And So We Walked

       When I was seven years old, I got lost in the woods behind my house for four hours. 

            My father and I had been walking out to the small pond that lay in the woods connected to our back yard, where we would sometimes fish just to pass the time on a warm Saturday afternoon. 

            I knew the way by heart. As long as you stayed on the well-worn dirt path, you would be fine. It took maybe ten minutes to walk from our back porch to the pond. Ten minutes of listening to my father’s pitchy whistling – broken on occasion when he would reprimand me for letting the fishing poles drag in the dirt. Just past the shed at the end of our yard, you turned right, heading into the sparse trees. The forest thickened with each yard, and if it had rained recently, you could feel the dew gathering on your skin, sticky and warm. 

            I knew the way by heart, but that day something caught my eye. It was a squirrel, or a fox. A flash of color in the brown decay of leaves – nothing more – that pulled me off course.  

            The scary thing about being lost in the woods, is that everything looks the same. The trees don’t bother to differentiate themselves from each other for your benefit. And the more you try to find your way out, the more lost you can become. Confidence in your direction can become utter hopelessness with the snap of a twig or a rustle of the wind. People die in the woods with no compass or point of orientation on which to focus their sanity. 

            As a child, though, I didn’t understand the depth of the situation until I lost the sound of my father’s whistling, somewhere far off to my right, dwindling into nothing as he walked down the path. At that point, I likely could have yelled, could have told him that I wasn’t there, but that would mean informing him of my mistake, potentially endangering the warm bubble of a nice afternoon that promised itself at the pond. 

            Surely, I wasn’t too far off the path. If I simply turned back directly the way I had come, I would find something I recognized, a root or a moss-covered rock. But the woods has a way of making you question even those things you think you know by heart. Something about the enticing, yet unknowable reaches of the forest – where only animals can always find their way back to the nest. 

            After hours had passed, I remember sitting down, holding my knees to my chest as if just waiting, succumbing to my inevitable demise in the woods. I’d given up fighting. I’d given up calling out. 

            And that was when I saw it. It could have been a trick of the light, the way that the sun was hitting the leaves above me. But I knew that it wasn’t. It was something.There, ahead of me – a pure, shapeless light. It’s the forest, I remember thinking. I don’t know where the thought came from. But I stood, wanting to walk into it’s embrace, wanting the comfort it might offer me. 

            It was then that I heard my father’s voice. “Veronica!” he called, not more than a hundred feet away. I turned toward the sound. When I looked back, the light was gone. It may have never even been there. But I knew it had been. And I knew then, as I know now, that the forest is its own beast, capable of swallowing us whole. But it doesn’t hunt. It lures. It waits for us to come to it. 

As we always will. 

......................................

            “We’re gonna be fine, Vee. Chill out,” Cal muttered, walking around the dim outcrop of trees we’d chosen as a momentary resting place. He held his useless phone up in the air, searching for a signal. But there wasn’t one. There wouldn’t be one. Because phone signals follow people, and, people weren’t supposed to be this deep in the woods.

            Hera’s arm draped over my shoulder, and she pulled me in closer to her side on the cold, vaguely damp surface of the rotting log beneath us. I thought I heard the wood cracking beneath our asses, but maybe that was just my brain looking for another reason to complain. She smelled like her honeydew Suave bathwash, and the vague hintings of her mother’s lasagna that she’d eaten for dinner that night. It was a smell I knew well, and it was comforting, for what it was worth. 

            To our right, Bodie, our dark horse of a companion, stood moodily against a tree at the edge of the circle. I don’t think he’d spoken since the last time he tried to explain that if we followed the crickets, they would lead us to water. That had been maybe an hour ago. 

            And that had been maybe two hours after Gina and Paul dropped the four of us off, blindfolded and mostly phoneless, in the middle of the goddamn forest. 

            It was a game as old as time - or, at least, as old as Green Valley High’s ominous graduation traditions. A senior year rite of passage: get a group together, have a couple of beers, and draw straws.

            Never, in the tales of the Green Valley Drive ‘n Ditch (the ones I’d heard anyway), did the losers just….not come back. 

            There’s a first time for everything, though. 

            “And what if we’re not, Cal? What happens then?” My voice came out, louder than I intended, drawing attention from Bodie as if he were bothered by the disturbance. My shoulders tensed under the weight of Hera’s embrace and she squeezed as if to calm me. It might’ve worked except that Cal’s face was twisted in that condescending way that he had. 

            “Then we’re not! I don’t know what you want me to say.” 

            I wanted to tell Cal to fuck off. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t take out his personal bullshit on me. But then again, maybe it was better to let him get it out now before our situation got any worse. 

            Cal’s gaze dragged over Hera and me where we sat and I could practically feel him simmering with jealousy. 

            “Well, we need to do something, don’t we?” Hera said, her words punctuated with a hearty sigh. “We can’t stay out here all night, it’s—” 

            I wrapped my arms around her waist, and she relaxed beneath the worn cotton of my hoodie. “It’s terrifying,” I finished for her. She gave me a grateful look and pressed a warm kiss to my lips. 

            God, I loved the mushy feeling in the pit of my stomach when she did. 

            Dragging my gaze back to Cal’s sulking form, I just managed to catch him rolling his eyes, muttering something under his breath. I might have caught the word dyke – whether about me or his prom date, I wasn’t sure. But I don’t want to go assuming anything. We all know what assuming does, after all. 

            Bodie’s shadowy form shifted at the edge of my vision then, as he moved to join our little group. The guy looked like someone that would have been blamed for the West Memphis 3 murders – straight out of the “Do you have yourself a Wiccan” catalogue, page 43: A Satanist in the Wild. He had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his studded denim jeans, scuffing his Doc Marten boots against the dirt ground. If you had told me before that night that this guy was Damien Echols, I would have believed you. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who would normally be seen hanging out with Cal Rogan and Hera Jeffries. But then again, neither was I. As far as I knew, he was a neighbor of Paul’s, tagging along for the ride. Bet he regretted that now. 

            “Look, she’s right. We shouldn’t be out here at night,” he said, facing Cal from a distance away as if it was necessary to speak to him, but he wasn’t happy about it. The wind stirred through the trees just then, whipping Bodie’s pitch-black hair over the tops of his shoulders. 

            Cal shuddered, the wind likely cutting straight through his ill-planned jacket choice. He regained his composure after a moment, though, and said, “Oh yeah? Why’s that, Marilyn Manson? Do the werewolves come out with the full moon?” 

            Bodie hesitated, glanced to Hera and I. When he looked back to Cal, he replied in a cautious voice, “Something like that…” 

            On cue, off to our left, the branches rustled and Hera stood up, eyes wide. “Alright, someone give me a plan to get out of here.” She paused, looking around when no one stepped up. She looked down at me still sitting on the log. “Right the fucknow!” She stamped her foot in the dirt and I stood up. 

            “Alright, alright, let’s keep walking,” I said, moving my hands in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture. “As long as we stay together and we walk in a straight line, we should be fine.” 

            Of course, I knew that was a lie. Anyone who’d seen Blair Witch, or any other horror movie set in the woods knew that was a flat-out, kick-you-in-the-face fib-berino. But it wasn’t just that. It was the familiarity of the situation. The nagging at the back of my head that told me to call out for my dad. The feeling that help had to be there, right? On the other side of that tree. It had to be, because people don’t just disappear in the woods, do they? 

            So we walked. 

            And we walked, deeper into the depths of the forest. The scent of moss and rain-soaked dirt seeped into my pores until I was sure I’d be oozing it the next morning. The sound of each foot fall on decay pulled us closer to exactly what we were afraid of…a whole lot of nothing. There was no way of knowing whether we were headed in the right direction – if we were even staying true to our course. 

            Hera’s hand clasped in mine was jittery, fingers clenching painfully around my own when there’d be any noise around us. Behind us, Bodie and Cal followed. We moved by the light of the flashlight we’d been provided, one of the few tools we were allowed on our little journey, grasped in Bodie’s fist. Even so, Hera and I had each come close to face-planting in the dirt several times, our sneakers catching on anonymous roots in the soil. 

            The steps behind us ceased suddenly, and so we turned to see Bodie. He was holding the flashlight in his loosely grasped fingers – I worried he would drop it. “Hey, where’s Calvin?” he asked, and shone the flashlight around into the shadows. 

            “I thought he was next to you,” I said. 

            “No, he was hanging back a ways…I thought he was behind me but—” He was cut off by the sound of rain landing on the leaves above our heads, a sudden downpour. 

            “Well, that’s just great,” Hera muttered, pulling her thick curls up into a bun as the rain started to come down harder. The weather forecast had called for rain. I remembered checking. But not until 2 am. I’d figured we’d be in the clear by then. 

            The leaves began to rustle around us, wind and rain spinning everything around into chaos. 

            “Cal!” Hera called, pulling her jacket tight around her shoulders, looking into the gaps between the trees as if something might reveal itself. “It’s not funny,Calvin! Get out here so we can get home!” Her voice echoed, not moving past the immediate space we were in, reverberating back into our faces. 

            The branches of the old oak closest to me shook. I craned my neck, taking a step closer to see. My heart thudded in my ears, rain water soaking into my jacket so that it clung to my skin. “Calvin?” I whispered, but there was no response. A shadow shifted in the opaque darkness beyond. 

            Hera’s scream sliced through the night air, and I spun around. 

            Calvin stood there, his hands braced on a cowering Hera’s shoulders. She started to unleash a volley of punches to his chest as he cackled, almost doubled over in his own amusement. 

            “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?” she seethed. 

            “Yeah, yeah. You all thought I was dead, didn’t you? That the night witch took me or some shit. Jesus.” He rolled his eyes, a few lingering chuckles still falling from his lips. “C’mon, this is getting old, let’s get out of here.” 

...........................

            We walked until I noticed that Hera had started to cry, wiping at her mascara streaked cheeks with the hand that wasn’t grasped in my own. 

            “Hey.” I stopped walking and Bodie just about ran into me, stopping himself just short of doing so, his feet slipping in the mud. The rain was still coming down around us, not in the vengeful way it had been before, but enough to make walking miserable. “We’ll figure this out, Sweet Cheeks, don’t worry,” I said to my—well, what exactly she was to me was yet to be established and we certainly weren’t about to have that conversation in front of the still neon green Cal. 

            She looked at me, and then at the others, realizing our little party had come to a stop. “No, no, I’m fine,” she managed, her throat sounding tight. I brushed at some of the tear drops gathering at the dip of her freckled cheek. 

            “I think we should stop,” I said, looking to the guys. Cal opened his mouth likely to protest, but I cut him off. “At least until day light. It should only be a couple more hours ‘til the sun comes up.” 

            “No,” Cal argued. God, it was like this guy was countering everything I said just for the hell of it. 

            “Yeah, I have to agree with the jock on this one,” Bodie said, frowning at the two of us. 

            “Why?” I asked. 

            “Well, because…according to the cellphone it’s almost three in the morning. The real depth of the night hits in the early morning hours before dawn.” 

            Cal groaned, pushing his hands through his dirty blonde locks in aggravation. “Okay. That is not what I meant. I just want to get the hell out of here and get home.” 

            “It’s fine, we can keep going,” Hera said, locking her gaze with my own. She squeezed my hand. In her eyes, I saw that little bit of fearlessness that had dragged me to her feet to begin with. 

            “Okay. Fine, but if you need to stop, you—” 

            “Wait—do you guys see that?” Cal had broken away again, looking into the forest in front of us. “That light. Up there. Do you see it?” 

            Hera almost growled, the guttural noise erupting from her chest. “Goddammit Cal! Don’t pull this—” 

            “I’m not! Look.” 

            We all shifted, moving to see what he was talking about. An eerie, white light shone from between the trees ahead, indefinable in size or shape, edges almost pulsing. 

            “Maybe it’s a car. Or—or a house or something.” 

            But there wasn’t any noise. There wasn’t anything to make you think that there was life on the other end of that light. In fact, there was an eerie kind of silence. A silence that absorbed everything within it – even the thoughts racing through your mind. 

            Bodie’s voice came from behind me, cracked, scraped down with something that sounded a whole lot like fear. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”

            It was calling to us.

            “I’m gonna go. Y’all can stay here if you want. But I’m getting the fuck out of here.” 

            As Cal walked toward the light, the edges expanded, enveloping him. It brightened, until we had to close our eyes for fear of burning our corneas. 

            Beside me, Hera whimpered, wrapped her arms around me. “Cal?” she called. There was no response, only the absorbent silence. From the corner of my eye, I saw Bodie moving around me, toward the light. Soon enough, he was enveloped as well. 

            “We have to go,” I said and looked at her, wiping away a tear from her eye. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s how we get out.” 

            She nodded. I expected her to protest, to hold up an argument in logic, but she seemed as convinced as I was.

            “Okay,” she whispered. 

            And so we walked.