It Waits in the Woods

by Josh Malerman

There was, allegedly, an entity, a creature, the demon imp who owned the bridge and was certainly close by if ever the white-and-yellow carvings were seen through the trees. The legend said that it was not so much strong, but smart and cruel, and stalked its prey in the woods. The one constant description of it was this: it’d lost its face and longed to find a suitable replacement.

Most myths have one foot in a reality so distressing mythic decorations are necessary to hide a greater horror, even as they keep the story alive.

One of the things she overheard that day was a brief story about a demon named Opso. An old legend, Brenda understood, concerning a bridge and a mirror deep in the woods. A demon’s mournful cries, a lament in the moonlight, the clip-clop of demon feet on weak, eroded wood. An entity, Brenda heard, with a strange name and an even more unsettling goal: to find a face to replace the one it was missing.

She thought of how most terrible things in life began as terrible motivations.

I think some movies work because you believe they’re really happening. I don’t even know if a writer can set out to make something feel so real. It doesn’t have anything to do with a realistic story. No matter how unbelievable they are, some stories ring true.

And what could she encounter out there that could be any worse than what had already happened?

Was this grief’s only gift? The eradication of the highs, by way of leveling the lows?

You had to work for the big things. You had to reach out and take your accomplishments—like all the great filmmakers and artists.

Why would she hang out in drugstore parking lots like the other teens in town when she could film a movie instead? Why text crushes all night? Why scroll meaningless memes? Why stare critically at digitally altered selfies when there was real art to be made—some actual truth to capture in all its imperfect glory?

That was the thing about pushing an envelope: they’d all been pushed before, by someone else. It wasn’t the envelope a good filmmaker should worry about, but the letter inside.