The Woods

         They say that some evils are inevitable. I don't how much truth there is to that, but my perspective as of late has seen distinct towards that belief. After what happened four days ago in the woods I'm not sure I'll ever be the same again. I never believed in God or a higher power, but now I'm certain that there is something stalking the nature trails that snake through Arnett Park. I will not step within a hundred feet of that terrible place again.
         It was me, my girlfriend Anna, and my best friend Garett. We packed all of our hiking gear into Garett's jeep and decided that we were going to experience nature in hopes that it would spur some kind of reflection on my last day as a teenager. It was around noon when we arrived there, though we had on a much earlier time. Anna had forgotten to pack the previous night so she needed a little extra time to get ready, which wasn't much of a problem. It was the day before my birthday after all and nothing could bring me down.
         "This is gonna be a good day," Garett remarked as he handed me my backpack.
         "We haven't been hiking in forever man. I mean, you know they had these trails closed down for a long time," I replied. It was true, there had been too much erosion on some of the steeper hills, so renovation work had to be done. It took a long time to repair everything, and I never actually hiked any of the trails there before despite the fact that the park was ten miles from my house and twenty miles closer than any of my frequent trails.
         "My dad used to hike up here. He said that the view was great," Garett said.
         "Well mine said that these trails can get pretty confusing. People used to get lost up here all the time," Anna warned.
         "We have smart phones now instead of maps, grandma," Garett teased. Anna punched him hard in the shoulder, actually causing him to wince a little bit.
         As we began our ten mile hike I noted that even though the trail had re-opened it hardly looked like it was fit for use. Weeds covered much of the path and crabgrass infestations were rampant. Poison ivy grew dangerously close as well, sometimes just barely brushing against edges trying to ambush those first time hikers that always seemed to end up with some sort of rash. The trees were healthy and rather imposing, like giant sentinels guarding the woods. It felt as if littering would bring down judgment upon some poor soul via a grand council of oaks and redwoods.
         Birds sung sonatas to each other in the trees, watching us as we passed through their domain, while squirrels foraged about anxiously already beginning to hoard for winter. Once or twice I saw fox peering out at us from a hiding place or far off in the distance, content to never intersect paths with us troublesome humans. It was the epitome of the perfect day, with the sun shining high above us and not a cloud in the sky. A cool breeze blew past us from time to time, preventing us from overheating like a natural air conditioner.
         Besides the fact it was healthy, there was deeper meaning behind the hikes for us as well. Four years prior there had been a fourth hiker with us, a girl named Casey. The four of us were as close as could be, doing pretty much everything together, but the one time she went hiking alone she was kidnapped. She was older than us and already driving; they found her car in a ditch almost thirty miles away and her body, naked and violated, in a ditch in Arkansas. So we hiked as much as we could together to remember her, and to stay strong, and let her know we were thinking about her wherever she was. We often joked she was up in heaven playing her violin.
         It was around two in the afternoon when the service on our cell phones was completely cut off. Luckily Garett brought the map just in case as any smart hiker would. Of course none of us had needed a map in years, so it was little tricky to jump back into reading it.
         "I'm pretty sure we're on this one here," Anna said, pointing to one of the many branching lines which indicated where the trails were.
         "Nah I think we're over here actually," Garett replied, pointing to a trail in the completely opposite direction.
         "Who made you the supreme master of navigation?" Anna asked in frustration.
         "Chill, no need to get violent. Put a leash on her will you?" he said turning to me. I put my hands up and took a step back. Intervening in the wrath of Anna was like walking through an unmarked minefield with a blindfold on.
It about twenty minutes to finally decide on where we were during which time Anna became incredibly frustrated. She was pacing around in circles impatiently, and frequently taking sips from her water bottle. We had never been lost before, even when the smart phones hadn't lived up to their name. Looking at the map we couldn't find any of the landmarks placed on it to help identify the trails. Finally Garett pointed out a trail that was no longer in service almost a mile away from where we were planning to be.
"How the hell did we get here?" I wondered aloud. Unfortunately all of the landmarks matched up. Even more perplexingly, it said on the map that it would be a five mile hike back to the open trails, and we'd only been walking for about thirty minutes.
"Whoever made this is an idiot," Garett declared.
         "Either that or your just an idiot and you're reading it wrong," Anna replied icily.
         "What's wrong with you?" I finally asked, fed up with the way she was acting.
         "It's nothing, I just don't feel comfortable here," she said quickly. I inspected her closely noticing that she seemed incredibly anxious. She was tapping her foot and her eyes were darting around the forest like she was looking for something. I followed her gaze and looked deep into the trees but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.
         We decided to walk back to where the trails started and call it a day. We would hike on one of the trails we were more familiar with even if it meant driving to another park. Oddly the woods had become dead silent contrasting how it was when we walked in. I could hear every single footstep we took and the weird echoes that they produced. Coming up to a bend in the trail I could see that Anna was still uncomfortable.
         "Are you sure you're okay?" I asked, sliding an arm around her.
         "I'm just getting this weird feeling. It's the kind of thing you feel when you're a kid. An irrational terror almost, like there's a monster under my bed," she explained.
         "There's nothing out here except bears maybe, and they're way further into the woods than where we are," Garett assured her.
         The trees in that part of the woods had different personality. They were twisted, gnarled, and unkempt, more like ghouls than sentinels. Most of them were dead or dying, essentially rotting from the inside out. There wasn't a bird or squirrel in sight either, though I began to get the strangest feeling that I was being watched. Its clich I know, but there was this unshakable feeling that there was something out there. I wanted to kick myself for letting Anna's nonsensical fear burrow its way into me like a parasite.
         "Well I guess your dad was right, Anna. It is pretty freaking easy to get lost out here," I lamented, wondering when we had walked into what felt like a completely different world and why we hadn't noticed it in the first place.
         "We're all thinking the same thing aren't we?" Garett asked.
         "That this place is fucking weird?" Anna snapped. I nodded in agreement as I listened closely for even the slightest sound of life besides us.
         "That's one way of putting it," he muttered. Garett was looking noticeably uneasy, as if he were walking on thin ice.
         When it came time for us to arrive where the paths were supposed to meet, we instead found a dead end. Garett scratched his head and looked around, his brain unable to quite register what was going on. I snatched the map out of his hands and looked down at it. We had followed the right path, but it led us nowhere. Looking at the map to see where we could have made a mistake, I began to hear something faintly. Looking all around I couldn't find a source for the noise, both my friends and the woods were otherwise silent. I finally pinpointed where we were on the map and discovered that somehow we had managed to go in the opposite direction. We were at the end of the closed trail instead of the beginning.
         "What the hell? How did that happen?" Garett asked in disbelief.
         "I knew you'd read it wrong you asshole," Anna replied, again socking him. She was becoming noticeably disheveled, and Garett seemed to be teetering on the edge too. He looked tired from walking, but his attention was also coming and going. He began staring off into the distance for long intervals of time before snapping back to attention as if nothing had happened. I would have asked him what he was looking at, but I'm not even sure he knew he was doing it.
         "Alright guys let's just walk back the other way. We already know this is the wrong way so the other way has to be right," I assured them. Again I could hear a strange sound in the distance which I felt like I heard before. It sounded like music.
         As we walked back in the other direction, hoping that this time it was right direction, I couldn't help but wonder if this is what it was like to be lost in the forest and never found. Did people just wander until they died? Did they continue to wander after that too? I pushed those dark thoughts from my mind and focused on walking. I could still hear something far off in the distance but it was just far enough out of reach where I couldn't make out exactly what it was. The pervasive feeling of something watching me continued to press at the inside of my brain like a stranger trying to break in.
         "My cell phone still doesn't have any service," Garett said. There was an edge in his voice forged by his frustration. He was getting fed up with things, and admittedly it was starting to play with my nerves as well. I had this strange vision of perpetually wandering in circles, trapped in a spell like the one in the Blair Witch Project. In that vision we kept walking until our feet were broken and are body's severely lacking nutrition. In the back of my mind I had always been afraid of getting lost in the woods, but I never really expected it to happen.
         "You had to pick this freaking park didn't you?" Anna said to me venomously. She had only spoken to me that way one other time, following Casey's death when she was still trying to make sense of it all. She had blamed it on me because I hadn't been feeling well enough to go, even though I told her she could if she wanted to. She had stayed home to take care of me by choice. She said horrible things to me in that state, almost ending our relationship.
         "I'm sorry," I said, holding back a more offensive retort. It was clear that they were both dehydrated and not in the right mind, so I had to stay level. If we were going to make it out of that maze of trees which seemed to wind on endlessly in a serpentine fashion somebody had to keep hold of rationality. The last thing I wanted to do was add fuel to an already dangerous fire, and pissing off Anna wasn't going to make things any easier. On top of that I started mistaking trees for someone standing in the distance, and it was beginning to get dark out.
         The greens of the tree leaves and browns of the tree trunks seemed darker than they should have. It was like someone had messed with the settings on a video camera, and the result had produced a freaky alternate world where shadows were blacker than black. Anna was getting jumpy and actually started shivering at some point. I slid an arm around her, holding her close to me not only to reassure her but myself. Garett continued to power on but he was limping a little bit and I had no doubt there were blisters forming on his foot. It felt like we had been walking forever and the destination never seemed to get any closer.
         When we had stopped to take a break at one point, I felt this strange sensation of someone looking over my shoulder. I turned around to be greeted by absolutely nothing, but the music I had heard before suddenly got much louder for a split second. It sounded familiar almost like I had heard it somewhere before, but it I just couldn't make out what it was. I couldn't tell if Anna and Garett were hearing it too, but something was bothering both of them. We didn't do all that much talking, as the two of them spent most of the time staring off into space. At one point I thought Anna had whispered something, but when I asked her what she said she quickly told me she hadn't spoken at all.
         "Night will be coming soon. Maybe we should just stay here until morning," I offered. The two of them nodded solemnly.
         When darkness had set in it was so quiet I could barely tell if Garett was still with us. I was holding Anna's limp hand so I knew where she was, but he could have gotten up and walked away and I might not have known the different. The whispering music still graced my ears, and I felt almost like I could see something moving about in the shadows but I knew better than to believe that. I was exhausted and I knew my eyes couldn't be trusted. Taking a small sip of the water I laid my head back against the tree, falling asleep much more easily than I had thought.
         I dreamt of seventh grade when I had first met Casey. She had been sitting alone in the music room while I walked in, an impossibly beautiful girl playing and impressive sonata on her violin. She looked at me and smiled as I walked in, sitting in the corner of the room and clumsily pulling my cello out. It was my first day of orchestra, and she was chair violinist. She played music far beyond anyone I had heard before. There was a grace to the way she drew the bow across the strings, like poetry through pure sound.
         "It's her," Garett yelled, jarring me from my sleep. I quickly looked over at him to discover a manic, almost psychotic look on his face as he pointed off into the distance. I followed his finger but all I saw was empty woods.
         "There's nobody there, man," I assured him, and Anna groaned. I looked over at her and could see then her eyes were bloodshot. She hadn't gotten much sleep throughout the night, not that I blamed her. I was surprised I had slept at all.
         "Yes there is, it's her!" he said, standing up excitedly. I thought he was hallucinating from dehydration and got up to offer him my water bottle. I held it up in front of him and told him to drink it but he just walked past me, still fixated on that one spot deeper in the woods. I squinted trying to figure out what he was pointing at, but there was nothing there you could even mistake for a person.
         Without grabbing his backpack or motioning us to follow him he began walking towards whatever he was looking at. I helped a very pale Anna to her feet and noted that I could hear the music once more, yet it seemed a little bit closer. We began to follow him, both mine and his backpack slung over my back and Anna hanging on my shoulder basically. She needed water badly and we were completely out. As we followed Garett I could hear him talking to himself under his breath.
         "What the fuck is he doing?" Anna asked weakly.
         "I don't know. He was talking crazy about seeing someone out here, but there's no one there," I replied.
         Suddenly Garett broke into a run, as if he were chasing something or in the case of his apparent hallucination, someone. I tried to run too, but I couldn't match his pace without leaving Anna behind and I wasn't comfortable doing that. If I got even the slightest bit disoriented she'd left alone out there, and who knew what would happen to her in the state she was in. I wasn't doing so great myself and I didn't like the idea of ending up alone out there.
         "Garett slow down! We need to stay together!" I yelled. If he heard me, he didn't make any indication of it. I caught glimpses of him ahead of me but he was running fast, and I didn't know how long I could keep Anna going even at the slower pace.
         I slowed to a walk hoping we'd find him somewhere up ahead. I could hear the music coming and going in waves. I was still unable to make out the tune, though I was certain that I had heard the song before. As we passed by trees that looked more like tortured souls, the air seemed to get colder. I couldn't look at the map to see where we were going because Garett had it in his pocket and he was somewhere ahead of us trying to catch a mirage.
         "I feel like crap," Anna said. She no longer sounded angry, but completely vulnerable, as if she were on her deathbed.
         "You got to keep going. He's just going to be up ahead here somewhere. He can't keep running forever his body will give out," I assured her.
         "Can you promise me something?" she asked.
         "Yeah anything," I replied.
         "Promise me we'll get out of these woods and never go hiking again," she said, letting out a slow sob somewhere in the middle of the sentence.
         "I promise," I told her.
         Eventually we came upon a stream, and that's when I noticed that there was blood on the trail. It looked like Garett had cut himself pretty badly on something. Looking up ahead I could just barely seem him walking along slowly. I wanted to keep going and catch up to him, but I'd lose Anna if I tried to keep pushing her. I couldn't let another girl I cared about die out in the woods. Anna collapsed to the ground and drank thirstily sucking up water like an electric pump. I could no longer see Garett in the distance.
         When Anna was finally well enough to walk again, we followed him once more deeper into the woods away from the trails. My hope was that he had kept going in a straight line, and not wandered off in some other direction. For a while there were wet footprints on the ground, but eventually they became less pronounced and then ceased altogether. Though Anna looked better than she had before, she still looked weak and pale and began to seem a little feverish. In addition her lips were moving like she was mumbling something under her breath.
         Suddenly I could hear Garett screaming somewhere ahead of us. It wasn't a scream of terror, it was more like cheering at an arena or a concert. I began to jog lightly, mindful of not putting too much pressure on Anna's weakened body. When we finally caught up to him, he was standing, looking across a ravine that had to be twenty feet deep. He was swaying back and forth as if in a trance and laughing hysterically.
         "It's her," he moaned when he heard a twig snap under my foot. I once again followed his gaze but could see nothing save for some disturbingly animate shadows.
         "There's nothing there Garett," I said. I let go of Anna's hand and walked towards him cautiously. He turned around for a second, revealing his hideously carved face and then jumped.
         As he fell he continued to laugh, and the crack that followed echoed throughout the ravine. Anna whimpered softly, holding on to my arm and trying to hold back her tears. The forest silent after that save for our breathing and the music which at times seemed to be playing five feet in front of me, but in the next split second seemed to be a hundred miles away. I turned away from the ravine and pulled Anna along with me. It took a second for her to start moving, her body almost completely frozen from shock.
         Garett had never been diagnosed with any psychological disorders that I knew of, but in his final moments there had been something wrong with him. His eyes had been cloudy, and he was smiling through his flayed skin. He had being someone who wasn't there. The dehydration might have gotten to him, but it seemed deeper than that. Dehydration could make someone act strangely, but I had never heard of it causing a full on psychological breakdown. I knew when he hit the ground that he was dead. The way his perverse laughter had suddenly cut off had been unnatural and sickening. He had dove head first off the side of the sheer wall, undoubtedly breaking his neck in an instant. Part of me wanted to go back and try to pull him out of there, have hope that he was still alive but I knew what I'd fine and I couldn't bear to see it.
         "What are we going to do now? We don't have the map," Anna pointed out.
         "There's no way down that ravine without climbing, and that could take hours and put both of us in danger. We're just going to walk in the same direction for as long as we can. These woods can't go on forever," I told her. Part of my mind wondered if they could in fact go on forever. There seemed to be no end to the trees who had almost become as much of adversary as the winding trails themselves. They stood there like an endless legion of monsters barring our escape for a worsening nightmare.
         It was after two hours of walking that Anna's condition began to worsen. Her movements became jerky and somewhat awkward. She missed a few times when reaching for her water, and accidently spilled it on herself due to shaky hands. She continued to mutter inaudibly under her breath and her eyes were far away. She almost reminded me of my uncle who had sleepwalked frequently when I was younger. I'd stay over at his house and sleep on the couch, waking up to him walking around aimlessly like he was following something that no one else could perceive. As if he were simultaneously in another world.
         This wasn't a dream though. Each step I took made my foot ache, and the uncomfortable feeling of mass perspiration made it hard to concentrate. We are already out of water again and hadn't come across the stream. There was a strange whining noise in my ear too, in addition to the music, which reminded me of a gnat buzzing in my ear. It seemed as though we were alone in the forest like all the animals had suddenly decided to vacate the premises for some unknown reason.  There were threatening clouds overhead which only made the unnatural darkness of that part of the forest look that much darker.
         For some reason I thought I could see the shadows moving on their own, dancing almost to the music in the distance. I closed my eyes and shook my head trying to force them to go away but when I opened them again they were still there dancing. Anna's teeth began to chatter, and her pace was slowly dwindling. She had become so pale that I could see veins in her face and forehead. Her eyes darted around and she began nod and shake her head, having a conversation of sorts in her own mind. Her grip on my arm would alternate between claustrophobically tight, and distressingly loose.
         "We're gonna get out of here soon, I promise," I told her.
         "I really hope so," she replied. Her voice was thick and hoarse. Reaching for my water bottle to give her a sip I felt something brush against my back.
         I spun around half expecting the terrible, mangled form of Garett my imagination had conjured to grab me by the throat and drag me into the dark, but instead I was greeted by the same empty woods that had been my captor for a day and a half. Turning back to the front I watched something slip behind the tree. It looked like the trail of an extravagant dress. My eyes were playing tricks on me, I knew, and they would continue to do so the longer we were lost out there. When I went to check my cell phone I realized that the battery had died.
         "Maybe we should just wait for someone to come looking for us," Anna suggested. In truth something about the woods made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. Looking at Anna I knew that she couldn't go much further without serious damage to her body and psyche.
         "Alright," I told her, slumping down against a tree. She followed suit and almost immediately fell into a deep sleep.
         I did my best to try and rest as well but my mind wouldn't let me. The dancing shadows continued to mess with my head, and the music continued to beckon to me from somewhere I couldn't pinpoint to save my life. I let my mind wander wherever it would go, staring blindly at the tree across from me.
         Twenty minutes later Anna began to scream in her sleep. I turned to look at her and saw that her nose was bleeding, and she was thrashing about as if trying to escape someone's grasp. Her vocal cords were tearing themselves apart, and her muscles convulsed involuntarily. I shook her trying to wake her up, but she wouldn't respond to anything. And then suddenly she was still.
She opened her eyes slowly and turned to look at me. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest as an unnaturally wide smile crossed her face.
         "She wants to come with her. We can wander these woods with her forever," Anna said in a hushed whisper. I could feel the buzzing in my ears again as the music slowly got louder.
         "There's nobody there          !" I shouted at her.
         Anna turned her head slowly and pointed a shaky finger towards a space between two trees. I turned my head to see what she was looking at and felt my heart skip more than just a beat. Standing there, in the dress which she had worn when she played violin for the musical while we were in high school, was Casey smiling brightly and playing her instrument as gracefully as that day in the music room.
         "You can't be here, you're dead," I breathed. The complex emotions running through my mind sent me reeling.
         "She's been waiting for us the whole time. This could be our forest, our home," Anna said excitedly. There was a manic look in her eyes which made me extremely uncomfortable. Turning to look back at Casey I could feel something distinctly wrong. I had been at her funeral and watched them lower her into the grave. Yet there she was standing front of me.
         "How...?" my voice trailed off as she began to walk towards us slowly. The dancing shadows became silhouettes waltzing together to the music. There was a poetic quality the movements and I could feel all of the tension leaving my body. It was when she just a few steps away from us that I began to feel a strange sensation, like something was trying to force its way inside of me.
         My eyes met with Casey's and I realized the ugly truth. The girl that I knew - the first girl I had ever loved - was nowhere to be found in that cruel malevolent gaze. Standing up slowly the illusion began to distort. Her dress was now ripped and tattered, and one of her eyeballs hung down her face. Her hair was matted with blood and dirt and her fingers were broken and gnarled. She reached out to touch me but I sidestepped it.
         "That isn't Casey," I told Anna, trying to pull her up off of the ground.
         "Of course it is. Who else would it be? Doesn't she look beautiful," Anna asked with stars in her eyes. Either she couldn't see through the illusion or she didn't want to, but I could tell that she truly believed that monster to be the same girl that all of us had cared so very deeply about. Forcing her up off of the ground I began to drag her along, walking away from the imposter as quickly as possible.
         "We have to get out of here," I demanded. Anna resisted my pulling, trying to go back towards the monster.
         "Wouldn't it just be easier to stay here forever?" she asked.
         "Do you really believe that Casey would have wanted us to die in this forest, or for Garett to kill himself like that?" I argued. It was no use though, and Anna broke free of my grasp causing me to stumble forward landing face down on the ground. I rolled over quickly and stood up, but Anna was already within arm's reach of it.
         She pulled the monster into a hug, clinging tightly to the hideous form. Then, without warning it tore into her back with jagged nails. Anna screamed violently as she began to bleed heavily. I looked around for something to defend myself with but there wasn't even a twig on the ground. The dancing silhouettes all turned to watch as the monster continued to ravage Anna, who was screaming and laughing hysterically. Like Garett had been. Her back was little more than a patchwork of loose flesh, and her throat had been slit, causing her laughter to turn into a strangled gurgling noise.
         Tears streamed down my face as I watched her bleed out on the ground. It was inevitable then. There was no way that I could get her to help in time to save her. She turned and looked at me on the ground, still smiling as if nothing were the matter. Raising her arm slowly she reached for me, asking me to come to her. I knew then that she was gone, that Anna had died as soon as she'd woken up, swallowed whole by the twisted insanity of those woods.
         I turned and ran, refusing to look back over my shoulder. No longer feeling my aching feet all I could do was hope somehow that I would find my way out. The woods began to shift around me, the trees warping and growing to block my path. Pushing my way through barriers of sharp, thorny branches. Little cuts began to open all across my skin which stung and I could feel myself slowly running out of time. If I looked over my shoulder I knew she'd be just inches away, ready to feed my blood into the soil. I continued to push through, fighting against my own tired body and forcing myself to keep going. The music was distorting then, the notes all out of tune and played unevenly.
         I could hear Anna calling out to me along with Garett. Those two would forever be denizens of that evil place, and they wished for me to come with them. I could feel the twisted monster pretending to be Casey brush against my skin just barely and knowing that I couldn't take much more, I gave my body one last forceful push throwing myself through the branches and collapsing to the ground. Turning back over my shoulder I could see it coming towards me with arms outstretched while the trees thrashed about anticipating the blood which would soon be drawn. Lying my head back on the dirt I allowed my vision to fade, and the unpolluted dream of Casey playing violin in the band room take over my mind.
         I woke up in the back of an ambulance about an hour and a half later. The police had been looking for us for almost a week, though we had only been in there for two days. When I asked them whether or not they found Anna and Garett in there, they shook their head. I told them to look for Garett in a ravine, but they just looked at me funny asked, "What ravine?" It turns out that those didn't have any.
         I don't know what I saw in there, or if I made some of it up because I was dehydrated. It haunts me every night though, and even now, I swear I hear them calling out to me to spend an eternity with them in those cursed, impossible woods.