Dead Zone

Amber sighed… because she’d seen that boulder before.

“Jenny,” she said.

“I see it,” Jenny sighed her reply.

“You know,” Amber said as she turned on the spot, trying to pinpoint the cause of their looping trajectory, “I thought you said you went orienteering a lot.”

“I did,” agreed Jenny.  “What I didn’t say was I wasn’t good at it.”

“Why wouldn’t you say that?” Amber begged.  “If we were going to bury ourselves in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, why wouldn’t you mention that you’re bad at directions?”

“Because,” Jenny explained matter-of-factly, “I didn’t want to admit that, once again, I rode the coattails of whichever orienteering group I was partnered with at the meet ups.”

“Every.  Frickin’.  Group Project,” said Amber, reminiscing on their college days while still inspecting the landscape.

“I also figured that there’d at least be a trail,” Jenny added more irritably.

“There is a trail,” Amber corrected.

“Well, one you could actually follow,” Jenny replied.  “This is just, like, a crap ton of bushes and trees and a random white stripe here and there.  I don’t even see how they get off calling it a trail.”

Amber ignored the complaint and pressed her point, “You’re aware I didn’t bring the satellite phone because of your orienteering experience, right?”

“No,” replied Jenny.  “I was not aware of that.”

“Where is the next trail marker?” Amber asked the empty forest more than her hiking companion.  “What, does it take a hard left or something?  Or did we take a hard left when it was supposed to be a forty-five?”

No matter where Amber looked, she couldn’t see a single white blaze marking the unmaintained trail.  In fact, she couldn’t even see the place they’d come from.  If they’d passed this boulder before, then the last marker she’d seen was on that ponderosa just to the northeast… right?  She could have sworn it was right there.  But the tree’s trunk was an unbroken sea of rusty red and black bark.

Amber huffed exasperation through her nostrils and pulled out her phone.  Still no signal.  Of course.

“Please tell me you have at least one bar,” Amber begged her friend.

Jenny pulled her phone out of her pocket and inspected the screen.  Looking glum, she shook her head.

“No service,” she said.

Amber let her head fall back onto her shoulders.

“Whyyyyy didn’t I bring the satellite phone?” she begged her past self.  Recovering, she instructed, “Okay.  I’m turning on my SOS.  You should, too.  If either of us wanders into a not-completely-dead zone, the closest 911 dispatch should pick up our location.”

“Okay,” Jenny obliged, although she didn’t sound very convinced.

“For now…,” Amber looked over the area one more time, “I swear there was a blaze on that pine, and we came up to it before the boulder, so if we go this way, maybe we can just go home by backtracking instead of completing the loop.”

“I’ll follow you,” said Jenny.

As Amber headed in the direction of her absolute best guess, Jenny fell in step beside her.  Then, the latter giggled, and looped her arm about her friend’s elbow, adding a giddy little skip.

“It’s like all my orienteering meet ups!” Jenny tittered.  “I’ll just follow you!”

Amber rolled her eyes so hard she almost sprained a muscle.

“Does any of this look familiar?” Jenny asked.

“God, I was going to ask you that,” Amber breathed, dejected.

They stopped trudging through the carpet of dead pine needles to try and get their bearings once more.  This was getting ridiculous.  How could they get this lost?  Amber had been hiking since she was little and she had never gotten lost.  She chastise herself, because in a moment of complete honesty, she realized her lack of bringing the satellite phone might not have been just her misplaced faith in Jenny but a little bit of overconfidence in her own abilities.

“You don’t have any signal yet, do you?” she asked.

Jenny pulled out her cell just as Amber did the same.

“Not a one,” said Jenny.

“Me neither.  Damnit.”

Amber stared down the sun where it was sinking westward ever more rapidly.  This was getting bad fast.  At this elevation, the night would get chilly quick if they didn’t make some kind of shelter and start up a fire.  Their day hike was quickly becoming a camping trip.  Surprise….

“Okay, let’s just try and go downhill for a bit,” said Amber.

“Why?” asked Jenny, perplexed.

“Because we might be out here a while, so we should find water, and water likes to go down,” said Amber, walking toward the nearest slope.

“So the more down you go—,”

“The more likely you are to find water,” said Amber.  “Didn’t pack the satellite phone, but I packed the iodine tablets, like an idiot.  Wouldn’t need the tablets if I’d packed the satellite phone.  God, did I unwittingly walk through someone’s cloud of pot smoke before I loaded the backpacks?  The Hell….”

Then Jenny’s phone rang.

Both Jenny and Amber froze, awestruck.

“Oh my God, answer it!” Amber shouted when she recovered from the unexpected occurrence.

Jenny fumbled to yank her phone out of her pocket as quickly as she could.  If she hadn’t been in such a rush, she would have paused in perplexity at the unusual number above the “unknown caller” ID.

“Hello?!” Jenny shouted when finally she had the phone to her ear.

“Don’t go into the hollow!”

“What?”

It was a woman’s voice that cut through a mess of static.

“Don’t go into the hollow!” she repeated.

“Is this the ranger tower?” Jenny asked.

Beep beep beep.  The call dropped.

Jenny pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the screen.  Once again, she had no service.

“Damnit!” she hissed.

Then she backed up a half step, hoping she’d wander into the pocket of reception she must have walked through by happenstance.  When that didn’t work, she held the device aloft in case the signal was better overhead.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny grumbled.  “It was a woman.  That’s about all I’ve got.”

“That’s it?” Amber said incredulously.  “What did she say?”

Jenny gave her friend a confused look.  “‘Don’t go into the hollow’.”

Amber had to pause for a moment, her expression just as confused as her friend’s.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Amber considered the advice from the disembodied voice on the phone.  It seemed like a reasonable request.  And yet, if they didn’t continue downward for fear of some unknown hollow for some unknown reason, they might not find water.  That would certainly mean death.

“Well,” Amber said, “let’s just keep an eye out as we go and see if we can avoid any hollows we come across.”

Jenny shrugged.  “Fine by me.”

When the phone rang again after an hour of walking, Jenny took more time to inspect the screen.

“Does it say who it is this time?” Amber asked.

“No…,” Jenny said quietly.

There was still an “Unknown Caller” on the ID.  The number that appeared below it was 131-313-1313.  And while all of that was unusual, what sent a chill down Jenny’s spine was the tiny words buried in the upper left-hand corner; No Service.

“What?” Amber asked, concerned.  Her friend was not a quiet person, and Jenny’s stillness irked her.  “What’s wrong?”

Jenny lifted her phone so Amber could see what she saw.  The woman felt the same chill run down her back that her friend had.

Before Amber could get her wits about her, Jenny turned her phone back over and answered the call, this time holding it flat before her and turning on the speaker.

“Hello?” Jenny asked.

“Don’t go into the hollow!”

Amber felt rooted to the spot at the tone of desperation in the speaker’s voice.

“Who is this?” Jenny asked.

“Don’t go into the hollow!” This voice was different; a man’s.  But the fear in his words was just as strong as the woman’s.

Amber felt an irrational urge well up inside her, and she took a step forward.

“This isn’t funny!” she scolded, even though her voice wavered.

Beep beep beep.  They were gone again.

Neither Jenny nor Amber moved for several moments.  This was all just too weird.  It didn’t help that the sun was nearly set and the air was cooling rapidly.  The shadows of the trees were growing long and at a glance they seemed like twisted figures lurking between the boles.

“I say we don’t go into the hollow,” said Jenny.

“Yeah…,” Amber agreed.

But then she shook off the blanket of dread that had overcome her.  She felt as if she were coming back to her senses, back to the real world.

“Or these assholes know there’s resources down in this hollow and they’re trying to scare people away,” she spat.

“Like what?” Jenny asked.

“Like water, or a stand of wild berry bushes or something—I don’t know!” Amber postulated angrily.

“I mean…,” Jenny replied, “maybe.  But, if we don’t even know where the hollow is, why would they tell us?  Seems like a dumb move.”

“Yeah,” Amber had to agree.  “Yeah, I guess.  Wow, I don’t know what came over me.”

Amber shook herself again.  She was starting to lose track of her emotions.  Perhaps it was this whole being lost in the woods for the first time in her life with daylight running out.  It had her more frazzled than when she pulled an all-nighter on a paper that could have been finished a week ago.  Perhaps because the consequences today were a hell of a lot more real.

“Let’s just keep doing what we were doing,” Amber said.  “Find water, find a place to camp, and avoid any hollows.”

Jenny nodded and followed her friend further downhill.

“Oh, Amber,” Jenny practically whimpered.  “Where the hell are we?”

“I don’t know,” Amber replied.  “We’ve been going east this whole time.  The main trail runs straight north and south.  We should have hit it by now.”

They paused to take in their surroundings, which was difficult because they were relying on the scant light from a crescent moon.  They should have set up camp a long time ago, but Amber kept thinking they’d find some kind of salvation by now, including the main trail.  She couldn’t understand what was going on; her instincts had never been this far off.  She wondered if she should stop trusting herself so much… but that didn’t seem quite right either.  It was as if there was something else leading them in the wrong direction all the time, something Amber didn’t have control over.  Something she couldn’t name or see, or even comprehend.

“Have you got any signal?” Amber asked.

“No,” said Jenny.  She sounded on the brink of tears.  “Amber… I’m scared.”

“Don’t be scared,” said Amber.  “Scared is how you die.”

“I’m still scared—AAH!”

Jenny’s phone rang, the sudden shriek of synthesized music piercing the quiet abyss of the night, making them both jump.  Jenny hated to look at her screen, especially when her fears were confirmed by the same unknown caller who called with no signal.  But the number was different this time: 138-742-9875.

Jenny picked up, her fingers trembling as she hit speaker.

“Who the hell are you?!” Jenny screamed at the phone.

This time it was not just the woman or the man, but a cacophony of voices along with them.  They overlaid one another, some yelling, some weeping, some quietly insistent in their command.  But all of them said the same thing.

“Don’t go into the hollow!”

“What fucking hollow?!” Amber yelled.

“Don’t go into the hollow!  Don’t go into the hollow!”

“Why are you doing this?!” Amber shouted back.

“Don’t go into the hollow!”

Jenny had started crying.  Amber would have, too, if she wasn’t so infuriated.  She snatched the phone from Jenny’s hand and hurled it at a tree.  The screen shattered and the case bent, and it thudded to the ground, silent and dark.  Jenny couldn’t even be mad; she was too grateful the voices had stopped.

As they stood panting, their breath fogging in the chill air, disturbed by the phone call, a tree creaked behind them.  It was loud enough they turned quickly, huddling together at the sound amongst the silence.  They searched the area, but it was too dark to see anything.  It was probably just a tree.  Nevertheless, they slowly backed away.

Then, Jenny’s dead phone lit up, but it didn’t ring.  This time, there was no mechanical distortion, no static; just a voice that whispered;

“Don’t go into the hollow….”

The ground gave way beneath Amber’s heels, just enough that she tipped backwards.  She didn’t mean to snag the strap of Jenny’s hiking backpack.  It was merely the one thing she managed to hook as she flailed for a handhold.  Instead of stopping her fall, she brought Jenny down with her.

It took forever and an instant all at once, falling down the steep hill they hadn’t know was there.  Their motion was too chaotic to stop, or even slow themselves, but they tumbled end over end through the underbrush for such an extended time it was clear the drop was far and steep.  When finally they rolled onto level ground, they were battered, bruised, and half submerged in a deep leaf litter.

Groaning and gasping, Amber slowly tried to push herself up and look around.  As she did so, she assessed each new ache and pain in her body.  She might have tweaked a wrist, maybe scratched up a knee.  Nothing too bad, considering.  Before she took in her surroundings, she looked for the vague lump of her friend, spotting her a short distance away.

“Jenny?” Amber asked, as loud as her voice could stand.  “You okay?”

“I… might have sprained my ankle, but…,” Jenny replied weakly, “mostly okay?  I think?  Where—oh no….”

At the moan from her friend, Amber looked around and realized what Jenny was lamenting.  They had fallen down a steep incline… into a hollow.

They both struggled to their feet.

“How did this happen?” Jenny begged.  “We were just going for a hike!”

“I don’t know,” Amber replied, finally shedding tears.

“We have to get out of here,” said Jenny.

Amber didn’t take the time to agree.  They both started walking the edge of the wide, open hollow, searching for a way out: an incline that was gradual enough they could get a foothold, or a section of hillside that was dotted with bushes and saplings they could use to pull themselves up and out.  But every time they thought they found a potential escape route, there was just one thing wrong with it: one spot too steep for too long to climb past, one patch too devoid of underbrush to reach for the next anchor.

And it looked hopeless.

Just as Jenny was starting to realize there was no way out, she spotted something odd on the trunk of the nearest tree.  No, not on; in.  Was it a wound with hardened sap?  But the color seemed wrong.  Of course, it was too dark for her eyes to see color clearly.  Still….

She edged closer, almost without realizing what she was doing.  With each step, something grew heavier in the pit of her stomach, but it didn’t seem to matter… she had to know….

It was the shape of a woman.  Her body, long since dead and bloated and drained of blood, was visible due only to the deep, curving crevice in the tree.  Jenny’s mouth fell agape as she realized what she was looking at.

Then the corpse’s eye opened and looked directly at her.  Jenny gasped and stumbled backward just a step.

The dead woman’s voice was a whisper, a familiar whisper, and it carried a terrible melancholy.  “I told you to stay away.”

Jenny loosed a bloodcurdling scream.

“Jenny!” Amber shouted, whirling toward her friend.

“Bodies!” Jenny shrieked as she back peddled.  “Bodies in the trees!”

Just as Jenny pivoted and ran toward Amber, a sharp spear of a tree branch curled down and ran Jenny through her back.  She didn’t even cry out.  She only froze in shock, her jaw dropping.

But Amber screamed, horrified by the sight of the branch protruding from her friend’s torso, darkened by thick, almost black red blood.

“JENNY!”

Jenny couldn’t hear her.  With blood pouring from her mouth, her face fell slack and her arms dropped to her sides.  She lolled as the branch retreated, dragging the dying young woman back to disappear into a deep gash the tree had opened in its trunk.

“We told you to stay away,” the whispers then echoed about Amber, coming from all around the hollow.  “We told you to stay away….”

Amber looked for the owners of the voices and as she turned, she saw all the trees slowly open up to reveal the numerous dead bodies they stored in their boles, grey with death and decay, tucked beneath the gnarled bark.

Amber’s phone rang in her pocket.  She shrieked, yanking it out to get it away from her body.  Exposed to the air, it answered for her.  Its screen glared brighter than was possible as a high-pitched keening of overloaded static followed the voices that came through the speaker; “We told you to stay away….”

Amber dropped her phone in the leaf litter where it sparked and smoldered.  She sprinted for the hillside as every tree in the hollow came alive.

Three steps up the slope, she slipped and fell hard, sliding back down.  When she tried to stand up again, she was tripped. It felt as if her foot was bound at the ankle.  She looked back to see a sinuous root gripping her leg.  Then, slowly, it pulled her back into the hollow toward a voracious tree.

As the crevice opened to swallow her, she heard a long, deep, creaking rumble of a voice croon, “Mmm… delicious….”