Around her, the wind raced to keep up, wailing in her ears. That terrified her most of all, the sound of that wind, the speed and power and the awful cry of it. It was the voice of those things, the voice of the leshiye. Of that, she had no doubt; in Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe, people had names for wind like that, names for the leshiye, both good and bad, and a healthy fear of their power. Once, on a trip to Ireland, she’d visited a little pub in rural farm country so remote that most still spoke the old language rather than English. Still, she had found one little old man in a wool cap and sweater, willing to exchange stories of homelands in English by the warmth of the pub fireplace. He had once traveled broadly to experience the cultural flavor of other nations, too, and since he didn’t know Russian and she didn’t know Irish Gaelic, English seemed a pleasant common ground. He’d told her stories about Irish fairies and elves and wood sprites, and he’d told her stories of the banshees, and how they howled. The latter were omens of death, he’d said, and went on to tell her that over time, popular culture dictated that if one heard the wail of the banshee, it meant he or she was next to die. And that was what the sound of the wind made her think of, the death-wail of the banshee. The breath of an approaching and inevitable death. It drove her speed.
They had let her live, as the rangers suggested they would, because of the sticks. She didn’t know how that could be, but it was. She had held her breath, convinced they were going to dismember her where she stood, but they seemed to read the latticework as a kind of friendly message. The sticks meant something to them, passed on some understanding. They were words made solid objects, and the leshiye apparently read or felt them as a reason to let her live. She saw now that even in America, so jaded and scientific, so convinced of their sophistication over superstition, even here, some people still remembered and understood. And thank God that they did, because they had essentially saved her life. She remembered how earlier that night, when the search teams were originally assembled, the troopers and local officers had rejected the three or four stick configurations that the rangers had offered. The ranger station only had those few and there hadn’t been time to make more, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, it seemed. One team leader had broken a stick configuration, while the others shoved theirs back in the hands of the rangers giving them. Oksana hoped those few remaining sticks had kept at least the rangers safe.
The leshiye were angry at the guns, angry at the invasion. She could feel their sense of having been disrespected and their desire to kill. She suspected that now that they had seen men with guns, it wouldn’t take an officer firing at them to anger them. They’d just attack on sight. No one in any of the search party units would be safe until everyone left the woods. And it was up to her to let them know, to make them believe. She had to tell them. She had to—
She didn’t see the state trooper in her path until she had nearly toppled him over. He caught her up in his arms and she began struggling against him. He was slowing her down, and they were coming . . .
“Whoa, whoa, hold up, Ranger. What’s going on?”
Oksana stopped fighting him; he was stronger, and had no intention of letting her go until she calmed down. She was still on high alert, though. Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath, and her darting glances behind her, searching the dark for movement or glowing eyes, betrayed her urgency.
As he looked her over with the flashlight, he saw the blood on her uniform and his voice softened a little. “Are you okay?” he asked. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
Oksana tried to open her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. How could she make them understand? Even in Russian, she didn’t think she could find an adequate way to describe what she had seen. She had so little time, and only words they wouldn’t believe anyway. The wind was coming. The trees were coming. How could she begin to explain to them how very real and deadly those things were in Nilhollow?
The state trooper stood there with a gentle but firm grip on her arm, waiting for an answer. The four men behind him, one of them Clark Cohen from the ranger station, watched her expectantly as well. They deserved to know what they were up against. She couldn’t let them head blindly in the direction she’d just come from.
She thought about what to say for a minute, and then replied, “Not my blood. My unit was attacked. They are all dead.”
“Dead? Fuck, what happened? Who attacked them? Are you sure they’re all dead?”
“Yes. There are things in the woods . . .”
“What kind of things? Bears or something?”
“No, not bears. And not people. It take too long to explain now, and time is short. We need to leave this forest.”
“We need to secure that area and see for sure if those officers are dead first,” the trooper said.
The policemen moved forward but Oksana grabbed at their arms. “No no no, wait. Wait. You can’t go back that way. You do not understand—”
“If we have officers down, we need to assist. And whatever you think you saw, if it killed our men, we have to stop it.” The state trooper turned to his unit. “Gibbons, call it in to the command post, and call for backup.”
A tall, gawky-looking dark-haired man in a state police uniform nodded and turned to his shoulder-mic.
“Greer, you and Gibbons bring up the rear. Cohen, stay here. Keep an eye on her.”
“Trooper, listen to me. You cannot fight what killed those police. They are strong. You need to tell your fellow police to leave this place. Please wait. Just listen.”
The state trooper turned around, impatience molding his features into a stiff expression.
“Your guns will not help. Your strength will not help. You need to warn the others that whatever slept in these woods is awake now, and it wants blood.”
The trooper shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, with sleepers being awake or whatever, but let me see if I can make you understand. If there have been casualties, we need to secure the scene and neutralize the threat. Get it? We don’t run. We’re the ones the running people come to for help.” He started off again with Gibbons and Greer in tow.
“Officer, please!” She sounded desperate, frantic, and even she realized her words came across as those of a hysterical woman. “Officer, you’re in danger. At least wait for the backup.”
“Unit three is on its way,” Greer told the trooper. “Should be here in five.”
Oksana turned to Clark. “The woods-spirits are real—and deadly strong! Like tree-people. I saw them. Felt them. I had the sticks. Was only thing that save me. But I drop it.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I drop it. Tell them, Clark. Make them understand.”
She wiped the tears away and could see by Clark’s face that he understood. She thought he would. It wasn’t just ranger tradition and superstition that passed between them; all the rangers had known on some level that there was more to what they felt in those woods than that. They had stories of their own of tree-haunts, and deadly serious precautions that even the newest trainee was taught, long before that trainee had reason to believe he or she needed them. One couldn’t spend nights and days and even more nights in the state parks of the Pine Barrens and not know deep in the soul that those who guarded the forest were always present—and that, unfortunately, those guardians specifically residing in Nilhollow were very damaged in some way. The rangers had suspected the time would come when just avoiding the woods-spirits or leaving them pacifying gifts would no longer be enough.
“Alvarez, wait. Just wait a sec.”
Again, the state trooper turned back to them, and this time, he did little to mask his impatience. “What?”
“The rangers,” Clark said, “have a . . . a belief. An old tradition—”
“I don’t have time for this, Cohen.”
“Make time. Hear me out,” Clark said. His tone was such that the police stood there, waiting to hear what the ranger had to say.
Clark continued. “We’ve been keepers
, in a sense, of this state park for a long time. As such, we hear stories. Then we see things that bear those stories out. If what Oksana is saying is true, and I strongly believe it is, then heading in like cowboys to secure the scene and take down the threat with guns drawn will only get you killed. You . . . you should have been more careful with the stick configuration I gave you.”
“What are we talking about here, huh? What’s with all the vague bullshit? You’re telling me I should be afraid of ranger superstition. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Elementals. They’re like guardians of natural things—in this case, trees, specifically. But the ones in Nilhollow—there’s something very wrong with them. According to legend, they’ve been going insane for centuries.”
Alvarez crossed his arms. “Still sounds like a bunch of hippy-dippy superstitious bullshit to me.”
“Call it what you want, Alvarez. I don’t care. Just don’t dismiss it.”
There was a brief uncomfortable silence that followed, and Clark looked like he was about to break it when they heard some crashing through the bushes nearby. Oksana cried out. Even the police officers jumped.
The members of unit three came stomping through the overgrowth. There were two men in trooper uniforms, a woman with a state Missing Persons Unit badge on hers, and a woman in the uniform of the local police. Oksana noticed that none of their rangers had been assigned to unit three, so there would be no one there to back up her and Clark’s assertions.
“Alvarez. You unit five?” one of the men in a state trooper uniform asked. He appeared to be in charge of unit three.
Alvarez nodded. Thanks for the backup, Hoss.”
“Don’t mention it,” the man replied. “What have we got here?”
Alvarez turned to look at Clark and Oksana again. “Rangers here think some of our officers from unit six were killed by . . . what is it, Clark? Forest ghosts? Tree-monsters? That about right?”
Clark and Oksana exchanged glances. When Clark spoke, it was clear he was choosing his words carefully. “In a way, they’re both. And neither. Like I said, they’re called elementals. They’re spirits in the sense that they don’t always have physical forms, but they are not the souls of dead people, like ghosts are. They were never human. And before you scoff and dismiss all this out of hand, just listen to me. You don’t spend every workday out here—we do. Any ranger will tell you the same thing I am. This is real. They are real. And if Oksana is telling you she saw your fellow officers die and that guns will make the situation worse, they will.”
Alvarez sauntered back to them, squaring off with Oksana. “Just what, exactly, did you see?”
His gaze made her uncomfortable. Behind him, the other officers looked annoyed.
“Well, Ranger? What little ghosties did you see in the dark, scary forest, huh?” Alvarez’s mocking eyes and his garlic breath steeled her to look him square in the eye.
“I saw two of them. Two creatures, they come out of woods. They have crazy inside them. Pass it on to others. I saw it with my own eyes. They make Officer Carver crazy to shoot one policeman, then himself in the feet and hand. The other trooper, Helen, she shoot at the creatures and it make them very angry. Off comes her arm, and they open her gut. Then they kill Officer Carver. Make things grow out of him. Tear off his flesh.”
The other policemen standing behind Alvarez shifted uncomfortably. Alvarez himself hesitated, backing off of her a little.
“Well, how did you escape, then?” the state trooper asked.
“I have sticks,” she told him, searching for a way in English to explain it. “These sticks made into figure when I tie with colored string. The leshiye see and I do not know what they think, but they leave me alone, so I ran. I drop it, though. It was only thing to keep me alive. We have no defense. So, we will all die if we do not leave this forest.”
“You know that sounds crazy, right? I know your English isn’t great, but tell me you understand how crazy that sounds,” Alvarez said. “For all we know, you killed the officers. You’ve got blood all over you. Maybe I should arrest you right now for murder.”
“Yes,” she said, somewhat exasperated by his stubbornness. “Arrest me, if that is what you want. Take us out of these woods to your jail.”
Alvarez’s eyes narrowed. Then he turned to Clark. “You stay with her. We’re going to check out the situation. You don’t leave until we get back. I mean that. No one leaves until we know what’s going on, got it?”
Clark didn’t respond. He just stared at Alvarez until the state trooper turned away. Unit three followed unit five into the woods.
For a long time, Clark and Oksana didn’t move. They felt the leshiye all around them, chattering in the leaves and breathing in the wind. They were nakedly, utterly vulnerable, alone with angry, vengeful guardians watching them like lions watch gazelles. And while it was true the rangers had no guns and no axes to incur the spirits’ wrath, they had no stick lattices, either.
They didn’t speak. Clark didn’t ask her any more about what she saw, and she didn’t volunteer any further information. They didn’t know each other well outside of work, so little comfort was to be had from familiarity or trust. More so, they didn’t speak for the same reason they didn’t move; speech would single them out and bring the notice of the elementals. Nilhollow was capricious. It was wiser not to draw anything’s attention when the two of them were alone. They didn’t want that.
But Clark understood. He could help make the others understand. Alvarez might be a lost cause, but when they reached the rest of the search party, the other rangers would back them up. Oksana thought staying there was just wasting time, but Clark held her arm.
“Just a few minutes more,” he whispered. She thought she understood; he wanted to see if Alvarez came back. Though she felt impatient, she supposed there were a couple of different reasons it would be good to wait. Besides the old adage about there being safety in numbers, units three and five would see for themselves, and that would mean more people in their corner, people who would help convince their own to abandon the search.
Those two cops and those two civilians, Oksana thought, were probably dead. If they had come across the leshiye, they were almost surely dead.
While they waited, their breaths shallow and quiet, Clark held her. They kept their silence and their stillness. In fact, one could very well have mistaken them for just two lonely trees in the forest until they heard the roaring. It was then, and only then, that they ran.
TWELVE
Julia and Pete ran, oblivious to the sharp hanging branches that nicked their skin and the uneven ground that threatened to trip them up. It was only when the pain in her ankle became unbearable and threatened to bring her down that she tugged on Pete’s arm to stop.
“I—I can’t anymore. My ankle. I can’t.”
She figured she had done some irreparable damage to it by that point; adrenaline could only carry her so far. She glanced down and could see that her ankle now bulged beneath her makeshift bandage and sock. The pain came in hot, throbbing waves that blacked out the world for a few seconds with each pulse. It took supreme effort on her part to force everything back into focus. If it hadn’t been sprained before, it certainly must be by now.
Pete scanned the gloom behind them as he caught his breath. “Want me to carry you?”
She giggled, aware of how high and thin it sounded in between pants. “It’s a sweet thought, Pete, but I don’t think that’ll work. Just—can I lean on you? I can limp, sort of, if we go slow.”
He nodded, looping a surprisingly strong arm under hers and around her back. It took her weight off the bad ankle and the pain relented a little. That close to him, she wondered briefly what she smelled like—dreams and dirt and fear and sweat, probably. He smelled good, though, despite a dirty and dangerous day in the woods. The scent of him made her feel a little safer.
He moved at her pace, but she could tell from his face that he was nervous that those horrors, freed of their n
ooses, were closing the distance between them. She followed his occasional glances to the inkiness that seemed to be consuming more and more of the woods they’d left only moments before. She couldn’t see any sign of the flayed corpses or even any movement in the shadows, nor could she hear their labored breathing anymore. The corpses were, she was pretty sure, an illusion of sorts to get into her and Pete’s heads and crack them open, and the forest had evidently grown tired of using them.
There would be other things to terrorize her and Pete, though—she was sure of that. Nilhollow wanted to exhaust them, cause them to despair. It wanted to break them and goad them into acts of depravity and desperation like murder and suicide and God only knew what else. Things crawling, snaking, and slithering up from that god-awful chasm, she thought. That’s what else. She didn’t think she could bear that. She’d weathered a lot the last couple of days, but she couldn’t stomach having to confront that chasm again. It would push her right over the edge, figuratively if not literally. She guessed that was the intent of that chasm. It wanted to drive them crazy so it could have them forever.
Maybe it already had, and it knew so.
Were they crazy yet, either one of them? How long did it take to go insane? She didn’t know. She only knew that as far as Pete was concerned, his possession of the ax made her uncomfortable. He didn’t seem so much different to her otherwise, but then, Darren never seemed “off” until suddenly he was, and she was blindsided. Was Pete leading her out of the woods, or was he really leading her deeper into them? Would he turn on her, seemingly out of nowhere, for some wrong word or action, and bury that ax of his in her skull?
As for her . . . well, she thought that Pete probably wished she’d drop her ax as well. She wouldn’t blame him if he was keeping an eye on her, assessing all the quirky, nervous little things she said and did. However, dropping the ax wasn’t likely to happen. It made her feel safe and in possession of at least a modicum of control. Although they weren’t quite on speaking terms yet, she was beginning to appreciate her ax as much as her little purse. Both were providing for her and keeping her going, and so her purse and her ax weren’t going anywhere so long as she was alive. She didn’t think he’d deny her that little bit of safety and security, anyway, even if he was a little worried about her sanity. He’d seen things, too. Being without a weapon here would feel like being naked—naked and decorated with steaks and thrown in a lion’s cage.
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