This story was an interesting one to write, you may find yourself re-reading it after learning one of its twists at the end, hence why ive put my usual trigger warning for the phobia at the end this time, as it might have been a spoiler for the first time its read.
Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota
A small figure walks alone.
Trapped in a darkened hollow where the smothered snapping of twigs are found underfoot and the muted calls of chicks reach out to their mother for warmth and sustenance.
Split from his classmates, whilst out on a trip to the national park, Bobby found himself isolated, confused, and cold. His phone was back at the cabin the students had been staying at, so texting for help was out of the question.
He had grown dependent on others for many aspects of his life, so this unforeseen isolation had pierced a hole in the protective bubble he had grown so accustomed to.
His eyes frantically search for something.
Anything that could be of use to orient himself to the land. A large tree, a mountain, or even a lake would suffice. But none reveal themselves to satiate his desperation.
As he travels down the forest path, movement tricks the corners of his eyes, shadows flickering and taking form within his peripherals. The paranoia intensifies as the echoes of night cascade across the forest in silent turmoil. Beginning a campaign of conquest against the last strands of light on the horizon, that signified the sun’s imminent departure.
They must be aware of his missing presence by now, but in light of that, what should he do?
Stay put in the hopes it will be easier to locate him, or move elsewhere, perhaps to higher ground. With nightfall approaching, he chose the latter.
Their calls to him could not be relied upon anyway and might only attract the forest’s more dangerous, nocturnal denizens that came out to hunt.
As the evening’s energy sprang to life, Bobby climbed a hill as high as his adolescent body allowed him to. There, he found a rocky outcrop that potentially offered protection until morning. A slit in the rocky surface was just large enough to allow his small body to enter it.
Here he curled up into the fetal position and attempted to rest as the night’s breeze gently hummed, resonating lullabies to him through the gap in the rock, though he paid them no heed. His attempts to sleep were hampered by thoughts of other inhabitants within his cavernous shelter. Snakes, scorpions, and other various insects could be within his proximity, with Bobby none the wiser.
This realization stopped his sleep and instead forced him to lie and experience the forest with his other senses.
He could see the trees below thrashing in the wind that had begun to intensify. Their sedated howls, unable to reach Bobby as they desperately waved for his attention. Amongst the heavy swaying of the flora, he thought he could see a shape.
Something with a tall, thin stature, watching, waiting.
His imagination ran rampant as he stared at it throughout the entirety of the night, but it never moved, forcing him to conclude it must have been a piece of a branch or perhaps just forest detritus.
When morning came, he was tired, and his body ached from the exposure of cold wind bombarding his joints. He engaged in workout activities such as star jumps and stretches in an attempt to warm his body up and stretch the aching muscles and joints.
Then, after checking his backpack for sufficient food rations, he scanned the forest until he found an old oak tree that displayed splayed branches enabling easier climbing. He ascended its trunk, breaching the top of the tree to see what he could observe.
All hope was not lost.
He could make out the lake where the log cabins, used by the school faculty, were situated.
Though it was some distance away.
After making a mental map of the direction needed, he descended the tree, his feet hitting the ground with a light thud.
He stopped momentarily, seeing a large footprint in the dirt near the base of the tree. One that did not belong to a human.
Bobbie’s gaze reaches out into the maze of trees, frightened of what they might find. Many predators operated out in these lands, such as bears.
His high alert was warranted, especially after his visions from the night before still haunted him. A light breeze carried with it a ghastly stench, causing him to recoil from the nasal assault.
However, nothing presented itself, allowing him respite and emboldening him to keep moving.
Without hiking experience, Bobby estimated a day’s walk to reach the lake. He pulled out a packet of potato chips from his bag and began eating them.
“It’s always important to keep your energy levels high.”
Something his father had always emphasized energetically, using his hands to motion the eating. The over-the-top gesture always made Bobby laugh when they camped out together in the past.
Even though he was no longer around, Bobby had never forgotten all the things he had taught him. Such as marking trees with blades to remember routes, though this time, a permanent marker would have to suffice.
He wished he were still here; it was always easy to communicate with him when times had become tough. As a loner, no one else understood Bobby`s perception of the world and the many things it lacked. His father did, and he always made every effort to fill that void of loneliness for him.
But that all changed one day, when he went out to a Lake on a fishing trip and never returned.
After six months of searching, everyone had given up, some assuming he ran off with some woman, others thinking he had met with an accident and was most likely dead. But Bobby never believed any of it, he held on to the hope he would walk through the front door one day, with the same cheerful face on him as he left.
It was the one year anniversary today, since his disappearance.
As he continued to travel further through the forest towards his goal, Bobby noticed the trees increasing in density, though someone of his size and stature had no real issue navigating them. Whatever happened, he had to remain in the same direction no matter what, following the imaginary line he had envisioned in his head. He removed the marker pen from his bag and began marking trees to help his navigation, as well as serving as anchor points, should he have to return the way he came.
In time, the little hairs on his arms and neck began to stand to attention. He had always relied on them over other senses to warn him of things he might not initially be aware of, similar to the spider senses his favourite comic book hero possessed.
Something felt off.
An unknown presence surrounded him and the ghastly stench had returned.
The forest was deathly silent as he looked around, warily attempting to sense the disturbance that taunted his inability to detect it.
Feeling the possibility of it being a bear or a cougar that had previously gorged on rotten prey, he ran as fast as he could through the densest part of the forest.
He ran for what felt like hours, but most likely were mere minutes, ducking and diving through branches, withholding the temptation to stop and check if something was following. He knew more than anyone that the absence of sound did not guarantee that nothing was in pursuit.
The anxiety hit him hardest as his stamina reserves emptied, forcing Bobby to stop regardless.
He looked back, but nothing followed, and the presence he felt before seemed to no longer linger, along with its deathly aroma.
It was at this point that the sharpened spear of realisation had pierced him through.
He had run off the track of the memorised direction.
There was no way of knowing where the hell he was now, most likely leagues away from the lake. He smashes his arm on a tree branch in frustration as tears fall from his eyes.
“This was such a bad idea?”
After getting it out of his system, Bobby pulled himself together.
He hated defeat, most of all admitting to it. This wouldn’t be his end, he`d been playing his entire life on hard mode.
The sky groaned before emitting a sudden flash that startled Bobby, he instinctively found a tree for cover from the imminent deluge of rain. The pause gave him time to reflect on the past, why he spent most of his time alone. In short he was just never able to fit in with other people, they couldn’t understand him and often mocked his inability to understand them.
The storm gradually cleared.
After recovering his stamina and consuming the last of his lunch box, accompanied by a bottle of water, Bobby began to warily retrace his steps.
Though this time, he circled around the path to avoid whatever it was that he had encountered earlier.
Once he returned to an area of familiarity, he continued on the manifested path to the lake, completely unaware that some of his tree markings had been scratched out and replaced with new arrows, etched from something misshapen and primal.
Eventually, he came upon an area that opened up from the treeline into a small kind of grove.
At first, Bobby failed to notice the hostility being projected at him from nearby. The movement out of the corner of his eye jolted him in its direction.
A boar.
A large one too, with many young cowering behind it. It seemed to feel threatened by his presence on behalf of its children. An act of parental protection, he couldn’t fault the animal for.
Its head shook in an aggravated manner as it started stirring up dirt with its legs in a motion that suggested it may charge him.
Bobby froze, unsure whether he should run or whether he should just remain still and hope it loses interest.
Before he is able to make a choice, the boar freezes in place too. Its eyes looked behind him to the treeline. Before he had time to turn and see what distressed it, the beast sprinted off in the other direction, with its young fervently following.
The uncomfortable feeling of observation returned as the hairs on his arm stood upright once more.
He gazed out into the vast forest.
Who`s there?
No point in calling out.
“If it were a predator, surely it would have attacked by now?”
He thought to himself.
Silence continued its eternal reign of supremacy.
then he saw it…
A shape darted and flickered between the trees. Too fast to see what it was in its entirety, but slow and large enough for Bobby to know it wasn’t just some piece of foliage in the wind, as he was briefly able to make out the shape of antlers.
He finds himself running again.
Though this time, he makes sure it is in the right direction. His heart pounded so hard he could feel its reverberations up through his entire body as he sprinted.
He could feel everything in his desperation.
The breeze on his face, the leaves brushing past his body, and the cracking of sticks underfoot.
The curtain of darkness began to fall again.
He had been on the move for hours, hopeful he had lost whatever stalked his presence. The lake couldn’t be far away now, but trees were all that still greeted Bobby. It was looking likely that he was going to have to sleep one more night in the forest before he could go home.
He desperately looked for somewhere safe to rest, due to the lack of sleep the previous night, his mind and body were now wracked with fatigue.
In time, he realised his only option was to climb.
Bobby nestled into a nearby tree, as high up as he could possibly climb. He was all too aware of the dangers of attempting to sleep up here, especially for people like him, who shuffled a lot in their sleep.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a t-shirt. Simultaneously tying it around his waist and a branch deemed sturdy enough. This formed a kind of human sling that stabilised Bobbie’s body, preventing any falls.
“Thanks for the old trick, Dad.”
His eyes automatically fell heavy from extreme tiredness, causing him to drift off into a deep sleep.
He dreamt of the day his father left for Sand Point Lake, Bobby tried to call to him, but it was too late as he shut the door on him. Suddenly, the world of the dream started to aggressively shake, as if an earthquake were occurring.
Bobby awoke to the sudden motion of his tree shaking violently, like something was smashing it from below.
He looked down to see the form of his attacker, but the pitch black of night embraced their body, making them invisible to the moon’s light that was blocked by the treeline. The attack would continue for some time, attempting to dislodge Bobby from the tree. But he held steadfast and refused to let go of it until the shaking suddenly stopped. He could feel violent tremors on the ground, travelling up through the trunk of the tree. These continued for a short period before they also stopped.
Yet again, a night’s rest escaped him.
When morning came, the stench of decay surrounded the tree as he descended it, and a gruesome sight greeted his eyes.
A brown bear’s corpse lay at the base of the trunk, its ribcage ripped open and gutted of all entrails and organs. That wasn’t the only disturbing event; the tree line had also been flattened in a certain kind of formation, creating a pathway in the direction of the lake. To Bobby`s disbelief, markings on the trees at its outer edges matched his own, though they were not made from ink, but instead from the blood of the bear.
Not wanting to wait around, he followed the path of downed trees until, nearly an hour later, he reached the cabins, where the flashing lights of police vehicles could be seen. The officers seemed to be examining the fallen trees with a degree of intrigue, indicating it was not deemed a natural phenomenon.
As Bobby’s dishevelled figure emerged from the path, his supervising teacher, Mrs Harriot, ran over in tears and embraced the boy, whilst crying uncontrollably. The seriousness of the situation seemed almost unbearable to her, though Bobby seemed unfazed as his attention was elsewhere.
He recollects the past few days in his mind.
He had snuck out of his cabin in the evening and run off into the woods, in search of something, and after pondering everything that had occurred, it looked as though he had found it, as he smiled towards the forest.
The outline of a tall, antlered being slinks back into the trees.
Mrs Harriot takes Bobby’s hand and walks him past the students and other faculty members as they stared silently.
They passed a sign by the cabins.
A sign that read `Welcome to Sand Point Lake.`
The neon lights of an ambulance blinded his eyes as a paramedic seated him in the open back of the vehicle and checked him over while asking him questions.
He doesn’t answer, not because of some kind of malicious intent or ego, no, he doesn’t answer because he cannot understand her.
Mrs Harriot knelt down in front of him and made a set of gestures with her hand.
Something that he finally understood.
`Time…to…go…home.`
Warning, if you suffer from sedatephobia, now knowing the outcome of this story, you may be triggered if you attempt to reread it with this in mind.
Beautiful