The Woods Are Always Watching

by Stephanie Perkins

  The shotgun clinked, clinked, clinked with each step. Shivery and numb and delirious with tedium, she wished her bare arm had a sleeve. The mosquitos chewed her up. Her ligaments stiffened and groaned. A creek trickled a siren song, and her tongue bleated with thirst, but she knew the water wasn’t safe to drink.

  Not long after, she flagellated herself for passing it by.

  She fell again.

  The pain was blinding, starbursts and electric shocks. Immobile, she sagged into the limbs of a waxy-leaved bush. It was too difficult to carry on. Her chances of survival were too slim.

  Except . . . Neena might also be injured and alone.

  Josie’s exhausted eyes peeled open, and her light shone a halo onto the next grouping of bottle caps. One step at a time, the voice reminded her. And she realized that it didn’t matter who it belonged to. It loved her, and it would always be with her.

  She picked herself back up. One blaze at a time, she continued through the woods, her bandaged foot bumping along behind her.

  NEENA

  NEENA REFLEXIVELY AVERTED her gaze before forcing it back to the decomposing man. His body lay supine with one arm bent outward at a warped and unnatural angle. Black flies and maggots teemed across stretched skin, which was marbled in bloated shades of gray and brown. Cloudy eyeballs protruded over a thickened tongue. The tent was ripe with the gassy stink of putrefaction.

  Acid rose in her throat. She purged a mouthful of fluid bile, tasting the fetor of his rotting tissue. He had been deceased for much longer than the young woman.

  We set up camp and slept beside a murdered man last night.

  Her vision went white.

  She blinked it, forced it, back into focus. The light of her headlamp exposed the cramped space. Dried pools of gunky blood. Gristly spatter, sprayed across everything—backpacks, sleeping bags, even the ceiling. The man himself was covered in so much that she couldn’t even tell how he’d been slaughtered. The blood swallowed her beam.

  Two backpacks, two sleeping bags. One body.

  He looked to be about the same age as the woman. Beside an inflatable pillow there was a bra that looked as if it had been discarded before bed. The man had been murdered so that his girlfriend could be abducted. Neena saw the other man—the killer—wrap his sadistic hands around the woman’s neck. With Neena’s narrowed passageways, it felt as if he was choking her, too.

  Overcome with an urgent need for water, she scrounged through a bloodied pack within reach. It was emptier than expected, and the haphazard mess within indicated that it had already been ransacked. She slipped an arm and foot inside the tent. Leaning toward the other pack, she dragged it over and discovered that its contents had also been dumped. She scoured the disarray until her lamp revealed a Hydro Flask that had rolled into a corner. The rest of her body entered the tent. Snatching up the bottle, she unscrewed the lid. Only about half a cup of water was left inside. She forced herself to drink slowly, but her hands shook so badly that some of the liquid sloshed out.

  The corpse judged her endeavor in gory silence.

  Sip. Her rib cage forced an inhalation and exhalation. Sip. Her muscles throbbed in agony. Sip. She repeated the effort until the water was gone. It was time to move again.

  At least now she knew her location.

  Neena plowed back out through the tent flaps. Psychosis engulfed her as the dead man chased her down the slope, pursuing her through the jagged darkness—arm crooked, elbow askew, fingers hooked. His figure morphed into the lean and rawboned killer.

  She careened past the site where she and Josie had camped, disturbing the barrier of nightly fog. The pine trees disappeared into the vapors. Her boots crunched and bounced wildly against the spongy needles. She tore through the sagging curtain of vines out of Deep Fork and onto the Wade Harte.

  She crashed into a halt. The trail was clear and exposed. Only now did it occur to her that the killer knew exactly where she was heading, because she had told him. He hadn’t been chasing her through the woods all night. Most likely, he had returned to his campsite to eliminate the woman, and now he was waiting in the parking lot to finish the job with Neena. Or waiting somewhere else along this trail. It was easy to imagine him bursting out from the trees exactly as he’d done before.

  There was another parking lot near Burnt Balsam, not far past their turnaround point. Despite their not seeing anybody yesterday at the overlook, it was the trail’s busiest section. If she turned around and hiked back across the ridgeline, she was sure to run into somebody else eventually. It would take longer, but it would lead to help. She’d be safe.

  But Josie would still be trapped.

  And, because of Neena, the killer knew Josie’s location. Maybe he wasn’t waiting along this final stretch of trail, after all. Maybe he had gone to take care of Josie first. Maybe he was already there. The decision had to be made quickly. If Neena kept heading toward the Wade Harte trailhead, it was less safe for her. If she turned around for Burnt Balsam, it was less safe for Josie. The tunnel of mountain laurel loomed ahead—dark, descending, and ominous. The heavy leaves provided natural coverage to conceal and trap. Everything inside her shouted to run back toward Burnt Balsam and safety.

  Neena chose Josie instead.

  Girding herself, she headed toward the tunnel—as a second beam of light swept along the trail behind her.

  Fear juddered her heart. She flicked off the headlamp and dashed behind the closest tree. Dirt clods and loose pebbles skittered down after her. Her lungs compressed tighter. Always, always, she couldn’t breathe. With one hand cupped over her mouth, she tried to muffle the gasping wheeze. Her other hand gripped the fir tree for strength. The bark roughed her skin, but the branches smelled incongruously like Christmas.

  The light was distant. The man was traveling slowly through the fog, but he was drawing near. Had he seen her? A mysterious, repetitive clink accompanied his form, similar to a prisoner being led in shackles. Each clink tolled a warning of danger.

  Huffing one last time, Neena fell silent. The man was close now. Closer. Illuminated in the shimmering beam, a gun barrel struck the ground before her.

  Terror exploded.

  But the man kept walking. As his gun clinked away, the fog weakened into mist. In the receding light, she saw that the man’s foot was dragging behind him. And then she saw that the man wasn’t a man at all.

  TOGETHER

  THE WOODS WERE secretive. Trees older than death and saplings younger than spring watched over the creatures that slunk and scurried between them. The trees concealed. Shadowed. Obscured. Their trunks provided cover, their leaves bestowed shelter, and their limbs extended to make contact with fur and feathers, scales and skin. They knew everything that happened here, yet they did not take sides. They observed in silence. They offered these hiding places, but, predator or prey, it made no difference to them.

  Neena burst out from behind a tree.

  Josie shrieked and seesawed.

  “It’s me. It’s me,” Neena rasped as the same disbelief rushed through her—an unwillingness to believe it was actually Josie. Her best friend was nearly unrecognizable. Underneath the stark light of Josie’s headlamp, her eyes were veined and bulging. Blood and dirt smeared her sallow skin. Bloody crusts rimmed her mouth and chin, streaked in vicious lines down her neck. She had one sleeve and one bare arm, and straw-like chunks of hair frazzled out from her braids and from underneath her hat. Her posture was stiff and broken, and, most alarmingly of all, she was grasping a gun like a bizarro crutch.

  Josie floundered, lost to hyperventilating convulsions. Several fraught and raving seconds passed before recognition dawned in her eyes. Neena moved in for a sobbing embrace—and then discovered the missing right hand. She jerked back with a gasp. Josie’s remaining sleeve had concealed the trauma. A crude bandage stumped her arm, and it was clear by the shortened length that the entire appendage be
low the wrist was gone.

  “He shot it off.” Josie sounded dazed. “There was a man.”

  Neena shuddered profoundly. “I know.” In her mind, the man’s helpful expression fell away as the gun swung in her direction. The woman lay dead and abused on the forest floor, the other man dead and bloated in his tent. Suddenly, she grew conscious of the brightness of Josie’s headlamp. She lunged. “Turn it off!”

  “It’s okay,” Josie said. “He fell into the hole.”

  This news stunned Neena. She dropped back again. “What?”

  “He pulled me out, and I pushed him in. And then I shot him.”

  “What?”

  Josie did not elaborate.

  “Is . . . is he dead?” Neena asked.

  “I don’t know. But he wasn’t moving when I left him.”

  Neena’s breath hitched. The unexpected noise tuned Josie back into reality. With another wave of fear, she realized that Neena had been wheezing and keeping her words brief. Her skin was pallid, her lips dusky. They were both in critical condition.

  “A man and a woman,” Neena said. “I saw their bodies. He killed them.”

  The verb exploded like a bomb. Josie’s ears rang. Her skin felt hot.

  “Loaded?” Neena nodded toward the gun.

  Josie shook her head. “I used both shots on him.”

  “How . . .” Neena couldn’t finish the thought. She was staring at Josie in fresh amazement, and Josie understood this was a new question. How did you get here so quickly? In your condition? How did you catch up with me?

  “The bottle-cap route,” Josie explained. “Shorter. More direct.”

  They needed to move. Further discussion was unnecessary. Neena turned on her headlamp to double their light, and a murmur in the back of Josie’s mind considered an argument about battery conservation. Just in case.

  But the hell with that.

  The girls began the excruciating climb down Frazier Mountain. They were severely compromised, so every downward step had become a potentially treacherous fall. Josie was still using the crutch, but now Neena was also providing support, gripping and lifting her up from the other side. It was a relief for Josie to lessen the weight on her armpit. The thin skin was rubbed raw and swollen, black and bleeding.

  They entered the tunnel of laurel. The bushes confined, and the night tightened in. Together, however, their hope had strengthened. The parking lot felt closer, too.

  A rifle cocked behind them.

  Their chests seized. The girls turned around.

  “Well, well, well.” A man was framed at the top of the tunnel. “Look what we have here.”

  “You—you said you shot him,” Neena stammered.

  But this man was lean and wiry, and, even with her poor vision, Josie knew that she had never seen him before.

  “I’VE BEEN LOOKING for you all night.” The man seethed at Neena. His eyes were slits of rage. His muscles were as clenched as fists. “And look what I found instead. Two for the price of one.”

  Neena reeled with shock, which jostled Josie, who cried out in pain.

  “I don’t understand,” Neena said.

  “That’s not the man,” Josie gasped, her nerve endings throttled and whirling. “That’s a different man.”

  The horrifying truth washed over them together. Two for the price of one.

  The man inched over his rifle to aim it at Josie. “Now. I’m gonna need you to set down my friend’s shotgun, nice and slow.”

  “I can’t.” Tears welled. Her good leg trembled. “I’ll fall.”

  “I don’t give a goddamned fuck if you fall.”

  Josie flinched and choked on a sob.

  Fiercely, Neena held her grip. “I’ve got you.”

  Josie let go, helpless. The useless weapon clattered to the ground. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Guns were never fair.

  The man’s rifle remained affixed to them as he moved to collect the shotgun, but the tension slackened from his muscles as soon as it was in his possession. Only the rifle had a strap, so he moved it onto his shoulder and carried the shotgun loosely in hand. Now that he held all the power, he didn’t have to point it. Unhooking a flashlight from his belt, he shone it up and down the laurel tunnel until he located the desired swath. It looked the same as the rest. He held the branches aside with the full length of an arm.

  “After you, ladies.” The last word was witheringly simpered.

  Josie curdled with revulsion.

  Neena kept her grip firm as she adjusted herself to better support Josie. Her right arm wrapped around Josie’s back. Josie’s left arm and only hand wrapped around Neena’s neck. Grappling with how to operate in tandem, the girls staggered toward the opening. Josie slipped, and Neena barely caught her in time.

  The two halves of Josie’s bad foot screamed with scissoring pain.

  “Move,” the man said. “I ain’t got all night.”

  The girls hustled as best they could and ducked through the opening in the shrubs. A slight groove was worn into the forest floor on the other side, a pathway trodden by animals. Apparently, the men had been utilizing it for their own purposes.

  The branches rustled back into place, closing like a door. Even with their three lights, the woods grew so much darker. The silence so much louder.

  “Where are you taking us?” Josie asked as they stumbled forward.

  Their abductor trailed behind them. Though his unhygienic stench reeked of violence, his manner distorted into something unsettlingly singsong. “Willie sure did a number on you. Hoo boy. You don’t look so good, girl.”

  She raised her chin and hoped it carried into her voice. “My name is Josie.”

  “Well, Josie.” Her defiance only seemed to tickle him further. “My name is Lyman. And I’m the last man you’re ever gonna meet.”

  Josie’s wounds pulsated inside their bandages. Lyman appeared to be a few years younger than the other man. He was taller and skinnier, and his features were all pinched together, while the other’s had been wide-set. She couldn’t smell his breath, but his body odor was worse. He was more talkative, too, although an erratic jitteriness undercut his relaxed demeanor. It seemed like an act, while the other man had been in full control.

  “Where are you taking us?” Josie asked.

  “Hey.” He ignored the question for a second time, prodding Neena with the shotgun instead. An accusation. “You never gave me your name.”

  Neena knew exactly where they were headed. But since Lyman didn’t know that she’d seen his campsite, she stayed quiet, trying to brainstorm any advantages this might give her. Concentrating was impossible. It was getting harder and harder to draw breath. Josie’s unbalanced weight leaned into her, heavier than their packs. How much longer would Josie be able to survive without medical attention?

  The muddy barrel pressed cold against her back. “I’m talking to you.”

  “You never asked for my name,” Neena said.

  “Well, I’m asking now. Like a gentleman. Which is more courtesy than you’ve given me. You know,” he said, tone shifting to irritation, “fuck you. You’re like my ex-wife, stirring the shit and then blaming me when the toilet clogs. Because of you, I’ve been chasing shadows all night. Because of you, Willie chewed my ass out. He’s been blaming me for this whole goddamn mess like he had nothing to do with it. I told him he should have gotten you out of that hole straightaway, but he wanted to play.”

  Lyman was speaking to them individually, together, to himself, all at once. “Aw, man. I can’t believe you fell for it. I told him it would work. I said if we covered that old sinkhole with branches—like one of them military booby traps—we’d catch us one. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I show up with both of you. Hey,” he said, sharply interrupting his own stream. “How’d you get his gun?”

  “I took it,
and then I shot him,” Josie said without emotion.

  “Bullshit.”

  Josie didn’t respond.

  “So where is he, then?” he asked.

  “Probably bleeding out inside the sinkhole,” she said. “Or already dead.”

  “Bullshit. Bullshit,” Lyman said, as if he was trying to convince himself. He probed her for more details, arguing with her and then denying her responses, growing increasingly worked up as they struggled through the forest. “He’ll be there when we get back. He’ll be there, you little liar.”

  They trekked for a long time yet still arrived sooner than Neena had anticipated. Perhaps because they had taken a shortcut. Or perhaps earlier she had only been traveling in circles. Perhaps she had never been far from this place. A dreadfully familiar glow lit the trees before them. The campfire was dim, but it was alive again.

  Somebody was already here.

  Lyman snatched the hood of her hoodie, holding her back. Neena lurched to a stop. Josie nearly fell beside her. Releasing his grip, he held up a silent, shushing finger, then waved the whole hand for them to turn off their lights.

  All three went dark.

  A flat clank issued from the shelter. Something metal hit something else metal, and moving shadows made scruffling noises. From the murky darkness of the campsite’s edge, they watched a large and blundering creature emerge into the firelight.

  “AW, SHIT!” LYMAN shoved the girls forward. “They told me you was dead, Willie.” Getting a closer look at the injuries, he winced. “You should be dead, Willie.”

  Josie’s tormentor was shirtless, although it took a moment for her to realize it. Willie was covered in an almost animalistic amount of hair, more like a grotesque coat of fur than regular body hair. The coarse curls were bloody and matted, caked with jellied gore around the areas where the shot had entered into his left shoulder and chest. He should have looked wounded and vulnerable. Instead, he looked dangerous and powerful.