by J. Thorn
Chapter 20
After meandering through the trees without sign of their parents or of the forest’s edge, Sarra brought the twins to a stop within a clearing formed by a circle of conifers. The sweet scent of pine radiated from the clearing which stretched twenty paces long and wide. The sun, hot and relentless throughout the afternoon, sunk toward the horizon where its rays wafted golden and bloody through the tree line.
“This looks like as good a place as any to stop,” Sarra said. “We’ll start looking for Mother and Father again in the morning.”
“We’re never going to find them,” Krea said, sulking as she plopped herself down onto a bed of grass and pine needles.
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why? It’s the truth. Admit it, Sarra. You’re lost. You don’t even know how to get us back to the road. How are you going to find Mother and Father when you don’t even know where we are?”
“She’s right,” Jasmine said, her eyes burning holes through her older sister.
“If we continue to walk to the west, we’ll—”
“We’ll what?” Jasmine asked. “We walked west all day and there still isn’t any sign of the road. How is that possible? I’ll tell you how it’s possible. You don’t know what you are doing. You got us into this mess and you have no idea how to get us out of it.”
“I’m going to die out here,” Krea said, wrapping her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth. “I’m never going to get out of this forest.”
Sarra sighed. Kneeling next to Krea, she put an arm around her sister’s shoulder. Krea flinched and turned away. Sarra wrapped both of her arms around Krea and although Krea twisted to break away, she collapsed and leaned into Sarra, crying into the older girl’s bosom.
“I’ll get us out of here,” Sarra said.
Jasmine’s lips moved as though she wanted to say something but her eyes glazed over in the filtered sunlight, one tear slashing a rivulet through the dusty film covering her cheeks.
They spent the morning cutting a trail north and south, hoping to come across their own tracks or those of their family. When they saw none, Sarra led them as best as she could in the confusion caused by the tall trees obscuring the sky. They saw no sign of the meadow or the Mylan Road.
“I don’t understand,” Jasmine said. “We didn’t walk far into the forest when we entered. How is it we can walk westward for days and still not find the exit? Are you sure you know where you are going?”
“I’m doing the best I can. Was the sun not to our left all afternoon?” Sarra asked.
“How can you tell where the sun is at all when the trees block everything?”
They all knew the sun shone on their left cheek and shoulder and by late day, the orb begun its descent ahead of their path. It forced them to squint as the rays wrapped around the trees in blinding yellows and oranges. But arguing about it was easier than acknowledging the truth.
“It’s like the road is gone,” Krea said, her eyes distant. “It’s like the whole world is gone and all that’s left is this horrible forest.”
“You know that’s not true,” Sarra said, brushing the matted hair away from Krea’s eyes. “We’ll figure this out tomorrow, after we’ve had some rest. It’s hard to think straight when you are tired and hungry.”
Their scavenging yielded only a few handfuls of forest berries and nuts, and although their stomachs growled, no one wanted food. Their bellies no longer felt hunger, but rather a hollowness, like the despair that lingers after the loss of a loved one. The girls crawled under a spruce branch and huddled together at the edge of the clearing. The thick smell of the sap caused their eyes to water, the final rays of the sun sliding beneath the horizon.
The shadows at the far edge of the clearing stretched eastward toward the girls like black snakes, merging with the thicker gloom seeming to swell out of the earth. A stillness covered them, an absence of shrill cricket songs and birds twittering to the sunset. It occurred to Sarra she had not spied a single track, not a hare or deer.
Their eyes raced to adjust to the building darkness, but soon the looming trees across the clearing became indistinct shapes—a darker imprint upon the coming night. A lone owl hooted above them, causing Krea to jump.
It felt to the girls as though the woods came to life despite the lack of movement within the clearing. The trees grew as they melted into the gloom, the deep blue of twilight a mystical cape cast upon them.
Krea saw her sisters’ eyes in the moonlight, cat’s eyes fixed upon the silent clearing. They held their breath as an undefinable tension emerged from the gloaming.
“Mother and Father. Do you think they’re trapped here, in the same woods as us? Do you think Delia is with them?”
“I don’t know,” Sarra said.
Branches rustled within the forest to the east.
Jasmine took a half step backward, fading deeper into the obscuring darkness within the pine. A crunch of brittle leaves and twigs preceded the sound of a footstep.
“Dread wolves?” Krea asked, whispering to Sarra.
Sarra shook her head.
“I don’t think so.”
“Could it be Daddy?”
“Shhhh.”
Sarra placed a finger to her lips as something brushed against a bush. Whatever it was, it was coming closer.
“Somebody is following us,” Jasmine said.
The owl fell into silent concert with the rest of the forest. The night, which grew thick with humidity in the coming twilight, cooled like chill air descending off of snowy slopes in early spring. At the edge of their vision where the glow of twilight covered the ground, a shape moved within the trees. Sarra caught her breath, at first thinking a small tree bent forward in the wind. But there was no wind.
The shape was not a tree, and it wasn’t a trick of shadow and light either. Even from a distance, they could tell the figure towered over the dread wolves.
“What is it?” Krea asked, her voice shaking.
Sarra didn’t answer. Instead, she stared into the woods where the shape stood last. A paralysis settled over the clearing and the twilight drained away to depthless black, pockmarked by a sea of stars. The sisters believed their minds played tricks on them. Nothing appeared to be within the woods. The approaching sounds stopped and perhaps the noises came from a solitary wildlife creature as lost in the night as they were.
As Sarra scanned the forest for movement, the air rippled on the horizon as though she saw the trees from behind a waterfall. The twins gasped and all three sisters clutched their ears. A high-pitched screech rang out through the woods. The owl took flight from the branches above Sarra’s head and she felt a breeze on her neck from the creature’s wings. Needles rained down on her bare neck and into her hair.
Then silence.
The piercing tone stopped as quickly as it started. And as the sisters removed their hands from their ears, a peculiar pressure forced itself down upon the clearing. Their ears popped. After several seconds of pain, the pressure relented and all was silent again.
Jasmine dropped to the ground. Her hands grasped at her throat, her attempts to speak cut off by choked coughs. Sarra and Krea dropped to their knees beside Jasmine. Sarra’s hands clasped beneath Jasmine’s chin as she watched her sister with helpless panic. Jasmine’s face turned as red as her hair, though all appeared silver and bleak in the dappled moonlight.
“Jasmine. Jasmine, what’s wrong?” Sarra asked, brushing her sister’s hair from her face.
Jasmine gasped for air, choking out raspy duck calls as she tore the shawl from around her neck.
“Help her, Sarra. She’s dying.”
Sarra shook Jasmine who stared back at her with haunted moons for eyes.
“Breathe, Jasmine. Breathe.”
But Jasmine couldn’t breathe. She saw the faces of her sisters disappear behind a growing cluster of black dots, like flies buzzing around a dead animal. Her head swam. Her fingertips tingled with pins and needles, the world fadin
g to black before her eyes.
“She’s dying. You have to do something.”
Sarra grasped Jasmine by the shoulders and slapped her sister on the back. Jasmine fought a helpless battle, fingers clawing at her Adam’s apple as though she meant to tear the flesh from her neck.
“Breathe.”
Jasmine coughed, a booming sound like a cork popping off of a bottle. She gasped, sucking at the air as though returning to the surface from the bottom of a deep pond. Jasmine bellowed a raspy wheeze followed by a shrill, desperate effort to inhale.
Sarra thought she saw a long object expelled from Jasmine’s mouth. Something scurried across the ground through pine needles as Jasmine sucked in the night air. Sarra strained her eyes at the earthen floor beneath the tree and heard a scratching sound, like rats clawing at a cellar door. Something black skittered out from under the bough, scraping through grass and leaves into the clearing. Sarra looked away, wanting to see the thing crawling out from under the pine.
Jasmine’s frantic breathing slowed. She pulled air into her lungs in long, grunting draws. Tears ran down her cheeks, glittering in the strengthening moonlight. Krea wrapped her arms around Jasmine’s shoulders and the twins embraced. Sarra exhaled, burying her face in her hands.
Before Sarra could ask Jasmine what caused her to choke, Jasmine started to twitch. She reached her hands toward her mouth, her face twisting into abnormal contortions.
“Jasmine. What’s wrong?”
As Sarra watched, Jasmine’s cheeks ballooned and protruded—first one side, then the other—as though she were poking the insides of her mouth with her tongue. Jasmine screamed, a muffled wail blocked by something alive.
Yes, Sarra thought. There is something crawling inside Jasmine’s mouth.
Krea fell back onto her palms, mouth agape and eyes bulging. Jasmine tried to cry, but produced nothing but a sob muffled as though a pillow covered her mouth.
Krea shrieked. When Sarra turned toward her, black shadows covered Krea, skittering across her face and arms. They bit Krea, swarming her body and becoming a macabre blanket.
“Spiders. Oh God, Sarra. Get them off of me.”
Sarra blinked. Spiders covered Krea’s upper body, their round abdomens dragged by spindly legs across Krea’s face. The spiders swarmed up Krea’s neck, dug through her hair and descended on silken threads strung from her head to her legs. Sarra felt something crawl across her hand. She squealed and jerked her hand away, seeing the pine needles crawling with arachnids.
Jasmine wretched, an awful heave from deep in her belly. The thing inside her mouth stifled her scream.
My God, what is inside of Jasmine’s mouth?
Sarra scrambled backward on her palms and heels, feeling the swarming legs of a spider under her hand, followed by slimy pus on her palm as her weight crushed the spider’s body. Jasmine heaved forward again and a centipede larger than a human tongue wriggled out of Jasmine’s mouth. Sarra fell to her back and as she scrambled to her hands and knees, spiders and centipedes swarmed past her into the clearing.
The enormous centipede hung out of Jasmine’s mouth resembling a cow’s tongue, its back arched into the air. It crawled down her chin, slithering along her chest as Jasmine vomited onto the forest floor. The pine needles undulated around her as more abominations crawled out of the earth.
Krea fell to the ground, stinging bites seeming to come from everywhere as the spiders covered her body. Sarra stumbled and fell, tripping over her feet as she crawled away from the infested pine. Writhing shadows encased the ground and rushed toward her.
She screamed.
Krea brushed her hands across her body at attackers no longer there. Bending forward, she brushed at her hair, expecting to feel the hard bodies of the spiders on her hands. But there were none.
Jasmine looked around in confusion, her face twisted in the moonlight. Sarra breathed for what felt like the first time in minutes. She scrambled to her feet, her eyes searching the ground.
The forest floor became still. The owl hooted from deep in the forest and the moon glow turned the clearing into a pewter ocean.
Jasmine curled up on the forest floor, hugging her knees to her chest as she sobbed. Krea leaned over and dry heaved onto the pine’s trunk.
Sarra spun her head from side to side, expecting to see the giant centipedes crawling out of earthen burrows. The spiders vanished. The webbing Sarra saw on Krea’s face, the silken threads draped in her hair, were nowhere to be found. Krea’s hands ran through her shawl, batting at the visceral memory of webbing and spiders.
Krea’s face contorted, her features snarled as though she detected an awful stench. Her eyes found Sarra’s, searching for an explanation. It was as though the attack was nothing but a dream.
As the moonlight bathed the forest clearing in chilling blues, the sisters collapsed and cried.
Chapter 21
“Wake up.”
Thom bolted upright. The woman’s voice came from right next to his ear. He felt her hot breath on his neck. But as he swiveled to his knees, one hand on the sheathed sword lying next to him, he saw nothing but the towering trees.
“Did you say something?” Thom asked Kira.
She mumbled in her sleep and turned away from him onto her side. Delia remained balled up between her parents.
The strange boulder lurked behind him along with the twin fallen oaks, the shelter they used again. He rubbed his eyes, wondering anew how it was possible he walked in a circle all day. It wasn’t, yet that was exactly what happened.
As the face of the moon shone down on them with indifference, blue light filtered through the leaves and boughs creating an intricate web pattern on the forest floor. A tapestry of stars glowed and pulsed overhead like distant bonfires.
He started to lie back down and then sat upright, thinking he heard a whisper from the trees across from him.
“Who’s there?”
He jumped to his feet and unsheathed his sword. Beyond the towering oaks and ash across from the shelter, the woods faded into a desolate blackness. The enormous trees along the front looked like gigantic soldiers, their boughs massive clubs that could crush a man.
“I said, is anyone there? Show yourself.”
No answer.
Thom began to believe he heard the woman’s voice in a dream. His skin crawled and the hairs on his arms stood on end. He scanned the trees and his eyes failed to discern contours and shapes beyond the front line. The black abyss would swallow him whole if he dared to step into it.
He stood poised for an attack, his sword raised toward the trees. Behind him came the whispered breathing of his sleeping wife and daughter.
He exhaled and scanned the trees. Nothing moved and he heard no other sounds.
Thom placed his sword on the ground and sat with his back against the boulder. The stone felt warm, as though it held the heat of the day within its mass. Although the warmth soothed his aching bones, something about the odd boulder left him uneasy.
He craned his neck and studied the strange symbols etched across the top. Delia was sure they were words. Thom wondered if it was an ancient language, and who drew the symbols. Looking at the writing made his stomach roil, a sense of power vile and forbidden. Alien yet familiar.
Judging by the gradient of darkness in the night sky, Thom estimated it was well past midnight. A new day was almost upon him and with it the hope he would locate his missing daughters and find a way out of the forest. But as the chilly night air seeped through his skin, the forest seemed to drain away his optimism. He wished Gavin was here. Gavin always knew what to do, always calm in times of crisis. Gavin lived life as a real adventurer, a veteran of the Mylan Guard. He would not have gotten lost in the forest or walked in a circle for an entire day. Nor would the brave soldier have lost three of his daughters when they walked right behind him.
But Gavin was not here. His friend lay ruined with the rest of Droman Meadows.
Thom dug his heels into the ground, an
d as he pressed his back against the boulder, he bumped his head against the stone to a frustrated rhythm. The silence of the forest pressed upon him, pushing through his skin and turning his insides to ice. He wished he could hear the chorus of a million crickets chirring amid the trees. He longed for any forest sounds that would assure him he was not already dead, drifting aimlessly through a tree-lined purgatory. His eyes grew heavy, as though weighted down. As he started to close them, he heard a whisper.
Thom’s eyes opened. He knew it was not his imagination. Emanating from deep within the murky black of the forest interior, the whisper came from a woman.
“Sarra?” Thom asked, creeping to his feet.
Kira turned over in her sleep, draping an arm over Delia.
Please, let it be my daughters, he thought.
The blackened outlines of the trees watched him, their shapes like frail, burned bodies against the sky. His heart thrummed in his chest. Thom watched the gloom beyond the trees the way one watches the ocean when sharks feed.
The shadows stirred.
He searched the trees for signs of danger, edging forward.
“Krea? Jasmine? Is that you?”
His voice perished within the woods.
The gloom spilled out from the forest. A force darker than night moved between the trees. His skin crawled with goose bumps. Something watched him.
Dread wolves?
He didn’t think so. A dread wolf would not have crept among the trees. It would have crashed out of the forest with murderous intent.
No. Whatever lurked within the forest moved with cunning.
He found himself wishing again that Gavin was here. Or Rowan. Rowan Sams would not have cowered like a child at the hint of a whisper.
“Who’s there?”
The hairs stood on the back of his neck. He spun himself around with his sword raised, ready for an attack. But nothing came forth. His wife and daughter slept on the forest floor between the fallen oaks, the boulder, and—
The boulder.