The Woods: The Complete Novel (The Woods Series)

by Milo Abrams

  “What?” Owen’s face twisted in surprise. It wasn't the answer that he was expecting to hear.

  “You said you saw a lot of smoke to the west, right?” Jack pointed far off into the trees where a gray haze could barely be seen. “If there’s smoke then there's fire, right? Something must be burning so we’ll follow the smoke to the fire. Maybe someone is burning something behind their house further up the road.”

  Owen smiled for the first time in a while. The spots where his dimples would usually appear were covered in mud, but the thinning of his lips showed it. He had found some sort of hope to hold on to. They left the creek behind and walked quickly toward the gray film that was starting to swallow the woods in front of them. After only a few minutes they were into it and the smell of burning wood filled their noses.

  “We’ll just keep heading this way. It's the only way we haven't gone so far. We don't know how far these woods go, or if we'll get turned around. If we just follow the smoke, we’ll know we’re heading west.”

  Owen felt a twinge of doubt. “But what if the woods are what's on fire or the smoke is blowing in the wind?”

  Jack stopped and looked down at his feet. He composed himself before looking back at Owen. Jack’s face was covered in smears of mud and his hair was wild, having dried in matted clumps with frayed ends from the creek. He didn't look like the fragile twelve-year-old Brainiac anymore, but a fearless leader that would carry him and Owen to safety. In his heart, he felt that no matter what, he had to assume that role and get them to safety—if nothing else then for James.

  “Well?” Owen asked him. “What if lightning from the storm caught the woods on fire, then what?”

  The answer again came to Jack without thinking. “Well then that's right where we want to be. If the woods are on fire, then someone will come to try and put it out.”

  Owen smiled in relief at the reassurance. “Yeah! Good thinking! Besides, I like fire!”

  Their spirits may have been up, but the longer they walked the worse their visibility was. The smoke that had permeated the woods so silently was now a thick smog that choked every branch and every tree. They pulled their shirts over their mouths to help with the coughing fits they kept having.

  “If it gets any worse,” Jack yelled through his shirt, “then we are going to have to start crawling or change direction.”

  Owen coughed several times before answering. “We’ve got to be getting close, right?”

  Jack shrugged.

  They pressed on, barely able to see the branches in front of them, let alone anything else. They walked side by side, feeling the ground carefully with their feet, and every time one of them tripped the other immediately fell, too. They walked and tripped until they could no longer see anything. Owen tripped and hit the ground hard, pulling Jack down with him by grabbing his shirt as he fell. On the ground the scene had finally changed. They could hear something running through the woods in front of them.

  “Shh,” Jack whispered.

  “Oh my God,” Owen whispered back, “it's the monster! I don't know how I forgot about it!” He covered his head with his hands and began to shake.

  Jack set his chin on the ground and tried not to breath as the thick smoke above them hid the woods completely, and anything that was moving through it. The footsteps were clumsy as it ran in a varied pattern of hurried thumps. Small twigs snapped and leaves moved as eight legs moved cautiously alongside Jack. Owen still had his face covered but Jack could see what stood next to him. He instantly recognized the short brown and white hair that covered the legs of two deer next to him. He sighed in relief.

  “It's just a couple of deer,” Jack whispered to Owen. “They're gone. C’mon we have to get moving before we suffocate out here.”

  They got to their feet and moved as quickly as they could. Haphazardly bumping into branches and tripping over roots was par for the course, but after a few more minutes of walking they could feel a small breeze. They coughed violently from all the smoke they had been inhaling, struggling with each step. Jack closed his eyes and they burned from the smoke. We aren’t going to make it, ran through his head as he followed Owen blindly across the endless smoky woods.

  “Look!” Owen yelled between coughs.

  Jack opened his eyes and he was stunned. The thick and impenetrable cloud they had found themselves in was thinning—and fast. Ahead of them the trees were more easily visible, and so they ran. They ran until their legs nearly gave out, sending them collapsing at the foot of a hill whose slope was gentle and long. They took deep breaths and coughed the rest of the smoke from their lungs in sweet relief.

  “Wait,” Owen finally said, “if we’re out of the smoke then we must not be going west anymore! We must've got turned around somewhere and just went through it!”

  Jack frowned. He couldn't deny Owen’s logic. He pulled the phone from his pocket again to try and turn it on but it was dead. “God damn it,” he said throwing it to the ground.

  Owen leaned back against the hill behind them. “I'm tired,” he said, “and hungry. I want to go home, Jack. I want to go home.”

  The edges of Jack’s mouth drooped as he watched the once boisterous and tough-as-nails Owen Sawyer he had known all his life crumble before him. His mind and body were numb from the relentless tribulations they had been through. He too wanted to fall apart there at the bottom of that hill and give up but he couldn't. The intelligence inside of him gave rise to a spirit that would never give up hope. He just couldn't. To him there was no other option but to keep going, to find a way out no matter what it took, or how long. What other option did they have, just wait for death in the middle of the woods? He didn't find it right to involve Owen in his mental conversation, especially not in such a fragile state. Instead, he picked himself up and offered his hand out to him.

  “Come on,” he said softly, “let's just see if we can get up to the top of this hill. Maybe there will be a way to see around better.”

  Owen looked up at him, his eyes pale and glossy. “Okay,” he whispered.

  The slope of the hill was gradual, with trees growing from it that seemed perfect for hanging on to. It didn't bear the same menacing feel the rest of the woods seemed to have with its endless trees that stood twisted like they were in pain. The trees on the hill were straight and smooth, their trunks leading up to wide branches which held thousands of leaves that shone with the sunlight in a deep emerald green. The ground wasn’t muddy, causing them to slip to the bottom or full of roots and holes that threatened to break off their feet. It was level and covered with fuzzy looking grass interspersed with tiny purple and white flowers.

  Jack saw this and felt a change. Maybe life wasn't a cold calculated game of chance and probabilities. Maybe there was something there, a deeper purpose that gave rise to everything. While he had wholly devoted his beliefs to science and realism, a small part of him started to wonder if there was something holy to life after all. God might not have come to the woods to save them, but life was guiding them. And that was enough.

  The hill finally crested, and despite hopes of a greater vantage point, there were only more trees. Owen sighed in defeat and exhaustion but Jack wasn't tired. Something inside him electrified his very being with something beyond hope of a way out. It swirled around his heart giving him an entirely new sensation he had never known—an unprovable certainty—faith.

  Jack grabbed Owen’s hand and pulled him along. A tingling sensation vibrated his limbs like the music made by the plucking of strings, and he led Owen ahead through the trees. There was no time to stop to rest or think about where they were. Everything fell behind them like the trees in the background as they came to a place where the trees became more and more spread out. Jack stopped only because his ears had picked up something. “Do you hear that?” he whispered.

  “Hear what?” Owen said, his voice cracking and broken.

  Somewhere in front of them, noises were carried on the wind and brought through the trees. Noises that we
re familiar and fresh but as old as humanity itself. Jack pulled Owen along once again and ran. They finally came to a place where they had nearly died to reach—the end of the woods.

  They broke through the last wall of trees and into an open field where the sun seemed to shine more brilliantly than it ever had before. The grass was short and manicured and Jack looked to his left and gasped. In the distance sat Nolan’s house and the old weathered barn. They had come out of the woods a couple hundred feet down from where they had gone in.

  In the distance, they could see the Red Rocket sitting in the driveway and someone standing outside. Jack and Owen looked at each other and then ran. They ran across the field in a silent and exploding joy they had never known.

  They had made it. They survived. They were found.

  32

  The first thing James noticed was the sensation of his head moving from side to side without any effort by him. A strange intermittent pressure pushed against the left side of his forehead, gently swaying his head back and forth as he continued to exist somewhere in the gap between eternal darkness and the brightly lit world where everything he had ever known existed. This sensation of feeling—this pressure—was the first thing to return to him.

  Followed quickly by the pressure was sound. The repeated slurping started as a muffled staticky beat whose rhythm remained consistent as the highs and lows of the noises entering his eardrums became clearer. The pressure and the sound had the same source which left a feeling of wetness in the spot where the pressure persisted.

  Soon everything rolled back into him as if God himself had breathed the life back into him. His chest rose sharply and he let out a loud cough, causing the pressure with its wet slurping noise to suddenly stop. James could feel his body again, along with the flat pressure of something across the entirety of his back.

  More sounds trickled in behind the veil of darkness holding his vision hostage. Running water was somewhere at his feet, swishing and rippling as its flow was disturbed by the rocks it ran over. Above him the chirps of birds bounced off invisible barriers, sending their songs echoing around him.

  Suddenly the pressure returned as a throbbing behind his head. He could feel that he had eyes but they couldn’t see, and he could feel that he had a body but he couldn’t move it. An involuntary groan exited his lips and then he was lifted. He slowly started to connect the dots as he moved through an invisible space devoid of sight, being carried by something other than his will. The pressure on his back had changed, it was no longer wide, stretching from his head to his feet. He realized it had been the ground before and now the pressure on his back was localized as if he were being carried in someone’s arms.

  But he couldn’t think. The darkness that stole his vision and movement left him foggy. Whoever was moving him finally set him down as he felt the pressure against his back return, but instead of feeling hard and straight it was soft and molded to the curves of his neck and legs. Even though he couldn’t move his hands he could still feel them. He could feel something warm and hairy against his left hand, but he wasn’t able to process what it might be. What little thinking capacity that had returned was dimming, his thoughts stretching further and further apart and the uncontrollable urge to sleep suddenly swept over him.

  Sleep. That’s all he could do.

  The second time he returned to existence everything was more solid. The fractured inability to process reality had receded as he woke up from his sleep. Instead of his senses returning to him in random intervals, he experienced waking up as he had every other day of his life. He opened his eyes and saw the dark mud roof of a dirt cave above him. Sitting up, he was finally able to see what he had been sleeping on. There was a make shift mattress that was nothing more than a large comforter with straw stuffed into it. He ran his fingers along the edge where the sides had been sown shut with some rope. The small cave he was in was much larger than the one he spent the previous night in. He could stand up without his head hitting on the top and beside the bed was a small wooden table with a bowl on it.

  He instinctively scratched his head amidst his confusion, which led him to the discovery of the bandage that was wrapped around his head. He felt it carefully, softly pushing around the whole bandage until he encountered a sore spot on the back of his head. He didn’t remember hitting the tree that knocked him out, or being washed away down the swollen creek and being stolen from his friends. He was in a strange place that was clearly made by someone, and outside the opening to the cave he could hear noises.

  As he stepped outside he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. He was in a small clearing where the trees were less dense and the air was tinted with a fine hue of gray. The air smelled of burning wood and tickled his nose as he slowly stepped further into the unknown. He turned in amazement to see that the cave wasn't really a cave at all but a mud hut which was perfectly camouflaged into the surrounding woods with branches and leaves covering it. It looked like any other hill throughout the woods and he wondered, how many of these have I seen that I’ve just walked right by?

  Then he heard barking.

  That’s a dog. That’s my dog, I just know it.

  He stood still, holding his breath as he tried to pinpoint the sound. The barking started again followed by several whines.

  Duffy?

  He listened closer. At first what he thought to be the cries of pain instead sounded like…playing.

  Without another thought he ran, ignoring the various tools strewn about outside the hut. He cleared through the trees, through a footpath that looked like it had been walked countless times before. Panting and sweating, his heart raced as he realized that he had finally found his dog. Somewhere hidden among the trees, the sound of his beloved friend danced on the wind to him. He was so entranced at the possibility that he ignored any thoughts of danger. The monster in the woods, the threat of starving to death, or never being found—these things no longer mattered. All that mattered was that he found his dog.

  He searched the trees, his elation fermenting into panicked frustration as every turn left him with nothing but more trees. Finally, he couldn’t resist calling out to him. “Duffy!” he yelled into the woods, “Where are you?”

  Behind him the dog bark echoed through the trees. James turned and ran back down the footpath in the direction of the noise until he came to a split where the path went two separate ways.

  “Duff!” he called out again. Again, he heard the bark, but this time from the right side, so he followed the right path.

  Winding through the trees it led him to a wide opening as the ground started to descend. He followed the hill, watching his steps in front of him carefully until he looked up and realized he wasn’t just walking down a hill but the side of a wide crater right in the middle of the woods. Before him in the center of the crater was an enormous and smooth black object that looked like a giant volcanic polished stone. As he descended, he walked by large piles of dirt that were freshly excavated from the ground. The path curved around until it brought him around the other side of the smooth black anomaly, finally leveling off. Just to his left by the edge of the crater there was a large red tractor, which he recognized immediately.

  Oh my God, he thought.

  He had never even met Farmer Dell before, let alone his tractor, but he remembered what old Sam Cray had said that morning at the hardware store to his father. Then there were the police cruisers and the “crazy drunk farmer” yelling and pointing at the woods. A few feet from the tractor he recognized something else. Leaning up against a tree was the large gas tank that had gone missing off his dad’s car. He ran to it and found a small opening in the top that allowed him to see down inside. It was bone dry. He was no detective but he could easily see what was going on.

  The monster had taken the tractor from the farmer and somehow used it, but to do what? His mind raced. Searching the ground, he saw more tools and mounds of dirt. Chains hung behind the tractor and other things began to appear in his awareness he didn't i
mmediately notice. On the front of the tractor, a scoop attachment was mounted and still full of dirt. His head spun as he looked at it then at the dirt piles, then to the giant black oval sitting in the dirt below him at the bottom of the crater.

  He looked again at the bottom of the crater. What is that?

  He didn't have to wait long to find out. His heart jumped as the sounds of running feet hitting the dirt came up behind him. As he turned, Duffy jumped onto his chest and knocked him to the ground, licking his face and covering him in globs of drool.

  “Duff!” he screamed beneath his dog’s hot breath and unrelenting affection. “I just knew it was you!” He wrapped his arms around his dog and hugged him tightly, as warm tears formed in the corners of his eyes. Duffy finally let him up and sat next to him with his tail wagging. But as James sat up his heart nearly stopped. Standing just fifty feet from him near the edge of the crater was the one thing he had waited so long to see even longer than his long-lost dog.

  The monster.

  James froze as he gasped at the creature before him. For the first time he was able to see it clearly, but it was nothing like he imagined. He thought that the monster was a hideous and twisted nightmare with long claws and sharp teeth, but when he finally saw it didn’t live up to the fantasy he had created in his mind over the last week. He had always seen it crouched down or hunched over at the end of the yard, but it stood before him on two legs just like a human. It stood as tall as his father, a good six and a half feet, and its head was smooth and round just like the picture had shown. As he looked at the pale white skin that covered its body he realized that the game camera had deceived him. The creature wasn’t wrinkled or deformed. The appearance had come from creases in the clothing it wore. It was wearing some sort of body suit that ran all way the way up to its neck, blending in perfectly with the color of it skin. But what surprised him most was its face. The glowing, evil-shaped eyes that he thought he saw in the picture weren't there. Instead there were two large black ovals, smooth and deep like the object in the crater. Two small nostrils below its large eyes led to the greatest surprise of all. A small mouth that seemed to be smiling.