The Woods, Pt I
This forest was the kind of place that swallowed up screams. The woods were thick, relentlessly filling in every free space with their root networks.
The brush formed around the people inside like babies huddling around their mamas.
The fact that they could even fit a campground in this space felt strange to Opal Bushida.
When she’d imagined camping, she’d pictured a meadow.
A big, fluffy meadow where you could see the trees swaying from a distance.
Open spaces had always brought her peace—the biggest music festivals, state fairs, dune buggy rides through the desert with her dad and siblings.
But this place was like a cage, the foliage thick and impenetrable.
Even the animal noises felt like part of the structure of the forest, repeated sounds programmed as a base track for someone else to put lyrics over.
As if the breaking twigs and chittering of squirrels and hoots of owls weren’t really connected to real beings that could react along with Opal.
When Paisley turned her phone on selfie mode and started talking, Opal knew the three of them would be the only living creatures in the forest to hear her. If the animals around here were real, they didn’t care about the girls’ tiny lives. Who would when the trees seemed endless?
“So, turns out there’s a part of this place Emma didn’t tell us about,” Paisley said into the camera.
The three of them sat around a fire on logs they had to purchase at the visitors’ center.
The bark dug into her thighs. Still, Opal didn’t complain, even though she knew what went wrong with this whole trip.
Paisley would never admit it, but she had no idea what to pack for a camping weekend.
Something as simple as chairs to sit around a fire had completely eluded her.
Opal could even guess that Paisley had jumped to her feet because her flat ass was hurting on the ground.
God help Paisley Horne trying to sleep on the ground without the mattress pads she’d forgotten as well.
Opal hugged her knees to her chest, looking up at the sky.
The one thing she’d been looking forward to on this trip was being able to see stars.
The only other place she’d ever seen a blanket of real stars was at her uncle’s house in Montana, sitting in the back of his pickup truck with the little Buddha statue on the dash enjoying the view with them.
When they’d driven up to Kingston, Opal had counted the miles with giddiness in her heart, thinking of all the stars they’d see away from the bright lights of LA.
Turns out, the tree coverage was so thick she could only see a handful of them. They were beautiful, but it wasn’t enough to name any constellations like she’d do with her uncle.
Paisley turned the camera on Harlow, who sat on a rock, just as uncomfortable as Opal. But Harlow wore that discomfort all over her face. The kind of deep, deep scowl that Harlow’s mom would chide her for, saying she would get wrinkles that way.
Still, Harlow turned her frown upside down when she heard Paisley’s voice.
“Bet Emma didn’t even know there was more to the story,” Harlow said.
Opal’s stomach twinged in guilt over the mention of Emma. Even if Harlow and Paisley never did anything, Opal would have to make it up to her somehow.
Paisley smirked. “Whichever. But there isn’t just some angry schoolteacher ghost here. It’s something older. Something they’re not even sure is human.”
Opal hadn’t admitted it to her friends yet, but she believed in ghosts.
Viscerally believed in ghosts. She wished she didn’t, but she’d believed in them since she was a kid in her first house in North Hollywood.
The fear had lingered long into her middle school years.
When her dad showed her the first cut of the Teke Teke–based horror movie he’d directed, she forced herself to stay awake for two days straight, terrified to shut her eyes and see the severed torso of the Japanese schoolgirl ghost leering from the edge of her bed.
Then that lady had told them about this town, about the old witch who haunts it.
Opal hated the word old, especially when it came to the supernatural. Old meant experience. Old meant grudges and accumulated power and confidence. Old meant beyond the sphere of what humans could comprehend. She’d take a hundred ghosts of humans over something old they’re not even sure is human.
“Don’t freak me out, Pais!” Opal called, even though she knew Paisley wouldn’t be listening to anything beyond the movie she was making. Opal hugged herself as shivers racked her body.
Paisley continued, “This lady we met in town said she’s like, half woman, half goat.
” She sat on the rock next to Harlow. “But you don’t see that.
This lady said her grandmother first saw the witch when she was nine years old.
The woman stopped at a bus stop and asked the grandmother where the inn was.
She was told not to talk to strangers, so she didn’t say anything.
Then the woman started asking personal questions.
She asked about her sick sister, asked if the cut on her side had healed, shit the woman would’ve had no business knowing.
The lady’s grandmother asked how she knew all this and she said she reads minds.
That she had her heart cut out and now the little pieces are all spread to every other girl in the world.
She then unbuttoned her shirt and there was a giant scar where her heart should be. ”
Opal squeezed her eyes shut, praying the images wouldn’t return. She could make up a nightmarish version of this goat-woman-witch. But that hadn’t been what got her. Horror books didn’t scare her, but movies did. Because images imprinted.
And that shop had two images on the wall.
One drawing on yellowed paper in a protective frame, detailing the top half of a beautiful woman with sharp cheekbones and flowing black hair, piercing brown eyes that looked right at you.
She was naked, breasts and flat stomach leading down to something morphed between human and animal, a woman’s thighs with pubic hair that spread out beyond what Opal had seen in anatomical drawings.
Thighs that got thin too quickly, abruptly ending in sticklike legs covered in that same black hair.
Down, down, until they ended in hooves. Tattoos covered her arms, or hair, Opal hadn’t been able to tell from the drawing.
She could only see that the artist had signed it 10/09/62.
Opal had no idea if it was 1962 or 1862.
Then there was a photo, washed out and yellowed. Black background and a figure carved out in white.
The exact silhouette of the witch, its eyes suddenly white like a deer’s.
Opal hated it. She hated it so much.
“Paisley, SHUT UP!” Opal yelled.
But no one listened.
Harlow laughed, finally acknowledging Opal. “Why was she half goat? Is that some Christian thing?”
“The lady says new girls in town see her,” Paisley said. “That she follows them. That she—”
And that’s when Opal saw it.
The same figure from the photograph, long hair flowing. Another inhabitant of the cage, separated by centuries but still surrounded by the same trees.
“Paisley, who’s that?” Opal calls out.
As if Paisley could save them.
(Maybe this was all punishment for what they did to Emma.)
It was only then that Paisley deemed Opal worthy of joining her little video, ignoring Opal’s question. Her back was turned to the figure. Opal’s hands hovered over her mouth, terrified. Begging like a little kid. Go away go away go away.
But it didn’t move.
“What’re you—?” Paisley said before finally turning around.
Paisley and Opal screamed together.