The Woman in the Polaroid

Kyle Kinkade studied the metal box in his hands and frowned. It was different than the others he had located that afternoon while geocaching around Lake Marburg. Instead of a small Tupperware container, this one was a gray metal box, about the size of a cigarillo tin. Opening the metal box, he saw a polaroid photograph inside. The picture was of a woman. She was pretty in that girl-next-door type of way, with long red hair and bright green eyes. Her face held a curious yet suspicious gaze as if whoever captured the photo had surprised her when taking it.

What is this, Kyle wondered, feeling the hairs on his neck prickle with unease? Usually, the cache boxes he found contain information about local history or types of animals that were native to the area he was hunting in.

But a photograph? That was unheard of.

This doesn’t make sense.

Perplexed, Kyle turned the mysterious photo over. Was there anything on the back? To his surprise, there was. Written on the small white section, just below the backside of the photo, it said:

WHERE THE TREES FORK. 1-0-1-0.

 It was a clue, Kyle knew, to the next cache location.

He flipped the polaroid over and studied the woman captured within. She was obviously a hiker by the backpack slung over her shoulders. She wore a blue t-shirt, tan shorts, and hiking boots. But there was something oddly familiar about the photo that unnerved him. Behind the girl, Lake Marburg was visible between the cut in the trees, the sun glistening off the blue water. Kyle looked up from the photo and realized why it seemed familiar; he was standing in almost the exact same spot the photo had been taken.

Was she also a fellow geocacher, like him? It sure looked that way. But who took her picture, and why was it left for the next person to find?

He didn’t know.

Kyle had stumbled into geocaching during the height of the Covid19 pandemic. Up until March of 2020, his workout life was primarily spent in a gym. Once the pandemic hit, all that changed. Gyms were closed in fear of spreading the virus. He had a few free-weights, a Total Gym, and a treadmill in his basement that worked for the few months while the world was closed. But as the pandemic raged on and one month turned into two, then two into four, four into six, Kyle began to feel trapped, isolated, cut-off from the outside world. That was when his sister, Mika, over a Zoom call one evening, suggested he try geocaching as a way of getting out of the house.

“What is Geocaching?” Kyle had asked, leaning closer to the computer screen.

 “It’s a hiking treasure hunt,” Mika replied.

“Have you done one?”

“No. I just heard about it on the news the other day. They’re doing stories on things people can do outside.” She paused, took a long sip of wine (her way of dealing with life during Lockdown), and then looked back at the screen. “From what’s coming out of the CDC recently, they say it’s okay if we go outside, as long as we wear masks and stay six feet apart.”

Kyle was intrigued and decided to investigate geocaching further. Armed with GPS coordinates and clues, hikers search for ‘cache’ or hidden containers throughout the world. All he had to do, was download the geocache app on his phone, and select one of the small green icons with a white box inside and find it. He instantly became hooked to the physicality of the hikes and hunting for the rewarding educational treasures inside each box.

But not this box. Someone had purposely placed this metal box, with the photograph inside, for the next person to find.

 He re-read the clue.

 WHERE THE TREES FORK. 1-0-1-0.

Kyle flipped the photograph over and studied the woman closely.

Who are you? Why is your photo in the box? He came to no logical conclusions, which bothered him more than it should have for some unknown reason. Replacing the picture, Kyle returned it where he had found it under a rock at an old Oak tree base like one was supposed to do while geocaching.

Opening his phone, he pulled up the geocache app. On the screen, it showed his current position on the trail with a blue dot. The next cache drop box was about a mile away, according to the GPS on his phone.

He picked up his backpack and started off to find where the trees fork. 

***

Twenty minutes later, the trail opened up into two paths. Kyle looked down at his phone and saw he was close to the cache location, though the dot was only an approximation. It could be anywhere within thirty feet from him in all directions. He began to look around for forked trees but did not spot any close by. Lake Marburg's forest was dense; a forked tree could be anywhere in a thirty-foot radius, camouflaged amongst the other vegetation. It could take him an hour or more to find it.

He then remembered the last clue.

Where the trees fork.

He turned his attention back to the trail and onto the two paths stretching into the thick woods. Here the trees were separated by the path. And then it hit him. He was not looking for a forked tree but where the trees fork. The clue was a play on words. It didn’t mean to look for a forked tree, but where the trees forked on the trail, he now realized.

He walked up to where the trail separated in two and began searching the wooded area between the trails. He looked for anything out of the ordinary where a cache box could be hidden. A fallen tree or inside a hollowed-out stump or an oddly place pile of rocks. Finding caches wasn’t always easy. Sometimes Kyle could spend a few hours searching one area.

But not with this one.

He spotted it relatively quickly, almost as if it had been left out in the open for him to find.

The cache was in a green ammo box and sat on top of a natural rock formation, about twenty feet off the trail. Kyle reached out and picked up the metal box. It was heavier than he expected. Examining the outside of the box, Kyle saw it was secured with a combination lock. He shook the box. Something moved inside.

He again remembered the picture of the woman and the numbers on the back.

1-0-1-0.

The numbers were the combination to the lock, he understood now.

Kyle quickly worked his way through the combination, and with a jerk, the lock snapped free. Opening the box, he looked inside. At the bottom of the ammo box was another polaroid picture, lying face down. Along the bottom was another clue written there. His pulse quickened with intrigue and excitement, maybe even with a little bit of fear. Kyle removed the photo and read the clue.

Only this wasn’t a clue, but a warning…

YOU’RE BEING WATCHED. LEAVE YOUR CELL PHONE IN THE BOX. IF YOU TRY AND CALL THE POLICE, THE GIRL DIES…

Gooseflesh shot across Kyle’s entire body, and he felt his innards coil into a tight, uncomfortable knot. His heart rate instantly spiked. His eyes snapped up, and he began scanning the area surrounding him in all directions, hoping to spot whoever was watching him. But he saw only dense, green vegetation that seemed to be closing in on him, cutting off his oxygen, choking him. Sweat began to break out across his forehead, neck, and back. He needed to sit down before he fell over.

He rested on the rock formation where he found the ammo box. His heartbeat was so strong now he could hear it pounding inside his skull, and his hands shook uncontrollably.

Who’s doing this to me? Why are they doing this?

Turning the picture over with his hand still trembling, Kyle saw it was the same girl he had seen in the last polaroid. Only in this one, she was on the ground with her hands and feet bound. She looked absolutely terrified. Her tears had pulled the mascara down her puffy, red face like oil streaks.

This couldn’t be real. It had to be a prank. Yes, that had to be it. A trick his buddies Tom and Cary were playing on him. They both knew how much he enjoyed geocaching, and they could have gone out of their way to play some frightening trick on him.

You should call the police, he told himself. But he quickly brushed the thought off. Don’t be silly. It’s just a prank. Probably Tom or Cary came out and placed the caches for him to find since he had told them what he was doing that Saturday afternoon. It would be something those two knuckleheads would do for a laugh at his expense.

But if it was only a prank, then why was this eerie feeling setting uncomfortably over his skin like a film of slime.

Call the police, a voice that wasn’t his own screamed out inside his head.

Not yet, he told himself. I have to be sure that this isn’t a prank first. If I call the police and they find out this was really a trick, it could get Tom and Cary into a lot of trouble.

Kyle turned the photo back over again. There was more written below what he had already read.

TWO PATHS:

ONE WILL LEAD YOU TO YOUR FREEDOM.

THE OTHER WILL LEAD YOU TO YOUR TOMB

But what if it’s not a prank, Kyle suddenly thought. Was someone playing some sick and twisted geocaching game with him? A game that had deadly consequences if he picked the wrong path or made the wrong move, like calling the police. His actions could end up costing him not only his life but maybe the girl in the polaroid as well.

You need to do what they say, he told himself.

Kyle reached into his pants and pulled out his cell phone. He looked at it, ran his thumb over its smooth, black screen, with thoughts of calling the police clawing at his mind.

You can’t call the police! Her life is depending on you to do as they say.

He lifted his hand over his head, holding the phone up so the eyes in the forest could see what he was doing. Then, Kyle opened the ammo box and placed his phone in the bottom, and relocked it.

He stood up and moved back to where the trail split.

Looking from path to path, there was no way of telling which one led to his freedom and which led to his tomb. There was no path where the sunlight could not penetrate, and the vegetation was dead and had twisted into weird shapes, a sign that evil dwelled within. No, both paths were lush with green foliage and life. But evil waited down one of these paths for him. Kyle was positive of this much.

He had to pick one. But which one?

Left, Kyle thought. No. Not left – bad idea. He remembered his grandmother’s story then. How her teachers would slap her if she used her left hand for writing or eating because it was believed, at the time, that if you were left-handed, it was a sign of the devil.

It made perfect sense to Kyle, at least in his current situation.

He hiked the backpack upon his shoulders and started down the right path…

He walked for nearly two hours over terrine that was unfavorable for humans. He was starting to second guess himself for taking the right path instead of the left. But, so far, he had not stumbled onto any more cache boxes and had not seen or heard anyone following him.

The trail then led him to a patch of thinned forest. Here the trees were sparse. The forest floor was covered with ferns that blew back and forth, as if waving, from the slight warm breeze that afternoon. The sight of the waving ferns sent chills up Kyle’s back. It was like some malevolent spirit hung over this part of the forest, taunting him. He had no idea how far away from civilization he was since he no longer had his phone, and the thought of being cut off from the rest of the world, unable to get back, froze his blood.

He was about to start up another rocky incline when he spotted something shiny hanging from one of the tree branches about ten feet away.

Another cache.

This one was a small copper bottle, something old-timey that held medicine or snake oil back in the 1800s. A piece of fishing line was tied around the bottle’s lip and then secured to the tree’s branch. 

Kyle swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. He wondered what insidious clue waited inside for him. Reaching up, he undid the copper bottle from the string and looked inside. There was something rolled up in there. He fished it out and unrolled it.

A polaroid.

But this one was not of the girl, like the previous two. It showed a freshly cleared spot of earth where the ferns grew. The dirt had been recently disturbed like someone had dug it up. It looked like…a grave.

Kyle turned the photo over, finding another clue written at the bottom.

DIG UP THE MARROW

What the hell did that mean?

Did it matter? Kyle knew he was supposed to go and find the cleared spot. But why? What awaited him there?

He tried to swallow, but the lump that had formed in his throat prevented him. The urge to turn and run suddenly gripped him. But he remained. If someone was out there in the woods watching him, who knew what they were capable of if he didn’t do as they said. They could kill him, leave him there in the woods for the bugs and animals to pick his carcass clean.

You have to do as they say.

He figured that the spot he was supposed to find had to be close by since the photo was taken amongst the ferns. He began searching the area by scanning the forest floor and spotted the clearing about fifteen feet from where he stood. He flexed his hands and felt how clammy his palms were. He moved to the clearing.

The clearing looked just like the photo, but with one difference. A backpack now sat where the earth had been cleared. The same backpack he’d seen over the woman’s shoulders in the first polaroid.

 Oh, my, God!

Kyle then understood what was happening. The last clue, DIG UP THE MARROW, now made perfect sense. Someone had kidnaped the woman and then buried her there. They wanted him to dig her up.

Kyle fell to his knees and began digging in the dirt with his hands. He dug feverishly, pulling clumps of earth and rocks out by the handfuls. At one point, Kyle felt one of his fingernails break off, sending a jolt of pain up his arm. But he barely noticed. He had to get her out of that hole, out of that grave before she suffocated.

 You’re too late for that, the strange voice he heard earlier spoke. Just run. Get out of here.

He ignored the voice and continued to dig, deeper and deeper into the earth until there was a pile of dirt beside him and the grave lay uncovered.

 But there was nothing there. No girl. No body. Nothing but an empty hole.

What’s going on…

 Then, he heard someone move behind him. Kyle turned and shot quickly to his feet to try and defend himself. But he was too slow. Hands shot out and shoved him hard. He felt himself falling backward, back into the hole he had just dug open.

 He came down hard on his back, kicking dirt up around him. It settled in his eyes, in his mouth. He tasted earth on his tongue, grainy and gritty.  

When he looked up, a person stood above him. It only took him a moment to recognize the scared green eyes staring back at him. It was the red-haired girl from the polaroid. She was holding something in her hands – a large, thick branch.

 “What are you doing?” He asked.

“I’m sorry,” she spoke, her voice held an apologetic yet terrified tone. “But he’ll kill me if I don’t do what he says.”

Kyle had trouble understanding.

Who will kill you?

 “He’s watching.” She looked around the woods as if trying to find him before returning her gaze to Kyle. “If I don’t bury you” – Bury me, Kyle’s mind screamed out – “He’s going to kill us both.”

“No. You don’t have to do this,” Kyle said.

He went to push himself out of the grave, but she brought the branch up and swung. The branch connected to the right side of Kyle’s skull. A white flash of light went off behind his eyes, and he fell back into the hole. 

“It’s you or me,” she said, with a tremor in her voice. “I’m sorry.”

She then started to push the dirt Kyle had dug out back into the hole with her hands.

“No!” he groaned.

Kyle tried to move, but the whack to his skull had left him in such pain he could hardly see, let alone control his motor functions. All he could do was lay there as the earth slowly filled in around him, becoming his tomb.    

THE END