A Forest, or a Tree by Tegan Moore

Author:Tegan Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

May panicked awake in the dark. For disorienting seconds she wasn’t sure why she was cold, nor why the world was so slippery and unstable. And she wasn’t sure why she had woken, except that it was urgent.

When it happened again the scream was dangerously close to May’s ear. It was more of a yell, low-pitched and open-voweled; not the helpless keen of something lost but assertive, purposeful.

“It’s back,” Elizabeth bellowed. “It’s here, what the fuck!” And then there was a slick weight on top of May, and an elbow found her gut and shoved out a yelp.

“What the fuck!” Elizabeth said again, almost in May’s face. Her sleeping bag thrashed. A flashlight infused the tent with light from outside, and for a moment May saw Elizabeth’s face, frightened and pallid. Trapped, May tried to wiggle her sleeping bag away from the other girl.

“What is it?” Ailey called, nearby. “What is it?” There was the sound of a zipper in the quiet, river-washed dark.

Knees, weight on May’s stomach pressing out her breath. She would be bruised in the morning. The tent zipper tore open and freed Elizabeth. The tent rocked. May struggled out of her bag and felt for her flashlight.

“What is it?” Ailey repeated over Elizabeth’s fuck fuck fuck. Her flashlight bobbed and shuddered and then made loose, frantic sweeps. “Elizabeth, what?”

“It was here,” she said. “The thing, the … the deer. The moose.”

“Elizabeth.”

May crawled out of the tent, flashlight on, and floundered with her boots. “What’s going on?”

“It was here,” Elizabeth repeated. She whipped the flashlight’s beam in a circle—she must have wrenched it away from Ailey—illuminating the stark columns of tree trunks and the quivering arms of lower branches. “It was there. Right there.”

Ailey spoke quietly. “There’s nothing there now.”

“The deer?” May said. Her flashlight beam joined the sweep, but what were they looking for? “Girl, you’re freaking out. You stepped all over me.”

“If it’s a deer, it won’t hurt us,” Ailey said. “Even if it’s a moose. You scared it away.” She took Elizabeth’s shoulders in her hands. “It’s okay,” she said, “you’re fine.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “No, it’s not—it was…” She panted. “You don’t know.”

None of them wanted to go back to their tents, so they started another fire. Ailey checked on Piper and then the three of them sat, cross-legged, in the glow.

“It wasn’t a dream,” Elizabeth said, “because I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep last night either, and I wasn’t sleeping now.”

“I was,” May muttered.

“I saw it.”

“How?” Ailey said. “From inside your tent?”

“No,” Elizabeth turned, scanning the circle of light cast by the fire. “It was the outline. The shadow.”

“Hon,” Ailey said, “it’s dark. You need light for a shadow.”

“I know!” Elizabeth snapped. “I don’t know why I could see it. I just could. I wasn’t dreaming!”

May crossed her arms and leaned them against her knees, hands stuffed in her armpits. Her skull felt hollow. She was so tired she didn’t care what was going on, if Elizabeth was crazy from stress and sleep deprivation or if there was another explanation.

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