Woodsong

It hit me last night, as a chorus of woodsong filled our hiding spot: we’re never getting out of here.

But even if I want to lie down and die, I’m clutching one last thread of hope. It’s all I have to offer Chase—it’s still my job to offer him something, even if it’s a lie.

“Where’d you go, dad?” Chase says, stamping his feet to ward off the cold. He scans the pine forest carpeting the mountainsides. “Out there again?”

I drag my focus back to our makeshift camp: pitiful fire, tattered gear scavenged from other camps littered with cleaved corpses.

But we don’t think about that. Eyes on the horizon. Minds on our next move.

I squeeze Chase’s shoulder. “It’s out there we’ll find a way home.”

He sighs, his stance radiating exasperation, like he’s a teenager.

Because he is a teenager now, stupid.

Years. How did it add up to years. When we first got stuck here, after our roadtrip turned into endless circling, I’d promised him we’d be home the next day.

Now our fourth winter is setting in.

“Dad, let it rest. We’re stuck here.”

We’re not stuck. I must make him see it. But my dad’s special connection with Chase had died with him.

“Don’t say that,” I say. “We—”

A shriek rises from the east. Maybe a person, maybe not.

* * *

The woodsong soon starts again, which means some poor bastard has been torn to pieces. A sighing breeze joins the buzzing of insect and the twittering of birds, until every organic mote rings like a bell.

The score of my failure to make things right.

“That song could be for them, dad. Like a memorial,” says Chase.

I say nothing, because it’s better than saying, “It’s either to torture us, or it’s a fucking dinner bell.”

There are no friends here—only the creatures of the forest. They rest by day, but each night their bloodlust ignites; they stalk, whisper, lay traps.

I urge Chase onward, trying a new route—which of course is another loop to nowhere. Come dark, we wedge ourselves between some rocks. Something titanic lumbers along the ridgetop, visible only in silhouette when it blots out the stars.

We sleep in shifts. Chase had bad dreams at first, but now he sleeps like the dead, which scares me even more. This can’t become his normal.

* * *

The terrain loops on itself; my improvised maps don’t knit together. I don’t even know if we’re still in Oregon. We’ve run into people who arrived from several continents.

Each time we retread our own footsteps it’s more obvious that I’m out of ideas.

I had hope in the early days, when we teamed up with three Japanese people who spoke of hidden passageways; if people arrived from all over the world, there had to be exits.

But the trio grew careless. What devoured them looked like a grove of trees, until the trunks split open, revealing rows of curved teeth.

Since then, we’ve walked alone.

* * *

The next day we find a field filled with butterflies. Butterflies in winter… whatever. Chase runs with wings beating around him, ignoring my hissed warnings—a flash of the boyhood he’s been denied.

“Don’t let your guard down. That’s how people die.”

He stops running. A dark look falls over his face. “I don’t want to end up like granddad.”

“You won’t.”

He looks away. “I already am.”

My dad died a few months before we got here. When I remember that liminal space between diagnosis and funeral, all I see is Chase holding dad’s hand.

I couldn’t even keep his grandad alive. I started failing him long before we got here.

* * *

We stumble on a frozen lake, and Chase insists we skate on the ice.

“We should stop walking,” he calls. “I like it here.”

My heart stops. He can’t give up. Not yet. “We need a better lay of the land. Come spring, we’ll try crossing the mountains.”

He arcs in a wide circle. “What if we die before spring?”

“I won’t let us.”

“I told you. I don’t want to be like grandad,” Chase yells, suddenly furious, his voice magnified by the ice.

“Look! I’m sorry I couldn’t save him. God knows, I spoke with every specialist, applied for every trial…”

“I’m not afraid to die, dad. I’m afraid of being invisible.” He jumps in frustration, coming down hard. “It’s like you’re not even here. I’m talking to you, but you don’t see me—

A sound like a gunshot splits the air, then he’s gone into a wound of black water.

By the time I drag him out and start a fire, he’s unconscious, blue, but alive.

* * *

Hiding in a tree that night, while frostbite gnaws my toes, I realize that my biggest regret is never having taught him to shave.

* * *

The things of the forest are closing in, sensing that hypothermia has left us too weak to run. Bundles of eyes open on rocks. Trees sprout wailing fruits that look like foetuses. Enormous shadows flit under the lake, splintering the ice.

The heaviness in my bones turns leaden. “We’ll think of something.”

“Dad, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not! I—”

“You can’t save us.”

It hurts to hear him talk like that, but worse is not having the strength to argue.

Chase smiles. “It’s like with grandad.”

“I tried to save him, Chase—”

“He didn’t want you to save him. Grandad just wanted you to be there. For as long as it lasted.”

But I’d been off somewhere trying to fix it. Clinging to hope so hard I strangled it.

I take Chase’s hand and whisper sorries into his palm.

We listen to a fresh wave of woodsong. Now that I really listen, it doesn’t sound malevolent or comforting. It’s just what it is.

“Chase, how many beautiful things do you think we can find before dark?”

* * *

Ⓒ Arthur H. Manners