Page 12 of The Bleeding Woods

Despite the daylight descending like time-lapsed rainfall through the canopy, this place is as dark as midnight on the moon.

Stepping off the road is like stepping off a spacecraft.

The asphalt’s familiarity is our sole tether to the world we’ve conquered.

Beyond it lies a realm dominated by the survivors of humanity’s greed.

Like Earth’s humble satellite, wilder lands uphold the illusion of connectivity.

They each feel like unpopular rooms in a huge mansion, distant libraries full of dusty books and shining mahogany.

Rarely visited, but still under the same roof.

In actuality, we own nothing. We paved a path of blackness through the center of this forest to stake a claim we cannot hold.

Here, we are nothing but foreign prey in a thorny tangle of predators.

Our spacecraft is idle, our communicators can’t reach Houston, and our team of astronauts is down a member.

“Did you see which way she went?” I ask my brother. He shrugs, his eyes darting through every gap in the bramble.

“She’s such a pain.” Jade’s voice is pure frustration, but the way she bites the edges of her cuticles, leaving them serrated and raw, tells a different story.

“Maybe she saw something. Maybe there was a hiker, or a headlight, or . . .” I run a hand down the length of my face. My lower lids stretch toward my cheekbones in response to the added weight. “Let’s go find her. She couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Why? The way I see it, we’ve got one less mouth to feed. Our rations will last longer while we wait thirty years for someone stupid enough to take this road,” she seethes.

I know she doesn’t mean that, but still a terrible sensation spreads through my chest. Adrenaline moves like antifreeze through my veins, lighting cold fires in every artery.

I clench my fists until my knuckles resemble pearly white molars.

Then I let the breath I’ve been holding exit through the tight gaps in my teeth with a low, audible hiss.

“Enough, Jade. This is serious. Come on, Joey,” I say, my footsteps leaving imprints in the brush beside the road.

He follows me with a shrunken posture, caved in around his rib cage.

Despite some quiet grumbling, Jade joins us shortly after.

We move in slow motion, moonwalking beyond veils of splintering bark and green ivy.

“Where are all the animals?” Joey’s gaze is still a pair of synchronized searchlights.

“Hibernating?” I guess. It is uncannily quiet.

Our footsteps make an orchestra of natural sound, our journey scored by crackling leaves and snapping branches.

Other than that, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

There are no rustles, chirps, bellows, or buzzes.

There is no evidence of life whatsoever, aside from our succession of mismatched shoe impressions.

“Seems a little early for that.” His voice is severe. It makes him sound like a stranger.

“Look who’s paying attention in class.” Jade gives him a playful push. He scurries back in alignment with us at the speed of light. “Don’t overthink it, J. Bunnies are skittish. They probably all ran for the hills when Clara came through here, which means we’re on the right track.”

Joey’s hand searches for mine. When he latches on, I’m reminded of a time so embedded in the past, it’s practically another life.

We ran hand in hand up to the window of a boxy ice cream truck, our small chests heaving.

He picked a strawberry-dipped cone, and I bought one doused in chocolate sprinkles.

To our surprise, the man in the window gave us each complimentary snow cones, one for Joey’s black eye and one for my swollen lip.

“Gray?” he mumbled, his mouth dyed red with syrup. “Is it true? What those kids said about me?”

I gave him the biggest, most reassuring smile I could muster. It was wide enough to rip a hole through the inflammation and send a river of blood down my chin. “Those kids were jerks. They’re gonna have a lot of trouble calling you mean things without teeth, though.”

Secretly, I was cursing said kids for landing a hit on Joey before I’d had the chance to ruin their orthodontics. He laughed, though. It wasn’t a bright, sunshiny laugh, but it was a laugh.

I wish I could put him at ease with an ice cream cone and a joke right now, but all I can offer is my hand.

Worry lines twitch across his forehead, and though our tether stays secure, it’s nothing but a uselessly comforting delusion.

The trees that tower over us hinge like observant gods, branches like arms clasped behind their backs.

They watch with eyes etched into the bark, wafting the acrid scent of leaves on the brink of decay over our senses.

We aren’t safe, and despite the chain that keeps Joey at my side, he knows it.

Up ahead, the foliage begins to bend. It flows to the left, a current of greenery at the edge of a massive whirlpool. At the epicenter, Clara stands with her back to us and her arms lax at her sides. She seems to dangle, like a puppet with one string held up by its head.

“Clara?” My lips move without permission.

The air stills. The flora that had served as instruments in our underscore falls silent. The sky itself seems to lower, each cloud the sclera of a gazing eyeball. Our presence feels obvious, cumbersome, and exposed.

Joey’s breath hitches in his throat. Jade rolls her eyes. She passes in front of me, thunderously trampling the delicate wildflowers gathered at Clara’s feet.

“Clara? Hello?” She circles her sister like a buzzard scoping out a carcass. “Earth to Clara.”

Joey and I catch up with her, more careful about the withering petals on the ground.

Clara’s wandered to a place we cannot reach.

Her eyes are glazed, and her lips are parted as though she’d been paused at the top of a gasp.

Her upper lids droop just enough to cut her corneas at the halfway point.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was sleepwalking.

“Clara?” I place the back of my palm on her cheek. Her skin is ice. My heart is stone.

I’ve known Clara since we were children.

I’ve observed her more closely than anyone else dared.

My mother warned me to keep my distance from the Lovecrofts, to only do what was cordial and necessary.

To say I disobeyed her orders would be the understatement of the year.

Protecting her came as easily as breathing, because in Clara Lovecroft, I knew there was something worthwhile, something beyond my comprehension.

It was a complication I couldn’t have hoped to prevent, not even for Jade’s sake.

My mother was furious, my father was terrified, and my best friend was betrayed.

All signs pointed away from Clara, yet I pushed ahead, into more and more of this complication.

Once, it was a poorly kept secret. Now it lives at the forefront of my mind, an instinct, an edict, and a duty.

In this moment, I’ve failed to uphold all three.

“What’s wrong with her?” Joey releases my hand to free his. He gives Clara the lightest nudge, and she sways like seaweed caught in a current.

Then she thrusts into movement with an explosive scream.

She hinges at the waist, both hands clamped over her ears, a thin line of crimson pouring from her right nostril.

All at once, we scream her name, desperate to awaken her from whatever hazy nightmare she’s lost in.

I grab her shoulders, and she fights against me with the strength of a field mouse and the frailty of a caged canary.

“Clara! Clara! Snap out of it!”

Lucidity reenters her eyes. She utters my name, then presses her face to the center of my chest. My heart races, and I’m certain she hears it.

Suddenly, my limbs have forgotten they are limbs.

I want to run my fingers through her hair or place a hand on the small of her back, but the pulses between my extremities and motor cortex have been short-circuited.

Before I can do anything of value, Jade rips Clara away to scold her.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she booms.

Clara stammers through an explanation her sister won’t allow her to finish.

I consider stepping in, but then something becomes exceedingly, almost absurdly apparent.

Jade isn’t just upset; she’s worried—worried sick, in fact.

Her voice might be strong, but her complexion gives her away.

Like her father, Cedric, she goes ghostly when she’s rattled.

Like her mother, her left eye twitches when she’s afraid.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what I was doing,” says Clara.

“That’s for sure,” says Jade. She releases a long sigh that sends her vocal cords clattering against each other. Her hands rest on Clara’s shoulders. It’s like she imagines her sister will vanish without them. “Don’t do it again.”

Clara’s eyes meander, but Jade is having none of it. She pales, visibly nauseous with concern, and shakes her little sibling viciously.

“Clara, look at me,” she demands. Clara looks, but she doesn’t see.

Her eyes are lightless. Jade’s burn. They burn like they did when Clara twisted her ankle at dance practice and we accompanied her to the infirmary.

They burn like they did when a girl four times Clara’s size stole a ribbon from her hair, and Jade earned two months of detention getting it back.

They burn with something she’s convinced she’s left behind, something as dangerous and complicated as my own forbidden inclinations.

“Let’s get her back to the car,” Jade grumbles.

She motions for me to take Clara’s hand, then falls to the back of our pack as a wolf might.

The journey back to the road feels longer than it should.

It is as though the space has become elastic, a rubber band stretched to capacity.

The impressions I pressed into our path have vanished, leaving us without a clear route.

Jade utters something about Hansel and Gretel, and I can’t help but wonder what ate up our breadcrumb trail.

Clara is both with us and a thousand miles away.

Her head snaps around with paranoid precision, twisting like an owl’s to ensure nothing is close behind.

“Do you remember why you came out here?” I let my fingertips brush her forearm. Gentle as I am, she still responds with a gasp. She meets my eyes with a doll’s gaze, wide, glassy, and unblinking. “Y-you . . . you don’t have to talk about it,” I reassure her.

Her chin touches her shoulder as she makes another attempt to place eyes on her back.

Instead of looking ahead, I follow her instincts behind us.

A tunnel of looming branches has been left in our wake.

They curve inward, creating unnatural arches, a portal of wood and shadow.

Even gentler than before, I catch Clara’s jaw with my thumb and forefinger.

“Forward,” I say. “Just keep moving forward.”

A centipede of frigid air crawls over my arm.

It feels like a hundred ghosts, a hundred crushed spiders haunting me with spindly vengeance.

The caustic scents of metal and marshlands barrel up my nose and down my windpipe.

Only after I recoil from her touch do the spectral sensations subside.

She doesn’t furrow her brows or frown in confusion.

She only stares, like living porcelain, a satellite picking up signals and wordlessly asking if I feel them too.