Speaker 1: I used to tell people I enjoyed teaching. It wasn't true,
not really, but it sounded better than admitting that the
job just kept me busy. Most of the staff thought
I had my life sorted. They didn't see how I
lingered in my classroom after hours, pretending to grade so
I didn't have to go home to a flat that
felt like a holding cell. People see what makes them comfortable.
I never corrected them. That Monday started like any other.
Rain streaked across the windows, a steady drizzle that made
the whole building feel half asleep. My students filed in
with their usual mix of muttering and half hearted chatter,
jackets stripping, trainers, squeaking on the laminate. I didn't have
the energy for anything ambitious, so I opened with a
simple warm up exercise. Draw a character you'd like to
write about. This term doesn't matter who. Someone from a story,
someone from imagination. Ten minutes, pencils scratched. A few kids
argued over colored pencils. One boy tried to draw a
dragon so massive it took up the entire page. Nor
more chaos comforting. Even then, my eyes drifted to the
back row. Joel Watkins sat hunched over his desk, shoulders tight,
tongue caught between his teeth and concentration. He was a
quiet kid, the saw too, apologized when he hadn't done
anything wrong. I expected something gentle from him, a cartoon mascot,
maybe a pet. But when he slid the paper to
the edge of his desk, almost shyly, something in my
chest went cold. The face he drawn wasn't fantasy. It
was familiar in a way that made my breath stall.
It had white brown eyes and hair that fell unevenly
across the forehead, a small dark mark along the right
cheek bone, a mole Caleb spent years trying to hide
in photos. Caleb was my younger brother. We fought like
brothers do, but I always told myself i'd look out
for him. That night in the woods was just another
argument that went too far, another moment I replayed so
often it lost its edges. And that was the last
time I saw him. Twenty years since i'd last seen
my brother's face, and here it was in pencil on
loose leaf paper, sketched by a boy who wasn't even born.
When Caleb disappeared, I forced myself to speak, keeping my tone,
steady interesting? Who's this meant to be? Joel hesitated, his
pencil hovered over the drawing. Then he wrote a title
in small block letters above the head, the Boy in
the Leaves. Something crawled up the back of my neck.
Where'd you get the idea, I asked. He looked up
at me, uncomplicated and earnest, as if the answer were obvious.
He told me to draw him, He said, so you'd see,
And just like that, the rain outside felt louder, the
room colder, and the years I'd spent burying my brother's
memories shifted, as if something beneath them had just begun
to move. I spent the rest of the day convincing
myself it meant nothing. Kids drew weird things. They copied
each other. They absorbed stray details from conversations they shouldn't
have been listening to. It was easier to believe in
coincidence than to even touch the possibility of something intentional.
By the next morning, I built a neat little wall
around it. One drawing wasn't an omen It was just
a drawing. Then the class turned in their free write assignments.
I was flipping through them during silent reading when I
noticed a short piece from a girl who normally wrote
about princesses and ponies. This time she described quote, a
boy who stood under the trees, smiling, a lopsided smile
that revealed a chipped front tooth. I couldn't help but
think about the chip Caleb hadgotten from falling off his
bike at age seven. My throat tightened. I set it
aside and grabbed the next Another story, another boy. This
one described the way he laughed quote, like he couldn't
quite catch his breath. That was Caleb, too. He used
to wheeze when he laughed hard enough. Third assignment wrote
about a boy who walked funny, like he had a
stone in his shoe. Caleb had one leg slightly shorter
than the other, but only my family ever noticed it.
I felt my puls climbing, but it wasn't fear that
hit me first. It was irritation, a sour hot flare
of anger. Someone had to be behind behind this, some
older kids spreading a cruel story, Maybe a sibling at
home feeding their younger brothers and sisters details about my family.
Kids could be thoughtless. Sometimes their parents were worse, and
beneath that irritation was shame, an old familiar shape that
whispered I was being ridiculous for carrying this match, that
I was overreacting, that it shouldn't matter anymore. While silent
reading ended, I closed the stack of assignments and addressed
the class as lightly as I could. These stories you've written,
I said, a lot of you seemed to have chosen
the same character this week. Did someone plan that or
did you talk about it beforehand? They all shook her head.
A few exchange confused glances. No one told us to.
One girl said, will we just saw him? Saw him?
I kept my voice casual, but my chest felt tight
in our dreams. Another kid said it was the same boy.
The third added, as if clarifying something obvious. I swallowed, okay,
but why him? Why that face? Silence settled. Then one
of the boys, a small, nervous kid who chewed the
sleeves of his jumper, raised his hand half way, then
put it down again. I coaxed him gently. His voice wavered.
He said to me that he used to be your brother,
but he's different now. He hesitated, eyes darting to the floor.
He wants you to find him. The room seemed to
hold its breath. I forced the tight smile, muttered something
about imagination and recurring themes, and dismissed them for break.
But my mind was already sliding in motion, gears turning
the way they hadn't in years. This couldn't continue if
someone was spreading stories about my family. I needed to know.
If someone was manipulating these kids. It had to stop
before it became a full blown rumor mill. So I
decided to investigate. Quietly, ask around, check for older siblings,
see who had started the boy in the leaves idea.
But deep down, something colder whispered that this had already
spiraled and I was catching it too late. I didn't
want to go to my mother's house. I never did.
Being there meant brushing up against memories. I spent years
smoothing into something manageable, But after the drawings at school,
the whispers about dreams, I couldn't talk myself out of it.
The drive felt longer than it was. My mother lived
only twenty minutes away, but every mile dragged as my
mind raised. When I pulled into the driveway, I was
struck by how much smaller the house looked, or maybe
I'd just outgrown it while she stayed frozen in her grief.
She opened the door before I knocked. She always did,
like she spent the days waiting for someone who never came. Heavan,
she said, giving a tight smile that didn't reach her eyes.
The lines in her face had deepened since I last visited,
grief calcified into bone structure. We exchanged the usual awkward pleasantries,
neither of us addressing why I was really there. When
the conversation ran out, as it always did, she led
me down the hall. Caleb's room was still preserved the
way she kept it since the week he vanished, post
as pale from sunlight, trophies, untouched bedding, smoothed as if
expecting him to slip under it any minute. I stood
in the doorway, half expecting to see some sign that
the intruder from school had been here too, But the
room was unchanged. That should have comforted me instead and
left a knot in my stomach, a strange little disappointment.
I hated myself for feeling if something had been moved,
tampered with, displaced, at least it would have meant I
wasn't losing my grip. Oh, something came my mother said, Suddenly,
turning toward a dresser, she pulled an envelope from a
drawer and handed it to me, no return address, just this.
Inside it was a drawing, crayon rough, unsteady lines. It
was of Caleb stood in our old backyard, smiling, same
uneven haircut, same bright eyes, same way. He tilted his
head like he was listening. My throat tightened. You sent this,
didn't you, she asked quietly, some kind of apology, No,
I whispered. I couldn't take my eyes off the picture.
The timeline clicked into place a week ago, was exactly
when the students claimed the dreams began. But something else
snagged at me, a detail I couldn't immediately place. I
stared at the yard behind Caleb in the drawing, at
the clothes line, the fence, and the sloping hill. Then
it hit me the hill was wrong. In the drawing.
The ground behind him dipped sharply, a small steep drop.
But our backyard never had that, not the way it
was drawn. It looked like the slope from the woods,
the embankment, the one from the night he vanished, the
one I've spent twenty years remembering as gentle, forgettable, harmless.
But here in crayon it looked exactly as it truly
had a sudden drop, a fall that could hurt a child.
My stomach twisted heaven. My mom asked, what is it?
I folded the drawing before she could see my face.
Whoever was sketching Caleb wasn't remembering the past. They were
remembering my past, the real one, the one I'd never
said out loud. They knew the place I'd spent twenty
years pretending didn't exist. By the next morning, whatever thin
veneer of professionalism I'd been clinging to had worn down
to threads. I wasn't thinking like a teacher anymore, nor
was I thinking like an adult. I just needed answers,
and the only people who seemed to have any were
twelve year olds who should have been worrying about lunch
room seating arrangements, not the last night my brother was alive.
I called Joel in first. He shuffled into the empty classroom,
looking smaller than usual, like he knew he shouldn't be
part of this conversation. I closed the door behind him. Joel,
I said, keeping my tone, even I need you to
tell me where you heard about that boy, the one
in your drawing. He stared at his shoes. His hands
were tucked into his sleeves, knuckle whitened through the fabric.
I didn't hear it, he said. He showed me my
jaw tightened. Showed you how in a dream. A hesitant nod, Joel,
it's important you're honest. If another student told you about
my about the boy, he flinched before I finished the sentence.
Don't like when you ask about him, he whispered. He
wants you to remember on your own. And chill swept
through me, quick and sharp. Remember what? Joel shook his
head rapidly. He told me not to say that part. Joel.
My voice snapped harder than I intended. He recoiled, and
I forced myself to soften. What did he mean? The
boy's eyes filled with a nervous, glassy sheen. He looked
past me, as though checking the corners of the room.
He said, His voice shrank to a thread. He said,
you were there the night he changed. My stomach hollowed.
No one knew I'd been with Caleb the night he disappeared.
I spent you telling the polished version I hadn't seen
him after dinner. We argue. The day before, I wished
him good night, a clean lie, a safe lie. I
had never told a soul that I was the last
person to see him breathing. Oh do you know that
I breathed? Joel squeezed his eyes shut, like he expected
to get in trouble for simply repeating it, Because he
told me he remembers you, he remembers what you did.
But he said you remember it wrong. My pulse thud
it in my ears. Someone something was feeding these kids
details pulled straight from the memories I'd locked away two
decades ago, my truth, the one I'd spent years suffocating Joel,
I managed, Did he say anything else? The boy nodded,
trembling now. He said he's coming to school today. He
wants to watch you teach. The words hung in the
room like smoke. I dismissed him quickly, but I couldn't
focus on anything. Every time I looked up from my desk,
my eyes dragged toward the window. By midday, curiosity curdled
into dread. I finally stood and walked to the glass outside,
beyond the football pitch, just at the border where the
school grounds met The first line of trees stood a figure, small,
still facing the building, facing me, watching, And though I
couldn't make out his face to the distance and the glare,
I knew, with a kind of bone deep certainty that
bypasses logic, that it was him, Caleb. I don't know how,
but he was back. By lunchtime, the figure of the
tree line had vanished. I stood at the edge of
the football pitch, staring into the woods, half convinced i'd
imagine the whole thing. The teachers milling around didn't notice
anything unusual. Kids shouted, laughed, and kicked balls across the
damp grass. Everything looked painfully normal, but the trees looked expectant.
Leaning in as if listening, I told myself I was
being ridiculous that I needed sleep. Yet my feet carried
me forward anyway, toward the place where I'd seen the silhouette.
The closer I got, the quieter the world became. The
kid's voices dissolved, the wind flattened, even the rustle of
branches dimmed, replaced by a subtle shift of leaves, a
slow spiraling motion on the forest floor, as if whatever
had been standing there had only just slipped back into cover.
My throat tightened. I knew this place, not this exact spot,
but the feeling of it, the sense that the trees
were watching, holding their breath. The forest where Caleb and
I had our last argument didn't look like this. It
had always seemed smaller in my memories, thinner, less oppressive.
But memories simplify things, especially when they're hiding something. A
flash of that night came back, sharp and enough to sting.
Caleb's face flushed with frustration, the way he threw his
hands up and said he was sick of me bossing
him around, Me spinning away from him, Fueled by resentment
I didn't want to admit. I carried his footsteps behind me,
my own anger smothering the thought of turning back, and
then nothing, just empty air where he'd been for years.
I clung to the comforting lie Caleb ran away, or
someone took him, or something else intervened, anything to avoid
acknowledging the truth that I left him. I stepped into
the trees, leaves cushioning the ground, forming a gentle slope
toward a shallow dip in the earth. At first I
thought it was natural, a hollow left by a fallen
log or the weather. But the shape was wrong, a
depression the size of a child curled on their side,
fresh and undisturbed. Something had been lying here recently, or
still was just beneath the surface. I crouched, heart hammering,
and hovered my hand above the leaves. The air felt warm.
Then a whisper rose from the hollow, thin and fractured,
drifting up through soil and roots. You left me my
legs nearly buckled. It wasn't Caleb's voice exactly. It was
stretched and frayed, as if passed through too many mouths,
too many years of abandonment. I didn't think. I just
lunged forward and began tearing through the leaves with my
bare hands, dragging them aside in frantic handfuls. Dirt under
my nails, where to my forehead, A pounding in my skull,
screaming that whatever I was about to find, I couldn't
walk away again. My fingers brushed something smooth paper. I
pulled it free, a drawing crayon on cheap printer stock,
fresh and unwrinkled, not a lick of weathering. Caleb's face
stared back at me, but the proportions were wrong, the
eyes too large, the smile too wide, stretching past the
limits of human comfort. The head ankled at a tilt
no child ever held, but he looked older, not growing,
just continued, evolved in the wrong direction, and beneath the
image an uneven lettering, I'm closer now. By the time
I left the forest, my hands were shaking hard enough
that I kept them shoved in my pockets. I told
myself it was just adrenaline, the remnants of a panic attack,
the shock of finding a child size hollow, and the
leaves with a drawing. I had no explanation for what
I didn't want to admit was simpler. The ground I
stood on in that clearing matched the terrain I'd spent
two decades trying not to remember. It looked nothing like
the softened version I described to police, the gentle incline
i'd said. I'd convinced myself that that lies so thoroughly
that finding the truth rendering crayon felt like having the
floor pulled out from beneath me. The walk back to
the school blurred again. My breath kept snagging on something
I couldn't name. When I stepped into my classroom, everything
looked normal. Kids chatting pages, turning, the scrape of chairs, normal, normal, normal.
I convinced myself the morning had been an episode e lapse,
something my mind could fold away. Then a boy at
the front, the one who hadn't been involved in the drawings,
muttered to a friend under his breath, you always slowed
me down. My chest constricted. That was my line from
that night. Before I could process it, another student parroted,
I'm not your babysitter in the middle of a conversation
about football practice. Then at the back of the room,
someone dropped a pencil and muttered, just go. I felt
my stomach twist. These weren't Caleb's words. They were mind
These children are repeating phrases I'd shoved so deep inside
myself that I'd believe they no longer existed. The walls
of my constructed narrative, the version of the story I
rehearsed and told them that it felt true, buckled around me.
This wasn't about the kids, and it wasn't about dreams.
Something was bleeding through the cracks in my memory, dragging
the truth with it. Then a girl who rarely spoke
raised her hand slightly. She didn't wait for me to
call on her. Her eyes when focused as though she
were listening to something I couldn't hear. In her own voice,
but with an inflection too measured, too deliberate, she asked,
do you remember pushing him? My vision blurted, the edges
my knees almost gave out. I had to grip the
edge of my desk to stay upright. She blinked, confused,
as if she had no idea she said anything at all.
That was the moment I knew the problem was me.
Something in the forest wasn't haunting me. It was peeling
me open, forcing me to look at the memory I'd
sealed shut twenty years ago. I couldn't keep pretending the past.
There was something that happened to me. It was something
I did, and something out there wanted me to stop
lying about it. I wasn't going back to the forest.
I told myself, I'd take the day off, call in sick,
do anything except fee the madness that had started tearing
through my life. But morning came and my body moved
before my mind could protest the desire for answers, overtaking
all senses. I parked at the edge of the woods
like someone drawn by instinct rather than decision. The trees
felt tighter, as if they had grown inward overnight. The
forest floor swallowed sound. The moment I stepped off the grass,
there was just the faint hum of something waiting. I
found the large depression easily in my memory. It had
just looked child sized. Today it was deeper, wider, curled
into the shape of grief I carried for years. I crouched,
expecting the faint whisper I heard before, but the ground
was silent. Instead. A sound drifted from above, A voice,
light and uncertain, weaving between branches, trying to be a
boy's voice, trying to be Caleb, except it wasn't right.
The pitch wavered, the rhythm stuttered, the tone slid from
soft to hollow, as if the speaker didn't understand what
emotion went where It was in imitation, built from scraps,
stitched together by something that understood the shape of a child,
but not the soul. I froze, staring up into the
interlocking limbs. Nothing moved, but I felt eyes studying me,
practicing me. The memory didn't return cleanly. It surfaced in fragments,
each one fighting against the version had rehearsed for years.
I saw my younger self shove Caleb, a hard, frustrated
motion meant to end the argument, not his life. I
clung to that justification. I didn't mean harm. I just
snapped brother's fight, kids fall. It wasn't it couldn't have
been that bad. But the next fragment shattered that excuse.
Caleb stumbled over the embankment hit the ground with more
force than I remembered enough the Jarro's breath into a
sharp startled gasp. His hand grabbed at the leaves, reaching
for balance. Long after momentum had left him. I felt
an old thought, try to surface, the one I buried
the deepest. He'll get up. He always gets up. You
don't have to deal with this, Just walk, breathe leave
it alone. He would get up and follow me, like
he always did. And then I saw when I spent
twenty years refusing to acknowledge. I turned away because it
was easier, because anger had hollowed out every instinct except
the desire to be free of responsibility. Because I told
myself distance would make everything less my fault. The memory
didn't condemn me outright, It simply showed the truth. Without commentary,
and that honesty hurt far more than judgment. I felt hollow,
A vacancy the forest seemed eager to fill my breath
left me in a rush. My vision dimmed around the
edges from a strange dissociation. I recognized too well the
same numbness I cultivated my entire adult life to avoid
touching this truth. The forest responded to it. The leaves
rustled with a sound too deliberate to bewind, roots grown
softly shifting beneath the soil like muscles, waking boundary between
my memory and this place felt thin enough to tear.
Something caught my eye, a scrap of paper pinned to
a tree by a sharpened twig. I approached slowly. It
was another crayon drawing. Caleb lay curled in the leaves,
knees drawn up the same way I now remembered him
lying after the fall. But behind him, half emerged from
the earth, was a long, pale arm stretching toward him,
cradling him, comforting him. I pressed a hand against the
tree to steady myself. The bark felt warm. I started
to cry, an ugly, shaking sob that dragged out of
me as if it had been waiting two decades for
his chance. The trees echoed it back to me, and
when the last echo faded, I realized it wasn't just
copying my sorrow. It was learning me preparing for something.
By the time I reached my house, the shaking hadn't stopped.
My clothes were streaked with dirt. I kept expecting the
panic to settle into something familiar, numbness or denial, the
emotional toolkit that had carried me through the last twenty years.
But the truth was too loud, now echoing through every
part of me. I closed the door behind me and
leaned against it, breath jagged, my brain scrambled for an
escape route. I could hear myself trying to rebuild the
same excuses I'd lived behind all my adult life. I'm
not required to go back into those woods. Nothing is
forcing me. People live with secrets all the time. I
already did. I can do it again, But saying the
words out loud only made them sound cheap, flimsy. I
didn't believe them any more, and the house, with its
suffocating quiet, seemed to know it too. I wandered from
room to room, rubbing my arms. The chase of a
chill that wasn't physical. The knowledge I carried, the truth
I'd avoided for two decades, pressed heavier than any whisper
or drawing or distorted voice in the forest. I stopped pacing.
My thoughts split between two clear paths, both terrible in
different ways. One was the path I knew best avoidance.
Pack a bag, get in the car, drive until the
forest was a rumor in the rear view mirror, seal
the truth back inside, and let time do the bearying again.
The second path fell like stepping into fire. Accountability, go back,
face what I did, accept whatever waited for me in
those trees. My pulse stooded against my ribs as I
stood there, weighing them. The first option glittered with false safety.
The second burned with everything I'd spent twenty years running from.
Then the tapping started a gentle rhythm on the back door.
Three light knocks, a pause, then one more. A pattern
I hadn't heard since I was a teenager, Caleb's pattern,
the way he asked me to walk with him to
the bathroom at night, the way he told me without
speaking that he was scared. The sound froze me where
I stood I knew or waited on the other side,
couldn't truly be Caleb. I knew it was an echo,
a mimicry for the message inside the sound was clearer
than anything supernatural. Choose. I slid down the wall and
on to the floor, body shaking as the weight of
the choice crossed against my chest. I can't leave him again,
I whispered, my voice cracked. Saying it out loud made
it real in a way nothing else had. I can't
do that twice. I wiped my face with the heel
of my hand and forced myself to stand. My legs
felt unsteady, but willing, as if some parted me had
finally stopped resisting the direction my life had always been
pushing me toward. I opened the back door. The night
air met me like a hell breath released. No creature
waited there, no shadow, no beckoning hand. It was just
the forest in the distance, patient and waiting. I stepped outside, choosing,
and as I reached the tree line, pale moths drifted
down from the branches, spiraling into a luminous path that
well deeper into the woods, marking the way forward. Walking
into the forest felt different this time. It wasn't like trespassing.
It was like returning to a place I had abandoned.
Mid sentence, the fear was still there, humming under my skin,
tightening the back of my throat. But that wasn't the
thing guiding me anymore. Responsibility was heavier than fear, and
for the first time in twenty years, I didn't try
to set it down. The trees parted as I moved deeper,
adjusting around me in slow, deliberate shifts. The forest wasn't
hiding anything tonight. It was preparing a path, an invitation.
The embankment appeared through the darkness, lit by a strange
sourceless glow, despite the absence of a moon. The sight
of it punched the breath out of me. Even without
the imitation of light, I would have known it. My
body had remembered this place long before my mind ever
dared to there. It was the hollow, the ground, shaped
by a small body, lying curdled into itself, a memory
pressed into the earth like a fossil. A voice drifted
from the dession, soft and trembling. You remember me now.
My throat tightened. The cadence was almost perfect, almost a
half echo of a voice. I'd spent years refusing to replay.
I sang to my knees before I even realized I
was falling. The confession came out of me, like something
being mined from deep inside my ribs, each word scraping
on its way up. I pushed you, I said, I
was angry. I wanted space, freedom, a moment where I
wasn't the only one responsible for everything. My hand dug
into the soil, clenching it like a lifeline. I heard
you cry out, and I left anyway. I walked away
because I convinced myself you'd be fine, because it was
easier than facing what I'd done. And then I lied
for years, to Maum, to the police, to everyone, to myself.
Most of all, the forest responded. The branches overhead untwisted,
the way someone relaxes their shoulders after carrying weight for
two long. Roots shifted beneath my knees, grounding themselves. Now
that the truth had been spoken, the air itself loosened.
It had been waiting for this. Movements stirred in the hollow.
Leaves parted as a small figure rose slowly from the depression,
child sized, fragile. My breath hitched the clothes were familiar
or trying to be. The hair, the tilt of the chin,
and the face. God, the face almost broke me, familiar
enough to ache, close enough to believe, far enough from
perfect that the distortions hid like tiny knives. The arms
hung a bit too long. The joints moved with liquid smoothness,
bending in ways that made my skin crawl. The eyes
called the glow of the forest, not on the surface,
but from some depth behind them, like lanterns shifting through
frosted glass. But even with all that, he looked like Caleb,
and that was enough to undo me. Caleb, I whispered.
The name trembled out, Coated in years of dust and gilt.
It felt raw, vulnerable, naked. The figure tilted its head,
exact tilt, that curious soft motion I hadn't realized I
remembered until I saw it recreated perfectly. I waited for you,
it said. The voice was gentle, no accusation or bitterness,
just the truth, spoken with all the sincerity of a
child who spent too long alone. Tears blurred my vision,
my chest cracked open. For one fragile moment, I believed
I had finally done something right. That by telling the truth,
coming back, not running. I had earned this, maybe even forgiveness,
the chance to say goodbye properly. I lifted a shaking hand,
an offering a plea. Caleb reached out. Its skin was warm,
human warm. Its fingers curled around mine with careful pressure,
and then it smiled. Caleb smiled exact a memory made flesh.
I lead out of breath. I didn't know i'd been holding.
Relief washed through me. Maybe I really was forgiven. Maybe
the forest dropped into silence. It didn't feel peaceful. It
felt like a predatory silence, one that falls when something
stops talking because it's finally ready to strike. Caleb didn't
let go of my hand, and its smile didn't fade.
It only widened, just a fraction too far. The forest
around us reacted. The branches stiffened, the light sank lower,
as if pulled into the creature's chest. You remember me, now,
it murmured again, But the voice was slipping, not entirely
calebs anymore. There were tones beneath it, older, layered. He
cried for you, it whispered, leaning close enough that I
felt its breath against my cheek. A tremor ran through
its arm like a memory excited it. I tasted everything
he felt. His pain was delicious. My stomach twisted. Then,
with something almost like affection, it murmured, But you, yours
has aged into something exquisite. I stumbled back, instinctively, yanking
my hand free. The creature stepped forward, and with each
movement the mimicry fell apart a little more. Its arms
lengthened by inches, stretching smoothly like softened wax. Its joints
hinged backward for a split second before snapping forward again.
Its eyes brightened from within the pupil, and a seam
appeared along the center of its face. But it wasn't
the line of an opening mouth, a split, vertical and
clean opening with a soft, wet sound. From within that scene,
the true appendage emerged, long, thin, almost elegant in its wrongness.
A proposis like a mosquito's hollow, tipped, widening and narrowing
in tiny pulses. It curled in the air, tasting it,
searching for something beneath my skin. Clicks came from inside it,
like an insect reading itself to pierce. I didn't think
I ran crashing through the underbrush, with the forest shifted
with me, branches bending, roots rising, guiding the creature in
a straight line toward me. It dropped onto my back
a moment later. The impact knocked the air out of me.
Fingers clamped around my wrists, pinning my arms behind me.
Its knees dug into my ribs, forcing me into the
cold dirt. Its breath trembled, marred with triumph. Let me
drink everything he left inside you, and whispered against my neck.
The proposes stabbed into my forearm. A white hop pane
exploded through my arm. But the real horror wasn't the puncture.
It was the sensation that followed. Some thing was being
pulled from me, ripped from within, siphoned and drained. And
it wasn't just blood but memories. The first tugged or
at the night Caleb fell, his cry echoing inside my skull.
The second ripped a decades of guilt, thinning it into threads.
The nags pulled at who I thought I was, my
sense of myself unraveling like fabric, fraying under strain. Grief
drained out of me in hot waves. My identity blurreded,
the edges my mind hollowed. I felt my limbs weakening,
turning slack. My fingers twitched uselessly in the dirt. The
creature shuddered above me, pleasure rolling through it invisible waves,
so much more than the boy. It breathed so much
rich matured. My vision blurred, black edges closed inward. I
could feel myself slipping into unconsciousness, into non existence. I
couldn't tell then movement through the haze. I saw something
behind the creature, small hands, small arms, wrapping around its torso,
then pulling. The creature shrieked a sound too sharp and
layered to be human. It clawed to the ground, refusing
to break its hold on my arm. The proboses stretched painfully,
still embedded in my flesh. The arms around it tightened,
then yanked, the probuses tor free. A spray of red,
following a surge of agony lit up my arm. I screamed,
collapsing onto my side. Through the blur, I saw a
small child sized silhouette holding the creature back. The creature
thrust wildly, limbs flailing, trying to crawl toward me, but
those small arms, those familiar, heartbreakingly small arms, held it fast.
I saw only the top of the child's head. Hair
I recognized instantly, hair eyd washed and brushed on school
picture mornings. I never saw the face. I didn't need
to go. The small voice strained out. I staggered under
my feet, half blind, half conscious, blood soaking, my sleeves
mined in tatters, and I ran branches, whipped my face,
my legs threatened to buckle. Every few steps behind me,
the two voices rose, one monstrous, furious shrieking my name,
and beneath it, small and strained go. I did, and
I didn't look back. I didn't remember getting home. One
moment I was staggering through the tree line, lungs burning arm,
pouring blood down my elbow. The next I was collapsing
through my back door and hitting the kitchen floor hard
enough to rattler chair. For a long time, I just
lay there, half curled, trembling uncontrollably. My arm throbbed with
a creature had pierced it with a physical pain was
nothing compared to the emptiness spreading through my chest, A
hollowness so deep if I like wind can blow straight
through me, not metaphorically, something was gone. Memories, feelings, pieces
of myself. I could feel the absence, like missing teeth
in my mind. I pushed myself upright against the cabinet, gasping.
My thoughts stuttered, skipping like stones and water. I tried
to remember the exact order of things, what the creature said,
how it looked, the way it fed. But every attempt
ended in a smear of fog, like someone had reached
inside and plucked the sharpest thoughts away. But the truth
of it that stayed, the truth I'd spent two decades bearing,
had sunk its claws into me, too deeply to be taken.
Something fed on Caleb, fed on his fear the night
I left him, on his grief as he waited alone
in the dark, fed on his abandonment. I created that understanding,
crushed harder than any promises ever did. I pulled my
knees up to my chest, shaking, my breath hitched on
every inhale. I'm sorry, I whispered. It came out jagged,
barely audible. But once the words started, more followed, quiet
and broken, unraveling from somewhere deep and rusted inside me.
I'm so sorry I left you. I left you there.
I didn't look back. I should have come back. I
should have my voice cracked. I pressed my forehead to
my knees. The apology wasn't to the creature or to
the forest. It was to the boy. I failed, the
boy who cried out after falling and waited for a
big brother who never returned. For a long while, that
was all there was pain and silence. But then a
thought rose through the fogged out places in my mind.
Uninvited those arms, those small arms wrapped around the creature's torso,
holding it back with everything they had, the familiar hair
falling across the forehead, shaped by childhood, the way the
silhouette pulled, strained, refused to let it reach me again.
If that was Caleb, or even just some fragment of him,
some last echo the creature hadn't devoured. Then he did
something I never did. He came back, fought for me.
He saved me. The realization hit like a fresh wound,
opening equal parts unbearable and blinding. My guilt did evaporate,
it sharpened, grew clearer. But beneath it, something else bloomed
in a way I wasn't ready for a possibility, A terrible,
fragile possibility did Caleb, forgive me, even after everything. I
didn't know. I didn't know of the arms that held
the creature with him, Nor did I know if forgiveness
was something a boy swallowed by a foresting could still offer.
But I knew this. I wasn't alone in that clearing,
not entirely. I sat on the kitchen floor until my
breathing steady, listened to the hum of the fridge and
the blood dripping from my arm onto the tiles. The
silence and the house felt different, now, less like a trap,
more like a question waiting to be answer. Dusk shifted
through the windows and I closed my eyes. That was
when I heard it, faint and distant, coming from the
forest far beyond my backyard, a gentle tapping, soft and hesitant,
yet familiar, the same rhythm Cale abused when he was
scared and wanted his big brother to come back. My
breath caught. The tapping continued just once, twice, three times
before fading into the night, and I didn't know if
it meant forgiveness. Oh goodbye.