In These Woods

TW: slightly graphic gore, mentions of guns

 

        It was a hot summer, Jace’s striped t-shirt stained with sweat and dirt from tumbling and roughhousing all through the bright afternoons. The scalding Georgia sun left plenty of the kids that gathered each afternoon burnt and peeling from lounging in the sun too long, their heads  moppy and in need of a trim. Knees scraped, faces dirty, the whole 9 yards.

 

        There was a drought that year, crops dried up, animals fell over from heat and exhaustion. Farmers and parents fretted about how to keep all that was living under their roofs alive, and while the animals were happy to stay put in barns and sheds, the kids seemed intent on running themselves dry with games in the dirt lot behind the general store.

 

        The dirt lot sat just in front of the woods. They were off limits, both by adult rules and kid superstitions. The parents said there were hogs, snakes, possums. The kids said there were monsters.

 

        No one knew who saw them first, but they were zombies sometimes, corpses walking around and feasting on the kids who dared enter. Sometimes they were jackalopes that would eat your flesh starting from the feet. Sometimes they were just bears which are close enough to monsters on their own.

 

        On one particular day behind the store, Jace and many of the other younger boys had been playing games, running back and forth and chasing each other just up to the edge of the wood. But as Benny entered the yard, everyone froze. He had a gun.

 

        Benny was tall and a couple years older than most of the kids, and unlike most of them, his hair was cropped short and neat. The light brown strands bobbed gently as he ran over to the lot, holding the gun by its barrel and shouting for everyone to come see. His freckles shone from the sweat on his face as if he’d run all the way from his family's farmhouse a mile or so down the road from the town.

 

        “Look what pop let me borrow! He says I get to keep it so long as I get the monster lives in the woods back here,” He spoke quickly, catching his breath in between syllables. “Three days to do it he says, but I reckon with some of y’all we can get it in jus’ an evening.”

 

        “Ma says there’s hogs, Benny. What if we find somethin’ dangerous in those woods?” One of the smaller boys spoke up from the crowd and immediately some of the boys close to him started ragging on him, one punched him a little too hard. 

 

        “That’s what th’ gun’s for!”

 

        “I know where my old man keeps his ax.” One of the other older boys drawled, his eyes gleamed with the idea. Jace felt a little lost. He scanned the other kids nervously looking for signs of dissent from the idea. He was worried about hogs or adders more than monsters, but even skunks were risk enough for him to be worried. He’d had to wash his dog last summer after a bad run in with a skunk and he remembered the awful stench.

 

        “Jace, you’ve got a bat right?”

 

        “What good’s a bat against a monster Benny? Think it plays ball?” The crowd laughed at the notion, but Benny, who’d brought the proposition to light, made like he was swinging a bat.

        “Long as you’ve got a good arm on ya, it’ll help plenty!”

 

        Jace stood uncomfortably. He didn’t really want to go into the woods but the kids were too carried away with the notion and every eye in the field gazed at him with baited breath. He kicked a rock and watched it skitter over the cracked dirt.

 

        “Yea, I’ve got a bat at home.”

 

        “Attaboy Jace, I’ll see you here just past supper along with any of y’all that wanna come. I’ll let ya shoot the gun after we get the thing!”

 

        Jace trembled as he walked home that afternoon; he hated the woods, hated the idea of them. They seemed shrouded in shadow even in the hot midday sun— he could only imagine them past dark. At dinner he ate slowly, making sure to eat every green bean and every bit of mashed potato he could get. He asked for seconds and ignored his mother’s scolding, his brain too full of the thought of the forest, of the animals, and of the other boys. The boys were maybe the scariest part. They were mean often and didn’t seem to much like Jace no matter how much he tried to fit in. Jace loved a lot and sometimes he loved the wrong people. Last year he’d gotten real friendly with one of the other boys of the lot, Tyler. But when a different boy found them alone under the porch of the pub and Jace had caved and blamed Tyler, they’d beaten Tyler so badly that his family searched for every penny they could to move away. Jace never saw him again.

 

        When he started back towards the lot after dinner, he had the bat his old man had gotten for him to try to spark his interest in ball and more refined forms of play than the scuffling and running of the dirt yard. He had his favorite jacket on, it was warm and the night had only started to cool so by the time he made it to the edge of the woods his back was already wet with sweat. He’d hurriedly filled the pockets with a stale biscuit from the morning meal and a few slices of sandwich meat, and as he shoved his hands into his pockets, the lukewarm meat sat uncomfortably against his finger.

 

        “Jace, you made it. We’re about to go in!” Benny held a lantern and his face blazed orange from the candle inside. The assembled boys giggled quietly, several others had lanterns and tools ranging from hatchets to hoes. Benny clutched his fathers gun, and they bravely ventured into the forest.

 

        Jace walked behind most of them, sweating more from nerves than heat at this point, his eyes scanned the pitch black forest in terror. Each huge trunk, each skittering shadow, everything was the wild animal that was going to kill him it seemed. Benny stopped and brought everyone together in a little huddle. Jace’s worries started to fall only on the dangers of the forest, forgetting the viciousness of the boys, not noticing their sneers and snickers.

 

        “We’re going to split up to find this thing, if you find it, give a big holler so we can find ya. Jace, come with me. The rest of you: split yourselves.” Benny’s wink and signal was lost on Jace who was blushing in the dark, his fear overridden by Benny’s hand pulling him away from the group. It faded fast as the hand tightened as they moved further from the group.

        In a moment Benny pushed Jace’s shoulder hard, throwing him onto the ground snapping sticks below him. Jace looked at the boy's handsome face and only saw evil, the lantern light flickered across his sharp features, silhouetting him against the shadows of the trees. Jace tried to crawl back, to turn and run, but Benny slammed the butt of the rifle against Jace’s cheek and he cried out.

 

        “I know what the hell you are,” Benny drawled, the words slithering out of his mouth, its corners curled in a cruel grin. “Run quick enough and maybe they won’t catch ya.”

 

        Jace sat dumbfounded. The freckles he had been admiring earlier on that same day now seemed ablaze with malice.

 

        “Go on, git!” He snarled, pointing the rifle at Jace and then motioning towards the woods behind Jace.

 

        A deer trotted into the tiny clearing with Jace and Benny. Bennys gaze turned to it, and Jace made a desperate rush towards Benny. He reached for the gun's barrel, praying in his mind that he’d make it out of these woods, but Benny was fast and threw a fist at Jace, sending him reeling off balance. Benny took a wild shot then cranked the bolt and took another one, and Jace ran. Rifle reports cracked after him but Jace ran like the wind. He heard Benny hurling insults after him and as he ran he started to feel cold despite his heavy jacket.

 

        He tripped over something warm and went sprawling across the roots and foliage of the dense forest. In the dark he rolled over and looked back to see what he’d fallen over, and saw the stained jacket of one of the boys that had beaten Tyler, the boy still inside. The deer had followed Jace, and it seemed huge as it stepped out of the trees to Jaces left. Its antlers and frame grew clearer every second, the voices and bright lanterns belonging to the boys racing closer.

 

        The buck loomed over Jace, its horns began to creak and morph, creeping like tendrils into the dark. Its eyes seemed to glow a pale, dreadful green. Its mouth opened and no sound came out but Jace knew it was speaking, knew it was smiling. He saw its teeth, its mouth hanging open as the face on its flesh peeled away, its antlers reaching the trees around it.

 

        Jace couldn’t move, frozen in fear and in pain, but as the words grew closer, different words filled his head. And as he watched in awe, the stag raced towards the lantern held by Benny, antlers lowered as it let out an ear splitting screech. 

 

        Jace couldn’t watch— his vision blurred and head filled with words that he was sure weren’t real, he felt frozen on the forest floor both from cold and fear. His arm leaked hot blood and the only thing he could think to do was crawl away as best he could. As he started to find his way through the roots and underbrush, he crawled through the noise in his head started to fade, and as it faded almost entirely a simple phrase emerged from the static:

        “s.some spirits.. hide or hinder but for… you we. fight.”

 

        Jace stumbled through the woods for hours, finding reassurance in every tree trunk he could get hold of. When he heard the horn of a train, he raced to find the tracks, and clambered aboard, curling up on the lip of a hopper car. He fell asleep to a lullaby that seemed to be sung by the tracks and the forest only, and woke in a hospital where the green eyed doctor whose irises seemed to glow under the harsh incandescent reassured him that all would be well.

​