Page 59 of Middle of the Night

Thinking. That’s what Ragesh was doing. Standing in the woods thinking about Johnny and how he’d fucked things up between them so much that he suspects Johnny decided to kill himself. But he can’t tell Ashley that. He can’t tell anyone.

“Nothing,” Ragesh says. “Just clearing my head.”

Ashley snorts, clearly not believing him. “Sure. Right.”

Ragesh looks away, more humiliated than he thought he’d be and regretting every decision he’s made in the past ten minutes. He should have just let these twerps keep walking, lit his joint, and let all his bad thoughts fade into nothingness. Instead, he’s here, marching through the woods with three boys and a girl who hates him, going God knows where. Checking his surroundings, he realizes they’re deep into the forest now. Even though he’s certain he’s been this far before, nothing looks familiar.

“Where the hell are we?”

“I don’t know,” Ashley says with a sigh. “Hey, Billy, since you seem to be guiding us here, how far are we going, exactly?”

Up ahead, Billy says, “Another mile.”

“Uh, why?”

They’ve reached a clearing in the woods, the trees giving way to a narrow strip of land before rising again on the other side. Billy turns around to answer, backing into the clearing as he does so.

“Because that’s—”

Ragesh hears the car before he sees it. A loud bleat of a horn, followed by the screech of tires skidding to a stop along the blacktop. That’s the moment he realizes the clearing is actually a road cutting through the forest.

And that Billy had almost backed right onto it as he was talking.

And that the car—a Ford something or other with a startled driver behind the wheel—had just barely missed him.

SIXTEEN

The forest is quiet and dark.

Unnervingly so.

I’d expected chirping birds and prancing critters and sunlight streaming through the trees. A cartoon, basically. Something from those Disney VHS tapes still sitting in the basement in their white plastic clamshell cases. Instead, I walk in near silence, the only sound made by my own footsteps as I move through the trees. Above me, a canopy of leaves blocks out much of the sun. What little light there is comes in bright splotches that dapple the forest floor.

I have only a vague recollection of the last time I walked these woods, the day Billy vanished. In my memory, it’s brighter, more open. Then again, there were five of us clomping through the woods, making no attempt to be quiet. Now there’s only me, the crash of my footfalls breaking the otherworldly hush of the forest.

Between them is another, lighter sound that I first think is an echo of my steps. But something is off about them. They’re not quite in sync with my movements, not to mention they seem quieter than an echo.

I stop, lift my right foot, and stomp once on the leaf-covered ground. The sound it makes reverberates through the woods amoment before quickly fading. Now that I know what the echo of my footsteps sounds like, I continue walking.

One step.

Five steps.

Ten steps.

On the eleventh, I hear the sound again.

I stop. A halt so sudden that all noise made by me instantly ceases. Yet there’s another sound in the forest. A single, almost imperceptible shush of leaves coming from somewhere behind me.

Hearing it creates a cold drip of anxiety that runs directly down my spine. Yes, it could be an animal. But animals, far more scared of us than we are of them, don’t just stop when there’s a human present. They run, scurrying through the underbrush and making all sorts of noise as they go.

But this? This sounds like footsteps. Quiet, unobtrusive ones timed to match my own.

I’m not alone in these woods.

Someone else is with me.

I slowly turn in a complete circle, scanning the forest for signs of where they are—and who it could be. But I see nothing. It’s just me and the trees and the ragged weeds filling the ground around them.

---