Lost in the Never Woods

by Aiden Thomas

  “People like me don’t get to live normal lives, Jordan.” It was a mantra that repeated itself in Wendy’s mind all the time, cycling over and over again. But this was the first time she had actually said it out loud. She knew she was generalizing and not being fair, but this town made her feel like there was something wrong with her. And, whatever it was, it was contagious.

  Wendy looked away from Jordan as pity threatened to overtake her best friend’s features. Jordan was usually so good at hiding it.

  “Everything is going to be okay.” She was so sure of herself.

  Wendy shrugged. She didn’t believe it, but this was the best she had felt since careening her truck off the road last night.

  “Are you hungry? There’s some cold, half-eaten toast I would be willing to share with you,” Jordan offered with fake sincerity.

  Wendy rolled her eyes, trying to laugh even though she felt weighed down. Smiling just took too much energy. “You’re disgusting,” she said, shoving Jordan’s shoulder.

  Jordan laughed and affectionately tugged a lock of Wendy’s hair. “The sky’s the limit for you, Wendy, okay?”

  “Right.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Dreams

  They managed to kill most of the day at Jordan’s house. Jordan was good at filling empty spaces and providing distractions. They talked about college and summer plans. When Wendy got quiet and stuck in her own head, Jordan coaxed her back. They’d even made muffins with fresh marionberries from Jordan’s backyard. Later, Jordan gave Wendy a ride to the hospital after texting her dad for permission, since Wendy needed to pick up her truck.

  Now home, Wendy slipped her sandals off by the door. The threadbare brown carpet was a disappointing contrast to the plush beige one at Jordan’s house.

  Her father sat at the dining table, his back to her. The news was on the television in the living room. A reporter was speaking off to the side, but the volume was too low for her to make out.

  Ashley Ford’s and Benjamin Lane’s faces were front and center. Wendy got nauseated looking at their smiling pictures. She vividly remembered the school photos they’d used for her and her brothers when they went missing. Wendy was in a white blouse with blue flowers. John had on a white collared shirt, his hair perfectly swept to the side, his glasses making his eyes look huge. Michael, on the other hand, was a rumpled mess. His shirt was untucked and he’d missed a button.

  Even after she had been found, they continued to run her picture along with John’s and Michael’s, explaining the details, what they did and didn’t know. At thirteen she hadn’t been able to handle seeing her brothers like that. After the first couple of times she had broken down in uncontrollable tears, her parents banned news from the television. Sometimes, though, her mother wouldn’t hear her come downstairs and Wendy caught a glimpse of the news before she quickly changed the channel.

  Wendy tore her eyes from the screen.

  She turned to her father and inwardly sighed. She really didn’t want to get yelled at, or lectured, or whatever else the hard set of his shoulders foretold. Well, the sooner she got it over with, the sooner she could go to her room. She steeled herself and walked up to his side.

  Mr. Darling sat clutching a mug. It had a faded blue logo of his bank on the side, and it was half full of black coffee.

  “Where’s Mom?” Wendy ventured.

  “Gone to bed.” He didn’t look up, but Wendy nodded anyway. Wendy imagined her mom especially needed sleep after last night and this morning.

  She, herself, could have used about five years’ worth of good nights’ sleep.

  “Do you know that boy?” Her father’s sharp eyes locked onto her. The question jolted Wendy, but of course she had seen it coming.

  “No.”

  “You just found him on the road?” One of his thick eyebrows lifted.

  “I just found him on the road,” she echoed through a sigh.

  “Hmm.” Her father made a gruff sound as he took a swig from his mug. When Wendy had been younger, he had made his coffee so sweet with hazelnut creamer that she and her brothers fought over who’d get a sip.

  Wendy shifted her weight between her feet.

  “If you see him again—” He raised his hand, pointing a finger at her. He was very good at making her feel small, even when he was sitting down. “You call the police and tell me immediately, do you understand?” His voice reverberated against the walls.

  Wendy nodded. “Okay.”

  He dropped his hand. “Day after tomorrow I’m going into work late so I can take you down to talk to those detectives,” he told her.

  She knew better than to argue and that she didn’t have a choice, anyway, so Wendy nodded again.

  Mr. Darling pushed himself up from his chair, and went into his study. The door closed, and a moment later, Wendy heard the light clinking of glass.

  Wendy dragged herself upstairs, dreading what tomorrow would bring.

  At the top of the landing, she came face-to-face with the door to her old room.

  There was nothing new about it. She walked by it every day, but now something made her stop. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, yet her eyes were fixed on the doorknob. She extended a hand and rested her fingertips lightly on the cold, aged brass.

  She wondered if her brothers’ bunk bed was still pressed up against the right wall. John’s bunk on the bottom was always properly made—it was the second thing he did every morning, after putting on his glasses. Wendy remembered how his hair stuck up in the back, his eyes barely open as he crawled along his bed, tucking in the corners.

  Michael, on the other hand, always left his bed unmade, which irritated John to no end. He always slept with his socks on, just in case one of his feet slipped out from under his comforter at night. Everyone knew an uncovered limb was just asking to be chomped off by a monster.

  That fear had actually been Wendy’s fault—the premise of a story she had told her brothers one night before bed. The fact that Michael always woke up with one sock missing only seemed to perpetuate the story. It got so bad, in fact, that even in the summer, when heat hung thick in the room and Wendy and John slept on top of their sheets in little more than their underclothes, Michael still huddled under his comforter, socks safely in place.

  Wendy wasn’t sure how long she had stood there when a small noise broke her from her trance. She withdrew her hand and tripped back a step. She hadn’t noticed she’d been perched on the balls of her feet like a bird ready to take flight. Wendy pressed both hands to her chest, feeling it rise and fall with a deep, steadying breath.

  She heard the sound again, but it wasn’t coming from the door in front of her.

  This time she knew it was the quiet whisper of a voice.

  Wendy’s heart clenched painfully. She leaned forward to peer around the corner, down the hallway that led to her parents’ room. All the lights were off and the small strip of space at the bottom of her parents’ door was black.

  Wendy’s hand brushed the wall as she crept down the hallway where it was less likely she would step on a squeaky floorboard. She’d done this enough times to know how to linger outside her parents’ room without being seen.

  With her hands gripping the doorjamb, Wendy huddled against the wall and pressed her ear against the door. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing, ears straining to catch any sound coming from inside the room.

  Wendy pressed closer to the door, hoping with every fiber of her being that it had just been the wind, even though it was a humid, breeze-less day in the middle of June.

  “My sweet boys…”

  Wendy squeezed her eyes shut.

  Her mother’s voice had a light ring to it. A melody that Wendy never got to hear anymore. One that was lost in the woods, along with her brothers, and that now only passed her mother’s lips when she was asleep.

  “I miss you so much…”

  * * *

  One night, not more than a week after Wendy had been moved int
o her new room, she went downstairs to get a glass of milk. On the way back to her room, she thought she heard Michael’s voice coming from her parents’ bedroom. At the sound, Wendy dropped her glass with a quiet thud on the carpet and sprinted on tiptoe to her parents’ door. She pressed her ear against it and heard her mother say, “My sweet boys.”

  And then she heard John’s voice. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it was him. It was John and Michael, just inside the door.

  Wendy had shoved the door open only to find the room dark. Moonlight from the open window spilled over her mother’s sleeping form. She was lying on her side, light brown hair gathered in loops on her pillow, one hand resting above her head. Her delicate fingers looked like they were reaching for something.

  Confused, Wendy looked around. She’d heard her brothers, but they weren’t there. She checked behind the door, but there was no one. Wendy carefully walked up to her mother’s side.

  Her eyes were closed, her lashes splayed across the dark circles under her eyes. Her lips parted and she said, the ring in her voice already starting to ebb, “Please come back…”

  That was when Wendy discovered her mom was talking to her missing brothers in her sleep. She must have imagined her brothers’ voices. It was nothing but the murmuring of her mother, in some state between sleep and wakefulness, speaking to people who weren’t there, and who might never come back.

  When Mr. Darling came home, he had found Wendy at the top of the stairs. She was crying, the neck of her nightshirt dark and damp with tears, as she tried to soak up the spilled milk with a rag.

  Without a word, her father gently took the rag from her hand, picked her up, and carried her to her new bed. He flicked on the string of fairy lights and rubbed her back until the hiccups went away and, from sheer exhaustion, she fell asleep.

  Now, Wendy let herself slide to the floor. Her cheeks were wet and her nose ran onto the hand she pressed over her mouth.

  Eventually, her mother had stopped talking in her sleep. She hadn’t done it in years, but now it was happening again. Wendy let herself take a gasp of air before she pulled her knees in and tucked her head down.

  “Sleep, my darlings,” her mother’s gentle voice came from the other side of the door. And then everything was silent, except for Wendy, who remained huddled on the floor, trying to force down the lump in her throat.

  Wendy was sweating profusely and her head throbbed. She needed fresh air. She needed to get out of the house, away from her mother’s words and the clawing feeling of being trapped.

  Wendy pushed herself up from the floor, ran down the stairs and through the kitchen. She jerked back the sliding glass door and flew into the backyard.

  Adrenaline coursed through her veins and pounded in her chest. Chains rattled as she shoved aside the swings and ducked under the abandoned swing set. She felt like she was trapped in a nightmare. All of the secrets and haunted memories she’d tried to outrun were catching up to her.

  Wendy ran, and her feet were ready to carry her away, to take her anywhere else, to escape, but she had led herself to a dead end.

  Her scrambling only took her a short distance until the faded, dilapidated fence corralled her in and she found herself face-to-face with the woods. The sun had just set, giving everything, even the bright green trees, an orange glow.

  If she were braver, she would jump the small fence and keep running. But she couldn’t bring herself to step into those woods.

  Wendy doubled over, bracing her elbows on her thighs as she stared down at her dirty bare feet, gasping for breath. The smell of pine trees and heavy summer air filled her lungs.

  Maybe she should go back to Jordan’s house. Leave her parents a note and just stay the night there. Maybe being near Jordan would settle her nerves and keep back all the memories creeping out of the woods.

  Maybe, if she could just suck it up and get herself together, her thoughts wouldn’t spiral out of control. She could feel herself deteriorating under that sense of impending doom, inescapable fear, and a tiredness no amount of sleep could fix.

  Maybe—

  “Wendy?”

  Her head shot up.

  There he stood as if he’d just materialized from the fallen leaves on the ground.

  Peter.

  His eyes were impossible to evade and trapped her immediately. They were such an impossible shade of blue. The bright, cosmic flecks were no trick of the fluorescent lights in the hospital. She could see them clear as day now.

  He perched on the fence, one leg extended down. His bare foot hovered just above the ground. It was the stance of someone trying not to scare off a bird.

  “Wendy, why are you crying?” he asked gently. That voice was so familiar, like she’d known it her entire life.

  She wanted to believe it was him, but her body reacted like he was dangerous. A wild animal, something that belonged in the woods she was so afraid of.

  Wendy blinked away her blurry vision. A scream for help welled up in her lungs but couldn’t escape. Her arms were heavy and useless at her sides.

  Peter jumped to the ground, a landing so light that she didn’t even hear it, though a loud roar was rising in her ears. He held out his hands at his sides, palms forward in surrender.

  Wendy took a step back. “No, stop,” was all she could muster.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his brilliant eyes searching her face. That crease between his eyebrows was back.

  Wendy made a strangled noise that was something between a laugh and a cry. This wasn’t happening. She had to get out of here. He couldn’t be Peter Pan. He was a stranger with too many connections to her nightmares.

  What if the detectives were right? What if he had been with her during those missing six months?

  He stepped closer.

  “Please, don’t.” Her feet tripped over each other as she tried to take another step back. He was right in front of her now. Wendy turned to run, only to collide with something hard. The last thing she remembered before it all went black was the clanking of swings and arms catching her.

  CHAPTER 7

  Crickets

  The first thing Wendy noticed was the sound of snapping wood. It cut through her ears and dragged her back to consciousness. The air smelled like damp wood and musty earth. Smoke stung her nose. She was warm and there was something hard poking into the middle of her back. Wendy shifted and groaned as a pain in her temple throbbed. She rolled onto her side, eliciting a symphony of metallic squeaks from under her.

  This wasn’t her bed.

  Wendy opened her eyes to find a blue pair watching her from less than a foot above. Images of the woods, the hospital, her parents, and the detectives flashed through her mind.

  Peter’s lips tipped into a grin, pressing dimples into his cheeks. His eyes sparked with amusement. “Hi.”

  Wendy punched him square in the face.

  Peter let out a shout and stumbled back. He careened into a table, knocking an empty mason jar to the floor.

  Wendy tried to scramble away, but the limp mattress slipped out from under her, throwing her back against the wall. Her right leg fell through the metal coils of the cot. She tugged, but the springs tangled painfully around her ankle.

  “Don’t touch me!” Wendy snarled, trying her best to be intimidating even as terror gripped her.

  It seemed to do the trick, because Peter stood far back, looking downright shocked and even a little frightened. “You hit me!” he spluttered, rubbing his jaw.

  She tried to shake her leg free so she could escape, but the springs only tightened, causing her to hiss in pain. “Where did you take me?” she demanded. “Where am I?” Her mind went wild with endless scenarios, each more terrible than the last, in the seconds it took him to respond.

  “I didn’t take you, you knocked yourself out on that swing set, so I brought you here!” He poked along the side of his face, one eye closed in a grimace.

  Wendy’s eyes darted around the small room, trying to t
ake in her surroundings while keeping an eye on him.

  It was only lit by a dented oil lantern hanging from a hook. Her eyes swung to the crooked window carved out of the wall. Through the grime-covered glass, she could see it was completely dark outside.

  Nighttime.

  She was in a small structure made of mud-chinked logs. It had a drooping roof and another dirty cot across the room like the one she was currently trapped in. Dust-covered beer bottles spilled across the wood plank floor. A deteriorating buck head was mounted above an old, empty gun rack.

  “Hunting shack,” Wendy suddenly realized with a groan. Kidnapped. She had been kidnapped and taken to a hunting shack in the middle of the woods. Was he—

  “You really got better at fighting,” Peter told her matter-of-factly, fists on his hips. “Who taught you to hit like that?”

  Standing in the middle of a scene straight from a horror novel, Peter looked oddly … normal.

  She’d half expected him to be flying and brandishing a pirate sword when she saw him next. It made her feel all the more ridiculous now, seeing him again. Of course he wasn’t Peter Pan. He was just a normal boy, not some magical being from a bedtime story.

  The fact that he was wearing cargo shorts and a faded blue T-shirt wasn’t strange, but the shorts were way too big and they were held up by a knotted length of rope. The shirt hung loosely from his shoulders, the neckline frayed and unraveling. They were both covered in dirt.

  Wendy gave her head a shake. She refused to be lured into a false sense of security by this boy who had taken her to a hunting shack in the middle of the woods.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Wendy blurted out.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Are you going to kill me?” she repeated. Hot, sticky blood trickled down her calf. She’d seen this same scene play out in at least a dozen different movies. She would go missing, her face would be plastered all over the news, her parents would have to go through the same torture all over again—