The Trees Have Eyes

by Tobias Wade

  A sharp ping rang through the bus, thrusting my out of my trance. What the hell was that? Fear shot through me like electricity. A rock? Had someone thrown a rock at the bus?

  I dropped to my knees, my instincts screaming at me to hide. I shuffled backwards awkwardly, trying to wedge myself into the space between the seats and the seatback in front of them. With shaking hands, I unlocked my phone screen, where the gray triangle stared back at me mercilessly. I dialed 911, heart in my throat, and sent off a quick prayer as I hit call.

  One ring, two rings. It was going through! Beep. I stared at it in disbelief. The complicated piece of technology was about as useful as a brick. Less useful, a brick could be used as a weapon. I looked around, the darkness of the windows taunting me; I was blind as a bat.

  Think! I yelled at myself. Think!

  Another ping.

  I instinctively jumped backwards, only to slam against the wall of the bus. The side of the seat dug into my ribs as I pushed myself as far into the safe little corner as I could.

  An image of a giant, hulking man walking onto the bus flashed through my mind. There was one door on the bus, and if that was blocked, I was trapped. I had pressed myself into my coffin, not a safe corner.

  I whimpered as a third ping rang through the bus, but I had to get off. I slid out from between the seats, and stayed low as I made my way to the front. I’ll go slowly down the steps, I thought, and then make a run for it. I took a deep breath, and moved across the open space next to the driver’s seat.

  Another ping, and panic took over. I stumbled down the two steps half-blind in the darkness, fell on my face, scrambled to my feet, and ran.

  “Aah!” I couldn’t stop myself from screaming when something hit me in the back of the head. I whipped around, but I couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

  I stumbled again, but regained my balance in time, and bolted…

  I ran until my breath burned in my throat and I had to slow down. I looked behind me, down the dark tunnel the fir trees created around the road. Empty. I stopped, holding my breath as I tried to listen. A hooting owl made me jump, but other than that not a sound. I wasn’t being followed. In fact, I thought, maybe it had been nothing but pine cones falling on the bus.

  The fingernail, though, I thought, getting nauseous. Next thing I knew I was spitting bile at the side of the road, head spinning.

  I kept moving at a slower pace, shuddering as the cold night air made my sweaty T-shirt feel like a sheet of ice. I briefly considered going back to the bus for my pack, but felt bile rise in my throat as an image of the bloody fingernail flashed across my mind again. They say freezing to death is quite comfortable, anyway.

  As the adrenalin receded, I became acutely aware of the pain in the back of my head. I gingerly ran my fingers across the spot, and they came back bloody. A really sharp pine cone? I glanced behind me down the road again, making sure it was still empty.

  I kicked at a sapling that grew on the grassy road. If trees had started growing on it, I couldn’t expect anyone to drive by me. The darkness gave way to a gray half-light, and I prayed I wasn’t walking deeper into the woods. Around noon, the sun pierced through the clouds, warming me, and still I walked.

  My steps got shorter, and my head started pounding. Dehydration, I thought. Like, it’s important to hydrate. God, what happened to poor little Brit? At least she was with Lisa, I thought. If they were together, maybe it was less scary. I tried 911 for the millionth time.

  Ring, ring, beep.

  Stupid fucking useless piece of shit.

  I stopped, staring at the phone in my hand, as a graphic played across the screen and then it went black. Tears welled up in my eyes.

  My dry tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth, the cold was stuck deep in my bones, and every part of my body hurt. Overwhelmed by hopelessness and exhaustion, I dropped to my knees, and then just rolled over. I’d just take a little nap, then I’d keep going. Just as I let my eyes close, something heavy hit my face. I jumped to my feet, the adrenaline surging through my body, giving me new strength. Spun in my spot, ready for fight or flight, when I spotted the pine cone next to me. Just a damn pine cone. Lucky, I thought. I would’ve died if I fell asleep.

  The shadows grew long, and the cold spread back around my body. I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, as I forced myself again and again to take one more step. Just one more step.

  “Dehydration is bad, right?” Brit’s voice rang through the woods.

  “Brit?” I croaked. “Brit, are you there?!”

  Not a sound. “BRIT?”

  “You’re, like, so nice though.”

  “Brit, where are you?”

  “Like, I literally want Lisa’s face, but you’re pretty too, Mary.”

  I yelled for her, looking around wildly. I needed to find her, to save her, to save Lisa. No reply. A horrifying thought made its way through my sluggish brain, as I shuddered again.

  Severe hypothermia leads to confusion, and can induce hallucinations.

  I am dead.

  Not yet. Walk. When I finally saw a gray crash barrier in the distance, the sun had disappeared behind the trees, and the sky was a bright pink. If I was less dehydrated, I might have cried.

  I made my way to the spot where the logging road met the asphalt, and collapsed in an exhausted heap. I just needed a little break, I thought. I looked around, and spotted a narrow ditch next to the road. I needed to be in it, it would be warm and comfortable. Not fall asleep, no, just close my eyes, just for a moment. I rolled into the ditch, tugging at my uncomfortable shirt, too hot now.

  “Don’t fall asleep!”

  Blackness took over, and I was gone within seconds.

  When I opened my eyes, I had to blink at the bright white light. Thoughts moved through my head like molasses. Am I dead?

  A loud beeping sound made me turn my head, and as my eyes adjusted to the blinding light, I saw the heart monitor. Am I in the hospital?

  Why?

  “H—,” I croaked, triggering a coughing fit.

  The door slammed open, and a nurse ran in. Still in a daze, I let my eyes slide close, and only heard the steps of the next person entering the room. An eyelid was pulled up, and a bright light shone right at me. I tried to jerk away, but strong hands held me.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Y—,” coughing.

  More tests, more questions, more coughing.

  “I need to talk to her now!” a man said loudly.

  “She’s barely conscious, you have to wait.”

  “Listen, doc,” a female voice interjected calmly. “A girl’s life is on the line here.”

  “I know, that one in there. And she’s my patient, so you’ll have to wait.”

  “L-Lisa?” I managed to choke out. “Wh—where is Lisa?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “I—” I wheezed. “I want to help.”

  In a haze, between coughing fits, I forced out what seemed like a coherent version of what had happened. I showed them my picture, and they disappeared with my phone as I slid into a fitful sleep.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I looked right at my mother’s puffy face, streaked with tears.

  “Oh honey,” she exclaimed. “You’re OK!”

  “L—Lisa?” I stuttered. My mother broke down in tears, reaching out to clutch my hand in hers.

  “They—they don’t know, honey.”

  It all became a blur of doctors, police, my crying mother, and not a single thing that made a lick of sense; I slipped in and out of consciousness. More doctors, more police, whispers outside the door, a pounding headache, drugs, sleep.

  The third time I woke up, my head felt clearer. Within minutes, a woman in a dark pantsuit walked into my room, shooing my mother outside.

  “Special Agent Keller, FBI” she said, pulling up a chair next to my hospital bed. “We’re trying to find your friend.”


  “FBI?” I said.

  “Yes. Look, we really need to know exactly what happened. Can you help me with that?”

  “Yeah, I guess, I—But I told the cops everything, why—Shouldn’t you be out there looking for them?”

  “Every piece of information matters. I’ll walk you through what you told us so far, please stop me if anything sounds wrong.”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “The evening of the 12th, you boarded a bus at the trailhead in Oregon, at ten past nine. The real shuttle had left ten minutes earlier, as scheduled. Between 24 and 36 hours later, you wake up—”

  “What? No, maybe a few hours.” I interjected.

  “You told us you walked along the road for what seemed to be around twelve hours, right?”

  “Right.”

  “A 911 call about a girl sleeping on the side of the road was placed at 11 p.m. on the 14th. An ambulance picked you up in a remote, forested area close to the Canadian border a little after 1 a.m. on the 15th.”

  “What? How?!”

  “Your tox-screen showed traces of sedative in your system. You were drugged.”

  “I—” I choked, adding in a small voice: “What?”

  “I’m sorry if this is hard for you, but we need your help to find Lisa.”

  “No, of course I’ll help, I’ll do whatever, just—“ I paused, stomach dropping when I realized the implications of what she had said. “Wait, just Lisa? What about Brittany? Did something happen to her? Is she safe? Where is she?”

  “Well, we’re looking for her too. But this isn’t the first time this happened…” She trailed off, rubbing her forehead. “What we really need to know is how you ingested the drugs. Did anyone have access to you water bottle? Food? Maybe you left them with the bus driver?”

  “No, nothing like that, I specifically remember Brittany taking them out of our packs, the bus driver never touched them.”

  “Okay,” the agent said. “And then—”

  “Wait,” I said, horrifying realization spreading in my gut. “Wait. Wait. Brittany took them out of our packs, Brittany… Holy fuck it’s her! She did it!”

  “Is there any other way you could have ingested the sedative?”

  “No!” I almost yelled. “That fucking bitch! After all we did for her!” Then the first thing she had said hit home. “Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean this isn’t the first time this happened?”

  “Well,” she sighed. “Lisa happens to be the third young blonde woman going missing along the PCT in the last two years. The two first were solo-hikers, the cases closed on the conclusion that they simply got lost after having left the trail. One went missing in Oregon and the other in California, so the cases weren’t linked before now.”

  “How—” I stopped. “What happened to the other girls?”

  She shrugged. “Never found.”

  My head started spinning, and I had to grab onto the side of the bed. I had walked through the wilderness for hours. There must be miles and miles of forest around the spot. Anyone could hide out there, could stay hidden for decades, forever. If Brittany didn’t want to be found, she never would be. And neither would Lisa.

  I was sent home with the assurance that I’d be the first to know when they found something, but they never did. No trace of Lisa, or Brittany. No trace of Brittany anywhere; no permits, no witnesses, no sightings, no nothing. When the police searched the logging road, they didn’t find a bus. It was like the forest had swallowed all of them. Weeks went by, and nothing happened.

  Until about two months after I had checked out of the hospital, when I came home late from work one evening to find an envelope in my mailbox. It didn’t have a stamp, or an address, just my name on the front in big, black letters.

  It contained three black and white photographs, looking like they had been developed in a home lab. The first was of my face, as I slept in the back of the bus. The second of the bus from the outside, me clearly framed in the middle of one of the windows, looking terrified. The third was me passed out on the side of the road, in a ditch between the logging road and the asphalt.

  They slid out of my limp hands, and as they fluttered to the floor, I saw that something was written on the back of one. It landed face down, the words screaming at me:

  “I’m sorry you’re not my type, but I still had fun playing with you.

  Xoxo,

  Brit”

  Don't Follow the Fiddler

  When I was a child, I would spend my summers in my grandparents’ old cabin in the woods, deep in the valleys of eastern Norway. My grandmother grew up in the area, and would tell me horrible tales of the underground people, to scare me from breaking the rules and keep me safe when I played alone around the cabin.

  This is one of the stories, just like my grandmother told it.

  ***

  I was young, then. Very young. And it was long before I ever met your grandfather, I want you to remember that when you hear the story, okay?

  The day it happened, I was all alone at the farm. Did you ever see the farm? Did we sell it before you were born? I can’t remember. It was in the next valley over from this one. The woods were the same as here though. Those tall, dark, fir trees that that throw the undergrowth into eternal dusk. You know how easy it is for someone to hide between them. And just as it’s easy for you to hide, it’s easy for something else to hide. And they do hide there, the somethings. Fewer and fewer of them, I’ll say, at the rate we cut them old forests down, but that may be for the best. Oh dear, where was I? Oh. My parents were very poor, as you know. Back then we rented the little piece of land, and grew some potatoes and owned some hens. Later, a few cows. It was nothing like these huge subsidized farms we have these days, oh no. What my father could have done if someone only helped him. Well, that’s not the story I’m tellin’, so just forget about all that.

  I was all alone on the farm, my parents had gone to the market. My brothers had gone to America to try their luck, as poor people did in those days. Died over there too, but that’s neither here nor there. I was alone on the farm. Stop me if I start rambling again, will you?

  Well, I was out on the marsh, picking cloudberries. Those days we couldn’t afford exotic things like chocolate, or oranges, or those green whatchamacallits. But berries we had, and we had plenty. These days there are fewer of those too, but when I was young the fall would cover the marshes in delicious, sweet, orange cloudberries, like thousands of little suns. That day had been one of the rare sunny days in fall, and I was out there on the marsh as the day drew to an end. My head hurt from the sunshine, and the cold marsh water had started leaking into my left boot. I couldn’t help but long for the cool, dry shade under those fir trees.

  Maybe the forest could tell.

  I was standing there, the marsh gurgling as I shifted my weight, the easy wind whooshing between the trees when I heard it. Faint, far off, but clear as day. I paused, listening. It couldn’t be—but it was, wasn’t it?

  A fiddle.

  Now, I have always loved the sound of the fiddle. I didn’t get to hear it very often, though, music was a luxury back then. Every once in a while, a fiddler would come to our little village, and if your great-grandfather was feeling generous, I’d get to go to the dance. That’s how I met your grandfather, but that’s a story for another day. In this story, I was standing in the middle of a field of cloudberries, hearing the sounds of a fiddle as it called to me from deep in the woods.

  At first I was simply intrigued, curious about what kind of person would be playing the fiddle with only trees as an audience. The next thing I knew, the music had seeped into my very soul. It thrilled, jumped, gurgled and laughed, just like a stream. It roared like a waterfall, it flowed like a river. It coursed through my veins and flooded into my heart.

  Now, I’ve been alive for many a year and heard many a fiddler play, but nothing ever came close to what I heard in those woods. Without thinking, I followed
. I had to see who it was who could create such beauty.

  At first I walked, slowly following the ebb and flow of the sound. The further into the woods I got, the louder the music, and the more urgent my need to find its source. I started running. I dodged between trees, jumped over rocks, and slipped on moss.

  All the time, that sweet, sweet sound was getting louder. It washed over my body, flooded my whole mind. It didn’t leave room for any other thought; no misgivings, no suspicions. I was filled with singular purpose: find the well from which the music sprang.

  Suddenly, I was at the river. For a short second, I paused, looking around. Then the fiddle let out a long, wailing note full of longing, and I heard the sound of the waterfall. The rushing sound of the water provided a deep bass line as the fiddle picked up speed again. It became an orchestra, a whole symphony. The clucking stream, the rushing waterfall, the fiddle soaring above it all. I walked reverently over the soft green moss towards the waterfall. I was close, the rush was gone, but the need—oh, the need!—grew stronger with every step. If you could only have heard that music, you would understand. I took three more steps over the soft moss, closer to the point where the forest floor gave way to a cliff, and the stream hurled itself into the deep pool beneath.

  The music stopped. My head snapped up, and I froze. My heart stopped, my breath caught in my throat, because there he was. Right in front of me, close enough that I could touch him if I reached out my hand. The most beautiful man I have ever seen. His blonde, beautiful hair flowed down past his chin. His young face was smooth, no hint of stubble, not a single blemish. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, a soft mouth curled into a wild smile. His bright blue eyes had a dark, hungry look in them. I quivered as he fixed me with his gaze. Never have I felt less safe, but never have I felt so alive as I did in the moment our eyes locked. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. Ten wild horses couldn’t have made me budge.

  He put the fiddle down on the soft moss, never looking away from me.