Red Woods

The woods were a beautiful thing–red barked trees reaching so far into the sky that it was impossible to see the end of them, three leaf clovers covering the ground in huge swaths, so that it was painstaking to find breaks in them in which to stand and crouch as you looked for that elusive four leafed one. A deer standing in a clearing, it’s brown back dappled by the sunlight filtering in through the leaves of the trees. But it was also a frightening thing, when the sun set and every tree branch looked like fingers and you could swear that Slenderman was lurking just past the light of the campfire.

The campsite was prime–the best pathway into the forest was just behind a fallen log at the back of the site, marked by two wooden stakes painted with bright gold lettering: LITTLE HENDY TRAIL. Down a small path was an enormous dry river bed, fallen logs laying across the gap–little bridges from one side to the other. California was not a place for wet weather, and even in all the years of coming here, Sam and Jordie had never seen this river flowing with water.

Sam picked up the long fronds of leaves laying at the bottom of the river bed and laid them gently across the fallen log bridges. Children would build forts with the fronds and small flat pieces of bark which had fallen from the trees. Sam leaned the leaves against the log bridges and placed the bark pieces on the ground like hardwood flooring, leaving a space of a couple of feet in which to crouch.

“Remember the forts?” Sam grinned up at Jordie. “God, we thought they were the coolest architectural achievements ever, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” agreed Jordie, but she was looking off into the distance, over the top of the bridge. She did not smile.

Sam pulled herself out of the little fort, her expression sour. She glared at Jordie from behind her back, but said nothing. A dog barked from somewhere on the other side of the creek bed. Sam moved so she was standing in front of Jordie, forcing her to look at her.

“Are you mad at me?”

“Don’t ask me that.”

“Why? Are you?”

“Why do you always ask if I’m mad at you? I’m not mad at you. Why would I be mad at you?”

“So you’re not mad.”

Jordie huffed. She made a waving motion with her hand as if to brush Sam aside and turned back up the slope to the top of the trail. Sam stood in the creek bed, watching her sister. She felt hot.

The campsite was mostly dirt. Their tent was set up in a little copse of trees opposite the trail entrance. Jordie poked about in the dry fire pit with a stick, moving a balled up piece of newspaper around and around. They had neighbors on either of the two campsites next to them, but even so it seemed too quiet. There was no birdsong.

“You should have brought Sitka,” said Sam. She had finally come up from the trail, and she pulled her chair over next to the fire to sit with Jordie. Sitka was Jordie’s dog–but she was in Oregon, where Jordie lived now that she had finished college there.

“Yeah,” agreed Jordie, “I should have. I think she’ll be ok though.”

“She’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“I just don’t have cell service. If anything happens, they won’t be able to reach me–”

“Jordie, everything’ll be fine.”

Jordie took a deep breath to steady herself. Sam watched her and then took the stick from her, digging it into the dirt outside the pit.

Later, they went on a hike. It was Jordie’s idea, and Sam was glad of it. The air between them felt lighter than when they had been in the creek, but years without really seeing each other was still hindering them. Sam felt they were less like sisters and more like cousins, or something like that. This made Sam think of their cousins. Once, they had all camped here, many years ago, aunt, uncle, parents, cousins. Their uncle had joked about a “he-mit” and they’d hauled one of the cousins in a tree with a rope and their aunt had burned the rubber soles of her shoes off on the side of the fire pit. They’d made s’mores and the lantern had gone out, leaving one of them to stumble their way by firelight into the tents to find a new one. Once, even their grandma had

Fiction - Third Place Shelby Hicks

Pleasanton, California, USA

come, even though she hated the outdoors and couldn’t swim. But there were no lakes at Hendy Woods, only the redwoods.

They stretched for miles, the redwood trees. Some of the trunks were so large not even three people could wrap their arms around them. They were like Totoro’s tree in the Studio Ghibli film. Jordie walked ahead because she didn’t like being at the back. Every now and then she looked behind her to make sure Sam was still following. The path was clear, but every now and then they passed an abandoned walking stick or a half full plastic water bottle laid among the roots of the trees.

“How’s mom?” Jordie asked suddenly. She did not turn.

“Fine. She wanted to call you last week when she called me,” Sam replied. The path was wide enough now, and she moved to walk beside Jordie.

“I can’t call. I’m too busy with work.”

“I know.”

“I’ll call her when I get back home,” said Jordie, and it took Sam a moment to realize the home she was talking about was not their home here in California.

Jordie changed the subject. “You want to have some?” She pulled a weed pen out of her coat pocket. The plastic sheet coating around the outside was a swirl of colors, and the bit of liquid inside the top was golden brown. Jordie brought it to her lips and took a long drag. Sam reached out after her and took one too. They stood in a clearing of trees, the clovers reaching up to their ankles, blowing out thick white plumes of smoke.

“These woods aren’t like the woods in Oregon,” said Jordie. “There’s sand on the ground, y’know? You can’t escape the ocean in California.”

“Oregon’s on the coast too,” said Sam. She took a drag off of the pen and crouched down in the clovers, looking for one with four leaves.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t–what’s the word? Permeate.”

“I don’t understand what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Language,” said Jordie. She didn’t swear; it was against her principles. She sometimes held other people to it, especially Sam. Sam was used to it–their father held her to it, too. “Hell isn’t a swear,” Sam protested, and she looked up from the clover she was inspecting.

“Is too. And you just did it again,” Jordie said, her eyebrows raised over the weed pen.

Sam gave her the finger.

Jordie jumped back, wiping hurriedly at her sleeve. “Oh my god!” she practically yelled.

A bird took flight somewhere. “A spider! There was a spider on me.”

Sam laughed. Spiders were against Jordie’s principals, too.

The weed was taking effect on Sam now, but not on Jordie, who had gone back to taking long drags now and then. Sam reached out a finger to a roly poly walking over a stick in the clovers, but she stopped, waiting for the world to catch up with her, or maybe for her to catch up with it. She struggled to get back into the flow of time. The roly poly turned away, its little antennae twitching at the smell of her.

Jordie turned her head toward a rustling off to their left. Sam followed her gaze, slightly delayed. The branches in the trees about twenty feet above the ground were rustling softly. It was like a breeze had blown through, but the clovers were still. Jordie looked over as Sam stood from her crouching position. They locked eyes, and it was like something had shifted. It suddenly looked darker in the clearing.

“Maybe a person?” Sam said it slowly. Jordie’s eyes went back to the trees, and she looked like she had in the dried river bed when Sam had made her log bridge fort. Sam didn’t even consider how illogical it was that someone was twenty feet up in a tree.

“An animal?”

“No.” Jordie was quiet. “Let’s go back.” Her hand went to her pants pocket, where the car keys were on a heavy keychain. Sam picked a clover and was surprised to find that it had four leaves. She wanted to tell Jordie she’d finally found one, but stopped herself; it wasn’t the time. She put it in her pocket, feeling it was crucial to take it with her.

The whole way back to camp they looked over their shoulders and tried to hear anything over the sounds of the birds. Several times Jordie stopped abruptly and Sam nearly ran into her. She would squint into the trees and then grab Sam’s wrist, pulling her forward.

Sam couldn’t understand what was so scary to Jordie. It was a gust of wind, a squirrel, a bird taking flight. It was nothing. Several hikers came by as they hurried along, older couples or single men. Jordie said nothing to them about what she may or may not have seen. Sam worried about whether the other hikers could smell the weed on them.

The camp was quiet. There was still no wood in the fire pit, and their tent was still standing. Jordie got in and pulled Sam

in with her. She was holding Sam’s arm in hers, grasping her elbow, and Sam could feel Jordie’s heartbeat against her side as it slowed down. They sat side by side, breathing heavily, like they were ten and eight again. Sam remembered when they had been children on their yearly summer camping trips with their parents, when it was nearly midnight and the fire was being stoked by their dad. Their mother came into the tent to tuck them in. She always told a variation of the same story. Two girls, sisters, their names Sam and Jordan. She always called Jordie by her full name, no matter how much she protested. But not Sam. In the stories their mom told, Jordan and Sam went camping with their parents and were viciously and terrifyingly attacked by a mysterious creature. And then their mother would laugh and kiss their cheeks and turn out the light. They would stare up at the thin blue fabric of the tent, black in the night, and breathe shallowly so that whatever creature their mom had told them about wouldn’t hear.

Sam found that she was breathing shallowly.

“What did you see?” she finally asked, after the light outside the tent had begun to darken. Jordie turned to her; her eyes were shadowy in the dim light.

“Don’t leave the tent, Sam, please. We’re going to leave tomorrow.”

“But–”

“Sam.”

They sat quietly in the tent for a while more, Sam becoming more and more confused and annoyed. Jordie kept looking around at the other sides of the tent, waiting. Finally she let go of Sam’s arm.

“Let’s go to bed”

“Why? Because now you’re less scared of a tree? What were you scared for?” Sam didn’t know why she was being mean, but it felt right somehow. Jordie hadn’t been accommodating to her.

“I wasn’t scared. I’m not scared. I thought–”

Sam cut her off, her voice rising over a whisper. “I’m an adult, Jordie, you can tell me what you think you saw.”

“Be quiet,” hissed Jordie. “Don’t be so sensitive. I made sure we were safe, what else do you want from me?” She got in her sleeping bag and turned away so that all Sam could see when her eyes adjusted was the back of Jordie’s head. The darkness and shadows turned Jordie’s long hair into a face, its mouth open and its eyes wide. Sam stared at the face, her eyes squinted. Then she turned away, facing the side of the tent. She could just make out the shapes of the trees on the other side of the fabric in the rapidly dimming light.

It was exceptionally cold outside the tent, and so dark that all Sam could see were the stars through the branches of the trees. All she was wearing was a t-shirt, and she wanted to go back to put on her sweatshirt, but she couldn’t see where the tent was and she was afraid of waking Jordie. The bathroom wasn’t far once she reached the paved road curving through the campground, but she had to reach the road first. She checked the time on her phone screen: 12 a.m. She wanted to use the phone’s flashlight, but the battery was almost gone.

Sam was stumbling through the trees, arms outstretched, when something ran into her from behind. She jerked forward, her arms running into a tree.

“What are you doing?” Jordie whispered. She’d remembered both a sweatshirt and a flashlight.

“I can’t go to the bathroom?” Sam made a grab for the flashlight. Jordie pulled it out of range and held her hand out against Sam’s chest.

“No, you–” Jordie started, but there was a sound, high-pitched, off to their left. Jordie swung the light between the trees, but nothing was there except Spanish moss and bushes and logs like bridges. They were standing on the edge of the river gully. Sam’s small fort-like house was still standing, not yet destroyed by children. Bathed in the yellow glow of Jordie’s light, the whole scene looked eerie and forgotten.

“We should go back.” Jordie’s breath was catching. In the ambient glow from the flashlight, Sam could see only her profile. Her blond hair outlined her face in hazy glowing yellow. Sam could see the resemblance between them now, the one everyone had been so quick to point out when they had been younger.

“Samantha.”

Sam pulled herself out of her disjointed reverie. She thought maybe she was still high. “Am I high?”

Jordie squinted at her. “Are you serious? Are you actually insane? What does it matter, we have to leave.” She swung the flashlight around to point it at Sam’s face. Sighing, she said, “No, you’re not high.” Sam thought maybe it was Jordie who was high.

The way back to the tent was easier with light, but Jordie kept turning around to look behind them for whatever had growled, taking the light with her. Sam finally managed to wrestle the flashlight from her and pointed their way through the trees. It seemed to be taking forever to get back to their campsite. The open-

ing to the Little Hendy Trail was only about thirty feet behind their tent in daylight, but in the dark everything felt much farther. Or maybe it was much farther. Sam swung the light back and forth through the trees, and finally the light landed on their little blue tent, half hidden behind a redwood.

The light went out.

Sam stopped, and Jordie ran into her. “What happened?” Jordie hissed, and Sam could feel Jordie’s cold fingers wind their way around her elbow.

“Oh fuck,” said Sam, completely deadpan.

“Language,” Jordie scolded. Sam smacked the side of the flashlight. A tiny band of light landed on the ground, but could reach no further. Then it went out, too.

“Just walk forward,” said Jordie, pushing Sam’s elbow where she held it. “It’s right there. Just walk forward.”

“You walk forward.” Sam twisted her arm out of Jordie’s grasp. She couldn’t see anything–she didn’t even know where Jordie’s face was in the blackness. “Stop being a wimp. You’re older.”

Sam felt Jordie trying to grab the flashlight, and she swung her hand out to whack her away. Her hand connected with what was probably Jordie’s face. Sam heard her stumble back–the crunching of leaves–somewhere off to the right. “I’m sorry–Jordie–” Sam didn’t know where she was supposed to be directing her words. She moved forward with her arms outstretched and felt them pushed away by Jordie.

“Get off me! Stop acting like Mom!” Jordie’s voice was high. She tackled Sam’s arm, the one holding the flashlight, and took it. Sam could hear the high pitched squeaking of the flashlight as Jordie turned the back of it on and off, trying to get the battery to connect.

The light came back.

Jordie trained it on the tent and sucked in air. Sam stared with her as a form rose slowly from behind the little blue tent. It was a monstrous thing, bluish against the yellow light and the black trees behind it, although Sam could tell that in daylight it would have been black as night. It was grotesquely distorted, its head pulled at an almost impossible angle straight back to its neck so that it had to bend its entire upper body forward in order to look at them straight on. Its head was covered in slimy scales and its body in fur dripping with a deep red wetness that they were sure was blood. It stood nearly as tall as one of the huge redwood trees, and in the blackness they could just make out the tips of its long white horns, curved like corkscrews. Its face was a flat surface like a mask, covered in red.

“Holy shit,” Sam breathed. She was entirely cold.

This time Jordie didn’t have enough breath to scold her.

They stood frozen as it bent its body forward and lifted a long, thin leg up and over the tent, placing it gingerly on the needles below. Another leg followed the first, like a spider crawling from a web, and it became apparent that it had more legs than two as it continued to move toward them.

Jordie had grabbed Sam’s elbow in the hand that was not holding the flashlight and began pulling at it, making little squeaking sounds. Jordie’s tugging and the sound that came from the creature’s mouth, wherever it was, broke Sam out of her frozen state, and then they were running through the woods, Jordie holding onto Sam’s elbow, her cold fingers and the breath catching in Sam’s throat the only things Sam was aware of.

They ran wildly, down onto the upper bank of the gully, past the wooden post that marked the beginning of another trail. They only knew the creature was still following them because they could hear its many spidery legs crunching through the leaves and twigs behind them. The flashlight in Jordie’s right hand swung wildly. Trees to ground to sky to trees again.

Jordie jerked Sam’s elbow to the right, and the two of them tumbled to the ground behind a tree. Jordie flicked the light off and pulled Sam with her in the dark. They sat, panting, their backs to the trunk of one of the great redwoods.

“Listen,” Jordie whispered, “don’t move.”

Sam wanted to say something like “no shit,” but instead she just nodded. Then she realized Jordie couldn’t see her and choked out an “okay.” The creature was moving slowly–they could hear the crunching of one of its great legs only once in a while. It was directly behind them, making the same high-pitched sound they’d heard while standing in the river bed. It was a sound like a woman screaming, or a vixen in the night, calling for others. This close, it made Sam’s ears ring.

The sounds of the creature became quieter and quieter as it moved away through the trees, back the way they had come. Jordie turned the light back on, shielding the light with her hand so that the creature couldn’t see, but they could. Her hand was yellow and orange and red where the light shone through it. The two

of them moved slowly around the trunk of the tree in the opposite direction of the creature, Jordie holding the light close to the ground so they wouldn’t snap a twig or crunch a leaf.

The path was clear in both directions, and they couldn’t hear the creature anymore. Jordie took her hand off the light, and its beam shone across the path.

“What are you doing?” Sam said, reaching for the light. Jordie jerked it away, and its light flew off through the trees in a great arc.

“Get off,” whispered Jordie.

“It’s going to see us, you idiot.”

“It’s gone. Who knows if it even can see. I didn’t see any eyes, did you?” Jordie turned in a wide circle as she spoke, moving the light through the trees. Suddenly, a great black leg came down on the path in front of them. The high-pitched sound started up, a dull whine turning into a blood-curdling scream. As its body descended toward them from directly above, they stumbled out from under it. Jordie dropped the flashlight, grabbed Sam’s arm, turned, and ran.

They moved through the trees, arms outstretched, feet crunching leaves and twigs and mud, eyes wide but seeing nothing. Several times one of them stumbled on a fallen log, a bush, a rock, and the other pulled them up and continued. The screaming cry of the monster was near them and far away all at once, its voice echoing back against the huge trunks of the trees.

Jordie ran right into one of the trunks. Sam ran into her.

And then they were inside the trunk. It was one of those trees hollowed out by nature or humans, and inside a small opening was a space of a few feet in which to crouch. Sightlessly and soundlessly they sat on the ground, holding each other, trying to be quiet as they panted for breath.

Sam realized vaguely that some of the blood from the monster’s body had dripped onto her shoulders. It smelled like copper and venison. She was freezing in her t-shirt.

The monster was outside, whining.

In some time, Sam could hear it moving way off through the trees; in some time more, she couldn’t hear it at all. At some point, she closed her eyes, resting her head on Jordie’s.

Light filtered through the mesh top of the little blue tent. Sam sat up, and saw that Jordie was, too. They were both tucked into their sleeping bags, their lantern and flashlight laid on the fabric bottom of the tent between them.

“Did you–?” Sam began, but she couldn’t finish. She was wearing the same t-shirt as last night, but it was clean and smelling of wood.

Jordie nodded. She remembered.

Outside the tent, the campsite was the same as the morning before. The fire pit still had nothing in it except crumpled up newspaper and a stick. They packed up with only a few words to each other. Sam felt as though her head was filled with fluff. She felt like crying every time she looked at Jordie.

“Where are the keys?” Jordie asked, checking her bag.

Sam reached her hands into her pockets out of reflex, although she knew they weren’t there. Instead, she pulled out a four-leaf clover, slightly squished. She looked up at Jordie, who stared back, eyes wide.

“Holy shit,” whispered Jordie. Sam laughed. Jordie laughed too, after a moment.

And then they hugged.

Sam looked at the clover, small and broken in her hand. She closed her fist and then her eyes. Jordie still smelled faintly of weed. Sam laughed again, and so did Jordie.

Sam watched out the passenger side window as they drove away from the campsite. The signpost labeled LITTLE HENDY TRAIL could just be seen between the red trunks.