14. Sunday, October 15, 2023 #3
His mom shakes her head hard. “No. I saw you both.”
His dad puts a hand on his mom’s back and guides her toward a chair at the dining table. “Come sit down. You look like you’re in shock.”
His nana steps close to Quinn and asks, “What’s going on?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea. She came running out of the woods yelling, ‘Call 911.’ ”
“You didn’t go into the woods too?” she asks, searching his face as though he might have gone off the deep end just like his mother.
“No. I was letting Panda out.”
His nana pats him on the arm. “Okay. Then why don’t you get your poor mom a glass of water?” She turns before he can answer and moves over to his mom and dad.
Quinn does what he’s told.
“Thank you, sweetie,” his mom says, taking the glass of water from Quinn, her hand shaking so badly she can hardly hold it. While she gulps it down, he notices his dad and nana exchange a look, one that seems worried and knowing at the same time. Do they think his mom has finally lost her mind?
His mom explains how she fell down a ravine and dropped her phone.
She carries on with her story, pausing now and again to stare at his dad and nana, reaching out to touch an arm or a hand, as though still testing that they’re real.
He understands why when she gets to the part about the bodies.
The part she can barely get through, she’s crying so hard.
She must be really traumatized, Quinn thinks, for her to be sharing something that graphic with him in the room.
She usually makes him leave when they’re discussing adult topics, like he’s still eight years old or something.
“Shh, shh,” his dad says, stroking her cheek when she’s finally finished explaining how she crawled out of the ravine and ran the whole way home, thinking they were dead. “We’re right here. We’re fine.”
She shakes her head. “But how? I know what I saw. I felt it, your skin.” She looks at his nana. “Your hair. It was real.”
“Babe,” her dad says, and Quinn tries not to cringe. When did his dad start calling her that? “You had a serious fall. You could have hit your head on the way down.”
His nana starts examining his mom’s head at the suggestion and Quinn is surprised she lets her. Then again, she doesn’t look like she has the strength to fight off anything, even his nana.
“I do feel some bumps,” his nana says after a thorough examination of his mom’s skull.
“Or maybe Polly’s magic-mushrooms theory isn’t so stupid after all,” Quinn interjects, and they all look at him like they forgot he was there.
“Maybe you fell into a patch and you hallucinated.” They stare back at him.
“What? That was Polly’s explanation after Dad went missing in the woods and didn’t remember any of it. ”
His dad gives a sideways nod. “It’s a bit far-fetched, buddy, but something to consider.
” He follows it up with a placating smile, which Quinn hates, then turns back to his mom.
“I think we need to get you cleaned up. Then get some ice on that head. You need to take it easy for the rest of the day, and you’ll be fine.
Whatever happened in there sounds horrible, but let’s just focus on what’s real.
I’m okay. Your mom is okay.” His dad pats his mom’s leg. “I’m going to go run you a hot bath.”
His mom nods, looking too tired and drained to say anything.
“I have some ice packs from when I hurt my knee,” his nana says. “I’ll go to my place and get them for your head, dear.”
Quinn and his mom are left alone in the kitchen. He’s still mad at her for what she said to him the night his dad went missing in the woods, so he’s been avoiding her, but she’s so upset he feels sorry for her.
“That’s really messed up, Mom,” he says, moving closer to her. “What you saw.”
She nods and tears fill her eyes. Worried she’ll start full-on crying again, he goes over and gives her a few pats on the back. “It’s over now.”
She nods again and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Then she reaches up and grabs his arm, pulling him down closer to her face. “Don’t go in there,” she says, panic laced through every word. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” Quinn says. In that moment he would promise his mother anything.
Polly
As soon as she gets home from work, Quinn pulls her into his room.
He doesn’t even let her shower the coffee smell out of her hair before launching into an account of some fucked-up shit that happened to her mom in the woods.
Dad and Nana’s naked, dead bodies half-buried in a field of ferns?
Shaking her head, Polly leaves his room to go talk to her mom in person but is stopped by her dad in the kitchen.
Apparently, her mom is sleeping and has been for hours.
Her dad downplays the whole thing, blaming it on a bump on the head.
He tells Polly there’s nothing to worry about.
“The woods are just the woods, nothing more.”
Polly pretends to be comforted by his words and promises to let her mom sleep. She tells him she’s going to take a shower. Instead, she goes back into Quinn’s room, where she finds him playing videogames.
She knocks the headset off his head so that she can talk to him. “Dad’s being weird about Mom,” she says. “He’s gatekeeping, and saying things like, ‘The woods are just the woods.’ ”
“Yeah, I know. Nana’s being weird too. All helpful and stuff. Do you think it’s because Mom’s going crazy?”
“No. Mom is not going crazy,” Polly says firmly. “Dad and Nana are fucking weird lately. Mom saw something in the woods that freaked her out. That’s all.”
Quinn sits up straighter. “I was thinking. When Dad was lost in the woods overnight and had no memory of it, you said that maybe he fell into a patch of psilocybin mushrooms. Well, maybe the same thing happened to Mom today.” His eyes grow wide.
“Maybe the forest is full of them. Maybe we can harvest them and then sell them and make a ton of money.”
Polly holds up her hand. “Slow down, Pablo Escobar. I was joking when I said that.” Quinn’s mushroom talk is triggering her; she can feel her guts churning and it’s like Friday night all over again.
“It would explain a lot,” he says defensively. “I think we should at least go in there and have a look.”
She shakes her head. “Ahh, no. Not today, little man. Let’s get a bit more intel from Mom before we go foraging for psychedelics.”
He slumps back in his gaming chair. “Fine.”
Polly leaves his room before he pushes the subject any further and she cracks and tells him about her bizarre cave experience. She’s dying to tell someone, and the person she would normally tell—her twin—is dead.
After Polly had taken the mushrooms Gray offered her, he’d led her into the woods.
When they abandoned the path, she asked if he knew where he was going and he said yes, with confidence, every time.
He had a small flashlight and somehow the thin beam of light was enough to lead him.
They wove through trees, him in front holding tightly to her hand.
She stumbled a few times on fallen logs and exposed tree roots, but he always caught her.
Like he had a sixth sense.
They were still walking when her high started to roll in.
She could tell it was happening because everything suddenly became loud—the cracking of twigs beneath their feet, the crunching of leaves, the wind rushing through the trees like voices whispering warnings.
She kept looking back over her shoulder, sure that someone was following them.
Just as she was about to suggest they go back, Gray dropped her hand and reached out to touch a rock cut.
“Duck down and crawl through there,” he gently instructed.
He shone the flashlight through a low opening in one of the rock faces.
She didn’t want to. Her chest tightened and her breath quickened at the thought of squeezing through the small opening.
She glanced out at the forest around them, wondering if they could just stay out there in the open for a little while, maybe find a log to sit on, but that’s when she started to see things.
Shadows that seemed to leak right out of the trees, quickly forming into fully separate figures, standing tall but shrouded in black.
In a matter of seconds, Polly saw a whole thicket of them, a few feet away hovering inches from the ground, as though awaiting an invitation.
She closed her eyes and told herself that they weren’t real, that she was high.
But upon opening her eyes, they were still there, watching.
She quickly turned toward the rock cut and ducked down to crawl into the slim opening.
Her fear of the shadow figures was much greater than her claustrophobia.
Only a few feet in, Polly was relieved that the narrow opening expanded into a cave with enough room for both her and Gray to stand up in.
“I’m really high, Gray,” Polly admitted. “I keep seeing scary, shadowy giants in the woods.”
Gray knelt down on the ground and started rummaging around with things Polly couldn’t see in the dim light. “Oh, don’t worry about them,” he said. “They’re harmless.”
She swatted at his back but missed, her perception off from the drugs. “That’s not funny.”
Light and warmth suddenly erupted in the cave and Polly could see clearly.
Gray had lit a fire in the middle of a rock circle.
Beside it was a pile of small logs, newspaper, twigs, and a glass jar with matches.
On the other side, a blue tarp was spread out on the ground with an open sleeping bag and a pile of blankets.
“Do you live here?” she joked.
Gray looked up at her and smiled. “I like to think of it as my home away from home.” He sat down on the sleeping bag and gestured for her to do the same.