The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Crown Shyness 
by Loren Rhoads 

Alondra slipped into the straps of her daypack and joined the crowd at the back. Most of the searchers looked like long-distance runners – tall and worryingly thin – so Alondra would’ve stood out at the height of summer. Now, with the chill of last night’s frost gathered in the hollow where they stood, she was the only searcher not wearing neon. She tucked the ends of her grass green scarf into her black leather jacket and zipped herself in.

People stared at her, but Alondra gazed at the forest ahead of them. Some leaves still clung to their branches, aflame in orange and gold. Such a beautiful day, she thought. She hoped it would have a happy ending.

The ranger gave a speech, thanking them for joining the search. He described the trail they believed the young hiker had taken, then outlined places where he might have deviated. Alondra paid less attention than she probably should have. She was eager to get started.

The ranger had them synchronize their watches. They were ordered to return before sunset. The temperature was expected to dip below freezing once the sun set. Now that the clocks had been set back for the year, the sun set early.

As she expected, the runners started off at a clip, followed by the paramedics with their heavy gear. Alondra ambled behind them. In the perfect world, she would have had the trail to herself, so she could listen to the birds and the wind. The birds were silent, now that the searchers had stormed off, shouting Cory’s name.

The wind, however… The wind wanted to be helpful. When she reached the trail crossing, Alondra pulled a skeleton key on a white cord from her jacket. She wound the cord between her fingers so that the key hung down from her palm. In the middle of the crossroads, she held her hand out at arm’s length, palm parallel to the ground. As she turned slowly, she felt the key tug gently, urging her down the correct trail.

No one else had gone this way, or if they had, they were far ahead of her now. Alondra picked up her pace. Leaves drifted down from the branches around her, tumbling as they felt. She took a couple of inches a red yarn from the wad in her jeans pocket and tied it around a branch at eye level. She wanted to be certain she could find her own way out of the woods later.

***

She’d hiked for over an hour, seeing no one other than a sassy squirrel and a flock of small brown birds too far away to identify. The key insisted she was headed in the right direction. Alondra wondered if she should’ve cut more pieces of yarn.

She crossed the threshold before she realized it was there. One moment she was climbing a 45-degree slope, then she had crested the hill. The trees stood in a circle. Their branches bent toward each other, forming a canopy over the clearing.

It was the strangest thing. The branches didn’t interlace. Each tree stopped before its leaves could touch another tree’s leaves. An empty margin, as if part of the tree had been erased, surrounded each treetop.

Alondra realized the path had vanished under a blanket of fallen leaves. She couldn’t even be certain which direction she’d come from when she’d entered the glade.

The pendulum key hung straight down. She was here. She’d found him. “Cory?” she called gently. “Are you here? Can you hear me?”

The still air seemed to swallow her voice.

“Cory?” she repeated louder. “I’m with the rescue searchers. We’re looking for you. You’ve been gone four days now. Would you like to go home?”

Something shuffled in the fallen leaves. It could have been another squirrel, but she didn’t think so. Alondra held her hand out at shoulder height again, closed her eyes, and attuned herself to the subtle swing of the key. It pulled her across the clearing.

“Cory?” she asked again.

A pile of leaves that she’d thought was a tussock shifted toward her.

Heart pounding, Alondra dropped to her knees, pawing through the fallen leaves. She uncovered a poison yellow jacket sleeve. The man lying before her didn’t help her excavate him. He moaned when the light struck his gaunt, pallid face.

Tiny white threads were woven through his hair and into his skin.

Alondra’s legs itched. She jumped to her feet, snapping the tiny white filaments that had been trying to penetrate her jeans.

She pulled the silver knife from her breast pocket and tried to slice away the mycelium growing over and into the lost hiker. He whimpered at the touch of her knife. “Hurts!”

Alondra swallowed and stepped back from him. She felt the mushroom fibers break as her feet shifted.

“Ok, Cory. I’m going to call for help.” She pulled her daypack onto her chest so she could dig through it without setting it down. Her phone got no connection. No surprise there. She took out the flare gun, thumbed it live, and aimed for one of the margins between the tree branches overhead. Then she fired the flare up into the sky.

The helicopter probably couldn’t land up here, but they would alert the other searchers and send help her way.

When she glanced down, the mushroom fibers were trying to knit over her boots again. She danced away from them once more. Should she worry about tracking them back into the woods, or worse, back home? She really liked these stupid Docs. She didn’t want to abandon them here and hike out barefoot.

She pulled out the bottle of four thieves vinegar and poured a scant amount across her boots’ toes. This had better work.

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Fiction © Copyright Loren Rhoads
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Loren Rhoads:

Alondra’s Experiments

Alondra DeCourval travels from San Francisco to Prague to Olso, encountering magical creatures and searching for the limits she will go to for love.

Available on Amazon!