Part One | Part Two
My favorite memory with Jace was from when we were four, before the woods took a toll on us and carried us into a strange life along with our older siblings. It was our birthday and we spent it by the lake, other kids from the neighborhood were there but we weren’t really friends. We didn’t have a lot of people we knew because we couldn’t go far from home yet, and because we hadn’t started school yet.
“Nate!” Jace called out for me as he tried getting away from our mother, who was holding him against her so he wouldn’t sink into the water. When I looked at him, he was waving towards himself, gesturing me to join him.
“What?” I asked as I got closer to the lake, crouching down. My mother swam closer towards me with Jace. When he was close enough, he put his arms around my waist. He was always the clingier one between the both of us, I wasn’t against it though. When were younger, our parents and their friends always fawned over us while we were constantly wrapped up in each others’ arms.
“Hi!” he said with a smile on his face. I laughed and joined them in the water.
Nothing extraordinary happened that day per se, we just played in the water with our mother making sure we wouldn’t drown. We mostly ignored all the other children and parents, as always only focused on each other. It’s a small memory, but it comes back constantly. It reminds me who we were; four years old, innocent. We didn’t know about waking up outside, or about dead bugs and hares. We were young, alive, and always there for each other.
I always loved having a twin brother, especially a kind and caring one like Jace. He always stood by my side, and I made sure to do the same for him. When, Kaylee, and then Alex, moved out, and when Sarah started becoming “too old” for us, he was there for me. I was scared of being the youngest and having to watch my older siblings leaving me behind, slowly having to say goodbye to them one by one. But I wasn’t alone, I thought I would never have to do it all alone. I was wrong, Jace disappeared when I was fourteen.
“Jace?” I asked, leaning against the metal railing of the top bunk, looking down. I was only able to see the side of Jace’s bed, but I could tell he was moving around. Despite being teenagers, we still shared a room, and we still shared our old bunk bed. It was late at night but sleep always had a difficulty to come over us. We stopped waking up near the lake, but we were still secretly afraid of once again waking up outside of the safety of our beds, without any recollection of what happened. I didn’t know how it was for him, but I was still having the same, reoccurring dream every night.
“Yeah?” he whispered, I felt him moving around again. I could imagine him lying on his back, looking at the bottom of my bed as I looked down towards his. It felt like we were looking right at each other.
“Do you want to take a walk?” I proposed after a moment of silence, I knew I shouldn’t have asked, but if it helped us sleep, I would do it. Especially for Jace, I didn’t play any sports, but he did — he was in the school’s soccer team — he needed the energy the next day, and I knew he always felt too tired to play as well as I knew he could.
He didn’t answer. But after a few minutes he got up from his bed, patting my bunk as he walked away towards his dresser. As I got down from my bed, he pulled a sweater over his head and put his shoes on. I did the same, slowly, and quietly. I knew that we would get in a ton of trouble if our parents caught us. It would be even worse if Sarah did, she would use it as blackmail against it forever. Or at least until she moved out. We left the house with a feeling of calmness, everything was quiet, and we had a moment to just be ourselves.
We slowly started our walk to the woods, having short conversation about school and homework. We didn’t share all of our classes — we only shared chemistry and English — so we generally had a lot to talk about. He turned to me suddenly with a look I couldn’t figure out.
“No one knows where Jenny lives.” he said. I raised my eyebrows. Jenny was his crush from math class. He started crushing on her during the end of middle school, and she seemed to live near us. Since we went to all small high school, most of the students came from our neighborhood, but Jenny didn’t.
“So?” I asked, questioning how that had anything to do with me.
“People say she lives in the woods.” Jace muttered. I couldn’t help but laugh at that, it was such a ridiculous rumor I hadn’t heard before. Jenny probably came from another neighborhood nearby, and her parents just decided to send her to our school, since it was one of the less terrible ones.
“Yeah, sure she does. Y’know, she’s the one who leaves those bugs during summer.” I joke, but an apology quickly left my mouth when Jace didn’t laugh. He always seemed more freaked out by the woods than the rest of us, though he always tried to hide it. I don’t know why things were different for him, why he never grew out of the fear like the rest of us did. I think it’s because he was more sensitive, too.
“I’m not saying I believe it.” he started with a shrug. “But, like, not even her friends know her address, or her neighborhood, or anything!” he expressed with a wide-eyed look. He seemed to really care about the fact that this girl seemed to live nowhere. I think maybe he wanted something — someone human — to blame for what was happening.
“We’d know if she lived in the woods, I don’t think not knowing her address means that she has to be a wood child or something.” I said, and with that, we stopped talking about the possibility. We turned the page and never looked back, or at least he didn’t. We stayed mostly quiet for the rest of our walk.
We were a little past the lake when it started. It was during autumn and the smell — or the accompanying dead bugs or hares — weren’t there, so we had no problem walking past the lake and walking through the trees behind it. Nothing was supposed to be there during autumn.
“It’s weird —” Jace started, but he was interrupted by something falling down from above us. We couldn’t quite see what it was, so I decided to step forward towards it as Jace just stood still. It was a dead bird, I recognized it to be a mourning dove, its head was nearly torn off. The only thing keeping it attached were strings of flesh and the bone.
“Hey, maybe Jenny — Shit!” I exclaimed as another bird came from the sky, that time it hit my arm before it landed on the floor beside me. I turned around to look at Jace, his face was struck with terror, and I could feel my stomach churn with disgust as I saw that thick, red blood staining my sweater. They must not have been dead for long. Another one came down, and then another, the pauses between them started becoming shorter. Jace ran away as soon as one hit him. I took a deep breath as birds kept falling, one after another. I wasn’t sure what to do and what to think. Then I decided to follow after Jace.
I wondered why the mourning doves were dead, or why whatever was doing this decided to kill them. I wondered what anything meant, the dead bugs and hares. Did anything have a reason? Mourning doves were coming in our woods, but less common than other birds. Wouldn’t it be a pain to kill so many birds in a short amount of time? Maybe I was looking into it too much, maybe it just did it to freak us out with the disgusting smells and sights.
Somehow, I managed to pass Jace without even noticing it. Even though I didn’t play a sport, I was still a fast runner. Not faster than him, though. When I reached the back of our house, I started walking along the side until I reached the front. The front door was open, and my mother stood on the porch, looking around. I had no doubt that she was looking for me and Jace. Jace wasn’t there yet, and I narrowed my eyes in confusion and looked behind me.
“Nate!” my mother yelled, she sounded way more concerned than angry. Then I figured that I did in fact manage to pass Jace, and that he was probably somewhere nearby.
“I’m sorry, mom! We couldn’t sleep so we decided to take a walk. But then —” I tried to explain as I walked towards her, but she cut me off.
“Where’s Jace?” she asked, surprising me. She still wasn’t angry, I was expecting her to start telling me off and yelling. But concern was the only thing that painted her face. I wondered if mom was afraid of the woods too.
“We were running…I must’ve passed him.” I explained. She nodded and took a seat on the porch steps, I sat down next to her.
“Your dad’s in the woods, looking.” she whispered silently. Her face looked sadder when she said it. I decided based off that that she was afraid of the woods, she seemed to have hope that we didn’t go in the woods. She seemed afraid that Jace wouldn’t come back from it.
We sat on the porch until sunset and I got to skip school that day. We went inside a couple of times, but not for long. My father came back after an hour or two, alone. He hadn’t seen Jace. My mother kept returning to the porch the following days, hoping that Jace would find his way home. Sometimes she went in the woods to search for him. Jace never came back.
We got our peace at his funeral when I was fifteen.