Angel of the Wood.

[J.L Hunter]

Through dead leaves of autumn, those hands reaching up for me. Pale and grotesque, like the hands of a corpse, but they most definitely were alive then. They almost got me, almost grabbed my legs and pulled me into the ground where the leaves only covered about a foot above the dirt where underneath the bodies were buried. I couldn’t see them, wandering in the woods by myself. I knew I shouldn’t have gone out alone, Sherry warned me about it before I went away. I told her that it would be okay, that those kids were probably dead because they weren’t looking where they were going and they fell into a ditch and into the stream below.

I was afraid of course, but more so I was determined to prove Sherry wrong, that I could go out alone and find my way out of the woods before dark. After dark there would be no escape, the way the shadows devoured the paths, all of which would lead out to the neighborhood. The darkness would play tricks with my eyes, making things move that weren’t supposed to move and making everything almost identical in the maddening sameness of the woods.

Being twelve years old, there weren’t too many people that believed I could go out on my own and be okay. Those boys, those boys were only eight and seven, nowhere near old enough to be wandering the woods, especially these woods where some people would hear weird noises that some thought were wildcats and some thought were wolves but none could describe entirely. That was before the disappearance of the two boys, after that no one went out into the woods, not even the adults. The cops went in to try and find the bodies, coming out with only vague conclusions, “They were probably washed up in the stream and would be down river by now” or “The boys are still missing but maybe in deeper than we thought.”

That day was a Saturday. There was no school of course, but I woke up around six, just after the sun had risen. I put on a pair of Capri’s and a clean blouse from the dresser. Not bothering to put socks and shoes on I just slipped on my flip-flops and went straight outside. Mac was still asleep in his bedroom at the far end of the trailer. Mac was my father, although only biologically and the fact that I lived in the same house as him and had to obey whatever rules he had laid out for me. Other than that the man was of no relationship to me, I hated him, the way he drank too much every night and sometimes grabbing a beer out of the fridge in the morning when he got up at around eleven.

I let the screen door slam shut behind me. I left the door open because I had not planned on going too far, otherwise I would have closed it, the neighborhood being quiet but there were still some people that would go in and root through my stuff at any sign of vacancy.

The morning was damp, I wondered if it had been raining that night and thought not because I would have heard most of it on the roof. I was a light sleeper, had to be sometimes with the life I had led before. I walked out off of the concrete patio and onto the grass where I could feel the coolness of the dew that had accumulated on the blades.

Sherry was my best friend. I had met her about six months before when Mac and I had moved into the trailer from the other side of town. It was like she and I had clicked almost automatically, the way most lifelong friends seem to do. She was red haired and had braces that made her talk funny. Most of the kids in middle school made fun of her, mostly seventh and eighth graders, but sometimes the other sixth graders would laugh and talk in hushed tones across the walkway between classes. She was a year younger than me, mainly because I had started school late because my birthday fell on September ninth.

Her house was about two blocks down. I looked back at the door that I had left open and heard some unusual movement behind the screen in the living room and decided to leave before he saw me outside. If Mac was awake it would be okay for me to leave the door open, everyone knew of him to be quite unstable and more prone to acts of homicidal nature toward intruders. I was just a little girl, although I knew where all the guns in the house were, had practiced loading and cocking them, making sure the safety was always in the on position. What people didn’t know was that I was not afraid to use them either.

On my way to Sherry’s house I noticed the street beside the houses was unusually quiet, the highway not as busy as it usually was. I kept on though, waving the ominous feeling of the morning away because it was nothing, I had just woken up anyways. My frame of mind then, before I walked into the woods and lost my life, everything changed but I never thought twice about it. There was really nothing that I liked about my old world anyways, this one much nicer, cold, but at least now I have meaning, purpose of fulfilling something.

Sherry was sitting on the porch steps of her house, her arms folded between her legs, her head down almost as if in prayer.

“Hey Sherry.”

She looked up and smiled, brushing away her tangled mess of red hair away from her eyes, “Oh hey Elizabeth, didn’t see you there.”

I sat down next to her. The scenery before us was serene, silent and gravely wonderful. We had talked before about what we would do if everyone on earth just disappeared one day, Sherry just brushing the thought away with a few words that she didn’t want to live in a world without other people.

This time we were quiet. There was something wrong, I could feel it as if there was something connecting our minds, like we were covered in a blanket of emotion.

“Is everything okay?”

Sherry looked the other way, not saying anything. I cocked my head to try and make eye contact with her. “Come on. You know you can tell me, I don’t have any other friends so I’m definitely not going to tell anyone else.”

This was more true than I would like to admit, she had been the first true friend I had ever had. I could tell she was shivering, but it wasn’t cold, she was shivering out of fear.

Finally she said, “I heard things last night, from in the woods. And I had a nightmare about those boys that died.”

“You don’t know that they died, they could still be out there, it’s only been a couple days.”

Sherry shook her head, “No, they are, I know they are.”

I looked straight. Past the road was a part of the woods, a thin part that you could walk across not even thirty feet and get to the highway. The deepest part was on the other side of the street, where it dead ended with road signs and no trespassing signs people had put up to try and keep kids from wandering inside.

“Okay,” I said, “you want me to prove it?”

“No.” She said immediately.

I got up and turned around to face her, “I’m not afraid.”

“I know your not afraid Elizabeth. I just, don’t want you to go in there.”

There was a pivotal difference between the two of us, and it was probably because of how we had grown up. She still had both of her parents and her father didn’t continuously try and beat her while he was drunk almost every night. I liked her father, he was nice, worked at home and was up in his office most of the time, but when he was out and playing with Sherry he was like the stereotypical father figure that I had never had the chance of experiencing. I was mainly pessimistic, and she was an optimist to the point that it was almost annoying. She was the good girl, and I was the bad girl, the girl that if you cut my hair and put on a pair of boy jeans and a T-shirt you wouldn’t be able to tell that I was actually a girl and not a very skinny boy.

“Are your parents still asleep?” I asked her then.

She shook her head, “ My dad is upstairs, working, my mom is in the bedroom going through some old clothes.”

“I wonder if your going to get some more of your sister’s clothes.”

Sherry gave me a disgusted look. She had been getting her older sister’s clothes for almost two years now and she was sick of it, she really wanted some new clothes to wear to school. Her sister was now In college and way too big for the things their mother had for some reason kept for all those years. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t have money, like me, it was some sort of strange ritual for her mother. I was sure if they had another girl then she would get Sherry’s old clothes that had been passed down after generations of wear, only discarding them if they tore or got to the point where no one would be able to wear them.

*
Darkness, all encompassing darkness surrounding me. Everywhere there are sounds, crazy sounds that shouldn’t be here. As I run, my mind is filled with the image of the arms that had reached up and grabbed at my legs.

Moonlight dances from leaf to leaf, glimmering like ephemeral flashlights above me. The path is gone, I had lost it back at the clearing where the standing sticks had been. Now there are only trees and the dark void that I continuously push my way through. Knowingly there are two ways I can be going, further into the woods, which stretched for miles into the country, and in the other direction is the neighborhood and the river below the cliff.

There is the sound of my steady heartbeat, thrumming inside my chest like the beating of tribal drums.

Panic overcomes me and now I have lost all sense of direction, up and down become something only my quickly moving legs can tell, the night sky and the black wall in front of me become one thing. Something rustles in the bushes behind me, in the trees above me. Things are watching, I know they are, I can feel their piercing gaze, their hunger growling from amidst the leaves below.

I am lost. I feel each laborious breath stealing from my lungs, making it harder to breathe every second. My sides hurt, I feel my stomach retching and some acidic liquid spills out from my mouth, but I don’t stop, I don’t even slow down because if I do I know that I will die here.

I don’t want to die here. No. No.

A sudden fierce growl from behind me, a high pitched scream somewhere in the darkness ahead.

*

We had gotten up from the porch steps and began to walk along the side of the road that encircled the entire neighborhood, which consisted of about four or five blocks long and six blocks wide. Sherry had plucked a pale white rock the size of her hand and chucked it across the street, it disappeared behind the brush and into the woods beyond.

“I bet there are demons in those woods.”

I had said this. Sherry looked up, her face the expression of complete perplexity, “What’s a demon?”

We had continued walking, but our pace slowed a bit when we had gone about half-way from where we had started in front of Sherry’s house.

“In church the preacher said it is a fallen angel. They work for the devil, but I think they are more like mischievous spirits that run around killing people for fun.” I said.

Sherry smiled, “Since when do you go to church?”

I looked at her and smiled back, “A long time ago, back when mom was with us, but that’s beside the point, Sherry.”

“What’s the point?”

“I don’t believe what the preacher said, I think most of it is a bunch of crap. I was just saying those sounds you heard were probably demons.”

Neither of us said anything for a while. Sherry was trembling again, the night before had definitely terrified her and I was immediately sorry for pressing it. I put my arm around her neck and we walked side by side like that for a while.

“It’s okay, if they are in there, they don’t seem to like to go out during the daylight, so as long as we don’t go running around at night we should be okay.” I said.

We had come to the train tracks that cut through a portion of the woods. There hadn’t been a train in months. Sherry and I would sit on them and take out the iron stakes, I had heard they were worth money if you went somewhere and traded them in, there was a box we put them in near the shed that looked to be some sort of old railway station.

I sat down on the metal track, my feet resting on the white gravel. Sherry was busying herself with trying to pry one of the stakes up, but it seemed to be stuck. She gave up after about five strenuous tugs, stood up straight and wiped the sweat from her forehead, her pale face gleaming in the mid morning sun.

“Promise me something Elizabeth.”

I already knew what she wanted me to promise her, and readied myself for the lie, “What’s that Sherry?”

“Please don’t go into the woods. You’re right, there is something bad in there.” Sherry was gazing into the thick blanket of green, beyond which the tall oaks and pines constituted of the fated wood. Her eyes meant something, the sincerity in them. There was fear as well. Fear so tangible I could almost see it coming off of her like fumes from something soaked in gasoline.

It took me a minute to answer her. I did not want to lie to her, but I felt the necessity of going into the woods, to try and find those two boys growing inside me. It was a stupid thing to do, to even think of doing, because even then I knew deep down that there actually was something in there. Something very bad.

“Don’t worry Sherry, I won’t.” The words came easily enough, and I tried to hide the deceit from my eyes, which I knew were there. Sherry loosened a bit, her face visibly softening. She smiled a big ear to ear smile that was goofy, but that was Sherry. I smiled back, a half smile that I had come to know as mine, one that was just as mischievous as it was trustworthy, which was an odd combination, but that was me.

She sat down next to me and we threw the white rocks that surrounded the train tracks, hitting the side of the wooden shed. Sherry chucked one up high and it pinged on the tin roof. I playfully nudged her in the shoulder, saying wordlessly ‘good shot’.

I really didn’t want to disappoint her. But I told myself to free my worrying mind, that I would be back before dark, that she would never know that I had went. We had both gone home. I went into my bedroom, not saying anything to Mac, who was lounging in the recliner, sipping a can of natural light and watching some show that I could care less about. The door shut behind me and I pushed a box full of books up against it just in case he decided to barge in unannounced.

My back-pack was hanging on the bed post. I grabbed it and zipped it open, removed the folders and a book that was in there. I opened the closet and took a change of clothes, a shirt and pants and shoved them in the pack. I would need something to eat so I left the room and went into the kitchen, being as quiet as I could grabbed a pack of granola bars from the cabinet above the sink and dropped them into the bag as well.

“What are you doing?” Mac said, still staring at the television screen.

“Nothing, just getting something to eat.”

After that I went into the bathroom, opened up the mirror and added the first aid kit that had been sitting there, unused forever to my collection of things I thought I might need for the trip. I played with the idea of not returning. Of getting everything I could into the bag and maybe using the big suitcase and leaving for good. Then I thought of Sherry, and how I could not let her down and the idea washed away as quickly as it had appeared.

I slipped off my flip flops and put on the socks and shoes that I had neglected before. Mac didn’t pay attention to the fact that I was leaving, of which I was glad, I didn’t need anything else to dissuade me into doing the thing I knew I shouldn’t have done in the first place.

It was twelve, the sun was high in the mid-point of the sky. I had six hours before dark, well enough time to go in, do a little searching and get out. Taking the detour around my house so as to not be seen by Sherry or anyone else, I thought to myself what could be out there in those woods. I thought if the boys were dead, that would mean there actually was something terrible lurking amidst the brush and acres of trees that stretched for miles and miles beyond.

Having been in the woods before I knew exactly the way in. I slipped under the futile barricade the police had made where the road dead ended and walked straight in. As soon as I stepped my first step onto the straw floor of fallen pine needles soft enough to make a bed out of and sleep through the night, I could feel the calm and stillness of everything around me. The wind soughed through the trees, making it sound like they were moaning softly. Things were so much larger than me, even the ground I walked on seemed to roll upward, defeating me in a way that I almost turned around the way I had come. I stopped, looked back and I could no longer see the bright orange barricade or the road next to it. There would be no way I could return now, so I pressed on.

About an hour of walking, the trees passing by with monotonous regularity, I began to feel the sense of chaos that the woods consisted of. Everything seemed to overlap reality with wonder, every branch that jutted out from the trees, the leaves that covered them like a swollen green blanket. Even the ground, entangled with roots bursting out of the carpet of leaves like motionless wooden waves, with bushes and the fallen trees that had been hollowed out by the steady act of decay.

If I hadn’t been over encompassed with fear I would have lingered in a spot longer, but along with the natural majesty, there was also something behind it, creeping from tree to tree, watching me from the clustered canopy of leaves overhead. Before I set out I had already thought out what I would do, what I would look for, a shoe perhaps, a torn piece of clothing I could identify with. For a while there was nothing, at least not the suspicious things that I would have expected. There were however fresh markings on a few of the trees, like something had come by and stripped off the bark to reveal its yellow insides. I walked over to one, slowly leaning in to get a closer look. Beads of fresh syrup still rolled down the stripped part of the wood, meaning whatever had done this was not far away. I looked around me, that feeling like something glaring at me from behind, as tangible as someone holding a knife to my back and prodding me with it.

I returned to the path, making sure every once in a while that I was still going straight, that the path behind was still there. One of the odd things was that there were no birds, I kept waiting for their abrupt chirping and screeching, trying to see if they would come spilling out of the tops of the trees as I walked under them. But there was nothing, not even a snake sliding along the path in front of me, nor a single squirrel clicking at me from its safe location perched atop a branch.

This was truly strange, but nothing caused real fear, not just the anticipation of it, the actual pit of your stomach kind of fear, until I saw the blood.

*

After I thought It couldn’t get worse, the night seems to grow darker.

I am still looking for the path, searching for the place my feet had kicked the leaves and brush aside as I walked, frantically. Of course there would be nothing, whatever was behind me now had erased any evidence of anything resembling a path, or anything discernable as familiar.

Things groaned below the pit of darkness, beyond in some other fierce world that I cannot understand. A sudden shriek that sounded like laughter erupted over me, followed by a series of clicking noises. Tears spilled down my face, the liquid covering my face and arcing into my mouth, and I can taste the saltiness of it.

Something whipped past me. I can’t tell what it was, nor do I dare look back.

It does it again, this time on the other side. It is toying with me, playing as if it were a child in a game of chase.

I cannot do this. I run, but only because there is nothing else I can do.

*

There was a metallic taste in my mouth as I stopped and stared at the blood that caked the entire side of the large rock. It was like someone had spilled a bucket of red paint on it, half a gallon at least. I realized that my body had been paralyzed, actually paralyzed there for a moment. I never thought that could actually happen to someone, I thought it was just something you read in books or watched on T.V when the characters find something so horrific they don’t move and you have to scream at them for not doing anything about it.

But I found myself literally unable to move any muscle in my body, and it wasn’t until I was able to regain control of my motor functions that I realized that it had happened, time had seemed to speed up rapidly to feel like not even half a second. Careful not to get too close to the boulder, I shimmied around it, also not wanting to turn my back to it, as if the rock was not a rock at all but some hunched over animal that was just waiting to strike at me.

What I didn’t see before, or what my mind didn’t want me to see, was that the blood not only covered the rock itself, but pooled in a gleaming red puddle all around it. Amidst the liquid red moat were pieces of what looked like strips of skin and chunks of white meat. I turned my head quickly to the side, I could not bear to look any longer. I felt the sickness rising into my throat, the bitter taste of bile on my tongue. I walked away, hugging my back-pack close to my body for comfort. Staring straight ahead, I didn’t see the blood trailing along the grass and leaves to my right.

It is fall now. Early September and the leaves will soon be turning their various colors and leaving their homes of the trees, covering the ground with a rainbow of browns and reds and yellows. A long time ago I used to play in giant mounds in our front yard. That was back when mom was with us, before she died. This was way before dad had become ‘Mac’ and I before I started to think about death as a thing desirable. It is not, not in the way that I had experienced it. Maybe it is for some people, death is a reunion of memories, replaying themselves over and over in your head. For them they can leave, go wherever they wish to go, their soul burning off like smoke from a chunk of wood to join the rest of the universe. Not me though, I had died with the curse of reliving nothing but the horrible last few hours of my life, going nowhere but these woods. I crave the taste of blood. That I should not have it is the only real fear that I have, but I am not allowed to go further than the edge of the wood-line. When I saw the blood on that rock, it was like the convergence of who I used to be and who I am now, like the transformation just beginning.

I began to walk faster and faster, until my legs hurt from the strain I was putting on them. I still, even then, was concerned with my mission, perhaps if I wasn’t, if I had turned back when I saw the boulder with the red stain, the freshly spilled blood, then perhaps none of this would have happened at all. But I didn’t, and I was so blinded by the images that kept flashing in my mind, images of dead things, rotting animal carcasses, leaning over a vast ocean of putrid flesh. They were not thoughts of my own, but implanted thoughts of some other kind of thing, something I cannot even now describe, for I am but a pawn in a game played by giants of soul and being.

That was when I came to the clearing, the one with the standing sticks, protruding out of the ground like old grave-markers. I stop, giving my body time to catch up to what my mind knew what was happening. The grass was knee-high, the sticks like trees stripped of their leaves and branches swimming in a sea of green.

Something was different there, like the air was lighter, as if gravity itself had lessened somehow just in this spot. I felt a peace come over me, so I continued through the tall grass. Approaching the stripped trees, I noticed markings on them. Mesmerized I stopped in front of one of them. It towered over me, like a giant wooden obelisk. The markings were names, I realized however I could barely read them at all, the writing like children’s chicken scratch, like the ones I myself had marked into trees with the words Elizabeth was here with a small pocket knife back home.

Billy. Rest in peace Dawn. Gary was good. Jimmy. Shaun. R.I.P Chip. Danny.

All these were inscribed, plus many more, all around like the words of an ancient cave dweller and I had discovered their abstract paintings and hieroglyphs after thousands of years. Although these names didn’t seem to be so long ago, maybe a few years, but the markings were relatively new, the bark had yet to cover them over so you could only see a slight indentation of where the words used to be. Two of them, I noticed, near the bottom of the wooden obelisk, were new, maybe a couple days old. I felt my heart stop beating for a second, a deep thrumming shuddering through my body, a sickly chill traveled up my back and neck making me feel nauseous for a moment.

George. Christian.

These were the names of the two boys who had gone missing. I had known them from school, although they were two grades below me. The little boys were inseparable, always walking alongside each other, eating lunch together, spending their after school time at each other’s houses. A sad horror came across me then, because I realized that those names that covered the thing that looked like a tall grave marker, were the names of children, small and older. Some of the names that were near the ground, covered up by the swaying grass were made by children so young they couldn’t spell their names right. A thought, so horrifying but made sense, came to me that these names and words were written after they had died.

I looked around. All of the trees, the standing wooden markers were also covered with names, straight lines forming the words that were made with any sharp object they could find around. I backed away, blinking off the sweat that continuously dripped into my eyes. It was hot there. I felt like I weighed nothing at all, as though I were something abstract instead of entirely real.

“God, what is going on,” I said aloud to myself. As if the woods around me heard what I said the trees ruffled, the leaves chattering noisily before falling silent, like an enormous chill traveling through the tree-line. I swung my head around me. The path that was directly behind was now gone. I looked back but could see nothing but shrubbery from the way I had come. The daylight was steadily depleting, the sun not visible anywhere in the sky. I had found what I had come for, not that I liked the answer, but sometimes the world is not so full of light.

Thinking that I had just misplaced the path because of the angle I was standing, I was positive that it was directly behind me, I backtracked into the shrubbery, leaving the graves without a second glance back.

I knew I was lost before I had gotten even ten feet into the woods. Nothing struck me as familiar in this place. The ground was covered with leaves instead of dirt, and there was no path to follow. Panic shot through me, my heart now beating uncontrollably. I could not move, I was completely undecided whether I wanted to go back or keep on.

Then I heard the ruffling of leaves behind me. I looked back but there was nothing. It was the wind, I told myself, but as soon as I began walking forward I heard the sound again accompanied with the steady sound of breathing.

This time it did not stop, and neither did I. I picked up my pace, but the sound of leaves followed directly behind me, the breathing kept on. I couldn’t tell if it was the thickening canopy of trees overhead, or that daylight was receding quicker than I had imagined it would, but everything began to grow darker, the shadows taking on a sharp intensity. Twilight and the darkness that would soon accompany it.

It wasn’t long before I was running, running through the leaves, darting in between the cluster of trees and roots and bushes that seemed to be gathering more closely as I pressed onward. There was an odd feeling that I was actually traveling further into the woods, but I didn’t care, now there were sounds that made me unable to breathe coming from around me, in the trees, and the bushes, above the canopy of leaves. I cannot discern what made me do it, maybe it was that I had grown too tired or perhaps I had just wanted to see what was pursuing me so closely, but after a while of running, I stopped.

I looked back and at first I could see nothing but as I looked closer at the ground below my feet, I can see the blood smeared along the leaves. It was the same blood I had seen on the boulder back before I had come to the clearing. The blood that pooled around it. I was sure that it had not been there before, the bright red was something that I could not mistake against the dull browns and faded yellows of the leaves.

A minute was an eternity. Or at least that is the way that it felt then, as the leaves began to move in front of me. First I could see the fingers, curled back as a tortured person in agony would. Then the arms thrust forth, pale and gray. I jumped back, maybe I screamed, I don’t know because the blood pumped through the arteries in my head so fast and loud I could not hear myself do so.

The thing pulled itself up. A skeleton with grayish, almost translucent, skin wrapped around it like a body suit that did not fit. I could almost see the highways of veins running through its arms and neck, just underneath the skin. It breathed hoarsely and groaned like someone under a great amount of pain. My feet moved before my body could catch up and I almost fell to the ground, which I noticed was streaked here and there with blood. I caught myself before I could fall, and I the next thing I know I am running.

It is dark now. Real dark, not the fake representation of it that was kind of mixed with a little bit of color and light. This was the entrée. Things screamed around me, above me, screeching like some otherworldly creatures.

I didn’t realize before, but the hands that had reached up had skimmed my calf, and it was now bleeding in three long streaks down the side of my leg. I ignored the pain that shot through my body, and continued running. There were footsteps through the leaves behind me, more than a set of two, but as many as four or five sets of feet ruffling through the leaves at a more than steady pace. I ran faster, knowing that the things would catch up to me. The world was full of dark and dull colors passing by, of sounds that I cannot even now describe, things that are not in existence now, but I remember them like they are happing now, like I can hear them at this moment.

*

Here I am, in the nowhere of this place. I can see, but it is like looking through a stained glass window. And for some reason I am replaying the events of the past day, the last day of my life. I am standing on the edge of the woods, and I can see Mac and some men in green clothes that I can only vaguely remember as police officers. There are only a few of them, but they are searching for something frantically, although I cannot tell what they are all looking for. I believe I am hidden behind the trees, for they look in my direction, but do not see me.

I am flying. Or that is what it feels like, because I don’t think I have a body anymore. Through the woods I soar like a bird. I see the children, some standing in the clearing, knelt next to the standing sticks that they had made. I soar higher, amidst the canopy of leaves above the dark of the woods. I see myself, it is odd, but it is not me, it is something else inhabiting my old body, because that is not me anymore. I lower myself, and I see the dead body walking, roaming through the trees, whipping its head back and forth, tilting its face crazily to the sky and screaming. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed. I smile, because there is no other emotion that I can show but happiness and laughter. Like I am a glaringly white light, rimmed with black, and that blackness is the world that I am seeing.

*

I stopped. There was no energy left in me to keep going, and as soon as I do so, I feel something hit me from behind, knocking me to the ground. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. Then it was on me.

The last thing I felt was a sharp pain in the back of my head. My body felt like jelly afterwards, and I could feel a faint tugging. I can see the trees, the light of the moon intensified in my eyes. There is relief when the pulling and tugging stops and I could feel myself being lifted up. The only way I could describe it was that of smoke rising from a fire.

*


As I am standing here, on the edge of the wood. An angel, not nearly the other thing that has come to adapt the body I had before. There is a collectivity, as I can feel the other’s that have lost their lives, who soar with me, who float with me. I can see Emily, she is walking towards the place where the road ends into the path in the woods where I had traveled in. I try to tell her no, to stop, but she doesn’t hear me. She is crying, tears streaming down her pale white face, making her shine in the receding daylight. The pure bliss, of which I felt would never leave me, turns into an awful blackness I feel I cannot escape. There are things here, crazy things and I can hear the screams coming from deep within the woods.

*

Sherry stepped over the crisscrossing of roots that jut out of the ground like mountains to such a small girl as herself. Some were so big she had to wrap her hands over one and crawl over. The woods were humongous, she had never thought that anything could be so large. However she was not merely fascinated by the grandiosity of the place she was in now, yet she was determined to find Elizabeth, her best friend. She had never had anyone so close to her in her life. Of course her parents always tried their best, keeping money rolling through the house, but in return they left her to become like an empty hole in the house.

The sunlight beamed down in rays through the opening in the leaves above, spilling onto the leaf-strewn ground like spotlights on a stage. She walked through them as if she were walking through a strange portal. Sherry could not stop crying, all night she had been, since from atop the stairs she had heard her parents talk to the police officers about Elizabeth’s disappearing a couple hours ago. The fact that Elizabeth had promised to her that she would not go into the woods alone was beside the point, she had actually figured Elizabeth would do it anyways. That was just something she would do, just to make Sherry feel better. And of course it did, even if somewhere deep in the back of her mind she knew different.

She continued walking, past the trees and bushes, across the winding roots. Night wasn’t far away, she could tell the sunlight was turning a deeper orange. Half an hour she figured, half an hour before night would steal away the possibility of her finding Elizabeth in here. Sherry paid close attention to the path she made, making conscious attempts to ruffle the leaves and dirt in a certain way so that she would be able to find her way back after she had found Elizabeth.

The light diminished quickly. The thirty minutes that Sherry had anticipated the light to run out had gone by like a whisper and night was upon her.

Something moved amidst the trees ahead. Quick, darting from one tree to the other. It was some sort of animal she tried to tell herself. Even that didn’t settle her though, because the things that were out here, the things of her dreams, they were animals of some sort, however awful they were. She continued slowly, stepping carefully, trying to not make too much of a sound, which was nearly impossible because the leaves crunched nevertheless underneath her shoes.

It happened again, this time there seemed to be more than one.

That was when the panic set in. It was now full dark, and she began to hear things howl in the distance.

Those howls turned to screams within seconds, mad shrieks of terror that belonged to nothing of this world that she knew of. Sherry turned around, beyond the sheet of darkness there were the silhouettes of things standing around the trees, their eyes gleaming. There was a smell, an abrupt and distinct smell that made her eyes water and her nose and throat sting from just breathing it in.

The things all stood around her, swaying a bit as if to a nonexistent breeze. She turned back around to where she was facing, and there she was. A feeling of relief so great she felt she could topple over and start bawling again swept over her at the sight of her friend.

Elizabeth walked slowly toward her. But then, there was something wrong. There was something wrong with the way she hung her head, the way she moved her legs as she were sleep walking. Elizabeth’s eyes were vacant, deep pools of darkness in a sea of white. This was not her friend, not at all.

Sherry tried to run, but everywhere around her the children, that is what they were, children, had encircled her completely. There was nothing she could do, her mind was so occupied with confusion and sadness and terror that nothing else was manageable.

A soft breeze then shifted through her, warm and comforting, a sigh that was almost like a voice calling her name. She looked around and no one could be seen except the lifeless bodies closing in on her. The thing was, she no longer felt confused, she no longer felt afraid. She knew that whatever lay beyond this life was something to be cherished, just as this life was supposed to be cherished, but for some it wasn’t, so for those are given another world to reside in forever. What was strange was that her friend was the one who got on her and although Sherry screamed in pain as the thing tore through her, separating her body from her mind and spirit, there was an almost peace about all of it. Soon there was a vacancy about it all, a detachment from all things living that she had known.

She had kept her mind and joined Elizabeth in the weightless place, the place where they floated. Angels of the wood, the ones swallowed up by something that should not exist. They soar among the trees, watching. Waiting for more to join.