KATIE MARIE

Going back can be dangerous

I am heading to the cabin.

My family’s cabin is in the northern forest, where it snows for two-thirds of the year and rains the other third. It’s been years since we’ve been back, not since my brother died.

I pull over at the side of the road for lunch. It offers an impressive view of the forest sloping down the mountainside. I pick up my phone to check the missed call I’d had while driving, recognising the number I hit call.

“Joanne,” Susanne, my therapist, answers. “I hope you missed my call because you’re on the road?”

“Just pulled over for lunch.”

“I’m glad you finally agreed to try this, getting to the root of your problems will help.” I make a non-committal sound in response.

“We already know this place messed me up, I don’t see what my coming here again will achieve.”

“Don’t be like that, this will help.”

“If you say so, but if I fall back into the bottle after this trip you’re paying for my rehab.”

“You won’t relapse.” Susanne sighs. “Now promise me you’ll try to take this seriously.”

“Yeah. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

I hang up and resume my drive, unable to finish my sandwich. I take slow purposeful breaths as I drive the familiar roads and try to keep my grip on the steering wheel relaxed.

I swerve wildly when the beast leaps onto the road. My car screeches its complaint before the engine stalls and dies.

The creature, now standing in the road, could be mistaken for a deer. It is approximately deer shaped, but its size and proportions are wrong. Its body is too big, its legs much too long, and its eyes are far too human. It looks like what someone who’s never seen a deer might draw if a deer were described to them. A warped concept.

It blinks slowly at me once, before it leaps off the road and disappears back into the forest.

My grandmother had often told stories about this forest, she’d spoken about creatures that were twisted amalgamations of human, animal and plant. She’d said how the forest was cursed and that if you died out here, you’d never really die, you’d become part of it, part of the curse that festered here.

My dad had never believed her, but Jason and I had. We’d seen the creatures; we’d known she was right.

The police report about Jason’s disappearance had said that there was no evidence that anyone but us had been in the cabin that night. But I knew that wasn’t true. Jason didn’t wander off in the middle of the night, something in this forest had come into the cabin and taken him.

I should not have come back here.

I swallow the bile rising in my throat. It takes a concentrated effort on my part to get my hands to unclench and release the steering wheel. I start the car and drive the rest of the way to the cabin. 

The seasons have not been kind. I take an hour to clear the leaf litter and muck off the roof to check for damage, and another hour to patch the hole I find. Once the roof is ok, I busy myself with boarding up the windows and finding materials to secure the door.

My phone ringing again startles me.

“JoJo?” Dad says when I answer. “You, ok? I can hardly hear you?”

“Yeah,” I swallow the dry lump in my throat. “I’m back at the cabin.”

“What the hell?” Dad snaps.

“Susanne said that-”

“Leave. Now. Do you hear me.”