By Ali Diamond
We are so fucking lost.
When Kyle, the guy I’d started seeing a couple months ago, had suggested a camping trip, this was not what I had in mind. I was expecting smores and bonfires, even possibly fishing in the nearby creek, but not this… expedition. There was something nearby he wanted to check out, he’d casually mentioned this morning over eggs and bacon. Shouldn’t be more than a couple hours walk.
“Sure, sounds fun.” I’d said, trying to sound chipper. The chill, cool girlfriend. Who likes hiking and camping, and watching her new boyfriend play video games.
But the two hour walk turned into three, then four. Now with the sun setting behind me, I couldn’t suppress that sinking feeling any longer. I could barely see him ahead in the gloom. Only the flashlight, with its sterile white light pointed at something near the ground, pinpointed his location.
He looked over at me, as if reading my thoughts, and frantically waved me over. Reluctantly, I went.
“Hey babe, I don’t know-”
“Look.” He said, cutting me off. He was pointing at something. “I knew it was real.” Hesitantly, I bent down next to him. “Babe, I-” But I’m cut off again as he takes my head and turns it, pointing it down at something. My stomach twists, and I suppress a retort. “Look,” he says again, his eyes glittering in the darkness.
By it, he was referring to this story he’d heard once. About wooden staircases in the forest, and the creatures that used them. He’s been obsessed ever since.
I sigh, and bend down a little closer. Amidst all the greenery and foliage, and tightly twisting vines, there was… something. Scratchings, etched into the base of a nearby tree. The flashlight, and the moon’s light, twist around it, casting flickering shadows through its deep grooves. Making it… dance.
I swallow uneasily and stand up. “Can we go back now? It’s getting late.”
Kyle’s face pulls into a deep frown. A gust of wind whips around us, as the trees sway violently above us. He doesn’t say anything for a long, long minute.
He straightens up. “You can go back. But I’m going to find them.” He then turns on his heel and continues down the path.
My stomach drops. “Wait!” I cry, panicked. He has the only flashlight. “I’m coming!”
I push through the overgrown foliage, the forest fighting back. The path was becoming more overgrown by the second and it seemed like the wind had picked up, reverberating into the canyon of silence that’d grown between us.
Kyle swung the flashlight wildly, trying to find more of those scratchings. The light danced on the leaves and branches above, the wind already whipping them into a frenzy.
Then suddenly, the flashlight caught something. On the branches above us. I could’ve sworn… no. There’s no way. I pulled my jacket in tighter. It was the cold, that’s what it was. The cold was making my eyes play tricks on me.
“How much further?” I called up ahead, but Kyle didn’t respond. He was standing a little ahead of me, with his flashlight trained on the trees above. He flicked the light from one tree, to the next, clearly searching for something. I could see the light, as it swung wildly above us, but I could barely see Kyle, who had melted into the shadows. “Babe!” I called out again, on the edge of hysterical.
I was suffocating. I was drowning in the green and brown and the black shadows that curled tightly around my throat. No comforting glow from my phone or watch, as both had been dead for hours. I couldn’t stop my breathing as it hitched, my heartbeat going a mile a minute.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t the chill girl, the cool girl who could camp and hike and be impressed with video games. I was out, I was going home.
“BABE. I’M LEAVING.”
No response. His flashlight had suddenly gone still, and was stuck on something on the ground.
I stomped up to him, and grabbed the flashlight. “You motherfucker, I said-”
But my heart stopped, as he turned to look at me. My blood ran cold, as a smile split his face in two. And his skin splintered, as the smile continued to grow. Almost as if, his smile was wooden in more ways than one. His face was slowly freezing as it turned into… what looked like, goddamnit, like bark. “The stairs.” He slurred, as his jaw cracked open. “I think we found them.”
I turned on my heel and ran, the flashlight bouncing along as I raced back down the path. I had a feeling we weren’t the first to find these wooden stairs, but I intended on being the first to make it back alive.
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