Monkeybear Productions

By OhioCat

Warning: horror, blood, violence, gore, sadness

“Here!” Louis plucked a vivid red poppy from its plant by their feet, where it grew among the black-green moss. Carefully, he tucked it behind his sister Alice’s ear.

“What for?” She asked, laughing and brushing her long brown hair behind her ears.

“Just because.” Louis sang, and pranced backwards. “Now let’s play!”

“hide and seek?” Alice asked, swinging her little oil lantern cheerfully, sending golden light glancing off the tall, blank trees all around them. The light shimmered on the damp moss and engraved patterns in the trees’ bark, playing shadow puppets with the thick layers of leaves and branches overhead.

“but we’re both already hiding!” Louis teased. They were indeed both hiding; their father was at their home in the village, expecting them to do their day’s chores. “But yeah, I’ll hide!” He meandered playfully away from the sphere of light, gradually dissolving into the trees’ shadows.

Alice grinned. “And I’ll find you, if it takes all day!”

Louis whooped, and ran off into the dark.

The forest was oppressively black without Alice’s golden light. The canopy was low and heavy, shrouding the forest floor like a black burial gauze, blocking out any remains of the sun’s twilight rays or promises of the moon’s shimmer. Though he was stepping carelessly, they didn’t make any noise on the forest floor, made up of moss and rotting leaves.

The forest felt like purgatory. Time was stopped here; these trees didn’t change. They stood like dead sentinels, long stilled but ever watching. Silent watchers ready at any moment to swallow one up.

Louis glanced back to find some relief from the darkness and unnerving images in his head. There was Alice’s lantern, a little bright spot; distant, but clear even between the trees. Like a traveler’s inn’s lit windows, promising safety and comfort upon reaching it. Alice was singing to pass the time until she could search, and the noise carried far in the dead silence, like a chiming bell in the night.

Louis decided to go a bit further, but not much. He never wanted that lovely light to be swallowed by the dark, or for the singing to fade away. Besides, he had a terrible sense of direction, and would never manage to leave the forest without her guidance.

Turning back, Louis continued onwards, looking for somewhere to disappear. Soon, he caught sight of a stone, a low shadow among the trees’ tall ones. It was warn and uneven, but clearly unnaturally shaped—too squared and thin— like a marker driven into the ground to mark a specific plot. Glancing back to see if Alice’s light was moving yet, Louis stepped towards the stone.

But there was nothing to step on, only to step into. Louis pitched forward, his eyes whipping away from the little light and towards the approaching distant ground. He fell, and cracked his head on the stone. Louis’ last sensation was of falling into the waiting grave of black dirt.

It was cold when Louis awoke. He felt the cold deep in his bones, as if his very skin had iced over with frost, until it was ice. He felt like a sculpture that had been woken and made to move. His clothes, clingy and dirty with mud, were bark and moss on the white rock. Leaves stuck to him like feathers.

Cracking, Louis stumbled to his feet, standing in the wet dirt of the open grave. The suffocating veil of leaves and branches stretched overhead, and it was no brighter or darker than it had ever been; only the same vague black gray. Fog lay heavy on the rot-soft forest floor, and trickled down into the grave.

Where was Alice? She must have been searching for a very long time, and maybe had run out of oil. Slowly Louis pulled himself out of the pit, digging his long nails into the mossy ground. He stood and looked around for his sister, but saw only the dark mist and looming trees. “Alice?” Louis tried to call, but his voice froze in his throat. Perhaps she had left the forest without him? But Louis knew his sister would never leave him, just as he wouldn’t leave her for the world.

Then, he saw a light. It was golden and distant. It glimmered between the trees, flitting about like a little bird, casting shadows in the trees around it. Louis tried to call out again, to shout and cry, but all that came out was a croaking moan. Slowly, he began to walk towards the light that was his sister.

He walked, but got no closer. He moved, but got no warmer. He cried out, but could not form words. The woods were endless and dark, every part the same, but Louis kept following the flitting, far light.

He wondered for an undefinable amount of time. Sometimes the light would flick out of sight, and he ran, furious with fear, until he caught sight of it again.

Night and day held no meaning; the forest held itself in a black-gray suspension. The light didn’t stop for sleep or rest. Neither did Louis.

They went in circles.

Soon, Louis’ skin was cracked stone, and his clothes turned to moss and bark. His hair, once a lovely brown mop, became a rack of branches and locust thorns. Sometimes, when the light was just ahead and he was walking slowly, birds would come and rest on the boughs.

The light led on and on. His back became hunched with the ever-present need to be nearer to it. His eyes slitted and yellowed, so he could see it in the perpetual gray. His hands grew gnarled, into hairless paws. As he walked hunched eternally forward, his back stretched and arched. Eventually he did not walk upright at all, but used his clawed hands and feet together on the moist ground. He grew bigger, until his splayed antlers brushed the shroud of leaves.

The light sometimes led by the forest’s edge. Both the leader and led shied away from the light and emptiness.

The beast that was once Louis could see the town from the trees’ edge. It was as foreign and useless of a place as the rest of the world beyond the forest. The light was in the forest. He paid it no mind.

Just as he could see the town, the town could see him. Panic spread with the news of a great beast in the woods. It was said to be the height of a grown man, as large as an elk—and as viciously formed as a wolf. People stepping into the forest only a few paces saw the huge clawed footprints of the creature pressed deep into the soft ground.

One day a group of men stepped into the forest laden with spears and torches. The men were young and bold, and held their torches high, sending the firelight glancing off of the encasing trees.

“We’ll be in so much trouble if anyone hears about this.” One of the men said, and nervously held out his pitchfork like a spear.

“Not if we kill the beast.” Another laughed, the leader of the group. “We’d save the whole town.”

The eldest man, a gray-speckled widower, spoke up, and the group paused to listen. “People—children—have been taken by this forest for long enough.” His voice croaked with resentment and crippling grief.

The group went quiet. The leaves under their feet were soft with decay, and there was no underbrush; only the trees. They walked further into the forest in silence.

But then a noise came from the silence. A voice.

“What’s that?” A man whispered.

The group stopped walking and listened. It was a voice. A song, light and airy. It was strange in the silence and gloom. It seemed to be coming closer, than stopped. All together, the men’s torches extinguished.

There were shouts of dismay, and fear together. The men stood together in darkness, throwing glances around them. As their eyes became used to the dimness, each in turn saw the same thing.

A little golden light was coming towards them, flitting between trees and bobbing absently, but coming closer. The men huddled closer together in trepidation, trying vainly to relight their black torches.

The light stopped a few feet away from the men. It was a glowing orb; no brighter than the light of a single oil lamp. It bobbed below eye level, perhaps four feet above the fog-laden forest floor.

As the men watched, the light began to change. It expanded and unfolded outwards, until the form of a little girl floated in front of the men. She wore a simple play-dress, and her hair tucked behind her ears and flowing almost to her waist. She held in her hand a little oil-lamp, but it was unlit; the oil had run out long ago. The light came from the girl herself, radiating out of the ethereal form made of insubstantial golden light.

The light was entirely gold, save for two spots. The girls’ eyes were not eyes, but two vivid red poppies. Their petals splayed out lushly, as new as if they had just been picked.

The men stared, too frightened to speak, yet too amazed to run. The little girl was still for a moment—perhaps she was looking at the men, but there was no way to track the flower eyes—, than spoke.

“Have you seen my brother? I’ve been looking for him for quite a while.”

The voice was light and echoed in the trees. The men mutely shook their heads, some whispering ‘no’s.

The girl nodded sadly. “That’s okay. I’ve just been searching for him for a long time. He’ll never get out of this forest without me.” She sighed, then lifted up her lantern. “Then, I’ll keep looking.”

“Wait” gasped one of the men—the eldest— pulling himself to the front of the group. “Wait.” He stared at the girl, and tears began to trickle down his eyes.

“Alice?”

The girl paused, looking annoyed—she had to keep searching. “It’s you, isn’t it!” The man cried. “My little Alice! You’ve—I—Where’s Louis, darling?”

The girl frowned. “I’m busy searching. Go away.”

The father, mad with grief, lunged for the girl, but she had already turned into the little ball of light, and flicked off towards the trees. The father stared after it, tears leaving traces down his cheeks.

As he slowly came back to himself, he realized the men around him were getting louder, their voices edging on panic, turning into staccato cries. He turned around to see them brandishing their pitchforks and spent torches at the woods. There was something there, coming closer, heavy steps on the ground, the scrape of antlers on bark. A ghost of wind rustled the leaves overhead, bringing with it the smell of dead rotting things. Now that the light was gone, they were in darkness.

The beast came into view, its slitted yellow eyes flashing. The men flinched back. It loomed over them, and its anger radiated outwards like a frost-chill. The father saw it, and began to laugh. The other men were waving their weapons, but the beast didn’t care about blades—it fell on the men without hesitation.

The father watched as his companions died. Some tried to stab the beast, but its skin was as thick as stone. Some tried to run, but it was as fast as death itself.

Some were torn apart by the claws; still more by the antlers.

Once the beast was done with the fleeing, it came to the father. He was kneeling on the ground, and stared upwards at the beast’s face. Shadow-blackened blood fell from its antlers onto the father’s waiting face.

“Ever protective, Louis. Ever lost.” The father said, and died laughing.