The Woods, Pt II
Harlow Spielman used to think the best place to get drunk was in the woods.
She wasn’t sure where the idea had come from—maybe that there would be fewer distractions so that you could really feel a connection to your body?
As for that connection tonight, Harlow felt the following: Her skin was warm, and she bet she’d look flushed if she had a mirror; her mouth tasted like bitter whiskey and something herbal; her stomach churned, but she couldn’t get herself to throw up; and she was fucking cold.
She knew she kissed some college guy, but now that they were out of their neighbors’ campsite and back in their own, the thought brought back no happy memories.
The only thing she wanted to do was sleep.
But Paisley had other plans, signaled by the click of an ill-fitting headlamp she’d managed to snag.
Harlow preemptively shut her eyes as she sat around their dead firepit, waiting for the blast of bright light.
The pitch black of the woods had made her uneasy at first, but now it sounded like heaven.
Climb into that tiny tent and snuggle in with her best friends and fall asleep. Perfect trip.
Except Paisley was filming again as she flitted around the campsite and packed her backpack with her free hand.
“What’re you doing?” Harlow asked, exasperated.
“We’re going to the mining town,” Paisley replied. “That’s where the energy is strongest.”
“Who told you that?” Opal piped up, layering another sweatshirt onto the two she was already wearing. Harlow recognized Paisley’s sweater settling on Opal’s skin and felt the strangest twinge of jealousy. Paisley hadn’t offered Harlow an extra jacket.
“Vanessa,” Paisley replied, an edge of annoyance clear in her voice as if she were saying weren’t you two paying attention?
Harlow didn’t remember Vanessa saying anything about energy.
She didn’t care enough to find out.
“I’m not going,” Harlow said.
Paisley stopped dead in her tracks. “You’re not chickening out on me.”
“I’m tired.”
“You had one drink and a few dust particles of shrooms. Get up. We’re not derailing this because of you. We came here because of the ghosts, so we’re gonna see some ghosts.”
They came here because it’d be funny to come without Emma.
“We can go tomorrow,” Harlow said. “I’m tired and cold and drunk. It’s not happening.”
“It’s less than a mile.” Paisley looked over to Opal. “Ready?”
Opal tightened the straps on her hoodie. “Is Harlow staying here?”
“No,” Paisley said, suddenly in front of Harlow. Yanking her to her feet. “We can’t separate and we’re all going. The moon is full tonight and it won’t be tomorrow.”
And somehow, when Paisley shone that flashlight and started walking into the thick cover of the woods, Opal followed.
Harlow considered the alternative. Staying here.
Staying here in the thick woods cover. Staying here while Paisley had the keys to the car and those college kids, who had been nice but whom Harlow didn’t trust, were across the way. When that guy, who smelled like cologne and smiled at her so long it’d made her nauseous, was here.
She thought about the goat-woman witch who showed that girl her cut-out heart. The possessed women Vanessa had talked about.
She thought about the animals lurking in the woods, bears and cougars she had no way to fend off. Especially not when Harlow had sugar on her breath, and no one had put the food up high enough to keep it away from bears.
“This is so fucking stupid,” Harlow said as she followed behind Opal.
Less than a mile. Then they’d come back and Harlow could sleep.
But less than a mile felt a lot different when the terrain was uneven. When Harlow stepped into divots in the dirt and snagged her foot on tree roots and stumbled into Opal more times than she could count.
“You two don’t think that witch is real, do you?
” Opal asked, breaking the silence of their trudge.
They’d barely begun and she was already losing it.
They should’ve left Opal at the campground; she was too much of a scaredy-cat for night hiking.
Had Harlow’s bubbe read her stories of Baba Yaga the cannibal woman in the woods far too much when Harlow was too young?
Yes, of course. But it didn’t mean it was real.
It would be a miracle if they made it to the mining town.
“Don’t you think there would be more corpses if it were?” Harlow muttered.
“The world’s too big for us to have seen everything,” Opal replied.
“That saying is meant for the ocean, not here.”
“You don’t know. You don’t know what could be hiding in the woods.”
Opal then proceeded to whimper and stop at every crack of a squirrel or mouse.
Harlow couldn’t stand it. She wanted to go home. She’d paused restoring an authentic ’40s tea dress for this trip and for what? This wasn’t fucking worth it.
“Paisley, get Opal to shut up!” Harlow said.
But then they came upon a clearing. Darkness suddenly enveloped them, sky melting into meadow in the black.
It was only when Paisley aimed her flashlight out that Harlow could make out the bits of buildings to break it all up.
All wood, simple designs, with gaping maws where doors and windows used to be.
Some shook so hard in the wind they seemed a kiss away from tumbling over.
She didn’t know what a ghost town was supposed to look like, but suddenly her heartbeat picked up.
Something could live in these rundown houses.
The witch could live in a house like this.
Paisley turned back to Harlow. “The universe is bigger than you could ever imagine.” She looked up at the sky, blanketed in stars. It should be such a hopeful sight, but the vast starry sky felt as unreachable as comfort and warmth and reality felt to Harlow out here. “Let’s go find the witch.”