A day in the forest [Jul. 8th, 2004|12:13 pm]
I was once six years of age, there was a forest behind my house in Guatemala (Central America). Five of my friends and I made bags of food (mostly candy) and took our slingshots and marbles. We ventured into the forest... alone.
We wound up finding a trail, old, no footprints of new. We followed it of course and all we could hear is birds chirping and lizards scurrying about. And the occasional frog or cricket sound. This trail led a dense fortress of trees intertwined with each other, dark wood as if it were burnt long ago, but somehow survived. These trees seemed to almost touch the clouds.
We looked at each other and smiled. We looked for a way in, and childlike enthusiasm we found it! A small crevice, a crack in time if you will, the opening seemed to be alive beckoning us to come in. And of course we heeded the command. As we ventured forth our smiles widened with anticipation... little notice to the winds of change upon us.
Darkness fell on us as quickly as the flick of a light switch. We felt a deep cold...our smiles had frozen on our faces. We stood still. No birds chirping, no lizards scurrying, no frogs croaking, no sound but a whisper of the wind outside. Our eyes adjusted, we swallowed hard. Gather our strength and held each others hands, and we set forth into that dark abyss. What motivated us eludes me now, the sense of danger was at a peek, yet, yet we moved to it. Naive moths drawn to a dark flame.
We walked on small white pebble-stones with the few cracks of light that seeped through the roof of dark and twisted branches. No sound, no clear view but that of darkness and a white floor scattered. We could hear a drumbeat at a fast paced, it was our hearts... the smiles had vanished as we came to what we believed was the center of this dark place.
A small broken house! We stopped, gripped our hands. And slowly inched our way to it... The walls, were dark brown with leaves in it... they were made of mud. We circled the house, no windows at all, no chimney...but on the opposite side there was a door made of branches and cobwebs. We stood before it. And we heard a slight sound, almost as silent as a snow drop. We held our breaths, and put a hand to our chests to calm the beating of our hearts. And we pierced the soundless dark, and listened. We listened and listened for an enternity... a muffled moan...
We looked at each other, drops of sweat on our faces, though there was no heat. How could there be, it was dark and cold. Sweats of fear? Perhaps. And we looked at the door, and we held fast to each other and all at same time took a hold of this makeshift door. And we slowly and gently budged it open. And we each took turns to look at through the needle opening we have created. And we all saw a figure... perhaps sitting, perhaps crouching, swaying back and forth as if counting time with each sway, a living clock. Again, we were compelled to go into this... mere pieces of scrap metal been pulled by a unknown magnet... we entered.
The first sense to yell at us was our sense of smell. Like entering some godforsaken butcher's shop that had closed all windows, the scent of dead things. We saw that the figure appeared to be a young girl, her long black hair was covered with mud and dried leaves, as it usually happens when you roll on the forest floor. But... there was another figure before her, outstretched lying, perhaps asleep. Or so we thought. We slowly inched ourselves to a better angle, a move we regret, and still regret to this day.
The view, the image as dark as it was in there, was a clear as a summers day. The figure was a person, long gone, nothing but the frame that held its flesh remained. Man or woman who knew, who cared! We held our mouths so no to scream, not to let fear know it had us, but it did. The child, the child had no face... no face because it was shielded by her hair.... we touched ours in dismay and bit our lips to hold our screams. She was as thin as her hair, skin paler than snow, and she kept swaying side to side and tilting her head as if it were to come off. We kept staring and staring and staring, till one of us gasped out of nervousness. She stopped.
If ever our hearts felt like exploding from within it was at that moment, that eternal moment, that plays slowly in our minds and in our souls. She stopped... and with a slowly movement tilted her head. Exposing one ear to our direction, it seemed to move on its own accord. Like the ear was a different part of her, it listened, it waited, it wanted to find us. Our hearts betrayed us, the pounding was so intense, in unison five hearts beating in fear. The ear heard us, it heard us!
By this time we were huddled together so much so we were sharing the same breath. Both of her hands touched the ground, one on each side of the torn dress she was wearing. Her exposed ear went into hiding withing her tangled black hair... the hair also seemed alive... Her back arched somewhat to the left, to the direction we were at. Her head tilted all the way back, making her hair touch the ground and it seemed to squirm. We only saw her left cheek and half of her mouth and the tip of her nose. But this face began to slowly turn to us.
We were digging our nails into each other, so fiercely that we practically broke skin, and we bled. Her nose twitched, it twitched in time as we shuddered... did it pick up our scent, did it smell our small drops of blood, I dont know... Her face was turning towards us as slowly...till the front of it was staring at us... staring if it could... for the perfect nose and lips were missing its two other siblings, she had no eyes! Vacant opening, an abyss upon an abyss, a darkness that made all other darkness seem like light.
We were frozen like rodents mesmerized by the stare of a soulless snake. We dare not move, breath, think, blink, we just stood. Her nose twitching, finding us, her hair wiggling and the empty sockets were once eyes lived pierced into our souls and saw our fear devouring us... One of my friends began to giggle nervously, the other whimpering, the third lost bowel control, the fourth began hyperventilating, and I began to cry. Tears from me, tears of fear...? I know not, but they were tears. Then slowly her lips quivered...
She yelled, shrieked, expelled horrific sounds that shattered the noise like glass breaking on the floor. We felt our ears burning, the onslaught of incoherent shrieks was killing us... despair and fear became lovers and we were their sacrifice. One thought emerged....RUN!!! And we scrambled and pushed, and headed for the branch door... she rose to her feet and that was the last thing I would ever notice from her, for I had closed my eyes and ran as fast as I could leaving behind my sanity. As we all ran the white pebbles we once saw, where actually old snail shell and small bones of vermin that had died... We ran and ran what seemed an eternity till we reached that opening... and jumped through it. We continued running through the green forest, kept running and the sounds of the birds had returned but we heard it not. For the shrieking still held onto us, we ran and ran till we all went to our homes.
That night I slept with my parents, if you could call it sleep, visions and sounds haunted me. I looked pale the very next day. My mother thought I had the fever last night for I was shaking. Little the she know that it was fear that shook me. Me and my friends met at noon. Minus one. Seems that he did not sleep at all, and was taken to see the doctor for he just sat in his bed and swayed back and forth.
Months later, his parents and he moved to another city, a city with no jungles, but those only of concrete. I know not what happened to that little girl, for I never returned there, none of us ever did. Only in our nightmares. But now I realize why I cried, I cried for her, for the worst fear is the one she has, the one of a lonely existence with nothing but decaying things around you.
Reply With Quote
Connect With Us