content warning: mention of blood/death
Do not go into the woods, Grandmother told me. Where the pines grow so thick there is no room for shadow, that is a dangerous place.
Every night as she tucked me in, beneath heavy, quilted blankets, she would make me promise. May crows peck out my eyes if I break my promise, I echoed back each and every time, my tiny fingers crossed out of sight.
I liked dark and mysterious places. I liked the dozens of glowing eyes staring back at me from the darkness and the hush of the canopy. I liked wandering barefoot and free through tiny, mossy crevasses and over rotting, dead things blanketed in a million fallen needles.
The first time I dared to step across the threshold where the open field ends and the treeline begins, I covered my eyes, but no crows came to peck them out. So I opened them even wider, taking in everything I was forbidden to see.
The second time I didn’t hesitate and walked for hours until the pines grew so closely together that I had to turn sideways and bend my body into unusual shapes to pass through. It smelled wild here and I wasn’t afraid.
Each night I would cross my fingers and each morning I would return, exploring deeper and deeper, until the day that I stopped.
That day I woke up with the sun. Dusty streams of hazy light stretched across my face, and the floor was cold under my feet but I didn’t search for shoes. Instead, I tip-toed outside, careful not to wake grandmother when I closed the door behind me. Most mornings she was already busy in the kitchen. She liked to hum a collection of folk songs from her childhood as she chopped thick sides of meat on a wooden cutting board, but today I was lucky and the kitchen was still.
I raced across the field as fast as my legs could carry me. My nightdress caught on thorny sticks as I ran and left a trail of white cotton flags that I would have to collect on my way home.
I passed into the shade of the pines, the soft mud and grass under my feet giving way to the gentle pricking of mounds of fallen needles. I left behind the eager chirping of birds and the rustling of the tall grass; familiar silence followed me from the shadows. I was home.
I tread deeper, contorting my body to move through the angled branches and narrow spaces until the sun could no longer reach me. As I lifted my head, after crawling under a fallen tree that had lodged itself deep in the trunk of the one beside it, I stiffened. Today I was not alone in the woods.
A figure stood turned away; a red cloak and hood draped over its body, the bottom billowing in the dirt and fallen dead things that lined the forest floor. It stepped confidently over a fallen tree and bent low on the other side, fumbling with something out of sight.
I crouched down and crept ever closer, driven forward by an unrelenting need to see what was hidden.
The figure was clawing at the ground, flinging great piles of dirt behind it. There was a strange sheen to the cloak that had been obscured by the darkness before: a sticky wetness that seemed thick and unnatural. It made my stomach move uncomfortably and I shifted my weight to try to settle it.
As I moved, my foot pressed on a fallen branch. It snapped quietly, but not quiet enough in the heady silence that lived in the woods.
The red hood snapped towards me and in the movement, I could see the reason for their frantic digging. In front of the figure, on the other side of the growing hole, was a man. His neck was laying at an odd angle and the glassy stare of his eyes was so captivating that for one last minute I was able to pretend not to see the ragged hole in his belly. Blood soaked the ground until it was too plump to absorb any more, so the rest seeped into the hole beside him, dripping in long fingers.
I forced my eyes away from the man and back to the red hood of the figure. It was too dark to make out a face inside, but the tension of its silhouette seemed to vanish. A tissue paper hand appeared out of the cloak and reached up, pulling the hood back so that it fell gently against the blood-soaked fabric.
Even in darkness, I knew every line and spot on that face.
It was the only face in my memory. The face that had stretched and frowned and pursed its lips when it had told me bloody stories from childhood and the dangers that awaited me outside the safety of our cottage.
Grandmother frowned at me for a moment from behind the fallen tree where she crouched, then turned back and continued to rake her fingers across the dirt as frantically as before.
Do not go into the woods, grandmother had told me. That is a dangerous place.
Rebecca Rich is an emerging writer from Canada who loves all things a little bit weird, dark and very magical. She graduated with a BA (Honours) in English Literature from the University of Ottawa, where her work was published in The Fulcrum. When she’s not writing, she can be found teaching high school, traveling and learning as many new things as possible.
photo by Rosie Sun (via unsplash)
Crow & Cross Keys 