Lost in the Woods

by Chris Page

  “Hello,” spoke the man as she approached.

  “Good afternoon,” Carrie replied. “How are you?”

  The man nodded with a modest smile. Carrie nodded back.

  “Enjoying your communion?” she asked.

  He observed her in silence. His face tilted and his brows, in a nearly undetectable adjustment, furrowed. For a moment, she believed none of it had happened. Perhaps she had never met this man, not beyond the one occasion when she was frozen and lost. It could be, through sleep deprivation and lack of nutrition, that her mind had developed a story around him, fed it to her out of the unconscious machinations of her slumber, and appeared whole some day when she thought back on him, igniting the false memory. She felt hot atop her skin, and cold beneath it. She wanted to turn away. She thought of running, which only caused her to blush.

  “Those rosy cheeks,” he commented warmly.

  Carrie smiled and internally sighed.

  “Have you come to commune with the forest?”

  Carrie searched his eyes for recognition. Perhaps she had met him, but she didn’t see it in his gaze. In the air around her, there was a pressure bearing down on her. She felt struggle swelling within her frame. Her muscles tensed. In the length of his pause awaiting her answer, patiently staring down into her face, Carrie intuited a decision. She had to either press against this mysterious force, or she could give herself over to it. Either way, she knew, there was no avoiding it.

  She released. The air paused, then relented, drifting away. “Yes,” she answered.

  A wide grin broke out gradually on the man’s lips. “Good,” he said.

  Carrie took a breath, swallowing the autumnal forest into her chest. It settled in her belly and calmed her nervous bowels. She exhaled and a cloud billowed between them, framing the man in a frosty, translucent, and evanescent pane. “Could you take me to the dark place again?”

  His smile held, the corners of his mouth pinned against the back of his jaw. She awaited reply, but it seemed as though he’d become a statue. His rigidity alarmed her, until she reminded herself. Let go, she spoke in a whisper, or heard it from her subconscious. The pause radiated out into the forest, stilling the trees, their branches, the wind. All became silent.

  “Oh,” he suddenly spoke. Carrie felt terror sweep through her to the interruption of quiet, but withheld reaction. Then, he spoke reassuringly, “Yes.”

  With her eyes fallen into his, she felt his hand enter hers and wrap around it, the warmth of his fingers passing into her own.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Okay.”

  They turned and proceeded down the path while the trees’ spindles creaked and moaned into motion, twisting across the path high above them to connect and knot together, squeezing out the clouds, and steadily the daylight behind them.

  Let go, she told herself.

  Her eyes fell to the path beneath them, following it out in its straight line towards the darker thicket of trees. The dirt itself changed shade, fading from a browner color towards black the nearer it reached the abrupt shift ahead. It was nearly a line, Carrie observed, dividing the forest as she knew it from the forest as she’d come to learn. The contrast was abundant. Beyond the path, the ferns lost their lush green hue. The bark on the trees became ragged and grey. The light, most notably, vacated the space before her. It was the most unnerving as she passed the line of division, between what she’d known and what lied before her.

  Let go, she heard herself say.

  She squeezed his hand. Then her grip softened.

  Her chin upturned, her vision passing into the sky. She watched the littled branches at the tops of the trees curling inward around the darkness they formed between them.

  19

  _________

  He left the lights off in the shed when he arrived home, taking his personal laptop into the dark space to conduct his business. Its blue hue emanating from the screen shot across his face as it booted, shrinking his pupils into pained, tiny dots. He didn’t blink. He waited for the system to awaken, eyes focused, body hunched, jaw agape. Only his fingers moved, furiously. The tips hopped across the keys of his login, striking enter to arrive at his home screen. His middle finger slid along the surface of the trackpad to unite the mouse with the internet icon. A double click ignited the screen with white as the window introduced itself, prompting his search query. He felt the strain of his irises as they twisted and squeezed.

  He followed the steps he was taught. He downloaded the special browser. He set up his account on the black market website where he’d found the listings of interest. Each demanded conversation via chat that he taught himself in the course of an hour to use. Technology wasn’t his strength, but his determination yielded results. He learned what he needed. He entered the space occupied by criminality and illicit business to attain what he required. All the while his body rested like an empty shell, a cicada’s skin latched onto the bark of a tree. He communed with what he would formally despise. He was driven to it out of necessity. Touched by evil, the only cleansing was through its black heart.

  He blinked and saw himself in the little house by the woods, arm frozen with blade extended from an ineffectual appendage. The salt stung, he took one hand away from the keys and ground a fist into his eye socket. The memory wouldn’t clear, like a burnt ghost image on a monitor. He felt himself blush. The embarrassment of his inaction, the foolishness of his aborted intent.

  He felt the room around him, suddenly present. Around the edges of the screen, he saw into the darkness. The floor was scattered with refuse, fast food wrappers and empty liquor bottles, beer cans and a few stained blankets that became his bed as of late. He leaned back in his chair and sighed to himself. His mind was agitated. The world around him on occasion forced its weight upon him. With its physical demands, with its monetary restraints, with emotions, memories.

  His eyes traveled on their own to the desk. It rested against the wall opposite the door, some five or so feet from where he sat with the computer in his lap. Above it sprawled his tapestry, a series of images, clippings, and maps linking his various theories together. Atop the desk were various documents compiled to justify each suspicion. The pages covered over the entirety of its wooden surface. A quick scan halted on an unfamiliar page. Standing out from the memorized disorder, the single, wide-ruled page arrested him.

  It occurred to him what it was. With penmanship like Carrie’s but not Carrie’s, the words strung together into a narrative about two fishermen, a father and son. It was the first page of the story. It began with the description of a sunset casting an array of reds, pinks, and oranges across the surface of an undisturbed lake save a single boat carrying the duo.

  Jake felt his bottom jaw fall, and the sting of tears threatened the backs of his eyes. How did it get there? He wondered this to himself silently, same as the answer came to him. In the depths of his inebriation, between morning hours before the light, when the world slept and he could almost imagine not being in his place and time but instead somewhere nothing mattered, something like heaven, yet dark, he had plucked the page from its resting place.

  Now, captured by its presence, he cursed himself for disturbing it. He growled towards it, but could not enact the anger he felt in fear of desecration. The page was holy, and he was filthy. It was forbidden.

  He turned his eyes back to the computer and stared into the white with wide eyes until his periphery shrank around the edges of the monitor once more. A chat had begun. He was now speaking with murderers. He was engaged with evil. He imagined it like a disease. He was coming in contact with its most infectious hosts.

  He hadn’t thought of stopping, but at times, somewhere in his thoughts was the hypothetical. What if he were inclined to? He’d begun something, set it into motion. There were forces behind this now, those of vengeance, justice. And beyond that, even. He imagined morality as a bygone collection of precepts. There was something broader at play in his actions. Either he was tapped into it,
or it flowed through him playing as conductor, but the result was the same. It was unstoppable. Certainly this was the case for his own hand. Something grander even yet would have to stop this. He had little inclination as to what that might require, something beyond gods, beyond life and death, something entirely amoral, something that cared even less about Jake’s ultimate outcome or the existence of his soul than he did.

  Jake viewed evil like a substance, equal with all others, and himself as an observer with distance even beyond the vantage of judgment. There was no right or wrong. Only what was, and what would be. And what would no longer be. He was interacting with evil with the same approach to hazardous materials. Its radioactivity was entering his body. He felt no way about it. He would use it to collapse it into itself, sinking the whole sordid affair into the earth to be buried. Or he was balancing a ledger. Or he was enacting cosmic justice. Or he was mad. Or he was angry. Or he was making something happen in a world that refused motion in his direction. Or—

  A message appeared on the screen.

  -Hello

  Jake leaned in and danced his fingertips across the keyboard again.

  -I’m looking for someone to kill for me.

  No use beating around the bush, he thought.

  -I can help you with that.

  He breathed through his open mouth while he typed, watching the words appear on the screen before him.

  -Tell me everything you need and I will provide it for you.

  His vision blacked out everything around the next line, awaiting text there.

  -Good. Let’s begin.

  20

  _________

  The season stretched deep into November, the leaves refusing to fall, same as the snow. Instead, a near freezing rain pelted everything and made cold radiate from the ground, the trees, the downed branches and rotting trunks. None of this deterred Carrie, and as she returned habitually to the forest, she discovered the same to be true for the man she met most days. A new path nearly formed over the weeks tracing her way from one trail to the next, her personal shortcut that emptied into the meeting place. There, like clockwork, the man would appear, greet her with his unchanging smile, and lead her. Together, they entered into the dark center many times, each more illuminating than the last. She couldn’t put words to her discovery, she hadn’t yet come into an understanding, not a full one. She knew, however, that while she marched by his side, as light shrank away from the air, as the trees twisted into tunnels, that she was approaching it. Soon, she would have the knowledge, the transcendent union with the trees and their secrets to share them, then use them. She was near to her son, inching nearer with each passing day. She could almost hear him again. Or at least feel him.

  She reflected on her progress as she pulled her car up to the trailhead. She parked and took a breath, preparing to depart from the warm interior of her car before stepping out into the cool November air. Keep going, she told herself. And let go.

  A knock against her window shook her from her spine outward, like a fist wrapped around it, rattling her bones from the inside. She lost her breath and turned to face the intrusion. There, exhaling into a frosty circle against her window, was Jackie. Her half concerned, half angry expression, coupled with the surprise of her presence, made Carrie’s gut churn. She gritted her molars before rolling the window down.

  “Carrie,” Jackie whispered.

  “What are you doing here, Jackie?” Carrie snapped.

  Jackie pinched her lips together and exhaled through her nostrils. She looked down, as if to intone solemnity, but such a gesture was useless on Carrie. She’d grown only to resent her friend’s insistence at this point. Jackie was a nuisance. All argument to the contrary was spent, Jackie’s dogged persistence to impede on Carrie’s personal time could be viewed as none other than rude intrusion.

  “I couldn’t let you keep ignoring my calls,” Jackie said. She wrapped her fingers around the base of the car window. Carrie’s eyes fell to them, stubby, fat, aging. She thought about pressing the little button to roll up the window. Instead, her friend’s voice beckoned her attention back to Jackie’s lips. “I couldn’t let you go in alone anymore.” She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I needed to come show you you’re not alone.”

  Carrie felt her eyes narrow to slits. She wanted to tell Jackie to fuck off. A silent rage brewed within her, one she had not previously known, but nonetheless now tainted interactions with the world beyond the forest. She did well to keep it hidden on other occasions, and operated with the same poise in her reply. “I know I’m not alone, Jackie.” Then, bubbling up from the pool within, she added, “I’d like to be. At least, right now.”

  Jackie shook her head. “Not today.”

  “What do you mean not today?”

  “I’ve come to join you.”

  Jackie straightened her back in a show of her obstinance. Carrie knew she wasn’t going to leave. She rolled up her window and exited the car. She leaned against it, stuffing her hands into her pockets where she could drive her fingernails into the flesh of her palms without exposing it. “I’m alright, Jackie.”

  Before she had finished, Jackie replied, “No, Carrie, you’re not alright. You’re not alright at all. These daily trips are destroying you, even if you can’t see it.”

  Carrie stared into her eyes. “Have you followed me?”

  Jackie remained in self-righteous silence.

  “I don’t appreciate being tracked.”

  “I’m not tracking you.” Jackie put her arms to her sides and lifted her chin a nearly imperceptible degree, but highlighted to Carrie’s eye. “You’re going to show me this man you see.”

  Carrie felt a pain within her belly. It was hot, and crawled north. She felt it clawing its way through the turns of her guts. She clenched her jaw and swallowed what little spit she had in her mouth. She shrank beneath Jackie’s eyes, her friend’s body enlarged by a masculine figure from her memory transposed over Jackie. It came accompanied by a foul taste in her mouth, sweat on her brow, the slimy texture of his adult hand wrapped around her small, child one.

  Carrie shut her eyes. She took a breath while Jackie spoke. “I’m not going to leave you, Carrie. If you’re going into this forest, I’m going to follow you.”

  She focused on Jackie’s voice, using it to reconstruct the woman standing before her. She was a friend. This was true. She meant well, and Carrie recognized that in the darkness behind her eyelids. When she reopened them, the spell had passed, restoring Jackie to her eye. The woman was pleased with herself, the way she forced her so-called help on others. In a way, it was sweet, Carrie believed, for Jackie to be naive in assuming she could actually do good. Like a child telling a parent not to cry, inept in understanding the complexities of emotions beyond their simple conception of feeling, yet determined to dispel upset, even if for selfish reasons, to feel at ease in the presence of their mother.

  Or it was like watching a dog fetch a stick. She could throw a bone. Jackie would fetch, and this tired charade would be put to rest for a while afterward.

  “Okay, Jackie,” Carrie said.

  Jackie sighed with relief. “Good. I just want to help you, Carrie.”

  Carrie nodded while she walked towards the trail’s entrance. “I know.”

  She listened to Jackie’s footsteps change from padding concrete to wood chips, holding at a three pace distance. It was a good length of time before Jackie hastened her steps to arrive at Carrie’s side, observing the forest as something sinister like a character in a fairy tale, neck craned to watch the branches. Carrie imagined what wisdom would be written into the end of her own fairy tale. She didn’t suppose there was a moral here. She didn’t suppose there were likely morals at all. The forest was showing her that. She was grateful.

  She led Jackie into the forest, all the while remaining on the designated path. She made sure to conduct herself as though this was her daily routine, averting her gaze away from the break in the ferns where she would t
urn on any other day. Instead, she proceeded down the wide trail coated with wood chips. She was selling it. Whenever Jackie turned her head to observe her, she found nothing to suspect in Carrie’s blank expression. For all her nosey prodding, Jackie had failed to ascertain her friend’s penchant for facade. It was something Carrie had fostered long before Benny’s disappearance, something she grew up with. Putting on faces for those around her. She knew which one to wear for Jackie now, and though she was tired and disinterested in performing, she gave Jackie the show she came for.

  She took Jackie for a lengthy walk, perhaps out of spite. The northwestern trail was several miles and wrapped around in a loop, circling away from where she intended to go. Her legs had no problem with the distance, these days they became preemptively numb before she stepped out of her car. In her periphery, she watched Jackie begin sweating, then breathing through her mouth. She suppressed a grin.

  When they reached a point in the trail where the path opened up into a grassy clearing, Carrie paused and planted her fists against her hips. She gave it a good long beat before twisting in place. Jackie’s red face passed by her vision as it swung along the edge of the clearing. They were alone. Carrie expected it. She played otherwise.

  Between pants, Jackie asked, “Is this where you meet him?”

  Carrie scrunched her expression into confusion at his absence, her eyes continuously scanning the edges of the clearing as though he should leap forth from the trees. She sighed before responding, “Yes.”

  Jackie turned her own head around in a circle. “Where is he?”