THE DARK FOREST by Ashley Harms (Short story

THE DARK FOREST by ASHLEY HARMS

Chapter 1 Matthew Gallagher would be the first to admit that he didn’t have the best memory. It wasn’t unusual for him to forget his homework existed or to lose his things and have no idea where they could be. He had constant reminders set up on his phone to prevent him from forgetting meet ups and test dates, and his parents had long since gotten used to putting his things on the counter when they were found.

But this? This was taking it a bit far.

He stood in the middle of a forest filled with thick, leafy trees and clouds of fog along the ground. He did not recognize the scenery.

Not that that was unusual. He hadn't been in any forests other than the one behind his house.

Also, he wore a hospital gown. The shirt was pale blue with tiny, dark blue squares, and the fabric hung down to his knees. He knew had never been to a hospital; thathe was sure of.

His pants were regular jeans, thankfully, though the pockets were empty. At the very least his phone should have been in there. Hopefully his parents wouldn’t be too mad that he had lost it? Though they would probably be more mad that he had somehow gotten lost in a forest when he was supposed to be….

Hold on, where washe supposed to be?

Matt remembered going to school that morning -- what he thoughtwas that morning -- but as soon as the lunch bell rang everything became a blur.

He sighed, ran a hand through his sandy-blond hair, and felt around the base of the tree near him for sticks or rocks. If he made an obvious marker, he could walk around and try to find… something. Civilization was probably too much to hope for, but maybe these were camping grounds? He could only hope.

After he picked up a single rock, he heard something echo in the distance. Were those really footsteps he heard, or was he imagining the sound?

They were real. He could hear the leaves crunching.

Quietly, he picked up a large rock with a sharp point. It probably wouldn’t do much good against a bear, but he could at least throw it as a distraction if nothing else.

The sound of crunching leaves came closer and closer until a face popped out from behind another tree. The figure stepped to the side and looked at him curiously. She had reddish-brown hair, freckles across the bridge of her nose, and looked to be about his age, seventeen.

She was not wearing a hospital gown. Instead, she wore a red t-shirt and pale blue jeans.

“Where’d you come from?” she asked, sounding surprised. In her right hand was a long stick that had one end sharpened to a point. He must have been staring because she continued talking. “That’s my spear. I mean, it’s not myspear, it belongs to the group, but they didn’t want me out here hunting without a weapon. That’d be pretty stupid, huh?”

“ ...Yeah, ” he said, having no idea how to respond.

“Oh, I’m Kaylie. ” She tilted her head to the side. “Why are you dressed like that?” She didn’t

sound accusing, or rude, just curious.

“No clue. I’m Matt, I just woke up here. ” He stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Oh, ” she said, sounding surprised again. “I didn’t think they were sending anyone else. ” She

shook her head.

“Follow me, I’ll show you to the camp. ” She turned to the right -- his left -- and carved a path through the trees.

He blinked and followed her. Who did she mean by ‘they?’ And ‘sending?’ Wouldn’t he remember being sent someplace?

It didn’t take long before he saw the light of a fire. Kaylie whistled, and three people whistled back with dierent tunes. He also heard someone blowing air, like they had tried to whistle and couldn’t get the hang of it.

“Hi, I’m back, ” Kaylie said. Matt stepped out from behind a tree and paused.

Four teenagers sat around a firepit, wearing torn and dirty clothing. The tallest one had some kind of meat speared on another sharpened stick and looked to be roasting it over the fire. He looked a little older than Matt. Next to him sat a girl who couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

“This is Matt, ” Kaylie said.

“I found him by thetree. ” Apparently that made some kind of sense to the others, because they started nodding.

Matt blinked. “Uh, hi. What exactly is going on here?”

“What’s with the hospital gown?” one of the other kids asked. Her black hair was cut jaggedly, like she’d tried to do it herself. The ends had streaks of purple in them.

“No idea, ” he said.

“I just woke up like this. An explanation would be nice, though. ” He probably sounded a little too aggressive there. Oh well.

“Dude, we have no idea what’s going on, ” the guy with the meat said, sounding defensive. “We

all showed up in this forest at the tree you ‘woke up’ by, really confused. ” He sighed.

“There used to be more of us, but Jake got lost yesterday and didn’t make it back to camp, ” he added.

“We didn’t think whoever put us here would send someone else so soon, ” the girl with the purple streaks said. She looked maybe fourteen? He wasn’t great at guessing ages.

“I’m going back out to hunt, ” Kaylie commented. She patted him on the shoulder as she passed.

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

“Oh, sorry… Matt, was it?” a boy with dirt smeared on his glasses asked. Matt nodded.

“I’m Ben. Sit down, there’s room. ” He moved over, leaving an empty spot between him and the oldest teen there. Matt sat down, glancing at the spears over the fire curiously.

“Call me Bryan, ” the guy cooking over the fire said, noticing his gaze.

“The forest has some weird animals, and Kaylie’s pretty good at gutting them. She doesn't remember why, though. ”

Now that was a weird thing to say. “Why not?”

“No clue, ” Ben said.

“None of us really remember what we were doing before we got here. What our lives were like, who our families are… ” he trailed o. “We aren’t even sure if our names are correct. ”

“Call me Jay, ” the girl with the jaggedly cut, purple-streaked hair said.

“It’s what I’ve been going by since I got here because there was a bluejay in the tree when I appeared. ”

“Does everyone appear by the same tree?” Matt asked.

“So far, yeah, ” Bryan said.

“Same clearing, same tree, same lack of recall. ” He rotated the sticks, turning the meat to the other side.

“Huh. ” Matt stared into the flames. This… was not what he meant when he said he hoped the woods were camping grounds. He had been hoping for some kind of adult, maybe a phone…

though now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember his parents’ numbers. Or their faces.

He knew who they were, he still had vague memories of them, but all the detailed information about them had been taken away somehow.

“Oh, d’you have anything in your pockets?” the youngest girl spoke up quietly.

Matt turned the pockets inside out. “No, sorry. ” She nodded sadly. “Did other kids have stu

with them?”

“Sometimes, ” Ben said. “It wasn’t useful stu, though. ”

Matt nodded silently, thinking. Something about this was bugging him. Aside from, well, the obvious. “How many kids have been stuck here?”

Bryan, Jay, and the boy with glasses shared an indecipherable look while the youngest girl winced.

“We don’t know, ” Bryan said quietly.

“There haven’t been more than six people here at once, but I’ve seen ten kids come and go in the last few months. ”

Matt stared. “How long have you been here?”

Bryan snorted. “Since winter. ” Matt winced. It was at least April now, maybe May.

“By ‘come and go’ do you mean…?” he trailed o, too nervous to actually say the words, to acknowledge that it could happen to him.

The answer came from Jay.

“Yeah, we believe that when someone gets lost in a forest full of thick fog and giant, carnivorous animals that they don’t survive, ” she said dryly. “I never liked Jack much, but I didn’t want him to go away. ”

“You’re the first new kid we’ve had in three weeks, ” Ben said. Matt turned to stare into the fire.

As they sat and watched the flames dance inside the fire pit, the light grew dimmer and dimmer around them. Night had fallen in the forest.

“What are sleeping arrangements like?” Matt asked curiously.

Bryan handed him a piece of speared meat. “Climb a tree and hope it doesn’t rain. Are you

allergic to seafood?”

Matt furrowed his eyebrows. “No?”

“Then you should be fine to eat this, ” Bryan said. Noticing Matt’s confused look, he elaborated. “Kaylie caught some kind of giant fish around lunch time. One of the other kids was allergic to something she found before. ”

Matt nodded and nibbled on the meat. It tasted salty, which was strange, as he was pretty sure any streams running through the forest would be freshwater. Oh, well. It was food, and he had a sinking feeling it wasn’t very common to make such a big catch and actually have this much to eat. How the hell did Bryan manage to survive here during winter?

He curled up under a tree and closed his eyes. Hopefully, hewouldn’t be stuck here that long.

Chapter 2 A long corridor stretched out before Matt. The walls and ceiling were pure white, the floors pale gray and tiled. Wooden doors lined the hallway, with dierent colored lights shining from the gaps beneath them.

Someone screamed.

Matt opened the door on his left, where he thought the sound had come from. A hospital bed sat in the center of the room, with cabinets along the walls and a sink in the back left corner. The sound stopped.

Tied to the bed was Jay. The girl had long black hair with much longer purple streaks, and stared up at someone dressed in a lab coat and face mask. She looked horrified.

Matt took a step inside.

“ -- and send subject 1-1-5 to testing site L, ” the person in the lab coat said. Their voice was deep. Matt thought it sounded familiar but couldn’t think of why.

“No! What are you doing!” Jay shouted as she twisted in her bindings.

A white light flashed before Matt’s eyes, and he blinked to clear his vision. When the spots disappeared, the room was empty.

Matt frowned and stepped backward into the hallway. He turned and opened the door across the hall, seeing a room identical to the one he had just been in. Only this time, a much younger kid he didn’t recognize was tied to the hospital bed, crying.

“ -- to testing site K, ” the figure in the lab coat said. Matt wondered just how many ‘testing sites’ there were.

“Lemme go! I want mom!” The little boy screamed. The figure in the lab coat leaned down and injected something into the boy’s arm. He went limp.

What the hell was going on?

Matt stepped forward, but no matter how far he walked, he couldn’t get any closer. It was like watching a movie. He couldn’t interact with anything behind the ‘screen’ even though he wanted to.

This time, the white flash shoved him out of the room, and he fell backwards.

Then he realized the kids had been wearing the same hospital gowns as he wore. He had been here, probably just before he woke up. But then… what had happened?

He made his way to a third room, not knowing what else to do.

Inside was Bryan. Shouting, screaming, kicking up a fuss. A figure in a black coat and what looked like a gas mask held him down. Matt watched as the ‘doctor’ injected him with something, and Bryan fell limp like the other kid had. But Matt was still in the room.

The ‘doctor’ nodded to the other figure, who released Bryan. They then pulled over a light -the kind you would see at the dentist -- and shone it onto Bryan’s head.

Matt didn’t dare move a muscle. He wanted to see what was going to happen. But he didn’t seem to have much control over anything, as the light flashed and threw him back into the hallway. He shook his head and picked himself up, walking to another door. Before he could reach the handle, the hallway began to shrink. Everything flashed black.

Blinking, Matt stared up at the tree canopy above him.

That was one hell of a dream.

But the hospital gowns… did that mean that had really happened?

“Hey Matt, ” Kaylie said brightly. Matt jolted up from the ground, breathing heavily. “Woah,

sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. ”

“Oh, you’re-- you’re fine, ” he said, waving it o. He tried to catch his breath.

“Say, ” he paused. Should he tell a complete stranger about his weird dream? They would probably think he was crazy.

“What?” Bryan said, across the circle from him.

“Uh, this is probably gonna sound stupid, but did you guys ever have weird dreams about hospitals while you were here?” Matt winced after he finished. It sounded nuts, even to him.

But that didn’t explain why Kaylie and Bryan both froze.

“ ...Yeah, ” Bryan said, sounding hesitant. “We have. Once or twice. What did you see?”

Matt relayed the strange figures and white flashes. Kaylie looked pale.

“And that’s all you saw?” she asked.

“Yeah, I woke up right after, ” Matt said, confused. “Why?”

“Just wondering if you saw me, ” she said.

“But since you didn’t, it doesn’t matter. ” She stood. “I’m gonna go fish. See you guys later. ” She stepped over a log and left camp.

Matt turned to Bryan for an explanation.

Bryan sighed.

“We have no idea what the dreams mean, and they’re never as detailed as yours. I always thought they were just our minds trying to make sense of what was going on, but your clothes…. ” He rubbed at his forehead. “I need to show you something. ”

He stood, and Matt followed suit. Bryan made some strange hand-sign to Ben, who looked at Jay and repeated it before nodding.

Matt blinked, confused, and followed Bryan out of the camp. They wove through tree trunks and ducked under low-lying branches. Eventually, they came to an area fenced in by thick brush. Bryan waved a spear in front of him to dissipate the thick fog.

“It’s here, ” he said. Bryan pointed with the spear at a black cube hidden in the foliage of a very large tree.

Eyes squinted, Matt tried to see what it was. But all it looked like was a black cube.

“Can you get it out of the tree, or is it stuck?” Bryan opened his mouth as if to ask something, shut it again, and poked the strange object with the spear.

A camera hit the ground.

Matt picked it up, turned it this way and that, looking for some kind of cord. “Do you see

anything else up there?” he asked Bryan.

“Hold this, ” Bryan said, shoving the spear into his arms. Matt took it, startled, and watched as Bryan scaled the tree like a lizard. The branches rustled, and several leaves fluttered to the ground. “Aha!” Bryan exclaimed. “Found a cable. ” He slid down the trunk, severed cord in hand, and hit the ground with a loud thump.

“Great, ” Matt said, smiling. “Now all we have to do is follow it. ” He handed the spear back.

Bryan hesitated.

“What?” Matt asked.

“We can get the others, you know. I’m not saying we should go alone. ” He frowned as Bryan shook his head.

“Dude, what are we gonna find there?” Bryan asked.

“We don’t know who we are. We have no idea what’s at the other end of that camera, or who’s watching us, or anything. I don’t want to get anyone killed. ”

Matt felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Right. This wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a scavenger hunt, where once they found all the pieces they would receive a prize and get to go home. This was a dangerous thing. At least ten kids had diedin this forest, and the six more of them could easily face the same end if something went wrong.

But if his dream was correct, this wasn’t the only place kids were dying. That camera could lead them to whoever was orchestrating this, and they could stop it.

Or whoever was running this could kill them all.

Matt swallowed.

“Good… good point, ” he said, and he hoped his voice didn’t sound as strained as it had felt. “Maybe… let's tell the others and see what they think?” He looked at Bryan questioningly.

Bryan took a breath and nodded. “Yeah. Take the camera with you; we need proof. ”

He nodded, and they started the trek back to camp.

Chapter 3 “Is Kaylie back yet?” Bryan asked Jay when they reached the fire pit. The flames had long gone out; they didn’t keep fire going during the day lest they run out of materials.

“Not yet, why?” she asked. Ben looked up at them curiously, as did the other girl -- whose name Matt still didn’t know.

Bryan sighed. “We found something. ”

“I’ll go get her, ” Ben immediately announced. He took o running through the trees, zig-zagging so as not to run into anything.

“What kind of something?” Jay asked.

“You wouldn’t be so excited if it were food… is it clothing? A phone?” Her eyes suddenly widened. “A way out of here?”

“Uh, not exactly, ” Matt said nervously, regretting the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. Whyhad he spoken up? He hadn't meantto, the words had just kind of come out. He always had been a horrible liar, but he wished it wasn’t so obvious.

Jay looked at him with suspicion, but Bryan was there to smooth things over. Thankfully.

“We’ll talk about it when Kaylie and Ben get back, ” he said, in a tone of voice that said no one was to argue. Jay nodded, annoyed, and turned to the other girl.

Kaylie and Ben came sprinting out of the woods a minute or two later. Kaylie skidded to a stop, kicking up dirt, while Ben dropped to the ground. He panted and futilely tried to catch his breath.

Bryan raised his eyebrows. “I didn't say it was an emergency. ”

Kaylie gasped for breath and shook her head. “Giant. Animal, ” she wheezed.

“Run. ” Ben looked at Bryan for guidance, while Jay and the other girl jumped up from the forest floor, worried.

“I guess we’re going to the edge of the forest, ” Bryan said. “Come on. ”

A loud roar echoed through the trees from behind Kaylie and Ben. Bryan took o running in the direction he and Matt had just come from, with the other kids following closely behind.

When they got to the tree, they paused to catch their breath and heard another ear-splitting roar.

“Okay, ” Bryan said, breathing heavily.

“I found something in this tree a while ago. It turned out to be a camera. ” He gestured to the black cube in Matt’s hands. “There’s a cord in the tree, that lets whoever set it up see us through it. ” Another roar came from the trees, sounding much closer.

“If we follow the cord, ” Matt said, still panting, “we can find the people who put us here.

Maybe get our memories back. ”

“Let's get on with it then, ” Jay said impatiently.

“And I’m not just saying that because we’re being chased by some weird, gigantic, technicolor animal. ” Matt looked at her, confused.

“Technicolor?” Another roar. The creature was approaching.

“Doesn’t matter, ” Kaylie said, gasping slightly. “We-- we need to run. Where-- where’s the

cord?” She looked at Bryan anxiously.

Bryan hurried around the back of the tree, the kids following, and pointed out the long, black cord coming down the trunk that looked a bit like a thin drain pipe. “This is it. See how it goes along the ground, there?” He pointed to where the cord disappeared into the undergrowth. “Follow that. ”

The girl Matt still didn’t know the name of followed the cord into the brush, pushing the plants aside for the others to follow.

Heavy footsteps shook the ground beneath them.

They rushed through the sharp, spiney plants that covered the soil, moving in one big blob. Leafy limbs reached out to tear their clothing and split their skin, but they kept going.

As soon as the brush ended, Jay took o sprinting after the cord. The others were quick to follow.

They could hear the footsteps and growling of the creature approaching from behind but couldn’t stop to think about it lest they get attacked by a fanged, drooling mouth.

Shoes crushed brittle grass and stray flowers into the dirt as they rushed across the flat landscape. No one had verbalized it, but they all knew they had left the trees behind. No more deep, rolling fog clouds or thick trunks to get in their way.

They were out of the forest.

Had it been that easy, all along? If they went through the undergrowth sooner, could they have gotten out?

A large, white building came into view. The kids sped up -- had they? It felt like it -- and sprinted through the grass, stumbling over pebbles and stray twigs. Kaylie tripped and skinned her knee but popped back up and kept running.

They reached the doors. Bryan pulled at the handle, Jay pushed against the metal, but the doors did not budge.

“Use the spear!” Matt exclaimed.

Jay looked at him like he was nuts, but Kaylie and Bryan jabbed their sharpened sticks under the doorframe. They poked and shoved at the hinges, hands trembling.

One of the doors shifted.

Kaylie moved over and shoved her spear right next to Bryan’s. They shoved forward, and the door fell back.

Quickly, the kids made their way inside. Bryan propped the door back up and then led the charge farther into the -- so far -- eerily empty building.

Their footsteps echoed as they walked down the hall, but they weren’t nearly as loud as those of the animal from the forest. Bryan took a right, and Matt stopped in his tracks at the view. “What?” Kaylie asked, looking worried.

“This is the hallway I saw, ” Matt said. He swallowed and rushed up to one of the doors.

Inside lay an empty version of the rooms from his dream.

Except for one smalldierence.

“A cell phone!” Jay called out. She snatched it o the counter and hurriedly pressed the buttons for 9-1-1. “Hello?” she asked. The answer was mued. “I don’t know where we are, but there’s a giant animal coming our way. Maybe a bear. ” Another mued answer. “There’s six of us. Look, can you just trace the call and get on with it?”

The creature roared from outside. Matt ushered the other kids in, shut the door, and shifted the hospital bed to barricade the room. Bryan and Ben helped him.

“Yes! Thank you, ” Jay set the phone down on the counter and turned to them, smiling in relief. “The police will be here in a few minutes. They’re gonna look for Jack and the others, too. ” Ben whooped.

“We get to go home, ” he said, breathless with relief.

“Yeah, ” Bryan said. He sounded disbelieving. “We… we do. ” He slumped against the wall,

laughing quietly. “I didn’t think I ever would, you know?” He looked at Matt and smiled

brightly.

“I totally get that, ” Matt agreed.

A few minutes later, they heard shouting. Someone knocked on the door. “Hello? Is Jay in

there? It’s Bryce, we talked on the phone. ”

“Yes!” Jay said. “We’re in here!” She moved the barricade away, Kaylie and Matt helping.

The man’s eyes widened.

“So that’s where you all got to, ” he said, sounding surprised. At everyone's confused looks, he elaborated. “You six have been reported missing for months. Your parents are all frantic. ”

“Can you give us our memories back?” the youngest girl asked nervously.

“Yes, Lacy, ” he said. “We can. ”

Matt breathed deeply for what felt like the first time since he had appeared in the forest.

It was over.