What Waits in the Woods

by Kieran Scott

  They really want to get out of here, Callie thought. They’re just as scared as we are.

  It couldn’t have been Ted. He was too shocked when they found Lissa’s body. There was no way he could have faked that, was there?

  Her gaze traveled to Zach. Even though he wielded all kinds of power at school, he’d never been anything but nice to her. She couldn’t imagine him hurting Lissa when she really thought about it. But she also couldn’t imagine him doing what he’d already admitted to doing—following them, taunting them, torturing them. If he was capable of that, what else was he capable of?

  Slowly, Callie dragged her gaze toward Lissa, lying motionless on the blanket. She thought about her friend, how difficult and prickly she had been. Now, Callie would have given anything for another moment of Lissa’s cruelty, if it meant that she was okay. But she wasn’t okay.

  Callie felt grief and shock battle inside her as she watched Ted and Jeremy carefully lift Lissa up onto the stretcher. Then Zach and Jeremy each took an end, crouching between their makeshift handles.

  “Ready?” Zach said to Jeremy. “One, two, three.”

  The two of them stood and the weight of Lissa’s body sat heavily inside the vinyl, an awkward, slippery load suspended down beneath the branches. Callie’s throat constricted. They were going, and Lissa was coming with them.

  The sky was growing darker when Callie and Penelope rounded a bend and came upon an empty fire pit in the middle of a long, flat stretch of trail. It looked as if someone had given up trying to find a suitable camping spot and simply crashed. Penelope let go of Callie and limped over to a large pine tree, collapsing against the trunk.

  “What’re you doing?” Ted asked as the boys caught up with them.

  “I can’t anymore,” Penelope sputtered. “I’m sorry, but I just … I can’t take another step.”

  Callie stood up straight for the first time in hours and rolled her shoulders back. Her side hurt from bending toward Penelope, and she’d developed a nasty crick in her neck. The day couldn’t have been any longer—hobbling over rough terrain with Penelope while watching Lissa’s body sway between whichever duo was carrying her at that moment.

  Callie thought about her parents. She longed to see them like she’d never longed for anything. By now, her dad must have been waiting for hours in the state park parking lot where they’d agreed to meet. All the parents had been waiting for hours. By now, they knew their kids were lost. Had they sent out a search party? Had they called the authorities? Callie wondered if her father had left to pick up her mom at the airport, or if he’d sent someone else. A neighbor, a colleague, a cop? Did her mom also know that Callie was missing?

  And what were Lissa’s parents going to do when they found out their daughter was dead?

  “How far to your cabin, Ted?” Callie asked. The question tasted tart on her tongue, because she knew that every last one of them doubted the existence of said cabin, at least a bit. But the idea of it was all Callie had to cling to.

  “I’d say another three-quarters of a mile or so,” Ted said, bending his knees to lower Lissa to the ground. Jeremy did the same, then walked a few paces up the trail to where Zach was standing. “I was hoping we could get there today, but … maybe we should make camp for the night. If we start fresh in the morning, we can be there in less than an hour.”

  Jeremy scoffed, hands on his hips, shaking his head at the ground.

  “What?” Ted asked.

  “Does this cabin even exist, or are you just playing some kind of twisted mind game with us?” Jeremy snapped, his eyes wide.

  “Um, I’m not the one coming off as twisted right now,” Ted said, raising his hands with an incredulous look on his face. “Am I right, ladies?”

  “Dude, I’d watch what you say,” Zach warned, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

  “My ankle hurts,” Penelope whined.

  Callie brought her hands to her head and turned away from Jeremy, Ted, Penelope, Zach—and the body. She felt like she was a bottle of soda and some stupid kid was shaking her up, bringing every bit of fizz inside of her to the top, just ready to blow.

  “Do you actually know anything about this mountain, or was that all bragging to impress the girls?” Jeremy demanded.

  “You’re such a jealous little twit,” Ted said snidely.

  “Where’s the cabin, Ted?!” Jeremy shouted, getting right in his face. “What are you getting out of this? What’s the point of lying? Are you the one who killed Lissa? Are you planning to pick off another one of us tonight?”

  “Jeremy!” Callie gasped.

  “What?” Jeremy said. “Everyone suspects him. It was time someone said it.”

  Ted whirled on Jeremy, his eyes wild. “Shut up right now, Little Man.” He spit at Jeremy’s feet and suddenly, Callie saw something snap in Jeremy’s eyes.

  “No! Don’t!” Callie shouted.

  But it was too late. Jeremy flung himself at Ted, tackling him to the ground with one hard shoulder to the stomach. Penelope screamed as Jeremy reared back, his fist cocked to punch. But Ted was too fast. He brought his fist down like a sledgehammer into Jeremy’s chest. Jeremy’s face went slack. The whole thing went down in about two seconds while Zach just stood there, watching.

  “What is the matter with you?” Callie shouted at him as she raced to Jeremy’s side.

  “What?” Zach said, palms up. “He was handling it.”

  Callie put her hands on Jeremy’s shoulders. His eyes were wide, terrified. “Breathe! You have to breathe!” She whirled around to glare at Ted. “You knocked the wind out of him!”

  “Whatever. He started it.”

  Jeremy sucked in a ragged, gasping breath and then coughed. Callie helped him sit up as he gulped for air.

  “You’re okay,” she told him. “You’re okay.”

  He nodded and pushed himself to his feet. Callie went with him, her hand still on his back, but she flinched away when she saw the look in his eyes. The awful glint was back, the same one she’d seen when he’d glared at Lissa that day by the river.

  “Jeremy?” Callie said uncertainly.

  He didn’t respond. Instead, he let out a guttural cry and rushed at Ted, his fists clenched. Ted reached behind him, beneath the shirt that was tied around his waist. There was a flash and suddenly, Callie heard a click. Jeremy stopped in his tracks. Ted was holding a gun out straight in front of him with both hands. The barrel was trained directly on Jeremy’s face.

  “You have a gun?!” Jeremy demanded, reeling backward. “I thought that was just a joke.”

  Callie’s heart was in her throat as she looked back and forth between the two of them. Any fear she’d felt over the past few days paled compared to this. Jeremy. She couldn’t let Jeremy die. The desperation pumping in her veins was almost too much to bear.

  She loved him. Her whole chest filled with the realization. She loved him and she had to stop this.

  “It’s no joke, dude,” Ted said.

  Zach skirted sideways toward Callie, but Callie couldn’t move. What was she supposed to do? Tackle Ted? That didn’t seem like a good plan, considering it might make the gun go off. But what? One twitch of Ted’s finger and Jeremy’s life would be over.

  “Is that thing loaded?” Penelope asked, sounding alert for the first time in hours.

  “Do you really want to find out?” Ted replied, keeping his sights on Jeremy.

  His snide tone made something inside Callie break, and the combination of anger and fear that rushed forth was uncontrollable.

  “I don’t believe this!” she cried as Jeremy slowly worked his way toward Callie in a wide arc around Ted, who followed him the whole way with the gun. “First you whip out a butcher’s knife big enough to take down a rhino, and now you have a gun? How are we supposed to trust you after this?”

  Ted lifted a shoulder. “It’s a good question. How about you tell me why I should trust you? All I know about you people is what I’ve seen the past couple of days, an
d one thing is totally obvious—you and Lissa clearly hated each other, Little Man. So you tell me. How do I know you’re not a murderer?”

  Zach’s gaze darted to Jeremy, his eyes sharp, as if this was the first moment it had occurred to him that any one of them could have done this—not just Ted. And that reality hit Callie square in the chest, too. She knew that she and Jeremy and Pen were innocent, but she could suddenly see this whole thing from Ted’s perspective. To him, they were strangers. Complete and total ciphers. And clearly the fact that he was outnumbered had him totally wigged.

  She had to talk him down. She had to make him feel safe. She had to get him to put the gun away.

  “You don’t,” Callie said.

  Jeremy turned to her, the depth of his hurt plain on his face. “What?”

  “I’m just saying, none of us really knows,” Callie said slowly. “Either there’s someone else out there stalking us,” she said, looking pointedly at Zach. “Or one of us did it. But even if one of us did, it’s not like that person’s ever going to admit it. Right?”

  The air was thick with suspicion as they all looked around at one another.

  “So for now, we just have to try to coexist,” Callie said. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

  She took a deep breath and looked Ted in the eye. “Please, Ted. Don’t do anything rash. Do you really want to go to jail just because you stopped to help out a few lost campers? Because you tried to do the right thing?”

  Ted blinked. He finally lowered the gun and Callie blew out a relieved breath. Jeremy was okay. For now.

  With his free hand, Ted rubbed his brow, pinching the skin between his fingers.

  “Look, Callie’s right. It’s pretty clear none of us trusts anyone else,” he said. “And it’s not getting any lighter out here. I say we make a fire, eat what’s left of the peanut butter out of the tube, and get some sleep.”

  Sleep. Yeah, right, Callie thought.

  “Unless you have some food on you,” Jeremy said acerbically to Zach.

  Penelope’s wavering eyes widened. “Yeah! You must have something to eat, right? I can’t believe you’ve been following us all this tim and didn’t come out just to offer us something.”

  Zach looked a little green. “Actually, I’m all out. I didn’t plan to be here as long as I was.”

  Ted rolled his eyes.

  “Whatever. I don’t need to eat anyway, but there’s no way I’m sleeping,” Jeremy said. “Not with you toting two deadly weapons.”

  “Fine, then we’ll stay up all night and keep a good, suspicious eye on each other,” Ted replied sarcastically. “Whatever. Let’s find some wood.”

  Callie tried to catch Jeremy’s gaze, but he turned away from her, his shoulders hunched. With a sigh, she took to the other side of the clearing, picking up broken branches and cradling them in her weakened arms. Her whole body felt shaky. But her fear had become a living thing, creeping its way around her chest, springing up and down on her heart, using her ribs as a jungle gym. It had taken up a gleeful, alert residence and she was certain it was never going to leave.

  What if one of these people really was a killer? If Lissa, always tough, always brave, hadn’t been able to defend herself, Callie had no chance. For the first time ever, she was forced to truly consider her weakness, her lack of size, her total cluelessness about self-defense.

  She felt like she knew nothing of value. Like she’d spent her entire life up to this point wasting her time studying, writing stories without endings, reading fantasy novels, doing her nails, and texting pointless photos and memes to her friends. All that time she could have been lifting weights, training, taking karate or Krav Maga or boxing or anything. Anything that could actually save her life.

  She tromped back to the fire pit and deposited her kindling next to the rocks, then sank to the ground. Ted eventually got the fire going and passed around first the tube of peanut butter and then his bag of trail mix. Callie took her portion and ate it slowly, piece by measly piece, rolling the granola and nuts and chocolate and raisins around in her mouth. No one pitched a tent. They simply rolled their sleeping bags out around the fire like spokes on a wheel and sat, watching the flames, watching one another.

  Callie did want to stay up all night. She couldn’t imagine sleeping, not with Lissa’s corpse close by, not with fear and mistrust coursing through her.

  Zach seemed primed to avoid sleep, sitting straight up with his legs folded in some kind of yoga pose, staring unblinkingly at the fire. But eventually, Penelope leaned back on her elbows, then lay flat, and then she fell asleep. Before long Callie felt herself start to nod off. She’d close her eyes and drift for a moment and every time begin to dream of Lissa, which would then startle her awake.

  “Cal, lie down and get some sleep,” Jeremy said finally. They were the first words he’d spoken to her in hours. He crawled over to her, unzipped her sleeping bag, and gestured to her to get in. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Callie looked into his eyes and saw just Jeremy. The Jeremy she had trusted and loved. The Jeremy she’d invited on this trip to keep her company, to have her back, if things didn’t work out with the girls. He couldn’t be a murderer, could he?

  She looked at Ted and Zach, both stoic and silent, the fire casting odd, distorting shadows across their faces.

  What did it matter, anyway? She wouldn’t be able to defend herself even if she was awake. Being asleep actually wasn’t going to make much of a difference.

  “Okay,” she said quietly, giving in, giving up. “Thank you, Jeremy.”

  He smiled wanly at her. She crawled inside her sleeping bag and fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.

  Fear is such an insidious thing. It can take hold in an instant, but is the hardest thing to shake. It can inspire suspicion where there should be none and fracture even the tightest bonds.

  It can also be a very useful tool. Especially when one wants to divide and conquer. Add a bit of fear to the mix and suddenly, everyone’s out for themselves, everyone’s watching their own backs. But they never know which way to look, really, which way to turn. In trying to protect themselves, they scatter their attention. They become unable to focus. Unable to see what’s right in front of them. Or behind them. Or next to them.

  They forget that the greatest danger often lies within.

  The sunlight woke Callie and she sat up, surprised. Somehow, she’d slept right through the night. Her eyes went directly to Lissa’s body, still wrapped in the torn-up tent. So it wasn’t a nightmare. Yesterday had actually happened.

  Swallowing down a lump in her throat, Callie looked at Jeremy. He was passed out, too, on top of his own sleeping bag, but something was wrong. His legs were covered in reddish-brown muck, some dried, some wet, and his fingers were dark with it, too. Her eyes slowly trailed up to his face, which twitched in his sleep. There was a smear of red across one cheek.

  Blood. There was no denying it. Jeremy was covered in blood.

  Callie shoved herself out of her sleeping bag and scuttled backward. Penelope was nowhere to be seen. Ted and Zach were gone, too. She was alone. Alone in the woods with a boy who had bathed himself in blood and then somehow, disturbingly, fallen asleep without a thought of washing it off.

  What did you do, Jeremy? Callie thought, covering her mouth with one hand. What have you done?

  Callie gripped her shirt in her hands and twisted it, looking left and right.

  The only other person in sight was Lissa. Lissa’s dead gray hand reaching out from within her shroud.

  Jeremy rolled over and moaned. Callie tore off down the trail. She still wore her hiking boots from the night before, which was good, but her legs were weak, her head light. She’d barely eaten in two days. As she staggered up the dirt path, she realized she had no clue where she was going. Had she taken off in the direction from which they’d come? Her head swam.

  “Focus, Callie. Focus,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She heard a whisper, or
possibly a breath, and froze. The air was thick and warm like milk bubbled over a fire, but a cold finger of fear grazed the back of her neck. She opened her eyes again. Nothing.

  “Penelope?” she whisper-shouted. “Pen? Are you out there?”

  There was a crack. One clean break of a branch.

  “Callie!” Jeremy called out, his voice reedy. “Callie? Where are you?”

  An awful, strangled sound escaped Callie’s throat and she took off running again. She shoved twiggy branches away from her face, their sharper points tearing at her arms, but she kept going.

  “Caaaallieeee!” Jeremy sang. “Caaaaallieee!”

  I don’t want to die, Callie thought, searching the trees wildly as they flew past her. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.

  Every moment she hoped to see some sign of Penelope or Zach or Ted, but at the same time she dreaded she’d trip over one of them like she had Lissa. The memory of that horror snaked its way through her chest and clung to her heart as if trying to stop its beating.

  Please let them be alive. Please let them be okay.

  “Caaallieeee! Where are you?”

  Callie stopped. His voice seemed to come from in front of her now, rather than behind. She whirled around. Had she already passed that tree? There was an ugly, angry gash through its center, like someone had tried to chop it down, but given up. She was certain she’d seen it before. Where was she? Where was Jeremy? She started to run again when someone stepped out of the trees. She collided hard with his body and cried out, sinking to her knees in fear.

  “Please don’t hurt me. Please. Please don’t hurt me!”

  “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  Callie looked up. It was Ted. He reached down to help her up. Callie’s lungs flooded with relief.