The Waking Forest

by Alyssa Wees

  The moon creaked and the stars frowned and the foxes, they lifted their heads and howled. They howled, because she could not.

  The Witch of Wishes alone in the Woods could not.

  “What have you done to my sister?” I demand of the boy in the darkness after everyone else has gone to bed. “Where is she?”

  “It’s all just part of the game,” the boy says at once, calmly, as if this is nothing, as if this is normal. As if people disappear from their family’s minds and memories every day, yanked like a loose tooth from a bloody mouth, quick and irreversible.

  “And if I don’t want to play anymore? What then?”

  “Then you lose, and you never see your sister again.”

  My hands trembling so hard that I can barely turn the doorknob, I flee from the attic and slide silently back into my own bed. I toss from side to side, trying to clear my head, forcing myself to think, to remember—to remember who he is and where I may have met him before, a boy like smoke clinging to the embers of a fire long gone, with shining black hair and a voice that echoes endlessly in my ears like thunder, soft and sore.

  Wait, wait, wait—shining black hair. Where did that thought come from? I’ve never seen him, but suddenly I’m sure—the boy’s hair is black and thick and unkempt, and I can picture it perfectly. In my mind’s eye I try to adjust my gaze, to force his face into focus, but the space where his features should be stays blank.

  Instead, as I grow more and more tired with every passing hour, my mind wanders where it wants, torturing me with if onlys. If only I hadn’t slept in the attic. If only I hadn’t agreed to play the Darkness’s wretched game. If only I had told my parents sooner about the sleepwalking, maybe I could’ve stopped this before I opened the door. Sometimes secrets are secret for a reason, because to know them will hurt us more than to keep them hidden.

  Ugliness doesn’t need light to exist.

  I roll onto my stomach, pressing my face into my pillow. Oh, God—what have I unleashed?

  Gabrielle moves from the foot of the bed to curl up next to my shoulder, sharing my restlessness as the night exhales around us, the heat sticking to our skin. Before long I hear Rose stir, and I lie in bed with my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep while she changes into her leotard and tights, coils her hair into a bun, and leaves for class.

  When I finally do open my eyes, the room is quiet and the door is closed. Gabrielle yawns and lifts her head from my pillow as I push myself up to sitting, my T-shirt twisted around my waist, only half my hair still tied in a ponytail. The room is dim, and rain runs like liquid fingers drawn down the outside of the window.

  Now that Rose is gone, I wish I’d said goodbye before she left.

  Before I can stop myself, the thought pops into my head, Because what if she doesn’t come back?

  I grab my phone from the nightstand and send her a text, praying she’ll answer as soon as she’s done with class, so that I’ll know she hasn’t been erased from my life, that she still exists where I can see her. When I’m done, I drop the phone onto my bed and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. In the mirror, the line Renata carved into my chest is no longer a line but a gouge, rust brown and bordered by bruises, green and gold. My chest is a moan made visual. A scream.

  I stare, but it doesn’t vanish; it doesn’t morph or molt or melt away. It’s real, and it hurts the more I look at it, an itch on an itch on an itch.

  “Morning,” Raisa says suddenly, squinting sleepily in the open doorway, the thin silver wire of her overnight retainer visible on her top teeth. She slides the retainer out, strings of spit still connected to it as she sidles up to the sink.

  “Ew,” I say.

  “Ew back,” she replies, pointing. “That’s an ugly bruise. What did you do?”

  “You can see it too?”

  “Uh, yeah. Did you think it was one of your visions?”

  Despite the soreness, I poke my chest with my fingertips, as if I can remove it by magic. “Um, maybe.”

  She shrugs, reaching past me for the medicine cabinet, placing her retainer in its sparkly pink case. “Would it have been better if it was a vision? Or is it better that it’s real, but that you also look like you got punched in the heart a few dozen times?”

  “I didn’t get punched. Renata stabbed me with a sewing needle.”

  Raisa shuts the cabinet with a magnetic click. “Renata again? Your imaginary friend?”

  I stiffen, every muscle in my body tense and aching. Her words, much more than my wound, feel like a few dozen punches to the heart.

  “You know what? You’re being really rude, and I’m leaving now.” I drop my hands and start toward the door, my chest still prickling.

  Raisa rolls her eyes. “Well, good, because I need to take a shower.”

  With Gabrielle following as always, I walk around the house looking for Mom, tiptoeing so as not to disturb the shadows. She told me once that it was okay—cathartic, even—to share when I had a vision that was especially worrisome. My parents’ room is empty; only the bed shows signs of life, with rumpled sheets and a scattering of pillows. I poke my head into the tiny laundry room with its starch-and-soap smell, the clunk of wet clothes whirling round and round in the washing machine. The family room is silent, the television turned off and the remote wedged vertically between the couch cushions.

  In the kitchen, taped to the microwave is a note in Dad’s block handwriting, all caps: WENT OUT FOR ERRANDS. CALL IF YOU NEED ANYTHING. WILL BRING BACK SANDWICHES FOR LUNCH. I LOVE YOU AND YOU AND YOU.

  I do the mental math—three yous, one for each of his daughters. Although, Rose probably left the house before he did, so maybe the last one is for Mom. There wouldn’t be a you for Renata, not anymore.

  Finally I venture back up the stairs to the bathroom, press my ear against the door, and let my eyes close, an aching exhaustion coming over me even though I just woke up. The water isn’t running, so I assume Raisa is already out of the shower. I knock.

  “Yeah?” she calls through the door.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Hang on.” The slap of wet feet on ceramic tile. I barely have time to straighten before the door cracks open and Raisa looks out. She’s wrapped in a towel, her silvery-blue hair damp and tangled. “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gabrielle grunts, a half gasp, half choke, and her heart flutters. My own heartbeat begins to accelerate, a compulsive mimicry. Loud enough to be heard over the sudden riot in my ribs, I say, “Do you know if she went out to run errands with Dad, or—”

  Raisa scoffs, starts to smile—then stops. “Wait—you’re serious?”

  I wring my hands in my T-shirt, stretching the bottom hem. “Yeah, I just want to talk to her about—”

  “Are you kidding me?” Raisa straightens. “Are you actually kidding me right now?”

  “What? No, I—”

  “Shut up, Rhea.” Her voice is like the audible equivalent of neon lights: garish and mesmeric and ticking with violent color. “I mean, I love you and everything, but you need to shut up.”

  I bring my hands to my face, covering the outer half of each eye, finding it hard to focus on the tantrum of my blood tearing through my body. “Ray, I don’t underst—”

  “You want to know where Mom is?” she says, and her teeth are as lurid and luminous as car headlights at night on a secluded highway ribboning through the woods, glinting off the deflective white letters of a green street sign: DO NOT ENTER, STOP, BRIDGE MAY BE ICY, NEXT EXIT ONE MILE, U-TURNS PROHIBITED. Her lips are white, white, white. And I am the animal slinking along the shoulder of the narrow gravel road, thinking I am safe and out of sight. Safe, out of sight, until I am awash in her rictus light. “She’s in the ground, Rhea. Six feet under. If you want to ‘talk’ to h
er, I suggest you either find a psychic medium or start digging.”

  I’m still looking at her with a gaze half obstructed by my perspiring palms. “Raisa, this isn’t funny.”

  “No,” she says. “It isn’t, is it?”

  No, no, no, no, no.

  “Where is Mom?” I shout, stamping my foot, and Gabrielle jumps back. “Where is she, where is she, where is she?”

  “She’s dead!” Raisa yells, and I cover my face completely. “She has been for the last six months. Got hit by a car while she was out riding her damn bike, remember? A drunk driver at six in the morning. Does that jog your memory? Now shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  “No. I don’t believe you.”

  “Cool,” she sneers. “Bye.”

  And then she slams the door in my face.

  Shaking all over, I stand there and wait for Raisa to reappear, to explain, but she turns on the blow-dryer to its highest, loudest setting, and I know that she will not come back, that the door will not open until she is sure I am gone.

  I run down to the kitchen, Gabrielle tripping after me, and rip Dad’s note off the microwave. I read it again and again—backward, forward, upside down—then flip it over, as if a secret message will be scrawled on the back.

  I LOVE YOU—

  Raisa—

  —AND YOU—

  Rose—

  —AND YOU.

  Rhea.

  “Mom?” I whisper, letting the note fall to the floor and shaking my head.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up—

  “Mom? Mom! Where are you, where are you, where are you, where are you?”

  —shut up, shut up, shut up.

  I walk to the foyer. I could wait, wait for Dad to come home and set things straight.

  But how long will that take?

  After bursting through the front door, I clamber down the porch steps and skitter across the grass toward the driveway by the side of the house, hurrying toward the detached garage. Dad’s car and the van the rest of us share are gone, so I wrangle past the lawn mower, a few folding chairs, and a tangle of dirty jump ropes to get to my bike stored in the back: a fixed-speed mint-green old-timey bicycle with swooping handlebars and a large woven basket affixed to the front. It’s dusty and the back tire is a bit flat, but otherwise it’s fine. I wheel it out of the garage, into the misty morning air. There are plenty of bloated clouds stuck in the sky, groaning with thunder, but no rain just yet. Though Gabrielle barks a protest, I pick her up and put her into the basket before raising the kickstand and climbing on.

  I ride away from the ocean and through the neighborhood where Brett and his friends live, down a main road past a series of shops.

  Sweaty, drowsy in the heat and humidity and fog, with steam swirling like ghosts’ breath out of the gutters, I try not to notice how the houses sag, how the people in the cars I pass have chunks of their faces missing after every third time I blink.

  Like this: one, two, three—clawed cheek—one, two, three—crushed nose—one, two, three—torn throat—one, two, three—

  Panting, pedaling, barely obeying traffic signals.

  I think, It can’t be true, it can’t be true, it can’t be true.

  Can it?

  Where is Renata? Are we all going to disappear, one by one? Will I be the last one left?

  I ride along the curb, and my tires splatter muddy puddle water over my ankles and calves. I don’t feel real, like I’m wearing borrowed bones and stolen skin. A heart like a rotting apple pinched from a forbidden orchard.

  I’m tired, hungry, and everything I pass is dead or dying. Soon it’s raining, soft but insistent, and I want nothing more than to turn back, to go to sleep, to wake up again and start over, fresh. But I can’t, I know I can’t, so even though my knees ache and my lungs strain, I keep going.

  I finally arrive at a white church with a slanted steeple and the wrought iron gates of the only cemetery in town, propped open to admit daytime visitors. Gabrielle lifts her head from the bottom of the basket as I pedal down the uneven path that winds through the tombstones and stone angels and marble mausoleums, through the old oaks whose branches bend in the wet wind, thick trees curtsying to the iron clouds. It’s not a large cemetery; I can see clear across it, to the busy street on the other side, cars cutting by with their windshield wipers careening across the glass. I ride right for the corner where my grandparents should be buried.

  I slide to a stop near their plots, just two square stones set into the ground. More mud joins the gutter sludge already tattooing my legs and arms as I kneel down to the earth and crawl in the sodden shaggy grass. Gabrielle hops out of the basket, shakes the rain off her reddish-orange coat even though more keeps falling. Then I spot it, a nearby grave I don’t remember ever seeing before.

  I read it once, twice. Again. Again. Fast, slow. Forward, backward, upside down.

  Reese Ravenna.

  Beloved Mother, Wife, Gardener of Life.

  There is no date, but Gabrielle whimpers. I bring the crook of my elbow to my face so that all I can see is a dark crease of skin, threaded with wan green veins.

  I keep following my list to avoid screaming: Cover your eyes.

  Inhale, slowly.

  Exhale, fast.

  Blink, three times.

  I keep my eyes covered tight, until the scream inside subsides.

  But—

  The scream, this scream—it will never ever, ever die.

  I bite the inside of my cheeks, hard, as hard as I can, and then—then I dig.

  With fists and fingernails, fury and fright, I claw, tear, scratch at the mud, the grass, the grave. I will unbury her if I have to, bone by bone, hair by hair, reanimate her brain and her body. I will bring her back.

  Just a little farther.

  A little deeper.

  A little longer.

  My arms become sore and my digging pace slows, but I don’t stop. Gabrielle helps, her paws turning tar-black, her teeth gritted, her ears tensed. I want to unscrew the stars and throw them into this mash of grass and earth-guts so that my mother will know which way is up, so she will be reborn in holy light.

  I am alone in the cemetery with a mash of mud and worms, with the seething earth. I am alone, and I wish with all my stupid, swollen heart that I weren’t.

  High overhead there is a choke-spasm of lightning, followed by a cough of thunder, spittle rain bursting from the cloud-crusted lips of the sky. Though it is only early morning, the world is as dark as a moonless midnight. Too dark. Darkest dark. One shadow in particular sticks to the back of my neck, coming closer.

  And soon it breathes, and soon it speaks.

  “Shhh, my sky, everything is all right.”

  I slap my fists down into the mud, splattering muck all over myself. “Stop calling me that!” I cry, looking up. As soon as I do, I realize, even though Mom’s grave is still in front of me, I am no longer in the cemetery.

  I am in the woods.

  In the middle of a wide clearing, surrounded by a near-perfect ring of trees, so tall that when I tilt my head back, I can’t even make out the tops of them. And I start to think that maybe they have no end, they just go up and up and up, forever, cradling stars like fire-bitten hearts in their branches, and their roots extend from this world into the next and the next and the next. The spaces between them are so black, it is as though nothing, not even air, exists there at all.

  But even the trees here are nothing compared to what rises directly in front of me: a castle.

  Or, rather, the ruins of one.

  A still and sludgy river the color of picked scabs encircling rotted-trunk turrets and a drawbridge dangling on rusted iron hinges, walls of twigs and crinkled red leaves half crumbled and sagging in on one side, crooked crenellations of toppled teeth, yellowed and chipped and spotted
with old blood, as if they’d been yanked from the massive mouth of some sickly beast. Large flaps of skin float in the air like dandelion fluff, mixing with the mist hanging like a heavy exhale over my head. A stale, sideways wind blows, as tenuous as a sleepy breath.

  Like something out of a dream, a nightmare, both and neither at once.

  Entranced, I rise slowly to my feet. The rain thins and eventually stops, but somehow I still hear the rush of traffic just out of sight, tires slicing through slush, the only thing connecting me to reality.

  The Darkness’s voice comes from behind me now, over my shoulder, next to my ear. I’m not sure if he’s really here, or if he’s part of the vision too.

  “Go inside,” he says. “Go and see.”

  I take one step and then stop, hesitant. Because this, this looks exactly like somewhere a witch would live. A palace in the woods.

  “Go on, my sky,” the Darkness softly urges. “I’m right here at your side.”

  “I want to see you,” I whisper, my heart beating terribly loud and achingly slow, as tremulous as the hush of the world awaiting a storm. When I turn in the direction of his voice, there is no one there, just a thick, impassable shadow. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “You aren’t,” he says. “I’m here; I’m always here.”

  Blinking rain out of my eyes, I stare at the castle, and I am so, so tired. And soaked. And hungrier than ever. And restless, like I want to tear the whole world apart. But also like I want to sleep and sleep and never wake up, forever.