The Pines

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. An angry north wind ransacked the pines. Their branches quivered the dark with a thousand grasping hands.

Faint whistling slipped between the rustle. Not the dull moan of wind through the cabin’s cracked walls and rusty keyholes. No, a melody, passed back and forth. A whistled tune against the darkness, with full and clear notes, like the words of a prayer. We'll say only that it was two hikers whistling.

(The ranger says it’s dangerous to say the hikers’ names. Through the names of the lost ones, They can find you, call to you.)

One hiker had light eyes, the other had dark eyes. Both were tired from a long day of hiking. They came to the Gila Wilderness for its primordial remoteness. World’s losing its mind, man, let’s hit the trail. Beyond the last Forest Service Station, there are no roads or services. Wish I could escape forever, leave it all behind. Nothing but faint trails and occasional fire lookouts, rising on spindly wooden legs, as in those stories of Baba Yaga’s cabin.

They hiked to escape the world and its discontents, to escape their own follies. Further and further with each outing—just slip through the cracks, get cozy where no one can bother me—they would sacrifice much, it seemed, to be free of life’s daily monsters. It isn’t easy to admit the desire to be lost—not since we’ve forgotten the forest’s swallowing power and made it into a playground of managed resources. But now that the hikers were lost, it occurred to them that maybe this was what they wanted all along.

Their whistling stopped. Even the pines knew it was too late to be hiking.

“I haven’t seen any trail marker in ages. We should pitch the tent here for the night,” said the hiker with light eyes.

“Just a little bit farther,” said the hiker with dark eyes.

“Why?” asked Light Eyes.

“The ranger said that after the burn scar, the forest should thin out into meadows. Figured that’d be a good spot to camp,” replied Dark Eyes.

“He also said to be careful,” Light offered.

“That’s why I’m trying to find us a nice open meadow,” Dark responded, a little curtly. “God the forest is so thick here, I’m surprised this area survived the fire.”

Light exhaled. “Sometimes it’s like we try to get lost. We should—"

In the distance, the candleflame flickered and winked, as though brushed by myriad hidden wings shaking off dust. The pines rustled their warning. They spoke with the wind, the only voice given to pines, but the hikers couldn’t understand them, not even their loud summer leaves. They rustled meaninglessly.

They cannot know, the pines said to each other. The approaching hikers—how many more will come?—with their boots and packs and bright summer smiles, they cannot know where the wicked light leads them. It isn’t easy to admit the desire to be lost. They cannot know the shapeshifters who fill the voids between with dark filament wings. Or what it is like to have no body but still to be endlessly unraveled. They cannot know that only terror survives, flickering forth as candlelight, to draw others who wish to escape.

“Wait—d’you see that light?” Dark interrupted. “There, there it is again, like a little fire or something.”

“What the—is that a candle? In a cabin?” In his wonder, Light lost what he planned to say.

The wind rushed and fell silent in turns, whipping the pines into a frenzied semaphore. The cabin came into view: a squat wooden rectangle, a grey pitched roof, a burning candle. It was probably an abandoned ranger’s outpost; staffing in the wilderness area is scarcer than it used to be. Something about the cabin didn’t belong, though: its rounder, fuzzy edges and bulbous roof—something’s not right—like the cabins of fairy tales.

“Who knows, maybe there’s a ranger staying there who enjoys reading by candlelight.” Light looked unconvinced. “Don’t worry. Grandpa would always light a candle in the window, on windy nights like these,” Dark said happily. “Seems like a good omen to me.”

“Yeah well my Grandpa wouldn’t be caught dead in any cabins in the woods. Didn’t trust them. Not enough of a home to keep the bad stuff out, enough of a structure to invite it in, he’d always say,” Light said darkly.

But Dark was already whistling again, whistling their tune as he approached the cabin.

* * *

The previous day, Light and Dark had driven until the road ended. Near the wilderness trailhead, an old miners’ General Store had been converted to a Forest Service Station. A ranger sat on the weathered porch, where a rainbow swarm of hummingbirds twittered around large nectar trays. He squinted, spit neatly into the dirt, and walked with heavy steps toward the hikers.

“Mornin’. What brings you fellas way out here?”

“O just looking for some solitude. It’s all wilderness area from here, right?”

“That’s right.” The ranger looked them over. “You’ll find your solitude, that’s for damn sure. I’d advise against it, though. Not many folks get out that way no more. At this rate, they’ll close this station too and I’ll be back to pushin’ papers. Lot of the forest up-trail burned in the La Tierra fire a few years back. Hell, do they burn hot these days. Decade of drought and no end in sight, ‘s a damn shame. Some remote patches of forest seem to’ve survived, but it’s easy to lose the trail up there, with all the ash and such. No service roads for days, so it’s harder’n’hell to keep things maintained. Downright eerie place, I don’t mind sayin’.”

“What about beyond the burn scar?”

“’Bout as pristine as anything on God’s green earth. The forest thins to high-alpine meadows and views down to the river. Long hard daytrip, though. You boys well supplied?”

“Yes, sir. No place too remote for us.”

“Mm-hmm.” The ranger hoisted his slacks and touched his hat nervously. “You do me a favor and leave an emergency contact in the trail log before you set off, okay? Don’t mean to scare you or nothin', but folks have a way of going missing between here and the next sign of civilization.” Always seems to be the ones don’t mind gettin’ lost. Got a death wish, some of these millennials, I swear, he thought.

“We appreciate the concern. Thanks again for your help.”

The ranger sighed. Something empty and sharp pulled at his gut, like the sensation of falling, with its queasy metal taste. “You come across anything strange out there, you turn right around, you hear?”

Dark dismissed the question with a laughing hand-swish, but Light was concerned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The ranger made clucking indecisive sounds with hands on hips. Another sigh. “Well. You boys ever heard talk of thin places? Where, well, stuff that’s not what you’d call natural slips through—” He shapes the last words with rounded hand gestures, like he’s polishing a crystal ball. “—all’s I know is it seems to get, well, worse after a big fire. Something ‘bout the e-co-systemic balance being off and whatnot. You get what you could call hot spots, you know, where They seem to gather together to uh, well, cause trouble you could say.”

“They?”

Big fires make Them angry, makes ‘em want to take something back, the ranger thinks, but he can’t bring himself to say it.

He throws his hands up. “All’s I’m sayin’ is I’ve been at this forty years—I’ve heard some strange stories and seen some strange things, and nothing stranger than after big fires. So you just promise me you’ll take care, alright? You see somethin’ or hear somethin’ shouldn’t be there, you get yourselves back here and don’t think twice.”

They’re already walking away when the ranger remembers he forgot to tell them: “Oh! And keep your names out of that trail log, understand? Emergency contact only.”

Dark chuckles. “Guy’s a bit of a loon, huh?”

* * *

Light followed Dark to the empty cabin. But someone must have lit the candle, come on.

They walked around back, hoping to find the cabin's resident smoking a pipe or taking the night air, but there was only another filthy window catching stray candlelight. The flame scattered nearby trees with cobweb shadows of black lace that looked like huddled eyes inside a kaleidoscope.

A tremendous ringing rose in their heads. All of those eyes were beautiful and deep in a dissociative kind of way—just slip between the cracks—so the ringing was hardly noticeable until it was everywhere, a cold flanging gong buried inside, where something, it seemed, was yawning open.

Dark stopped whistling—you see somethin’ or hear somethin’ shouldn’t be there—tugged at his ears, tried to shake away the ringing—

—and a whistle came from the trees. Then a woody cr-ack, and the fearful rustled pines between silences. Dark held up a hand, quiet, then made a birdlike call. The call was returned from the woods west of the cabin.

“Sounds like a bird.”

But then the call came from all directions, above and below and around them, encircling the treetops, filling their ears. It mimicked the hikers' tune, and the pines' rustle too, becoming fast and frantic: the lush impatient whistle of an unhinged animal learning to speak.

“That is not a bird, man.”

Their hearts thumped jagged rhythms that climbed spider-like through their heads. Light started running and pulling raw wheezing breaths. He tripped and fell, and for a moment the world was knocked off its track, or back onto its track, because he saw the cabin alone in a charred forest of black ash, skeletal pines. The pines shuttered between frames—burned, alive, burned, alive—until the Whistle unspooled, many-voiced, into echoed dissonant layers.

The hikers clattered through the heavy cabin door, through the rift that fire had opened—there was no time to choose really, terror doesn’t leave any spaces between—and inside, shadow-shapes like resinous flowers opened to receive them, Light and Dark.

The candleflame was a place of bliss, at least for a moment, long enough for them to think, Yes.

(The ranger says that’s how They trick you: there’s no way out once you’ve gotten cozy and thought for even a blink that maybe this is what you’ve wanted all along, maybe They can help—)

A few moths fluttered across the cabin as the candleflame grew large and cold-bright. Light and Dark understood everything at last—

(They give you a kind of illumination, before They take you into that insane darkness. Or so the ranger says.)

They blinked their light and dark eyes, spoke each other’s names. They clutched their bodies, clung to heartbeats—too late now—any tethering thread to the mad and beautiful real world, but it was too late now. Already their broken hologram skin flickered, already the cabin was lost in the candleflame maze, where nothing could catch up with itself. Things were becoming other things, changing without image or sound. Above and below and around them (within them?) the winged void folded and unfolded Their endless occult outlines. That sentient oblivion seemed to ring with a laugh or a scream you might finally hear if you got a little bit closer—

—NOO I didn’t mean it, I wanna go I can’t no-o anywhere—I can’t, where am I? I’m sorry please Iwannagohome—make it st—

The moths shook off dust in the windowsill, and there was no difference anymore between light and dark. The candleflame settled. Outside, the pines shivered for those lost.

* * *

Meanwhile, night fell and fell on the Forest Service Station until the ranger gasped awake. His head flanged with a bottomless ringing drone. Nightsong buzzed in the hard shells of insects. The ringing made them malevolent, gathered them into one huge, encroaching sound. Old floorboards groaned from lumbering steps, and the old ranger groaned his way outside, clutching wild hair.

No, no no no, not again—damn fools, like moths to flame—

The air became dusty from his pacing in the dirt, until all at once the ringing stopped and the insects fell silent. The ranger fell to his knees, muttered curses and prayers. The insect song resumed. One more glance toward the lightless trailhead was all he could muster before trudging back to the porch.

No hummingbirds anymore: only frail moths swarming one harsh light.