If Anything Happens

A short story

Good morning!

If you’re new here, welcome. This is Sleep Tight, the section of Kindling where I publish original short fiction.

Do you enjoy nature? Walks in the woods and camping trips in the wild? So does our narrator. That love is what brings her to the woods alone, an attempt on her part to face her fears in solitude.

Her mother, of course, is not on board. After all, her mother is older and wiser. She knows that in the great wilds of North America, not everything is as it seems. There are mysteries there, things not understood by people who live their lives in cozy houses on paved roads. There are places where no map applies, and the road less traveled need not be taken.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

---

“She told me not to go.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek, a white trail of frost forming on her skin. They were in the kitchen, her mother in business casual on her way to a meeting. Unstoppable. Needed. And her with a backpack, the sleeping bag rolled and tied to it. The necessities sorted and accounted for. She would be fine. It was only one night. 

“You don’t even know what you’re doing.”

That was all it took to seal the deal. She had felt a twinge of anxiety, a sense that she should back out. She didn’t know the woods well. Hadn’t camped more than a handful of times, and all of those trips had involved cars and tents, hookups and water pumps. Hell, there was a bathroom at the public campground where she went with her dad. 

But the question mark in her mother’s eyes turned out to be all the push she needed. Hot anger melted away that little pang of fear, and she marched out to her car, head held high. 

Now she was seated on moist forest ground, ass wet, knees bent, chin trembling against knobby bones as she watched night slowly encroach for the second time. The silver foil of a granola bar lay crumpled next to her. It caught the warm light of evening in the folds, the wrapper turned inside out. She had one more stuffed in the side pocket of her backpack. That was it for food. 

It was supposed to be one night alone in the woods. A challenge. A way to face your fears like ancient people. And that first night went like clock work. Until early morning. She had set up her tent. Made a fire. Journaled and waited in the silence. Fell asleep and slept. Awoke to cold, tucked her head into her sleeping bag and slept again. 

At four she woke up and looked at her phone. There was no service out here. She knew that. But the reminder in the dark tuned her up. She was alert, receiving any and all frequencies while fighting the urge to pee desperately. She tried to open her messages. There were no new ones. None from her mother since the phone call had dropped in the car on the way up the pass. 

“At least tell me where you’re going and when you’re coming back. That way if anything happens—”

She had laughed when the call went dead. Actually laughed. The thought of it brought more tears. Crying at the thought that the call had dropped just then, right before she could get the pertinent information through. And then, at the quieter thought that maybe, just maybe, that hadn’t been a coincidence. 

“Stop it.”

The woods stood perfectly silent at the sound of her voice, and the noiseless indifference of it chilled her. These were old places, unmoved by human hands. The trees listened motionless. Not even a squirrel chittered. She hadn’t heard any animals since the lights came.

Her eyes were still adjusting, the blue white alabaster glow of her phone fading as she lay in wilderness night. There isn’t other darkness like it. Unless you’re blind. She thought they were flashlights in the distance, hitting the tent so that she could see the white orb of them through thin green canvas. 

But they were moving slowly, strangely. Not in the up and down motion that matched human footsteps as they made their way through woods. They moved in unison and surrounded the tent, the white glow of light growing larger until it resembled moonlight. Her breathing grew shallow as she watched them move. When they finally stopped, she held her breath.

She sat up on her elbows careful to keep the rustling of nylon at bay. She could hear her heart beating in her ears. Her stomach knotted. She looked towards her backpack. There was bear spray in there and a knife. If she could reach it—

Her eyes darted to the tent flap. The black zipper was moving slowly, pulled by something methodical and quiet. There was no shadow. No person she could make out even with all the lights surrounding. She watched it, frozen like the dumb girls in horror movies who stand aghast as the creep in some wacky mask moves in for the kill. 

She saw the headlines flash before her eyes, and moved fast for her bag. She was unzipping it wildly, racing against whatever it was outside that was making its way in, and then the world was plunged into darkness again. She was breathing heavy, her hands still shoving aside items in her backpack, searching for a weapon that could help her fight. 

She listened, waiting for the snap of a stick, the crunch of leaves under heavy boots. A voice, male and deep and looming. But it was quiet. Until a soft wailing broke in the distance. It was a baby. A little one by the sounds of it. Crying out here in the middle of the back country. 

She listened for voices. Maybe there were other campers nearby. Perhaps those lights had been flashlights after all. But there was nothing but the sad, lonely voice of an infant. 

“Shit.”

She reached for the zipper to undo it the rest of the way. She breathed out before moving, her lips forming an O as she readied herself. With a silent nod of her head, one, two —

“Three,” and she whipped the flap open. 

The night was moonless. The black shadows of trees stood nearly invisible against the night. She could hear the baby crying harder and louder now. It sounded close. Maybe fifty feet away. She put on her boots without tying the laces, grabbed her backpack and set out towards the sound near blind.

She took careful steps towards it, feeling the ground with her feet before planting them to keep from tumbling forward. After a few minutes she turned around and saw nothing. No campsite. No nothing. Only utter darkness. The sound of the baby hadn’t changed. It was as if she was in her tent, the baby still fifty feet away. 

She turned around and started back. If she could hit her tent, then she would wait there until dawn. The baby hadn’t been crying long. They could wait another hour or so for light to break. Her steps were faltering, nervous motions now, her feet plunging awkwardly between fallen branches and piles of forest mulch. 

A fire light appeared in the distance, unmistakable in the dark. She could hear people’s voices murmuring. Someone laughed.

“Hello?”

She made her way in their direction.

“I’m sorry to come on you like this, but I think I’m lost,” she said.

But they didn’t seem to hear her. Their conversation continued, hushed tones and murmurs with the occasional good natured laugh. It sounded like there were a lot of them. The infant’s crying had stopped. 

She walked towards it, but the light never grew larger. The voices of the people never became clear. 

“Hello!” she yelled out, and broke into a run. 

The firelight went out and the voices stopped. In the sudden silence, the only sound was the toe of her boot hitting wood as it snagged her lace. She went headfirst, arms splayed, into what felt like a pile of broken branches. The edges of them scraped her forearms. 

She pushed herself up slowly, her arms stinging and raw, heart pounding. She listened, and heard nothing. There were no birds or owls. The wind didn’t rustle the leaves. She wanted to keep moving, keep working and reworking the woods in the dark until she found her tent. But some quiet inner voice reminded her of the sacred survival secret. Stay put.

She sat against her backpack and closed her eyes and decided to wait until morning. The sky was indigo when she opened her eyes. She was in the middle of trees, their branches and trunks repeating and repeating from now until forever. Around her, she could make out what looked like piles of dead wood. There were twigs that were gnarled and stuck out every which way. The things that had scraped her when she fell. 

Light came slowly, and the forest around her came into focus. The twigs and gnarled things that she sat amongst turned yellowed and gray. The realization came slow, but when it hit, it filled her with all the energy she needed to run. It wasn’t wood that had cut her and pooled the blood dried in large black scabs on her arms. It was bone. Piles and piles of bones. 

She stood and turned to run in any direction, it wouldn’t matter as long as she was away from here, when she heard voices. Rescuers calling for her in the woods.

“Hello! I’m here!”

There was no reply. Their voices rang tinny, like they were coming from a tunnel.

“They won’t find you.”

She jumped and turned. A little girl stood behind her, no older than five years old. Her dark hair was tangled around sticks and dead leaves. Her face was smudged in what could only be the juice of berries.

“I used to try to get out too. But the lady won’t let you.”

“What lady?”

“She says they’ll find you once you’re dead. The People will lay your body back in the forest. Sometimes they never come.”

“Who never comes?”

“Your mommy and daddy.”

The voices were fading.

“Hello! Help!”

“She’s coming,” the little girl said, then turned and ran, her feet light against the dead litter of forest floor.

The light of the day faded somehow, blacked out against a more brilliant white, the aura of it cold. Her skin felt like ice. She closed her eyes and shielded her head with her arms, preparing for some inevitable end. Her last thoughts were of her mother’s face, when she was three, and ten, and nineteen.

“I’m sorry mom,” she whispered.

For her sake, she hoped they would lay her body in the path of some rescuer, that her remains would rest in a place her mother could visit, not heaped onto this pile of the lost who left their homes for the road less traveled, and found death.