ROSES

TWO

The moon was swallowed up again by cloud and we lost sight of the figure in the forest, but the terror of his presence lingered; Chip and I remained huddled together downstairs near to the fire, desperately coaxing the flames back to life in order to hold back the darkness. The place had changed in my mind now; no longer was it wonderful, full of mysteries and discoveries. It was dark and ominous now, every branch and tree appearing as some terrifying entity in my mind's eye.

When the sun finally appeared through the haze of branches we decided to make a run for civilisation, moving as fast as our legs would carry us. I later explained it away as sleep deprivation coupled with terror, but I felt eyes on me the whole way back.

Like the forest was watching me hungrily.

The parting of ways for the school term between Chip and myself was an awkward, tense affair; I was due to leave for boarding school that day, but we were both still reeling from what we'd seen in the forest. My mind was in turmoil, I had no idea how to respond to the situation, and neither did Chip. So we simply avoided talking about it as we said goodbye; I told him I'd write, he told me to get back soon and cracked a joke about the weird stuff that goes on at all boys boarding schools.

That term passed rather quickly; I managed to find myself a few friends in and amongst my fellow students and the work kept my mind occupied. Away from home, away from that forest, I began to rationalise what I had seen. A hiker, perhaps. Plenty of people use the forest, after all. As for the roses, I figured that low-light and lack of sleep had a lot to say for that strange sight.

None the less, I was still uneasy about the whole thing. I found myself avoiding forested areas and felt my pulse rise whenever I was around flowers. However irrational I thought myself something had changed, and no words or mind-tricks would alter that.

Though I had promised to write to Chip during term, I kept finding reasons to avoid doing so. Yet even on the rare occasions when I did try it ended with crumpled up letters that would forever remain half-written and myself sitting frustrated and angry. I was desperate to talk to Chip about what we had seen that night in the forest, but doubts had taken root and flowered into full-blown insecurities; what if I had just imagined it all? What if Chip had rationalised it away far better than I had? He would think me mad. At one point I attempted to write just a simple thing; the usual 'hello, how is life, how is school' platitudes, but even that faltered, rose stems choking the flowers of my words.

Term dragged on and I began to dread returning home. In dark dreams I found myself being hunted through a twisted forest by something I never saw but knew was out to get me. As the term came to an end I contemplated asking to stay with relatives, but knew this would just arouse unwanted questions.

My first night back was the hardest; I found myself staring out my bedroom window for hours, unable to sleep, watching that old forest for any signs of movement or life. Sleep didn't take me until the early hours of the morning, when the sun had already risen up beyond the tree canopy.

When I finally staggered down stairs sometime close to afternoon my mother informed me that Chip had been by and had left a note. Curious as to what my friend had to say I took it up to my room and opened it:

"Meet me at the Hiker's Trail entrance at 7pm. I need your help. - CHIP"

Short and to the point; very unlike Chip. Concern for my friend began to bloom, and continued to expand for the rest of the day until I made my way to the start of the Hiker's Walk trail that wound through the forest. Though I feared straying so close to the place of my nightmares, my mind was resolved on the matter.

I waited there in the near-darkness for several hours, the small beam from my flashlight like the beam from a lighthouse in a sea of darkness. I jumped at every noise and imagined eyes watching me from the black.

Yet Chip never showed. Nor did he show the next night, when I returned.

Concern had grown to worry, now; I thought of phoning Chip's house only to realise I never got his home number. I visited all his usual hangouts to find no sign of him. After a day of fruitless searching I had all but given up hope of finding him and was contemplating stopping by his home or even going to the police. But I decided to visit the spot he had arranged to meet me one final time.

For the first twenty minutes it looked like it was going to be another no-show as darkness began to settle. Yet just as I was preparing to go home I spotted a flashlight approaching from up the road. Surprise turned to hope as I moved toward it, hoping that I was finally going to see my friend again.

It was Chip alright, but not as I remembered him. That all-but permanent smile was gone, replaced with dejection and hopelessness. His face was a swollen mass of purple bruises and cuts, his lip split at the centre. Similar injuries covered his arms, and he was lugging a heavy-looking backpack along with him.

"Jesus, Chip, what the hell happened to you?" "My dad," he explained simply. That was all he needed to say. Chip's old man had finally gone off the rails and done his son some serious damage. I'd seen Chip injured before but this was different. This was vicious.

Common decency filtered through the shock of seeing my friend in such a state; I urged him to come back with me to my parents' home, where we could get him cleaned up and call the police. He just shook his head. "He'll just find me again. I have to get out. Leave town." I spent the next five minutes desperately trying to get him to re-consider, but there was nothing I could say; Chip had made his mind up, and that was that.

"But where will you go?!" I all but yelled. His response was once again simple, matter-of-fact; he raised his free arm and pointed into the woods.

"The old mill. I'll hide out there for the night and then move on in the morning." That was when the fear really gripped; my mind raced back to that night, to the man lurking in the gloom of the forest almost out of eyesight. I knew we were both thinking the same thing, but I had no idea what to say. For months I'd been wanting to talk to Chip about what we had seen in that mill, but now it had finally come up I had no idea what to say. After stammering for a moment I managed to blurt out, "What about what we saw that night? The man in the forest?"

Chip's indifference scared me. He just shrugged and slung his backpack on again. "I dunno what we saw that night, mate," he informed me, wincing as his lip parted once again with a fresh flow of blood, "Could have been anything. But they're probably looking for me by now, and that mill is somewhere only you and I know about." He started to walk away from me, leaving me standing there with more questions and worries than I could ever hope to utter. Before setting off down the path he turned to speak one final time. "Come find me in the morning before I leave. It'd be good to catch up with you properly, mate." With that he was gone; I watched helplessly as the beam from his flashlight was swallowed by the forest, like some vast predator's jaws closing around its prey.

That was not the last time I saw Chip.

But it's the way I prefer to remember him.