The Darkest Part of the Forest Read online

  “That’s why we’ve got to go,” Robbie said louder, as if he’d forgotten why they’d been whispering earlier.

  For a single moment Hazel contemplated walking away from all of them, walking deeper into the school and waiting for the monster there, daggers drawn. She’d imagined fighting it so many times when she was a kid—it was the embodiment of the forest, the embodiment of terror. In her mind, fighting the monster was like the boss battle in a video game. In her mind, if she’d faced it and won, all the other terrors would stop.

  Her instincts pushed her toward a fight. Her fingers gripped the scissors more tightly, her blood pumping. She wanted to find the monster and slay it.

  “Okay, everyone, shut up!” Carter yelled. “Hazel, what do you think? Should we get out of here or keep looking for more survivors?”

  “What are you asking her for?” Robbie demanded.

  “Because I know what I think and I know what you think and it doesn’t matter what Molly thinks. And because—” Carter bit off the words and spun. There was a strange sound, as though someone was dragging a dead body through the halls. Abruptly, one of the rods glowing overhead burst into a shower of sparks, and moss began to boil from the sinks. Spots of mold dotted the mirror. Carter pushed Molly’s chair farther into the room, her head lolling to one side, hair over face. Robbie slammed the door closed behind them. Carter slid his hockey stick through the handle and braced to hold the door shut since there was no lock.

  No one spoke. Hazel sucked in her breath and held it.

  The patterned glass showed a shadow of something move on the other side of the door. It was huge, easily over seven feet in height, and looked roughly human in shape, if a human could be made from branch and vine and soil. It had a hunched back, and the top of its head seemed to twist into a gnarled stump. Impossibly long twig fingers hovered in the air.

  It paused a moment, as though it could hear the hammering of their hearts, as though it was listening to their caught breaths. Then it moved past, thudding down the hall.

  Hazel counted in her head. One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. Four one thousand. Five one thousand.

  “I vote we go,” she whispered. “I vote we go now.”

  Carter opened the door of the bathroom, and they raced for the front of the school, Molly’s chair wheeling faster and faster as Robbie pushed it, Leonie’s sneakers squeaking as they pounded against the hallway floor. Hazel brought up the rear, glancing over her shoulder again and again as she ran. She kept expecting the creature to grab them from the shadows, horrible hands lifting them, dirt choking them. It wasn’t until they were through the front doors and gulping down lungfuls of cold, autumn air that she realized they’d made it out of the school.

  From the trees all around, cawing crows went to wing in a rush of black feathers, like an inkwell spilling into the sky or blackflies rising off a corpse.

  The parking lot was lit with the flashing lights of cop cars and an ambulance. A few other cars, too, knots of students beside them, but it seemed as though the majority had already gone home.

  “Is anyone else in there?” one of the emergency-service people asked as they descended the steps.

  “A monster!” Leonie told him. In the clear afternoon light, Hazel could see the way her eye makeup had run, as though she’d been crying.

  “There was a gas leak,” he said, looking a little confused and a little alarmed. “You might have breathed in a little too much.”

  Not bothering to answer, Leonie rolled her eyes and walked past him. Carter heaved up Molly’s chair, carrying it, at the same time Ben ran up the steps and hugged Hazel. Her arms went around him, hands still gripping her scissor blades as she pressed them against his back.

  “Are you crazy?” he whispered into her hair.

  Her eyes went past him, to Jack, seated on the hood of Ben’s car, watching them with his silvery eyes. Three times I will warn you, and that’s all I am permitted, he’d said. Had he known about this, but been forbidden to say?

  “You know I’m crazy,” she whispered back.

  After Hazel had been checked over by a very solicitous volunteer with the ambulance team, she was told she could go home, but to go to the hospital immediately if she experienced any light-headedness.

  Ben was waiting for her by his car, talking with Leonie in low voices. But as she started toward him, Jack caught her arm. When she turned, startled, his gaze made her feel suddenly self-conscious.

  “I think the playground meeting is off,” he said.

  “You better not be about to tell me you’re not taking me tonight. Not after what just happened,” she said. She tried to keep her voice steady, but it didn’t quite work.

  Jack shook his head. The bruise on his cheek looked worse, the swelling more pronounced, turning the skin around his eye the color of a Concord grape. “Come by my house around sundown, but don’t come inside, okay? I’ll sneak out and meet you in the backyard. We can walk from there.”

  “Okay,” Hazel said, surprised she hadn’t had to argue even more—surprised and relieved and, despite herself, a little afraid. “So what do I wear?”

  For the first time that day, something had amused him. “Anything you like or nothing at all.”

  On the way home, Hazel described to Ben the monster she’d seen through the distorted glass and the way the vines and moss had crept over the school. In turn, he explained how Jack had hustled him outside after the first students collapsed. Jack had been about to go back in for Hazel and Carter when several of the teachers had stopped him, forbidding his going inside in a way that made it plain they blamed him for everything that was happening.

  “This has got to blow over,” Ben said, sighing. “They have to see he’s got nothing to do with any of this. We all know him.”

  Hazel nodded, but she remembered the way people had shrunk back earlier that day, remembered the fresh bruise on his face and the story Leonie told, the one she’d been keeping to herself for years. How many other people had a story like hers? How many people had seen his mask slip and never quite forgotten?

  “And we still have to talk—you and me,” Ben reminded her as he parked his car in front of their house. “About Severin and what happened the night he got free.”

  Hazel nodded, even as she hoped she could avoid doing that until after the revel.

  Inside, their mother was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. Hazel hadn’t seen her smoke in years. When they came through the door, Mom ground the lit end into her plate and stood. “What is wrong with you? Neither of you picked up your phones. I’ve been freaking out, calling people, trying to figure out what was going on. The school called, but none of their explanations made sense. And now there’s a curfew. I think we should talk about going to stay with your father for a while, in the city—”

  “A curfew?” Ben echoed.

  “It was announced over the emergency broadcasting thingie on the television,” she said, waving toward it. “Everyone’s supposed to stay inside unless absolutely necessary, and no one is supposed to go out after six tonight under any circumstances.”

  “What are they saying the reason is?” Hazel asked.

  “Inclement weather,” said her mother, raising her eyebrows. “What really happened today?”

  “Inclement weather,” Hazel said, and took the stairs two at a time.

  Once in her room, she crossed over to her closet and opened the door. Lots of vintage dresses, worn pairs of jeans, and sweaters with holes in them, some hanging, some in a pile on the floor, covering another pile of shoes. Nothing seemed quite right for a faerie revel. Nothing that would make them believe she was someone to be reckoned with.

  After all, the news promised a storm was coming.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jack had said to come at sunset, but it was almost full dark by the time Hazel got to the foot of his driveway. She’d snuck out of her house as soon as she was dressed, walking straight through the front door while her
brother and mother were in the living room, quiet and steady so they wouldn’t notice. She left her cell phone on her bed along with a note, so Ben would know he couldn’t get ahold of her and hopefully wouldn’t worry too much. She’d be back by dawn and then—then—she would tell him everything.

  Jack was in the backyard, tossing a ball to the Gordon family dog, a golden retriever named Snickerdoodle. The porch light illuminated a narrow pool of grass where they ran. In that moment, Jack looked every bit like a normal human boy, unless you noticed the points of his ears. Unless you believed the stories. Then he looked eerily like something playing at being human. When Hazel got close, Snickerdoodle began to bark.

  “Time to go inside,” Jack told the dog, with a glance at the woods. Hazel wondered if he could see her in the dark.

  She waited, wishing she’d brought a jacket. The autumn air grew colder as the orange glow on the horizon tipped down into night. She occupied herself by gathering up horse chestnuts from where they’d fallen and picking off their spiky coverings. It hurt a little where the husk got under her nail, but it was immensely satisfying to feel something come apart in her hands.

  It seemed as if she were standing there at the edge of the woods for ages, but it was probably only about fifteen minutes before a window on the second floor opened and Jack climbed out onto the roof.

  Inside, she could see the television in the living room—a splash of moving color—could see Mrs. and Mr. Gordon sitting on opposite couches. He had his laptop open, and the pale glow of it made the shadows outside seem deeper.

  Jack stepped off the roof and onto the bough of a tree, sidling along it, before jumping to the ground. She braced herself for the noise, for his parents’ heads turning, for Snickerdoodle to start barking again, but Jack landed nimbly and quietly. There was only the sound of the leaves rustling when he leaped from the branch—and that sounded only like wind.

  Hazel met him at the edge of the woods, shivering slightly and trying to be brave. “Hey,” she said, letting the chestnut she’d been holding fall. “So what now?”

  “You look nice,” he said, his eyes silver in the dark.

  She smiled, feeling a little awkward. She’d put on the only thing that seemed to look right—a pair of jeans and a green velvet top she’d discovered in the very back of her closet. In her ears she’d hung silver hoops, and on her feet were her favorite boots. She hoped it would be fancy enough for Faerieland.

  “This way,” he whispered, and began to walk. She followed. Even with the full moon overhead, it was hard to navigate the woods, and it became quickly clear that Jack saw much better than she did in the dark. She tried to keep up, tried to keep from stumbling. She didn’t want to give him any excuses to decide she should be left behind.

  After they got a ways from his house, Jack turned. “I should warn you about some stuff.” “Always be polite,” she said, reciting what she’d been told a dozen times by concerned adults who didn’t want any of the local kids acting like tourists. “Always do what they ask you, unless it contradicts one of the other rules. Never thank them. Never eat their food. Never sing if you suck at singing, never dance—and never brag, ever, at all, under any circumstances. That kind of stuff?”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.” Jack took her hand suddenly, his skin warm. There was a rough intensity in his voice that shivered over her skin. “I’m ashamed of going, that’s why I’ve been hiding it. I know how reckless it is—how stupid it is. I don’t mean to and then I hear it, like a buzzing in the back of my head when there’s going to be a revel. It’s like someone whistling a song far off and I can barely hear the music, but I’m leaning forward, straining to hear it better. So I go, all the while telling myself that I won’t go the next time, but when the next time comes, I do the very same thing all over again.”

  He dropped her hand. The words seemed to have cost him something.

  Hazel felt awful. She’d been so busy worrying about her own puzzles that she hadn’t thought about what she was asking of him. The last thing she wanted was to hurt Jack. “You don’t have to come with me. I didn’t know. Just tell me the way and I’ll go on my own.”

  He shook his head. “You wouldn’t be able to keep me from the revel—no one could. That’s the problem. But I wish that you’d go home, Hazel.”

  “And you know I won’t,” she said.

  He nodded. “So here’s the rest, then. I don’t know how to protect you from them, and I don’t know what they might try to do to you. What I do know is that they hate to be reminded of my human life.”

  “And you think I’ll be a reminder?” she asked.

  “To them—and to me.” He started walking again. “Be careful. Ben would never forgive me if anything happened to you.”

  “Yeah, well, Ben’s not my keeper.”

  “Then I’d never forgive myself.”

  “Will you…” She hesitated and then forced herself to ask. “Will you look different there?”

  That startled a laugh out of him. “I won’t. But everything else might.”

  Hazel pondered what that meant as they made their way through the woods. She could tell he was trying to slow down so she could keep pace, but she could also sense his eagerness, his hunger to be at the revel.

  “You offered me a trade,” he said, pausing to look up at the moon as she clamored over some rocks, then back at her. “You said you’d tell me the story of the horned boy and Amanda. You’ve yet to make good on your part of the bargain.”

  “After what happened at school, I’m not sure I know as much as I thought I did,” Hazel admitted. “He said the monster was hunting him, and you said the Alderking was after him. Do you think the Alderking is controlling the monster?”

  “Mayhap.” Jack smiled as he said the word, exaggerating its oddness. “But you know better. You’re the one he spoke with.”

  “He was looking for a sword,” Hazel told him. “He said that was the only way he could defeat the monster.”

  This was deeper in the woods than she’d ventured since she was a child, and back then she’d done it with the knowledge she was crossing into dangerous lands. The trees here were old, their trunks massive, and the tangle of their branches overhead were thick enough to blot out the stars. The first rash of fallen leaves crackled beneath Hazel’s feet, like a carpet of brittle paper.

  Jack looked over at her. “There was something else you said—about them using you.”

  “You remember that, huh?” she asked.

  “Hard to forget,” he said.

  “I’ve been—I’ve been losing time. I’m not sure how much.” She’d never said anything like that out loud before.

  He studied her for a long moment. “That’s… not good.”

  She snorted and kept walking. He didn’t say anything more. She was glad for his silence. She’d been afraid he’d push her for answers; in his place, she might have. But apparently, he was going to let her decide what she wanted to tell him and when.

  They came to the swell of a hill, ringed in thornbushes that grew in a gnarled circle, creating a thick tangle chasing steps that rose to the top of the hill, where the foundation of an old building rested among tall grass. The steps were cracked and worn, with moss oozing from the gaps and flowing up to an archway. There was a sound in the air, faint music and laughter, flickering in and out, as though blown in by the wind.

  Suddenly Hazel knew where they were, although she’d only ever heard of the place before.

  This was the meetinghouse one of the town founders had tried to build before he discovered this was a hill sacred to the Folk. According to the story, whatever was built during the day was dismantled at night, whatever land was cleared became overgrown before dawn. Shovels snapped and accidents left men with cracked bones and bruised bodies, until, finally, the town center of Fairfold was moved miles to the south, where the first meetinghouse was constructed without incident.

  Faerie hills are hollow inside, she’d once heard Mrs. Schröder
say. Hollow like faerie promises. All air and misdirection.

  Hazel shuddered at the memory.

  Jack walked toward the looping vines of thorn. Scarlet roses grew there with a velvety nap on their petals, heavy and thick as fur. Stems slithered, curling up to make a path, slowly, so that if you didn’t watch closely, if you looked away and looked back again, it might seem as if there had always been a way through. He tossed her a grin, raising his eyebrows.

  “Did you make that happen?” Hazel asked in a whisper, without really knowing why she was whispering. “Will the path stay open for me?”

  “I’m not sure. Just stay close,” he said, as a sharp tangle spiraled behind him.

  And so they climbed, with her hand on his back, keeping close enough that the briars let her pass, up the steep incline.

  Jack skipped up steps and then, at the arch, tapped his foot three times against the ledge and spoke: “Lords and ladies who walk unseen, lords and ladies all in green, three times I stamp upon the earth, let me in, green hill that gave me birth.”

  A chill went through Hazel at the words. It was a scrap of a poem, almost like the sort of thing they would have made up while playing in the woods as kids, but it sounded far older and of uncertain origin. “Just like that?” she asked.

  “Just like that.” He grinned, wide and wild, almost as if he was daring her. “Your turn.” Then, stepping through the arch, he let himself fall backward.

  Hazel didn’t even have time to cry out. She ran forward, to see if he was okay, but he was gone. Disappeared. She saw the rest of the hill, the rest of the foundation of the old building, saw the silvery carpet of long grass. Not sure what else to do, she leaped through the arch, hoping it would take her, too.

  Hazel landed in the grass, losing her footing and falling to her knees painfully, brambles tearing at her jeans and the velvet top. She hadn’t fallen through into another world. She was exactly where she’d been before, and she was alone.

  A breeze made the thorns shiver, bringing with it tinkling laughter.