Many thanks to my dear friend Kim, who commissioned this story.
Check this space in the future for an audio version, coming soon!
Warning: mild body horror.
Charis Matsouka closed her eyes, took a deep, steady breath, and stepped out of the car. The air was cool and humid, smelling of wet greenery so thick she could almost taste it. She flashed a smile in the direction of the volunteer who was guiding the vehicles into some sense of order, and then looked over at Indira, her fingers moving with familiarity across the screen of her phone.
“Are you warm enough?” Charis asked; there was a second or two delay before her text-to-speech app took effect.
“Yes, Mom.” Indira rolled her eyes as she settled her cloak more comfortably over her shoulders. She made a show of activating her hand warmers, slipping them into her inner pockets. “It’s not that cold out here. Stop worrying, or I’ll text your mom.”
Charis flipped Indira off, but Indira just laughed before she scented the air and took the lead, the heavy weight of her scaled body slithering against the ground and leaving a somewhat more even path through the mud that Charis used to follow after her.
After a few minutes of walking, it became obvious where all the volunteers were gathering— there was a clearing ringed in flood lights that cast the woods around them in glaring fluorescence. First responders were centered around maps of the local area, but everyone else faced a ranger with a megaphone. Charis inched forward through the crowd, straining to understand what was being said past the too-loud distortion.
“Thank you for volunteering your time. I’m park ranger Patrick Miller— I’m coordinating the volunteer teams together with the local police. We’ve broken the park into grids, and we’re going to get y’all set up into groups to spread the work out. Keep in mind that we’ve got a bunch of laugh tracks in the area, so make sure whatever you see is solid before you call it in.
“Onto the stuff you need to know. We’re looking for Latisha Wallace. Our people are passing out photos, so make sure you grab one. Dark skin, black hair in two braided pigtails, brown eyes. Last seen wearing pink tennis shoes, blue denim shorts, and a pink shirt that says ‘Black Girl Magic’ on it. She’s been missing for about,” — he checked his watch— “twenty-eight hours. Let’s get moving and bring this little girl home.”
Charis flagged down one of the people passing out photos, grabbing one for her and Indira, who went to check in and verify their team assignment. The photo that had been chosen showed Latisha with a wide smile, her hair gathered into a ponytail of box braids. She looked eight? Maybe nine? Too young to be out here by herself, lost in the woods. Charis couldn’t imagine what Latisha’s parents were going through.
Indira slithered back to Charis’ side, bumping their shoulders together to draw Charis’ attention. She said, sotto voce, “You wanna go do your thing? I’ll cover for you.”
Charis nodded and squeezed Indira’s shoulder in silent thanks. She made a beeline toward the woods, skirting around other people as they started their search. She needed to find somewhere quiet, where she could gather her concentration. She stepped carefully through the trees as the other volunteers began to call Latisha’s name. Charis ignored them all as she turned on her flashlight and moved further in, where the trees were the thickest. In other circumstances, Charis would have taken the time to enjoy her walk; this part of Ohio was beautiful, and the trees towered over her, blocking out the gray light leaking from the edges of the threatening clouds above.
Eventually, she picked her way toward another clearing, her attention caught by the toppled tree trunk lying in the center. Out of the trees to her left, the translucent form of a native man bolted forward, twisting to throw a hatchet at something behind him. He stumbled and scattered into mist as he hit the ground. Charis waited for several long seconds to see if the looper was going to reappear, and then closed her eyes, pushing everything from her mind except the single lost child she was looking for.
Her throat ached with the memory of music, and she reached out with her mind, her siren song flooding from her as loud and as long as she could make it.
If you are lost, she sang, find me.
~*~
When Charis finally stopped singing, her head pulsed with a raw, agonizing headache of overexertion. She should have remembered her painkillers, but like an idiot, she’d left them with Indira. She twisted the cap off her bottle of water and took a long drink, letting it sooth her parched throat. The plan was simple— she would sit here until she was sure there was no response, and then she would rejoin Indira and the rest of their volunteer group to do things the hard way. The human way.
The shouts of the search parties were muffled by the insulation of the trees, and she looked up, toward the sky that was hidden by the canopy of tree branches. Just a minute longer, and she’d go.
Charis’ ears buzzed in an abrupt quiet. The absence of birdsong and insect noises was alarming, and she realized that even the calls of the people in the forest with her had grown muted, as if a thick curtain had fallen between her and the rest of the world. Her skin prickled with chills that had nothing to do with the actual temperature, and she stood as she looked around, searching for the cause of the sudden change. Part of her was tempted to stay where she was, to be an unmoving point of reference if Latisha had heard her, but there was a larger part that needed to move, her skin crawling under the weight of the silence.
There was a reasonable chance that even if the little girl had heard her, she wouldn’t be able to come. She could be injured, could be stuck somewhere. Charis gnawed on her bottom lip as she glanced back toward where she’d come from, and made her decision.
She dropped a pin on her location for Indira, and ventured further into the woods, clutching her phone and tapping her fingernails anxiously on the back of her cellphone case. She paused to crouch and look at every potential hole that Latisha could have fallen into, looked over every drop off she discovered, but she found nothing. Charis wiped her damp palms on her jeans, pausing respectfully as she crossed paths with another looper and waited for the ghost to resolve. She needed to keep her head. Move slow. Be methodical. Finding a child in a forest was like trying to find a needle in a haystack— very much like the day to day investigations she carried out in her job.
There was a sound ahead of her, a gentle snap of twigs and underbrush, and Charis froze, dropping her location to Indira again out of habit before she turned in a slow circle, squinting as she tried to look beyond the murky forest gloom. Another sound— this one was undeniably a footstep, almost inaudible on the carpet of dead leaves— and she caught sight of a small face peeking at her from behind a tree.
A child. Not the one she’d been looking for, but a child nonetheless. She lowered to one knee, smiling, and typed her greeting into her app. “Hello. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”The figure stepped out from behind the tree and stepped closer; it was a little boy with brown eyes and, beneath the filth and mud, she could see that he was pale and scrawny, his threadbare gray shirt falling off one shoulder like he didn’t have enough mass on him to keep it up. “I’m lost,” he said, his voice soft as a whisper. The forest was so quiet around them that Charis could hear him easily. “‘I’m lost, and I found you.”
Charis chewed on her bottom lip, trying to buy herself some time to think. Shit. Shit. Her mother had always told her the importance of being specific, but… hadn’t she? How many lost kids were there in these woods anyway? The boy wasn’t a residual— loopers didn’t have the ability to acknowledge or talk with her, so who exactly was this? What did she just find?
“I’m glad you did,” Charis said, taking comfort in the familiar voice of her phone. “I need your help. Have you seen this little girl?” Charis paused to show the little boy the photo she’d grabbed earlier. “She’s lost, too. The people here, we’re all looking for her.”
He tore his eyes from Charis’ phone to examine the photo with intense eyes, his forehead creased in concentration, and then shook his head. “I don’t know. I can ask the others?”
Charis stayed where she was and used the excuse of her phone to look down so she could steal a look from the corners of her eyes as she struggled to get her bearings. Everything was so quiet. Her breathing was the loudest thing she could hear. “My name is KaReese,” she typed; it was the only way she could get the stupid app to pronounce her name correctly— “What’s your name?”
He tilted his head. “I don’t remember. No one’s wanted to know my name in forever.” As the boy stepped closer, Charis heard the crackling of wood beneath his feet. That wasn’t exactly right, though— his feet themselves were wooden, strange and fibrous, like roots pushing through the soil with every step he took. Veins of bark and light brown ash wood crept up his legs like deposits of gold in stone, lending him a monstrosity that was both beautiful and horrifying. “Maybe my friends can help you?”
Charis swallowed. “Of course,” she said. “We have to help each other, right?”
The boy reached out wordlessly, and Charis took his hand. His fingers were freezing, and he squeezed Charis’ fingers in a tight grip, bordering on painful. Charis swallowed back her wince, squeezing back in reassurance as she stood. She kept a watchful eye on the forest around them as he pulled her onward, and she texted another location pin to Indira, a modern day version of bread crumbs. As they walked, the quiet grew thicker, in a strange, inexplicable way. She wasn’t scared, exactly, but there was an oppressive weight that constricted her lungs, a warning prickle racing from her scalp to her toes. She didn’t know exactly what had found her, but every fiber of her being was screaming at her to be careful.
More faces were appearing among the trees as they walked, each one less human than the last. Children, all of them, but also less than that, stranger than that. There was a girl with nut brown skin and hazel eyes with an arm made entirely of bark and wood, growing upward toward the sun. Leaves were budding from the tips of her fingers, just starting to change color with the season. There was another, rooted in place by legs she could no longer use, and yet another with pale, filmy eyes, a fine veil of fungus curling around his head and disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. There were so many of them, too many, and Charis turned her attention back to the little boy pulling her forward, the susuration of his roots moving through the leaves.
“Where are you taking me?” Charis managed to type, despite her shaking fingers. Adrenaline coiled beneath her skin, but she tried to ignore it, unsure if the strange children surrounding her meant any harm, and unsure of what she would do if they did.
“My friends.” The boy dropped her hand and looked up at her, gesturing at the children around them. “They couldn’t come to you.”
Charis took a deep breath. One step at a time. Hopefully she wouldn’t regret it. She turned the volume up on her phone as high as it would go. ‘Have any of you seen this girl?” She held out Latisha’s picture again, turning in a slow circle so that they could all see it.
“She is mine.” Charis startled at the voice— the timbre was high and young, but there was an underlying rumble to it that made her breath catch in her throat. Turning, she found another boy directly behind her. He was barefoot, with eyes so black it was as though they swallowed the light around him. Tender seedlings grew from his forehead like budding antlers. “She was lost,” he said, “which means she is mine.”
A spirit, then. She’d never met one in person, but there were endless stories of creatures that wore a body like a sleeve.
“She’s not forgotten. She has people looking for her. Is she here?” The best thing about the stilted cadence of her phone app was how assured it made her sound. Technology hid her fear. “Give her to me. Whatever you are, whoever you used to be— let me take her home.”
“You’re far more lost than she, little siren,” the spirit said, and his face twisted into the semblance of a smile. “We heard your call, and we have come.”
That’s not what I meant, Charis wanted to say. She let the frustration move through her and tried to wrestle it under control. It was too dangerous for her to lose her temper. She tried to type her response on her phone without looking away from the creature in front of her, but it recited garbage, nonsense sounds, forcing her to look down so she could type correctly. “Show her to me.”
The creature before her stared, unblinking, and the void of its eyes pulled her in like gravity. How easy it would be to rest here, where loneliness wouldn’t exist. There would be nothing but peace and quiet and belonging.
Something inside Charis screamed in protest, the same furious beating inside her veins that had carried her through every disaster she had faced since that cold night in the warehouse when she’d almost died. She was her own. She was going to survive this, no matter what the cost. She couldn’t do any less.
“Latisha Wallace.” Charis typed the name in capital letters, as if that would be enough to get her determination across. The forest children were all staring at her, and the attention was enough to make Charis’ skin crawl. Up ahead, there was a hint of movement at the base of a beech tree. The carpet of orange leaves rustled again, and Charis walked forward. She glared at the forest children, just in case they got the smart idea to try and stop her, but there was nothing. Somehow, that was even more terrifying.
Charis knelt next to the tree, digging past the detritus of leaves and decay until she touched something that felt like fabric. As she’d hoped and feared in equal measures, beneath the leaves lay Latisha. She was sleeping peacefully, her legs pulled up toward her chest, with a latticework of vines twining around her. Charis darted a look around, a cold sweat prickling her back as the silence thickened, and she slid her phone into her back pocket. She yanked at the vines around Latisha, scraping at roots and sticky mud until her hands were bruised and bleeding. She couldn’t bear to look behind her. Everything in her demanded she keep moving forward, no matter the cost.
Charis was panting for air by the time she got the last bits of tangled root from Latisha’s braids, and she picked the unconscious girl up, staggering a little as she tried to find her footing. She took one more deep breath, trying to pretend a steadiness she didn’t feel, and she turned to face the spirit again.
There were hundreds of shapes, shadowed by the trees. Branches cracked, twisting from the limbs of the trees and reaching toward her like grasping fingers. It was so dark beneath the canopy of leaves that she could barely see. She smacked the side of her flashlight with the palm of her hand, but it seemed to weaken further, its beam flickering.
“You are mine,” the boy with eyes of shadow said— the words echoed around her from every mouth capable of speech. The words were light, conversational, and if they weren’t being spoken by a hundred different, young voices, Charis might have thought the spirit meant no harm. As it was, she couldn’t help but grip Latisha tighter. “Whether you give in now or later, I will always find you.”
Charis gritted her teeth and shook her head. What could she even say to that? This wasn’t something you could reason with. If she were alone, maybe she would have tried, but the weight of Latisha in her arms was a reminder that someone depended on her, and it was someone who might not make it back on their own. She opened her mind, her head aching the the effort of using her abilities again so soon after straining herself, and pushed a silent, desperate plea: Let us pass.
Charis kept her eyes straight ahead as she took her first few steps. Every one of her senses was on high alert, adrenaline singing through her body. It could be easy. She wanted it to be easy.
With her next step, she sank up to her knees in the sticky, wet mud of the forest floor. The faces of the forest children around her blurred, growing the gray-brown of plant roots beneath the dirt. She could see now that they were saplings instead of children. Were the faces she saw now once human? Had the bodies and spirits of those that once lived fed this thing until it had grown unknowable?
Charis clutched at the more academic of her thoughts as if that would be enough to temper her fear. Branches tore at her, ripping strands of hair from her braid. Roots slithered and pulled from the ground to catch at her feet. Each step she took took an impossible amount of effort; she was drenched with sweat, her muscles shaking as the ground slowly sucked her in. Part of her wondered if everything would stop if she put Latisha down, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she knew she couldn’t do it. She heaved Latisha over her shoulder instead, carrying her like a sack of potatoes, and dropped her dying flashlight so she could plant her hands against the ground and leverage her way out of the muck.
She heaved herself up, twisting to keep Latisha up on her shoulder as struggled to her feet. Centipedes were crawling in her hair, on her arms, and she batted at them with her free hand, trying to shake them off before she was bitten.
It had grown darker, and Charis struggled for her phone, shaking it to activate the flashlight. Relief flooded her when it worked. She didn’t know what time it was anymore, or how long she’d been in the forest, and she couldn’t spare a glance at her phone screen to get an idea of how long she’d been trying to get away. Her heart was racing in her chest, and she had to fight against the urge to look back over her shoulder; looking back would be the same as admitting defeat.
She couldn’t run, her legs shaking with effort as she continued to take one step after another. Vines were twisting and curling around her ankles, creeping upward and coiling around her thighs. In the arc of her flashlight, she could see greenish mold spotting her hands, as tender and sickly as fresh bruises. There was a stiffness rising up her neck— she refused to touch it, choosing to change Latisha’s position instead. Charis held her tight against her chest, as though that act was enough to keep Latisha from suffering.
Charis’ ears were filled with the sound of crackling bark, and she screamed soundlessly as roots stabbed through her calves, crawling through the tributaries of her veins. Her chest heaved, and tears blurred her vision even further, leaving hot trails on her cheeks as she sobbed.
There. The edge of the woods. Charis’ ears were ringing— if there were voices, the tread of car tires through the gravel, she couldn’t hear it. The very air around her was thick as a wall, a barrier keeping her from the rest of the world. She clutched Latisha close, reaching out with her other hand, struggling to get even just one inch further.
All at once, the tension cut, and she crashed forward, catapulting from the edge of the tree line. Instinctively, she tried to curl in to protect her head, and they both hit the ground hard, the weight of Latisha’s body punching the air from Charis.
Charis gasped for air and flopped onto her back. It was raining. The sky above her was the pale gray brightness of light clouds, and she tilted her face up, grateful for the light and drinking in the moisture as if she’d become a plant herself. Everything ached, like she’d been running for years instead of minutes.
She turned her head and there, just before the forest ended, was the boy. His face changed and shuddered— she could see the sharp slide of teeth, of a strange fungus delicate as a spiderweb— and the only thing familiar was the dark void of his eyes. He squatted on his haunches and stared at Charis with something in his expression she couldn’t identify.
“You’ll come back,” he whispered. “I will be here. Always.”
Latisha jerked in Charis’ arms, gasping in a breath, and all at once sound rushed in— the dull roar of volunteers talking in the background, the shouts of people in the trees calling Latisha’s name, the crunch of gravel in the distance, where cars were still pulling into the lot to park.
Charis wanted to lay on the ground and sleep for a hundred years.
Instead, she clawed her way into sitting up, waving to catch someone’s attention. She caught sight of her hand, and then looked down at the rest of her. There was no mold. No bugs. No mud. She was rain-damp, her hair messy and falling out of its plait, but she was okay. She was okay, Latisha was okay, and somehow, they’d made it. It took a few minutes for someone to spot Charis, and she finally lowered her hand as calls for first aid and a paramedic rose out over the coordinating first responders.
Latisha opened her eyes and stared at Charis for a long moment before she coughed one more time. “I heard you,” she said once she caught her breath. “I couldn’t come, but I heard you.” Charis nodded, offering a smile, and then let the girl go into the efficient arms of the paramedic on site.
Tomorrow, Charis would deal with the questions. She’d write down what she experienced and talk to her contacts about what it was that she’d seen in those woods.
Today, she’d just take the damn win.
The Lost by Mallory Overbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Mallory Overbrook - Author 