Ivy of Our Hearts

Three

Margaret and I especially knew the stories because we'd grown up so near the woods.

Once, long before my parents had conceived me, before they even met, a family with twin girls lived in our home. They would have been around Margaret's and my age—sixteen—when it happened. On one hot summer night, not so unlike this one, the girls along with two boys from school went into the woods to fool around as us teens do.

The story was never too specific with the details. Adults claimed they wanted to keep the tawdry scenes away from the wanting ears of children. No one knew how long they were out there for or how far in they went. But they say their screams were so loud, so piercingly agonizing, that glasses in the homes nearby shattered, and blood ran from the ears of whoever heard them. They never found their bodies.

As for the boys, they never spoke again.

"How convenient for the story," I said when my mother had first warned me. I was eight, and even then I realized the absurdity of it. If the boys never uttered a word, then how did the legend come to be? Yet, everyone believed it.

As Margaret and I made our way through the woods, I kept my gaze pinned straight ahead on the trees, which went on forever. Some trees were tall and bony. Some were squat with a thick assortment of leaves. Others were stumps. Once or twice, I had to dodge one before my face collided with a trunk.

Margaret stumbled along behind me. She squeezed my hand. "How far do we have to go?"

"Far enough that we live to tell the tale," I said, stepping over a thick root.

"Would you look at that tree, Ivy? It looks like your granny." Margaret giggled.

I jerked my flashlight to the tree. Its branches hung low, twisting towards the ground. It did remind me of a hunched over old person. I laughed, too. A thick layer of moss covered it from top to bottom. I raised my flashlight. A crow was on its highest branch. It saw me watching and tilted its head.

It cawed at me, as if it meant to say, "Yes, I have been following you."

I tore my gaze away from the crow, which marched along the branch, as if it were in deep thought about crow-ish things, and pulled Margaret along, past the granny tree, going deeper. "Hello, is anyone home?" I called.

"We're two girls and we're oh so alone," Margaret said.

Our laughter chimed through the woods. If anyone were around, they would have heard us. I believed that if there was anything lurking in these woods it was a someone not a something. I believed my schoolmates liked to play pranks sometimes.

It would have explained the voice to my disappointment. Now the woods were quiet, except for the occasional scamper of small animals, the hoot of an owl, and the ruffle of wings. I tipped the flashlight up, searching for the crow but saw only the empty branches of trees, trees whose leaves were so dense they partially hid the night sky.

"Hello?" I asked again. "Is anyone in here?" I waved the light around at bushes, brambles, and thickets. Nothing. "Well, Margaret, looks like we were right."

Margaret swatted at her arm. "Good, because the bugs in here are starving."

"Let's go back. I want to see the look on everyone's faces when we tell them it's not true."

"If we tell them, be prepared for them to call us liars."

"That's all they'll call us if we're lucky."

We made to turn and go, to head back to my house where Margaret would be spending the night, as was our summer tradition. It could have been the crow, but something made me whirl around again.

Before I could make out what it was it was gone. The owls hooted, and other nocturnal animals chased each other through the bushes, a nearby brook kept on babbling. And when the wind blew, swaying the leaves, it whispered a name.

Phillip.

I wielded the flashlight around, all around us, at every tree, every bush, every thicket, every place a person could be hiding. "Did you hear that?" I asked.

"Hear what?" Margaret rubbed her arms.

I squinted past where the light from my flashlight fell and saw only darkness. I shook my head. "Forget it."

Margaret shrugged. "It was probably just the wind."

"Yeah, you're right. Let's go."

***

We wandered for what felt like forever, hurrying through the woods like we were being hunted by our own shadows. We couldn't say it. I couldn't even think it, how no matter how far we walked it was all the same, which made panic simmer in my stomach.

***

Getting lost wasn't like how they showed it in the movies. We hadn't gone in circles, so we didn't end up back at the tree that looked like my granny, scratching our heads in confusion. There was no warning; no giant neon sign saying, "Go back. You're going the wrong way." No, our getting lost was much worse. I could've sworn we'd gone the right way. I was sure of it. We hadn't traveled too far into the woods in the first place, but I couldn't see the path we'd taken through the trees, as if more of them had grown in a millisecond, creating a kind of barrier between us and home—wanting to keep us locked in.

"I think we're almost there," Margaret said when we'd walked so far a cramp had formed in my sides.

"I think so, too," I said, a lie because I heard my heart pounding in my ears. I could almost hear Margaret's, too.

I itched in uncomfortable places, and all I could think about was the hot bath I was going to take once I got home. The whispers I'd heard about the boy named Phillip would be washed away for good. Yet, I wondered about this mysterious person in a way I shouldn't have.

My imagination had always been efficacious.