The Outer Perimeter Society

I wasn’t planning on writing much of anything this week, maybe not even this month but I got wildly intrigued about the idea of completing another challenge and have always wanted to try one of these for myself—so be kind—as this is my first and I am not sure I did this exactly right. Today’s story is more of an inspiration from something a bit spooky and a lot less magic. I was feeling something in the vein of macabre for summer so I decided upon the “All Night Long” challenge—the guise of which intrigues me. A story that spans the whole night, without using the words night, light, dark, day. It’s a mystery, what will happen next, but I am excited to see where this story takes me, and you, the reader. I started with the title— "The Outer Perimeter Society” joyless, nefarious sorts of folk who inhabit the dusky, gloomy, shade ridden edge of our world. The ones who hunt in our obscure radiance and wait on baited breath for those of us who can’t help ourselves, and let curiosity win, even if for just a little bit, but what are they hiding, what are their secrets? Some of this is likely also inspired by my most recent movie outing to see: Weapons—which was a small treat. I love the doors it unlocked in the mind but wish it would have been slightly more realistic in regards to the missing persons, that would have been exquisite (imho). But for now, let’s see what happens with this story—hope you enjoy!!!

Let me start by saying this isn’t usually how this sort of story goes. I am typically much more sensible with my time but the idea of certain death surely rattled me to my core, rooting me to the very spot I stood patiently waiting for what would inevitably come. Fifteen people were rumored to have traveled these same trails looking for the outcast and the missing but they had never done it like this. It didn’t help that I dreamed of her again, my dearest friend Emmaline, Emma for short. It also wasn’t helping that I had spent majority of the afternoon looking for her, like I had every week for the past two-years. She’d last been seen hiking in the Freya Falls Canyon. Photos from her posts still haunt me this very moment. Her smiling face peering up through the phone as she rested by Bridal Lake.

This should have been my first sign. I had been walking for hours, and I had, up until now, not seen a single lake, or a marking for any other body of water for that matter and I was starting to feel a twinge of hopelessness creeping in.

I checked the screenshot of her last post saved in my phone, hoping for a clue of some kind to lead me in the right direction. Her caption was far more disturbing than anything I had seen thus far and read more like some twisted child’s nursery rhyme:

“Don’t settle for what you can’t see for they are all around you, even now. Feel them crawl up your back and down your spine. Their eyes devour what the mind cannot. Their down-sun trot leaves you in the dusk, until you wake for more than just blood-lust.”

What was the difference between back and spine? Weren’t they the same thing? I started to wonder if I really needed to know the answer to her riddle or if some things were better off left unknown.

This thought was interrupted by the woods. They were changing into something fierce. Soft hints of muted grey made the trees blend into one and the hairs stand stiff on my neck.

Shades of sunset washed over and I realized just how dangerous this place could be. In the eerie stillness, I couldn’t even see the eyes of a predator looming over.

Her words rung like a forlorn bell— “do you find yourself feeling brave when you walk alone in the woods? I surely do not.”

This thought turned my stomach. I supposed you must be curious as to why I decided to take this little investigation upon myself, to venture far into the unknown and not tell a single soul— Or maybe you are curious as to how I found out about the people who haunt the outer perimeter, the society that should never, ever should have been. Sitting here alone in my rabid thoughts, I decided it must be some form of guilt. After all, I was supposed to be on that trip with Emmaline so naturally my mind wanders to what could have been.

Maybe if I had been there, none of this would have happened or maybe I would also be missing alongside her. Maybe. Just Maybe.

But…Before delving any further, you should know— she told me not to tell anyone. She made me promise.

Maybe that is why we are here instead of there.

All because she trusted me, and now, in this obscure place I can’t (for the life of me) think of one good reason to have ventured here by myself. I absolutely do not recommend it.

There’ve been six-hundred-and-sixty-five rotations around the sun since then, and this by far has been the most unsettling of them all. I can’t recall what was so important I wasn’t able to make a simple weekend hike. But as with everything else—what was one more going to hurt, a few more hours until the veil was pierced and I could finally get some answers.

So I settled, I settled in for a long stretch of waiting. Pitch black, dense air and the soft velvety crisp can of energy I had at the ready. I wasn’t about to miss what would happen next.

I thought back to the last conversation Emma and I had—and how she told me about the people she had seen in the woods. People. People do many strange things. You can imagine if left to your own devices how far one would go to scratch an itch (or itch a scratch).

People trusted me with their secrets, Emma trusted me with her secrets and I was coming to learn, I really shouldn’t be trusted. I am quite incapable of keeping anything safe—not my friends, not myself and surely not a bunch of people I had yet to meet. I hadn’t even thought of a good plan for getting back. Maybe these people wouldn’t be lost if they too could step out of the shadows—but that was too easy, wasn’t it. They would have already done so, if they could, right?

So, the question begged, what was keeping them back?

If I had been paying an ounce of attention, I would have turned around and left well enough alone, but, as things go—I had come to far to leave. I didn’t wake up feeling particularly different. No bad feeling, no sick stomach, or inkling of doubt in the back of my mind. Nothing, just normal, unremarkable me.

I wish I could promise you this ends well, but all that ends well is not always lost—or so they say. I can’t tell you I will survive this trek. For now, most certainly, one thing is clear. Something is very wrong with these woods. Don’t let their peaceful façade fool you into contended slumber as the timbers of dusk softly lull you.

Emma came to me once in person and twice in a dream. I remember it as though she was a brief flame igniting the smallest candle. A dream I scarcely recall come morning, but her voice lingered long, long after, vivid and just out of reach—

“You have to find them, but only once evening arrives. You must know exactly where to look, and trust me, you won’t believe it until you see it for yourself but always know, I promise. If I go missing, I am never truly gone. You will be the one who saves us. Just go to the bend and you will see the place where the water meets the rise. They will let you in. Just ask and you shall climb.”

Her words rattled my brain until the contorted mess turned to mush. White noise filled my ears, nearly deafening me. More hours passed, thankfully uneventful for the most part. We were in the clear. Just a few more hours to go. The woods were unsettling indeed, not a chirp, or a crick, crunching of a twig, nor any leaves being trampled. The feeling of eyes upon my skin never left but I kept finding myself drawn to a narrow opening in the nearby brush, just beyond where her phone last pinged.

A silver glimmer of the moon reflected off something shiny in the distance. I crawled over to the line of trees, still keeping myself hidden. What earlier had been a patch of dried earth now lie a shimmering near perfectly circular lake. The water, a blue motionless sheet of glass. If I knew better I would think this all to be a dream. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, Emma had been right, there was a bend in the edge, and it called my name.

It called my name…

Beckoning me forward, pulling me out of the confines of what fell behind me. I reached my hand out to the surface, deep like the ocean dredged in the unruliest of sapphires. The fog lowly and calculated sunk into the clutches of my heart, stealing my breath as something grabbed hold of my hand.

“The sun is not yet out to play, dear girl.”

“Are you lost?” another voice hissed.

“The woods are not safe. We will help you find your way. Come here with me, dip your toes in the pretty, pretty water, hurry before the sun wakes up. Hurry.”

My spine tingled and burned with the most recent waves of fear. The edge of the opaque water did nothing to quell my discomfort. How could I know what to ask for, how could I have known I was at the right place?

Bursts of brightness peaked over the frame of the farthest blades of grass out in the brambling lily-meadow. The harsh grip tightened, pulling me closer and closer and closer to obscurity.

“Ask dear girl, ask…quick, it’s about to be too late.”

Link this main page as reference for others:

https://shopping-feedback.today/writers/james-and-oneg-s-summer-writing-extrav-again-again-za

Link another creator’s entry at the bottom of your story:

https://shopping-feedback.today/poets/the-moonlit-vow

https://shopping-feedback.today/poets/something-in-the-air-wb66u0hc0