Page 59 of Wildwood

The figure has stopped, stands still, a black shape almost blending in with the trees, the late October sky already darkening everything below. I get a flash of every horror movie I’ve ever seen. The Ring. The Shining. The Blair Witch Project.

“Don’t run,” I say, keeping my voice level. And I try not to gasp, as I step cautiously on trembling legs, when I realize the figure is wearing a black hood.

* * *

When they turn, it takes me a moment to process that the face I’m seeing is that of a teenager. A girl with long brown hair and frightened-looking eyes. Behind her, I realize, is another girl, a blonde with a more confident gaze, also wearing that fucking scarf.

“What are you doing here?” Confusion has replaced the fear. These two girls are certainly not ghosts. Nor witches. I don’t think.

“We are so sorry,” says the brunette, voice trembling.

“I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” she hisses to her friend.

“We didn’t think you’d notice,” says the blonde, stepping toward me. “Honestly, I know it’s trespassing, but you’ve got so much property we figured you’d never know. I didn’t realize how close we were to the meadow.”

“But why? Why are you in these woods?” My brain feels like it’s working on overload, trying to digest and make sense of the people standing in front of me.

“Did Madeline put you up to it?” The thought suddenly occurs to me.

“What? No!” the blonde nearly shouts. “Definitely not.”

“We came to find the witch,” the brunette says sheepishly.

“It’s like a rite of passage,” explains the blonde. Up close, I can see that she’s cold and her nose is running. She pulls the scarf tighter around her neck. “You know, go into the woods of Wildwood and see if you run into the witch.”

“Do other kids do this?” I think of the times I was in the woods, hearing the crack of twigs that sounded human, the sound of laughter.

“Oh yeah,” they both say in unison.

“Please don’t call the cops,” pleads the brunette. “My parents will kill me. Our car is just on the road, we’ll leave now.”

Suddenly, I feel depleted. The adrenaline that had propelled me into the woods is completely gone, and I suddenly feel very, very tired.

“No, no I won’t call the cops. But please don’t come back here again. And please tell your friends too. People hunt in these woods. It’s dangerous.”

“Yes. Thank you. Thank you.” The girls hurry past me, two twin shapes moving through the darkening forest.

“Wait!” I call, before they are out of sight. They both turn.

“Where did that story come from? The story of the witch?”

The blonde shrugs. “Everyone knows it. It happened here once when my parents were young. The witch took a girl from her bed at night.”

I expect them to laugh, acknowledge the silliness of the lore. But they don’t.

And then they turn to go, picking their way through the woods to safety, and I make my way back home, a strange feeling turning in my stomach.

I won’t tell Topher. I know that I should, but I won’t. He’ll see it as proof that there was an innocent explanation all along. Just a bunch of teenagers causing trouble. But I don’t think that’s right. After Lucy and Simon told me about the lore, I looked it up online, even though I knew it wouldn’t yield any results. Nothing had come up before on my exhaustive Google searches. But its absence was even more suspicious than had anything actually popped up. Sure, there might not have been any documented witch trial, but if the lore persists, it started from something. Certainly, some teenage sleuth or podcaster would have compiled a site dedicated to the witch of Wildwood. But it’s as though the internet has been wiped clean of the story. Yet the story lives on, the lore strong enough to send kids far from town down a dirt road, and into the wild woods, looking for a witch.

Chapter 50

The next morning, I give myself an assignment. I have to go in the basement. I procrastinate on it, nursing my mug, eating a second bowl of oatmeal. There’re many things I don’t like about the basement, even excluding the incident from a few nights ago. The dirt floor, the cold stone walls, the smell of must.

Finally, I stand at the top of the stairs for a good five minutes, Hugo whining beside me, before slowly creeping my way down the creaking stairs. Now that I’m standing down here, I realize another reason why I don’t like the basement. Time feels elusive down here. The stones that were brought down here have not seen the light of day in two hundred fifty years. It could be morning, noon, or night, and it would all look the same. I might as well be in a cave.

But even though my heart is thudding, and my palms feel wet, it’s important that I’m down here. Someone or something was down here. The light glowed through the floorboards and went out as soon as I slid open the lock. Topher didn’t find anything, but he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

Not that I know what I’m looking for. But I’ll know it when I see it. I slowly walk through the room, willing myself to stare straight into the shadowy corners, almost daring some malevolent force to come for me. But nothing is here, aside from a mountain of our storage boxes, and a few rickety shelves piled high with old cans of paint. I notice one can is on the floor, so I go to pick it up. A deep crimson red has dripped down the peeling label. It’s still wet and I look at my red-stained fingers in fascination. It reminds me so much of the birch tree in my dream. Of the blood pouring out of the trunk, the pieces of bark falling away like ribbon.