It Waits in the Woods

by Josh Malerman

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.

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.

At fifteen, she was the variety of young that was aware of it. She looked to adults for solutions. Let the police do their job.

She dreamed of bridges upside down on the forest floor, as if whatever walked upon them went places nobody had imagined.

And she believed the hand she, personally, had been dealt was bad enough to excuse her from worrying about people other than her own. The sorrow of others would have to remain just that.

exist in a mutual fog.

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?

hoping to find there a setting as dark as her heart had become?

It suddenly felt like she’d come there only to grieve.

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

She wasn’t driven. She just knew what was important.

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?

Whoever she was now, for better or for worse, she was alone out here. Despite these revelations: alone.

She asked herself to notice it all. Allowed herself to feel.

Like all kids, she was just off experimenting with life. Trying things out. Pushing the boundaries that felt so rigid when you were young.

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.

She could hardly believe it. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Sibilant:

In the cracks of their new realities,