The Forest

by Collings, Michaelbrent

Alex ran.

  They ran together, and as they did, Tricia remembered Alex’s phrase:

  All this has happened before…

  … and it will all happen again.

  39

  Interlude

  (When Sammy Was Young)

  Sammy is hurt.

  He is afraid.

  He has blood on him, all over his neck and chest and his shoulder. He thinks it is his blood.

  And then the devil-angel who pulled him from the dark and the heat after the car crashed said a bunch of things Sammy didn’t understand.

  Now, the angel-devil jostles him. Sammy’s shoulder explodes in pain, and he screams so hard and loud he thinks he’ll never stop.

  But eventually, he does.

  Eventually, he forgets.

  He enters a place that, like the angel-devil, is both dark and light. It is a strange place, and the pain that made him scream drifts away. He actually forgets it.

  It happens to everyone: people forget. People are forgotten.

  But for one brief moment before that last forgetting comes, he opens his eyes and sees where he is.

  The forest.

  40

  (When Alex and Tricia Begin to Become)

  Alex ran with Tricia,

  Tricia ran with Alex,

  both of them

  ran

  toward the man

  and

  toward Mandy.

  Alex threw himself

  forward and up,

  Tricia pitched herself

  at the killer,

  aiming low,

  just as Trish flew at

  the killer’s feet,

  at the same time as

  Alex went high,

  and together they

  collided

  with the killer

  and drove him

  into the spot

  they had seen

  a monster,

  so many years,

  so many eternities,

  before.

  Alex gasped, his mouth

  opening into a wide “o”

  of shock,

  Trish gaped, one hand

  covering her mouth

  in disbelief,

  even though they both

  guessed

  the next of

  the forest’s tricks.

  But even guessing what

  would happen,

  he flinched and

  gave a yell as

  Because even guessing what

  would happen,

  she flinched and

  shouted as

  the mist

  closed

  over the killer.

  Alex didn’t

  look away, though.

  He watched

  Tricia didn’t

  let herself

  look away, though, from

  the fog,

  the mist,

  as it

  separated,

  letting him see

  the past,

  the present,

  and the future,

  all of them

  combined at

  allowing her to view

  what was,

  what is,

  what will be,

  all of them linked at

  this moment,

  which happened,

  and happens now,

  and will happen again.

  Forever.

  In the forest.

  41

  (When Alex and Tricia Begin to Become)

  Together, Alex and Tricia both saw the killer, stumbling back.

  They both saw the mist flicker, and in that instant they could see something else. A flashing, overlapping image.

  A madman with a knife.

  A madwoman with a knife.

  Both raised their weapons.

  Both stumbled as they flickered.

  They were apart in the light.

  They fell back in the dark.

  Alex and Tricia heard a loud, horrific scream. In a night of screams and terror, this one shriek stood above and below them all. It was the beginning and the end of horror, the alpha and omega of pain.

  Two bodies cannot exist in the same place, at the same time. Not even, it turned out, in the forest.

  So the forest took them.

  It took the woman.

  It took the man.

  It bound them together as a monster.

  Tricia and Alex fell back. Not with fear for their lives, this time, but in disgust at what had been done – at what they had done.

  The thing – with too many heads, too many limbs, too many bodies – fell more than stepped toward them. The flickering light of the forest fell over it, and it disappeared in the darkness –

  (disappearing to a past where they had seen the monster before)

  – then reappeared again, in this place, in this now, a bit closer.

  Mandy was screaming in terror.

  Both Alex and Tricia wanted to comfort her, but couldn’t find the words.

  The monster was screaming, too. Two screams, one from the mouth on its misshapen “head,” the other out of the mouth like an angry slit in its outstretched palm.

  White things tumbled from one of its mouths. Teeth.

  It reached forward and its screams shifted.

  “Ih-hz-soond-Ih-nnnn-ear-ih-nnnn-aow…” it screeched in its high/low voice, before that sound, too, fell away and shifted to nothing but the grunts of a dying animal.

  Its back arched, twisted impossibly far. Like a stick, twisted in a stream. Ribs jutted from its skin. Some of them broken in pieces, some of them glinting like the blade of a knife or an axe.

  The mist-lights brightened, and the monster was there.

  Darkened, and it was gone.

  Bright, dark, bright, dark, there, gone, there, gone, closer, closer, closer…

  The thing’s gait faltered a bit more with every step. Even in the forest, two things – at least, two living things –could not occupy the same space in the same time, because to let it happen would be a twisting of nature beyond what that branch could stand, and so the bodies of the madman and the madwoman had been twisted together, tips of toes to temporal lobe, brain to balls. The ribs Alex had broken when he kicked the madman were there, clinging to the outside of its chest rather than the inside, broken even further by the twisting of two moments and two people into one, melded with the metal of the knife and axe the madman had carried, had lost, and which now still shone in the mist-lights.

  It was an impossibility made flesh, though that flesh was corrupt and, Alex and Tricia could see, quickly dying.

  More shadows appeared in the mist. Several stood near to Tricia and Alex, so close that either could have reached out and touched them if they dared. The shadows said no words, but seemed to chant in time with the monster. Nonsense sounds, that a young Alex had made so long before, watching this moment from the other side of the mist: “Ah, uh, ah, uh.”

  Closer…

  The thing’s hands reached out…

  The fog billowed, seeming to reach for the monster, tendrils of vapor like the curling vines that climbed some of the forest’s trees. Where the mist touched the monster, its skin blackened and sloughed away, its muscle melted like hot wax.

  The creature broke free of the grasping mist. It took one last, awkward, ungainly step.

  It fell.

  It hit the ground hard, its grotesque mass driving it to the earth with a dull but substantial thud. It took a last gasping, rattling breath through the mouth on its head, then the mouth on its hand breathed that air out.

  And then it did not move at all.

  The strobing stopped. The mist hung motionless and silent.

  Then the monster moved again. Before either Tricia or Alex could run or scream or both, they realized that its movement was different this time. It wasn’t lumbering to its feet or coming after them. It seemed to collapse into itself, like a balloon slowly deflating.


  A moment later it looked less like a balloon than a puddle. It became a gelatinous, mottled mass of darks and lights, almost translucent at times. The mass settled still further. It burst along the sides, and ichorous fluid oozed out. The fluid settled into a pool on the ground, then the pool flashed and became something like glowing dust.

  The mist surged forward and swallowed it whole. The dust flew into the mist, hovering as bright sparkles for a moment, then the sparkles diminished and disappeared, one with the vapor where they had finally come to rest.

  The fog hovered there a moment. It flashed, then withdrew again, leaving only empty earth behind.

  Tricia and Alex looked at each other. “Is it over?” said one. The other began, “I –” but then the mist flashed.

  The forest had one game yet to play.

  The whisperers were back. Only a few, but the mist curled and danced and in that moment both Tricia and Alex saw their old friend, Sam.

  He was just as they remembered: wearing the same shirt buttoned to the collar, the same red backpack with its books that had delighted them all and pushed them to learn new things.

  Alex and Tricia ran toward their lost friend, both aware as they did that the whisperers beyond Sam also rushed toward him. A race between the living and whatever things lived only beyond the curtain of mist.

  They ran, and the shadows flowed. Converging on a single point, and somehow both Tricia and Alex were aware that whoever reached Sam first would possess him, truly and completely, forever.

  Sam turned toward the shadows. He was going to them. Going away.

  Someone ran out of the mist. Not a shadow this time, but someone real. A figure with a dark green jacket and khaki pants, a broad-brimmed hat perched atop the head. The person had appeared in a spot closer to Sam than Alex and Tricia, closer even than the shadows beyond.

  The mist curled around Sam. He began to fade behind the mercury wall.

  “No!” shouted Tricia, while Alex screamed, “Stop!”

  Sam turned toward them, and they reeled. It wasn’t Sam. They had both seen their old friend, they knew they had. But how could they have seen him, when it was Mandy who now stood before them?

  The figure that had appeared out of the mist leaped forward so fast he was a blur. A hand grabbed Mandy’s shoulders and yanked her away from the shadows that had sought to take her.

  As everyone watched, those shadows coalesced into a single form. The person who still held Mandy whispered something into the mist, toward the thing that sought to take her.

  The wind blew.

  The mist drifted away.

  The shadows drifted away with it.

  For the first time since the strange, otherworldly fog had come into the forest, bright, natural light pierced the gloomy gloaming of the mist-lights.

  The person who had pulled Mandy away from shadow turned and faced Alex and Tricia.

  And they stared into the eyes of Sheriff Julie Azakh.

  “You fell,” said Alex, and Tricia said, “You died.”

  They had seen Julie’s head nearly chopped in two by the killer in the watchtower. They had seen her keel over and slip through the trapdoor. They had heard her fall, ricocheting off the ladder and the tower’s supports.

  But, they now realized: they hadn’t heard her hit the ground.

  And when they climbed down, they had been pursued by a madman. No time to look around. No time to investigate. Even so, one more thought ran through both Tricia’s and Alex’s minds (and though the wording was slightly different for each, the substance was exactly the same):

  We didn’t see a body, did we?

  “Damn,” said Julie. “What a day this is turning out to be.” The words were quiet, meant only for her, but both Tricia and Alex heard.

  “He’s dead,” said Mandy dully. “The man who chased us – my dad – he’s dead, isn’t he?” Then, with hope: “Isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said the sheriff. She looked at Alex and Tricia, taking both of them in in a heartbeat. “But things don’t always stay dead in the forest, do they?”

  The words electrified the air. Alex and Tricia felt them – this was real truth, and one more piece of what was happening, what they were starting now to remember, fell into place.

  Cracks and crackles sounded nearby, the sounds of something making its way through the forest, and Alex and Tricia realized that they had already turned to face the place the sounds were coming from – and that they had done so before the sounds came.

  Alex and Tricia could remember papers they had written and read years before. They could write pi to a thousand places and recite entire books verbatim. But that kind of memory was nothing compared to what they felt now.

  They were starting to truly remember what had happened in the forest when they were young, and to understand what was happening now that they had grown, and what would happen as they continued to…

  … become.

  Mandy let out a small moan as she turned to look toward the source of the cracks and crackles, obviously terrified at what might be coming from the trees this time. But Alex put up a hand and said in a calm voice, “Don’t worry,” and Tricia finished his sentence, knowing what he would say just as he had known she would finish his words: “It’s one of us.”

  Julie looked at them. “Your eyes have been opened,” she said.

  “And they’re beginning to see,” said Doc Brown as he stepped out of the woods, followed by two people with heads of hair that were peculiar shades of red: Tina Louise and the unseen man she called her brother. “They’re becoming,” Doc Brown said, then he looked at Alex and Tricia and continued, “Aren’t you?”

  42

  Revelation

  (When All Has Become)

  I thought I was God, I thought I was Alpha and Omega.

  But I look upon what I have wrought and I cannot say, “it is good.”

  It is a horror.

  I have tried to stop it. I have tried to take it back. Billions of ways, with millions of faces, in quadrillions of times and quintillions of places.

  Everyone, parents and children, lovers and friends, said it could never be done.

  They were wrong, though. And now they are gone. The others are gone, and there is nothing beyond this moment, because they all said it could never be done rather than the only thing that mattered: that it should never be done.

  But I did it. I didn’t tell anyone else, not even the person I love most in the world. I just did it.

  And it went so… very… wrong.

  So many things ended, so many lives and loves truly lost – which is so much worse than simply ending.

  But I can fix it. I can do it again, and do it right. Because I am all, and all is me. I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. I am God, and…

  … and oh, God, what have I done?

  FIVE:

  CIRCLES

  43

  (When Alex and Tricia Begin to Become)

  For a moment, Alex and Tricia knew. The forest could do that. In this place, you could remember what you had forgotten and, sometimes, could remember even things you never knew.

  But that was fleeting. It came and went like mist.

  For a moment they knew everything.

  Then the wave of memory, the unforgetting of things unknown, receded. The fog came in again, both in their minds and in the forest itself.

  Doc Brown looked at the fog that curled and thickened. Shadows appeared beyond it, but he seemed unconcerned – about them, at least.

  “You have to move,” he said. “Or the timing won’t be right…”

  (And memory flows again: Tina Louise in the back of her diner, arguing with her brother, snapping, “No you won’t… Because the timing has to be just right or it’ll happen too early or too late, and then what happens, huh?”

  And then, Sheriff Azakh, who is dead and yet not dead, keeps them for long hours, interviewing them and taking “notes” that, Alex and Tricia realize, are not notes at all. She just need
s them to stay; needs them to be there until she looks at the clock and says, “I think that’s about it.” She glances at a wall clock and says, “It’s time I let you go.” Then she looks again and says, “Best get a move on,” not because she needs to do a report that will never be filed, but because the timing has to be right.

  She had known they would be there. Just like Doc Brown did, with his black bag that held the ice pack he knew Tricia would need. No reason to bring such a thing to examine a corpse, but he knew she had been hurt. Perhaps he had somehow seen or even lived through that moment before.

  It was all for them, all so Tricia and Alex would enter the forest at the right moment and then –

  The memory fades. The fog curls in.)

  Julie nodded. She turned and began running into the forest. Tricia and Alex followed, knowing somehow that they should.

  They ran only a few steps, though, before Mandy shouted in terror, “Don’t leave me!” The shout became a shriek as Tricia and Alex turned back to see Doc Brown and Tina Louise’s brother wrestle her to the ground. Doc Brown had a hypodermic ready, just like he had had the ice pack ready. He plunged it into Mandy’s neck and she went limp.

  Alex and Tricia knew they had to follow Julie. But they knew, too, that they must protect Mandy. They stepped toward Doc Brown.

  He looked at them. “It’s just something to help her sleep, and to forget.” He shook his head. “Ignorance can be bliss, and sometimes it can be survival.” Something approaching fear flashed over his expression. “Now go! Go or we all die.”

  Julie ran. Tricia and Alex followed. The fog curled around them without ever quite touching them.

  “Stay close,” said Julie. “We’re in a pretty stable corridor, but you don’t want to wander far or you end up in the stream and it’s hard to find your way back to the right place at the right time.”

  (“I fell into the stream,” says the sheriff in the watchtower, when they ask how she came to be in this place.

  Then memory – or perhaps the forest itself – takes Alex and Tricia into the cabin, where Sam’s mother is babbling, “Some things change in the forest. But other things stay the same because I won’t let me change them. Or maybe the universe won’t or maybe it will or maybe it won’t or maybe it will, row, row, row your boat,” then singing, “gently down the STREAM!”