The Path

Stay on the path.

Lauren’s mother spoke those words as a warning, uttered them in the hushed whispers of one imparting secret truth. They were the words of a priestess to a young acolyte bathed in the holy blood but one moon prior to being sent upon her sacred pilgrimage. 

And then Lauren, an iron lantern in one hand and set off on her journey. Heavy clouds, swollen with a looming storm, obscured the early afternoon sun, but enough light filtered through the canopy to make the lantern unnecessary. 

You’re still young, her mother had responded to that statement. As a wispy smile with melancholy tinting its edges danced upon the old woman’s wrinkled face. Only yesterday you were stripping your Barbies naked in your bedroom and having a tea party with our cats.

Lauren had rolled her eyes at her mother’s reminiscence. I am no child!

She snapped those words with every bit of force her youthful rage could summon into being. She spun on the heels of her Docs and left home. The slamming of the kitchen door behind her drowned the crunching of grass beneath her stomps as she traversed the yard and the creaking of the rusty hinges as she passed through the back gate and into the forest separating the two houses.

And now, as she stood within the shadows stretching across Granny’s porch, a triumphant smile illuminated her face. The clouds had parted; no rain drenched her, and she had arrived safely at the little white cottage on the border between the forest and the old family farm. She turned and gazed at the emptiness of the shadows in the forest behind her. The wooden chair granny sat in when she read a much younger Lauren stories, the younger version of the woman now standing alone on the porch nestled in her lap, rocked in a breeze so gentle Lauren felt nothing of it. The lights were out, and the curtains were drawn tight. 

Lauren knocked thrice. 

 No answer.

She knocked thrice more to be met with silence. Granny must’ve been asleep. The trip from the house her parents had bought and moved into after Grandpa passed on two years ago took no more than two hours, but she did leave in the middle of the afternoon, and as Halloween was two weeks ago, the sun set much earlier these days than it did in the summer. 

She’s taking a nap, Lauren reasoned. Mom’s pie will be a nice surprise to wake up to. Good thing I have a key.

The creaking door wheezed like a deflating balloon as Lauren closed it with thoughtful gentleness. The air in Granny’s sitting room was cool and still. Faint traces of floral perfume, the menthol aroma of the muscle soothing balm she rubbed on her hands after a long day of knitting, and the earthiness of old tobacco clung to the air. Silent images flickered on the old television.

“Granny?” Lauren called out with enough force to carry her words through the house but not enough to jar her sleeping grandmother.

She received the expected lack of a response. With a shrug, Lauren set the lantern on the coffee table and walked through the archway into the adjoining kitchen--clean and organized, as Granny would tolerate no mess there. 

Her left eyebrow raised in curious confusion as she placed the cottage pie atop the tiled counter beside the stove. Another cottage pie, unopened and in a white porcelain baking dish the same shape, the same size, and adorned with the same blue floral pattern as the one she brought with her, rested upon the white and pink checkered tiles. 

I’ll leave her a note, check on her, and be on my way, Lauren thought.

As she searched for a pen and paper, Lauren gasped as she saw a crimson X on the inside of the front door. White light flashed before her eyes.

The forest path was narrow, being a path beaten by repeated use. Leaves of red, orange, and gold browned as they decayed on the soil. Even though she wore a red hoodie, the chill in the dry air—air perfumed by the scents of woodsy life and seasonal decay—slithered down her spine; Lauren wrapped her arms tightly around her body. The trees towered over her, their arching branches casting angular shadows over the underbrush. The forest was silent today.

As she walked, she noticed red paint in the shape of an X on some of the larger trees. That wasn’t normal. Pausing, she examined the trees nearest the path with her lantern at the level of her eyes revealed; the paint was sticky. It was fresh.

Lauren continued along the path for a while. Then her nose wrinkled as the acrid smokiness of a fire scratched at her nose. Turning toward the scent, the faintest red and orange of a fire flickered in the distance. Its shadows danced against what looked like a tent. Who would be camping in the woods right now?

Her eyes flashed white once more, and Lauren’s focus returned to where she stood in Granny’s sitting room. Short, swift breaths pushed white clouds from her lips into the air. Shaking her head, coppery curls danced freely as the hood keeping them imprisoned fell against her back. She scratched her head, and in that moment, her eyes noticed muddy footprints on the floor. Lauren swallowed hard.

“I wiped my feet on the doormat,” she muttered in a cautious whisper. “Those are boot prints like mine though…”

She followed the path the prints made as their owner traversed from the sitting room and into the long and narrow bathroom. The medicine cabinet remained closed, but water dripped from the faucet of the pedestal sink. 

Granny must’ve washed her hands before taking her nap. I’ll turn it off for her.

As Lauren approached the sink, the flapping of the cream linen curtain surrounding the clawfoot tub evoked another flash of white light in her mind.

Screams burst from Lauren’s mind as she raced through the woods, leaving the tent’s door flapping behind her. Her heart pounded in her chest as she clumsily pulled her arms through the sleeves of her hoodie while balancing the cottage pie she carried. The frayed cuff smelled of smoke—both campfire and cigarette—and cheap beer. 

Twigs snapped beneath each hurried step. She turned her head back to see an older man burst from the tent. He shouted threats and hurled curses at her.

The shadows had deepened over the past few hours. The trees bent at unnatural angles, their branches clawing at her face, arms, and tits as she ran. 

Lauren gritted her teeth. She pushed on. Her eyes darted from side to side. Where was the path? She hadn’t strayed too far of. Had she? 

Pulling the lantern from her hoodie pocket, she pressed the power switch, and then switched it off once more. No. There could be no light. He would follow it. He would follow her.

What was it that one TikTok creator said about crocodiles? Zigzag! Would that work? With nothing to lose, Lauren zigzagged through the trees, jumping distances in the hopes any disruption of her steps might throw him off. 

Her face slammed into a towering oak. Lauren grunted. Shaking her head free, she paused to catch her breath. 

Lauren listened in the silence. Her heart pounded her ribs with a frantic intensity screaming she needed to run. Leaves crunched faster and faster. Twigs snapped louder and louder. Lauren again rushed through the forest.

Eventually, as the thinnest sliver of the moon peeked through the thinning clouds, she reached the forest’s edge. Lauren smiled. There was her grandmother’s cabin.

She leaped up the stairs two at a time until she reached the porch. Pausing to catch her breath, she ran her fingers through her hair, combing it as best she could, zipped up her hoodie, and then pulled the hood over her head. Her eyes saw the rocking chair over in the corner of the porch rocking in the breeze that pushed through.

“I made it,” she whispered with a relieved smile.

“What’s… happening?” Lauren whispered as she looked into the mirror. 

Parts of the curtain, of the linen cabinet, and of the ceiling appeared in the medicine cabinet’s mirror, reflected with the accuracy of a funhouse mirror. She turned away and then back to the mirror. Steam must have shrouded the reflection, as it now appeared farther away.

Her heartbeat quickened to match the pace of her breathing. Lauren’s eyes darted from side to side as she peeked out of the bathroom and into the narrow hallways. Settling and wood shrinkage caused the floorboards to be uneven beneath her steps.

“Granny? Granny?!” She called out.

No response.

Lauren staggered along the hallway toward her grandmother’s bedroom at the far end of the hall. Doors remained closed on both sides. Lauren counted ten doors and then twenty—twenty—where there should have been an additional four. No more than that. Her grandparents only had two children, and each had their own bedroom. One room was for laundry, and the other was the library and hobby room.

Lauren turned around as she passed ten doors. Only two doors—the bathroom and the library—appeared. She shook her head and continued along the hallway.

Granny’s bedroom was in a state of disarray. Clothing lay strewn about the floor. Shards of the lamp that once stood upon her nightstand littered the area near her closet.

“No!” Lauren gasped. Fearful thoughts and images raced through her mind.

And then she saw a sweaty amber PBR bottle on the nightstand where the lamp once stood. And her eyes flashed white.

She was back in the forest, seated upon a cut log before the crackling warmth of a blazing campfire. A gentle breeze blew across her cheeks as her eyes scanned the camp. A simple tent door flapped across the camp from her, and an axe, its blade slammed into a tree stump, rose beside it.

“A bit young to be out on your own, ain’t ya?”

Jeremy Barton, a man who looked almost as old as Lauren’s father, asked her that as sat beside her. As the chill in the air made her shiver, the scorpion tattoo on his left shoulder protruded from his sleeveless red-and-black flannel shirt.

“I’m seventeen,” she shot back. “I’m just going from one side of the forest to another. It’s a two-hour walk at best.”

“Seventeen,” Jeremy said, his voice dripping with patronizing faux-mockery. He then handed her a bottle of PBR. “Then you’re old enough for a beer or two.”

They talked; they laughed, and they shared their stories. Jeremy Barton was a carpenter who had been employed by the Forest Service to thin out some of the trees to ensure proper mineral extraction. Those trees scheduled for cutting he had marked with a red X. 

The beers flowed as they chatted. And his face slowly emerged in her mind. Tanned skin, dark hair peppered with streaks of silver and cut short in a nondescript style, and three-day stubble on his chiseled jaw marked him as generic—a nobody but everybody simultaneously. But Lauren found him cute—for a man of his age and in his own way. With each beer accepted, Jeremy slid closer to Lauren until he was practically next to her.

And then he kissed her.

The kiss was hot, passionate, and rough. Before Lauren could respond, he pinned her to the log beneath his body. She was curvy, but he was older, larger, stronger. She rolled from side to side and attempted to push his body off hers. Ignoring her struggle, however, Jeremy rested one calloused hand on her throat, holding her in place, while the other groped her tits.

“Don’t act like you don’t want this, you little whore,” he growled while thrusting a meaty hand down her pajama pants. “You’re already wet.”

With a yelp, Lauren’s eyes flashed white again. The rush of water spewing from the faucet screamed at her. She lay crumpled in a heap on the bathroom floor. Her jaw trembled; tears fell, and her breath came in ragged and fearful rasps. Bracing herself on the toilet, she struggled to her feet and stood before the mirror to wash her hands, her face, and her body. Then she shrieked at the clean reflection of the shower curtain, the cabinets, and the ceiling met her gaze, but her face was not framed by the mirror.

“What the fuck? What’s going on? Where is Granny? What happened?”

These questions echoed in her mind, bouncing from one shadowy corner to another, only flitting into the light for a brief moment long enough for her to almost piece together two clues. 

Lauren raced from room to room. An object laced with a tragic memory greeted her in each one. She returned to the sitting room and found the front door locked. She slammed against it, and it refused to budge. Spinning on her heels, she raced into the kitchen and through the farm door that led to the small alcove where her grandfather would change out of his field clothes to prevent dirtying the clean floors. 

The door opened, and Lauren raced into the herb garden at the edge of the fields that have remained barren since her grandfather passed away. Breath caught in her throat, and her eyes burst wide as her gaze focused on blood on the morning glory trellises. Her eyes descended to a foot inside a house shoe sticking out from beyond the trellis row.

“She’s dead?”

Lauren swallowed hard as she crept toward her grandmother’s body. Spilled blood drenched and darkened her house dress and watered the soil and the body beneath it, evidenced first from the Doc Marten poking from under her grandmother’s hip. 

Her gaze followed the line of the bodies; her hands and jaw trembled, and she struggled to hold back tears. Breaths, short, ragged, terrified, fell from her lips. A raven cawed as it flew across her field of vision, landing on something near the ground.

No!

Lauren raced toward the carrion bird, her heart thundering within her chest with each step. Halting when she reached the bird, she waved her arms and shouted, but the raven never flitted from its perch. Lauren shrieked as the green eyes, now lifeless, from her own head stared toward her. When her eyes recognized the raven perched upon the poll of an axehead whose blade was now buried inside her blood-soaked skull. And as the raven, perched upon the poll above her skull, feasted on her flesh, Lauren collapsed in tears, and then that same white light claimed her eyes.

With a grunt, Lauren stumbled as she fell onto the dirt beside the morning glory trellis. She crawled forward, her grandmother’s cries to run blazing in her ears. She stumbled to her feet only to have her grandmother fall forward, slamming into her back and knocking her down to the ground.

Lauren heard a crack; Granny rattled a rasping wheeze of a last breath, and then Jeremy Barton’s haggard voice growled out, “Sorry, Granny. I ain’t going back to jail, so I can’t have no witnesses.”

He grunted, and Lauren rolled onto her back as he yanked his axe from where it hacked into Granny’s spine. She shrieked, wept, and begged for mercy.

Jeremy just shook his head. “You had your chance, fucking bitch. Then you had to run off screaming.”

And then the axe came down, and all went black.

When Lauren’s vision returned, she stood within the thick pooling of shadows blanketing Granny’s porch, a triumphant smile illuminated her face. The clouds had parted, and while no rain had fallen, she had arrived safely, if later than expected, at the little white cottage on the border between the forest and the old family farm. The wooden chair granny sat in when she read a much younger Lauren fairytales and told her folktales of the region, the younger version of the woman now standing alone on the porch nestled in her lap, rocked in a breeze so gentle Lauren felt nothing of it. The lights were out, and the curtains were drawn tight. 

Lauren knocked thrice. 

 No answer.