Beyond the Wild Wood

by E. M. Fitch

  “We should see if we can’t get her down,” Cassie said, staring up at Mrs. Evans. She wondered if her husband was anywhere nearby, or her daughter, Anna. Her youngest child might be dead, danced to death in the forest by none other than Jude, but her eldest daughter was home for the summer, and she might be reliable. Cassie stood on tiptoe and peered into the restless crowd. Anna’s dark head bobbed anxiously near the bench her mother was standing on. She wasn’t staring up in rapt attention as so many of the other townsfolk were; she was looking around anxiously, and the pinched expression on her face read two things: how did it all get so wildly out of control? and how do I get her out of here?

  “My daughter was taken! Stolen in the night! And it was them; they did it! They lured her to the woods; they had their way with my baby! They’ll take yours, too,” Mrs. Evans warned through the electronic squeal of the mega horn. A man reached up and swiped at her elbow, grabbing for the horn, but she wrenched herself free, tottering on the bench. A dozen other hands reached up as well, steadying her. She continued as though there had been no interruption.

  Gibbons followed at Cassie’s heel as she elbowed her way through the people. Unseen by either, Laney worked the edges of the crowd, whispering in unsuspecting ears. Some drifted to their cars, but a mist began to lace around their feet. Cassie looked down in terror as she felt the cool air swirl past her ankles.

  “Do you have a mask?” she asked, panicking as the mist licked at her calves. She pulled the blackened cloth that hung around her neck over her own mouth and nose, knowing how disgusting it was to be breathing this in, but not caring. Anything was better than losing her mind in the mist.

  “More engines are coming, but it’ll do no good! They’ll bewitch them as easily as this!” Mrs. Evans snapped her fingers, but no sound could be heard over the squeal of the bullhorn and the restless murmurs of the people. A slow siren could be heard over the hills, neighboring towns coming to the rescue.

  Officer Gibbons rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a handkerchief, swiping a bottle of water from a nearby baby carriage and soaking the cloth. He tied it around his face, looking down in confusion at the mist swirling through the sea of legs. Cassie only hoped it would keep the mist at bay as her medical mask seemed to be able to do. They moved forward together, reaching for Mrs. Evans. A wall of women turned suddenly, eyes staring blankly ahead, and stepped in front of the bench. Anna, her eyes still clear, stood behind them, looking in confusion to the people now wordlessly protecting her mother. Mrs. Evans droned on, unseeing or uncaring that half of her listeners had lost the ability to listen.

  “They want to silence us,” she hissed into her horn. “They want us to shut up and go away, but we will not be quiet! We want answers! We will march into the forest and demand them!”

  “Mrs. Evans, no!” Cassie shouted, finally unable to stand it. If she marched these people into the woods, every last one of them would die. “It’s suicide! You can’t! Send them home!” Cassie lunged forward but was held back; hands surrounded her, tried to wrap around her middle. She was pulled by a sea of arms—soundless human machines that knew only one command: silence her.

  Fingers prodded her mouth through the mask, trying to pull it free. Cassie wrenched her head back and forth, crying out, trying to free herself. One of the arms that held her belonged to Kate, the woman who served pizza in the local restaurant. The fingers that pulled at her mask—and for a moment succeeded; Cassie could taste the cloying, sweet scent of the mist as it briefly clogged her throat—belonged to Mrs. DeRobertus, another mother who lost a child to the Fae. Officer Gibbons’s grasp was the strongest, however; he shouldered the woman gripping Cassie back, and then yanked her to his side. She adjusted the mask first, and then looked up to him for ideas. The women who had held her stood straight in a line once more, eyes unblinking, and no longer reaching for Cassie. There was no threat now.

  “What the hell?” Anna shouted, pulling on her mother’s skirt. “Mom, they’re insane. Stop this—”

  Before she could finish, the line of women turned. Red Rover, Red Rover, send Anna over, Cassie thought dully. The girl was hoisted over the line of women, pushed through even as her hands tore at her captors. Her mother continued as though her only remaining daughter wasn’t being manhandled by her supporters. Behind them, the crowd was closing in, pushing and straining toward the woman with the bullhorn shouting encouragement. Gibbons fingered his gun holster but didn’t pull the weapon out. These people were his neighbors. Cassie recognized her history teacher, Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan and their two young boys, her recreation soccer coach running from his car to join the crowd. Just beyond him, Cassie saw the secretary from her high school, Jane Keller, a woman she had known on a first-name basis for years now.

  Cars stopped all along the road now, some parking, others idling. Laney couldn’t keep up with the influx of people, not with the mist rolling along their ankles as well. Even Cassie was beginning to taste the sugary air that seeped behind her mask. She felt light-headed and gripped Gibbons’s arm.

  “What the hell?” Anna asked, though her voice was weaker than before, and Cassie saw her fading behind her eyes.

  “Hold your breath, Anna,” Cassie shouted. She grabbed the older girl’s hand and pulled, ducking under the elbows and dipping dangerously close to the rolling mist. Still, she found a pathway between hips and thighs, relieved to hear the shouts and curses behind her that meant Gibbons was following.

  When they had cleared the crowds, Cassie turned to look at Anna. The mist wasn’t as thick here. Cassie kept going until they were up the hill behind the Town Green, just at the end of an ancient, well-maintained Revolutionary War-era cemetery with mini flags poking from holders set in front of each headstone. Cassie gripped the iron, spiked fence that separated her from the cemetery, visualizing for one wild second that she could rip one of the spikes from the ground, wishing she still had her golf club.

  Up here, the air was clearer, but the chaos below was worse. Laney ran from person to person, but for every human she got to stagger toward their car, another ten took their place. She looked up to Cassie, hopeless, before jogging toward them.

  “They won’t listen, not all of them; I’m no match for that mist,” Laney huffed as she marched up the hill toward her friend.

  “We need backup,” Gibbons murmured.

  “Backup that won’t get sucked into the mist?” Cassie asked, frantic. “Could you radio them to wear masks?”

  “They’d think I was crazy,” he responded, shaking his head. “Maybe I could call in a biohaz situation … ”

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” Anna said blankly, staring at Laney. She nodded without hesitation, staring at Anna.

  “I know, but I’m not.”

  “My sister—”

  “Is,” Laney said abruptly. “I’m so sorry.”

  Anna seemed to consider this for a moment; a well of grief and fury fought for dominance over her features. Cassie knew the feeling, and she knew that there wasn’t time to feel it fully. Anna would have to decide, as the rest of them had time and time again, just what was important in the now.

  Logic won; over the explosion of feelings battling inside her, reason overtook them all.

  “My mother wants the people out of here; maybe that’s better?” she said, seeming to chew the words as they exited her mouth. “At least they’d be out of the road … ”

  “Not better, no,” Cassie argued. “The woods—she’s right in a way; there are creatures out there.”

  “Monsters,” Laney corrected quietly.

  “And they want them there,” Gibbons finished. “We need to get the people out of town. Or to their homes, at the very least.”

  “Well, let’s start with getting them out of the street,” Anna said. “I need a mask.”

  Cassie tore the bottom off the tunic she stole from her mother’s closet, looking around for a source of water. Laney was one step ahead of her, pulling a h
alf-empty bottle of water from the brush on the other side of the graveyard, probably discarded through some sloppy person’s car window as they sped along the road after dark. Together, they wet the cloth and turned to Anna to tie it against her mouth. She shivered as they did, whether from the gross thought of the half-drunk water bottle, or the coldness of the cloth itself, or the proximity to Laney—the girl who should be dead—none of them were sure.

  “Keep to the edges, spread out,” Gibbons instructed. “I’m calling this in; I’ll tell them to use masks. They’ll think I’m crazy. So be it.”

  Gibbons reached for the mic secured to his shoulder. Laney stepped toward the crowd, followed closely by Anna. Cassie let go of the iron fence, wishing she could catch a glimpse of Ryan or Samantha, and still badly wishing for a piece of iron she could hold onto, when a semi-trailer truck rounded the curve at the top of the hill behind them.

  It was going too fast—even a panicked civilian like Cassie could see that. They turned as one, and Laney shouted, “No!” as loud as she could, shattering the agitated murmur of the restless crowd. Gibbons jerked forward while Anna fell back, knocking into Cassie’s legs and sending her tumbling back onto the iron fence. One of the spikes scratched its way up Cassie’s forearm, digging a trench in her arm and drawing a trickle of blood.

  The people in the street didn’t move. Just like the firefighters who watched an explosion while water trickled uselessly from their hoses, these stood in rapt attention, their eyes on the forest or on the woman who was shouting for them to march there. The truck’s horn blared, silencing everyone. Everything moved in slow motion. Cassie stood, her eyes on the white truck that barreled down Main Street. The streetlight above swayed innocently. A baby carriage went rolling into the street, aiming for the other side. Cassie even had time to read the side of the truck—Aunt Leona’s Maple Syrup, the best New England has to offer!—before the screech of failing brakes overtook the blare of the horns. The air was filled with the scent of burning rubber. Cassie could taste it even from beyond her mask. The truck twisted, the driver trying to avoid the baby carriage. It twisted too far, and it was a useless attempt anyway.

  The baby carriage clipped the front bumper and went flying in a wobbly arc over the grille.

  The truck teetered on its left wheels, hovering in midair like a Vegas magician’s final trick, and then came crashing down on its side, streaking down the road past the green, the contents of the truck smashing on the pavement as it went, leaving brown trails of glossy maple syrup littered with glass.

  “Motor vehicle accident on Main Street at the intersection of Main and 118,” Gibbons said in a rasp to the mic on his shoulder. “Semi versus baby … ” he stuttered over the word “ … baby carriage. Masks—you need masks. Consider it biohaz, boys. Gibbons out.”

  Laney stood in shocked disbelief in front of the tiny group of humans not yet affected by the mist. It seemed unreal, impossible, that things had become so out of hand so quickly. It needed to end, all of it.

  “We need to get the … the people … ” Words failed from Cassie’s mouth. Laney turned and watched in concern as her best friend drew a trembling hand over her mouth. Blood dripped slowly from her elbow, and Laney moved forward, careful of the iron fence, and pulled more fabric from Cassie’s tunic to bandage her forearm. Laney’s fingertips tingled when she touched Cassie’s arm; the fence was indeed iron, and bits of it were now embedded in Cassie’s skin. Small bits, but still, Laney could feel them as she pulled the makeshift bandage tight.

  “I’m going to check that baby carriage,” Anna said in a shaky voice. Cassie looked like she wanted to protest, but the older girl already had her hands up. “Someone has to. You stay with him,” she gestured to Gibbons, “and see if you can’t back these people off the road.”

  Already people were milling through the trails of syrup. They shuffled, some in disbelief and shock, but more in that horrible way of the mist, eyes blank and unseeing. Sirens sounded from up the road; smoke smudged the sky from the still-burning library; citizens shambled about like zombies in a black-and-white film, unknowing and unseeing. Static burst from Gibbons’s shoulder, the mic loud in the bizarre silence that descended amid the chaos.

  “Report coming in of a … a mountain lion in the hospital—”

  “Come back, at the hospital?” a voice interrupted with a static squeal.

  “No, sir, in the hospital. Second floor. And a couple of deer are busting up the ER—”

  “The whole world’s gone mad,” Gibbons murmured.

  “My mom is there,” Cassie mumbled through numb lips. Anna cast a sympathetic glance, and then took off toward the wreckage, in the opposite direction of her own mother. Gibbons ran to the crowd, waving them back down the street. There was an old, unused tennis court a quarter of a mile down the road; they could push the people that way, maybe corral them like cattle in a western movie. Laney spoke this suggestion quickly to Cassie, hoping her friend was with it enough to understand. To her credit, she nodded along easily.

  “I have to go,” Laney said quickly. Cassie whipped around, looking stricken.

  “You can’t!” she cried out, reaching forward and clutching Laney’s shirt. Laney brought her hands over Cassie’s gently, leaning forward to rest her forehead against her best friend’s.“To the hospital, Cass,” Laney whispered, smiling soothingly. “I’m going to the hospital. I’ll be back.”

  She turned and ran in the way of the faeries. She didn’t need a car to get her there; she was spirited away through the trees, sailing among their branches like a shadow flung by the sun.

  The hospital wasn’t far from the center of the town. It was a small town, so, in truth, nothing was far from anything. Laney was there before even the police that had been notified over their radios. She slipped into the ER unseen; the chaos was so absolute, she didn’t even need to use her magic.

  Patients streamed out into the sunshine, their gowns flapping open behind them, some trailing IV tubes. Nurses accompanied them, trying to frantically usher people to the main entrance, always watching the woods for what may be coming next. Laney slipped past the crowd unnoticed.

  The inside of the ER was almost empty. In the wide circle of rooms, curtains separating the patient areas from the nursing station fluttered—though whether it was from patient activity beyond, Laney wondered if anyone could tell. There was a small group of nurses huddled behind the high counter of the circular nursing station. Laney thought she saw a flash of hospital johnny as well, meaning at least one patient was hiding there. There was a steady beep-beep-beep of some kind of life-saving machinery. The noise came from Laney’s right, somewhere behind a drifting curtain. The room breathed as though a giant hid there, and for all Laney knew, maybe one did. At the moment, she had no time to care. There were deer in the ER. Just as the man on the radio had said, they were there. And they were unhappy.

  Laney could hear the whispered laughter of her new family drift in on the breeze. Their laughter carried over the terrified shrieks of the running hospital staff and stumbling patients. Laney would deal with those Fae later. Oh, yes, I will, she thought ruthlessly. But for now, there were the deer, and somewhere above—she could hear the soft padding of its heavy paws—a mountain lion.

  The deer were males. The larger had a rack of fourteen points, a massive creation that rose from his skull, a battering ram when he lowered his head. The smaller of the males was still extremely large, his shoulder well past the crash cart that had been shoved up against a wall to the side of the ER. The hospital smell—a mix of bleach and blood and lingering death—mingled with the musty odor of the deer as they huffed breaths into the forced clean air.

  The larger buck lowered his head and charged, smashing into the smaller, who caught the blow with his antlers, grunting and huffing as he pushed forward. Their hooves slipped on the polished linoleum, carving deep scratch marks as both animals slid forward, crashing into the far wall.

  Heads poppe
d up from the nursing station, one definitely a patient. She was an elderly lady who seemed confused. She caught sight of Laney and smiled brightly, waving her hand. Laney awkwardly waved back as she stepped further into the ER.

  “Oh, look, dear,” the elderly woman exclaimed, pulling on the arm of the nearest nurse, “a faery!”

  “Yes, Doris, yes,” the nurse answered, not looking at Laney. She patted the old woman’s arm before whispering to the older nurses, “We need to get her out of here. Hell, we need to get out of here!”

  “She can barely walk, let alone run. Maybe we can lift her?” another woman whispered, looking doubtfully at Doris.

  The deer recovered from their failed charge, the larger falling to one knee before he disengaged his antlers and backed up, knocking into the side of the nursing station and eliciting screams from the nurses and a squeal of delight from Doris. A rack of papers fell back, cascading documents over the huddled group. The deer rammed again, and again hooves slipped over the floor and antlers rattled as they connected. The larger deer twisted, the antlers caught and then slipped, and each fought for dominance in the once-sterile environment of the hospital ER.

  Laney stepped into the middle of the melee. The animals outweighed her easily and could trample her without blinking. Any catch of an antler against her skin would rip or bruise or damage, and yet Laney stood in the middle of it all and outstretched a placatory hand. The snorting beasts disengaged, and they turned as one to look at her. The largest bowed his head, pointing his deadly antlers at her chest.

  Laney had known, known since Corey’s death, what she was about to whisper to the beasts. She had fought the knowledge, buried it, tried to ignore the truth, but it had lingered like a cancerous growth—there was no ignoring it; it would grow into significance no matter what. There was no cutting this knowledge out, no killing it. It was bigger than her, bigger than the deer, bigger than all the beasts of the forest. And with regret—but with the firmest of confidence—Laney whispered those words to the stags.