Night Tide

by Kory M. Shrum

  He kept walking.

  However, it was difficult to traverse the woods with complete stealth. It looked lush and green. The forest floor was thick with spongy moss and soft clover. Their steps should be nearly muted. And yet, it seemed that every snapping twig, every shifting rock betrayed them.

  Something is wrong, he thought. The forest was beautiful. Grayson might even have used the word inviting. But he found himself thinking of the story about lost children finding a house made of candy. He was sure the witch’s candy house had seemed inviting, too.

  The canopy shed sparkling light onto their path as if urging them further, deeper into the woods.

  A wild thought visited him then.

  This forest is alive. Like a single, sentient creature, it lived. Not only did it live, but it knew they were there and did everything it could to draw them deeper into its yawning maw.

  He hesitated on the path.

  Abby froze instantly beside him. She looked eager, almost ready to bolt and run the other way.

  “Does it feel....” He searched for the right words. Now, the idea that he would come to this forest, that he would look for this damned tree seemed incredibly stupid. “Does it feel alive to you?” he whispered.

  When Abby didn’t answer, he was worried that perhaps he was too quiet to be heard.

  Then she nodded. Her eyes had gone a fraction wider since when they’d first entered.

  “There’s a lot of magic here,” she whispered. He saw goosebumps prickle along her skin. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  They were almost at the halfway mark in their journey between Vendetta Heights and Druid’s Hollow. It seemed silly to turn and run back now after they’d come so far.

  His phone buzzed in his bag. Unanswered, the call went to his voicemail, probably on account of the shitty signal. He pulled the phone from his bag and listened to the message.

  “Grayson? It’s Ms. Monroe. I’m just seeing your note about the books you took. One of those—The Dark Mother and Her Children—is, well, it shouldn’t be read. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t. Just bring it back, please. It’s not that you need to worry about the content or anything like that. It’s...well...the book has a will of its own.”

  Grayson wondered what exactly that meant.

  “Just don’t open the book,” she said. Fretfully, she added, “Call me as soon as you get this.”

  Abby nodded north, suggesting they press on. When he started walking, she seized his arm and shook it. She jabbed her finger north again and he frowned. Once he followed her gaze however, he understood.

  There, not a hundred feet away, was a woman.

  She was walking away from them. She wore an outfit that looked like equestrian riding breeches and black leather gloves. Her black hair was pulled into a low pony at the nape of her neck. Her boots crossed the forest floor in absolute silence.

  She didn’t look their way, but the idea that she could pass so close and not see them was unimaginable. Or perhaps she couldn’t be bothered by two teenagers wandering the woods. Her incessant stride suggested she had a very important appointment she could not miss. She marched on.

  Or it was a trick. Maybe she wasn’t a woman at all.

  “She doesn’t look like a monster,” Grayson whispered.

  “Looks deceive,” Abby replied. “Let’s give her room.”

  They kept their distance, though both parties were headed in the same direction. There were times when they’d seem to lose her as if she were walking three or four times faster than they could manage. She would disappear around a bend, or a rock-face and be gone. But when they arrived, she would always appear again.

  Was she adjusting her speed for them? Did she want to be followed?

  Grayson ran through the list of dangerous creatures he knew roamed the Western Woods. Dryads, of course, with claws like blades. Wendigos—equally terrifying. But neither of those took the shape of a woman. Perhaps it was a fey. Fey was an umbrella term for any number of creatures who lived on the magic of nature. The nastiest ate children and stole husbands. The best simply hated humans for their part in the world’s deforestation.

  Perhaps the woman was fey and this game a trick.

  What happened when she grew tired of playing with them?

  They finished out seven miles, and Grayson checked his watch. He wanted to be mindful of the time. But in fact, in trying to keep up with the woman, they’d managed to cross seven miles before it was even three o’clock. They were making great time. But he was itching from the sweat glistening on his skin. He lifted his shirt and wiped his face.

  “We’re almost there,” Abby said, her own breath labored. “Don’t give up on me now. I want to get the hell out of here.” She urged him on, setting the pace for the remainder of the hike.

  Less than a mile later, the trees broke and the winding path dissolved into an enormous field. In the center of the field, The Crone Tree.

  No one needed to tell Grayson this was the tree. Nor did he require any convincing that this was the subject of Castle Cove’s oldest lore.

  The name was apt. The tree was monstrous and with spindly black limbs. It was like the Indian goddess Kali, black limbed with a thousand twisted arms extended about her. Her branches were full of strange blood-red blossoms unlike any Grayson had seen before. And it sounded as if it were full of birds. No small creatures flittered from branch to branch and yet the chorus seemed to emanate from it.

  The trunk itself was knotted in such as a way as to suggest an old, weathered face.

  Grayson was pulled from his gawking by an incessant quiver against his spine.

  Grayson’s backpack vibrated against his back. He mistook it for another call, until he pulled his phone from the pack and found it dark.

  It was the book. The book vibrated in his hands.

  “What’s that sound? Do you hear it?” She knelt down beside him and turned her ear as if listening. “God, is it singing?”

  All the cautious attention that she’d kept about her as they walked through the woods left her. Her eyes were wild with curiosity now. She bordered on delight.

  And she was right.

  The book was doing something. Vibrating or singing, he couldn’t be sure.

  “Is it made of the same wood?” she asked. Her finger lovingly traced the cover.

  That’s when Grayson realized that it was wood that encased the pages. How could he have mistaken it for leather before?

  “Let’s bring them together,” Abby said. She looked from the book in his hands to the tree sitting in the center of the field. “Maybe they want to be together.”

  Her voice had a faraway, dreamy quality to it now. Her eyes had glazed. Grayson himself felt as if he had entered a dream. His body moved of its own accord toward the large, imposing tree.

  They’d almost reached it when a hand shot out and snatched the back of Abigail’s neck. The fierce hand wrenched her head back, stretching Abby’s pale throat.

  It was the woman in the equestrian riding gear.

  This close she didn’t look fey. But what did Grayson know?

  The woman’s hand shredded Abby’s clothes and slid under her rib cage as easily as a Mayan blade adept at human sacrifice. Abby’s scream ripped Grayson’s soul in two. He couldn’t bear the sound of it. When it was cut short, it was both a blessing and curse. Abby’s crumpled body fell to the ground between their feet.

  I’m not seeing this, he thought. This isn’t happening. This is a terrible, terrible dream.

  But he was.

  The woman was lifting a red heart to her lips and she was sucking it. No, eating it.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” the woman said, her blood-stained teeth pulled into an awful grin as fire-filled eyes met Grayson’s. “It’s better warm, you see. I can barely get it down when it’s cold.”

  Grayson fell to the ground, aware that the crumpled form before him was Abby.

  Abby. Abby. Hot tears streamed from the corner of hi
s eyes.

  “Now,” the woman purred. She climbed onto Grayson, straddling him. Her warm pelvis pressed into his stomach. Her eyes were dilated, her mouth and cheeks smeared with Abby’s blood. “Thanks for waiting for me, lover.”

  She bent and kissed him full on the mouth.

  Grayson wanted to scream. Grayson wanted to throw her off and kill her with his bare hands.

  But he remained frozen, pinned to this earth with invisible force.

  “Oh yes, this feels good,” she said, running her bloody hands over Grayson’s chest, shredding his clothes as she went. “Your friend had a lot of juice running through her veins. Give her ten or twenty years of decent training and she would’ve been a hell of a witch. She would’ve been running the coven for sure. Maybe she would’ve been running the town.”

  Then she laughed.

  “Too late now.”

  “Fuck you,” Grayson managed.

  “We could try sex magic,” she said, with a salacious grin. “But that only works if you’re a virgin. So no point in raping you. Unless you’d like one more go of it before you die?” She caressed his face again. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Her fingers tightened on his chin. She lifted her head as if listening to something. “There’s the dryads. They can smell the blood,” she said, wistfully. “I better finish up here or I’ll have my work cut out for me.”

  She lifted Grayson off the ground and hauled him to the tree. She shoved his aching body against the rough bark. From this angle, he could see Abby, her crumpled body motionless in the grass, her hollow eyes vacant. The woman’s black gloves lay on the ground by her head.

  “It’s nothing personal,” the woman said. “I hope you know that. But I need the Witching Blade. I thought the sirens had it, but that was a lie. It was always hidden in the tree.”

  Grayson’s chest exploded with black fire. That sound was him screaming. That thump in his chest was his own wounded heart resisting the probing fingers that would crush it.

  Or perhaps it was the tree’s heartbeat.

  It certainly felt like the branches were twining around him, pulling his body into its trunk. The woman was smiling. The bird song swelled to an ear-splitting chorus that ricocheted in his brain.

  Darkness pressed in on the corners of his vision.

  The woman didn’t seem to notice. She only smiled. “That’s a good boy.”

  He wondered if she would keep smiling once the galloping dryad closing in fast reached her.

  Grayson didn’t know.

  For him, the world went black before the beasts arrived.

  Create New Story

  Remake last choice

  Grayson: Don’t Bring Abby

  He didn’t respond to her text. Instead, he put his cell phone on silent and slipped it into his backpack. It was easier this way. She would try to talk him out of it and he had to go. He had to.

  Maybe it was the exhaustion, but Grayson felt as if he were in a dream as he drove through town. Before he knew it, he found himself at the four-way stop at the edge of town. Across the street sat The Crossroads, a demon bar where humans could make literal deals with the devil. Or devils.

  South Beach bloomed on his left, revealing sandy beaches and blue-grey water. On his right was the open fields known as Vendetta Heights. It was premier make-out spot and vampire feeding ground after dark. All the more reason to make it back to the car before the sunset. Grayson drove until he thought he was about parallel to the place known as Druid’s Hollow.

  It was eight or nine miles deep into the woods, but no need in making the journey longer by parking too far away.

  Satisfied that this was his best guess for its location, he pulled off the road and parked.

  Grayson glanced at the dashboard clock. It was 11:32. Daylight was still on his side.

  He stepped from the car into the tall grass. He hefted the pack onto his shoulders and locked up his car.

  The forest loomed before him.

  A shiver ran down his spine as he recollected the illustration from The Dark Mother and Her Children. He didn’t see any eyes watching him, waiting for him to step vulnerable into the woods. But he suspected there might be creatures here that he couldn’t see. This was Castle Cove after all.

  The dense canopy overhead immediately blotted out most of the sunlight.

  He hadn’t even gone twenty feet before he realized he had been right about the low light. He’d suspected the covering in this part of the forest was thick, dappling what little sunlight they had.

  In the Wayward Woods, he could walk until nearly sunset and count upon the light. The trees weren’t as crowded and the wide expanse of bright sky invited hikers to linger in any of the beautiful, open fields surrounding the trails. Lake Trail, in particular, offered a gorgeous view for stargazing. And it was close enough to Sunset Park that one could linger well into the evening and feel relatively safe because of its proximity to town.

  Here the trees seemed to stand almost on top of one another.

  They are crowding in on you, he thought. He shivered again.

  He needed to get to The Crone Tree within three hours. If he kept a good pace, he could do it.

  He walked in silence, or as silent as was possible given the thick forest floor.

  First a mile. Then two. By the third mile, his mind had entered a sort of trance state as it often did when he hiked. His thoughts flittered away and left him only with the sensation of the experience. His body labored. Fresh air moving in and out of his chest. A slight sweat formed on his brow.

  However, it was difficult to traverse the woods with complete stealth. It looked lush and green. The forest floor was thick with spongy moss and soft clover. His steps should be nearly muted. And yet, it seemed that every snapping twig, every shifting rock betrayed him.

  Something is wrong, he thought. The forest was beautiful. Grayson might even have used the word inviting. But he found himself thinking of the story about lost children finding a house made of candy. He was sure the witch’s candy house had seemed inviting, too.

  The canopy cast sparkling light onto his path as if urging him further, deeper into the woods.

  A wild thought visited him then.

  This forest is alive. Like a single, sentient creature, it lived. Not only did it live, but it knew he was there and did everything it could to draw him deeper into its yawning maw.

  He hesitated on the path.

  On the path, he realized.

  Why was there a path in these unruly woods? Worse, why did he feel like it was forming before his very eyes. It could be a trick of the light, or the forest could actually be leading him deeper into its gullet.

  He was almost at the halfway mark in his journey between Vendetta Heights and Druid’s Hollow. It seemed silly to turn and run back now after he’d come so far. And it wasn’t lost on him that the path behind wasn’t nearly as inviting. It was darker. The roots and brush seemed to grow up behind him.

  Why leave? a little voice in his mind asked. Hadn’t he wanted to explore these woods all his life? And he was finally here. There are no monsters. Have you seen even one?

  His phone buzzed in his bag but he didn’t reach it before the call went to voicemail.

  He listened to the message.

  “Grayson? It’s Ms. Monroe. I’m just seeing your note about the books you took. One of those—The Dark Mother and Her Children—is, well, it shouldn’t be read. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t. Just bring it back, please. It’s not that you need to worry about the content or anything like that. It’s...well...the book has a will of its own.”

  Grayson wondered what exactly that meant.

  “Just don’t open the book,” she added, fretfully. “Call me as soon as you get this.”

  Grayson put his phone back in his bag and resumed hiking.

  Less than an hour later, the treelined broke and the winding path dissolved into an enormous field. In the center of the field sat The Crone Tree.

  No one neede
d to tell Grayson this was the tree. Nor did he require any convincing that this was the subject of Castle Cove’s oldest lore.

  The name was apt. The tree was monstrous and with spindly black limbs. It was like the Indian goddess Kali, black limbed with a thousand twisted arms extended about her. Her branches were full of strange blood-red blossoms unlike any Grayson had seen before. And it sounded as if it were full of birds, yet no small creatures flittered from branch to branch.

  The trunk itself was knotted in such as a way as to suggest an old, weathered face.

  Grayson was pulled from his gawking by an incessant quiver against his spine.

  Grayson’s backpack seemed to vibrate against his back. He mistook it for another call, until he pulled out his phone and found its screen dark.

  It was the book.

  The book vibrated in his hand.

  Bring us together, he thought. The book and the tree. We want to be together.

  In a dreamy haze he stumbled forward, holding the book out the way a child offers a toy to its mother. He’d almost reached the tree when a hand shot out and snatched the back of Grayson’s neck. He dropped the book.

  She stepped into his view, but never relinquished her hold on his neck. It was a woman in equestrian riding gear. Pants, vest and riding boots. Her hands were in black leather gloves.

  Or maybe she wasn’t a woman. Maybe she was a creature pretending to be a woman. How could he be sure?

  I’m not seeing this, he thought. This isn’t happening.

  But it was.

  Grayson wanted to throw her off, but he remained frozen, pinned by an invisible force stronger than the woman’s grip.

  “Hello,” she said, running her hands over Grayson’s chest. “What’s your name, handsome?”

  “Fuck you,” Grayson managed.

  “We could try sex magic,” she said, grinning. “But that only works if you’re a virgin. So no point in raping you, hmmm? Unless you’d like one more go of it before you die?” She caressed his face again. “I wouldn’t mind.”