Like most Halloweens she could remember, it was chilly, the sky gray, the leaves wilting. Each tree branch jumped out at her, and she jumped back. She wasn’t scared of the woods – they were scared of her.
As she moved through the underbrush, she spotted something. Resembled a face, she thought, but it was nothing like that. Just leaves in the underbrush, a shadow that fell upon the ground, simply by chance.
A raven cawed, and she settled back into her brisk pace.
Branches snagged at her hair and clothes and pulled off the little threads that she found falling off every so often. But her mind kept moving back to that thing, and so did her body. She found herself at the same tree, again and again, surveying the bushes. There was nothing different each time she walked past, not even the raven’s caw, which continued in perfect pitch each time she passed under the roost.
She was supposed to have arrived at school by now – at seven past eight-thirty she was already late, and not anywhere close to arriving either. She would walk along the path that she knew quite well, step over each tree branch and stump, but just as she was about to turn the way she knew to go, a most peculiar impulse told her to turn around and go back, just to check once more that the thing wasn’t there. And it never was – in fact, that thing was the only thing different than the first time she had passed. Even her footsteps seemed to disappear, so each step she took created a footprint anew only to vanish into the underbrush as if someone were to magically erase it.
She didn’t like this.
She knew these woods. She controlled them. The raven cawed again.
And that. She’d heard stories of the lively birds that everyone loved to listen to, singing in the wind, or the adorable bunnies creeping around the bushes, but no animals were present when she came around. That was good for them, everyone said. And it was true.
She’d had a dog once, because her little brother begged. The first night it was there, however, it was found dead on its bed. Her brother cried and cried, but she stayed emotionless. The dog’s name was Shelly, but she just thought of it as it. They’d never gotten another pet.
Then a month later, her brother had been found dead in his bed. Her parents had cried and cried.
But she stayed silent and emotionless. Inside, a spark of wicked satisfaction burnt – and all alone, while staring out at the woods, she giggled, just once.
Her phone rang. She assumed it was her mother, calling about why she was absent from class again. Truthfully, the only class she cared about was chemistry – or specifically, the strychnine she got to work with once, and the thallium. Nothing else was of much use. She let the phone ring until silenced and continued walking before turning back once again. Her footprints vanished. She felt her heart thump. Like the woods were trying to erase her presence.
This time, upon coming back to the bush, and hearing the raven caw, she carved something into the tree.
I will kill.
She went up and came back, rounded through the tree, and checked. There was no I or will. But there was the kill. So she wrote the others back in. This time she caught another glimpse of the thing. Evil, malicious. It looked like a face. Like a girl.
This time, as she came back, they stayed, but another word had appeared beside them.
You.
The raven cawed.
That raven was annoying her. Caw, caw, caw. She didn’t care about the you or anything else. Not even the face anymore.
Caw. Caw. Caw.
So why did she keep turning back?
What she didn’t notice were the additions to the message on the tree.
I will kill you. We will kill you. You are not welcome here.
She was a haunting girl. Death clung to her like a ferocious stench, trailing her, as if it was a person who knew to follow her to reach the people it would like to claim for itself – or perhaps she herself was Death, claiming victim after victim, a single weapon at her disposal found in many forms – the strychnine she found in the lab, the thallium in the teachers’ closet, or most commonly, the mushrooms found under the tallest trees in this very forest.
She kept walking, and walking, and walking. She became increasingly desperate to reach school and escape the wretched woods. She did not like the woods.
There were stories not only of animals coming out when she was not around, but of the sky and woods itself. Children said the sky would pour rain or dump snow or shine a brilliant blue when she was not around. The trees’ leaves would be all green and then turn orange and red, they would not wilt. The bare brown branches in the winter would glow even when there was not a speck of snow to light them. And at night, the moon itself seemed to favor others. It would always shine down on the forest, along with the stars, but if she was there, it would be darker.
And she liked it that way.
She didn’t like rain, snow or sunlight. She didn’t like beautiful leaves or flowers. She didn’t even like the peaceful darkness that was said to fall. She liked the darkness she brought.
On a day when she was in the forest, the sky would be gray. Not overcast, but like smog, like smoke. At night, darkness would have an unnatural edge. Which made sense. What she came here at night to do was unnatural.
The amount of bodies buried in these very woods was startling. One hidden under every tree, or so it seemed. Her brother and dog were buried under this very tree – their graves were empty. She had taken them, reburied them here. They were hers, after all. And all of her bodies stayed in her graveyard.
None of the bodies were able to be found even by bloodhounds – those dogs refused to enter the forest when she was there, high up in a tree, watching.
She did not like the forest, and yet, she was always in the forest. She turned, then, but did something different. On the path back to the thing, she turned, to see the forest moving, as if anything she did on that path was being erased. Each branch was regrown, each leaf placed back, every thing she disturbed fixed. She returned to the bush.
The raven cawed.
She did not like the way that raven cawed. She wanted it to shut its beak and learn the rules. As she came round again and heard its mournful cry, she had enough, and placed her hands on the bark.
That’s when she noticed messages.
You are not welcome here. You should not be here. You should leave here and never return. I am warning you. I am warning you. I am warning you, Annabelle.
She placed a foot on a knot.
I am warning you.
Her hand grasped a branch.
GET AWAY. NOW.
She saw the raven.
I MEAN IT, ANNABELLE.
She grabbed the raven with both her hands, clutched it around the neck until it stopped breathing. She climbed down, sure she could leave now.
But at that point she remembered the face, so turned back, and walked underneath the tree again. She checked the bushes, she checked everywhere. The messages on the tree had vanished, now, convincing her she had imagined the whole ordeal.
The raven cawed.
Her head snapped up to the trees, then down to the ground where she was sure she deposited the raven. Only, there was no raven. And now above her there was a great gathering of them – an unkindness, some would say, and she agreed.
She picked up her pace then, running along the path. At the turn, she heard her name being whispered.
Annabelle.
A pretty name for a pretty girl. She had brown hair and blue eyes and a perfect little face that shone like the sun. But she wasn’t pretty. Her cheekbones were too sharp, her face was too shallow, her hair was too flat, her eyes were too large. And her smile…her smile was said to haunt the school at night. The very idea. Her smile was more terrifying than her scowl.
The sound of her own name being whispered drove her more mad than the raven. So she shed her backpack and turned back, grabbing a handful of mushrooms on the way.
But she heard the caw of hundreds of ravens repeating over and over, and looked up to see a great black plume of one fly right over her. Then the thing emerged. It wasn’t just a face – it was a head, turning into a body, into something alive.
She’d thought it was a woman, and it was. A girl, really, but she kept thinking of the face – of the girl – as it. It had brown hair and blue eyes. Really, it looked like her. But its smile wasn’t terrifying, which terrified her.
It was wearing baggy black jeans and a blue long-sleeved shirt. It looked normal. It approached her.
“You are unwelcome here,” it said.
She took a mushroom from her pocket.
“I’m sorry, what? See, I’m new – I’m a forager. Would you like a mushroom?”
“Sure,” it said calmly. Her heart raced. She could feel a smile creeping over her; she would enjoy this very much, she thought.
“Just – one thing,” it said. She coughed.
“Yes?”
“Do you like my beautiful ravens?”
Before she could stop herself, she said, “no, I do not.”
“Oh. I love them. But this will make them go away,” it said, handing her a mushroom. She tilted her head, smiled slightly, and ate the mushroom; the girl giggled.
Every raven took flight then, but did not leave the woods. Instead, they descended on her. She shrieked as the black plumage consumed her, as the other girl disappeared. The darkness was all encompassing and it wasn’t the good kind. She shrieked and shrieked, and her body began to convulse; the pain was extreme, she felt on fire.
The ravens did not harm her, but the mushroom did. Her own mushroom. The girl didn’t eat it, of course. But Annabelle did.
The poison shot through her veins like a bullet, lighting every cell on fire, fighting back, fighting back against it. But these mushrooms – they were something special. They were hers. Her forest, her mushrooms, her face, HER GRAVES. Why was it turning against her now? She felt tree roots twisting up around her, leaves fluttering around her face, as if the forest was consuming her. A branch fell above her, not large enough to end her suffering, but it started to bury her.
She twisted in the dirt, before coming to a halt, lying on her back.
The last thing Annabelle ever saw was a raven.