The Forest

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  Then the memory was gone.

  Another flash of illumination. The fog brightened, and Tricia knew she would hear them. Something made it inevitable, a predestined moment when she was thinking of ghosts, and so the ghosts spoke.

  “Whisperers…”

  Something about that single word chilled Tricia more than anything they had said before. They were naming themselves, plucking the title from her own mind and lips.

  Science was all about discovery. Discovery meant understanding, understanding meant power… and naming things was a part of both. But now, hearing the things in the fog name themselves just made them more horrible. It was as though they were telling her that, named or unnamed, they would always rule in this place.

  “Whisperers…”

  She looked at Alex, who put on a sudden burst of speed that told her he had heard the word, too, and that he felt the same adrenaline rush of fear flooding his own mind.

  She looked ahead of her. Julie had stopped jogging. She turned in a slow circle.

  “Come on,” said the sheriff. “I think we’re almost –”

  “Whisperers…”

  This time, the sound did not end. It trailed off instead to a shriek of terror and agony.

  Alex started running even faster. Tricia had to bend all her attention to fleeing, to following the sheriff.

  Thuck.

  The sound shouldn’t have come through the screams. An axe biting into the wood of the trees should have been a nothing-sound in the face of all that they were hearing. But it did penetrate, almost as though the sound were not a wall, but a wrapping. A gift the whisperers had put in a sonic box, and now handed to Tricia.

  Death. They’re giving us death.

  “Come on!” shouted the sheriff.

  Thuk.

  Tricia didn’t look where the sound was coming from. It had shifted again. Behind her now.

  “HERE!” shouted the sheriff. She darted around the side of a tree. Tricia and Alex followed, still leading/pulling the girl between them.

  The fog flashed. The whisperers’ screams crescendoed.

  Ka-thu –

  Tricia and Alex and the girl rounded the tree. As they did, silence fell. The screams disappeared, the fog that had roiled and billowed all around seemed to pull back. Even the sound of the madman’s axe seemed to cut off too soon. She had the image of the madman disappearing but his axe remaining behind. Embedded in the tree and the tree gradually growing around it, sheathing it in pulp and bark and claiming it for its own.

  Then the image dissipated, and she saw why the sheriff had led them here.

  29

  (When Alex Had Grown)

  “Thank heaven,” breathed Julie, and for a moment Alex had no idea why the sheriff was so happy. He saw only a monstrosity in the clearing beyond the trees. A skeletal thing that stood on legs impossibly long, impossibly thin. A monster so tall that it disappeared into the fog above.

  Then his vision of it shifted, and he understood why the sheriff was so happy. It was like looking at one of those optical illusions: an old crone when viewed one way, a beautiful young woman when other aspects were focused on; or one of the sculptures whose eyes seemed to follow you, until you moved around to the side and saw that it was just a portrait painted on cardboard or metal that had been folded a certain way.

  Not a monster at all. The thing in the clearing was some kind of tower. A watchtower, Alex figured – an enclosed platform high enough that rangers could look for poachers or vandals, or perhaps built so surveyors could do their jobs more easily. Maybe even for scientists who would watch and measure the growth of the forest over time.

  Whatever it was, it offered the possibility of contact with the outside world. Somehow he doubted that Julie’s walkie-talkie was going to be sufficient.

  Evidently following the same train of thought as Alex, Julie said, “My radio doesn’t work. Can’t reach anyone. But I hope if the tower is high enough, if it’s above…”

  The fog.

  Trish eyed the structure skeptically. “We have to climb that ladder?” she said.

  “Unless you’d rather wait down here,” said the sheriff.

  “No thanks,” Alex said.

  “But the girl,” said Trish, indicating the blonde teen whose hand they still held, and who still wore the vacant expression of someone who has blown more than a few fuses. “I don’t know if she’ll be able to follow.”

  Julie shrugged. Not a mean shrug, just pragmatic. “We won’t know until we try,” she said. She was trying to sound nonchalant, in control of the situation. But Alex could hear the tremor at the edges of her voice, threatening to crack her calm into bits and pieces.

  “We should try,” Alex agreed, as much to keep the sheriff happy as anything. If the one thing they’d found in here that represented order and calm fell apart, where would they be? He looked into the mist that still hung in the air – that was starting to seem like it always would. It was becoming the beginning and end of their world.

  Trish nodded, and he saw the same resolve on her face. She would keep it together – especially now, with another person to care for.

  She was thinking of Sammy, he was certain. Of the loss, and of keeping any other parent from experiencing that same loss. Maybe she was going even farther back, and thinking of Sam, and wondering how to bring this girl to safety the way they had failed to do with their friend.

  Trish brushed a bit of matted hair out of the girl’s face. “Honey, we have to go up, okay?”

  The girl stared at nothing.

  The fog flashed. “Uh, folks,” said the sheriff. “I really think –”

  “I’m not leaving her down here alone,” Trish said between clenched teeth.

  “I wasn’t suggesting it,” said Julie. She shook her head. “Not in a million lifetimes. But maybe if we start climbing, she will, too.” She paused, then added, “She’ll surprise you how tough she is.”

  Trish looked like she wanted to ask what the sheriff meant, but before she could Alex drew the girl forward. “Come on,” he said gently. “We’re going somewhere safe.”

  The girl pulled back, resisting. She shook her head, though her eyes remained unfocused, glassy and nearly blind to the world.

  In the distance, Alex thought he heard something. The hollow sound of an axe biting deep into a tree?

  Or a body?

  “We have to hurry,” he said. He pulled the girl again. Again she resisted.

  Alex was calculating his chances of success if he just tossed the girl over his shoulder, kicking and screaming if necessary, and hauled her bodily up the ladder. He judged the chances to be pretty slim. The platform was so high it disappeared into the fog, which meant it was at least forty or fifty feet. Maybe much more, if it really was a surveying station of some kind. He wasn’t in terrible physical shape, but he was far from being an athlete. Writing equations and formulas all day gave you pretty sturdy typing muscles, but that was it.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  Trish’s face lit up. He knew that expression: an epiphany. His wife leaned in close to the girl they had found and said, “Honey, do you want to get out of the fog? Out of the forest?” The girl said nothing, but her eyes focused on Trish. Trish nodded as though the girl had responded. “Me too. But to do that, we have to figure out where we’re going. And the best way to do that is to climb up the ladder and get out of –”

  “The fog,” whispered the girl. “Get out of the fog.” Her eyes shone. “I’ve been here so long. So many nights.”

  She moved toward the ladder.

  Alex moved to help her, but Trish motioned him away. He understood: the girl was on the verge of a mental collapse, obviously caused by the lunatic with the axe. She might respond badly to a man shadowing her, no matter how well-intentioned.

  Julie was scanning the forest. No more sounds came from its depths, not even the whispers. The air felt less charged, somehow. Alex really believed he had heard the axe a few moments ago, but so
mething inside him whispered that the threat was gone, if only for the moment.

  The girl began climbing. Trish followed. Alex motioned for the sheriff to go up. She snorted. “This isn’t the time for chivalry. I’m the one with the gun, so I go last. Rear guard.”

  “Not being chivalrous,” said Alex. “You have the gun so I want you up there in case something else is waiting already.”

  His skin crawled as he spoke. Not just because of the situation, he realized. It was his wording. He had said that something else might be waiting. Not someone. Even a lunatic with a bloody axe wasn’t as worrisome as the… the… thing behind all this.

  And it was a thing. Something in the air told him that – whispered it to him. Perhaps he heard the fog itself. Maybe every time he breathed in the vapor, he heard its secrets.

  Or perhaps he was becoming part of the fog.

  The sheriff nodded. She began clambering up the ladder behind Trish, but only went a few rungs up before she bobbled and almost fell the short distance to the ground. Alex read the indecision on her face as she tried to decide whether to sacrifice the security the gun afforded in return for a better grip, or whether to keep the gun out and climb with one-and-a-half hands. She opted for the first, shoving the gun back in its holster and climbing as rapidly as she could until she had reached Trish. Even then, he could hear her chanting, “Go, go, go,” in time with Trish’s movements.

  Alex almost yelled at her – not a good idea, so he managed to hold back. He was ashamed of himself a moment later, as he realized the sheriff wasn’t urging Trish on, but the girl above her, who climbed with metronome movements. Alex suspected the girl would fall, and was ashamed again as he realized his major worry in that moment wasn’t the girl’s safety, but concern that she would hit Trish on the way down and both of them would die.

  But the girl didn’t fall. The three of them continued until the fog had swallowed them by degrees: they were dark shadows for a while, then dark blurs, then nothing.

  Only then did Alex begin climbing. He had been alternating between watching them and swiveling in circles, scanning what he could see of the forest, watching for movement, for the bloody knife coming at them.

  No, axe. Why would I think it was a knife?

  Nothing appeared. The fog hung silent. It felt quiet for the first time, truly quiet, rather than the expectant silence that had greeted them at every moment save when things were actually happening.

  Something flickered. Not brightly – there was no surge of fog, no increase in the mist’s luminous properties that made this place into a twilight realm.

  But something had happened.

  The whispers came.

  “You have to climb…”

  “You can’t climb…”

  Alex felt something cold on his back. He knew it was the whisperers, come at last to reveal themselves, to wrap cold, bloodless fingers around his arms and legs and neck and drag him into the fog.

  He reached back. Felt the things that were there and realized it wasn’t the whisperers. He had just backed into the ladder of the watchtower. He turned and took hold of the rungs, hauling himself up so fast he was almost flying.

  When he was ten feet up, the fog flashed, brighter this time.

  “You!”

  “You caused it! It’s your fault…”

  Any other words would have made him climb higher, climb faster. These stopped him. They were words he had heard so many times in the last few years. So many times he had spoken them in his mind, or whispered them in the darkness, laying awake beside Trish as she moaned and twisted the circle of her wedding band even in sleep.

  The fog flashed. Tendrils reached out, caressing him with cool mist. Fingers of the fog floated in front of his eyes, darting out, darting back, almost beckoning him. He didn’t want to turn. He wouldn’t turn.

  He turned.

  And saw the worst thing. Worse by far than a shadow in the mist. Worse even than a man clutching a bloody axe and obviously hoping to bloody it further.

  He saw Sammy.

  He saw his little boy, standing in the mist. Holding his stuffed animal, his treasured unicorn. Bright red in the mist, only this time the red was not cute or happy. The plush animal looked bloody. Sammy himself looked bruised and bloody as well. The boy stared up at him with confusion, the eyes of someone looking at his daddy and wondering what had happened and how it had happened and why oh why had his daddy let it happen.

  Hands reached out of the mist, reaching for his child.

  “No!” Alex shrieked, and jumped off the ladder. Ten feet up, and he simply let go and knew that part of him hoped he would die. Would fall and not just hit the ground but continue below it, to die and fall forever until he found the darkest places, the deepest pits. To pull the entire earth over him, the entire universe, and then descend below it all until all was darkness and pain and whatever nothing that waited beyond.

  He hungered for it. Darkness and pain were no more or less than he deserved. He had lost his child.

  He fell, but too slow. Before he touched the earth, the hands clutched Sammy. The fog billowed. It flashed, and Alex saw the form of something behind his son, his little boy. Alex screamed, and heard the scream of his wife, high above him. Part of him knew she was screaming for him, screaming because she heard him scream, and feared that the forest had taken him.

  But the rest of him, the greater part that was his world in that moment, thought she was screaming because she felt Sammy near; sensed him in the way that only mothers could.

  For the first time, Alex knew his son was dead. Really knew. He had told others he knew, when they asked after him and told him he had to move on – it was ten years, couldn’t he move on?

  He moved on from those friends instead. Trish had been his only constant. She understood that it was impossible to move on. The way they had lost their child ensured that truly moving on was forever both dream and nightmare.

  Now Trish was leaving him, too. Drawing away from him just like Sammy was drawing away from him. A shape in the mist of his mind, torn away from view.

  The fog flashed. It seemed brighter, not just in the area of the flash, but everywhere.

  Something is happening. It’s all coming together here, in this place, in the forest.

  The words were unspoken. The only sounds he made were screams as, with a final flash, his son disappeared.

  He ran into the mist, heedless of what he might find other than his child, his baby.

  He found the patch of ground where Sammy had been. He found the place where Sammy – gone so long – had stood. It was a dream, a nightmare, a vision. It had been ten long years of loss, and Sammy returned to him as Alex had seen him that last day. No aging, no changing. There was no way he was real.

  But there was something else at Alex’s feet. He reached for it. Sammy’s unicorn. It had always been red. It continued red here in this place that time and reason had abandoned. Only now the red was mottled. Part of it was the original color, part of it was matted with blood that had the peculiar bright/dark qualities of new-spilt life.

  Alex reached for it, and expected it to disappear. It remained, this piece of Sammy. He took it, feeling his sanity escape him, slipping out as he sighed. The touch of his child’s lost toy, his lost child still warm in the blood that soaked it, was more than he could bear. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

  But it felt so real. Mourning clung to it, and terror. The feelings that had stunned him and Trish in the hours after it happened, then wounded them in the following weeks and months, then – finally, and worst of all – gradually numbed them with the passage of years.

  Mourning. Terror.

  A terrible nothingness.

  But the toy wasn’t nothing. It was real and because the toy was real he had to show it to Trish because it meant their child was real. He was more than memory.

  Memory, Alex knew, was the biggest liar in existence. Memory chipped away at the imperfect sculpture of reality. It left only per
fection –

  (Smiles, hugs, the delicious joy of a belly laugh of the kind only toddlers can manage, the belly laughs that shake them from head to toe and press out every milliliter of oxygen until they’re almost blue from laughing and you worry they’ll just suffocate right there, but only for an instant and then they gasp in every bit of air in the room and laugh again and again, and oh, dear God, I would give my soul to hear that laugh again.)

  – behind, and the perfection rested in the few features left after time, that terrible destroyer, did its work. The rest was smooth, featureless…

  … forgotten – and that was so much worse than simply gone.

  Now, Alex gasped as so much of memory returned. Of the nights rocking endlessly, trying to get the baby to stop screaming at decibel levels that would put a jet engine to shame. Of the days when it seemed the infant was trying to set a record for number of diapers used in a single day. Of the terror Alex felt when he saw his toddler holding a butter knife and pushing it toward a wall socket he had managed to pry the baby-proof cover off of, then the terror shifting to anger when he tore the knife away and screamed, never again never never again!, then that anger shifting to remorse and a crushing realization of how much he loved and needed this child and the child-smell that permeated him as he held the crying Sammy close and whispered, never never never.

  And beyond that, deeper memories surged. His and Trish’s first time in the forest. Their lost friend.

  The whisperers.

  (The monster that took Sam away. The thing with too many arms, too many legs, too many heads and far too much blood.)

  The memories were almost there. He could reach out and touch them. But to do that, and to hold them to him he knew he would have to drop the toy he clutched to his chest.

  He did not drop the unicorn. He held the toy tighter. The memories he had been so close to finding – and perhaps even understanding – fell away from him.

  Alex found the ladder that climbed like a fleshless spine up the center of the watchtower’s scaffolding. He grabbed it with his free hand. He would not let go of the toy. He would fall first, and join his baby in the thing that had taken him away and then held him in limbo here in the mist.