They say I am never to be alone in the Wood. I believe them because they died here, and they were alone. They all told their stories, both lives they remember in flashes, and deaths only I heard about. I grew up on these dark stories, while other children got lullabies and tales of princes or princesses. But, like all children’s tales, these came with their own morals and warnings.

“Come back quickly.” Trist’s desperate, whispery voice is in my ear. “Gather the wood and nothing more. Remember Lonan—”

“I remember.” I cut Trist off with a scowl and lift my thick, round arms, crossing them over my chest. I’m fifteen, and while I’ve spent my whole life in this little shack that my friends call their home, I still haven’t quite got the muscles that a fifteen-year-old should have. Melinoe says I’m still strong, like a lumberjack, though not quite as tall as one. She knows because her husband was a lumberjack. He wore big fleece shirts, had a barrel-chest, and rippling arm muscles. At least, that’s how Melinoe describes him when she remembers him. Melinoe died here over twenty years ago. She’s a skinny woman who resembles the foxes that slink in the trees around the house. She found me when I was seven and lost in the Wood. She’s been a fast friend ever since. She has a silly way of putting things, though, usually speaking in riddles. Melinoe is also the one who warned me about the Wood first.

“I have a blue one, you have brown. Beware, beware, we’re all around,” Melinoe now whispers in my ear. “Never take the Wood for granted.”

It’s her usual riddle and warning before I leave the house. She’s talking about them. The strange deadly creature that lives in the Wood. I believe I remember seeing them when I was little. Bright dotted yellow and red mushroom caps sometimes appear in my dreams, mixed with the only memories I retain of my parents. I demanded that Melinoe show them to me when I first arrived. I was seven, and a challenging–that’s how Melinoe says it–child. She warned me then that I could not leave the trails and, if I left the house, I was always to heed her riddle. 

They all insist on it. Because Trist, Melinoe, Daniel, Nixie, and Rhodes can’t leave this house. Nixie, because of the axe which her husband took to her neck. She’d found out he was cheating. You wouldn’t think of him as a villain though, the way that Nixie tells it. I think her ghost still loves him, so she stays. Then Daniel, who I believe had the worst death. He told me he was fifteen, the same age as me now. Daniel’s story is that his own parents murdered him here because of money. He showed me his skeleton under the floorboards. I laid down every night for years wondering when I’d be as tall as him. I’m proud to say now, I’m taller.

Trist interrupts my musing and points her bony transparent finger out at the dark Wood before us.  “Do not leave the trails.”

A cold wind whips at the brush beyond the threshold and the trees overhead. I peer down the dark path. Ghostly hands touch and leave my shoulder. No matter how tall I grow, or how strong, or even how old, they worry. I can’t blame them either. They’re dead, and if I’m not careful, I will be too.

I wish I could pat their hands and assure them, because I’ve spent eight years of my life here in this little shack. Every day I clean the floors, I find the water from the closest stream within view of the doors and windows. I go out, like today, to gather wood. I cook, I clean, I sleep, I read various books out of dusty chests, and I listen to their stories as well as their warnings.

I can’t touch any of them, though, so I nod. I smile at Trist and Melinoe as they haunt the space beside the door. “I’ll be safe.”

The two women nod soberly. Trist reaches forward and her fingers brush through my black curls. Her touch is like an icy wind on my face. I turn away from her and the wind catches my canvas shirt like a sail.

“I’ll be back!” I cross the threshold before they can stop me and plunge into the cold winds. I don’t like leaving them behind, because I can feel the shiver down my spine that is their long faces and worried stares. But I can hold my own. I have for eight years! One day they will understand, and I will be able to leave the house without them treating it like I’m going to my grave.

Pebbles roll away from my bare feet, as I kick some down the path. Bits of light stream between the holes in the treetops. The Wood always looks grey, even in the daytime. I think it’s because of the big trees everywhere. They have littles branches and huge wide domes far over my head. I asked Melinoe once what they were. She didn’t know. Only gave me more warnings of them. Don’t look them in the eyes. Don’t talk to them. And whatever you do, don’t leave the trails.

I think it’s silly that a forest would be able to talk or have eyes. But the mushrooms in my dreams…they have eyes sometimes. Hazel eyes like my mother’s. I miss her. I miss my father too. No one knows how I got here, not even me. I asked Melinoe, since she found me, but I was already lost and alone then. Well, not entirely alone. 

Rustling from the trees distracts me. I look up and there I find my one living friend. The one I met before Melinoe. Nixie swears nothing alive resides here, except me, but she’s wrong. She’s never met Wren. Wren is actually a raven, but I had never seen a raven when we first met, back when I was wandering the misty Wood alone following trails of red mushrooms. I also hadn’t met Melinoe then, or the others, so I hadn’t read the books in the chest at the house. There’s one on birds full of pictures. I love that one. I was eight when I read it, and I realized Wren was a raven. I don’t think he minds.

“Good afternoon, Wren!” I wave my whole arm back and forth to catch his attention.

Wren watches me pass. The path to the lumber is short, as are all the paths to anything in the Wood. They’re all made of scattered pebbles and only as wide as my shoulders, but clearly not natural. I don’t know who made them, only that they exist, just like the house, which has no builder living or dead.

I pause along my path and wait for Wren. Usually he follows, but today he simply watches. I wave at him again and lift my head to squint at where he sits in the shadowy branches. I swear there’s mushrooms up there. How? I will never know.

“Wren,” I call out. “Is everything alright?” He’s worrying me.

Wren does not answer. He soars down instead, and I duck, almost too late, as the big bird skates by my head. Now I’m mad.

“Wren! What was that fo—” I stop screaming when I see why Wren flew at me. He dropped something at my feet. It’s round, like the marbles I have in a box, but it’s white and it doesn’t look like it’s made of glass. I kneel and touch it. It’s squishy and wet. I jerk my hand back and grimace. Instead of picking it up, I kick it with my foot, and it rolls so that I can see it isn’t a marble at all. It’s a single eyeball staring up with a green iris and tiny pupil. I step back and search the sky for Wren. He’s back on his perch, watching me.

“This isn’t the kind of thing you’re supposed to bring people you call friends,” I say and wag my finger at the bird.

Wren doesn’t bother to look remorseful. I’m not sure I’d recognize what remorse looks like on a bird, but I think I’d know if it came from Wren. We have a special connection that way, being the last two living things.

“I’m going to get firewood,” I announce and  turn around. I leave Wren behind and follow the trail to its head. Not much grass grows here. I remember the ground in my dreams is always squishy, like the sponge I use to clean the windows. But on the trails, it’s just hard soil. A worn-out axe waits for me in the little clearing of trees that I’ve slowly hacked away at. The trees here are small, and their bark is thick and hard. They also have little branches, and don’t get very tall. 

I take to a nearby stump—close enough to the trail that no one will worry—and hack it down into logs I can carry. Gathering up my day’s work, I do a quick sweep but, to my disappointment, Wren did not follow today, but I still feel like he’s watching. I walk back.

I’ve only gone two steps though when I see it again. Another eyeball lies in my path. The first freaked me out. Seeing the second, I can’t help my curiosity. I have said I’m a curious child, right? I’m always careful about it, but today is special. I’m alone without a friend, ghost, or otherwise, and I’m being presented with a puzzle. It begs two questions. First: where did the eyeball come from? Second: are there more?

I put down my logs and overcome any squeamishness to pick up the second eyeball. This one isn’t green. It’s brown, like my own, but darker. I study it, and my first question is answered. Wren reappears from the trees and lands at the edge of the trail. He stares at me with one golden eye. If I hadn’t grown up in a house of ghosts, I wouldn’t understand him, but not all the ghosts can talk. Rhodes has no mouth, only a gaping hole where a shotgun destroyed his throat and jaw. So, I read his eyes and, in the same way, I read Wren’s. They implore me to follow.

Wren sits at the edge of the trail, though. I am not a fool, even if I’m young and difficult. I inspect the eyeball in my hand. Two different eyes mean a possible two different sources. Could be rotting bodies. Could even be them. Wren would never lead me into danger, though. When I arrived and was lost here, Wren led me to Melinoe. He saved me.

I grip the eyeball firmly. “I’ll follow you.”

I take my first steps off the trail. I expect to feel afraid, but excitement bubbles up in my chest. Wren takes off into the dark trees, and I follow with increasing boldness, drawn further and further from safety. A sense of adventure overwhelms me. Here, I see the mushrooms like my dreams. They’re everywhere. Red, yellow, blue. They’re beautiful. The ground turns spongy beneath my feet. I forget about the eye, and I think I crushed it somewhere along the way, because when Wren finally stops in the middle of a moist smelling clearing, my hand is wet and sticky. The air around me smells the same, but it also weighs heavy on my lungs. I’m further from the house than I’d ever gone. I’m in a thicket of what I can only describe as fungi–I read in one of the books that mushrooms are sometimes called that. It all looks blurry, though. I’m so tired from running.

I don’t recall exactly what happened next. I know I paused, feeling like a hundred eyes were on me. I took a good look around. The trees were covered in vibrant mushrooms that seemed to grow from the bark itself. The bark looked like a mushroom. The ground sank under my slow steps, and the air reminded me of when something in the cabinets went mouldy. But that was all I noticed before I saw them, their faces smiling exactly as I remember.

I sprint across the squishy clearing, calling out, “Mom, Dad!”

My mother kneels and extends her arms. I can’t believe my eyes. I thought my parents were dead. But they’re here. Here. They waited for me! 

I lock onto my mother’s gaze as tears well up in mine. I notice her eyes. One is green but the other a deep dirt brown. My steps falter, and I look at my father. I should be happy to see him. But he also has different colored eyes. 

My head swims. I stop. I remember, I’d already begun to cry, and that’s where, in the blur of tears, their faces fell apart. What my hopeful self had formerly mistaken as my parents were now just arrangements of dots on the heads of the mushrooms in the clearing. Mushrooms with eyes, staring at me. The skin on my neck stood stiff. They had been watching me.

I collapsed to my knees. I think I retched, then I lay down, exhausted. Melinoe’s warning returned to me, the one I’d always thought was a little silly,  the one she’d given me just that morning. “I have a blue one, you have brown. Beware, beware, we’re all around.”

By the time I thought that, it was too late. My lungs and body were heavy. In the middle of the clearing, watched by a hundred mushrooms, I was a fly trapped in one of the house’s cobwebs. At first, I was angry. I looked weakly for Wren, but found his golden eye among the mushrooms as well. Then I cried, for the house, for the ghosts, for Daniel’s skeleton. I supposed I wouldn’t be getting any taller now. 

When all my tears had dried up, stillness crept in. The sky darkened. My skin darkened to grey, then purple and, as the winds changed, one of my eyes stopped seeing. 

Each day my body becomes more a part of the Wood. My bones started to peek through after months. My face has sunken in. What was my skin now looks like canvas fluttering in the wind. I mourned for a while that I was dead, but I’ve had time to realize, the Wood is alive. The Wood is my friend. It has voices. I hear my parents. I hear Wren. They watch over me, and through my golden-brown eye, I watch over them. They tell me I am never to be alone in the Wood again. I believe them. Because we died here.

***

Kay Koel (she/her) is a US-based young author who enjoys constructing tales of the fantastical and macabre She has a unique love of black cats, deadly mushrooms, and dark fiction. She has published horror and fantasy shorts in magazines and anthologies and hopes to share more.