Out of the Forest

Out of the Forest

By Tim D. Smith

In the broiling summer of 1993, Meg, pensive, reluctant, and ready to be anywhere else, arrived at her grandmother’s home, surrounded by sad pastures and moony, brown jersey cattle. In the distance, though, rising behind the banks of a twisting stream amid drooping River Birch, a forest tempted, its toad-gray-dangerous depths beckoning. Resolved, she would explore at dusk on her first day.

The Dallisgrass and Yellow Foxtail wilted low (for the promised rains had not come), mute, and watchful as she gazed into the pooling ink of parting trees. Tempted but afraid, exploration would have to wait for new light. Imagining her footfalls, she began to retrace her steps then stopped, as if a voice called to her, no, even more, a voice had called her name, clear and distinct in a throaty whisper, resonating like a breeze in a canyon or the stillness of a cavern. She had heard it. She was certain, enough so that a shiver shook her shoulders and goosebumps tickled her legs. The forest, like a new lover, requited her longing, a mirror of shared desire. A silent consent confirmed, she would return tomorrow.

At daybreak she did, skipping in quick steps over three small stones in the stream then freezing as the day-bugs buzzed and matched the hum in her ears. She scanned the undergrowth where no foot had trod and tiptoed until she could stride over pine needles amid the rising trunks and the canopy of branches, the only sound now the beating of her heart, life mute in the shadows. The forest swallowed her call of “Hello!” before she dared to continue, until the glare of the red morning’s warning faded behind her.

Had she walked a hundred yards? Miles? She fought the urge to return and instead sat, leaning back against a Loblolly underneath the curving limbs of the Pitch Pines, scanning the tree tops absent movement and life. She waited, expecting another call, and considered continuing. Tomorrow. She rose to return, and after skipping across the stones once more, she heard it again, this time more insistent, her name repeated once followed by deafening silence. She ran through the field and looked back to the forest. Tomorrow.

“Where did you go?” grandmother asked, cornbread and string beans on the table.

“Across the stream,” Meg answered, looking to her grandmother and then to her grandfather who had entered and towered above, his face a blank mask. “Did you call?”

“I thought you’d return when you were ready,” the woman said before taking her seat.

That night, lights extinguished, the sounds of a squeaking, overhead fan and the ticking of an ancient grandfather clock muting the quiet, she swung her legs from under covers and stole to the window overlooking the yard. Behind it, the invisible forest hulked. Miller moths fought under a lonely yard light whose spatter of beams was being swallowed by a still fog. She eased open her bedroom door and slipped through the house to the back door, which she opened, crossed through onto the long wrap-around porch, and down the concrete steps onto the dewed grass. From here she could hear the gurgle of water, and with the smell of ragweed, spider flower, and Devil’s Trumpet assaulting her senses, she walked across the yard before squeezing through the fence into the pasture.

“Who are you?” she murmured. “Did you call my name?”

She imagined eyes, watching her movements, gauging where she might wander, her fear smothered by curiosity. A movement in her peripheral vision caught her eye, and she stopped, unable to move, fear now engulfing her but fading when nothing happened. She walked to the edge of the stream, now in complete darkness, cloaked in the mist that gathered around her feet.

She could walk into the forest to blend and coalesce with the black ether. Something was here, she could feel it. She could submit and it could take her, far away into the nothingness. A survival instinct awoke, catching her breath. She turned and began to run, the crunch of her footsteps over the dying grass, and as she strained to fit between the fence, the lone light illuminating the sagging house, she heard it again, this time long and mournful: “Meeeg….” The sad voice of a young woman, pleading from the forest.

“Did you sleep?” her grandmother asked the next morning not bothering to turn away from her cooking, butter, biscuits, and eggs drifting to meet her. A blood red sunrise seeped through the blinds into the dining room.

“I did,” Meg lied as she sat.

“Did you walk to the pasture?”

Had her grandmother heard her or possibly spied her as she stole away in the night? The voice she heard had not been her grandmother’s, but how did she know?

“I walked around,” Meg said, “trying to get sleepy?”

“Did it work?”

It had not worked; in fact, it had haunted her throughout the night.

“Not really,” Meg answered.

Her grandmother came to the table and began helping her plate.

“You’ve been through lots,” the woman said, stopping, holding the iron skillet which drooped in silence. “If you need to talk, let me know. I’m here for you.”

That night, the rains came, then the storms, and the glider facing the pasture swayed and whined on its chains. She endured the tempest as midnight approached, and when the wind began to howl at its loudest, she arose and went to the window. The rain fell in sheets, sideways under the light, and pools of water splashed around the yard and ran in torrents down the dirt road near the pasture.

She glimpsed movement, strange motion, across the road and moving in the direction of the forest. Meg strained to see more, closer to the window, placing her hands as to block the slight glare. Had it been upright? Were those footsteps? Then again, she saw it, a fleeting instant this time to her left and out of sight traveling in the direction of the gate.

This time her haste lacked caution as she strode to the porch, outside her window, as the droplets of warm rain invaded. She scanned the area, moving her gaze back and forth, straining. That’s when she saw her.

Crossing the pasture, her legs became visible, moving toward the forest, not in fright but with purpose. Without thinking, Meg followed, drenched in an instant, her running feet sinking into muck.

In only another moment, she was in the pasture and could hear the stream, only this time the sound was much different as the rainfall had created a rushing torrent. Soon she could see the creek had broken its banks and foamy, whitecaps crested in its vanishing turns. And then she saw her once more, closer now and so dark she seemed to be a specter, her upper body facing away, walking into the forest.

Meg called out. How had she crossed the stream? She had to know what was really on the other side.

*****

Impossibly old, she rocks on her porch, sometimes late into the night, alone. No one mows the pasture nor mends the fence; it holds nothing anyway, but memories. And in her mind’s eye, the old woman can see the footsteps crossing the yard, traveling into the field, where the Dallisgrass and the Yellow Foxtail form a path to the creek in front of the dark wood. And still, after all these years, she watches and waits and mutters:

“She will come out of the forest… she will…come… out of the forest…”