Chương 33: 31. Dreams of the ancient forest

It was a strange feeling, anxiety. The kind that just bordered on fear but is not entirely there. A feeling born of an obvious truth hanging in the air, a truth that everyone was all too well aware of, but no one wanted to speak out loud. As if saying it would make it a reality. But everyone knew. They were lost. Ophelia knew that. Everyone did. They had been walking for a couple of hours now.

They should be approaching the other end of the forest, but the trees seemed to be getting taller, as if they were walking deeper and deeper into the forest. They followed the compass. Just walking straight, like an arrow in flight, should have been enough, but somehow they got lost.

"Maybe there are some magnetic ores around here. I heard they can mess with a compass," Steven suggested, not sure of himself, hesitation clear in his voice. Miss Brianna, who held the compass, answered with a voice just as unsure.

"No, it would be marked on the map, and there would be tourist warnings. Also, those mountains don't have those types of ore, I think." Silence descended again. Ophelia was worrying about even more things than the rest—the altar, the shift, and the feeling of being observed that just would not go away. She looked behind herself many times, sometimes sure she would catch someone, but each time, there was no one.

Finally, after one more hour, when the level of light visibly changed and anxiety ballooned into fear, someone stated it aloud.

"I-I think we should consider what to do when the night comes… I think we are lost," murmured Steven. Silence. What do they do when the night comes? Norwegian nights weren't exactly warm, and they did not have any tents. They were supposed to sleep in tourist shelters. The question hung in the air unanswered.

"W-we can't be lost. W-We walked according to the compass, right? This forest shouldn't be large enough for a whole day of walking," asked Alice, more to assure herself than to ask the question.

"We wouldn't be in this if not for someone's 'oh so horrible' illness," grumbled one of the guys walking at the back of the group. Although it was said supposedly to himself, it was loud enough for all of them to hear.

"What did you say?" Tom stopped in his tracks.

"What did you say!?" he repeated, louder this time, a clear challenge in his voice. There was a moment where the other guy hesitated, but the fear pushed him forward, telling him it was a good idea, that he needed to let his emotions erupt.

"I SAID THAT WE WOULDN'T BE HERE IF NOT FOR YOU!" He shouted, his voice ringing with anger.

"How the fuck is it my fault? We should have been out of the forest by now. Maybe it's her fucking fault for reading the compass wrong," he shouted back, pointing at the professor. Everyone was stunned by those words. She was still a professor and a staff member of the university.

"Now wait a second," started Miss Brianna, but another guy from Tom's group interrupted her.

"Yeah, maybe it's the compass." He snatched the device from the woman and started fiddling with it, turning around just to end up pointing in the same direction they had been walking in for the past hours.

"Maybe the compass is broken."

"How can a piece of magnet be broken, you fucking idiot?" barked a girl from the quiet group.

"Well, if you are so smart, why don't you get a fucking idea, huh? We are all listening," the man spread his arms wide, as if inviting her to speak.

"I'm not saying I have an idea, I'm saying you're stupid, like the fact that we are cutting through the forest off the trail," she barked back.

"M-maybe we can call for help?" proposed Frank, who had previously been the only one falling for Tom's illness. His voice and posture radiated uncertainty.

"Oh great fucking idea, did not know you took a satellite phone, why not propose that sooner?" answered Tom.

"I-I'm just saying." People were starting to argue more and more, even those not part of the shouting match were whispering to each other. Ophelia looked at the scene from the side. Her emotions were strange—fear on one side, frustration on the other. She caught herself thinking again, "Why?" She was just as clueless as they were, but somehow, she looked at them like they were children lost in fog, like they were the ones lost, not her. Panic was starting to creep in. The forest was having a strange effect on her.

She wanted out. Go deeper. Something inside her whispered. No, not deeper, out! The reasonable part of her protested. Miss Brianna walked into the middle of the group, raising her hand.

"Hey! Arguing will not solve anything."

"I'm sure you can sol-""Shut up!" To everyone's surprise, the professor shouted. They did not know she had that in her.

"Silence, this will not solve anything, and it's only making things worse. Let's look at it from an objective perspective. We are lost." She allowed the words to hang in the air for a second.

"How that happened doesn't matter, but the truth is we are lost. We need to plan what to do once the night starts. We will need fire and shelter." She looked around, checking if everyone was listening before continuing.

"The sculpture we saw earlier was clearly human-made. Maybe someone lives in this forest, or at least maintains the sculpture."

"We can't walk back now," someone complained.

"No, we can't, but we can walk a bit deeper. If we were walking this whole time in a straight line and we are somewhere close to the exit, then if we turn 90 degrees left, we should not get any deeper into the forest, but walk alongside its edge. Maybe if there is someone here, we can find them and get some shelter. We have around two hours of daylight. If we don't find anything in the next hour, we will start a fire and sleep on the ground. Does anyone have anything to add?"

Tom opened his mouth, but after she looked at him and added, "Constructive," he closed it back up after a bit of hesitation. And so they had a plan. Walk a bit deeper alongside the supposed edge and look for any sign of humans. It was a reasonable plan, it was a good plan, it was a plan Ophelia despised. As they turned left and started walking, she could feel it, the sense of wrongness, getting stronger. The beckoning call to go deeper was happy inside her.

She wanted to protest, but she had no evidence that it would be a bad idea. She was not sure she believed it was a bad idea herself. And so they walked, the time stretching with all of them with their heads on a swivel, looking for any sign of human life. They also shouted and screamed in intervals, but to no avail. It was when the allotted hour passed and they all started to realize that tonight would be spent on the cold ground. Alice, who had wandered a bit left of the group, shouted.

"Hey, I think I have something!" she screamed excitedly. They all half-sprinted to where she was. And as they came closer, they all saw it. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! It was a small hut.

"Hey!" shouted one of the men in the group.

"Is there someone there?!" There was no response.

"Let's get a bit closer and knock," proposed their professor, and they all went towards the hut. As they approached, Ophelia could sense the same strange feeling of being observed. She had a strange feeling that another sculpture would be inside the hut. Brianna knocked on the door, and they all waited. She knocked again, this time stronger, with all of them also shouting for the people inside to come out, that they needed help. Tom even started offering hundreds of dollars, but to no avail.

Finally, one of them pushed on the door handle, and the door opened.

"Hey, I think it is another one of those sculptures," announced Oliver. Ophelia froze. She wished she were wrong. Why could she sense it?

"I think this is an altar of some sort," Oliver commented as they slowly walked in. It could maybe even be called a mini-church or place of worship. The hut had thick drapes covering the windows, making the insides dark. In the light of their phone flashlights, they could see an empty space with a couple of rugs made from brown, bark-like skin. The rugs lay all around the sculpture in the center. This one was similar in style to the one in the tree, but for a few details.

For one, it was all wooden, and in place of antlers, there were arms, many arms, perfectly sculpted from wood and made to look as if they were in constant motion, all reaching towards the sky. Also, the eyes weren't pools of blood this time. This time, they were just empty. Or so she thought. Others didn't notice as they weren't looking closely, but Ophelia had to look. She needed to know if the presence would be there, watching.

And as she did, as she noticed the feeling of looking into someone's eyes creep up on her once again, she also noticed something different. The light was stopping on the darkness of the eyes, like the eyes were pools of tar. No matter the angle the flashlight hit it, the insides of the eye sockets wouldn't show. She shivered and broke eye contact again. She would not be able to sleep here. But what was the alternative? Was the strange forest any better?

"Hey, there's upstairs," one of the people shouted at the rest. They looked towards the voice and, sure enough, behind the altar-sculpture was a ladder made from branches. They climbed it to enter an attic. It was used as a small storage area with a broom and some primitive cleaning supplies, but most of the room was empty.

"Look! The things seem well-maintained, right? There wasn't much dust downstairs, so there were people here. Maybe they will come back," Alice said in a hopeful voice. Everyone else, aside from Ophelia, relaxed a bit. She was right. There was no road a car could traverse, so whoever came here did so on foot, there should be humans around.

"Good," said Jimmy, his shoulders relaxing a bit.

"And I say we sleep here. The thing downstairs gives me the creeps."

"Agreed." Jessica nodded her head.

"Yep." Alice also agreed.

"I'm not sleeping near the sculpture. I don't need additional nightmare material." Oliver was also keen not to sleep near the thing downstairs. Ophelia also agreed. She was not sleeping anywhere near the thing. They were all tired and agitated, with fear and the long walk making themselves known as they all started to wind down for the night. They laid their sleeping bags in the attic, ready for the night, all tired and hoping for a better morning. Ophelia dreaded the nightmares that she knew would come.

She knew herself all too well. Those nights after emotional turmoil, she would have bad dreams, usually starring her mother and/or father. Between the sculpture and her family, she did not know which would be worse to see in a nightmare. She started to consider staying awake, but the day's excitement started to drag her eyelids down. She wished for a merciful nightmare at least. She stood in the forest, tall, gloomy trees all around her.

She was standing there helplessly, turning in her spot, looking around, and panicking.

"This is a dream, this is a dream, I have to wake up," she was telling herself, but she could not wake up. Pinching and slapping did not help either. The sensation was muted and strange, as if coming from a numb part of her body, but still there.

"Please, please, I have to wake up." She could feel tears make their way to her eyes, and she was starting to sob.

"Please wake up," she begged herself. Fear was tightening her chest.

"Ophelia," her mother's voice said. She quickly turned around to see the woman standing behind her. Her first instinct was to run to her mother and cry like a child, to ask to lead her out of here, but she stopped after seeing the woman's face.

"Ophelia, you never contribute," she started speaking with anger in her voice.

"I could've had a good life if not for you. You and your…

'strangeness' had to ruin it for us." She scrunched her eyebrows in an expression of anger.

"Mom, stop," Whimpered Ophelia.

"But Dad will fix you," she said, her mouth stretching into a cold smile.

"Your father will set you straight, and we will live together once again." She wanted to tell her mother that she would never go to that man, but then she heard rustling behind her. It was her father, the same middle-aged man with graying hair and a beer belly she remembered. He even had the same scowl on his face the night he heard she fought off an attacker in her room, a face of anger and disappointment.

"He wanted to make a good woman out of you, but since you can't take a hint, I will have to discipline you instead." He screamed as he tackled her to the ground. She fought, she scratched, and bit with all her might, but as it was in dreams, she still felt powerless. She felt her father's hands on her throat as he started choking her, his other hand raising in the air to hit her. But then she heard a shriek. They both looked up to see another woman. A woman she had never seen before.

She had never seen anything like that. Her hair was the Milky Way, her eyes like galaxies. Her dress was the night sky itself, flowing down her figure, waving and flowing in patterns she could not understand. Her skin was white like milk without the slightest flaw. She approached her screaming mother and, in a movement like swatting a bug, with one swing, she took her mother's head clean off her shoulders. Ophelia did not know what was going on. This had never happened in a dream before. Who was this woman?

Then her father started to scream. She looked back at him, and there was another figure. This one did not have a face. It was made from a squirming, tar-like substance, a dark figure with only two deep, hollow eyes. It touched her father, and he started to rot and scream as he disintegrated into a red pile of flesh. She started to crawl back on instinct.

The shadowy figure stayed back, just looking at her with curiosity, while the woman approached with a strange gait, as if each of her steps could traverse infinity. She arrived in front of her instantaneously. The strange lady then pointed a finger at her chest and traced a pattern in her flesh, like a child drawing in sand. This time, the pain was not dulled. The ache erupted as Ophelia screamed. The woman then pushed her in the direction of the shadowy figure.

"Wake up!" Screamed the creature.

"What?" She asked, panicked.

"Wake up, what are you doing?" The figure started to shake her. She recognized the voice. Oliver?

"Wake up!" A slap ripped her from the dream into the waking world. There were screams and shouts, crying and chaos around her.

"Please, please, please," someone was screaming from upstairs.

"They're dead," some other person whispered while cradling their head in their hands.

"All dead, why would they leave me? All dead."

"Nooooo, we have to run, we have to run, we have to run. Nooooo," someone was screaming on repeat. Oliver shook her once again.

'"What the fuck were you doing?"

"What?" She could not make sense of the question.

"Is this your fucking doing? Huh, what were you doing downstairs?" He asked, his eyes wide and teeth gnashed like those of a wild animal. She finally gained enough clarity to check her surroundings. She was kneeling down on a leather rug downstairs, even though she did not remember walking down the ladder. She was kneeling on the central carpet right in front of the sculpture. There was a knife in her hand, and she could feel pain coming from her chest. Both her hands were covered in blood.

She could see her handprints on the floor in front of herself alongside a small, clear spot in the dirt on the ground, a spot where she realized her forehead had touched the ground. A realization hit her, a terrifying one. She was praying, she was praying on all fours in front of the altar. She also cut something into her own chest. She was trying to answer the questions as some of the people in the group were making their way downstairs, someone opening a window to vomit.

"Were the nightmares your doing?!" screamed Tom when he saw her in front of the altar.

"Are you praying to that fucking thing, huh!? Are you a witch?" He approached her, and she was still confused. She tried to get up from her knees, thinking whether she should run or fight here to get her stuff at least. Would she have a chance in the forest alone?

"Hey, there are people outside!" screamed the person who just vomited out the window. Those sane enough to understand what was going on stopped what they were doing and went for the windows. Oliver let go and ran to a window. She also looked from one, and sure enough, there were people. She could see quite a few of them between the trees. They had torches and were dressed in primitive clothing. Some of them had elk masks on, and some were in ceremonial gowns. The whole scene, lit up by fire, was quite terrifying.

But in all that, one person caught Ophelia's attention. He was a man around her age, dressed like a wizard in movies might be. But what caught her gaze was how his eyes felt when she met them. They were hollow, dark, and unnerving even though she could not say why. But even weirder, they reminded her of the hollow eyes of the figure in her dream.