The Woods: The Complete Novel (The Woods Series)

by Milo Abrams

  “Me too,” Owen said looking at James. “We can split it?”

  James smiled and opened the water and handed it to Jack first. As they took a few sips, James pulled the back of jerky from his backpack and they shared the whole thing.

  “Don't eat that little silica gel bag," Jack said, “I almost did that once when I was eating some in the dark.”

  They all laughed at that.

  After a well-needed break, the gravity of the situation again tugged on James’s mind.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” he asked.

  “Well, I guess we go back to the creek, like I wanted to before,” Owen smiled, feeling a little better with something in his stomach.

  “Might as well, I mean there are hundreds of hills and little valleys around here and they all look the same. We'll go back to the creek and take it back and figure out a way up the hill. Then we need to go get help,” Jack said.

  James knew Jack was right, but inside he felt like he was giving up on Duffy. Going home to him felt like a death sentence for his dog. Logically, he knew that Duffy could already be dead but he didn't want to believe it.

  “Someone has to be wondering where we are,” Owen added, “I forgot to call my mom and tell her I was staying with you. Mastermind fail.”

  “Oh no,” James said, “that means she probably called our parents looking for you, and of course they thought we were with you! We’re dead meat!”

  “Forget that,” Owen said, “we need them. I've seen lots of movies. They’ll be happy just to have us back if they think we're missing. We have to get back to the house and call them.”

  “Oh,” Jack muttered.

  “What?” Owen asked.

  Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “I forgot I still had this on me,” he whimpered.

  “I can't believe you had that the whole time!” Owen yelled.

  Jack held the power button and the phone powered on. The screen lit up and Jack sighed.

  “What?” James asked.

  “No signal,” he said. “We're too far in I guess. Maybe if we can find a higher point we can get a signal and call for help.”

  “Do you have your phone?” James asked Owen.

  He just shook his head. “I left it at home when I realized we were coming out here. It's a dead zone, remember?”

  “Well we still need to try,” Jack said, “just because there was no reception at the house doesn't mean it isn't anywhere else. We need to find higher ground.”

  “Or maybe when we are back by the hill by the house!” Owen sounded excited again.

  “Maybe,” James offered, “let's get to the creek and get back there first.”

  They crossed back over the hill and followed the small stream for the third time back to the split with the creek. As they followed the split to the larger creek they hopped on to the left side, doing their best to stay on the same side they came from. The creek’s flow slowed as they walked and the bank soon disappeared. All that was left was a sheer drop off where the land had eroded all the way to the trees from the heavy rain fall.

  “Looks like we're going through the trees,” Owen said.

  “Yeah, but didn’t we walk on the side the whole time before? We never went past anything like this?” James looked around nervously. “There was definitely a place to walk before.”

  “I don't know anymore,” Jack said rubbing his forehead, “I'm too hot, I can't think.”

  They marched on into the thick trees and kept hope that with the next break in the trees that they would see a place they recognized from earlier. But after walking for nearly an hour the trees thinned and they reached a clearing right along the water’s edge they hadn't seen before. A semicircle of large stones interrupted the current and created a shallow and relatively still pool where they could rest. Jack set his phone onto a rock and stepped into the water, dipping his hands in and splashing it all over himself. James set the rifle down and followed Jack into the water. Owen didn't wait for an invitation, he threw his lighter and hat next to the rifle and jumped in. The water brought new life into their skin and bones and after swimming for a few minutes they came back on land and sat on the ground. For the first time in hours they were all smiling. Once again, the woods didn't seem so threatening but soon that would change. Thunder rumbled softly in the distance.

  James looked straight up. The lack of trees allowed them to see the quickly darkening sky above them. “We might get caught in a storm,” he said nervously.

  “Good,” Jack laughed, “hopefully it'll bring the temperature down.”

  “Yeah, but it won't make that damn hill any easier to climb.” Owen looked at them as if they had forgotten about it. They were so relieved from cooling off that they had temporarily forgotten their troubles. They had also forgotten that there was a monster in the woods with them.

  A stick snapped somewhere in the woods behind them. James jumped, quickly turned around and grabbed the rifle, pointing it into the woods. “Who’s there?” he yelled out. There was no response. Jack began to shiver, not from cold but from fear. Owen grabbed his lighter and stood with Jack behind James. A loud whistle rippled through the air, the very same whistle James had heard before. It was shrill and terrifying. As soon as it stopped they could hear many more sticks breaking and brush being moved around. Something was running through the trees toward them—and it was running fast. James once again hesitated as he pointed the gun directly where the sound was coming from. Owen held his breath behind him and yelled.

  “Shoot, God damn it!”

  James squeezed the trigger and the small explosion in the barrel hurdled the bullet into the trees with a loud bang. The noises stopped and the boys braced themselves.

  “Did you kill it?” Owen whispered.

  “I… I don't know,” James stammered. He had never killed anything before.

  Another twig snapped a little further to their right making them freeze. The rustling was slower, moving from their right side toward the creek. They watched as leaves began to sway and a little further down the bank two deer appeared from the cover of the trees and stopped at the creek to drink.

  “Jesus Christ,” James said lowering his weapon. The three boys looked at one another, appreciating their luck up to that point. They had yet to encounter the monster.

  Raindrops gently sprinkled down, bouncing off their already wet hair and formed gelatinous brown blobs in any dry dirt on the ground. The trees began to sway in unison as the wind picked up, making them like hundreds of fans in a stadium doing the wave. The air was cooled rapidly as the cold front smashed into the muggy thick atmosphere they had been trudging through all day. Owen looked up and watched as the dark shelf cloud slid over top of them.

  "Holy shit," he said pointing at the darkening sky. The rain then fell more steadily as millions of raindrops impacted the flowing creek like handfuls of pebbles.

  They ran into the trees to escape the oncoming downpour but it didn't help, the rain pierced the treetops and soaked the ground. Within minutes the small water veins that ran off the creek began to swell and the creek took on a stormy sea look, complete with misty cresting waves and the illusion of white water rapids. Each blob of rain smashed into the ground and over-saturated everything. Each step they took became softer and each footfall was a slushy splash or a plopping pluck out of the muddy ground that threatened to snap their ankles in sinister slips and insidious trips.

  Jack held his hands over his head as he was pelted repeatedly with cold water bullets. The sheer force of the water falling on the trees and ground sounded like TV static with the volume cranked up. He yelled to Owen and James who ran ahead but they didn't hear him. They were moving too fast and Jack was getting tired. The wet floor foliage grabbed his mud-covered shoes and tripped him, causing him to fall to the ground. James and Owen continued moving forward without even noticing. Jack groaned and curled up to rest a moment as he rubbed his elbow which collided with a tree root.

&nbs
p; As they ran, James’s mind wandered back to the monster. Being tired, the distance between him and Owen increased. “Owen!” he yelled, “hang on!”

  Owen turned and looked behind James, a horrified look appearing on his face.

  “What?” James asked as his brain caught up with his eyes. Thoughts of the monster standing directly behind him haunted his brain like so many scary movies.

  “Where is Jack?” Owen yelled.

  James turned to see, to his relief, that the monster wasn't behind him, but neither was Jack. "Jack!" he yelled as they ran back the way they came, their eyes frantically scanning the trees around them. The ground was full of broad-leafed plants that stunk like hell when the leaves were severed. It stood up to the middle of their shins and walking through it was like walking through a room where the floor was completely covered in balloons.

  "Jack!" Owen yelled into the rain.

  Jack caught his breath and sat up, suddenly appearing among all the green and scaring his friends. They ran over to him.

  "Jesus, are you okay?" James asked, helping him up.

  "Yeah, I tripped. I tried to tell you guys to slow down."

  “This rain is ridiculous!" Owen yelled.

  Every break in the trees that was exposed to the sky was filled with a torrential downpour. Cumulonimbus cloud formations emptied an entire ocean of water on the unsuspecting corner of Ohio. The creek swelled and pushed against its banks.

  Time seemed to slow down for the boys but it was simply an illusion created by the disorienting rain. Jack looked up at his friends, "We need to get to higher ground or at the very least get away from this creek. I don't know if you've ever seen anything on the Amazon, but it's known for incredibly quick flooding—

  Jack's voice was interrupted by a crack of thunder that sounded like one of the giant storm clouds had fallen from the sky and collided with the earth. It shook the ground in a long drawn out rumble that lasted ten seconds, followed by two loud pounds that scared the boys into reflexive jumping. They helped Jack up and ran away from the creek in the direction which they believed would lead back out toward the countryside. They assumed the land was laid out in a series of layers that started with the tree line, followed by the hill where Owen fell and then the creek that ran parallel to that hill. Unfortunately, it wasn't layered like a cake and the paths the creek and hills ran were not in straight lines. They were unknowingly running deeper into the woods, after spending the better part of the day following a creek that gradually curved further from home than they had ever been.

  25

  Nora had finally woken up from a lazy day of sleeping in, thanks to the hellish thunder that ripped through the atmosphere and shook her bedroom walls. She sat up and tried to recall the hazy memories of what she had deemed "one bitching party" from the night before. She hadn't forgotten about her little brother and his cry for help, she was merely tormenting him. A mastermind of manipulation, she was now in prime position to shift the focus of her parents’ anger on her brother instead of her. The opportunity couldn't have come at a better time for her, she surely was going to hear it for sneaking out to a party even though she was grounded. She hopped out of bed to look for her mother and to unleash her brother's delinquent folly. Somewhere in her mind, she unconsciously justified torturing Jack as a form of "tough love" that she believed he needed to deal with the real world. In the living room her mother, Amy, was standing at the window peeking out the blinds with the phone on her cheek. She sat down on the couch and patiently waited for her moment to drop the bomb.

  Her mother turned around and hung up the phone. Another rumble of thunder shook the walls. "Have you heard from your brother?" she asked frantically.

  Nora was slightly surprised that she hadn't started with "now listen here..." but it worked for her just the same. Before she could utter a single word, her mother threw a hand to her forehead in worry then spoke.

  "That was Owen's mother, she’s looking for her son. Jack told me that they all were supposed to be staying at Owen's last night."

  "Well," Nora started, but she was interrupted by her mother’s anxious yammering.

  "I've already called Margaret and they said their dog is missing, too. I saw them talking to you yesterday when you first came home." Amy looked at her daughter with the type of worrisome eyes that only come from the paranoia of not knowing where your baby is.

  Nora smiled. Her plan was coming together and now it was time to sink her brother to get herself out of her mom’s line of fire. "He actually called me last night and asked for a ride home."

  "What? From where?"

  "Dr. Callum's new house, but I—

  Amy walked toward the door and left the house before Nora could finish. She got up off the couch and followed. It started to sink in slowly that maybe something was wrong—her mother seemed really worried. As she opened the door she gasped at the darkened clouds to the south. It looked as if God had gashed the sky with a knife, exposing the inky blackness of space. The thunder growled again and Nora could feel it beneath her feet. She couldn't believe that she could feel the thunder from a storm that was so far away.

  She ran into the Callum's house where her mother and James's parents were standing in the kitchen.

  "What did he say to you?" Amy demanded.

  "Uh, nothing. Just that they were stuck out there and needed a ride home."

  Nolan couldn't believe what he had heard. "How did they get out there?"

  Nora panicked as she was being ganged up on. "Uh, he said they snuck in the back of your—uh—truck when you went there."

  Nolan looked at Margaret in disbelief. The thunder rumbled again, and this time it was stronger. Margaret picked up the phone and dialed Nolan's home number. She waited as it rang but Nolan put his arm on her shoulder.

  "They won't answer," he said, "he knows he isn't supposed to be out there." He grabbed his keys off the table and stepped to the door. "I'm going out there to get them, I'll try to call when I get there but the storm looks really bad. You know there's no signal out there."

  Margaret pouted and said, "I know. Please be careful."

  Nora watched as her plan crumbled to nothingness. Things were serious and she messed up. While she was busy worrying about herself, Nolan peeled out of the driveway toward his country house. Margaret and Amy sunk down into the kitchen table chairs, unsure of where their sons were. Nora noticed the TV running in the living room which showed the local weatherman standing in front of a weather map and waving his arms around a bright red mass surrounded by thick bands of green in the middle of the screen. "There's a bad storm?" she asked her mother.

  Amy looked up at her with a distracted look. "Came out of nowhere. News is calling it a spontaneous super cell. I've never seen storm clouds like that."

  "I've never seen so much red on the weather map like that," Margaret added, "I just hope those boys didn't go outside.”

  Amy nodded and then grabbed the phone to call her husband at work. Nora felt a twinge of guilt in her stomach that felt like her intestines were being twisted. Her brother and his friends were in real danger and it was all her fault. She wished she hadn't been such a bitch and had just picked them up.

  26

  It took Nolan longer than usual to get out to his house. The half an hour drive was easily doubled as he headed into the storm and his windshield wipers failed to clear the windshield. He tried sticking his head out the window but he was overwhelmed with the sting of heavy rain. Resorting to driving at a crawling speed, he passed several cars that had accidentally driven off the road from the storm. Ahead of him two cars had crashed and flashing red and blue lights struggled to penetrate the wall of water. As Nolan pulled up to the accident, a police officer in a bright yellow poncho waved a bright flashlight, motioning for Nolan to roll down his window.

  "You have to get off the road," the officer yelled as water rolled into his mouth. "All the roads headed south are closed, the rain is just too heavy."

  "I just live up the r
oad, I'm heading home," Nolan yelled back.

  "Don't you have someplace else to stay for now?" The officer asked. Nolan shook his head and the officer nodded. "Just be careful." He ran back to assist the accident and Nolan slowly pulled away to head deeper into the storm.

  The force of the rain seemed like it would smash the Red Rocket’s windshield and pummel the rusty metal truck into a small pile of twisted steel like a crushed soda can. He jumped off the truck’s bench seat as a white-hot streak of lightning careened to the ground from underneath the menacing shelf cloud that hung over the field to his right. Although he had never seen a tornado before, the intensity of the storm made him feel as if one could come spiraling down on top of him at any minute. His tires spun wildly on the pavement as he turned on to his dirt road, partially hydroplaning at only a couple of miles per hour. The truck sank into the dirt and gravel mixed road as Nolan pushed the pedal to the floor and fought the steering wheel, swinging it back and forth like a madman. He squeezed it so hard he thought the pressure would erase his finger prints. He finally reached the house, pulling into the crunchy gravel driveway and right up to the porch. As soon as he stepped out of the truck the rain stretched his shirt down in long soaked yawns and flattened his normally messy hair. He pushed the front door open screaming for his son.

  "James!" he yelled as he ran through the house and slipped on the hardwood floors. "James!"

  Every light in the house was on but no one was there. He scrambled back to the kitchen where he saw the game camera and the laptop, now dead, on the table. He grabbed the cordless phone and dialed his wife.

  "Margaret," he said, "they aren't here." Her worst fears confirmed, she spoke but it was broken up due to the storm. "I'm going to check the barn,” Nolan yelled to her, “call the police!"

  "W—hat?" her broken voice replied.

  "Call the police!" he yelled as the call dropped. He hung the phone up and the lights flickered then went out. He rushed to the door and slipped on the porch, twisting his ankle as he hit the grass with a squishy thud.