The Stairs in the Woods

Chapter 20-Then

Alice was gone.

They had to drag me away from the clearing, force me to the police station so I could give my statement. I don't remember much. What I do remember is that the dogs couldn't pick up a scent anywhere. As I walked through the woods, none of it seemed familiar. They searched for hours and didn't turn up a damn thing. And when I asked one of the officers about the stairs, he gave me a funny look and said, "We didn't see any stairs, girlie."

I searched, too, on my own—snuck past caution tape, followed the paths we'd taken when I lost her. But I never got close. No one did. She'd slipped right through everyone's fingers. I couldn't even find the clearing.

After maybe a week, people stopped caring that Alice was missing. They wrote her off as a runaway or just another dead girl no one would ever find. No one really cares about the dead girls. It was heartbreaking—eventually, people just didn't want to look for her. A sad story, people reasoned, but girls like Alice don't tend to stick around. It was like she'd never lived at all.

I wanted to scream and cry and break things. I wanted to rip the world to shreds. Alice was whimsical, sure, and barely tethered, but she wouldn't leave like that. No one really knew her. No one really cared. Alice was here, and then she wasn't, but kids go missing sometimes, so no point dwelling on it, right? An accident, an unfortunate tragedy, but by all means, move on.

Two years after Alice's disappearance, once I guess they really decided she was a lost cause, Alice's family held a funeral for her. They hated me. Blamed me for her disappearance. And, in the midst of all the reporting, they'd found out that Alice was my girlfriend. I wasn't invited.

I went back to the forest over and over again. I begged the trees to bring her back. I begged the trees to take me too. But it was no use. I drove myself halfway crazy, pushed my parents away, fell apart over and over again. Therapists tried. Grief counselors and support groups tried. Doctors with pretty little pill bottles tried. None of it stuck. The last year of high school was a blur, but I made it through, and landed myself a spot in a forestry program, and for a little while, the cobwebs lifted themselves from my mind.

I spent four years studying forestry across the country. That was good for me. When I came back, local conservation areas were in need of park rangers. I applied, got the job. And the search for Alice picked back up.

I've spent years in those woods. I don't know them—none of us can really know a forest—but I'd like to think that there's an understanding there. Alice was so young, and so alive, and so curious, and she was everything a forest feeds on. They wanted her, so they took her.

Other rangers had stories. We all know there's something sinister lurking in the heart of the deep woods. There were paths that led to nowhere, bones that turned up with every shift of the season, monstrous things that twisted in and out of humanoid forms. One ranger spoke of a monster she'd seen that looked exactly like the one I saw in the bones. Another told me that he'd gone down a wrong path, once, and didn't remember any of what had happened, but he'd lost a week.

And the stairs. Everyone knew the stairs. Everyone knew to avoid the stairs. It seemed like common sense. It was common sense. I told you not to climb, Alice. I told you to come down. Why couldn't you have listened?

I wasn't the only one, and I wasn't the first one. The woods have been taking people for as long as there's been woods and people on this earth.

Alice is gone. Alice is gone, and it's been ten years, and now I don't even remember her, not really.

All I have are these stupid little snippets of memory. Parts of a story. We went to a movie, she kissed me in the woods, she planned a picnic. It's not together. It's not coherent. I'm trying, god, I'm trying, but ten years is a long time. Alice isn't a whole anymore, she's just whatever pieces I can pull together. That's what happens when something goes away. The certainty is gone, the steady reassurance of their presence, and you're left scrambling to simulate what once was.

But memories fade, and Alice is fading, and it's like losing her all over again, and I can't do that. The woods took something from me, too, I think, when they took Alice. They took all the grounding parts.

I've just been drifting ever since.