Escape From Norriswood

CHAPTER FIVE

"The sulphur smells much stronger here," Rosalyn said. She turned to look at Tara, who had been silent for most of the walk since leaving the Rabbit. To Rosalyn now, Tara looked dried out, bothered. Lines etched into her tanned skin, below her eyes. Beads of sweat clung to her chin, her pores flared open, exposed.

"Tara?"

 Her green eyes fluttered closed, then open, then closed again.

"Sorry," Tara said. She noticed now that the light had taken on a kind of reddish hue. The sunset was nowhere near them, but Tara felt the sun had shifted lower into the sky, the air cool again now, the forest growing dark.

The forest road had been revealing itself to them the same way it had been since leaving the Rabbit, all dips, and turns, the road a great snake uncoiled and dropped into the woods. "How much further do you think we have to go?" Tara said.

"Not much further." Rosalyn's left foot came down on the road, and suddenly she halted. She threw her arm out in front of Tara, to prevent her from moving. "Listen," she said. But before Rosalyn could speak, she belted it toward the gulley on the side of the road.

The roar of an engine came up from behind them, and Tara took off, following Rosalyn's streaking frame. Tara hopped over the overgrown gulley, weeds and thorn needles prying into her ankles. Just as she snuck into the thicket of brush, towering oak, and birch, a car came around the bend from behind them. Rosalyn's hand was on her arm, tugging her down onto the forest floor.

Tara heard the car scoot along the road passed them, and then Rosalyn let out a soft breath. Except Tara couldn't control her breathing. She looked at Rosalyn, and tried to sit-up. "Think they saw us?" Tara said.

Rosalyn looked at her, a sheen of sweat of Rosalyn's pale skin. Her lips parted, formed the shape of a syllable, and then Tara heard it. A loud, thundering crash, echoing backwards to them from somewhere further up the road, somewhere past the next bend. Roslyn grabbed Tara's arm again, and dragged her onto her feet, and then deeper into the thicket of birch trunks.

As they walked, the trees swarmed, grew closer and closer together. A kind of violence to the way they must've grown, elbowing each other for sunlight. Rosalyn was reminded of a painting she saw as a child, a wooded forest in fall, all autumnal, red and orange leaves sweeping the floor. And those birch trunks crowded around one another, blurring the line between where one ended, and one began some distance behind it. She felt swarmed -- and how far back did the forest really go?

Tara found herself pivoting, and rotating her body to move past the tree trunks. She ducked, crawled under a branch. Rosalyn held the twigs back for her, but she caught a spider's web in the eye. Forest growth, leaves, small bushes, grass rustling along beneath her. They pressed forward at this broken, jagged pace, and soon the ground beneath them began to slope downward.

Rosalyn stopped walking. Her shirt sucked onto her body like a wet leech. When she looked backwards, all she could see was the maze of tree trunks, and above them bark covered arms reaching out in all directions, obfuscating her view of the sky. The gaps between the trunks where the light had filtered in now seemed to look darker. She had no idea how far she could see back, how far they had come.

Sounds whirled around her. Birds chirped, and called to one another nearby, and their high-pitched voices rang in her ear. Somewhere to the left, an explosion of movement caused a great rustling sound, and Rosalyn jumped, only to find a squirrel gunning up a thick tree trunk.

From down below, the sound of water. Then a chainsaw rang up again from the distance, the sound of it so far away now, so tame, and muted. Roslyn wondered if that meant they had strayed even further from the town, from civilization.

"We have to go on?" Tara said.

Rosalyn noticed how in the thicket of sounds around them, Tara lowered the volume of her voice to a whisper. Rosalyn nodded her head.

The brush on the hill grew unwieldy around them, and Rosalyn found herself on her butt, scooting along on the forest floor, spitting out mosquitos as she inched along beneath hives of thick brush. Time passed like this, the light in the forest fading into darkness, the sound of the running water growing stronger and stronger.

When they reached the river, Tara was the first to notice the log stretched out along it. The thing looked soaked, the bark peeled away and the flesh of the trunk grown dark from all the water.

Across the river, the forest seemed to slope upwards again, but from here, Tara thought she could see a makeshift path, trampled into the ground.

"Might be someone's land over there," Rosalyn said.

"Might be," Tara said. She felt the night threaten whatever light was left. She took a step onto the log. Suddenly, from behind them came a great rustling sound in the trees. Tara strained her eyes, peering around the dark wood, but then she heard it again, and Rosalyn's hands were already on her back, pushing her forward.

Tara clambered forward and prayed that she wouldn't slip. She ran across, and into the path, turning behind her to see if Rosalyn had made it, and saw her inching forward, about halfway across the log. A low moan seemed to come across the sky, and Tara had to ask herself if she was hearing the same chainsaw she had heard before. The sound so faint and dull now, the distance she'd travelled seeming unreal.

Rosalyn reached Tara's side of the river, and then a crashing came up from the forest on the other side. People, or a bear, or something gigantic, pummelling forward in the dusk. Tara turned on her heel and sprinted. From her peripherals, she thought she could see a the light of a flashlight flicker on, beam toward them.

The path she thought she'd seen earlier turned out to be a rough, well-trodden walking trail. Roots struck upwards in the ground, and Tara's toe caught one, and she plummeted onto the ground. "Fuck," she said, loudly, and she felt Rosalyn's palm slap against the back of her head. Then she was on her knees again, and Rosalyn was pulling her up, and they were running.

At the top of the slope, the path broke through a thin layer of brush, and the two girls crashed out of the woods. Before them, a hilltop grown yellow with dry grass descended down into a cul-de-sac. Tara could see the lights of a town linking up beneath the night sky, and on the furthest point of the horizon, the land ended, and a lake veered outwards into a dark blue nothing. The sight was familiar, and not, reassuring, and not.

Rosalyn picked something up from the ground. "What in the fuck?" she said.

Tara looked down. In her hands, Rosalyn clutched two pieces of ripped fabric. Rosalyn brought them along, holding them up to her legs.

"No," Tara said. "There's no way." The pieces fit the spaces where Rosalyn had ripped her cargos. They were the same navy blue colour as the hand-ripped shorts she wore.

"That's impossible," Tara said. Then she smelled it. The smell of sulphur now rich in the air, carried on a breeze around her. Rosalyn pressed her hand on her back,and Tara could feel her shaking. They began to slip down over the hill, into the cul-de-sac that stood quiet, and dark, and waiting within the smell of the paper mill.