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.