Of the Trees(6)

Laney snorted. “Right, because she’s ever even spoken to you?”

“It’s all changing this year. We have art together. I predict we’ll be together by the end of homecoming.”

“You have lofty goals, my friend,” Ryan said, laughing.

“I don’t need a love life,” Laney said, sitting up straight. “I’m gonna find a ghost by the end of this year, so help me.”

“How romantic,” Cassie quipped.

“Look who’s talking! What are your plans for this weekend? Babysitting? You wait until you’re chopped up and murdered because you spent all your free nights babysitting,” Laney exclaimed, firing back at Cassie.

“You know that just because I babysit doesn’t mean that some psycho will try to murder me. That’s really just in the movies. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know that all urban legends have to start somewhere,” Laney retorted. “Do you really think that out of all the mental hospitals in all the country, there’s never been an escapee?”

“Are you trying to tell us the movie Halloween is based off a true story?” Ryan teased.

“No, but Texas Chainsaw was,” Laney retorted.

“Loosely,” Ryan said, catching Cassie’s eye and shaking his head. It was hard to see much of anything, but Cassie’s eyes had adjusted well by now, and she could make out the quirk in Ryan’s smile. She grinned back before hiding her smile against his chest.

“Did you know that they’ve dug up coffins with scratches on the inside? People were buried alive and then woke up down there. That’s why it’s called a wake when someone kicks it. It’s to see if the person actually wakes up.”

“You are seriously creepy,” Cassie said.

“Which is, of course, why we love you,” Jon added with a yawn. “You almost ready to give up on the Gray Lady?”

“Oh, I guess,” Laney answered through a sigh. She pulled out her own phone and checked the time. “Stupid ghost.”

“Doesn’t she know it’s your birthday?” Jon asked. Ryan hopped to his feet and offered a hand to Cassie. She took it, and he hauled her up to stand.

“Thanks for those,” Cassie motioned to the empty bottles. Ryan shrugged.

“You guys are driving us home, right?” Laney asked, stuffing her blanket into her backpack and hauling it over her shoulder. They agreed, of course, and as a group, they climbed over the low stone wall that separated the graveyard from the road.

“Hey, wait,” Cassie called out, the last to stumble over the rocks. She had almost tripped, the toe of her shoe catching between two stones, and when she looked down, out of the corner of her eye, she saw it.

Light.

“You forgot your lantern.”

It was strange, though. It hung, not on the ground but as though Jon had hooked it on a low branch. Cassie stared into the woods, squinting into the darkness. The soft orange glow seemed to suck the rest of the light out of the air, as though from the very moon itself. The trees were black voids in the dusky night. The lantern bobbed softly, though the wind had died—or at least the wind felt still where Cassie was standing. Somewhere the wind must have been pushing through the trees because a noise, low like a whisper, hissed from the forest. The sound was indecipherable. If Cassie didn’t know better, she would have sworn it spoke to her.

Go now. Go.

“I have it here,” Jon answered, and Cassie whipped her head around to look at him. There was a click, and he swung the glass-encased light up. She winced away from the glare.

When she looked back, the orange glow was gone.

“We should go now,” Laney said, her voice soft.





What was strange was that it wasn’t the glow she’d remember. Not the light or the way it seemed to bob in the non-existent wind, not even the distant breeze that mimicked a whisper. It was the feeling that would plague her. Something indescribable. The way the wind seemed to die down around them and yet whipped through the trees, the way the leaves flipped over on themselves, something in the quality of the darkness that shifted and thickened. It floated around them, around her, like a cloak, heavy and oppressive. If the others noticed, they never said.





Their neighborhood was a patchwork of roads that formed a rough circle, stamped into a section of the woods. The homes were established and old, yet it was easy to see where the forest longed to take back what had once belonged solely to nature. The branches, high and unreachable, crept over the roads even though the power company had come by, just that summer, to trim them back. Everyone’s yard butted up to the woods, the brush creeping up and over the lawns, draping over the fences put there to keep it back. Even now, as fall tightened its grip and the underbrush started to dry and die, the growth of the forest pushed the uncultivated brambles into the neatly trimmed yards and cracked the pavement of the roads.

In some places—such as Mrs. Casey’s garden with the overgrown tomato plants or the Cooper’s bench that they had allowed to be completely overcome with ivy—it seemed people were more than happy to help nature along, inviting it back in and letting it run wild. Other neighbors left fairy lights at the edge of the woods; a few had ceramic elves and gnomes scattered about otherwise orderly lawns. It was as though people wanted not just the forest back—not just the ferociousness of nature—but the insanity of fantasy. They wanted the folklore and legends of fairies and goblins—the old inhabitants of the forests that ran about before the box houses and paved driveways.