The Woods and Other Tales

The Lake

The breeze brought in the promise of fall while the early September sun still shone hot. The midwestern town was large in size and very new to 17-year-old Adaliah, who had recently moved to town with her two mothers right before her senior year. They had moved from a few towns over for the better school district and the close college that Adaliah could attend once she graduated.

The new home was in fairly good condition and on good days Adaliah could walk home from school, as long as she took a shortcut through the woods. Adaliah passed small stores on her way home with parking lots that looked more empty than her new garden. The only cars in the lots belonged to unlucky employees, who stared at the clock waiting for their shift to be over, or so she guessed. It was a Wednesday afternoon and parents were busy picking up their children or working and the teenagers rarely went to the yarn store across from Cracker Barrel.

She felt a few beads of sweat trail down her back as she tightened her bookbag on her back, turned up the volume of her music, and picked up the pace, ready to just be home. The black shirt claiming 'fuck the patriarchy' certainly wasn't helping, nor the fishnets that had started to stick to her skin or the tennis shoes that trapped the heat with a thick pair of socks because they were the only ones she could find this morning.

She knew she had things to get done at home as well of course, but at least there would be A/C. She was already thinking about her homework, most of which would not get done, in hopes of preserving her sanity.

She was also hoping her mood would improve with the music in her ears blaring at full volume and the thought of fresh clothes, maybe a shower, just anything to not feel like she had just spent all day in a hot school with no air conditioner and then had to walk home with a heavy backpack in the same heat. It may have been September, but it was not fall.

The wind decided to become more forceful and blew her hair in her face, momentarily obstructing her vision. She pulled the blue strands out of her face, noting that her nail polish had chipped sometime during the day, and accidentally yanked out an earbud as well. While she hated when that happened, she decided to pause her music and take out the other earbud as well. She had arrived at the beginning of the forest trail she used to take home.

She usually liked to stop her music at this point on her way home. She liked to appreciate the forest, listen to the birds call back at each other through the trees, watch the sunlight filter through leaves, see the clouds and incredibly blue sky through gaps in the trees, and watch squirrels chase each other. She loved feeling so alone and yet so connected to the world, to nature. She could hear the wind rustling the leaves and water from the small lake lapping its shores. The small lake was not close to her house, but due to the large cliff that encased most of it except for one side and the large cave system, the sound traveled well.

She began to walk the trail. It was the kind of trail that had only been made because it had been used so much and hadn't been made of mulch or concrete. It wasn't too bumpy, as it had been worn well over time. Adaliah slowed her pace and drank in the forest. As she continued on the trail though, she had to wonder how much longer the walk would be. She was ready to be home and felt as though she had been walking for longer than normal. She brushed it off as the heat was playing tricks on her mind and decided to stop and take a drink.

She took the water from her bag. At this point it was room temperature, but better than nothing. The water went down the wrong pipe and before she knew it she was choking. She stumbled forward and spilled some water in the process. Before long she had recovered and turned to put the water bottle back in her bag. As she looked up she saw footprints on the forest floor. There had been a storm the day before with lots of rainfall that Adaliah had thoroughly enjoyed and would have made it easy to make an imprint in the ground.

The footprints were relatively small, about the size of her own, and were most definitely made by bare feet. While there was not much underbrush in the forest, it was still most certainly a bad idea to go barefoot. Adaliah stepped off the path to closer inspect the strange footprints and as soon as she had both feet off the path, she felt the overwhelming urge to follow the footprints. Soon she stepped in one by accident. Once she did, she could not pull her foot up, but she had the compulsion to step on the next print. She could not stop.

As she followed them, she swore some of them changed shape, as if the thing who made them forgot what they were supposed to be for a moment but then remembered before the next step. This resulted in small barefoot impressions and then a single impression that should have been made by a webbed type of foot, or one time it looked like the impression would belong to a chicken but was then followed by the same human prints.

Soon moss started to cover the ground and she felt an even stronger sense of urgency to follow the prints. She discarded the backpack with relative ease, as she felt it was weighing her down. She made it a few steps farther and fought to look back at the now-abandoned pack. For a second, just a single second, she felt a sense of wrongness. She felt a sense of sadness. Because deep inside she knew she would never see that pack again.

But then she lost the battle in her mind and once again hyper fixated on the prints she had been following, the backpack and unsettling emotions forgotten. Soon she was past the trees and in the clearing where the lake stood. She glanced up to see where the prints would lead next and once she did, her mind was perfectly clear, unlike the lake that was cloudy and dark.

The prints were headed directly into the lake and she had a feeling they wouldn't stop just a few inches in. While her mind was clear, her feet would not stop stepping directly on the prints. The lake was getting closer and Adaliah could not stop. She begged and pleaded for her body to stop. She cried aloud, but no matter what she did, she could not stop moving closer to the lake.

Her left foot went in first and she could feel the cool water seep into her shoe. Her right foot was next, stepping even deeper into the lake. That's when the laughing started. Not her own, but someone else's. It could have come from anywhere, she felt surrounded by the sound. No longer could she hear the birds- the water was up to her waist. It was a cold dark laugh. The one a man uses when he knows he has power and no one can do anything about it. It had reminded her about stories of the fae she had read as a child. She could no longer hear her own cries- the water was almost to her shoulders.

It was much much colder the deeper it got. She begged her body to turn around to no avail. She realized the laughter was completely drowning her out as it bounced off the cliff and cave walls and she could no longer tell if the sound was even coming from her anymore. She may have been screaming, but she still felt silent. She might as well have been for all she knew.

The water was to her chin but she was still weighed to the bottom, much like whoever or whatever had made the prints. As she took a large step forward, she took as big a breath as she was able. The breeze blew once more, the sun was still hot, and silently, so silently, Adaliah went under. The last thing she heard was that haunting laugh that echoed through her ears until her very last moments, gasping for breath, knowing she was feet from the surface.