Someone who wanted to remain hidden

In running through the darkest part of the woods, he tripped and was violently flung to the ground. Stunned, he didn’t move for a moment—wondering how he could fall so hard. He tried to get up, but a sharp pain in his ribs dissuaded him from trying it a second time. He tried looking around, but the world was blurry. Had he hit his head? It took a few seconds for him to realize that he had lost his glasses during the sudden impact, and he now searched for them with his hand, unwilling to sit up quite yet. He felt along the dirt and found a root. Could this be what tripped him? That would make sense. He felt a long the root and was surprised that he could put his hand all the way around it. That was his first mistake.

His brain was reasoning that, of course, a root sticking up out of the earth like that could certainly trap one’s foot. Perhaps this root could also help him get up. He squeezed the root. That was his second mistake. And then he pulled on it as he rolled over in an attempt to hoist himself up.

It was then that the root pulled back, and he felt bony fingers enclose his own wrist. He opened his mouth in shock. Third mistake. In a hypersecond his was violently pulled down again, and because his mouth was open, he soon had a mouth full of dirt, which he lacked the air to spit out, since the wind had been knocked out of him again. He tossed his head from side to side, physically trying to get the dirt out of his mouth. Then, thankfully, he was able to draw in a breath from his nose and spit most of it out. However, the taste was one he would never be able to erase from his sensory memory—a kind of dank moldiness, with a metallic undertone. The taste sounded like the tolling of a large bell, like bats streaming out from a cave in the dark of night.

He cursed his decision to come on this mushroom foraging weekend with his girlfriend. He could have been at a baseball game with his buddies.

After spitting out as much as he could, his second task was to deal with whatever still had a grip on his wrist. Should he try to tear himself away, thereby bringing on further violence from the creature who clasped him, or should he turn to see what he was dealing with. He wanted to do the latter, but could not summon his body to move. In truth, he was afraid of what he might see. His hand had telegraphed to his brain that it was enclosed on a root, but the actions suggested otherwise. He tried to call for help, but it was as if he was in a dream and his voice was unusable. His throat strained, but no sound came out. He would have to turn over and face his captor. He took a breath (through the nose, again, as he was loathe to breathe in any residual dirt) and rolled over.

What he saw was a vision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The bony hand that clasped him was not a root, though it looked as gnarled as the cedar roots he had seen earlier in the day. His eyes slowly traced the bony arm attached to the hand, and wavered over the shoulder and chest, with shrunken breasts—a woman. He slowly looked up into this female creature’s face. Sunken eyes burned out of their sockets, like the figure of death in a Hans Baldung painting. The lips were cracked and blackened. When they parted, no sound came out.

He felt his own throat constrict into a scream, but he, too, was unable to make a sound.

Gripped by an extreme desire to extricate himself from this monster, he jerked his arm with all this might. The creature’s face screwed up with pain. With her eyes closed, she opened her mouth again, and this time he could hear something that seemed hardly more than a breath, “Help.” He looked down at the rest of her body and saw her foot was at an unnaturally angle. What he took to be dirt, were bruises. What had happened? He regained his voice.

“I will go for help,” he said.

She screwed her eyes tighter shut and shook her head side-to-side while maintaining that preternatural grip on his arm.