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A Walk in the Woods, Part Two

Owen had for himself an unspoken rule, one so unspoken he hadn’t even put it into words for himself until now: Don’t go into the woods .

And he had not. Not since—

(Matty)

—high school.

You go into the woods? You might not come out of them.

It was stupid, he knew. The logic didn’t even hold. It wasn’t the fault of the forest that day. Still, now, walking through these woods—struggling with his fucking carry-on bag because caster wheels did not work on the forest floor—he felt this cold, dark feeling settle onto his shoulders. A free-floating oppression, like the air was heavy and wanted to push him down into the scrub, into the dead leaves, until the underbrush grew over him and swallowed him up. The trees seemed too tall. The shadows too long, too dark. The light seemed to go sideways. It felt otherworldly, like one step behind an oak or onto a patch of ivy and you could be gone, forever, and wouldn’t even know it until it was too late.

(Matty…)

But he’d agreed to go on this adventure. To follow Nick, foolish as that was, because his old friend had ended up with terminal cancer.

Owen switched to carrying his bag instead, which worked, but he kept crashing it into the tangle of understory, and at one point the suitcase’s wheel caught in the fork of a branch of some viny plant, and he nearly fell when it jerked him backward.

“Here,” Lore said, “lemme help. It’s got two side straps—I’ll grab one, you grab the other. We can’t go side by side, but I’ll lead, you follow, the bag between us.” Owen nodded, and her plan worked. It was still annoying—but doable.

“Great,” Owen said, as they made their way down the trail.

“Problem-solving is a huge part of game design. Game playing too, obviously, and writing fiction—but it really shines during game design because everything is connected to everything else, and sometimes stuff breaks. And you have to have some real come-to-Jesus conversations with yourself when you try to figure out how changing one bit of innocuous code fucked up the rest of it.”

“Thanks for explaining that to me,” he said, unable to bottle up the bitter sarcasm. “Since I’m a total rube, apparently.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“You really have done it all.”

“Not by half. Still more to do.”

“Well, I’m proud of you.” Those words were hard to say. They weren’t a lie. Not exactly. He was proud of her. But that pride came duct-taped to a whole lot of other baggage, didn’t it?

“You’re not,” Lore said.

“What?”

“You’re not proud. You’re jealous.”

Said with the certainty of a hammerblow to the back of the head.

“I am. You know I am. Proud, I mean.”

“Fine. Maybe you are. A little . But you’re jealous, too. What I’ve achieved, where I’m at. This was supposed to be you. Or you always thought it would be you. And I think that fucks with you.”

He scoffed. And he was about to say more but then bit his tongue. “No, you know what? We don’t have to do this. Let’s just—let’s change the subject.”

“Too much history between us for weak-ass small talk, Zuikas. Say your piece, speak your mind. Do it.”

He suddenly let go of his end of the bag. It dropped to the ground and Lore jerked backward, overcompensating for the change.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s talk about—what’s the studio calling it? Hellhiker ?”

Lore froze. She eased her end of the suitcase into the brush and turned around. The forest seemed to darken. The trees, tightening.

“What about it?” she asked, ice in her voice.

“You know what,” he seethed. “That was our game, Lore. We thought that shit up back in college. We had a whole notebook full of it. And you just—you just took it—”

“Well, not like you were doing anything with it.”

Another hammerblow. To her mind, probably, a mercy kill. But the hit left him reeling. She must’ve seen it on his face, how hard she’d hit him just then.

“Owen…”

“No, you know, yeah, you’re right. It’s probably smart, just leaving me behind.” That’s what she’d done, after all. Moved on without him. And it probably was the smart move, wasn’t it? He was dead weight. Dragging behind her, slowing her down, her having to wade through his mental emotional bullshit all the time. But then again, that’s what friends were supposed to do, wasn’t it? It was all her fault became it was all my fault, and round and round that carousel went. It wasn’t a new conversation Owen had with himself. He’d been having it for decades now. Since the end of college. Since…whatever this life of his had become in Lore’s considerable shadow. And at the end of the day, maybe none of it mattered, because she had accomplished what she accomplished.

No matter who she had to climb over to get there.

“Jesus, Owen, come on.”

“You know what?” he said, a little too aggro, maybe, but too late now. “I got this. I can carry my bag just fine. You go on ahead. I’ll see you at the campsite.”

“Fine. Yeah. Okay.”

Lore forged on ahead, leaving him behind. Like always.

—

Lore and Owen had been friends for a long, long time, and now they weren’t. None of them were. She knew why. There were a lot of reasons, but those reasons had one origin point, like the hydra—many heads, one body, one heart. They knew it, too, but they all needed to say it out loud. They needed to get it out, to purge what was in them.

For her fantasy bartender management game—basically, Tom Cruise’s Cocktail meets D&D’s Forgotten Realms —she did a lot of research into medieval stuff, including the medicine of the Middle Ages, because, you know, of all the potions and draughts and tinctures and shit. One of the things they believed was that you had all these humors—blood, bile, all your bodily fluids. And when you were in good health, that all circulated fine and kept you going. But when you were sick, it meant something had entered you. An ill spirit, a demon, an infection, whatever—and the only way to get it out was:

Bloodletting.

They had a variety of tools for it—lancets and fleams and cups and, of course, leeches. (The practice had a cool name, too: venesection . And you bet your ass she used that in the game. Your character could join the College of Venesection and make a variety of fascinating blood cocktails to feed to the most monstrous patrons of your made-up bar. And you can bet your ass she put a ‘u’ in ‘humours’ to make it sound more fantastical.) Did venesection work? No. No fucking way. It was primitive, brutal business, and was as likely to result in further infection or even death—but it was still one of their primary ways of dealing with disease for centuries.

Thing is, though it was a terrible practice for physicians, it served Lore as a very good metaphor for the problems among people. These people, in particular.

They had a lot of bad blood between them.

And it was building up inside them. The only way to get it out was to cut it out. And that meant Lore showing up with her knives out.

Sure, she could compartmentalize. But here? She didn’t want to.

Not anymore.

They’d compartmentalized all of this for far, far too long.

It was time to open up and let the blood flow.

Owen was about ten, fifteen feet behind her. Trudging awkwardly through the brush. Struggling with his bag. She wanted to help him, but he didn’t want her help.

Ahead of her, Nick and Hamish walked together, side by side, talking. Nick was shaking his head, agitated. Hamish threw up his hands, frustrated or fed up, and then let Nick walk on ahead as he fell back.

“Hey, man,” Lore said to him. “You good?”

“Not now,” he snapped at her. Well, that’s not very Hamish of you, she thought, and then he headed toward Owen instead.

“Well, fuck you, too,” she said under her breath, and put some pep in her step to catch up to Nick.

A voice then whispered in her ear, crisp as someone snapping a twig—

“ All alone again, Lauren? ”

She gasped and whirled around.

Hamish and Owen were giving her a confused look.

“Did you hear that?” she asked them.

“Hear what?”

“I—” A voice. I heard a voice. I heard his voice. Matty .

“Lore?”

“I thought I heard a—an animal. Like a bear.” She shook her head. “It’s stupid. Never mind.” And again she hurried forward, now chased by the feeling of being watched, being judged, and—

Though she didn’t understand it, not yet—

Being summoned .

The voice, that question, it lingered in her ear like an endless echo. A dead voice, bouncing back and forth, back and forth, till it became a meaningless hiss.