by Nick Scorza
“Of course it’s right,” Hector said, though he didn’t look as sure as he sounded.
Then I saw Ash’s car in the driveway, the cigarette butts in the front yard. I knew she had a hard life, but it was something else to see it like this, without being invited. I just prayed she was all right. I couldn’t handle losing her just as we’d become friends. I was about to walk up to the front door when Keith stopped me.
“I don’t know if anyone’s home,” he said. “Let’s check the back. Maybe her room’s on that side.”
We crept through the narrow side yard to the rear of the house. The back yard was strung with a clothesline, and part of it was set up as a garden, but the rest was mostly mud. Ash’s backyard bordered directly on the forest that surrounded the town, just like my father’s. The back door was ajar, creaking faintly in the breeze. Then I saw the footprints.
“Look!” I said.
They made a trail through the mud from the front door out to the tree line. They were made by sneakers, about the same size as Ash’s feet, from what I could remember. Immediately I thought of my promise to Elaine to stop the junior detective stuff. I’d broken promise after promise to the adults in my life, but I had to break one more. Until now, I’d been hoping we’d just find Ash at home with nothing amiss, but now there was no choice but to believe the note. I followed the footprints to the edge of the forest, Hector and Keith behind me.
We stopped for a moment at the tree line. We all knew what we might find at the end of this trail, but none of us wanted to say it, or even think it. The darkness of the forest ahead made the street look bright. The trees were hulking gray shapes in the purple gloom. The wind whipped my hair into my face and made an eerie rustling sound as it blew through the branches.
“We have to go,” I said.
Hector and Keith nodded, and we set off down Ash’s trail. Her footprints were soon lost in the darkness and the uneven ground. Not even moonlight penetrated the canopy above us. We had to take out our phones to see the way forward.
I thought of my first trip into the forest and shivered.
“Stay together,” I said. “No matter what you hear, don’t run off after it.”
“This isn’t a path,” Keith said. “This is no good . . .”
“No choice now, man,” said Hector.
The crickets were still chirping around us, and I gave silent thanks for that. The undergrowth here wasn’t dense, but the tree roots were hard and gnarled and seemed to rise up out of the ground on purpose to trip us unawares. There was a heaviness to the air that grew as we got deeper in. The trees ahead were shrouded in a pale mist.
“We’re getting close to the lake,” Keith said.
Just then, an ear-splitting howl rang out from somewhere in the forest. It froze us all to the spot. It was answered by others further off, savage growls that rose to a frenzy of high-pitched baying yips. We took off running deeper into the forest. Wherever we were going, I hoped it was toward Ash.
We were almost at the lake—I could see a silvery ribbon of reflected moonlight ahead. Then I caught sight of a lone figure walking between the trees, making for the water. She moved slowly, swaying as if she were still half-asleep. The cascade of matte-black hair was unmistakable.
“Ash!” I shouted.
She didn’t even turn around. She was clear of the trees now, walking down the rocky shore toward the lake’s edge. We ran toward her. The lake was a pool of utter blackness, like a second sky, with its own near-full silvery moon to match the one above. I thought of all those times I’d seen the lake during the day and thought there was more to it I wasn’t seeing. . . . At night, it’s true face was visible, a dark, yawning void, like deep space. I couldn’t look directly at it—I was afraid it would swallow me whole.
Ash was almost to the edge when I caught up with her.
“Stop!”
I grabbed hold of her shoulder, wrenching her back. She stopped, shaking her head, then stared at me, bewildered. The question she was about to ask me died on her lips, as her eyes suddenly went wide with terror. My eyes followed hers, a shape even blacker than the darkness of the lake had risen up from the water, towering above us. It was like a cloud of dense shadow, standing twice the height of a full-grown man. We stumbled backward as it advanced toward us. From around us in the forest, the howling rose up again, closer this time. We tripped over rocks and roots, scraping our arms and legs, running back toward the trees. Hector and Keith both saw what followed us, their faces pale with fright.
“Run!” I shouted.
Hector took off with us back into the trees, but Keith stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. The rest of us drew back in terror. My mind raced, trying to think of some way to help him, but what could we do against something so unreal? I threw a loose rock at Keith, hoping to stir him from his trance, but it only bounced off his shoulder.
“Keith, run! You’ve got to fight it!”
The shadow drew closer, drawing itself up even taller. The howling around us in the forest had risen to a gibbering chorus, and I knew then we wouldn’t be safe, no matter how fast we ran. The shadow stood there in front of Keith, a negative stain like an afterimage burned into the eye. I felt certain it concealed something, something even worse than what we could see.
The air around us was electric. I could feel my hair stand on end. Keith still hadn’t moved. He was staring right into that mass of darkness. It moved toward him slowly, as if it had all the time in the world. All of us could feel the same rank, animal fear that rooted Keith to the spot. We were all holding our breath.
Here it comes, I thought, do something.
I fumbled on the ground, looking for a rock, for anything that could help. Then I remembered the old iron clasp in my pocket. I pulled it out and hurled it at the cloud of shadow, hoping that for once in my life I could manage to throw something straight.
The clasp arced over Keith, striking the darkness as it rose above him. There was a terrible hiss, like a nest of snakes, and the darkness drew back.
It hovered there for a tense moment. I was afraid it would come back toward us, and I was about to scream for everyone to run. Then, slowly, it withdrew, sinking lower to the ground like an animal on all fours, backing slowly down to the lake. In a moment, it was gone, and it was as if the whole forest breathed out at once. The crickets burst out in a frenzied chorus. In the trees, a flock of night birds took panicked flight. In the distance, I could hear one last mournful howl fade to silence. We caught our breath. Ash almost fell to the ground, catching herself on a nearby tree branch.
“Thanks,” she said, “thank god you were there. I-I don’t know what happened.”
“Yeah,” said Keith. “Thanks. I don’t—I couldn’t—”
I looked back into the depths of the forest. The iron clasp my father had given me was out there somewhere, but I couldn’t bring myself to take one more step in that direction.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
We walked back toward Keith’s Jeep in hushed silence. My head was brimming with questions, but I didn’t feel ready to speak yet. It took us until Ash’s back yard was in sight for the fear to even start to lift.
“What do you remember?” I asked.
“I was here, at home. My mother had gone to bed, her medication makes her sleep like the dead. I was just sitting up, watching something stupid on TV. Then-then everything after was like a dream. I heard a voice whispering to me, telling me to come outside. I knew I shouldn’t, but it was like I wanted to so badly. I had to.
“When I opened the door, it wasn’t my back yard. I was walking down a garden path. The flowers were glowing just like the moon. I heard singing in the distance. A voice I wanted to follow. It was beautiful.” She shuddered.
“What—” Hector began, his voice hoarse. “What the hell was that back there?”
Keith had been vacant-eyed the whole way back, walking in a daze just like Ash had, but at Hector’s question, he seemed to come around.
>
“I’ve seen it before, when I was a child,” he said. “It’s called the King of the Wood.”
1725
. . . After the requisite niceties had been observed, we were brought before the Sachem at the Onondaga council fire. Members of the Bear Clan spoke against us, and asked that we answer for the indiscretions of our countryman. Louis and his troops bristled at the words, being unfamiliar with the ways of the Haudenosaunee. They had likely heard wild tales at the settlement, and expected to be flayed alive or some such nonsense.
The Turtle Clan counseled patience and spoke in our favor, and I was permitted to present an entreaty from the Commander of Fort Frontenac, inquiring as to the health and whereabouts of his foolish young nephew, who had ridden this way some months before with a company of coureurs du bois after furs and gold. When I had said my piece, the Sachem frowned. He motioned to two of his warriors, and they brought forth a body wrapped in a shroud. He had been given all the respect of their funerary rites and our own, such as they knew them. Louis hissed that this was surely treachery, but I told him to be silent.
“I have ill news,” the Sachem said. “Your Commander’s kinsman did not return.”
“Then who is this?” I said.
“The Spirit’s Eye is forbidden for good reason. Your man would not heed our many warnings. He ventured there, and he did not return. What did was not a man as you or I know them. He slew two of my best warriors, and he died cursing all men and all their gods.”
I thanked the Sachem, and told our men to ready the body for transport to Frontenac. Louis whispered to me that I was abetting murder, and that he could not countenance how a man of the cloth could be so taken in by pagan superstition. He promised the Commander would know all when we returned, and I would be hanged.
Perhaps I would have been if Louis had shared his tale, but one look at the dead man’s face and he fell silent. The features were that of our commander’s nephew, but twisted into a look of such unearthly malevolence that none could say he was the youth they remembered. I heard nothing from Louis all the ride back to Frontenac.
—Confessions of Fra. Benoit Giraud, Societas Iesu, 1725
From the library of Tom Morris
XIV.
Keith and Ash exchanged fearful looks. The name King of the Wood meant something to them it didn’t mean to Hector and me.
“We’re all in this together now,” I said. “We need to know what you know.”
“It-it’s just supposed to be a story,” said Ash. “He steals children that don’t obey their parents, or go walking in the woods at night. He and his hounds hunt the souls of sinners on All Hallows Eve.”
“I saw him before,” Keith said as we walked toward the Jeep. There was something hollow in his voice, like he was trying to hide from his own memory. “I was just a kid, I don’t remember how old. I was wandering in the grape vines, pretending they were a maze I had to find my way out of. I lost track of time. Before I knew it, the sun had set, and it was dusk. Everything was caught between light and dark, and I saw this shadow, big and darker than the rest of the shadows, rise up out of the lake and creep along the ground t-toward my house. I couldn’t move. I’ve never been that afraid in my life. As it passed, it turned toward me, and I knew it could see me crouched there between the grape vines, holding my breath. It just looked at me like-like it did now by the lake, and I could see it, too, beneath the darkness, it . . . I can’t remember. I don’t want to.”
I laid a hand on Keith’s shoulder, and all of us stayed there for a moment, silent, while he buried his head in his hands. Ash also put an arm around him, and even Hector laid a hand on his shoulder. Finally, he seemed to come back to himself.
“What now?”
“I don’t want to go home,” said Ash. “I need to be somewhere with light. I . . . can you all come with me?”
“Light,” said Keith. “I think that’s a good idea.”
Keith took us down the road I’d first come into town on, past the bus stop. He was driving us out of Redmarch Lake. All the time I’d been here, I’d never thought of just hopping in the car and leaving town. It seemed wrong, just like throwing a pebble into the lake had. Part of me was afraid we’d hit an invisible wall, or realize we’d somehow turned around and were right back where we started, but Keith kept driving until we were outside the town limits, on a dark road lit by the silvery circles of streetlights.
“The only thing open now is a gas station out by the state road,” said Keith. “I hope no one minds.”
“Nothing numbs the unspeakable horror like beef jerky,” said Hector.
We all managed to laugh a little, which was good. It was funny—leaving the town and the lake felt like letting out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. It was nice, and almost made me want to head back home, but I couldn’t go now. Despite the horrible things I’d seen, I didn’t want to leave the lake. Not until I knew what it had to do with my sister. It was more than that, though. This lake had a hold on me, somehow, and even now I felt a disturbing urge to be near it again.
As we drove, Hector and Ash talked about the town in the back seats. It was like something had come loose in Hector—now that a few of the locals acknowledged his existence, he couldn’t stop talking.
“For real, no one sits you down one day and says ‘don’t talk to any outsiders,’ or anything?”
“My mom didn’t tell me much besides shut up and sit still,” Ash said. “Maybe other people’s parents did. Sometimes this place feels like one of those old Hollywood sets of a Wild West town—like it only looks real on the surface. I don’t know what’s underneath, and I’m not sure most of the adults do either.”
“Wow,” he said. “All this time, I thought I was the only one on the outside of this big secret.”
“If there’s a secret, I think we’re all outside it,” Ash gave Keith a sideways look, which he couldn’t see with his eyes on the road. “Well, most of us, anyway.”
I felt a sudden flush of jealousy at Hector and Ash’s new little mutual-respect society. Was he only talking to me because the locals ignored him? I told myself I was being crazy, and it was good they were becoming friends.
The gas station was a little oasis of red-white-and-blue neon. There were a few trucks refueling at the diesel pumps, but otherwise it was empty. We parked well within the station’s halo of light and walked into the mini-mart, which was lit up like high noon. I think all of us appreciated that. We bought big armfuls of junk food—sodas and chips and candy bars, not caring how bad any of it was. The sleep-deprived young man behind the counter rang us up without saying a word, or even opening his eyes beyond a painful squint. None of us minded. The bright artificial light made this the best place in the world right now.
We sat in the parked car, opened our feast of junk, and shared everything. I mixed salty and sweet without second thoughts until my stomach ached and my teeth hurt, but I was finally starting to feel normal.
“So I just want to get one thing out there,” said Hector. “Out of all the small towns in America, why did I have to move to the haunted one?”
“I’m sorry,” said Ash. “For everything, for the way we all don’t talk to outsiders and all that. I hate it. Neil was the only one who refused to do it . . .”
And look what happened to him, we all added silently.
“We didn’t ask to be born here, either,” said Keith. “I know, the town’s named for my family, cue the world’s smallest violin, but—I hate it, too. It feels good to say that. I don’t think I ever have before.”
Both Hector and Ash seemed a little nervous around Keith. I guess for them he still represented everything they feared about the town, but I hoped they were starting to see him like I did.
“Let it out,” said Hector. “Don’t be shy. I used to count any word someone said to me in this town as a victory, even if it was ‘shut up, nerd.’”
“Ouch, see I feel bad for complaining already,” said Keith. “They made me captain of t
he football team. I didn’t even have to try out. I was terrible, but no one would tell me that. It was hard to resist, but I could see what kind of person I would be if I let that continue, and I didn’t like it. I quit the team. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I never thought of it that way,” said Ash. “Half the kids in school are afraid of you, I mean, of your family. No one wants to get on your bad side, even the teachers.”
“Don’t remind me,” said Keith. “I do all my homework, even though I’d get the same grades if I never turned anything in. My whole life is like a really comfortable cage, but the cage is so nice I feel awful for complaining about it.”
“Why don’t we just keep driving?” said Hector. “We could stay with Clara’s mother in the city.”
Keith and Ash agreed enthusiastically to this decision. They were already planning out new lives in New York. They were only half joking, I think. I wished right then that I could bring them all back with me, Ash and Keith and especially Hector.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” I said. “You haven’t met my mother, not to mention her loser boyfriend.”
“That’s a good point,” said Hector. “If your mom’s as tough as you, we’re all in trouble.”
I felt my cheeks get hot. I hoped Hector couldn’t see my face in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t even sure that was a compliment, but my body already seemed to think it was—clearly I wasn’t as tough as I liked to think. Maybe it was just that Hector was the one complimenting me.
I looked away, catching sight of my reflection in the passenger side window, against the darkness of the road and the forest. It made me think again of Zoe at the lake. Every friendship, every night spent with people I cared about made me feel guilty, because I should have been spending that time with her. It’s not what she would have wanted, I know—but nothing can replace a twin. If only she were here beside me.
It had been her, not me, in the lake. I was certain. All this time I’d been half-pretending she was still with me, trying to think of what she’d say about everything in my life. Then I started receiving these clues in our secret language, and when I actually saw her, it was in the water beside a dead boy—begging for my help.