The Room
The room they were sitting in was steel, sharp, and full of the same cheap light that was basking about at any other government building he'd been to so far. Milo didn't know exactly where he was, or how his family was doing, but he knew this hospital might be the last in a long line of psychiatric facilities. In the center of the room, there was a black video camera sitting like a square gargoyle. A single red light beamed a watchful red eye above its hollow lens. In front of Milo's arms was a brown mahogany table, with two circles of stale coffee in Styrofoam cups. At the head of the dark square was an obscenely tan man with silver glasses and dyed blond hair. His name was Scott, and he would be the featured criminal psychologist of the day. Milo relaxed back in his tin chair. He was wearing a black polo, with tan pants and brown shoes. They were baggy and unkempt. His parents had sent him the clothes, though they didn't know his sizes anymore. He was 37 after all. The last time they'd known him, he was 12.
"So let's start then. I'm not sure if I've been introduced yet, but I'm Scott from the FBI's behavioral unit. I'll just be asking you a few questions about what happened in the woods," Scott said while chewing on a pencil. He was holding a leather-bound portfolio with a yellow notebook. It didn't look like he was ready to write anything down.
"Hello Scott," Milo said through some blue eyes.
Scott reached across the table and shook Milo's hand. Scott's hands were soft and smelled like perfume. The vanity made Milo giggle a little bit.
"Everything okay?" Scott asked.
"Yes, everything is just fine," Milo said leaning back.
"Okay, well, I guess you've had a fair amount of interviews and analysis at this point. So I guess I'll get right to it. According to the DNA test results, you're Milo James. You disappeared for four days in a woods in Saint Paul Minnesota. Correct?"
"Snake Tooth Pass," Milo said.
"What?"
"The name of the woods, Snake Tooth Pass."
"Oh yes, that's what it said in your file. You and the other children called it that?"
"Yes, we did."
"So tell me, how in your mind is all this possible? This Snake Tooth Pass, how is it real?"
"It isn't functioning in impossibility, it's concrete, it's real."
"Okay, well then, explain it so it seems real to me then."
Milo sat forward in the chair and pointed at the gold wristwatch around Scott's cosmetically glowing wrist.
"One hour," he said shaking his head.
"Excuse me?"
"You'll last one hour, Scott."
Scott pulled his jaw back into a tight frustrated square. He always smiled as a way of demonstrating control. He'd studied the circumstances of these abductions, and the FBI was completely flabbergasted at how any of it actually occurred. There weren't many more experts to parade in. There weren't any more tests to be made on the area in Minnesota. It was all coming to an apex, and Scott would be one of the last people to talk to Milo before he was released.
"So, you said you guys kept track inside the woods for how long you were in there. According to your earlier statements, it was around 400 years. You were gone four days, and now you're 37 years old. I don't see how that adds up? Would you explain?" Scott asked.
"I don't know how it works. If I did I wouldn't have been stuck in there. We carved marks in the trees for each day," Milo said.
"So you were stuck? How were you stuck inside the woods? I think we measured it out to be exactly 96 by 96 yards, which I'll admit was strange for the length to match the width. Still though, that's not a lot of space to live in for that long."
"It was designed, that's why the dimensions worked."
"Designed and stuck? You'll have to explain more."
"At first, if I remember right, we tried to run to its edges, but these vines would come out of the ground and hold our feet."
"Vines? Like what kind? What did they look like?"
"Bright green, with little black spikes on them. They'd cut us too. We wouldn't bleed out, it was just for pain. It didn't want us to die."
"It? The thing you referred to in the earlier interviews? This monster that basically ran the woods?"
"Yes, the Phantom."
The Woods
On a sunny afternoon, exactly three children walked down 29th Ave in New Brighton Minnesota. It was their school bus routine. All three kids lived close by, played together, and went to school together. The tallest boy, Ron, had a hard time walking home from the bus stop without stepping into any woods for a quick tromp. Melissa, who had a slight and sharp crush on Ron, would follow into the woods with reluctant words, but non-reluctant actions. She had a round face with blond hair, and she was growing into a woman too soon. Milo noticed, but not Ron. Milo, their third member, a pale child who had a slight limp would always be chased by Ron wanting to sword fight with sticks they'd find sitting around. Ron would always win, and he loved winning. Milo still loved the woods though, despite this swordplay sadism. He loved the woods for the sole reason that he knew no one could see past the trees when he walked. There was nobody to laugh or jeer, the trees hid his foot's stutter.
"We don't need to get into Snake Tooth Pass today. There isn't any time anyways. I don't want my parents finding out I'm playing games when they're not around," Milo said walking zigzag down the black pavement. It was the middle of May, and the world was in a state of late bloom, with flowers and leaves still curling out in dramatically slow peels. It almost looked like the half made world around the three children was ready to burst open, only completely stalled by its own accord. They were halfway down the block when they stopped and stared at the small bubble of forest known as Snake Tooth Pass. The lines of trees were thin, with spotted chunks missing between their disheveled limbs. Past these empty spaces was a single island of stocky cat tails and twisted swamp weeds. A ring of dark bog water surrounded it with little foamy sprinkles of algae playing everywhere in scribbled lines.
Nothing was ever inside Snake Tooth Pass.
Ron crossed the street opposite of Hidden Oaks Park, which was a one hill and one playground blip in the neighborhood. Ron covered the ground pretty quick. Ron was tall for his age. He was almost six feet, and had long-dragging limbs. His face was permanently befuddled, like he was constantly confused by the very nature of existence. His duck-feather blond hair atop his head didn't help with this disposition. Despite these ignoramus symptoms, Ron was the undisputed leader of their little pack. Outside of Snake Tooth Pass was a lonely pen of tennis courts, a single tall hill with a few crab apple trees, which looked lost and empty without their pink petaled fury. At the base of the hill was a small parking lot for people to station their cars in case of an event at Hidden Oaks. The entrance to Snake Tooth sat at the base of this seldom used lot. The three of them charged down to its entrance, which yawned wide and wild onto a leafy path with teeth of struggling trees sprouting up. The little pond with the never conquered island hovered as they entered the woods. A broken tree was cracked open like a crumbled statue. This marked the paths beginning.
The three of them stopped as they crossed the leafy border and towering beams of jade-flickered canopies.
"Why are there toys floating inside the water?" Milo said with a shaking hand.
