Lost in the Never Woods

by Aiden Thomas

  It was possible Wendy saw a flicker of disappointment cross her mother’s face, but she just gave her a small smile and nodded.

  “Night, Mom,” Wendy said. She wanted to reach out and give her mother a hug, but she felt like she had forgotten what hugging looked like, or even where to put her arms. She picked up her plate with her half-eaten chicken instead.

  “Good night, Wendy.”

  Wendy walked up to the second floor and at the top, as always, she was met with the door to her old room. She stood there for a moment, plate in hand, and stared at the handle. Even though John and Michael weren’t here, it still felt like she could open the door and there they would be, sitting on her bed, riffling through her art supplies so they could make a treasure map or draw pictures of make-believe beasts.

  She rested her hand on the doorknob. It felt like cold electricity under her fingertips.

  If Peter was right, and they were able to stop his shadow, she would finally get her brothers back.

  A surge of energy ran from her core and down her arm to her hand. For the first time in five years, Wendy gripped the doorknob and gave it a turn.

  But it was locked.

  Deflated, Wendy’s hand fell back to her side. Of course it was locked. How had she not predicted that? Her father had probably locked it up after she refused to go inside. It had probably stayed locked ever since.

  Wendy rubbed her stinging eyes. Even though she was alone, she felt silly and embarrassed. Without a second glance at the door, Wendy turned and went to her bedroom. She left her dinner on her dresser, having lost her appetite completely. She needed to clean up, so she went into the bathroom and scrubbed away at her skin in the shower until the smell of dirt and ash was replaced with jasmine and green tea.

  She changed into her oversized sleep shirt and turned on the fairy lights that twinkled around her window. But before she lay down in bed, Wendy paused. Ever since she had entered the woods earlier that night, she’d felt a heavy weight. Not only of the anxiety around keeping Peter a secret, or the responsibility of needing to stop the shadow so she could save her brothers, but something else. Something dark. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

  Wendy looked out her window. The lights from the main part of town blinked lazily in the distance. For the first time all summer, she crawled up onto her bed, pulled her window shut, and locked it tight. It was still hot and humid, but she was willing to sleep uncomfortably warm if it meant not being worried that something would crawl in through her window while she slept.

  She jerked her curtains shut and shoved the comforter off her bed, leaving only the white cotton sheets.

  The acorn was still on her nightstand from where she had left it that morning. Taking it into her hand, Wendy leaned back against her pillows and gently rolled it between her fingers.

  Even with the window shut and locked, and her curtains preventing anyone from possibly being able to look in, Wendy didn’t feel any better. It was like whatever was in the woods had attached itself to her back and was clawing its way into her skin, no matter how hard she tried to scrub it clean. Wendy shuddered and squeezed the acorn tight in her hand.

  If she was going to get any sleep tonight, she needed a distraction.

  Keeping the acorn in her fist, Wendy pulled out the notebook from her bedside drawer, a red Sharpie, and a stack of pamphlets. The university had sent her a large manila envelope full of information on housing and academics.

  Jordan had convinced Wendy to sign up for the health sciences housing. Jordan knew what she wanted to do and was already reaching out to premed students with questions.

  Wendy wished she had that confidence.

  Chewing on the cap of the red marker, Wendy flipped to the page of her bullet journal saved with a ribbon. Across the top center of the page she had written Nursing, and on the next several pages were bulleted lists, dates, and calendars. After poring over the university website’s academics section, she had mocked up an entire four years’ worth of classes to graduate with a nursing degree. Wendy had used her collection of fine-tip Sharpies to meticulously map out potential schedules, all color coded with their respective credits. It had taken her weeks.

  Everything was carefully laid out for her. If she followed these steps, she would have her nursing degree and be ready to enter the real world after graduation. She would have a steady job in a high-demand field.

  But …

  Wendy turned to a blank page. At the top in small, red letters she wrote Premed.

  It was a crazy idea. Becoming a doctor took ages —four years of undergrad, four years of med school, and then a three-to-seven-year residency? That was a lot of time and a lot of money. She was relying mostly on grants and scholarships for college. How would she be able to afford going to med school?

  Nursing was perfectly respectable. She’d earn a degree faster and make a decent living. Sometimes, she entertained the idea of becoming a doctor, specifically a pediatrician, but she was just toying with the idea. Realistically, it was too much of a risk and too big of a cost if she failed.

  Being a pediatrician meant the wellness of children—their lives—would be in her hands. It made Wendy start to sweat just thinking about making the wrong decision, or messing up so colossally that she’d lose a patient. There was no way she could handle that sort of responsibility. She couldn’t even keep her brothers safe—how could anyone trust her with their children?

  She pulled out the athletics brochure and busied her mind reading about the state-of-the-art training facilities on campus.

  The acorn remained tight in her hand. I wish Peter were here, she found herself thinking as sleep began to lull her eyes closed. She would never admit it out loud, but he emitted a warmth that Wendy couldn’t help being drawn to, and she felt it when she was holding the acorn.

  CHAPTER 12

  Warning

  Wendy shivered in the middle of the woods. The fading light of dusk tinged the trees a cold blue-gray. They were dense here, like they only got in the heart of the woods. There was a light layer of snow covering the trees and frosting the ground beneath her feet. Her wet clothes clung to her skin. The smell of moist dirt filled her nose. Wendy tried to remember how she had gotten there, but her head was in a fog.

  It felt like she was supposed to be looking for someone. Or was someone looking for her?

  Wendy wanted to call out for help, but something told her she needed to be quiet, to not break the dead silence that hung thick in the air, pressing against her ears. Craning her head back, Wendy searched the trees above, noting the silvery sky as it peeked through the boughs. She slowly turned in a circle, naked branches turning above her. When she stopped, Wendy found herself facing an old tree.

  Its trunk dwarfed the others that encircled her. Its bark was an oily brown, and its branches twisted and curved above her, completely devoid of any leaves or needles. Its roots were thick and gnarled, knotting and tangling with one another before plunging into the frozen earth.

  It was the tree. The tree. The one she had sketched a hundred times, just as crooked and eerie in person as it had been on paper.

  Wendy’s heart thudded violently in her throat. Cold sweat beaded on her skin. Her nails bit into her palms. Harsh, ragged breaths billowed white before her. The trembling in her spine began to awake.

  At the base of the great tree, the roots formed a small opening, like an entrance to a dark cage. Rotten leaves brushed past the gaping mouth and, just below the sound of their ruffling, Wendy heard quiet voices murmur.

  She knew this place.

  Everything in her screamed for her to run. Wendy needed to get out of there. She needed to get away from this tree. But it was like she had no control of her body, because suddenly she was moving toward it. The hushed whispers became steadily louder as she stepped closer, one foot after another.

  They were children’s voices. Wendy could only watch as her own hand reached out toward the opening of the roots.

  The v
oices grew harsh and urgent. The whispers turned to soft cries, then gut-wrenching wails, the kind that howled with unhinged fear. Wendy wanted to scream and drown them out, but her lips remained closed as she leaned in.

  “I’d be careful if I were you,” a voice behind her said.

  Wendy whirled around. There stood the guy who had talked to her when she was getting her bag out of her truck. She had almost forgotten about him.

  “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice sounded far off and distant.

  She still couldn’t make out his face. The light continued to fade and she couldn’t see his features clearly.

  They seemed to shift and change the more she tried to focus on them. Black eyes. White teeth. An unnaturally wide grin. His features twisted and morphed.

  “You never know what you might find in dark places,” he continued, ignoring her question as he moved closer to her.

  The shadows of the trees behind him started to sway and converge. Wendy took a step back, but he pursued. The black shapes behind him became towering figures, bowing down in the darkness.

  “If you insist on poking around, Wendy…” His hand lashed out and snatched her wrist. His sharp fingers dug into her skin.

  Wendy cried out in pain and tried to twist her arm free of him. He pulled her roughly toward him, and his face came into focus.

  Peter’s face. But wrong, very wrong, with pale skin and inky pits for eyes.

  “You won’t like what you find,” he breathed. It smelled like rotten leaves and wet dirt.

  The shadows behind him gathered, piling up high then forming long, sharp fingers. He laughed and it shook Wendy’s bones. She tried to struggle but he held tight. The shadows lashed out and crashed down over her.

  * * *

  Wendy thrashed and jerked herself upright. She was home, in her own bed and drenched in sweat. Her clothes stuck to her skin and her hair was matted to her forehead. Shuddering gasps wracked Wendy’s body as she gripped her sheets. It was just a dream, she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to steady herself. But it felt so real.

  Wendy gulped a deep breath, but when she looked down, a strangled shout caught in her throat.

  She scrambled back so quickly, she slammed the back of her head against the headboard.

  Everything was covered in red.

  At first, Wendy thought the ink was blood, but after the initial terror cut through her, she realized that she still held the red marker she had fallen asleep with.

  They were drawings of the tree, over and over again, in haphazard lines that crossed and dragged over everything—her nightshirt, her legs, and all over her sheets. Pages of her bullet journal were also covered in red, ruined and ripped from the notebook. Gnarled branches and tangled roots buried her carefully written notes.

  Clutched in her other hand was the acorn.

  Wendy threw the marker and clutched the acorn tight to her chest as she tried to steady her rapid breathing. Had she done all of this in her sleep?

  Wendy squeezed her eyes shut.

  What was happening to her?

  Surrounded by torn pages and red ink, she felt trapped. The shadows, the drawings, the murmurings—everything was creeping in.

  Wendy dropped the acorn into her bedside drawer. She leapt out of bed and yanked the fitted sheet free. Some of the red had bled through and stained the mattress. She bundled everything up into a heap and ran into the bathroom, where she shoved it to the bottom of her hamper and out of sight, along with her ruined nightshirt.

  She couldn’t have her parents seeing what she’d done. Wendy was the only one who did laundry around the house. This was the perfect place to hide it until she could sneak it out into the trash.

  As she shoved the bundle of sheets and torn pages under her dirty clothes, Wendy caught a glimpse of her hands. They were smeared with red. Some had even gotten under her fingernails.

  At the sink, Wendy turned the hot water faucet on full blast. With shaky hands, she scrubbed furiously at her hands with soap and a facecloth.

  That tree. It had been so familiar to her when she had seen it in her drawings. There was something there, some sort of connection she couldn’t place, but after seeing it with her own eyes, she couldn’t deny it anymore. She knew that tree. She had seen that tree in person. Been next to it.

  To call what she’d experienced a dream just wasn’t true. It was more than a dream. She could smell the earth and feel the cold of the snow. The forest looked just as it had that winter when Wendy and her brothers had gone missing in the woods. It wasn’t a dream; it was a memory.

  A shudder ripped through her from head to toe, her hands jolting so hard that she dropped the bar of soap. She scrambled to grab it out of the sink and began working on the red slashes of marker up and down her legs.

  A memory. She’d spent years with a gaping hole in her mind where those six months had been ripped out. Wendy had been dropped into a flashback, however brief.

  And the boy in her dream—there was no doubt in Wendy’s mind it was the same person who had approached her in her driveway right before Alex went missing.

  It was Peter, but it also wasn’t Peter.

  It had his face, but a horrible, nightmarish version.

  Was that Peter’s shadow? Wendy had assumed that his shadow was just that—a black, amorphous thing. Could it take a solid human form? Did Peter know?

  She needed to find him and tell him. If Peter’s shadow could walk and talk, and knew where she lived—

  Wendy shut off the water and gripped the edge of the sink. Her hands were bright red, the knuckles blanched. Pin drops of blood spread through the dry cracks. The hot water had burned, and her skin stung, but she’d gotten rid of the ink. Even her legs only had bright streaks left from being scrubbed raw.

  A shaky breath filled Wendy’s lungs, an attempt to steady herself. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. The hair at her temples and the back of her neck was damp with sweat. Her gray eyes stared back at her, puffy and bloodshot.

  She needed to find Peter and tell him what had happened. He was the only one who could make sense of it.

  The clock on Wendy’s counter read 11:32 a.m.

  “Shit!” she cursed. She had told Peter to meet her at noon.

  Wendy jumped into the shower to wash the sticky, stale sweat off her skin. Drying her hair would take too long, so cold drips hit the back of her neck as she rushed around her room. She pulled on a pair of green shorts and a navy tank top before sliding on her tennis shoes. Grabbing her bag, she bounded down the stairs and nearly tripped on her laces.

  Wendy was halfway across the living room when her father’s voice rang out. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”

  She whirled around to find her father standing in the doorway of his study. He wore a dark blue suit that was a little too tight across his barrel chest. He had somehow managed to wrangle his hair with gel into an uneven comb-over. Even his bushy mustache was trimmed.

  Wendy frowned. He never dressed this nice for work. And why was he home in the middle of a weekday?

  “Why aren’t you at work?” Wendy asked, momentarily distracted from her mission by his odd appearance.

  “I’m not at work because I need to take you down to the police station, remember?” Mr. Darling grumbled as he hooked a sausage-like finger over the knot of his tie, trying to wiggle it loose. “I’m taking a half day to deal with this.”

  “What?” Wendy said, starting. Her mind went into a panic with visions of handcuffs and mugshots and dark interrogation rooms.

  Mr. Darling furrowed his thick eyebrows. “Those detectives still want to talk to you.”

  “Oh, right.” A wave of relief washed over her. Wendy rocked onto the balls of her feet so she could read the clock next to the TV: 11:54 a.m. She was supposed to meet Peter any minute now, and she had so much to tell him. “Can we go a bit later?” Wendy tried, wincing in anticipation of his answer.

  Mr. Darling scowled. “No, we can’t go late
r,” he barked, waving his hand in the air. “Where do you have to get to that’s so important?”

  “Nowhere,” Wendy answered quickly, smoothing her hands through her wet hair. “I just made plans to meet up with Jordan at the hospital, you know, after her shift.” Another lie. The more she told, the easier it got.

  “This is more important,” he told her. He waved his hand dismissively. “Text her and tell her you’re going to be late. I can drop you off at the hospital after.” Mr. Darling snatched his keys from the kitchen table and started for the door. “Let’s go.”

  Wendy gave a nod and pulled out her phone, pretending to text Jordan as she followed him out the door. She’d lied herself into a corner. She wanted to see Peter, and she especially didn’t want to leave him waiting for her, but what choice did she have? This wasn’t really something she could talk her way out of.

  In the car, Wendy tried to look for Peter as they drove down the street, but there was no sign of him. How was she going to find him when she got back? She’d have to wait at the hospital until her mom got off work to get a ride home. It wasn’t like he had a cell phone she could call him on, and there was no way she was going to just wander around the woods calling his name.

  But for now she had more pressing matters to deal with. Like what Detective James wanted to ask her. Were they going to accuse her of having something to do with Alex’s disappearance? Was she a suspect? Was Peter?

  Her mind grew frantic. She tried to distract herself by focusing on the quiet rhythm of music flowing out of the speakers. Her dad only ever listened to classic rock.

  The police station was located on a main road that paralleled the shore. The ocean funneled into a large bay that eventually turned into the Columbia River. With her window rolled down, the ocean breeze felt cool in the heat of the midday sun. The air smelled like salt water. Large ships laden with crates trudged along, and behind them she could make out the blue mountains of Washington across the river.