In the Woods

The deeper in the woods this thing ended up, the better this was going to be.

Greg stood upright again and pulled his scarf up to cover his mouth and nose. It kept him warm, but it made it hard to catch his breath. There were no easy options, just icy air that ripped its way into his lungs or warm air that seemed stripped of oxygen.

He shook his limbs out and grabbed the bag once more, hauling it over his shoulder. He wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing.

He saw the barn owl again. It was alien for so ordinary a thing, a pale round ghost with a dished face and unblinking eyes just barely visible in the moonlight. There was a leanness to it that made him nervous.

It just stared at him.

He shivered and began trudging down the hill. He should have grabbed a headlamp or his phone for the light, but he hadn’t wanted to risk it. Chances were high no one was following, really, but still…

Still. He shouldn’t have done this. He had- who wouldn’t really?- but it was something he shouldn’t have done.

This pressed on the backs of his eyes. He had to keep blinking to keep it back.

It was just money, anyway. His nieces would be fine. They were smart kids, strong kids.

He flinched as something pale and silent drifted just over his head. The owl again. Its feathers seemed impossibly bright as if the owl was giving off its own light in the dark woods. It landed above his path forward to stare at him with dark eyes darker somehow than the night. Greg’s skin crawled.

Whatever. He’d heard that sometimes birds followed people in the woods, looking for scraps. “Stupid bird,” he growled at it, wincing at the loudness of his own voice, and tramped beneath its branch while trying to act normal.

He just needed to bury his sister’s old will and all her old papers and it would be done. Good as, anyway.

The stuff had just been sitting there in her old office. No one else had been there- the girls and the doctor were in the other room. He’d spent so much time doing stuff for her while she was sick and he just…he just needed to get his.

He found the hole right where he’d left it in the daylight. He hadn’t dug it himself- that wasn’t his sort of thing- but it was pretty handy. He’d tripped a dozen times during that expedition to find a cliff or something, but the hole had been well worth the bruises and scrapes.

It was destiny, really. A sign that this was the thing he should be doing. As if the money he’d get wasn’t enough.

With a heave, he dumped the whole sack with the strongbox into the hole. It wasn’t all that deep, only three or four feet.

He stopped to catch his breath. The hike through the woods had sucked, but this was going to be the real hard part. He had to fill in the hole. Fortunately, there was a pile of dirt next to it and he’d been smart enough to bring a shovel out with him during the day to leave here.

Now where he’d put the damn thing? He dropped the bag and squinted into the darkness, moving around with shuffling steps that made the dead leaves on the ground crackle.

“There you are,” he muttered as he made out a tall straight shape. He reached for it but flinched back as the silent ghost-shape of the owl landed on the branch it leaned against.

A vicious feathered claw rested on the handle. The bird stared at him. It felt judgmental…it felt like a warning.

Owls always looked like that, though. He swallowed and seized the shovel violently, pulling it close. The owl leaped upward in an utterly silent flurry of wings to perch above him, still watching.

He shoved the bag into the hole with the shovel and started dumping dirt on top of it. He’d never done this kind of thing before- not the physical part or the…other part.

Cheating at cards, sure. A bit of shoplifting here, some sketchy pawn shop deals there. But nothing like this.

The girls would be fine. They were tough. They’d learned. He’d learned, hadn’t he? Learned that you couldn’t trust anyone, that everyone is out for themselves. As they should be. He was doing them a favor really.

The wind kicked up suddenly. Still icy air became a biting breeze became a cutting gale. Greg huddled into his jacket and scarf, dropping the shovel to tuck his hands under his arms.

The moonlight grew faint as clouds rolled in impossibly fast. The hell? He squinted at the sky through flying leaves and thrashing branches.

The owl landed right in his view.

In the wind, in the thrashing of the trees, in the shapes of the moon-silvered clouds, came a voice.

“YOU ARE WRONG.”

He felt the words in his actual heart. He felt them etch themselves into the fibers of the muscle.

“YOU DID NOT HAVE TO WALK THIS PATH.”

The owl descended from its high perch and landed in front of him…but it was huge, now, a monster, man-sized. The wind did not stir its pale feathers. The eyes were a depthless black, not as much a color as a view into some endless silent stillness.

“Please,” he said, getting his scarf in his mouth.

The huge claws flexed as the creature rose from its haunches to take a step towards him.

“No. I had to. Who wouldn’t?”

There was no reply but the depthless gaze and no words came from the storm.

The owl struck with one huge talon.

The claws scythed into his torso. The pain was both burning and cold, spreading from the claws and sinking into everything he was, devouring it.

He tried to breathe around the pain and failed.

***

The thumping at the door didn’t let up. Cayla settled her sister back into bed and went to make it stop, making sure to grab her mom’s old emergency baseball bat.

She liked the solidity of it. She could feel the places where her mom’s hands had gripped it a thousand times, or so she thought. She turned on the porch light before opening the door, ready for anything. Life had been hell enough and she doubted it would let up.

She threw open the door, startling a pale bird that nearly hit in the face as it flew away into the night.

There was no one there, but there was something there.

A familiar old strongbox. Cayla knew it well. The code was her birthday.

She dropped the bat to the ground and pulled the heavy box inside, slamming the door closed with a kick as if it would be pulled from them again.

All of her mom’s documents were in here. She unlocked the box and checked. Her will, the paperwork for the house, everything.

She curled around the old thing and cried in relief. She could finish high school. They wouldn’t have to live on the streets. It was all here in black and white.

Maybe there was mercy in the world after all.