Gone

Annabelle was up at dawn, as usual, even though she didn’t have anywhere to be, or anything to do. She drank her coffee as she stood in the small kitchen of the cabin she had rented for a week. She stared out of the window over the sink into the deep woods. Most of the trees had dropped their brown leaves, but some still clung stubbornly onto forlorn limbs.

She decided to build a fire in the fireplace, the cabin was drafty and a fire sounded nice.

She set her coffee cup down and stepped out onto the covered front porch. The fall air was crisp and there was a light fog coming off of the river, which ran past the dirt road to the cabin. She gathered several pieces of wood and went back inside.

She didn’t know much about building fires, but she was industrious, so she assembled paper and cardboard and stacked the wood into what she thought was a perfect pile. She used the lighter on the mantel and lit the paper, which soon caught the cardboard. She adjusted the chimney flue until the flames spread around the logs. She stood back and admired her handiwork. Soon the fire crackled and she could feel it’s warmth.

She went back to the kitchen, warmed up her cup of coffee and opened the refrigerator. She stopped at the local grocery store on her way to the cabin last night, but she had only purchased a few things, some yogurt, a few bottles of water, a small jar of grape jelly to go with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. She shut the refrigerator door. She decided she would go back to town later, maybe find a local café, or go back to the grocery store.

There was a trail head near the dirt road of her cabin and she thought a morning hike would be nice.

She changed into leggings, boots and an oversized sweatshirt. She looked at her phone, and realized again, that there wasn’t any reception in the woods. The last time she had reception was at the gas station on the way into the little town. She set her phone down. She wouldn’t be calling anyone anyway.

Annabelle was thirty- two and going through a divorce. Her husband, soon to be ex, Todd, was presently soothing the wounds of divorce by sleeping with a twenty something that she was sure he met on Tinder. She only knew about it from one of their mutual friends, who came over to her house a few weeks prior with a bottle of wine.

Annabelle was a state criminal defense attorney. It wasn’t her first choice for a profession when she passed the bar and moved to Memphis, but the public defenders commission had an immediate opening and she thought it would be a good start. Then she met Todd, who was a private criminal defense attorney. He worked in a firm downtown which only represented high profile defendants. His yearly income more than doubled hers, but she found meaning in her work. She represented people who made mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes, but who were often the product of their environment and who had generations of relatives in prison. She prided herself on her ability to negotiate deals that would keep her clients out of prison and from becoming another statistic.

She had a good life, with a meaningful career, attractive successful husband, and a downtown loft. Her marriage started to derail two years ago, when she turned 30. They discussed children but decided to wait a few more years, and save up some more money to buy a house in Germantown. She thought the subject was settled but shortly after that decision, Todd seemed to go through a midlife crisis. He became obsessed with fitness. In the seven years of their marriage he would occasionally work out or run, but he joined a CrossFit gym and would spend hours before or after work with his gym buddies. She joined him during those first few months, but she much preferred her 5am spin class or the occasional hot yoga. She thought it was a phase, and it was sometimes cute how he talked about it all the time, but his obsession with fitness seemed to bring about other changes, including various get rich quick schemes with his workout buddies.

The final straw was when he took sixty thousand dollars from their joint savings account and invested it in a fledgling bit coin operation. Within three months he had lost all of the sixty thousand and emptied the remainder of their savings to invest in another "sure thing". She flatly told him no, but he ignored her and did it anyway. They had a bitter fight and she left that night and went to stay at a friend’s house. She hoped he would come to his senses, but it had been eight months and other than to discuss the divorce, they had barely spoken since.

The loft was for sale, she couldn’t afford the rent and he had to pay her back her share of the lost savings. She was staying in a friends spare bedroom while she looked for an apartment she could afford. She was ready to get the divorce over with so she could start a new life.

She closed the door to the cabin behind her and walked down the dirt road toward the trailhead. She looked at her watch, she had left her useless phone on the kitchen counter, it was almost 7am. The trail was a two mile loop. She could walk the trail and be back at the cabin in time to go to town for lunch.

The trail wasn’t much more than a narrow path cut into the woods. She was soon climbing the hillside along the river and she couldn’t see the road, or the cabin anymore. She loved early morning walks. It was always quiet and still, even in the city.

Her feet crunched along the leaves. She tried not to dwell on the divorce, or let her mind settle on the thought of turning thirty three in a few months. If she ever did want children, she was going to have to find a partner and sooner rather than later.

She stepped over a fallen branch and wondered how long it had been since anyone else had walked the trail. The path started to wind down the hillside and she assumed she was circling the loop which lead back to the road.

She rounded a large tree and stopped quickly. There was something laying in the middle of the path directly ahead of her. It looked like a box and it was certainly out of place. She looked around and saw nothing but trees. She approached the box cautiously. As she got closer she could tell it wasn’t debris that had drifted into the woods, it looked like it had been purposely placed there. She stood over it. It was a plain square box, a little bigger than an average size shoe box, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with twine. It didn’t have any visible markings. She looked around again, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

She stood over it a few more minutes and debated whether to turn around or step around it and continue on the path. She couldn’t shake the idea that it looked to be deliberately placed in the middle of the path. She decided to pick it up, she didn’t have to open it, she could just shake it a little.

It was light, and there couldn’t be much in there, nothing rattled around when she shook it. She held the box in her hands a little longer. She decided to open it. A small box couldn’t be that dangerous.

She pulled the twine and it fell to the ground. She briefly considered that she might be making a mistake, but she parted the brown paper, folded back the cardboard lid, and peered inside. Inside the box was one folded piece of plain white paper. She glanced around her again, and again, there was nothing unusual. She reached inside and plucked the piece of paper and unfolded it.

“Annabelle,

Step inside if you would like to join us.”

Written in plain bold pencil.

Her heart skipped a beat and she dropped the box and the paper. She looked around slowly. Nothing moved in the woods and the birds chattered as usual. A thousand thoughts raced through her mind. “Who could have written this? Who knew she was here? Was she in danger? Step inside where?”

She decided to walk a little farther down the trail, to see if someone was waiting for her. She crept as quietly as she could until she came to a bend in the trail and she could see straight down into the valley near the river. There was no one around. She looked up into the trees, nothing. She turned and walked quietly back to the box. She picked up the box and turned it around in her hands several times. The paper stuck to the box but didn’t appear to be taped. There wasn’t any writing on the box or the brown paper. She reached down and picked up the note. She read it again, but it didn’t make any more sense than it did the first time. She was reminded of the old saying about how curiosity killed the cat, and she thought maybe she should just go back to the cabin, pack her bags and go back home. She paused when she thought of that, she didn't have a home to go to. So instead, she set the box upright on the ground and peered inside. She wasn’t sure why she did it, but she lifted one foot to step into the box, even though it was too small for her to actually stand inside it, but as she set her foot down the box wavered like a mirage. She jumped back quickly.

Surely it was just her mind playing tricks on her. The box was a perfectly normal box, sitting on a path in the woods. She reached down and picked it up, and turned it around again. It was perfectly normal.

She set it down and lifted her foot and paused over the box. Had she lost her mind? She thought again about how she should just turn around, but she realized she didn’t want to go back to Memphis and deal with her pending divorce. She didn’t want to fret about having children or finding love. She wanted to step inside the box and disappear.

She set her foot down inside the box and the mirage appeared again, the box and the ground waivered beneath her. She lifted her other foot and set it down inside the box as well.

The plain white note lifted on a breeze and tumbled into the woods along with the leaves. The birds sang their morning song but the trail was silent, and empty.