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So I tried to follow Perry. I stepped into the water. It was cold as ice and I was instantly chattering.
The trees started whispering.
Come to us Ada, we’ll bring you home.
I whipped around, nearly losing my footing in the gooey bottom.
The forest was still.
But still in the sense that a snake is still when really it’s waiting.
Waiting.
I called out for Perry, my voice sounding so small and weak, because I was small and weak. I moved a few more steps, the water coming up to my knees now. The mud clung to my legs.
And then I couldn’t move. My feet sank into some kind of hole and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t bring them out.
Now I was really yelling for her and finally she turned around and saw me. Started moving toward me fast, water splashing.
But I had the most real, succinct feeling that she wouldn’t be fast enough.
I looked over my shoulder at the forest.
It was now at the water’s edge.
It had moved.
And more than that, the shadows inside it were moving too, clicking like insect legs, branches reaching forward like stick fingers.
You’re almost home, it hissed.
It was going to swallow me whole.
Then I don’t know what happened. Next thing I knew I was back at home and running a fever. Later on, like a decade later, when I brought it up around the family, Perry said I was sinking into the mud and if she hadn’t gotten there in time I would have drowned.
She never mentioned the forest moving closer on its own, one giant whispering creature that oozed evil. She never mentioned it and I never brought it up. Chalk it up to childhood memories gone wrong.
But now, now that I was here in this forest, I knew I wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t in my head back then and this isn’t in my head now. This forest isn’t just made up of trees, it’s made up of something much larger, blacker, unfathomable.
And it’s waiting too.
“I think we’re here,” Jay says as the car bumps over a pothole and comes to a stop. We’re at the end of the road, the gravel tire tracks fading into Salal bushes, ever grainy in the descending darkness.
I don’t want to leave the car. I grip the pebbled leather seat as if it will tether me to this world.
Jay twists in his seat to face me. “We don’t have to do this,” he reminds me. “Some things are beyond one’s capabilities and there is no shame in that, only sensibility.”
“We’re getting my mother back,” I tell him and I know now I won’t turn back.
He nods and we get out of the car. He stands beside me as we crane our necks back to stare at the sky. It’s black, void of stars, blending in with the tops of the trees. In the distance a blood red moon glows.
“How is this possible?” I whisper. “This was my dream.”
“Many places where portals exist operate on a separate reality. The other worlds can leak through, mess up physics and what we know as truth. Sedona, Stonehenge, Easter Island, there are many more. And here.” He grabs my hand and tugs me toward a faint path in the forest. “Come on. Now or never.”
We walk through the forest, the path cutting through the trees like a scar. I hold my breath at first, afraid to breathe the air. The branches seem to reach for me and when they brush past my skin, I can feel them try to take hold, like fingers wrapping around my clothing.
Jay holds my hand for the first few minutes, bringing me comfort, until he drops it. I know he’s too afraid he’ll lose himself, his duty, if he feels me for too long.
So I follow him down the path until it becomes a slope and then we’re winding down rocky terrain, moss and vines and branches tripping up my feet.
The crimson moon is glowing now and even though I don’t hear the song from my dream, the one my mother was singing, I can feel its rhythm pulsing in my blood.
So hurry now and listen
Run to the pond that does so glisten
They knew. They knew all along that I would come to this exact spot to do this.
Everything has been destined.
The only thing I don’t know is what fate has been chosen for me.
Or if I get to choose my fate.
Eventually the forest starts to open up, letting in more of the blood red glow until it’s like we’re standing in an old-fashioned darkroom, developing film. Giant bats flutter in the distance, not seen but definitely heard. Leathery wings that flap the hot air, stirring up a putrid smell that makes bile slide up my throat.
Then in front of us is the pond.
Skinny alders grow around it, some leaning over as if trying to reach it—or escape—while one large tree slices through the middle. Reeds and lily pads pop up around the edges of the brackish water while the middle is black as sin. It’s not large in diameter but it looks infinitely deep. I know that it doesn’t have a bottom, that it keeps going and going, to no end.
