The year I turned thirteen, I made the error of accepting a dare. It was a silly, stupid thing to do, but I was young and had much to prove. So, when Susie McMullin challenged me in front of the class to enter the woods since I claimed that nothing could hurt or scare me, I took her on. Heart of steel, I told myself. Thick skinned and nothing to lose.
Ashyn Woods lay just beyond our little town. It rose beside a winding road with tall Evergreens that withstood each season without change. Always dark. Always foreboding. Always calling.
The kids who could make it that far to the edge of town gathered one Saturday afternoon. Susie was there, too. She had a gleam in her eye, while the other kids carried looks of worry and fear.
“You’ll never do it,” she sneered, “Just like you dad. You’re a loser and a quitter, too.”
I pretended I didn’t feel the sharp sting, but her insult burned me like a hot iron brandishing my skin. Everyone had heard about the recent fight up at the mill. My dad and the foreman, Mr. Da Costa had had a shouting match people claimed could be heard a mile away. Some of the things my dad said had bruised Mr. Da Costa’s ego and the man wasn’t about to let that go. Now, we faced money troubles and a tarnish to our good name.
“Shut up, Susie!” I picked up a long stick on the ground and threatened her. “Don’t act like you could go in there. Everyone knows you’re full of shit. You just make people do the things you can’t.”
My words didn’t affect Susie in the way hers had injured me. She simply smiled and shrugged. “It’s just some dumb trees. Don’t be a baby.”
It was a shock to all of us to see the prettiest, most popular girl in school charge ahead and step beyond the tree line. I lingered a moment but began to follow, knowing that if I didn’t, I’d never be able to hold my head high again.
Susie moved ahead with surprising ease. She stepped over rocks, dodged jutting roots, and avoided low-hanging branches, all with the grace of a white-tailed deer. When she turned around, she exclaimed, “You’re cheating. The dare is to go into the woods all by yourself.”
“Then let’s go our separate ways,” I said, this time being the one to put out a challenge. She glared at me.
“Good.”
I pretended to be brave as I pushed past her. “Great! I hope you get eaten by a bear.”
The bet was to walk for thirty minutes before turning back around to leave. I checked my watch. A mere three minutes had passed. Soon, I couldn’t hear Susie’s footsteps anymore. When I looked back, she was gone.
“Susie?” I called weakly.
She didn’t answer.
Thirty minutes is nothing. I can do it standing on my head.
But the lingering shadows played tricks on my eyes. Ten minutes, then twenty went by. I was doing it. I’d win the dare, and then I could shove it in Susie’s dumb, pretty face and prove that her words didn’t bother me.
Someone shouted in the distance. It stopped me in my tracks.
“Help!”
My heart clenched. Her scream was loud. It startled me.
“Susie?”
Her blood-curdling scream called again. “Oh, God! Help me!”
I started running.
Behind me, I heard her anguished wails. I heard something crashing in the woods. Branches tore and broke. Twigs snapped loudly, echoing in the dead silence of nature’s dark green cocoon.
“Where’s Susie?” A kid asked, seeing me tear through the opening back into the light of day.
“I dunno,” I wheezed, bending over my knees, gulping air.
But when we saw the woods tremble and felt the ground shake, tall trees parted way for a gargantuan creature whose skin was made of bark and whose eyes bore into our souls.
It did not intend to leave its forest as it never stepped onto the road.
I could no longer hear Susie’s scream, but I saw her. The ancient Woodsman of the forest had peeled off her face. No eyes could look upon us from the monster’s shoulder. Hers wasn’t the only one. Many others, turned leather over time, cloaked the Woodsman’s body in a patchwork of screams and skin.
Much thicker than mine.
Fiction © Copyright Christina Persaud
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com