What Moves in the Forest (Short Story)

What Moves in the Forest
A Dystopia Rising: The Pike Story
By Jenn Tharp

Find the audio version here: https://youtu.be/PkrJfqGpU3o

Lucky Gerber was being watched.

Lucky knew from forests. They’d grown up in the Pine Barrens, and even if they’d spent the majority of their adult life so far in Woodsworth Mills writing up paperwork at the Cog & Compass Coalition, they still had the instincts of a Barrener written somewhere deep. They knew that forests, particularly unfamiliar forests, were not something to be treated lightly.

They had maybe forgotten that, when they’d decided to go on a survey hike into the Candlewood for the Wells Society.

It had just seemed like such an exciting idea, back then. Back when the sun wasn’t setting, and they were standing in the lodge watching Last Eve workers scurry around making fixes to the roof before it snowed again, and installing a workbench for the locals. It was exciting, they realized now, like an open wound was exciting, not like a party was exciting. They sometimes had trouble telling the difference.

But the rumors were all so strange, and they wanted to be able to tell the people from Barrens’ Reach something legitimate about the local area, its flora and fauna and all of the various things in between. Last Eve wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to go exploring in the daylight, and they outright avoided the forest in the dark. So Lucky had set out with a backpack and some water and a notebook, and they had walked into the woods.

The trouble was, they had walked into the woods at about noon, and traveled for about two hours on the same path in the same direction, taking notes on the different trees they could identify and on the distinct lack of animals they could hear in the minimal underbrush. Then, when they were comfortable with the amount of information they’d gleaned and uncomfortable with how cold it was, they’d turned around and walked two hours back towards Claimers’ Quarry again. And then another two hours. And they were still walking, while the shadows of the bare trees crowded on the uneven patches of snow on path in front of them, cast by the slowly fading daylight as the sun fell closer to the horizon.

The forest was endless. Lucky could see no difference from the path they’d walked in on, but they knew that it couldn’t possibly be the same one. Or maybe it was — maybe they’d seen that crooked tree before. Maybe they’d seen that rotting deadfall an hour ago. They couldn’t tell. In the patchy snow, in the last gasps of real winter, everything looked the same to them.

Fear, real fear, began to crawl up from their stomach and claw at their throat.

That was when they felt eyes on them.

They stopped in the center of the path. They wrapped their hands around the straps of their backpack and pulled their shoulders tight, looking first left and then right into the expanse of wet-dark trees on either side. Nothing moved. They let their breath go quiet, concentrating on what they could hear, putting every bit of their attention onto what might be lurking nearby.

There was the sound of a cracking branch from behind them.

They spun, coat flying out to either side of them, in time to see something dark moving behind a wide tree off the side of the path. Their heart hammered in their chest, fingers buzzing, head swimming. They called out, “Hello?”

No answer.

They waited. One beat. Two beats.

“Hello?” they called again. “If you’re a person, this isn’t funny. If you’re a zed, it also isn’t funny, but you don’t know that, I guess.”

They felt something laugh.

They didn’t hear it. It didn’t travel as vibrations in the air and hit their ears, rattling the little bones in there. They felt it. Inside of their head, they felt some kind of external mirth reverberating against their consciousness. Something dark and impossibly deep and unfathomably huge, laughing inside of them. It wasn’t a good laugh. It wasn’t fond. Lucky had the distinct sensation of being something small at the feet of something possibly too big to even consider them sentient.

The laugh stopped, and another branch cracked in the gathering shadows.

And Lucky ran.

They weren’t a great runner, but fear and adrenaline can make up for a lot of faults in a person, and Lucky was more afraid than they had ever been in their entire life.

The path stretched on before them like an endless roll of ribbon, trees creeping up on both sides, each more malicious looking than the one that came before it, each possibly hiding something terrible behind it, but still Lucky ran. Their legs ached and their chest felt like it was going to cave in, but they ran, and they ran, and they saw lights.

The lights bobbed toward them, and they truly could have been anything, a trick being played on them, but in this moment Lucky was willing the grasp at the shortest of straws, and they barreled forward down the path, calling in a breathless, whistling voice, “Help! Help!”

The bobbing lights stopped. Lucky saw shapes behind them, but they couldn’t make out any details.

“Gerber?” they heard someone call.

Lucky burst into tears.

“It’s me!” they shrieked. They kept running until they were in the very middle of the group, almost knocking a few of them over. They only stopped when someone arm-barred them across the chest and knocked the wind out of them. They bent down over the knees, wheezing and crying and babbling their thanks while the Last Eve contingent gave each other knowing, eye-rolling looks over their head. They didn’t care. Yes, they’d been foolish to go in there. Yes, they knew better now. Someone hauled them up straight and helped them start moving back toward Claimer’s Quarry. Lucky could see more lights up the path, standing out in the blue-black night that had fallen now.

Yes, foolish, of course. Yes, they knew better.

But even as they tried to catch their breath, even as they tried to stop their relieved tears so as to not look like a complete mess in front of these people who were supposed to have some amount of respect for them, Lucky couldn’t help but start to think. The gears in their head couldn’t help but whir, and wind, and they couldn’t help but consider. What had they heard out there? What great thing had laughed at them in their own mind?

What was it that they could feel watching them, even now, as they crossed out of the treeline and back into town?

It was something to look into, certainly.