***
I was on a date at my favorite restaurant. I was even having a good time. I… don't know what happened… she and I ran into Jen. Now, she'd never liked Jen, but she put on a good face for the conversation. If I hadn't been so oblivious, I would have guessed she didn't really want to change our plans and go to that stupid party with Jen.
I've never really liked parties. Not really. I always get self-conscious, and my brain gets all tired trying to keep up with all the things I keep imagining other people are thinking or saying or expecting. Pretty soon, I always just want to go home. I can't go home, though, because I need a good excuse to leave… a believable one, so that people won't secretly judge me.
I got my excuse, I guess, when Jen died.
I wasn't sure what happened. Nobody was sure. She was always a party girl - had she overdosed? She was bleeding pretty profusely from the nose, and she'd fallen and gotten terrible slashes up her back… but she'd been locked in the bathroom, and nobody had found her until it was too late.
My date insisted we leave when the commotion started, and I agreed wholeheartedly. On the way out, I heard a very odd cry: "She's gone - her body's gone!" - but I wasn't sure what to make of it.
On the walk home, I apologized profusely, but she just seemed scared. Two blocks down, we saw a group of people huddled around another body.
It was then that I felt something chill and sharp move by me - but I turned, and saw nothing. I had the inexplicable sense that I was very close to something large and menacing, but the night-darkened street seemed normal, save for the worried people calling emergency services.
Another few blocks down, my date and I stood under a streetlight and waited for the bus.
We decided to keep moving when a homeless man on the other side of the road seemed to fall rather roughly. Blood splattered up as if he'd… but it didn't make sense… why were all these people having terrible accidents?
Just after we kept walking, I looked back, and - for a split second - I thought I saw something moving toward us. It was a mere blink against the streetlight we'd just abandoned, and it was gone almost immediately, but I quietly insisted we walk a little faster.
Four police cars surged past us, lights afire and sirens blazing. In the rotating red and blue, I thought I could make out a weird blur behind us on the sidewalk, but my eyes just couldn't make sense of it.
The Portal in the Forest Page 5
