Chapter 28 - The Man of Wind and Moss

They parked in the same lot that held them the first time. John, the jacket-wearing attendant, wasn’t there anymore. Nobody was. The metal gates hung open and rusty, and it seemed like cars hadn’t parked there in longer than a year. Grass grew wildly and ferns clawed out from under the perimeter. Marco had driven the final stretch and when he cut the engine, Sasha and him sat there in an odd, spooky silence. It was night. The headlights illuminated the dense forest before them, but after a long minute of mute anxiety, the lights went out and the darkness of the forest hurried to the windows.

More Marco than Sasha, but they both smelled like smoke. Marco still hadn’t shaken off what he witnessed in the greenhouse. When they peeled out of Sharpwood and Gaiety blazed behind them, Sasha kept asking him what happened in there, but then she realized that he wasn’t answering, not to save her sanity, but because he didn’t know how.

Sitting in the car was a respite. He rubbed his dirty hands on his jeans. He surveyed out the windshield. There was no point dwelling on the fear he just escaped. He simply had to lean into the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

“Maybe they closed this point after everything that happened,” he finally suggested.

A beat passed.

“I’m going to look around,” Sasha said.

She opened the car door and Marco flinched. The cool night came in louder than anticipated. Crickets chirped and birds whistled, and trees swayed and creaked.

Do you know what a flock call is?

“Shit,” Marco, realized. “We don’t have a map to get in.”

“Oh, so now you like maps,” she winked.

“That’s not funny,” Marco joked, and a quick laugh snuck out of him. It felt good to laugh. His brain was coming out of his ears. His heart still hadn’t slowed down. His jeans were damp with urine. But laughing felt good. Good in the way a balloon must feel when someone releases it and it blows gleefully around the house, ready to die from exhaustion wherever it crashes.

“There might be one in that booth over there,” Sasha said. She gestured with her chin to a ramshackle booth that the attendant worked out of. Only now it was abandoned and sat like a sepulcher.

Sasha reached into the back seat and grabbed a flashlight. She pulled it back and stepped out onto the grass, flipping it on. The beam of light cut through the night. It was only ten or so, but the place felt out of time and otherworldly, like it had never been daytime in that particular plot of land. Marco realized that he only remembered the place at night, when they first arrived. After Doll died and they followed the stream back, they must have showed up there at the lot, in daylight, sure, but Marco couldn’t remember much of it. His brain skirted around the image. Gun to his head he couldn’t remember much from those last few hours when the woods spat them out all chewed up and dripping wet. There was Ranger Hartke, yeah. And there was John. But what did the sky look like? What was the weather? Did it matter? The car lot before them now jogged his memory in another direction. Just a few yards away was where the hunter had laid with his throat cut open. The hunter who was friends with the other hunter, lost in the woods. Somewhere past the gate was the trail where they heard those first few screams. Then there was Paula’s cabin. Then everything else. Queasiness spread in him like an algae bloom.

He stayed put in the driver’s seat and watched Sasha walk to the attendant’s booth and disappear into the wooden shack. The lights inside the Nissan had turned off and he sat in the car and let his eyes adjust. In the back seat was Zaäper, and he trained his eyes not to look in the rearview mirror. Poor Calvina. Poor Chichi. Poor Doll. Poor Lily. All of this his fault.

But it’d be over soon.

“Come on,” he whispered to himself. “Get out there and help her.”

He put his hand on the latch but couldn’t bring himself to open the door. He had the keys in his right hand, and he contemplated turning the car back on and getting out of there. He made a quiet deal with himself that if Sasha didn’t come out of the shack, then he would drive home. But why wouldn’t she come out of the shack? Why would you even think that? He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and looked out the window to the booth. The glow of her flashlight was gone. Through the trees just above he thought he could see someone short, watching, with fangs and claws, floating up there above the highest branch, his dwarfish toes just grazing the tips of the leaves. That’s why she might not come out. Because He’s up there. My brother in Christ, you’re in the woods now.

He’s everywhere.

A minute passed. Then another. Finally, she stepped back out waving a folded paper and pointing her flashlight at the car and then at the map in her hand. Marco exhaled and climbed out of the Nissan, fairly confident that he wouldn’t be climbing back in or that if he did, like the first time he came back from these woods, he definitely wouldn’t be processing it. His mind would be elsewhere. Somewhere very far away indeed.

* * *

The trail moved them forward like a conveyor belt. Sasha had given him the map, and he took the lead. Strapped to his back was the cooler with groceries and in his left hand, just like when he carried the guitar case, he gripped his Adidas bag. His knuckles were already hurting from curling around the cloth handle.

“Why didn’t you bring your backpack?” Sasha asked, watching him readjust the duffle bag and the cooler on his back. She held Zaäper to her chest.

“I didn’t want to,” he said. He figured he could just tell her that it was filled with mud and detritus, and she’d probably believe him, but he didn’t want to verbalize the scenario. He didn’t want to explain to her that he was truly, literally, getting it from all sides. He was afraid it’d sound insurmountable, and it was already getting pretty close to that.

Painted blazes came and went, and Marco was surprised at how exhausted he was. His body felt resistant to the hike, defiant almost, like his knees and ankles knew where they were marching and resented him for it. The metal in his jaw started to hum and his head started pounding. A whistling came from his nose. His body was reacting to something in the woods.

“How much further?” Sasha asked. She sounded labored as well.

“It’s not far,” he said. He looked at the map in his hand. His other hand was cramping, and he dropped the duffel bag onto the trail.

“You should’ve just brought your bag,” she said.

“Enough with the bag,” Marco shot back. “It was covered in mud and shit. Filled with it. Packed to the brim. And I was in a bit of a hurry if you don’t recall. Just drop it.”

Sasha shined her light on him, and he winced and turned his face away.

“Hey, I’m on your side here.”

“I know, I know, it’s just—” He reached down for the duffel bag and the cooler on his back shifted weight and threw him off-balance and he fell onto his butt. “Motherfucker!” He slipped the cooler off and kicked it across the trail and milk and juice and canned goods tumbled out. “God-fucking-dammit!!”

He was fuming. The trail had gone quiet. Last year, around this area and around this time, they had heard the screams coming from below, deeper in the valley of the forest when they played that call and repeat with those faceless strangers. This time it was quiet. It was perfectly still, and he couldn’t tell if that was worse.

“Take a breath,” Sasha said. “Relax.”

Marco did as instructed. The first part anyway. He put his hands on his head and took a big breath. The flashlight resting on the top of his crown cast a sideways light at the border of trees. Eyes glimmered back and then rustled deeper into the woods. It was a little critter most likely. Hopefully.

“I just want to get there already,” Marco said. He grabbed the cooler and set it up and tossed the spilled food back inside of it. “I don’t want to talk about the forest in my apartment and how it’s some ancient curse.”

“We can’t just not communicate,” Sasha retorted.

“I’m communicating that I’m scared, okay? I think we’re fucked. I saw Doll again back there. I saw Pansy’s kid. Sasha, this thing wants me dead. And I’m feeling guilty! I blew our cover. I got Calvina killed. And our conversation in the car has been bouncing in my head. Why shouldn’t I give myself up and let Dean have a real life?”

“Because you deserve one too!” she shouted. She held the flashlight steady on him, trapping him in place. “You’re a good person, Marco. The only mistake you made was going after the Black Arms creep and you were right to do it. You did it for me. And for Ray. Taking us out here for the first time wasn’t a mistake. Confessing your love to Pansy was annoying, yeah, but it wasn’t a crime. What’s frustrating is you just rolling over and taking it. There is no more normalcy. We have to go forward. We have to.”

Marco took another breath. They were coming easier now, and he hoisted the cooler back onto his shoulders. He crouched low for his duffel bag and scooped it up.

“I just can’t let you get hurt too,” Marco said. The light was in his face when he said it, but he could make out the shift in her posture.

“Then how about we hurry up and get to the cabin. Because we’re kind of sitting ducks right now.”

“Yeah. Good idea.”