Part Six - We Hate Fire

The Room

“What’d the machine look like? Was it futuristic, or something more like we’ve got around here?” Scott said. He was ready to start entertaining fantasies to keep Milo comfortable. The statement about the imagination filling in the kids gaps during the centuries of unknown made Scott cringe with the invisible prospect of accuracy.

“It was big, ugly, like it shouldn’t run at all. It almost looked like trash, people threw in the woods. Litter, or junk, a big square of it. Especially from a distance,” Milo said.

“Wait, did you ever see it up close?” Scott said.

“Yeah, yeah, a few times, but only with fire.”

“With fire? I thought you guys didn’t have tools in there? How’d you manage to make a fire?”

“Everyone, everyone knows how to make a fire, Scott. We’re genetically predisposed to it. We need it like we need air.”

“So you figured it out. I’m impressed.”

“You should be impressed that I survived at all, Scott.”

“I am, believe me, I am, but tell me more about starting the fire.”

Milo looked disinterested and crossed his arms. More scars curled up off his forearms like little blemished slugs. It seemed like with every detail, image, and piece of storytelling being unloaded on Scott, the more he noticed the crusted deformities riddled across Milo’s body.

“I mean did you rub two sticks together like Bear Grylls? What kind of tool did you use to make it?” Scott said. He had to start establishing some authority in the interview, so leaving questions open wouldn’t be an option going forward in the conversation.

“Basically, Scott, it was a little inarticulate, but we had no choice. We needed fire to try and break the trees apart. It was our only option,” Milo said.

“To stop them from grabbing you? Did it work? You’d think it would work?” Scott said.

“If it worked, Scott, do you think I’d be the only one talking to you today? Do you think I’d have mentioned how Samuel and I are the only ones to survive?”

Scott felt uneasy talking about the infant. They’d managed to steer away from it this entire time, but it was another monstrous elephant in the room. He pulled out a little photo of the baby from the woods. It looked like a doll, like it wasn’t real in the sterile edged government photo. The labs and doctors had done tests on the baby, and it was the genetic equivalent of Melissa and Ron, the two missing children.

“You want to talk about, Samuel?” Scott asked.

“Where is he? You’re not doing tests on a baby right?” Milo said.

“What would we ask an infant? The child is in a foster home. We’ll be turning him over to you once we’re done here. Contrary to popular belief, Milo, we can’t just throw people away in labs for forever.”

“When will I see him, for real, Scott?”

“I just said after we’re done with our conservation. Now, we have 48 minutes left on the clock, so why don’t we make them useful? Why don’t you tell me about what happened with the first fire you started.”

“We started it, and the forest put it out.”

“Oh, I see, so did trees not get affected by it?”

“They did, but, it wasn’t them that stopped it.”

“Who stopped it?”

Milo rubbed his face again, as he felt colder in the room and the walls were narrower.

“It, the Phantom.”

The Woods

It took them three hours to even get a clean spout of smoke to billow upwards from the stack of wood along the path. Melissa had stacked the sticks together into a pile. Ron grinded away with a flat log in the middle. Milo would whistle his best at the base of the grinding twigs, in the effort to make a small spark form upwards. Ron’s hands were red and ugly looking, like all the heat was being forged against his fleshy palms, and not the bundle of building fire they were working on. The winds were quiet while they worked, almost like they were curious about what they were building in their green trap. The woods along the path were drawn back and patient, waiting to swipe at the children with their tendrils if they tried to escape the woods or even the path. On the fourth hour, after they finally managed to seal the air escaping from their pile, a small puddle of flames formed at the base of their brambly pile. Melissa quickly fed the fire with dead leaves and kindling, and started to push the fire upwards.

“Alright, let’s do it, we need to burn the place down,” Ron said, wrenching a white stick free of the contorting pyramid of flame.

“Aim for the edges, where they won’t let us out or anything,” Milo said, following suit. Both boys charged down the path towards the entrance to the forest like a tiny angry mob ready to storm down an evil doctor’s door. The trees immediately came alive like chained squids from some deep sea horror film, flailing and thrashing at the two boys. The strikes were hard enough to take the deepest sections of skin away, and the pain made Milo drop his fiery weapon. Vines immediately wrapped around the broken fire, putting it out, while losing a few husks to its blazing top. Ron was slashed so hard, he dropped the torch back into himself and fell to the ground. The vines trapped him a like a spider web. They were so insistent of their wrapping, they actually bound the torch to his skin before he could start moving away from it. The fire burnt his skin nearly to the bone before it went out against the coiled stalks of the forest. Melissa dragged both boys away from the vines and trees. She pulled them to the crooked bend of the path right next to the dark water.

“Keep calm Ron, keep calm,” Melissa said. “You’re in lots of pain, so just stay still, we to wash the wound out with water to keep the fresh from burning.”

Milo had partially recovered, and helped Ron into the water. Ron was barely conscious, which was nice so he wouldn’t argue with Milo or Melissa. The water stayed shallow for them as they helped Ron into the oozing pond shore. The bog did not want to terrify the children like it had earlier with Ron and the pearled faces along its depths. This time the bog wanted to see how the children reacted with such a serious wound, to study their efforts to practice compassion, and hope. Milo looked back briefly at the campfire they’d made along the path. It was completely gone. The woods had eaten it up like a buzzard would a piece of rot. The forest was standing tall and quiet, and the path had gotten smaller. A figure was retreating into the woods. It was the hooded figure from before. It was dark, hanging, and faceless in the shadows. It moved like a trapped piece of light, like a reflection. The cloak around its body was fluctuating and fluid. Golden claws hung out of its hands along the figure’s side. It petrified Milo, but he managed to tug at Melissa, who was supporting the comatose body of Ron above the water. She turned as the figure retreated into the woods without parting a leaf.

She could only scream.      

Part Five - My Hidden Machine

The Room

“Not at first, it liked the hot weather, and how it made us act,” Milo said. Thinking about the unchecked sun made the sterile box of a room seem oven-like for just a rare second.

“How often?” Scott said.

“We tried to keep track at first when we realized we wouldn’t be going anywhere. It tricked us pretty easily at the beginning, but we figured out the more unpredictable we were, the more predictable it was,” Milo said.

“The Phantom?”

“Who else Scott? Don’t make me repeat it,” Milo said.

“Who decided to call it that anyways? Especially if you don’t want referring to it,” Scott said, pretending to scribble some notes. Whenever Milo would show a little frustration he’d mark his memo pad. When their interview was over, he’d count the amount of times Milo had collided with his own emotions. He’d refer it back to the material of Milo’s instigation, and try and build some pattern out of it.

“What?” Milo said.

“Who decided to name it that?”

“Oh, I don’t remember, it was just sort of the name we adopted. Conversations run together after that long amount of time, only certain acts sort of spring out to me.”

“Certain acts, like moments of violence?” Scott said. He wanted to skip ahead, past the moments of wandering the woods and looking for a way out. They had hundreds of years to cover within the woods, but, they had only fifty minutes to evaluate these centuries in their claustrophobic tin box. The table kept on getting bigger and wider, a mahogany sea pulled wide by the intensity of their conversation. Scott had to keep pressing him about the disturbing details within the woods. He had to play Milo like the time lapse was real, even though, Scott didn't believe Milo quite yet. The watered trembles of Milo’s eyes as he recited these little tidbits were convincing though. They were melting away at Scott’s analytical core like a corrosive salt-tear acid.

Milo didn't say anything for a few seconds after Scott’s last sentence. The room had become narrower to Milo, and the looking glass behind him had grown into a square black eye. Just fifty more minutes till he’d be free to return to his family. The press would get wind of his story and they’d be swarmed by oblong bobbing towers of cameras and reporters. The FBI said they wouldn’t release his story to the press, but he knew something this wild and dark couldn’t be kept a secret.

“How about discoveries?”  Scott said, breaking the silence and the growling motor of a distant furnace.

“Discoveries? What do you mean?” Milo said.

“You know, you sound like you sort of understood the situation you were in, what kind of discoveries did you guys make to give you even a little closure?”

“Closure? There was no such thing, Scott. We got vague and abstract answers, and our imagination filled in the rest.”

“Then fill me in those Milo, if you have vague answers then I have vague questions. What was the phantom using to make all these nightmares for you poor kids?”

Milo set his thin face on his right hand like a drunk at a bar. The kindness at the end of Scott’s question made him only say one word.

“A machine,” Milo said.

“What?” Scott said.

“I think it used a machine.”

The Woods

Milo had pointed out the dark shape of the machine what seemed like hours earlier. Now, they’d sprinted through the narrow green breaks of the forest. They all knew time had passed between each charge. Melissa and Milo had slept between their runs, resting their dirt-pounding feet and slashed skin against the soft breezes of the endless forest. Ron continued chasing the oblong shape, which was sitting like a lost barge one green ocean away. He’d sprint until his feet didn’t feel like they were below his knees. He’d sprint until the forest looked like a cracked trail of broken twig and branch, but the woods would never stay wounded for long, and would revive itself in subtle glows of white fog. Sometimes, if the kids had cared about how the forest had worked, they’d see the thin lines of pearl faces in these healing clouds.

They weren’t that observant yet.

They knew the machine was there and in the forest. It would appear behind them, in front of, or even what seemed like above, attached to the high limbs of the sky-blocking trees. Ron even tried to climb a few trees with his bloody fingers, but they’d shake him loose like an angry water buffalo. Ron wouldn’t stop any of his physical movements no matter how much Melissa screamed at him, and how much Milo begged. Ron was completely slashed to pieces. His white skin was nearly non-existent. Only his eyes retained any hope in comparison to his frame. He eventually stopped chasing the monstrous block of a shadow. He didn’t stop out of exhaustion, but only because he sensed that the machine wanted him to chase it.

“It wants us to chase it. Look, I see it right there like it can hear me,” Ron said. They were all sitting close to the sealed entrance they’d come in through before being trapped. The island and ring of swamp water was to their right, and the plants glowed around the inky strips of the bog like little narrow flames. The brick like outline of the machine was just beyond them up the path where Milo had originally noticed it. Melissa was sleeping in the sunlight, and Milo was starting at the island.

“Yeah, we figured that out a long time ago Ron, that’s why we stopped,” Milo laughed. He was getting tired of his ignorant friend.

“Well, you guys never said anything to me,” Ron said.

“Yeah, yeah, we did. You don’t listen to anyone Ron. Now, you look terrible. You should go back in the water and wash yourself off,” Milo said, with a sneer.

“I’m not going back in there. I’m not going in the water ever again,” Ron said.

“Okay, well, we need to figure out food and water, and stop trying to get out,” Milo said.

“I’m not hungry,” Ron said.

“Well, you will be. Besides, I’ve got an idea on how to get out of here,” Milo said, pulling together a pile of broken branches on the path.

“Oh, how is that? You've finally got an idea?” Ron said.

Milo banged a couple of sticks together to get their weight.

“Yeah, we’ll build a fire.”

Part Four - You'll Get Only Daylight

The Room

“So what did the faces do?” Scott said. He felt like he was making progress with Milo, but he didn’t want to insult him like other profilers had in their interviews. Scott had made as much progress as them, he’d watched the videotaped sessions, so now every word going forward would be new territory.

“Why would I know?” Milo said.

“Did you ever theorize about it? I mean, you had the time?” Scott said. He pulled his stomach tight and breathed deeply. He probably shouldn’t have joked with Milo about his situation. Milo was completely unpredictable, and Scott was one wrong mannerism away from this interview ending.

“Lot’s of time?” Milo said. He leaned forward stretching his arms over the table.

“Lot’s of time indeed Scott. How long was I in there again?” Milo said.

“Four hundred years,” Scott answered back.

Milo looked at him blankly.

“You’re getting it Scott, let’s keep going,” Milo said. He sat back in his chair like an exhausted puppet.

“My theory, plan, formula, whatever, was that the faces were linked to whatever was controlling the woods. It wanted to observe us, every inch of our behavior,” Milo said.

“Why would it want to do it, the Phantom or whatever,” Scott said.

“To study us, we talked to it too at times. The problem is the days mixed together weird. So much time had passed since we were in there, I can’t remember all the events where we figured things out. I only sort of remember the big things.”

“It, it talked to you, the Phantom?”

“Yeah, multiple times, I don’t understand it.”

Milo tapped his finger on the table like a bent mannequin.

“I don’t understand it. The thing tortured us for years, but it wanted to know how we felt about it all,” Milo said.

“You’re saying it was doing it strategically, like it wanted to know something about you?” Scott said. He was getting sucked in by the forest now too.

“Exactly, it wanted to study us,” Milo said. He looked away at the panel of glass behind Scott’s head. It floated like another world, a flat portal to a world of suspicion and misunderstanding. The government wanted to know how all this was possible, and Milo was biological proof of the forest’s strange power. How did they want to respond? All the government agencies and their lackeys could dismiss this as isolated event. They’d bring in some reclusive scientist to explain a hole in time and space, and Milo would be the sole survivor of some dingbats warp field theory.

“He was preparing for an invasion, Scott,” Milo said.

“What, what do you mean?” Scott said.

“He was preparing for an invasion, he wanted to know our weaknesses, and there is no one more resilient in our world than children,” Milo said.

Milo blinked back some tears and shook his head.

“Um, okay, I’m glad we’re getting there, but let’s get back to the details of the forest a little bit more,” Scott said. He knew if Milo drifted into emotion he’d lose a bunch of answers.

Milo shook his head again.

“What? What details then?” Milo said.

“If you were there for so long, did the seasons ever change?” Scott said.  

The Woods

"How long have we been in here anyways?" Melissa said. She was on her back, on top of some brown-angry leaves with mud sinking out from underneath their edges. She was staring at the canopy of chiseled green and twig. She was covered in mud, dried blood, and small pebbles of caked dirt. When Ron tried to swim back to the shore just a little while ago, something was pulling on his feet. He started to panic, and said there was something in the water with him. Milo and Melissa didn't see anything moving behind, except the thrashing blackness from his panicked limbs. They had to jump in the mire to help him out.

"I'm not sure, but it's been a while," Milo said. He was sitting against the tree watching the island. Nothing had moved since the figure wandered out there when they first appeared.  A few birds were singing like broken whistles in the wayward eves. There were no sounds of cars, jets, or other people walking alongside Snake Tooth Pass. Milo couldn't see past the canopy completely, but the sky looked strange, fake, like it'd been crudely painted with a fleshy yellow crayon. The trees themselves had an odd plastic edge to them, like the kind Milo's mom had in their basement, and would take out for special occasions since they had cords of Christmas light webbed through their limbs. He didn't want to think too much about his mom.

He'd cried for her earlier as they were running into the unforgiving wall.

Everyone had cried from the slashing vines and bashing trees except Ron. He cried later from what he saw beneath the water. Milo was happy to see him cry. He didn't know why, but he was glad to see Ron wasn't always trying to act better him. They'd been friends forever, but Ron had always been the same type of egotistical asshole. The one silver lining about being trapped in this forest was it finally knocked Ron off his 11-year-old pedestal. They were all pieces of meat for this forest to play with.

"I think it's been at least nine hours?" Milo said.
"No, less that that, maybe five," Ron said. He was sitting further up the path from Melissa and Ron. He wouldn't go near the water.
"I'm starving, we should try to find some food," Melissa said, standing up.
"I'm not hungry, at least not yet," Ron said.
"It doesn't matter, we should try and find something," Milo said.
"I need a little bit more time, just a little more," Ron said.
Melissa looked up to the sky.
"Shouldn't it be night by now, it was two thirty when we got off the bus," she said.
"Yeah, there is no way the sun shouldn't be getting less bright, this is weird," Milo said.
Milo walked further along the path, deeper into Snake Tooth Pass. Nothing moved but the edges of trees bending over the dirt-bumpy trail. There was a shape up a head, where the forest billowed upwards on a tree-etched hills. It was jagged, menacing, and full of moss.

"Is that a machine?" Milo said. The trees bent downward like a collapsing tunnel. Melissa sprinted over to Milo.
"I see it, I see it!" She yelled, pointing.
"The trees are trying to hide it, look at them," Milo said.

The forest groaned like an old engine powering up. Another figure stood amongst the trees across from Ebner's island. It watched with five eyes beneath it's metallic mask. It needed more reactions from these children, especially the coward from the water.

Part Three - I'm Guarded by Faces

The Room

“What’s Ebner’s Island?” Scott said. He tapped his pencil on the mahogany table slightly. The tapping echoed about the room in reverberating squeals, like it wanted to escape the metal chamber. Milo’s eyes followed the sound and watched the man’s perfect fingers balance the instrument. It looked toy-like against his paw. Everything about Scott’s body was tanned and manicured. It seemed strange to Milo that he wouldn’t be using a Dr. Touch pen, or something fancier considering Scott’s ruling vanity.

“Why do you use a pencil?” Milo said.

“What? My pencil?” Scott said. He held it up to Milo and looked at it slightly like it could give him an answer.

“Yeah, why do you use a pencil?”

“Oh, I see. Well, I like to be able to erase my mistakes.”

“Am I making mistakes?”

“No, no, I’m talking about punctuation and spelling. Stuff like that.”

“Won’t you be typing everything up and submitting in report form?”

“Let’s get back to this island, can you tell me more about it?”

Milo rubbed his hands together a little bit. He felt more scars etched into his skin. His body had been regrown multiple times, but the little marks from his escape attempts remained. Everything he used to do, at least in terms of physical movement, was directly tied into his environment, which was for the last 400 years a forest ruled by a monster. He’d been poked, prodded, and tortured inside the woods. Now, these doctors were doing the same exact thing to him, only they were well-groomed, charming, and too educated to understand the irony of the situation.   

“It was the island the phantom sort of operated out of. It was like this place it never wanted us to go, but wouldn’t make it a secret. It stood there countless times in this one form,” Milo said.

“This one form? You mean it changed around? How did it appear on the island?” Scott said.

Milo fidgeted around in his seat a little bit. He’d answered questions about the phantom in earlier interviews, but previous investigators hadn’t wanted to know about it like Scott.

“So it had multiple forms, or just the one? Was there more than one? You said it’d be a shadow, smoke, or even light before,” Scott said. He could feel himself getting a little desperate with his questions.

“No, just one, it wasn’t like when it’d be in the rest of the forest,” Milo said.

“But on Ebner’s Island, what shape was it?”

“It was this faceless thing, like a man, but not physically there. It was some sort of walking thing, but it never left the island in that form. It protected the island. The faces also helped with that.”

“Um, I see, you said it had no faces.”

“Not on its head, but elsewhere on the island.”

Scott had to stop. He started to write something down on his yellow memo pad. He wrote in long and hard presses with the quivering pencil, so Milo would think he’s writing something important. He didn’t know whether to laugh, scream, or a mixture of both. He stopped and looked back at Milo who was calm and plain-faced in the clammy light. A big, freshly written “What the hell” looked up at Scott from his writing pad.

“The faces weren’t on him Scott, but elsewhere on the island,” Milo said. He pushed out some angry air with his clenched teeth.

He didn’t like that Scott was making him repeat himself.

The Woods

“You think that man can help us?” Ron said. He pulled at the little scabs that had formed around his lips from the vines slashing at him while he tried to escape Snake Tooth Pass. It’d been about two hours since they finally gave in, and stopped running at the walls of trees. Mostly, it was Melissa who convinced them to stop with heavy bouts of crying and screaming. Even though they’d been inside the forest and its trembling branches of barely budded trees for nearly four hours, the sun hadn’t moved its leaf-cut silhouettes since they first walked in. The wind hadn’t changed either; it’d been a consistent breeze cutting between the trunks and dirt-pulled paths. It was like nothing had been dissected by time except their blood and skin.

“I don’t know if it was a man. It looked like something else,” Milo said. He was pacing in front of the black water. Something about it had changed recently since the cloaked figure had disappeared.

“Well, if he’s on the island still, then maybe we could swim over there and talk to him,” Melissa said. Her voice was contorted from crying and screaming. She sounded hoarse and strangled, like an old woman whispering.

“I don’t see him anymore, and you wouldn’t miss him. He was strange,” Milo said.

“Well, I’m going to try and get over there and see him,” Ron said. He staggered up and split a few more scabs from his lips.

“Plus, the water will clean off all this blood,” he said.

“Ron, don’t be stupid, stop trying to prove yourself,” Milo said.

“Shut up Milo, nobody wants to hear you talk right now,” Ron said.

“Both of you shut up, nobody should go anywhere till we get help,” Melissa said.

“Screw it, I’m jumping in. We’ve been here for hours and nobody’s come,” Ron said, wadding into the dark water.

“Just stop and think Ron, you’re making everything worse,” Milo said. He was standing on the weed-soft edge of the pond with black-rotted stick in his right hand. He was ready to swing it out over the water in case Ron had problems.

“Shut up Milo, and put that away, this water isn’t even that deep,” Ron said.

As if sensing his optimism and confidence, the mud beneath his feet, which felt slimy and sticky, sunk down like a hidden pit. Ron’s blond head bobbed below the weather like a feathered cork. He had suddenly, or maybe just provoked, a hidden drop-off. Ron started swimming immediately in panicked wiggles. Below the water level it looked like the night had reversed itself. It was completely black and hollow, like the long dormant eye of a skull. Even the sun barely penetrated the melted-shadow as Ron stared down at the pulling deep. Something was making the swim longer, more complex, like it wanted Ron to work on getting to the island.  After swimming through the water for what seemed like a small century, in a shivering doggy-paddle, Ron stopped and looked back at the shore. Logically, it should only be a few yards away from when he got in the water. Instead, it looked like the far side of the ocean. He could barely make on the battered forms of Melissa and Milo standing on the bank. Something hissed in the water around him, and he turned back towards the island. It wasn’t far, just about ten yards away. He could see a few flying beetles sticking to the sharp green reeds sprouting off the island.  Ron dived down into the water to give himself some more energy. He liked going down below the surface a little bit. It gave him some extra energy. The water was black, oily, and cold to him. The underwater shore started to appear as his hands parted the unending bubbles in front of his face.

He stopped and screamed at what the shore had waiting below its banks.

Faces, pearl and perfect, like masks out of some ghoulish play, had been fused into the dirt and grime of the island. They spread apart as Ron got close, like they were going to entrap him. They were smooth and flawless, and had slits for eyes for features. No mouth, nose, or ears stared back at him. The faces started to shift slight in his vision back and forth, like they were part of some unholy melody. A shadow in the water was below them floating. It was sharp, stretched, and shaped like a man. It was pulling on something mixed in the water and matter to make the masquerade dance.

Ron immediately soiled himself, and clawed to the surface.

“Faces!” He screamed to the shifting shores.

“There are faces in the water,” he said. He scrambled backwards in the water.  A hard point jutted into his shoulder. It was Milo's branch from before. Ron clawed onto it like a lost cat.
"You only went a few feet Ron," Melissa said. She couldn't hide her disappointment.

Part Two - Don't Test the Edges

The Room

“So, this phantom, did you ever see it?” Scott said, fingering through the yellow memo pad.

“Yes, yes I did, many times,” Milo said without blinking.

“How many times is that then? How many is many?”

“1,319 times to be exact.”

“What?”

“I witnessed the phantom 1,319 times.”

“How, how do you know it was that many times?”

“We counted, not at first, it was too terrifying, but we eventually got used to it.”

“How would you count? You had the same clothes and everything from before. Did you have paper?”

“What?”

“I just want to know how you got that number,” Scott said.

Milo leaned over in the seat and shook his scarred head. Scott couldn’t help but think of the vines he’d mentioned before as the shallow and jelly-like gashes gazed back at him in white scars.

“I just told you I saw this Phantom 1,319, and you care about how I got that number?” Milo said.

“Well, no, I mean it’s a very specific number. So, I guess I just wanted to know?”

“How I kept track?”

“Um, yeah, how that happened.”

“And you asked me a question about paper?”

“Yeah, yeah I did.”

“Do you need paper to keep track of time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did you ask me? Don’t you want to know about the phantom?” Milo said leaning back.

Scott waved at the clear panel of glass behind him. The glass reflected the sterile white light of the room in a perfect glow like the surface of the moon.

“They’re going to bring some water in for me, did you want any?” Scott asked, adjusting his glasses.

“No, I’m okay, but thank you,” Milo said, rubbing his forehead.

“So tell me about the phantom then? What did it look like?”

“It appeared many different times, in various forms. Sometimes it would be just a shadow or bulge of light. Other times it was this blue thing drifting around like smoke. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“It was always there though?”

“Yes, almost always.”

“Where was it usually inside Snake Tooth Pass?”

Milo rubbed his forehead some more, like he wanted the skin to go away. His callused fingers missed the scars on his narrow forehead like they were little bits of fire.

“On Ebner’s Island,” he said.

The Woods

“Stop trying to get it Ron, you won’t get it,” Melissa said crying with a torn lip. They’d been inside Snake Tooth Pass all day. At first, when they wandered inside the woods, there were toys beaming about the swampy water around the green island like little plastic stars. Milo had pointed them out, and they immediately made a weary break for them between the reeds and mossy logs. They were almost too old for toys, but they just wanted to know what kind they were, and why they were floated in this little pond. The toys suddenly vanished in the murky water though, like they were attached to some hidden puppets strings deep beneath the bog. A weighted breathing followed the toys disappearance, like an exhausted chest of air had been watching them. The sound echoed four times, which even to three children seemed excessive in the forest.

They ran for the edges after the toys vanished into the inky water.

Each time they’d come close, the trees would tighten together like stubborn giants of bark and leaf. Vines would snap down like condensed whips of fire and slash at the children as they pushed forward. None took more than a few scraps of flesh, but they were deep enough to slap their nerves inner fire. The pain was biting enough to produce tears and wails. Milo never thought he’d get used to the sight of his own blood, but there it was pooling about his hands and knees. Ron was still the most battered out of the three of them.  He’d run at full speed over and over again. The woods would wait for him like a sharp green net, throwing him backwards like Ron was a rancid fish. It wasn’t until a particular flaying, which ripped the skin just above his eyes so blood trickled down in a stinging crimson glare. Ron sat on his kneels trying to pull the blood out of his eyes.

“Stop, stop it, just stop,” Milo said, standing in front of Ron.

“We got to get out of here, we’ll be in trouble, my dad,” Ron gasped.

“Something’s keeping us in here okay. There is something in the woods, something is going on,” Melissa said pacing.

Milo sneezed out some blood. His nose had been torn open from an earlier bout with the living wall. He walked back and forth on the narrow path winding through Snake Tooth Pass. The woods seemed to shrink and expand around him with each step, like it monitored his panicked heartbeat. The path was just outside the water and its beams of bright green reeds. Something was standing in the center of the island. It was tall, long, and bristling about in shadow, even though the rays of sunlight hanging through the forest hadn’t changed since they’d been trapped. It looked like a man for only a second, only it had a hood, and what looked like no face. It was so close, Milo could see the shadows hanging down, and trying to mix into the clear air sitting around them.

“You see that man? That guy over standing on the island? Can anyone else see him?” Milo said. He pointed into the forest, and the towering shaped looked back, even though no one listened.