Alone in the Woods
Wind has a strange ringing to it when you are alone in the woods. You become strangely aware of all the sounds it can make , pushing through the trees, a symphony of branches and leaves singing to you, playing dark games of chess with your deepest thoughts. The forest has a voice of its own, and it knows where you are weakest.
I pace in muddy prints. My only path is wet steps sinking into sand and dirt, and they seem to repeat in patterns of panic. Night falls entirely too quickly when you are alone in the woods.
For days I have made camp to endure the darkness , to outlast it. The dance of shadows is my constant companion, and the flames of a small twig fire push back the voices that seem to invade my mind as the cold envelopes my skin. It calls to me. "Little lamb," it whispers, scratching at the back of my skull in a deep voice that carries both comfort and terror in the same breath. When I feel myself giving in , almost enchanted by its grip, pulled toward the dark , I wake.
I wake in the same muddy steps. The cold bites at my skin, and my companion from the night before has been snuffed out by the darkness, its battle finally complete. I move again, unsure if the direction I am walking is the same muddled path I've already passed through, or a new bog I must trudge into ,fleeing what I know will visit me when darkness falls again.
Tonight, a new friend joins me. No longer a small gathering of twigs, but a proper fire ,a song of branches snapping, heat washing over my frosted body in waves I had almost forgotten. A calm I don't ever remember feeling washes over me, and I drift into a warm sleep. A sleep where I dream. A sleep that grants me memories I had locked away: the laugh of my son, a field where we used to run, the warm glow of the sun, and a pride that swells so full in my chest it almost breaks me. A moment of release from the nightmare that is my journey, alone in these woods. Just as his small hands reach for mine and a smile breaks from my teeth .
I am yanked from that warmth by the voice. The terror. It scratches at my skull. "Little lamb," it echoes in my ear , just behind the tree my back is resting on, just beyond the sanctuary of light that holds the shadows at bay. Its cold tongue clicks with wet flesh, and lips curl in excitement at my horror. My body tenses. My heels dig into the dirt. My mind races for a way out, a way to rid myself of this voice, this cold, this entity that calls to me.
Again it comes, tearing into the back of my skull with its words: "Why do you flee?" But the tone has changed. It sounds softer now warm, even, painted with colors of pain and the same deep loneliness I had grown so familiar with, alone in the woods.
Daylight breaks on my eyelids. A glaring, unforgiving light blinds me as I open my eyes. Blinking releases the pain, and I look around, searching for the body behind the voice that haunts my nights. But again, I am alone.
Nights pass. The same echo scratches at the inside of my skull, relentless and maddening, but I never see this wraith that haunts me ,only its voice, calling me away from the light and into the dark. And when I finally listen, when I have had enough of the itching, the endless pushing, I follow it. From tree to tree, from path to path, deeper into the woods. The mud gathers at my feet, caking my toes in cold wet sheets. Hours of silence follow, and the only sound I can hear is the soft symphony of wind ,and that voice, low and patient, guiding me further from warmth and reason.
I see it just beyond the trees: a break in the dark, a small clearing, a patch of mud void of life. A body covered in dirt. Skin stained purple by the cold. I stand over it. I stand over me ,gnarled and twisted by time and frost, barely recognizable, barely human. My heart begins to race and my hand reaches down to pull myself from the blanket of filth that covers us both.
The world goes dark the moment my fingers extend. And then , the sun. Pushing at my eyelids, golden and insistent. My ears fill again with branches and leaves singing to me, calling me to walk, to find myself, to find the light.
But I feel something just beyond the trees , watching, waiting , walking alone in the woods.