My old stories - The Wood

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Chimerix
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My old stories - The Wood

Postby Chimerix » Sat May 13, 2023 9:01 pm

The Wood

Folks around there just called it “the wood.” Nothing ominous, nothing sinister, just a recognition that back in the valley, things were different than they were throughout the rest of the forest.

The Forest Service had sent several experts back in there. All of them had come out again, looking pretty much like you’d expect after several days of extensive backpacking. They would report on dangerous animals, venomous snakes and spiders, poisonous berries, concealed gullies, falling rocks, flash floods… generally the same dangers one would expect to find in any wild-forested area nestled under a mountain range.

Conspiracy-minded folks in the public and from outlying areas would whisper about secret government labs, toxic waste dumps, drug cultivation, radioactive ores, undocumented carnivorous life forms, even reclusive mad scientists. The locals didn’t whisper about it at all, and would merely snicker disdainfully if one of the fringe theories were presented by a passing camper/tourist/tree hugger/hunter.

Still, it was passed from parent to child. Stay out of the wood.

Statistics is a science of tendencies. For example, all things being equal, people tend to fall off of cliffs at the Grand Canyon about as often as they do at Yosemite, at least on a per capita basis. Drunk drivers in LA wrap their cars around innocent pedestrians about as often as do drunk drivers in New York, Seattle, and Walla-Walla. And postal workers, well, now that’s what statisticians call a “statistical anomaly.”

The same could be said of the wood. It was a statistical anomaly. According to statistics compiled by the US Forest Service, one could expect to “lose” roughly 5 people per 100,000 who entered an undeveloped area similar to the wood. Lose, in this case, is a very literal use of the word, meaning that the people are never seen or heard from again. They might be eaten by predators, fall in a ravine, drown in a remote waterway, etc.

In the wood, the rate was higher. It wasn’t exactly a high volume tourist area, but it had its share of hunting, fishing, camping, and climbing devotees. It wasn’t gated, so keeping track of the ins and outs of individuals wasn’t particularly easy to do. Still, when you made a reasonable guess at the annual usage count, and compared it to missing persons reports, you came out with something on the order of 1/2 a percent.

If you’re not a statistician, that means 5 out of every 1000.

Millie had almost been one of those 5. When she was a child, she’d gone into the wood on a dare. Taking a running leap to get across a stream, she’d landed on the far bank and instantly sank past her knees. Stunned, she could only watch as her legs disappeared into the sandy shore. It wasn’t until moments later, as her 8-year old waist disappeared, that she was shocked into screaming. Luckily her older brother Robert was close behind. It was he who dared her, and he had followed to make sure both that she didn’t chicken out, and that she was ok. His 10-year-old legs carried him just enough farther up the sandy bank that he didn’t join her, and an eternity later they were both lying on the solid shore… wet, muddy, exhausted and trembling with adrenaline.

That could have been the end. For Millie, it was just a beginning.

She never confessed this to anyone, but even in the gasping moments following her rescue, she wanted nothing more than to go back and sink even further into the treacherous sand. Over the coming years, she would find opportunities to sneak out into the forest (although never again into the wood) and toss herself into whatever boggy areas she could find. She would get spanked for ruining her clothes, grounded for disobedience, teased by her brother and his friends, but still she went out to sink.

During high school, she was more discreet. Spare clothes purchased from the Goodwill, elaborate lies about sleeping at friends’ or class field trips, refusing to rise when ribbed by her obnoxious brother. Those few who knew or suspected soon forgot, and Millie had her solitary time being swallowed by the ground.

It wasn’t until her college years (Forestry, what else?) that she overcame her childhood fears. During her first summer back, she took a backpacking trip in for 2 weeks. She told her family she was going to one of the more frequented camping areas on the edge of the forest. In actuality, her legs carried her back to that area she’d avoided for over a decade, into the wood.

She never did find that sandy bank again. Maybe it wasn’t there anymore, maybe she just turned left when she should have gone straight. Still, during her 2 weeks, she found several places where the earth was happy to swallow her just as deep as she was willing to go. She experienced her first complete submersion on the bank of a stagnant pool, accompanied by about a billion frustrated mosquitoes who wouldn’t brave her Deep Woods Off.

Subsequent summers held longer camping trips, and more of them. Her parents would remark that she spent more time at home during the semester than she did over the summers, and why spend so much time camping anyway? She would just smile her cute little smile, the one that reminded them so much of an 8-year-old girl in lace and pigtails, and stuff another pair of socks into her backpack.

Deeper into the wood than ever before, Millie stopped by a rather picturesque lake. There was a marshy area that collected itself into a stream, heading back down the valley. It looked very promising. Millie sank, then the sun sank, and she happily lay in the twilight with mud up to her ears, watching the stars come out. Hours later, encrusted in slime and grime, she dragged her body over the last few feet of marsh and into the shallow edge of the lake. As she splashed and scrubbed, she felt strange sensations along her feet and calves, as if they were being stroked by long, soft fingers. She wrote it off to either weeds or fish, and slid into deeper water so she could attack her face and hair. She continued to feel the gentle caress, accompanied by a mild burning sensation.

She cleared her eyes and peered down. The burning sensation was fading, but her legs were feeling heavy, sluggish. Moving them was like moving in a deep bog, but there was only water.

Wait, there was a faint light, a hint of luminescence. Millie plunged her arm down, and immediately felt something long and soft wrap around it. The burning sensation, uncomfortable but not painful, flooded her arm as she grabbed tightly and pulled. There was a little resistance, then she looking at a… what?

It had several long tentacles, growing from a stalk-like tube. Two of the tentacles had wrapped around her arm, raising pale red welts, and causing the burning sensation which was even now fading into a heavy numbness. Millie felt a hot flush creeping up her neck and cheeks as she looked at the thing hanging from her arm. Out of the water, she could plainly see its eerie blue-green glow. The body and loose tentacles hung limply, unable to move without the buoyant support of the lake.

Millie tried to shift back into more shallow water, but found she couldn’t make her numb legs work. Looking onto the darkness of the pool, she saw that the glow surrounded her, and faded down into the depths. She could feel herself moving farther from shore, the ghostly touch of the tentacles on her sides and back propelling her deeper with their fiery touch followed by blissful numbness.

Millie struggled to think, her entire face flushed, her breathing fast and shallow, her thoughts slow and foggy. She’d seen this before. In some biology class. Under a microscope. But they were tiny, tiny… the biggest only 2 centimeters long. What were they called?

Millie realized she had fallen back, and was lying suspended in the water. She was floating, but not completely, as the tentacles shifter her feet and body deeper into the lake. She was aware of the stars overhead, and of the warmth flushing through her brain, and of the cool water as it rose over her shoulders, up her neck, into her ears.

“Sinking” she thought. “I’m glad I’m sinking.”

After the cold water closed over her face, Millie exerted her last bit of strength to lift her head and peer down along her body. It was so beautiful, seeing herself encased in these glowing fronds, in the middle of a glowing sea. The smooth curves of the tentacles as they wrapped and released, moving her downwards but never turning loose. The ghostly transparency, seeing her skin through the waving feelers.

The way the luminescence reflected off the air bubbles that rose from her mouth,

Half-a-percent may not be much, but it’s enough to merit a warning, passed not from the Forest Service, but from parent to child. Stay out of the wood.
The difference between theory and reality is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and reality.

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