Don't Let the Forest In, page 7
Andrew turned stiffly, and the coach clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep this energy up and you will play in the November tournament.”
“No offense,” Bryce called across the net, “but he doesn’t have the stamina. Give it fifteen minutes and then I’ll beat him every time.”
“Start eating more, oui?” the coach said, voice warm. “Do the weights, footwork. Be faster. We are in agreement?”
“I’m actually going to be an author.” Andrew directed it at the ground.
“And I wanted to be Picasso.” The coach looked unfazed as he steered Andrew back toward the net. “It is better to study law, play tennis, then kiss many beautiful women.”
Bryce barked a laugh.
Andrew served hard. Bryce returned the ball and the real fight began. The coach strutted off to enthusiastically harass someone else.
Something shifted in Andrew’s pocket and he nearly missed the next serve. His pocket had been empty when he dressed, but maybe it was a note from Thomas—he often smuggled drawings to Andrew and Dove, and they’d find them during a tedious class and end up smiling. Maybe it was forgiveness in charcoal and ink.
But then Andrew’s pocket shifted again, pressing against his thigh in a way that felt less like a folded note and more like an earthy clump of—
A shudder barreled down Andrew’s spine and his body twitched. His pocket felt wrong. Warm and soft and doughy and—
The ball hit him right in the face.
Andrew felt it in his teeth. Pain exploded across his face, air punched from his lungs as he went blind in a white, hot blaze. His racket slipped from nerveless fingers. He bent double as he cupped his nose and let blood pour between his fingers.
“Holy shit!” Feet running. Bryce’s shadow loomed over him. “That was an accident. Why’d you stop swinging, you idiot? Coach!”
Andrew thought about punching Bryce so hard he ate the tennis court. Instead, he dragged one bloody hand from his face and reached into his pocket.
His fingers dug into something spongy. He squinted through his tears at the mess in his hand.
“What the hell…?” Bryce said. “Why are there mushrooms in your pocket?”
The fungi crumbled between Andrew’s fingers. His mouth opened in confusion, blood running across his lips. He yanked out another handful, but his pocket still bulged with the fleshy, rotting mess, the smell of foul forest everywhere. This didn’t make sense. How could he have dressed without feeling it? He dug out another handful and threw it on the ground.
He wiped his hand on his shorts, but the mess didn’t come off.
The coach ran over, rattling off French expletives as he tilted Andrew’s face up. “Not broken. But you shall go to the nurse.”
“I’m fine.” Andrew swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Everything throbbed.
“The bathroom, then. Go clean up.” The coach whirled on Bryce. “What was that?”
Andrew escaped while Bryce received his deserved scolding. Andrew found no joy in it, though, because his skin was crawling.
Had Thomas put rotten mushroom in Andrew’s pocket?
The indoor pool building held the locker rooms—of course Wickwood had a private pool—and the bathrooms were always crowded this time of the afternoon. But when Andrew stumbled inside, perfect silence swathed the boys’ bathroom. His tennis shoes squeaked on the white tiles, and blood dripped in a perfect line behind him, each drop as round as a marble.
He stumbled to the sinks, already grabbing at his pocket again. His shorts felt dragged half down his hips from the weight of it. But he’d emptied—
His pocket was full again, bursting at the seams.
The mushrooms were growing.
He dug out more fleshy muck and threw it in the trash. Then more. And more. His heart crawled into his throat and he began to shake. He couldn’t find a way this made sense.
He had to calm down. He was breathing too fast.
Stop, stop, and breathe. It had to be some weird super fungus. Gross, but explainable. He looked at his hands, stained brown, and tried to wipe it off. It clung to his skin, blooming there as it traced up the blue lines of his veins.
“Please, please, stop doing this.” His voice fractured, and he didn’t even know who he was talking to.
The lights flicked off, then on, and Andrew flinched. He snatched paper towels and scrubbed at his fingertips. Shit, shit. It didn’t come off. He threw the towels aside and started scratching and then peeling at the mushroom on his fingers. It came off like a sucking mouth that left behind red welts. He flung the shed mess on the floor with a moan and stumbled back.
People should be in here. Where was the swim team? He needed witnesses. He needed Thomas to see this so he knew he wasn’t going insane.
The air felt wrong. Alive. Breathing.
It felt like the first day back at school, the thing in the foyer with lips and fevered tongue against his neck.
pleasure
Horror.
lovely
Horror.
open your pretty mouth for meeee …
NO—
A stall door jerked open somewhere behind him.
Andrew’s heart punched against his ribs hard enough to bruise. “Hello?” For the first time in his life, he did not freaking care who walked in and saw his bloodied face, with fungi crawling up his arm as he had the mental breakdown of a lifetime.
Please be Thomas.
But no one turned the corner.
Another stall door slammed so hard it crashed against the wall. Andrew’s heart clawed up his throat, sweat slick on the back of his neck, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t—
He took a step backward, then another. Then he ran for the last toilet and locked himself inside.
Somewhere down the row of stalls, another door slammed. Then another. Like gunshots against the stillness.
The breathing grew heavier. Something scratched against the stall doors with a high-pitched shriek. Then silence.
Andrew wiped his nose, smearing blood up his cheek. His eyes blurred as he swallowed hard. This wasn’t happening. Whatever it was. It couldn’t be happening.
He squished himself onto the closed toilet lid and pulled his knees to his chin and tried not to hyperventilate. Above him, electricity crackled along the fluorescent lights and they snapped off again. On.
Off.
Darkness fell, absolute. It crawled over his arms and pinned him there, no air to even scream.
Another stall door slammed, slammed—SLAM SLAM SLAM.
It would get to him next. He’d locked the door, but he had to choose to believe it wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. It was all in his head.
In the green glow from the emergency exit sign, legs appeared under Andrew’s stall door. They were hard to distinguish, half eaten by the dark, but he could tell they were slender and furred.
A senior prank, it had to be. They hoped to make him piss his pants and then they’d laugh about it for weeks. He could get through that. He knew what it was to be a target and survive.
His mouth trembled. Too soft, too sensitive.
Pathetic—
Panic bricked up his lungs. He just wanted this to be over.
BANG. Fist against the door. It shuddered.
The legs shuffled and made two sharp, clear taps. Like iron horseshoes on tiles.
Andrew forced himself to peer under the door.
Hooves. Each leg ended in perfectly round hooves.
Fingernails scratched against the stall lock. The lock began twisting, slowly. Slowly—
just a little
a little more
and more and more and
He was whispering out loud now, a numb prayer, crushing his face to his knees. “Please, please, leave me alone—”
“Andrew.”
His head snapped up, body jolting backward with nowhere to go.
Dove was there. He had no idea how she’d opened the stall door and slipped in so silently. Her skin glowed green against the emergency lights, her lips in a line of cold fury, the kind she wore when she wanted to absolutely end someone for picking on her brother. She took his hands and squeezed.
He shook so hard.
“Come on, I’ll get you out of here.”
“B-b-b-but the thing—” He broke off with a sound halfway between a sob and a curse. The hoofed legs had vanished, but the breathing hadn’t. Thick and rasping, now coming from across the bathroom.
“Ready,” Dove whispered, “set … go.”
They burst out of the stall together. She held on to him so tightly he felt like a paper kite on a string flying behind her.
Hot breath hit the back of Andrew’s neck. He could feel it crawling, crawling, down his spine. It smelled of mold, of spoiled meat.
Andrew let out a strangled cry as Dove hauled open the door and they tumbled outside.
He stumbled into afternoon sunlight and fell onto his knees on the grass. Bile rose up his throat and he gagged on the blood slick against his teeth, on the wrongness of it all.
“It’s just a panic attack.” Dove sounded so far away.
Two juniors turned the corner, laughing and jostling, but they broke off when they saw the twins.
“Whoa,” said one, while the other asked. “Um, are you okay?”
“Don’t go in there.” Andrew wiped blood from his mouth. “D-d-don’t—”
One of them immediately pushed the door open. Andrew tried to get to his feet, to save them somehow, but he couldn’t feel his bones. Couldn’t stand. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t—
“There’s legit nothing in here.”
Something in Andrew’s chest gave a sickening swoop. He didn’t realize until that moment how scared he’d been that none of it had been real. But how could it be real, Andrew, you goddamn fool?
Dove petted his hair anxiously, no condemnation or embarrassment in her expression. He hated the pity, the lines around her tight mouth that said My brother’s having a meltdown over nothing again.
It only took moments for a crowd to gather. Someone had gone for a teacher, and the track team had begun filing in from their run. People stared at Andrew with a mixture of pity and embarrassment, not quite sure if they should offer help or put distance between themselves and this mess. Andrew focused on his trembling hands, but they didn’t feel attached to him. He would cry soon, he knew it, in front of all these teens who were already staring.
Words volleyed back and forth over his head as Dove fumbled an abridged explanation that would make sense. But they both knew she couldn’t salvage this.
“He’s not feeling well,” Dove said, steel in her tone. “That’s all.”
“It was just some shitty prank, Perrault,” someone said. “You’re fine.”
“S-sorry, I’m sorry. I’m s-s-s-so—” Andrew couldn’t catch his breath. “There was this—this thing in there. It wasn’t a prank. It was real—” But he cut off, knowing he needed to stop before he made himself look worse.
He was
l s i n g
o
his goddamn
mind.
TEN
He curled under blankets in the dark, his spine to the wall, listening to Thomas breathe across the room. The electric clock perching on a haphazard stack of textbooks flicked to 2:00 a.m. He watched the dark melt down the ceiling and wished Thomas would fill the silence between them with a whispered What happened? I’ll take care of it for you.
Andrew hadn’t explained what had happened in the bathroom the day before—not that his supposed best friend had been around to tell. Two seconds before lights out, he had slid into their room and dived into bed, and by then Andrew felt too small to speak. It was all over the school anyway: the boy who’d had a total mental breakdown over an alleged senior prank and landed in the nurse’s office for the rest of the day.
He decided that Thomas hadn’t heard, instead of accepting the possibility he didn’t care.
Everything felt wrong. The way the darkness bled like ink before his eyes, the ghosted memory of things touching him as if they wanted him, owned him.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Thomas?”
The only response was the sound of bedsprings shifting as he rolled over and pulled the comforter over his head.
And suddenly Andrew couldn’t stand it any longer. A frostbitten anger surged up his throat and he flung off his blankets and punched the desk lamp on. “Thomas. Wake up and listen—”
Thomas wasn’t in bed.
Andrew squinted in the lamp’s golden blaze and scrubbed his eyes, because he’d seen him a second before. Heard him moving. Breathing.
But the bed across from him lay empty, comforter and sheets scrunched up, and when Andrew crossed the room to feel the mattress, no heat remained.
Something had been there—
He had the crawling urge to look under the bed.
No, no. Andrew dug fingers through his hair and pulled, hissing through clenched teeth. He wasn’t making this up.
A cool breeze slipped under the window. Papers rustled on the floor, and crumpled balls of Thomas’s half-done drawings rolled around like tumbleweeds.
Andrew would have to wait till tomorrow to confront him—except, why was he always the one who had to be patient and quiet until someone felt like listening to him? Maybe he should force Thomas to listen.
Andrew’s jaw clenched. Surely he deserved that much.
He snatched up a sweatshirt and tennis shoes and shoved the window all the way open. He bit his lip until it felt raw and swollen as he climbed down and landed in the rosebushes. He still wore pajama shorts, the cool evening biting at his bare legs, but this wouldn’t take long. None of them would want to linger after Andrew busted them in the woods.
Thomas and Dove. Dove and Thomas.
Mouths against skin and shirts slipping from shoulders and the leafy green knobs of the forest’s fingers tangled in their hair.
They could do him the barest courtesy of being honest about it.
He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his lumpy sweatshirt. It was time to change the story.
At least, he thought, as he ran across the sports field with the moonlight turning his hair silver, he still wasn’t afraid of the dark.
He climbed the fence and dropped down the other side without a sound. The night folded over him as he walked into the woods. As soon as the trees stretched up tall and black on every side, he turned on his phone’s flashlight and stomped around until he found the dirt track to their ancient white oak.
He decided to be noisy. No way did he want to surprise anyone.
Everything inside him had turned brittle. He couldn’t fit into a love story the way he was meant to, the way the stories were always told. No one would see a point in kissing him and leaving it at that, but he didn’t think he wanted anything more.
Sticks cracked underfoot and he plowed through leaves until he sounded like a petulant storm. But the tiniest worm of doubt wriggled through his stomach. Was this even a good idea? If there was something in the school, it could be out here, too.
Cloven hooves. Breath like wormwood rot.
“I’m not afraid,” he said to the trees. “Nothing bad has ever happened in the forest.”
Leaves whipped up around his ankles, and a single word slipped into the darkest places between the roots and thickets.
Liar.
Then the wind died suddenly, a switch shut off. Silence pushed down on his shoulders as if it wanted to drive him deep into the earth.
He stood still, flashing his phone light around. “Thomas? Dove? THOMAS.”
The silence breathed out.
Goose bumps rippled up his arms.
He turned in a slow circle, his light following in a smooth arc. The beam lit up a dark lump leaning against a pine, but he moved it past before registering something had been there. A person hiding behind the tree? He slashed his light back toward the shape. Nothing. Just a single pine shot up to the sky.
“If you jump out at me,” Andrew said, his voice surprisingly steady, “I will hit you so hard you’ll bleed, Thomas Rye. I am sick of this.” Of you, he wanted to add.
No one stepped out.
He clenched his teeth and spun back to continue down the rugged little path.
Something huge stood before him.
Andrew cried out, nearly dropping his phone. The light beam skittered everywhere before settling again on the thing before him.
Not Thomas.
Not Thomas.
It reached out a hand—a claw. Its arm was bone, flesh hanging off in rotting ribbons, skin pulled so tight over a naked chest that ribs punctured through. But its face—Vines poured out of its mouth, eyes, ears, growing and writhing. Blood slipped between its lips as another vine broke out of its flesh and spooled toward the ground.
Its feet were hooves.
Andrew ran.
He flung himself forward with a cry so terrified it didn’t sound like him.
This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening.
The thing followed. He could feel it coming up behind him, a weight so heavy and intense as it came fast fast faster—FASTER FASTER—
His flashlight jittered so hard he couldn’t see anything. The path was too small, too rough. He tripped, kept going. Tripped again. Shoved to his feet as roots and rocks cut his hands. Panic blossomed in his gut and rose up his throat in choking waves.
A claw ripped forward.
He felt it, his sweatshirt tearing as bright pain slashed across the back of his shoulder. He plummeted to his knees, scrabbling forward even before he hit the ground. His phone flew out of his hand.
The monster kept coming. The weight of it bore down, growing larger as it blocked out the whole forest above Andrew. It took hold of his leg and slowly, languorously, dragged him backward. Claws cut into his skin.
Andrew screamed and kicked out. The thing was almost all the way on top of him now. He would not get through this. He knew it.
The vines falling from the monster’s mouth pulsed forward, tips flickering toward Andrew’s face. Searching for somewhere to spear into and grow.
His eyes.
His ears.
His mouth.
