The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  Hazel could hear the weeping in the liquid drum of her heart. In her every breath. It pricked the back of her eyes. It was so much—so sad, as though all the sorrow she’d ever felt woke in her at once.

  Ms. Nelson stumbled, her hand going to the glass. Her breath hit the window, fogging it. Her eyes filled with tears. There was something else on the glass, too, growing blotches of something greenish, like mold or moss. Outside, black crows began landing on the branches of a tree, cawing to one another.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Hazel whispered in a tear-slurred voice. She stumbled away and heard a body hit the floor behind her, heard the sound of soft, muffled weeping.

  Hazel had to think. Her eyes were already filled with hot tears, her throat already thick with them, and everything she’d ever lost was crowding her head. She remembered looking down at Adam Hick’s half-rotted body and feeling utterly helpless. She thought of being sick during one of her parents’ parties, having eaten a big chunk of cake before she realize it had been soaked in rum. Dizzy, she’d looked for her mother, but everyone seemed to be a stranger. She’d thrown up in the bathroom for what felt like hours, until some of her throw-up was streaked with blood and a man she didn’t know brought her a glass of water from the tap. Hazel thought of her brother’s broken fingers, of the way his nails blackened and fell off, one by one. She thought about the boys she’d kissed and how the names she remembered first were of the boys who hated her after, because she remembered things that hurt more than any of the good stuff. Hazel thought about lying down on the sticky linoleum floor, curling up, and never rising again.

  It seemed pointless to keep standing, but she kept standing anyway. It seemed pointless to cross the hall, but she crossed the hall anyway.

  Go over there and pull the fire alarm, she told herself.

  She didn’t think she could.

  You don’t have to believe you can, she told herself. It was too much to ask for her to have to do it and also believe she could. Just do it.

  The sound of weeping grew louder, nearly crowding out all other thoughts.

  Her fingers closed on the red metal lever. Throwing her weight against it, she brought it down hard.

  Immediately, the alarm sounded, louder than the crying, louder than the keening. Hazel’s head pounded, but she could think again. After a moment, students started coming out of classrooms. Their cheeks were wet, eyes red-rimmed, and faces ashen. Normally the hall would ring with shouting, with gossip, with friends calling to one another. Right then, it was as quiet as a procession of the dead.

  “Liz?” the industrial arts teacher came over, crouching near Ms. Nelson’s body. “Evans, what happened out here?”

  “I don’t know,” Hazel said, looking up at the loudspeaker. Moss was spreading up the wall in patches, thickening like fur. If it kept growing like that, it would eventually smother the alarm.

  He blinked at her, as if he hadn’t quite processed what he was seeing yet. Maybe he was making up excuses. Maybe he was telling himself that spontaneous magical weeping was just part of the price for living in Fairfold.

  Ms. Nelson blinked and started to push herself up. “What’s going on?” she asked, voice hoarse. “Is that the fire alarm?”

  The shop teacher nodded. “Some kind of emergency. Come on, let’s get you outside. Maybe you inhaled some smoke.”

  A tiny crack started in one corner of the wall. Hazel watched it spread, watched it split into two cracks as vines seeped through.

  “There’s a fire?” a sophomore boy with a shaved head asked, coming from another hall in gym clothes.

  “Outside!” commanded the shop teacher, pointing toward the exit. “You too, Evans.”

  Hazel nodded, but she wasn’t ready to move. She was still staring at the moss and at the looping, pale vines poking through the growing fissures.

  Students flooded around her, on their way to line up outside. On their way to wait for the fire department to declare this a false alarm, maybe a prank. Hazel leaned against the windows, taking several deep breaths.

  That was when she saw Molly coming down the hallway, moving against the stream of bodies. She was walking strangely, as if she was half-dragging herself along, as if her limbs had become unfamiliar to her. Her expression was blank, her gaze seeming to slide over everything until it fell on Hazel.

  Molly’s lips looked blue at first, but the more Hazel stared at them, the more she realized they were really stained green, stained from the inside, as though she had been eating sour apple Laffy Taffy.

  Hazel stayed still, a hideous chill starting at the base of her spine. She’d been scared when she saw the other kids crying, but the revulsion she felt at the way Molly moved was entirely new. It seemed wrong. Hazel knew that she might be looking at Molly’s body, but Molly was no longer looking out through her eyes.

  “Stay back,” Hazel said as whatever it was got close, throwing up a hand automatically, stopping just short of knocking the girl to the floor.

  A syrup-sweet voice came from Molly’s mouth, speaking in singsong. Her head tilted to one side. “I loved him and he’s dead and gone and bones. I loved him and they took him away from me. Where is he? Where is he? Dead and gone and bones. Dead and gone and bones. Where is he?”

  With every word, clumps of dirt fell from her tongue.

  “What are you doing to Molly?” Hazel asked shakily. The hall was nearly empty. The alarm was still ringing, but somehow the voice coming from Molly’s mouth carried easily over the sound.

  “I loved him and I loved him and he’s dead and gone and bones. I loved him and they took him away from me. Where is he? Where is he? Dead and gone and bones. Dead and gone and bones. My father took him. My brother killed him. Dead and gone and bones. Dead and gone and bones. Where is he?”

  Molly had been Hazel’s best friend for two years, the one she’d stayed up late instant-messaging about boys, the one she’d trusted to trim her bangs. When she and Molly walked through the halls, Hazel had felt like maybe there was nothing wrong with normal, as if maybe she could just focus on having fun and not worrying too much about what came after. Molly didn’t care about faeries in the woods; they were just stories to her. She thought that all the tourist stuff was a scam and that the tourists themselves were boring, desperate for someone to tell them they were special. Seeing Fairfold through Molly’s eyes was like seeing an entirely new place. After Molly dumped her, Hazel sometimes thought she missed seeing the world that way even more than she missed Molly.

  Now, Molly would have no choice but to believe in the Folk. The thought made Hazel furious.

  “You can’t have her,” Hazel said, fumbling for her necklace, the one Ben had made her wear. She pulled the chain strung with rowan wood from around her throat. When the creature didn’t react, Hazel thrust it over Molly’s head, letting the amulet settle at Molly’s throat. “See? So go! Go! You’re not welcome here!”

  Abruptly, Molly’s eyes rolled upward, until Hazel saw only the white of her sclera.

  Hazel’s heart thundered. Then Molly collapsed to the floor, her whole body going limp at once. Her head hit the linoleum, making a horrible, hollow sound.

  “Help!” Hazel called. She knelt down, fumbling for Molly’s wrist, meaning to take her pulse, before she realized she had no idea how to do that. Over and over she screamed the words, and over and over nobody came.

  Then Molly opened her eyes, blinking wildly, coughing so hard it was half-choking. When she looked at Hazel, the expression that washed over her face was some commingling of embarrassment and terror. It was an entirely human expression.

  “Hazel,” Molly croaked, spitting out dirt and what appeared to be leaves.

  Sweet, incredulous relief made Hazel lean against the wall. “You’re okay?”

  Molly nodded slowly, pushing herself into a half-sitting position, wiping at her chin. Her black hair, usually gelled into spiky precision, was a mess. Blood dribbled from a shallow cut where her head had struck the floor,
turning the collar of her white shirt red. “I saw it. The monster. It’s made of old, knotted branches grown over with moss, and it has these horrible black eyes.”

  Hazel scooted closer and reached out to take Molly’s hand. Molly squeezed hard.

  The alarm was still going, a siren wailing into the emptiness of the halls.

  “You always knew this was all real, didn’t you?” she asked, anguished. “How can you stand it?”

  Hazel was trying to formulate a reply when Molly’s eyes closed. She shuddered once and collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. Hazel shouted and shook her by her shoulders, but Molly’s body was as limp as Amanda’s had been.

  The monster was no longer content to wait in the heart of the forest. It had come to the center of Fairfold in the middle of the day, and Hazel wasn’t sure if it could even be slain.

  Was it looking for Severin? For the sword? Had someone summoned it with the rhyme?

  First things first, she decided. She needed to get out of that hallway and she needed to get Molly out, too. Carrying Molly over her shoulders would be possible, but not ideal. Hazel wouldn’t be able to fight and she wouldn’t be able to move fast, either.

  What she needed was a chair with wheels.

  “Stay right there,” Hazel said to Molly softly as she got up. She passed the widening crack in the wall, oozing unfurling tendrils of ivy, and went down the hall toward the art room just as two people came barreling around the corner. It was Carter, with a phone in one hand and a hockey stick in the other. Robbie Delmonico was beside him, brandishing a baseball bat. He yelped at the sight of her, stumbling back into some lockers, which rattled like chains.

  Hazel found her hands balled into loose fists. “What the hell?”

  “Relax. We were looking for you,” Carter said. He was wearing the rib pad from his football uniform and knee plates. Hazel had never before noticed how much football gear was like armor. With his broad shoulders and excellent jawline, he looked like Sir Morien from the Round Table. “Emergency services people won’t let anyone back into the school. Ben and Jack got stuck out in the parking lot, so they’ve been lecturing me over texts on where you might go.” He gestured vaguely toward the front of the school.

  “There’s some kind of thing,” Robbie put in. “We found three freshmen under one of the tables in the cafeteria. They were out cold—or at least I thought they were, but one of them opened her eyes and told me something super creepy—something about bones. Then she passed out again. We carried them to some EMTs through an open window, but figured we’d stay inside until we were sure everyone else got out.”

  Hazel nodded. She was forcibly reminded what a good guy Robbie was when he wasn’t acting bizarre and besotted. “Dead and gone and bones.”

  He lifted his bat higher, eyes widening. “Not you, too!”

  Hazel shook her head, sighing. “Molly said that, before she passed out. She was—I don’t know—possessed or something like it.”

  “Molly Lipscomb?” Carter looked down the hallway and drew in a breath at the sight of her body. “Did you see the monster? Was it here?”

  Hazel shook her head. “We’ve got to move her, though. I’m getting a chair.” She turned to Robbie. “Try to find rope or yarn or something we can tie her with.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Robbie nodded, starting toward one of the classrooms.

  “Jack says…” Carter seemed to realize he was talking to himself more than them and bit off the thought with the shake of his head. “I’ll stay by Molly. You guys get whatever you think you need.”

  Hazel found a swivel chair behind the teacher’s desk in the second classroom she entered and rolled it into the hall, while Robbie managed to discover a spool of heavy bright blue string in one of the closets. Hazel lifted Molly, while Robbie braced the chair so her weight didn’t send it flying suddenly backward. Then Carter helped them tie her in place, as if she were a prisoner about to be interrogated or a fly stuck in a spider’s web. Head lolling to one side, eyes shut, Molly was soon held fast to the chair by layers and layers of crisscrossed string.

  Then Hazel went back for a weapon. She found a pair of heavy scissors in the desk and slammed them down until the two pieces came apart and she had made herself twin daggers.

  “Jesus, that was loud,” Carter said, hands on the back of Molly’s chair. “Come on.”

  They walked down the empty hall together, peering into abandoned classrooms, where jackets were still draped over the backs of chairs and desks still had papers and pens and books lying on them. Whiteboards had been left with math problems half-solved, carried ones floated above unadded numerals. In a science classroom, a documentary about genetics still played on a projection screen. A few desks in the back were entirely covered in a spreading tide of moss.

  The shadows lengthened as they made their way past the gymnasium. Hazel stepped in, her scissors gleaming in the flickering overhead lights. Ivy dripped down from the ceiling, knotting around the cables. Her heart pounded in her chest hard enough that it felt like a fist. Hard enough that her insides felt bruised from it. The room had never seemed ominous to her before, with its slick, shining floor and the skeletal metal scaffolding of bleachers, but now she was acutely aware of all the places a monster might rest, folded up, looking like nothing more than a pile of refuse, long fingers creeping out to grab hold of an ankle…

  “Do you see anything?” Robbie asked from behind her.

  Hazel shook her head.

  “You don’t have to help us look for more stragglers,” Carter said. “Take Molly and head for the front. Your brother is worried about you. My brother is worried about you.”

  In the flickering light, the boys seemed different. Robbie looked sallow and a little frantic, the hollowness under his eyes made prominent. Carter looked more like Jack than ever, his face sharpened by shadows. If she tried, she might have been able to pretend he was his brother. For a horrible moment she understood why someone might do what Amanda did. It would be like kissing Severin’s casket. It wouldn’t be real. It couldn’t hurt.

  “Why don’t you get out?” she asked him, not particularly nicely, since she didn’t appreciate being condescended to and she didn’t like where her thoughts were going.

  “Guilt, mostly. I was the last one to see Amanda—everyone’s saying it and it’s true.”

  “What happened?” Hazel asked. They were moving through the literature and history hall of the school, toward the principal’s office and the main doors, passing by the auditorium, where the curtained stage lurked. One of the wheels on Molly’s chair hung up a little, making a small squeal of protest, over and over, as it rolled.

  Robbie pushed, flinching at the noise.

  There were echoes in some of the rooms, sounds that Hazel couldn’t place. She’d hunted through the wild woods and knew how magnified noise could become through hyperalertness and adrenaline. She knew how convinced you could be that you’d heard a sound when it was only your own breathing. And she knew how dangerous it was to dismiss your instincts. At least in the woods she had experience identifying the rustlings and breezes and footfalls. Here, she hadn’t paid enough attention. Every movement made her teeth grit and the hair along her arms stand.

  Carter spoke again, softly, his voice pitched so Robbie might not hear. “We had a fight. Me and Amanda. She said some stuff about Jack that was—ridiculous. Like that he wasn’t even a person. Maybe she was just trying to rile me up, but, well, it worked. I kicked her out of the car, even though she was wearing these huge, dumb heels, and figured she could just walk.

  “I got about three blocks before I realized I was being an asshole. Mom would kill me if she found out that I took a girl on a date and then left her someplace, all by herself, with no way home.” He stopped speaking abruptly, as if realizing that killing wasn’t something he should be joking about.

  “And?” Hazel asked.

  “Amanda wasn’t there when I went back. I didn’t see her again, and her parents w
on’t let me visit her in the hospital.” He raised his voice slightly. “Hey, Robbie, what about you? How come you’re sticking around? Trying to be a hero? Why don’t you get out of here?”

  Robbie gave them a lopsided grin. “The one thing I know from movies is never to split up. Besides, you two would be lost without me.”

  “True enough,” Carter said amiably.

  “Hey, Hazel, why are you—” Robbie began, but he never got to finish. A scream split the air.

  They took off running toward it, the thud of their footfalls pounding against the floor, the shrill squeak of Molly’s chair loud in their ears. The screaming was coming from the girls’ bathroom.

  Hazel charged ahead, slamming her shoulder against the door, scissor daggers poised to strike.

  Leonie stood near the sinks, water streaming from one of the faucets to puddle on the floor. At the sight of Hazel, she screamed even louder. The room seemed empty, but Hazel’s heart was beating so fast and Leonie seemed so scared that she wasn’t sure. She kicked open the first stall, but there was only the toilet, with three burnt cigarette stubs floating in it. She kicked open the second: empty. She was about to kick open the third when Leonie grabbed her arm.

  “What are you doing? Stop!” Leonie said. “You’re freaking me out.”

  “I’m freaking you out?” Hazel shouted. “You were the one screaming.”

  “The thing—I saw it,” Leonie said. “Jesus—I thought it was safe to go out into the hallway, but then it was there. Oh god, what happened to Molly?”

  “Did you get a good look at it?” Carter asked from the doorway. He and Robbie were standing at the threshold, as though, even now, the idea of putting one foot into the girls’ bathroom, with its Pepto-Bismol tile and ancient tampon machine on one wall, was forbidden.

  Leonie shook her head. “I saw something. It was horrible—”

  “We’re almost to the exit,” Robbie reminded them, shuddering visibly. “Let’s just get out.”

  “What if it’s waiting?” Leonie demanded. “It’s somewhere nearby.”