IT HAD BEEN four months since April disappeared. She had been riding her bike home around 10 pm but hadn’t made it there. Her bike was found on the side of a small backroad, trees lining both sides of the shortcut she had often taken on her way home from Nolan’s house.
Nolan and April had been best friends since elementary. Both of their parents had expected them to end up together at some point, but they had never been anything more than friends. That fact didn’t make it any easier on him when he heard the news.
The routine search party had searched a small vicinity to where her bike had been found, but quickly gave up, saying she’ll turn up because ‘they usually do’. But that hadn’t been true for the other four girls.
In the last year, five girls, including April, had gone missing. That wasn’t a huge number, but for a close-knit town of only about twenty thousand, four missing people in a year is massive. Nolan hadn’t known the other three girls, at least not personally.
He had spent the entire first month of April’s disappearance in the bottom of a depressive pit where he stayed locked away in his room and hardly spoke or ate anything. The next month was easier, but the growing realisation that she might not return was a heavy weight to bear. The third month he spent trying to acclimate to this new world where his best friend didn’t exist. It seemed an impossible task to do since practically everything reminded him of her, but his wound was beginning to heal.
When the news first broke about her being missing, Nolan had been part of the group to search the woods. The difference between him and the rest of them was that he went further, searched harder, and refused to give up as quickly as they had. After all, he had more to lose from her disappearance. They just had to add another tally to their list of missing girls. Nolan lost his best friend.
At the beginning of month four of April being gone, Nolan was riding his bike home from school, taking the same road where April’s bike had been found. This road had never made him uncomfortable before, but since he had seen how her bike had laid there on the side of the road, scratched up and dented, this route had given him an eerie feeling. He knew it was childish to think, but he felt as though someone was watching him.
He peddled a little faster, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the road so as not to let them wander in the trees. Nothing was there of course. But what if?
It was then that he was sure he saw something, a shape, high in a tree. He did a double take, but it was gone. No, it wasn’t gone, there was just nothing there to begin with. He drove on, cresting each hill one after the other, begging to find the end of the road.
Not a minute later and he saw it again, on the other side of the woods. But only in his peripheral. Again, when he looked, there was nothing. That large shape high in the trees. Maybe a bear cub, maybe a raccoon. It was something. Either that or he was going crazy.
He made it to the end of the road, and then the rest of his trip home with nothing strange. Until he got to his house.
When he pulled into his driveway, he heard from behind him, a large snap. He jerked his head around, throwing himself off balance as he did so. He fell to the ground with his bike, but any bumps or scrapes he got, he couldn’t feel them yet. He stood, his eyes fixed on the woods, determined to find what made the noise. When he thought he saw something before, that could be excused as a shadow or some coincidence, but this was not so easily forgotten. He stood and waited for any noise, any movement. All he could hear was the squeak of his bike wheel still spinning and the slight rustle of the wind in the leaves. No birds chirped; no bugs flew. Nolan just stood and waited, skimming the woods with his eyes. But finding nothing except trees and grass and leaves and nothing strange. After a minute or two, he gave up, picked up his bike, and walked down his driveway hesitantly. He looked back once before going inside. Just the woods stood there, ordinary and ominous, the tree branches moving together in unison as if taking a breath.
He dreamed of April that night. Seeing her in his dreams wasn’t uncommon for him recently. It was the only way he was able to see her alive and well again, aside from old photos, and Nolan couldn’t decide if the dreams were his brain’s way of trying to comfort him or rub salt in the wound. Either way, the dream had the same effect: restlessness. With her having been gone for so long, you could almost convince yourself that she never existed in the first place and that you had imagined the whole thing. But April being the leading role in the majority of his dreams was a constant reminder that she was real. Was? No, is. They reminded him that she exists which only added fuel to the fire that was his hope. And hope can be a dangerous thing.
But this last dream was different from all the others. The others seemed to be a reenactment of an old memory or some wild adventure. They were all fun, peaceful. But this dream brought him no closure.
He was walking in a forest, weeds and branches grabbing at his legs like the souls of the damned, as his footfalls were muffled by the thick, leaf strewn earth. You never really know how a dream begins, you just seem to be placed into it. He walked, seeing nothing but trees and glimpses of the silhouette of the moon that could have been full through the dense branches. He began to wonder if he was walking in circles because everything seemed familiar. But he continued walking despite this. For how long he walked he didn’t know. You never really notice the passage of time in dreams, it seems to all happen at once and is dragged out into what feels like eternity.
It wasn’t until he heard a slight sound that he stopped. In the stillness of the woods—which would’ve been quite peaceful under different circumstances—he listened intently until he heard it again. It was a groan. Or a growl. It could have come from anything, an animal, a creaking tree. But he knew instinctively what it was, and broke into a jog in the direction of the noise, abandoning all preconceived notions of caution, fuelled only by the slight flicker of hope.
He broke through the foliage into a clearing, expecting a horror scene and nothing at all. He looked around, a dark feeling crawling over his shoulders and down his spine. He knew he was being watched. The clearing was empty.
The source of the small groan he had heard, that he was convinced came from April, and that he was convinced came from this area, was nowhere to be seen.
A strong gust ran through the trees, stirring up leaves on the bed of the clearing, picking them up in a spiral in front of him. The roaring wind, whistling as it was caught in the tree branches, rang in his ears. He tried taking a step back but his legs were bound to where they stood. He stared into the trees in front of him, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the clearing, like an actor in the spotlight.
The wind didn’t let up. It continued its war cry all around him and whipped the leaves into an unnaturally thick cyclone. His heart was pounding almost as quickly as his mind was racing. Then all at once the cacophony stopped. The leaves all dispersed, floating to the ground in a heavy cloud, and again he could see the line of trees in front of him. But rather than scanning the area for danger, for April, he stared straight at a large oak tree. He felt drawn to it.
He watched as, from behind the tree and out of the shadows, a thick branch wrapped around the base of the tree, seeming to hug it. The branch took its finger-like limbs and, slowly retreating back to the shadows, carved three stripes into the bark.
Like a leaden wrecking ball, he felt his chest cave in, his blood running frozen with what he could only identify as pure terror. He didn’t scream, was too scared to think to try. But he could move his legs again. He turned to run, to go anywhere, just to get away, but as his foot lost connection with the ground, he was thrown across the clearing as if by some force, perhaps the wind. It threw him towards the large tree with the fresh engravings, and he felt as his back made connection with its trunk and knew that it would have been a lethal blow if that hit didn’t cause him to bolt upright in bed, a cold sweat permeating his bedsheets.
He sat in silence for the remainder of the night, waiting for the daylight where he knew he would be safe. And as he finally watched the sun crawl its way into the sky, he only thought about April. It was a dream, he knew that. But he also knew that he was in the safety of his room. What if April had no escape from whatever it was he saw in that clearing?
His dream sat heavy in his mind several days after. It isn’t uncommon for the emotions of a dream to linger into the waking world for some time, but they eventually fade. This dream was different somehow. The dark feeling it left on Nolan showed no signs of fading. There was some aspect about it, the woods, that clearing, that tree, that felt entirely real. In the quiet moments of the night when he allowed himself to feed into the delusions his mind told him, he believed it was real. He believed it did happen. And rather than a fictitious dream, he had seen, like a magic mirror or some window, into the woods, into that clearing, and that it was real. And that that…thing had seen him too.
The daylight would eventually come, expelling any real belief in those ideas. But despite that, seeds were planted in his mind. He could never truly forget what he had seen. Just as he could never truly put the hope of April being alive out of his mind.
It wasn’t until his second dream that he decided they were real. This one happened exactly a week after the first and, unlike the first, this one was quick, subtle, and easy to miss. He saw nothing. Felt nothing. There was no clearing, no giant tree or raging wind. There was only a distant voice. It lasted only a moment but he could make it out more clear than anything else. It was April. He heard the crunch of a branch. A footstep, he knew. The sound of brush, of grinding tree bark. And then one quick, sharp yell. It sent an electric chill down his spine like the first dream couldn’t. He knew it was April’s voice. Any best friend would have known. He bolted upright in bed again, panic heaving his chest. Unlike the first dream, from which he awoke with fear and paranoia, from this dream he awoke with anger and conviction.
Anyone would’ve written him off as being crazy, as being in the denial stage of grief. But these dreams, these visions, were all the proof he needed to know that April was still alive. Everyone else had given up long ago but he couldn’t afford to do the same.
He spent much of the next day replaying the sound of April’s scream in his mind. She sounded far away. But not unobtainable. He replayed the crunching steps. He replayed the roaring of the wind from the first dream. He sat in these thoughts and rather than create a plan, (he knew he had to act, that was non-negotiable, so a plan wasn’t vital) he focused on pushing down his fear. Fear is the rocky ground that suffocates the tiny seeds of bravery and there would be no room for that if he were to help April.
It was Friday and he knew his parents would be away that evening for some dinner party, leaving him free to act on his own—not that they watch over him heavily when they are present. He had a backpack prepared with snacks—cookies, granola bars, chips, things his mother kept stocked in the pantry—bottles of water, a flashlight, and a lighter, just in case.
Nolan was never a courageous person in any sense of the word. At recess he would sit with April and watch as the more athletic boys played whatever game it was they were playing. During P.E. he preferred to sit on the sidelines with friends and avoid the bulk of whatever testosterone fuelled frenzy was going on. His proclivity to opt out of such activities and avoiding such interactions was probably the reason he had very few male friends, but it never really bothered him—at least that’s what he told himself.
So Nolan taking an active role in this situation, vowing to find April, was a new, thrilling feeling. He likened it to the feeling before a big fight scene in a movie, or the feeling of beating a hard level in a game.
Once his parents left, he grabbed his backpack and walked out to the woods. Days ago he had stood there, his bike overturned, feeling the piercing gaze of something from within the tree line. As he stood there now, he felt the same sensation. But rather than one omniscient set of eyes, he felt the eyes coming from several directions. An entourage of paparazzi. Despite the pounding of his pulse deafening in his head, he took a few more steps and entered the tree line. Once inside, he looked back only once at his house and the open land beyond it, just in case.
The sun was high in the sky when he left his house, but that had been quite some time ago and the light was beginning to fade. Nolan estimated the sun would be fully set in an hour or two. And although the thought of being out here, miles away from home, trapped in complete darkness, scared him, he didn’t allow his mind to tell him that retreat was an option.
It is very surprising how long you can walk and still see nothing. He stayed alert to his surroundings, waiting for any sign or clue that he knew where he was, but there was nothing but the camouflage of trees and brush and foliage. Despite the great distance he had made, he never felt entirely alone. He surmised that there was bound to be wildlife around him, a bunny, a squirrel, a million different bugs, so perhaps it was their eyes he felt drilling into him. But he carried on, giving his audience no sign that he knew they were there.
With little to go on—nothing to go on, if he was being honest with himself—it only made sense to find the clearing he had seen in his dreams, despite every nerve in his body telling him to stay away from there. He would walk until something looked familiar.
He didn’t dare adventure too much due to the risk of getting turned around and lost, but several times he did make a turn or change in direction. Only when it felt right. Only when something told him that was the right way.
The sun was touching the horizon now, casting a warm glow on everything around him and lighting the sky in a crimson that probably would’ve been beautiful in any other situation. He was looking up at the tree tops, its leaves bathed in the evening’s burning light, when he heard a crack and stopped dead in his tracks. He looked around, listening for any other sound. But everything had gone quiet. Everything. Moments ago he had heard birds signing their evening songs, and cicadas screaming for whatever reason they scream. But now the woods were silent.
He walked a few steps further and stopped when he noticed a fallen tree. It seemed entirely ordinary except for its base. Rather than a clean break or a natural crack, the tree looked as though it had been ripped from its stump and devoured. He carried on.
Only moments later he saw what he had been scared of. Although his goal of being out here was to find it, he half hoped, in his subconscious, that it wasn’t real after all and his dreams were just dreams. But he saw ahead of him, through the trees, a large clearing that looked all too familiar.
He broke through the thick branches and into the clearing and he knew this wasn’t the same as his dream because this time April was laid on the ground on the opposite side of the clearing.
Nolan lost every ounce of precaution and abandoned any prior inhibitions and ran to her. He fell to his knees at her side, fearing the worst. She looked bad. A tear rolled down his cheek. Malnourished, dirty, clothes torn to shreds, and her skin covered in cuts and bruises. As he looked her over, he stopped at her stomach. She had always been a skinny girl, regardless of what she ate. But now her stomach was too big. Unnatural. He placed his hand there and it was hard; not like a human’s stomach should feel.
‘April,’ he whispered, trying to shake her awake. ‘April, please.’ He looked around him for any threat. There was nothing. But right next to them, a large tree loomed, bearing three parallel slashes in its bark. His stomach dropped and the surface of his skin felt cold. It wasn’t until then that he truly considered the dreams to be real. He felt a flood of adrenaline in his mind and knew they needed to leave. He shook her once more, trying to wake her.
He was going to lose hope and attempt to lift her when her eyelids fluttered.
‘April! Wake up, come on.’ When her eyes did open and their emerald gleam locked with his brown, where he expected to see joy or relief, he only saw pain. She tried to talk but no noise came out. He got a bottle of water from his backpack and helped her to drink.
‘Go,’ she forced out. ‘Please go.’
‘What? No. I’ve been so worried.’
‘Nolan. Go!’ She could hardly finish her short sentence before she was overcome by some pain. She laid her head back on the ground, holding her stomach and gritting through the pain.
‘April. Are you pregnant?’
‘Go!’ she yelled.
This was impossible. They had always shared every detail of their lives with each other. Dating lives, family drama, everything. He knew she had had only one boyfriend in her life. They broke up because he had to move away, but they had never had sex. They both thought her ex had been gay. But whatever the circumstances, April was a virgin. She had sworn it. That is the kind of major news they would share immediately. But she had been gone. What? Four or five months? This was impossible.
‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘Can you move?’ She nodded. He stood and grabbed her under the armpits and tried dragging her out of the clearing. At least then they wouldn’t be so exposed. April continued fighting the pain, holding back screams through gritted teeth.
‘No.’ A faint sound. Nolan stopped dead, nearly giving himself whiplash looking for the source of the word.
‘You can’t.’ The voice was dry, raspy, and held very little life in it. He looked over, near the tree line and saw another girl. His mouth was agape in disbelief, but laid April back down and went to the girl’s side. She was in far worse condition. Cuts that were clearly infected. Malnourished to the point of her ribs being visible. And April’s ripped clothes seemed modest in comparison to this girl’s lack of any. What was left of them was threadbare and torn.
‘You have to go. He’ll never let her leave.’
‘What are you talking about? How did you get here?’ Too many questions were spiralling in his mind and none of them were getting answered.
‘None of us can leave.’
‘None of who?’ Nolan didn’t believe what he was hearing. None of us. That implied more people. He stood and looked around. Just beside the tree line he saw another girl, face down, seeming to have tried crawling to whatever safety she could find. Anyone could tell she would never move again. There were two other girls nearby as well, also dead, and seeming to have been that way for a long time, months.
‘She can’t leave. He’ll never let her go.’ She looked past Nolan at April still struggling through what he assumed were contractions. ‘She’s going into labour again.’ He felt his mouth go dry.
‘Again?’
‘This is her fourth,’ she said. ‘Or fifth, it’s hard to keep track.’
Nothing felt real. He would’ve believed this was also one of his dreams, but he knew that wasn’t true. He stumbled back to April, his feet feeling as though they were replaced by lead blocks. He knelt there trying to coax her to her feet or into his arms. But her screams told that she was giving birth, and that moving her now was not an option. Change of plans: he would help her have the baby and then the three of them would leave.
He watched as the baby came, trying to stay strong for April, acting like all of this was normal and alright. But as he got a first look at the baby, if you could call it that, he was horrified. He fell back, trying to get distance between him and the…thing. Even in the last rays of the setting sun he could see the misshapen, unnatural, vile thing. If he had had food in his stomach he would have vomited. Instead he only gasped for air, feeling weak.
With a final push, April had birthed the thing. He could hear a relief in her panting breaths and felt that she would be alright. Trying to steady himself, he moved closer to see for certain what he hoped he was wrong about. And as his eyes fell upon it he had no emotions except a burning loathing in his chest.
‘Oh my god,’ was all he could say. But there was no god here. Not in these woods. Not in the making of that thing.
It looked canine, with four legs and a rounded back. The skin of the thing looked thick with a dark textured colour, something akin to tree bark. Its face was a gross, moulded amalgamation of what he assumed was bark, moss, and grass.
He stared in disbelief as its chest rose and fell with its breaths, its eyes still closed. Disbelief that this thing existed. Disbelief that it had come from April. What did the girl say? This was her fourth or fifth?
With no warning, its eyes flew open and it jumped to its feet. It turned to him, staring into his eyes. For a split second Nolan was caught there, seeing a slight flicker of green in the creature’s eyes before it let out a rattling, gravely growl and leapt past him, running into the trees. He watched it for as long as it was in sight. He finally lost it when it climbed up a tree and hid itself in the branches. It made sense then the many eyes he had felt on him as he made his way here.
He turned back to April who was still catching her breath, recovering from the pains of labour. He saw the reflection of light in a tear as it ran over her cheek and down her neck.
‘You have to go!’ the other girl yelled. ‘He always comes back after a birth.’
‘What are you talking about? What was that thing?’
‘Are you stupid? Cause that’s the only way to explain why you came here looking for her. No one came to find the other girls that he took.’ A pause. ‘No one came to find me.’ He could hear the hurt in her voice now. He assumed there would be tears as well, but she’s probably cried all the tears she could muster being here.
‘Months we’ve been here! That’s how he does it, finds a girl, uses her for a while. Then just as she’s about to be of no use anymore he brings in another one. She was before me.’ She pointed to the girl he had seen trying to crawl away. ‘And then after two months your friend showed up. I guess that means I don’t have long left.’
‘But what’s happening here? Who’s the he you’re talking about?’ Nolan begged, always desperate for answers now.
‘You just saw what’s happening here. Those things. That’s what he wants. Non-stop. As soon as we have one, he comes back to begin another. It’s some screwed up army he’s building or something, I don’t even know. It’s not like we had the privilege of being told those tiny details.’
It was all falling into place and it was everything Nolan could do not to vomit. He looked down at April. Soft, weak, vulnerable. This was the first time since she had gone missing that he considered that maybe there were some things worse than death. He wasn’t wishing she had been killed instead; at least he didn’t think so. But he couldn’t help but feel that maybe it was more moral to wish she had. It certainly would’ve been kinder to her.
His piteous train of thought was derailed by the crunch of a branch behind him, across the clearing. He looked over to the other girl—he realised he didn’t even know her name. Did April? Have they had these last few months to talk about simple things like that?—She looked panicked. As if she knew what was coming. Her reaction wasn’t much different to that of an abused puppy. Nolan knew what was coming. He.
He looked back across the clearing and even though the sun was almost fully set now, there was still enough of a light glow of the sky for the figure to be backlit as it stepped into view, making it little more than a silhouette.
Just like when he had dreamt of this place, he felt his skin go ice cold. It’s funny how an emotion like fear can cause something like that. But he didn’t move, couldn’t move, as the thing took a step forward. Two.
Nolan could see it better now. It was tall. Maybe three feet taller than himself. Skinny. Its limbs looked as though they were made from twisted branches and vines and grass. Moss hung from him like some sort of hair.
His hand. The exact same he had seen claw the tree next to him. Long talon-like fingers, sharp. His shoulders were wide, but not in that way that looks muscular. More so in a way that looks incorrect.
His head was something entirely different. Nolan expected to look into the face of the thing and see something resembling human anatomy. He was not correct. It was mangled, jumbled up, and unholy, like some kind of overgrown roots or knotted bark. But it was the eyes. Nolan could see they casted an amber glow onto its face, but as he lifted his eyes to meet the creature’s, his head began to pound and his eyes stung. He had no choice but to look away.
He dropped to his knees. Partially from the pain, partially to be near April who had lifted herself into a sitting position and was trying to back away. She also knew what his being here meant.
Nolan told himself he wouldn’t let it happen. He would die before it did. And deep down, in a small part of his mind, he knew that would most likely be how this ends.
He took a deep breath, trying to muster the courage that didn’t exist, and got to his feet again. He took one step forward, getting between April and the creature. He was sure not to look into the yellow eyes again.
Now they were only feet apart, in a standoff at the centre of the clearing. He heard the scratching and feet pattering all around him and in the trees so the entire congregation of those awful creatures was watching. With one deep breath Nolan let out a yell. It was the only thought he had to seem strong. But just as any noise left his mouth, breaking the thick silence in the trees, the monster let out an annoyed grunt and he felt himself being thrown through the air. Again, as in his dream, he was slammed against that large tree.
But he wasn’t dreaming this time, so he couldn’t wake up when the pain rushed in. He was stuck there, suspended in the air, feeling a pressure on his chest as if he was being constricted by ropes. The creature gave him one last look and then turned away as if Nolan were no threat at all.
He could do nothing but watch as the thing began walking towards April. Nolan yelled again, and the creature let him, but it changed nothing. He began to panic, realizing for the first time since entering the woods hours ago, that he was helpless, truly helpless.
April was still too weak from the labour to get away. Nolan knew that, and he could see April knew that too. She didn’t even look panicked, she seemed to just not care anymore, accepting her fate as if she knew this was her life now.
Nolan yelled until he could taste blood, and didn’t stop even then. He had always heard stories of people saying they would sacrifice themselves for someone they loved. And he believed them, but didn’t really think he would if it came down to it. He knew now that he would have greeted death happily in that moment if it meant he could see April leave this clearing safely. But even if she could get away, even if she could get out of here and outrun that thing, he knew the pack of beasts he’s been creating would hunt her down.
There was no hope. Only a fool could deny that.
It felt like hours as he sat there, forced to watch as the creature did what he did to April, no hint of remorse or sympathy. It was as though April and the other girls weren’t valuable to him. Why would he care after all? He would find other girls anyway. As long as he got what he wanted, everything was fine.
Finally it was over. The monster stood to leave, leaving April curled up in what looked like pain or regret or pity. But instead of crossing the clearing to return to the woods, the creature turned to the tree on which Nolan was still suspended by some force. With a hardly noticeable tilt of the creature’s head, Nolan was released and fell to the ground. Before he could recapture the wind that was knocked from his chest, he felt vines move over his arms. They stretched like snakes over the ground, grabbing for him. He tried to shake them off, squirming away from them, but there wasn’t much place to go. The tree was to one side of him, and the creature to the other.
In seconds he had been fully constricted, like an asylum patient to their bed. The vines pulled him to the ground, and despite his struggles, there was no escape.
‘No,’ he heard April force out, exasperation in her hollow voice. It was clear she hadn’t expected this. It was her plea that made Nolan realise what was happening.
‘What? No!’ he yelled. Begging, as if the creature would understand him, or care.
It moved forward, closing the gap between them. Why? Nolan thought. Why would it want me too?
That was the single thought that replayed in his mind again and again, distracting him from what was happening as he just laid there, no struggle, no fight.
He heard a sob from some far away place. He thought it was April, but what did it matter? His yells changed nothing, what would her tears?
Before standing, the creature let out a large gust of air into his face. The putrid, rotten smell would’ve been enough to make anyone gag, but Nolan was hardly bothered. The monster stood, and Nolan didn’t care. It walked away, returning to the woods, and Nolan didn’t care. April crawled to his sides, the vines releasing him, but he didn’t care.
They sat there together and there was a moment of unspoken words, eyes both fixed to the ground, where they knew there was no escape. A small rustling in the woods, and a sharp bark from one of those creatures confirmed that thought.
Nolan leaned against the large tree, and April laid her head on his shoulder. He closed his eyes because it had been a long night.
He focused on the darkness of his eyelids and the quiet of the night, and he could almost pretend nothing was real. He felt a tug of something in his stomach and drifted off to sleep.
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