Downslope

They hit the sign two miles into their usual walk.

On a typical Saturday they parked their car in the dirt parking lot at the park entrance, double checked their clothes, step counters, and water bottles, and then headed out on the Sunny Pines trail. A five mile loop that marched up the mountain, meandered about up top for a bit – hence the sunniness of the pines – and then wove it’s way back down through the trees. They were usually done in an hour, and fifteen minutes later were sitting in their favorite diner eating up all the calories they had just burned off and then some.

But that sign was always there.

At the top of the slope, about halfway down, an old wooden sign. Words chiseled into it, spotted with what remained of the white paint that had been used to fill in and had mostly worn away.

“Sunny Pines” with an arrow pointing to the left, the way they always went.

“Downslope” with an arrow pointing to the right. The path they always ignored.

It was on the map, sure enough. Downslope trail, a there and back to what looked like either a large pond or a small lake. And the path itself looked fine, well maintained, if a little steep.

Darren and Christy had never gone down it simply because they didn’t want to. It would have added three miles to their walk, half of which would have been coming back up the mountain, and they really weren’t the type to look for strenuous walks. They just wanted to move a little after a long week sitting in front of their computers and televisions, and then they wanted to devour corned beef hash and eggs with cheddar.

But today was the day. They’d packed an extra water bottle. They’d packed extra snacks. They’d decided to still go to the diner, but for lunch instead of breakfast. They were ready. It was time to see what was at the bottom of this slope.

“It’s a pond,” Darren said.

Christy snorted. “It’s muck.”

Maybe it had been a pond, once upon a time. Whatever creek or rain had been feeding it had long since dried up, and now the two of them were staring at a thick pool of mud, dotted by large rocks and patches of green that were valiantly trying to survive.

Darren scratched as his beard. “Well, I guess this is why we hardly ever see anyone coming down here.”

“We’ve done it,” Christy said. “We did it. Curiosity satisfied. Let’s go get lunch.”

“Oh, yeah! Lunch!”

It was only a mild disappointment. What Christy had said was true. At least now they knew that the only thing at the end of this mile and half path through the other side of the slope was a pile of muck and another mile and half to go back up.

She was thinking about what she was going to get at the diner, torn between a patty melt and a tuna, when she began to notice something. No, that’s not quite right. When someone uses the word the ‘notice’ it’s meant with the idea that they are using their forebrain. Their consciousness is noticing that something has changed.

But this wasn’t that. No, this was something deeper. Older. A tickle at the very bottom of Christy’s brain that for a few seconds she mistook as an oncoming dream. It made her scratch at her neck, like a loose hair or a fly was tickling there, even though there was nothing. It made her think of those nights in childhood, after her mother had forbid a nightlight, waiting under the covers for the monsters to get her. She couldn’t say why.

Ten seconds later – an eon in terms of the brain – her conscious brain caught up. And she did notice something.

“Hey, that’s weird,” she said, chalking up the goosebumps on her arms to walking back into the shade of the trees.

“What?” Darren asked from in front of her. He always walked in front, otherwise he had a tendency to get distracted and walk right into her.

“The birds. They’ve stopped.”

The couple stopped, too, and without the crunch of the woodland floor underneath their too-expensive boots they could hear it better.

Or, rather, not hear it.

Little colorful birds they didn’t know they name for had been chirping and singing the entire morning. Darting through the trees. Calling at each other. Now, there was nothing.

Nothing.

Hadn’t there been squirrels, too, yelling at one another? The argument was over. It seemed even the bugs had stopped buzzing around, even the wind wouldn’t rustle the leaves.

“Huh,” Darren said, looking around. “Big predator around maybe. Black bear, or a mountain lion.”

The sweat soaked into Christy’s shirt froze against her skin. “But they wouldn’t go after us, right?”

Darren shrugged, still looking into the woods. “Two adult humans? Probably not. Better make noise, though, so they know we’re here.”

Darren put his hands up to begin clapping, opened his mouth to announce their presence. They’d done it a dozen times before, usually out of paranoia.

That’s all this is. Some big animal who doesn’t want to mess with humans, anyway. We’ll give them a wide berth and-

“Darren?”

He had froze. Hands up in front of his chest, still a foot apart. Mouth closed. Tight. Eyes still scanning. The color had drained from his face.

“Darren?” she said again.

“Something is coming,” he whispered.

“What? What does that mean?”

He turned fast to look at her, and Christy stepped back. For an entire two seconds – millennia – her husband was not her husband. Or, he was, but some different version of him. An ancient version, from way back, before electricity, before great civilizations, before fire. The oldest Darren, nothing more than hairless, upright ape with plenty of predators still in the wild.

Then it was just Darren. Still panicked.

“You don’t feel that?”

It wasn’t like Darren to play pranks, and anyway he wasn’t this good an actor. Christy searched herself, searched her sense, looking for some clue as to what he was talking about. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing…

Something?

But what was that? Where was it coming from? She couldn’t even name the sensation.

“We have to get out of here, we-”

He’d taken two steps up the path and stopped. The woods were still so quiet the only thing drowning out his steps were the blood pumping through her ears.

“It’s coming.” Darren swallowed hard. “It’s coming from that way. We…we need to go.”

“What is – hey!”

He’d run around her, taking her by the hand and pulling. Back down the trail. Back toward the muck.

“You’re hurting my wrist!”

Christy managed to pull free, and for a second Darren managed to look apologetic. He hadn’t meant to grip her like that. It only lasted a single second. And then the fear was back. Gnawing at him, turning his face white and gaunt.

He’s gone crazy. Can you go crazy so quickly? Maybe it’s a stroke. An aneurysm burst. There’s blood in his brain where it doesn’t belong and it’s making him paranoid, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, it’s a perfectly normal day-

Is it?

That voice again, from somewhere inside. Deep. Quiet.

She pushed it away.

“Darren, this is crazy. If there’s an animal out here we need to go that way,” she said, pointing back up the trail. “Toward the trailhead and the other people and the car.”

Darren shook his head. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking all around. For whatever he thought was coming? Maybe. It was impossible to get a read on him anymore, beyond ‘abject fear.’

“It’s coming from that way, we don’t have much time. There!”

She whipped her head around, expecting to see a mountain lion finally allowing itself to be seen. Or a black bear, hustling away from the sound of their voices.

Nothing. Trees. Ferns. Nothing.

“Come on.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled again, away from the trail. Something you were not supposed to do, especially when no one knew where you were, on a trail hardly anyone ever used, a trail that you were barely used to.

“Babe, I-”

“Be quiet,” he hissed at her, and kept pulling.

Oh, my God, I’m going to have to get him out of these woods myself. He’s completely lost it, something has broken, please, Darren, keep it together enough to get out of here, I-

The little voice, coming from some mysterious place, was suddenly screaming.

Adrenaline dumped into her body, her lower back itched, her brain was buzzing, her heart was racing, her fight or flight had been punched on and there wasn’t a single thing she could see to cause it.

It was behind her.

She forced herself to look, afraid if she didn’t she’d go insane.

Insane like Darren.

Nothing. Nothing was in the woods with them. Nothing she could see. But still…

“Something is coming,” she muttered.

Darren stopped, letting go of her wrist. She’d forgotten he was pulling her.

“You feel it now?”

Christy only nodded.

“Here.”

Two fallen logs, next to each other. Each tree had been nearly two feet across. They had grown together, died together, landed together onto a different fallen tree. The angle made a tent, of sorts. If they could fit.

“Go.”

Darren shoved her, and she went with it, half falling, half diving beneath the logs. Underneath the dirt was wet, sticky, clinging to her shorts and her legs and climbing into her socks. But none of that mattered. She hardly even noticed it all. That new, old, mysterious voice was still screaming, no words, just a wailing klaxon. There was nothing to do but hide hide HIDE

She shoved herself deeper and deeper beneath the fallen trees. Darren was right behind her, pushing her along. It was dark. Bark scraped her face. Didn’t matter. Christy only stopped when she physically could not go any deeper, her feet and knees jammed into the angle where the wood met the soft ground. She turned as much as she could, looked out.

Darren was mashed against her, the soles of his shoes pressing into her knees. They had managed to fit. Barely. If it went past at the exact right angle, it would see them.

‘It’? What ‘it’?

The ringing alarm in her head stopped long enough for her to wonder what the hell they were actually doing. What could be out there that the solution was to hide under trees? No park ranger had ever told anyone to hide under trees! It was insane, they were being stupid, it was hysteria-

It was here.

She couldn’t see more than a few inches of light beyond Darren. She didn’t hear anything. And yet, she knew. Whatever it was, it was out there somewhere. Getting closer.

Closer.

It was going to pass right above them.

Without knowing she was going to do it she held her breath, holding her hand over her mouth to muffle any sound. Darren did the same. They were utterly still. Gone tharn. If whatever it was noticed them, if it took the longs in one hand and flung them away like they were toothpicks, that would be the end. There was no more motion. There was only fear.

Finally, sound.

Except, no, not quite sound. Massive, reverberating footsteps were reaching her but not through her ears. Coming from inside, ringing out of her chest like bass. Some extra-sensory perception she didn’t even know she had, flipped on and running at full speed.

Forget being found out, the real fear now was being stepped on. Whatever walked these woods wouldn’t even notice.

It was above them.

Those radio-wave steps landed next to the logs. In front. Behind.

And then kept going.

And then, five seconds later – an epoch – they began to fade.

Sometime later – her internal clock had gone completely kaput – they emerged. Pale. Shaking. The last of the adrenaline being filtered out, leaving them cold and wet like a forgotten towel.

“What-”

“Not until we’re out of here,” Christy said.

Darren didn’t even respond, only followed her back to the path.

When they reached the top of slope, Darren and Christy found another couple standing on the crossroads, staring at the little sign. They perked up and waved.

“Well, ain’t that perfect timing,” one of the women said. “We were just wondering what was down there.”

“Always passed the sign,” the other woman said. “Never got the gumption to-”

“Don’t,” Darren said in such a flat tone the women actually took a step back.

“He means it’s not worth it,” Christy said, trying to make her voice as flowery and friendly as possible. The women relaxed. “Nothing down there but a pile of muck that was maybe a pond, once. And the trail is all overgrown. And steep. We’re not going back, that’s for sure. Just going to stick to Sunny Pines!”

“Good to know, thanks for the hot tip.”

The women gave Darren another cautious glance, and then went down the Sunny Pines trail.

“You should have-”

“Should have what?” Christy asked, rounding on him. “Do you think they’d believe us? Hell, I don’t even know what that was.”

“It…it was…”

Darren was searching inside himself, and for the second time that day Christy thought she was going to lose him. He was trying to figure out what they had hid from. The thing that had walked all over them. Whatever sort of signal that thing had been sending out, Darren had been receiving it far stronger than Christy. She had managed to disengage. He had not. Darren was going to stand on this spot and drive himself completely mad.

Just as she was about to call 911, Darren shook his head with a thin smile.

“Jeez, I’m exhausted. Let’s finish so we can eat.”

Something is still wrong.

But what could she do? She was afraid if she mentioned any of it – the trail, the muck, the it, the hiding, the slightly unfocused look to his face as though he was searching for a sound he still couldn’t hear – she would lose him completely.

So down the Sunny Pines trail they went. And whenever Darren paused for few seconds too long, Christy would give him a little push.

---