“Guys, come on. We should go find Sarah.” I couldn’t care less about Sarah, but I didn’t know what else to say. There was no way I was going to get between Marcus and Lee.
• • •
“Yeah, it was real.”
A waitress approached our table, notepad in hand. She was older, with a mustache shading her upper lip. “Know what you’d like?”
I ordered a cheeseburger and fries. Jennifer asked for a slice of pumpkin pie. When the waitress walked away, Jennifer leaned across the table. “What was that thing inside? Was it…him?”
I shook my head. There it was, the crazy part. The thing that had kept me from contacting her for the past twenty years. It was true that something had happened that summer, but we’d been kids, too young to understand. Our minds had created a story, a boogeyman, to blame instead.
She interrupted my thoughts. “You heard the song too, right?” She sang the words, barely louder than a whisper:
“Don’t get lost along the way,
Forest Man is here to play…”
My stomach knotted. “I heard you sing it.”
The waitress returned with two glasses of water. Jennifer refused to meet my eyes.
“You never told me what you remember.”
Her gaze met mine. “Did I tell you I asked my parents about Franklin? I was so freaked out after we found his bracelet. I asked them what happened, why his family wasn’t there.”
I hadn’t known. “What did they tell you?”
“Nothing. They wouldn’t tell me anything. They said it wasn’t my concern or some bullshit.”
Xanax. The bottle said Xanax.
• • •
The next morning I went to the Boulder Path again. We hadn’t agreed to meet or anything, I just felt drawn to it. I needed to return to the cave and see if I could find evidence that it had all been a joke. Maybe then Jennifer would think I was a hero or something.
When I got to the path she was already standing there, as if she’d been waiting for me. She grinned when she saw me. She was beautiful.
I held up my flashlight sheepishly. “I thought I’d go check it out.”
She nodded. “Me too. I…I mean, it was weird, right? That tree thing? The bracelet? You don’t think Marcus would do that to scare us, do you?”
I shook my head. “Lee maybe, but not Marcus.”
She nodded.
We entered the woods, and left the path where Brandon’s chalk marks began. I was grateful that he’d left them. I could tell an oak from a maple, and I knew that bigger meant older for trees, but that was where my knowledge ended. I was a child of the suburbs, not the forest.
We turned our flashlights on and entered the cave. I swept the beam to the center of the cave where the tree…thing…stood. It looked changed, somehow. I reached out to touch it, but Jennifer got there first.
Her flashlight clattered to the ground, breaking a silence that I hadn’t noticed until that moment. When she pulled her hand away it was covered in something red, and sticky. She gasped, holding up a UFO-shaped key chain. “Marcus’?” she asked.
I nodded. “Do you think he left it here yesterday?”
She shook her head, looking down at her hands. “No. This…this wasn’t here yesterday.”
“Maybe he came back this morning?”
“I don’t know, but something isn’t right.” She sniffed her hand and recoiled. “It smells like blood.”
I shined my light along the cave’s inner wall. It was covered with crimson words:
Take my hand and come with me
Tweedle, deedle, deedle, dee
I will follow where you go
Tweedle deedle, deedle doe
Don’t get lost along the way
Forest Man is here to play…
The air in the cave was suddenly stifling. “That wasn’t here yesterday, was it?” I stammered.
Jennifer shook her head.
“Someone must have come back here. Maybe Lee. Right? Lee came back and did all this…to get back at Marcus for trying to scare him. Right?”
She stared, unblinking, at the words on the wall. Her hands were shaking.
I led her out of the cave, and offered her my canteen. “Here, wash your hands off.”
She moved mechanically. After her hands were clean I led her back to the path, out of the forest.
When we returned to the lake Sarah and Lee were on the beach. Sarah’s eyes were rimmed with tears. A fishing pole lay at Lee’s feet. It looked like they were arguing, and that they’d been at it for a while.
Sarah frowned. “Jennifer! Where were you? I woke up this morning and you were gone.”
Jennifer stared at her feet, silent.
“We went back to the cave. It was…different.” I said.
Lee flinched, the movement barely noticeable. “What do you mean, different?”
“There was something written on the walls…it looked like blood.”
“Blood was written on the walls?”
“No. Something was written on the walls in blood.”
“What was?”
“I don’t know…it looked like a story, or a rhyme. Something about a man in the forest.”
“Forest Man?” Lee asked.
“Yeah. That sounds right.” I answered.
Lee muttered under his breath.
Jennifer’s voice was barely above a whisper. “What does it mean?”
He shook his head. “It’s bullshit, that’s what. It’s Marcus being a freak. He should’ve let it go.” He turned and stalked toward the cabins.
“Where are you going?” Sarah called after him.
“I’m going to pound that little jerk,” he called back, vanishing down the road.
Sarah turned to Jennifer and me. “Is she okay?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think she is.”
When Lee got back to the beach, Brandon was following him.
“Well, what happened?” I asked.
“He wasn’t there.”
Jennifer tensed.
“What do you mean, wasn’t there?”
Lee sighed. I expected him to yell at me, but he just ran a hand through his hair.
Brandon broke the silence. “He was supposed to meet me this morning. We were going to break into Franklin’s room, to see if they left anything behind.”
Sarah propped her chin on her knees. “Supposed to?”
Brandon nodded. “Yeah, but he never showed up. I went to his place.
