“Come on Kyle,” Amelia says.

  “One sec.”

  The man takes a lighter to the kindling. “It’s not there all at once. Not like a natural disaster. It doesn’t come for all of us at the same time, see, that’s what makes it so ... insidious, one of the scientists called it.”

  “Can’t they just catch it?” Kyle asks.

  He laughs as the fire spreads, bathing them in warmth they don’t need. “There’s no it to catch. You wanna catch Nessie, give it a go. You’re just picking at the sores, fussing about a symptom while the disease spreads.”

  Amelia stands. “We have to get back to Chandler. Our friend is sick, mister, so we have to get back to him.”

  With the mention of Chandler, Kyle realizes how long they’ve been out here. He starts to stand, but the man grabs his wrist. “The ones it comes for first have to warn the others. I’m warning you now. I wrote it down for the scientists, but I done enough now. I’m getting in my truck and taking it to the ferry tomorrow. You said you saw it, and maybe you’re ill, maybe you’re like that cottager zooming his wife into the ocean, but if you’re not, you need to warn them. Like I’m warning you now. Leave. I don’t know if the city’s safe, but getting there will buy you time. It’ll buy your friends more time.”

  “What the hell man?” Kyle says.

  Amelia has slung her bag around her shoulder and is backing away. “Let’s go!”

  “I mean the rules don’t apply. Same place, same time, but different for me. Different for you.”

  Amelia grabs Kyle’s arm and tries to drag him away. The man stands and follows them. In the shadow of the forest, the fire highlights the deep lines in his face and the reflection dances in his sad, wild eyes.

  He stops, then shouts after them. “I mean the end of sharing this space. The beginning of the decomposition of perception!”

  Chapter

  Five

  Chandler said he chose his name because it couldn’t be shortened. It’s the same with Kyle—the name is the name, no good way to cut it down, unambiguously male.

  The man who lives in the forest never offered his name. He also never named what he was trying to tell them about. I won’t name it, because that’ll give it a home in my head.

  Except he had named it, hadn’t he? The decomposition of perception. If not a name, a label. Kyle can’t help but put the label on it. It’s the same with the word love that pops in his mind whenever he spends time with Amelia. It was the same growing up with Chandler, everyone calling him girl, even though he knew, and the people close to him knew, that in his reality, the one that matters, that’s not who he is.

  Kyle hopes his friend is okay. He hopes the water will sooth Chandler’s stomach. Then they can all leave.

  Amelia has taken the lead again, talking as she pushes through this unfamiliar part of the forest. “He was crazy. He was, wasn’t he? Mentally unwell. Nobody lives out here for three years without losing something.”

  “Maybe, yeah.”

  “I think we should watch our backs. This could be a scam, or worse. All that crazy talk about birds and scientists. It didn’t make sense.” She stops for a second and rubs her face like she’s psyching herself up to make a big choice. “I’ve decided I’m not worried! It’s nothing to worry about. He’s a crazy hermit who lost all his marbles.”

  But Kyle can’t see the forest the same way he did before. It’s true that the man’s words didn’t make sense, not all of them, but something about what he said felt real. As he watches Amelia hop over puddles that aren’t there, then stroll through clouds of bugs that Kyle has to shield his face from, the man’s words tumble around in his mind like an uneven load of laundry. The decomposition of perception. The de-com-position of per-ception.

  They climb over a toppled tree, and there’s the buzz again. He thought it was the feeling of being watched, but now it’s physical. Out there rather than in here.

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  She hesitates, cocks her head. “What?”

  “Buzzing. Over there.” He points ahead. The path is getting narrower, the trees closing in.

  She juts her head in that direction, as if that’ll help hear better, then shrugs. “Could be the wind?”

  He sighs. The wind doesn’t do that. It whooshes, it moans, it rattles branches—which are increasingly grey and brittle around the path ahead—but it doesn’t buzz.

  Their path is blocked. Something moves on the other side of a wall of criss-crossing branches and vines.

  “Do you see that?” Kyle asks.

  She sighs. Of course she doesn’t.

  The buzzing is loud enough to be a thousand bees—except, no, that’s not it. It’s more like a handful of very large bees. Kyle hears the individual flaps of their wings. When he listens closely, he hears the segments of their bodies chittering as they dance inscrutable messages to each other.

  Kyle covers his ears. “Stop,” he says to Amelia.

  Finally she stops, curls her hands into fists. “We have to hurry.”

  “How can you not hear that?” Kyle says, shouting.

  Amelia’s fists uncurl, and her face makes the subtle shift from anger to worry.

  He grabs her hand, pulls her away from the sound. A breeze hits Kyle’s back, cold and dry, like it came from somewhere other than the humid forest they are trapped in.

  “What are you doing?” Amelia asks.

  “Maybe ... maybe my ears are more sensitive. How can you not hear that?” Kyle shouts.

  Her reply is almost lost in the buzzing. “You’re scaring me. Did you take something?”

  Kyle turns around. The buzz immediately quiets to a low hum. It is impossible to pinpoint where it comes from. What if she’s right? What if something has snapped inside his head—a chemical interruption to his synapses caused by all the drinking, or sniffing something in the man’s fire, or inhaling old poisonous mould from the crevices of their cottage? All this could be tinnitus mixed with a malfunctioning brain.

  Something crashes through the brush behind them. It’s clear as day, right there. Kyle whips around, but Amelia is only looking at him, not reacting to the sound.

  She reaches out, her soft hands on both sides of his head, and forces him to look at her. “Oh no, Kyle, maybe Chandler isn’t the one who needs …”

  Amelia is ripped away. Her legs collapse and her head collides with the ground before she has a chance to cushion her fall. Her glasses are knocked askew. Kyle leaps to grab her, but she’s already sliding along the underbrush. He stretches to reach her, but she’s already gone, already obscured by bushes.

  “Amelia!” he screams, pushing through the trees, vines snagging at his ankles. A shape is moving ahead. He only sees a shadow between the trees, and the impression of scrambling limbs, too many of them, twitching with the same rhythm as the buzzing that fills his ears.

  He tries to run, but his feet are again in nightmare slow-motion—except no, this time it’s real, physical. He looks down. There is a black vine wrapped around his foot. It has a strange texture—soft, doughy. But when he tugs to escape, it feels more like a rubber band.

  The vine tugs back. Kyle goes down hard. He lands on his hip, and sees that it’s not a vine, and it’s not alone. Other black tendrils surround him, like the forest floor has come alive, each one a different size, some as fine as filaments. They stick to him, catching in his arm hair as he struggles.

  All the tendrils come from the same place. Even as the horror overtakes him, even as he’s dragged towards a shadow with flailing limbs and quivering lips, he notices how high-pitched and weak his screams sound, and he hopes Amelia can’t hear him.

  Pictures of Rustic Landscape. Myles Birket Foster, 1866.

  Chapter

  Six

  Brittle needles from dying trees jab at Kyle’s arms as he’s dragged across the underbrush. He tries to grab on to something, but he only ends up with hands full of soil and branches that smell like rot. The tendrils around his ankles squeeze tight.

  The sound in the air rises in pitch when he gets close to the buzzing thing in the bushes. More dark shapes gather behind it, a chorus of clicks, snaps, and scratches as more tendrils snake through the earth like roots growing far too quickly.

  All the sounds are overtaken by a moan so loud it shakes the ground. If it’s real, if this is really happening, then John and Chandler must have heard it. It’s so loud people must have heard it in on the other side of the island.

  The tendrils release his ankles. The buzzing things bolt, jostling against each other to swarm away from the direction Kyle intuitively knows the ocean lies.

  The earth rumbles. Trees snap. Kyle stands, runs. Not towards the buzzing things (I won’t name them, I won’t name them), not towards the moaning from the ocean, but into the stream that feeds the Grotto. He tumbles down a ridge, then ends up on his ass in shallow water.

  From this angle he can’t see it, but he hears it, feels it. Something so large it doesn’t need game trails to get through the dense trees, because it makes its own path.

  It’s impossible to know how far away it is. It could be just up the ridge, watching, something as large as a grizzly, so heavy its footsteps can be felt in the stone against Kyle’s elbows. Or it could be further away, yet far larger.

  He lies still, hoping that if he is silent, it won’t know he’s there. His heart thrashes so loudly he’s afraid it will give him away. His trembling limbs make ripples in the water.

  He doesn’t process how long he lies there, eyes darting about. Now, the trees are green again. Birds have returned to their mournful rainy-day songs.

  Breathe, and know that you are breathing. That’s some mantra he heard in a meditation app once, and it comes into his mind now as he realizes he hasn’t inhaled in a long time. He tentatively takes a breath. Nothing reacts. The stones under his elbows have stilled.

  With the stream as a landmark, he can orient himself. The forest above the ridge seems clear of the buzzing tendril-things. No more moan or rumble from the ocean side. He checks the sky, too, just in case. Clear.

  These hiking shoes were designed to dry quickly, but until they do, there is an uncomfortable squish-squish-squish with every step. Kyle focuses on that wetness under his shaky legs. It was real. Something had made him tumble into the water. Something had dragged Amelia away.

  His heart slams, making its presence known. Instead of trying to rescue her, he lay in the stream shaking.

  “Amelia!” he calls out, but it sounds as feeble as his screams did. “Amelia!”

  No answer. He keeps trying and picks up his pace. If she is okay—and surely she is, because she fights for herself and her friends, which is another thing Kyle loves about her—she will find a landmark and head back to the others.

  Kyle does the same, keeping the stream to his left until he reaches the place where he knows it intersects a path they had taken before. The clearing where they left John and Chandler is just ahead.

  Chandler’s voice carries through the trees first, cutting over the sound of the pop music playing through the Bluetooth speaker he keeps in his bag.

  Taaake on me, croons A-Ha. They must have just started the music—it’s the first song on Chandler’s phone, because A-Ha comes first alphabetically. Taaake meee on. The song reminds him of Amelia. She always says the same thing two different ways.

  “... you can’t leave them in the sink!” Chandler says, his voice booming over the music.

  John is quieter. Kyle can’t make out his reply.

  “It’ll get moldy anyway. Moldy, mildewy, bug-infested. All that shit crawls out of the drain, doesn’t matter what you do.”

  John mutters something, still indecipherable. Kyle tries to piece together what they’re talking about, but he only has one side of the conversation.

  What worries him more is that he hasn’t heard Amelia’s voice. He bursts into the clearing.

  Chandler’s face lights up when he sees Kyle. “There he is! Help us settle something. You’re done with a dirty dish. Do you put it on the kitchen counter, like a normal person, or—“ He makes a disgusted face and glares at John. “Or do you put it in the nasty kitchen sink?”

  Both of their smiles fall away when they have a moment to look Kyle over. He’s wet, dirty, and his face twists with worry now that he sees Amelia is not there. It must be equally baffling to them, because she’s not with Kyle either.

  John stalks towards him. “Where is she? What happened?”

  Kyle stumbles into the clearing. He leans against the toppled tree. Chandler picks a branch off Kyle’s shoulder and brushes some mud off his back. “You’re a mess. Did you get mauled by a bear?”

  “No,” Kyle says. “Not a bear.” He remembers that the whole purpose of leaving was to find water for Chandler, and holds up his water bottle, still full of the Grotto’s water.

  “Oh, yeah, thanks. I’m good, just needed some time to rest, and it rained, so we got a nice fresh drink earlier.”

  Kyle doesn’t recall it raining, though now that he looks, the ground is wet here. Perhaps it was a hyper-localized downpour. Perhaps it was another anomaly in his perception.

  John grabs the water bottle and takes a sip. “So?” he says. “Where is Amelia?”

  “I don’t know.”

  John steps towards Kyle, scowling. “You were with her. How do you not know?”

  “Whoa,” Chandler says, stepping between them. “Take a breath. Kyle, can you tell us what’s going on?”

  He tells them about the Grotto, about the man who lives there. As he gets into the part where he was separated from Amelia, talking slowly so he has time to phrase it in a way that doesn’t sound insane, he notices that the toppled tree they’ve been using as a bench is old, rotting. Wasn’t it freshly damaged before? Wasn’t there black fur stuck to the leaves near the top, where now there is only a moss-covered stub?

  He loses his train of thought. “What was I saying?”

  “You sure you didn’t eat those berries too?” Chandler asks.

  “Not that I see how it explains where Amelia is,” John says, “but you were saying you came across an animal.”

  A branch snaps behind them. They drop behind the fallen tree. Up close, it smells like the wet soil Kyle’s mom used to rake through when she made him help with gardening.

  “Wh—what kind of animal did you see?” Chandler asks.

  Leaves crunch under irregular footsteps.

  “It wasn’t an animal. It was worse.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. It was an animal,” John says.

  Branches shake. The forest gives way to whatever is approaching. Kyle’s feet want to turn and run before he sees clay-textured tentacles slither from the undergrowth, but he can’t leave his friends, not again.

  A body stumbles from the forest. A person. Amelia.

  John hops over the log and rushes to her side as she falls to her knees. Kyle and Chandler join them a moment later.

  “Are you okay?” Kyle asks. “Where did you go? What did it do to you?”

  Amelia looks up at him and squints. “Kyle? Where did I go? Where did you go? You were with me one second, and then,” she struggles to catch her breath, “then you were gone.”

  “But, the, the—” Kyle waves his arms around in exasperation. “The things! You saw them. They took you. You saw them, right?”

  “You mean the deer? Deers.” She stands up, takes a swig of water. “I guess we got a little too excited, but I wanted to get closer. We shouldn’t have run at them, I know that’s dangerous, you can get stomped. My glasses flew right off when I whacked my face against that shrubbery. When I looked up, you were gone. So were my damn glasses.”

  “Animals ...” John mutters.

  Kyle studies her face, which looks wrong without the thick lenses that almost always cover her eyes. Is she joking? They never saw deer. They never talked about getting closer. Her glasses must have gone flying as she was dragged off by those nameless things.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks him. Her shoulders relax. “Or maybe you’re not looking at me like anything, maybe your face is just fuzzy. Everything is fuzzy! I thought I’d get lost all night out there. It’s a miracle I found my way back.”

  John brushes dirt off her back, which apparently did not result from being dragged through the mud by chittering monsters. “Well?” he says. “What happened, Kyle? Why did you leave her alone out there?”

  Even Chandler is looking at him with concern.

  Kyle’s voice feels weak in his throat. “I ... I fell. I suppose, running after the ... animals ... the deer ... I tripped. I was in the stream. Maybe I passed out?”

  Amelia’s face immediately softens. “Oh my gosh, are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Don’t ... don’t worry about me.” He rushes at Amelia and squeezes her tight. “I’m just happy you’re here.”

  “This is weird. You’re acting weird again,” she says, her voice muffled from her face being squished against Kyle’s chest.

  Kyle pulls away when he realizes she is not hugging him back.

  John glares at him. “We should go. Amelia is blind. Chandler is sick. Looks like Kyle has finally lost it completely.”

  Kyle wants to say something—tell John that he hasn’t lost it, that something is going on, that they met a man in the woods who could verify that nobody here is crazy. Kyle is angry, he’s frustrated, he’s not sure what he is. But John is right. They have to go.

  “Agreed, we should be closer to doctors, for Chandler,” Kyle says. If they can see it his way, maybe they’ll stop looking at him like he’s grown antlers.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8