Page 57 of The Woods

“I think it flipped midair so that the screen was facing up, not down.” She points at the screen. “See? That looks like the tops of trees and some sky.” She zooms in on one corner of the photo. “And that’s me, falling.”

Geoff leans in to get a closer look. “How can you tell?”

“It’s blurry, but look, you can see the gray of the leggings I was wearing, the black of my running shoes, and the green of my windbreaker.” Alice reaches out for her glass of wine and only then notices the slight tremble in her hand. She takes a sip, hoping to drown the anxious feeling that’s building in her gut. “But that’s not the weird part.” She zooms in on another part of the photo. “Look what’s standing on the ridge. In the exact spot I was before I fell.” She points at the outline of a person in shadow.

“Someone else was out there with me.” Her voice rises with panic as the thought sinks in deeper. “Maybe they pushed me?”

Geoff takes the phone from her hand and brings it closer to his face to examine the photo. Alice tries to recall if she heard anyone behind her when she was walking. She’d had that feeling that she wasn’t alone, but the woods always give her that feeling. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe someone was out there all along. She slides off her stool, tries to shake the trembling from her hands, tells herself to breathe.

“Should we call the police?” she asks. Geoff’s probably beside himself at the thought of someone pushing his wife down a ravine.

He looks up from the phone, passing it back to her calmly. “Honey,” he says, a wariness to his voice that she doesn’t like. “I can’t tell what’s up or down in that photo. It’s just a bunch of blurred colors.”

“But you can see my clothes,” she argues, “and someone else on the path.”

“Gray, black, and green are all colors in the forest. We could be looking at anything.” She looks back down at the photo and he puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. “Isn’t paranoia part of menopause? I mean, could this whole thing just be that?”

She gets up from the stool. Knocks his hand away. “I know it’s really hard for your particular gender, but can you please not mansplain my lived experience? You can’t blame everything on menopause. It makes you sound like an ignorant chauvinist.” She picks up her glass of wine and carries it into the living room.

“I’m just trying to help,” he calls after her.

No, you’re gaslighting me and weaponizing a natural stage of life. Seething, she plops down on the couch, working hard not to cry. Tears will only confirm the theory that she’s a paranoid, emotional, perimenopausal mess. Easily patronized, easily manipulated. “Fuck you,” she snarls. That relieves some of the pressure inside of her. So does a long sip of wine.

Opening the photo app on her phone she checks to see if there are any other shots of her time in the woods. She’s relieved, and a bit disappointed, that there’s only one. She could use more proof. Tapping on the last photo, she stares down at it, doing her best to look with a critical eye. She zooms in on what she thinks is the figure on the edge of the ravine looking down as she’s falling. She stares at it intently, studying every gradation of shadow, searching for defining features, until a face starts to develop. A mouth, open wide, black holes for eyes, a nose long and thin bisecting the grin.

A hand clamps down on her shoulder from behind. She screams and her phone goes flying from her hand and onto the living-room rug.

“Mom?”

Alice turns to see Quinn standing behind the couch. “Why would you sneak up on me like that?” She presses a hand to her thumping heart.

“I’m sorry. I called you from the doorway, but you didn’t hear. Dinner’s ready.” He gives her a searching look, a questioning-her-sanity look, before heading back toward the kitchen.

Alice reaches down for her phone. Looking at the photo one more time, she wonders the very same thing.

Polly

Polly doesn’t even have a joint to smoke, but she stands outside her bedroom window, arms wrapped against the cold, hoping Gray will appear. She needs to ask him how the hell she got home on Friday night and if she did or said anything embarrassing. She can’t remember much, and that really freaks her out. She also needs to know where he got those mushrooms and what was in them that made her so sick. Her stomach is still queasy, two days later.

At dinner, her mom wouldn’t stop talking about what happened to her in the woods, which freaked out Polly even more. Obviously, her mom was just hallucinating, but after Polly’s own experience on mushrooms, and the things she saw that night, like those watchers, something feels very wrong about those woods. She really doesn’t understand why Gray loves them so much.

As though on cue, she hears a rustling in the bushes and Gray appears out of the trees. Butterflies fan the queasiness into full-fledged nausea and she instinctively puts a hand on her belly to settle it. He’s smiling sweetly, his hair is a perfectly-tousled mess, and his earthy scent wafts over her, this time laced with the smell of the autumn cold.

“Hey,” he says before leaning down to kiss her. For a split second she forgets all about her upset stomach and her worry that she may have done something to embarrass herself. “That was a great night on Friday,” he says after pulling out of the kiss. He takes one of her hands in his. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Yeah. No. Me too. That was, like, the most intense mushroom trip I think I’ve ever had.”

Gray smiles even wider. “Good. I’m glad.”

She laughs nervously. “I mean, I don’t even remember how I got home.”

He tilts his head and looks surprised. “Really? You just followed me out of the woods. I made sure you got through your bedroom window safely, and then I left.”

“So, nothing weird happened? I didn’t do anything weird?”

“Nope. Not at all. You were the perfect date.” He gives her hand a squeeze.

She laughs again, but this time with relief. “Okay. Phew. I was worried. I don’t usually have blackouts like that, which is why I’d really like to know what was in those mushrooms. I threw up some nasty stuff the next morning and I still feel a bit sick from them.”