The rental car passed through the thousands of trees on the empty road. We needed to go slowly, there were signs about “risk of animals on the road” every few miles, human influence seemed negligible in that almost paradisiacal place, if it weren’t for the fog giving a certain morbidity to the landscape. We tried to pass the time, bored by the hours of monotony.
“No fucking way.”
“I’m serious!”
“If you were filthy rich, would you get married and be with just one person? I don´t believe you.”
“I’m a romantic, and I like solitude sometimes too. I wouldn’t have the energy for more than one person. What would you do if you were rich?”
“I would have at least one boyfriend and one girlfriend, but I would probably get new ones every month.”
“I didn’t even know you were bi.”
“I’m not, but with infinite money you have to enjoy everything, right?”
“That’s not how it works, woman, you don’t choose to become bi overnight.”
“If I’m rich, I’ll be able to choose whatever I want.”
“If you become a lesbian, you have my full support, I would even prefer you to date someone without the chance of getting pregnant!”
The last line interrupted our dumb interaction. Fernanda’s father, the famous “cool dad”, did whatever his daughter wanted to make up for the time he was absent after the divorce, he never complained or fought about anything. This is the reason he paid for this trip, an abandoned town with no other attractions nearby. But she wanted exactly this location, even though it needed the international travel.
“So, honey, aren’t you going to tell me the real reason for this trip? Are you finally going to admit that you’re dating Cristian?”
Fernanda made an expression of disgust.
“No, dad! Gross! Cris is like a brother to me. Where did you get this idea? I bet if I look at your porn site history there will be full of incest videos, what a disappointment to hear you say something like this, find some normal fetishes, man, like feet.”
Her father laughed; he didn’t even have anything to say about that. I wasn’t bothered by her reaction, our relationship was really just friendship since childhood, we even gave each other love advice, always without jealousy or anything like that. Like siblings from another family.
We stopped at a restaurant before the hotel. The waiter acted strange, as if he didn’t like customers.
“More tourists, huh? If you go to visit the abandoned town, leave before the evening, and don’t go into the forest.”
“Why?” I asked, curious.
“You know that there are a large number of people who come here just to commit suicide in the forest, right? I don’t even know how the government hasn’t banned tourists yet.”
I found it strange. If the number of suicides here are so high, how come when I researched our trip nothing came up? I thought it was the most boring place on earth, after all “Google” only showed a photo of the abandoned town and a paragraph of information.
“If you think so, why do you work here?” Fernanda asked.
“Capitalism’s a bitch, right? There were no jobs where I lived, and no one else wanted to work in this end of the world. So, it’s up to this loser, no one likes to die of hunger. Anyway, I hope you three come back, most people who eat here die after wandering into the forest.”
We placed our order, and Fernanda’s father expressed concern about the information.
“I don’t like it here. Why did you choose this place, honey?
“I wanted to visit a place where almost no one else had been. Did you believe this bullshit that most people don’t come back? Don’t worry, the guy probably wants to get fired so he keeps making things up.”
We slept at the hotel, and the next morning, we went to visit the abandoned town. It had an oppressive and surreal aura, I couldn’t think of a reason why a place like that would be empty, it was very strange to see all that fantastic architecture without anyone using it. Even more bizarre was that, scattered periodically, there were a series of warnings painted on dozens of walls in that location.
“Don’t say her name.”
“Death ahead, flee.”
“Ignore the calls.”
“Ignore, ignore, ignore.”
“She lies.”
“Don’t listen to her.”
At the exit of the city, before the entrance to the forest, a sign that seemed to have been recently placed, despite it being decades since anyone lived there.
“Do not go beyond this point, in this forest lies Anabel’s hell.”
We went back to the hotel, it was more than 30 miles away. At dinner and in our interactions, Fernanda was acting very strange. She said several times how much she loved us, and she was never a very emotional person or one who showed a lot of affection. Before going to sleep, I noticed that she was looking towards the forest, her eyes empty, a smile on her face. Her eyes felt like they were going to burst into tears at any second, but the wet salt didn’t come. Before turning off the light, she hugged me and reiterated “I love you, sleep well.” I returned the affection and went to sleep.
The next morning, Fernanda was no longer in bed, she had disappeared.
We contacted the police, who didn’t seem to care much. “We’re going to look around”, was basically the summary of our interaction. A distressing week later, the worst possible news arrived. Fernanda had been found dead, leaning against a tree in the forest. There was no trauma to the body, no wounds or signs of a struggle. The reason for death was dehydration. It was as if she had gone walking alone in the forest, got lost, leaned against a tree and simply died. The strangest thing is that there was a giant river crossing that place, and several smaller lakes. It seemed impossible for her to have died like that without it being suicide. There was no way to walk in a straight line for a few hours and not find any source of water, but even so the reason for death was “cardiac arrest due to dehydration for days without consuming liquids.”
There was something wrong. I knew that Fernanda would not wander around alone, nor would she commit suicide. I needed to find out what had happened to her, the real reason she died. She wouldn’t abandon everyone like this.
Before returning to my hometown, I asked some residents of the nearest city about the warnings found in the abandoned town. It was of no use. Nobody answered anything, nor did they know who “Anabel” was. A hope of finding out what happened came from children and teenagers. When I asked them the same question, I got a lot of “I can’t talk about this”, “this topic is forbidden”, “don’t say Anabel, bad things happen when you say her name”.
In other words, there was definitely something, there was a reason. People just didn’t want to talk about it.
After the arrangements made on Fernanda’s body, we returned home. But I didn’t give up, I couldn’t accept having lost my best friend. I started researching every day, but I couldn’t find anything about why that town was abandoned, about the warnings at the entrance to the forest, about any legend related to a certain Anabel.
Nothing.
Every day I spent hours searching online, trying different keywords on various search engines and forums. I tried physical books, I even traveled to access a renowned library. This was my routine. I practically had no hobbies anymore, I spent hours every day researching. I knew there was something, I just needed to find out what.
After 2 months of searching, I found what I wanted in a personal blog with barely any views. The reason Fernanda died. The story of Anabel, the witch who lives in that forest.
Anabel had 7 children, her husband was always traveling to fight in wars, and in the weeks he was at home, he would get her pregnant and leave again. The family lived on an isolated farm, where they were practically autonomous. But after a pest destroyed the crops and a disease affected the animals, the food became sparse. Desperate because the farm’s production was no longer enough to feed everyone and the money was running out, she went to the city to look for a job.
As soon as Anabel left, a wanderer, fleeing the war, entered her house, looking for food. Seeing that there were only children and teenagers, he thought it would be easy to get what little food was left for himself. The two eldest children tried to stop him, they knew that the lack of food could be fatal at a time like this. They grabbed a machete and fought the hiker. But the fight was not fair, the two young men without fully developed muscles were easily subdued and fatally struck.
He couldn’t leave witnesses or seeds of revenge, “too dangerous”, he reckoned, so the fugitive soldier killed the remaining 5 children, and stole everything he could carry.
Arriving home, Anabel saw the bodies of her 7 children on the floor. She hugged each one of them tightly, catatonic with the unimaginable tragedy, still hoping that it was all just a nightmare, a bad joke of fate. When she realized she was alone, she tried to seek help from divine forces; she prayed and fasted for a week. As there was no response, she looked for an answer on the other side.
She had an old book in her basement, an heirloom from her ancestors, a family treasure. In it, a ritual to revive the dead. For it to work, there was a price. For each life, a part of the body. Anabel chose the eye as the most viable part. You can still see with just one eye, right? With a sterilized knife, she plucked out her own eyeball and performed the ritual.
It worked.
Her eldest son returned, a 14-year-old teenager. Personality identical to when he was alive. But there was a catch. There’s always a catch for this kind of thing. The soul returned, but the body remained the same. A corpse walking. She hugged her son, they talked and lived as before. She planned to repeat the ritual for the other 6 children, as soon as the mutilation of her eye healed a little.
A day later, she tried something suggested by her son: taking out his eye. The eyeball came out easily, it didn’t even bleed with the rigor mortis and clotted blood of that teenage body. But the ritual didn’t work. The body part needed to come from a living body. She decided that she would cut off her own hand the next day, and slept hugging her resurrected son.
In the morning, Anabel woke up with a scream. Her husband had returned and saw her hugging that stinking and decomposed body. The teenager reasoned with the father with the same voice that he always had. I mean, his voice sometimes stuttered because of the rotten vocal cords, but it was him. Clearly it was him, not some evil entity. It was his son.
Anabel hugged her husband, tears of happiness flowed at the return of her love. But he showed no joy. He understood the tragedy of the death of his kids, but the resurrection ritual was furiously rejected. He said they had to kill that freak who imitated his son. Fury dominated Anabel. How could he suggest taking her son away from her again?
The knife in her hands found the man’s belly, which gave way to the floor with the loss of abdominal strength. She then tied him to a chair, with the help of her son. Before he bled to death from the wound, she had the idea to use him for the ritual. The man who had created those lives would give them one more chance. It would be poetic, one life for six.
Initially Anabel cut his fingers and ears, which didn’t work. She already knew that, the book clarified that it needed to be a more important part of the body. But she had to try.
So, she gouged out both of his eyes, and two more children came back to life. She then cut off his tongue and a hand. When she went to cut the second one, she noticed her husband wasn’t moving anymore. So, she felt his pulse. He was dead. The ritual worked with all 4 parts, after all they had been taken from a living person. Now, 5 children had returned. There were two left.
Anabel then went to the city. She waited, waited, until she saw a child playing unsupervised in a square. She picked up the child and took him to her house. She then gouged out both of his eyes and revived the last two.
The family was together again. Anabel and her 7 children.
Months passed. The decomposed bodies no longer rotted, but they also did not age. The baby was still a baby. He remained lying down all day, didn’t cry, didn’t eat, didn’t walk. He was an eternal infant, stinking with the rot of his soft, already decomposed skin. Everyone would have their features stuck at their respective ages.
In the town, they were still looking for the missing child. For months the police investigated, without success. Until a hunter arrived at the isolated house in the middle of the forest. The scene made the man vomit: mutilated children with purple and gray bodies playing in the yard normally. After recovering from the initial shock, he noticed that one of them was different. A boy missing both eyes played along, but other than that, his skin had the normal tone of the living. Without confronting anyone, he returned to the town and told what he saw.
A crowd gathered and marched to Anabel’s house, seeking revenge for the kidnapping and mutilation. Her eldest son greeted the crowd, saying that his mother would soon welcome them. When they noticed the boy’s condition, rotten skin with visible flesh, a man came forward and cut off his head, which fell to the dirt floor. For the surprise of everyone, the lips still moved: “Please don’t hurt us” the severed head begged. Upon noticing the abomination of nature, the crowd stamped on the head until it turned into pulp, until there was no trace of a body left that could hold the soul there. Then they entered the house, massacred the other resurrected children and rescued the kidnapped one without eyes, while holding Anabel, who was unable to react while her children died for the second time.
Then they punished her, the mob lined up and executed Anabel, each of the 37 members stabbing her once. She was dead after the 7th stab, but everyone wanted to show their disgust for her actions. After uprooting all life from that cursed house, they set fire to the place, destroying everything.
But the story didn’t end there.
In the following months, children began to disappear from the city. Sometime after their disappearance, they were found in the forest, leaning against a tree, dead from dehydration, without any sign of trauma. The city investigated the surrounding area, locked the children in their homes, enforced a curfew, everything they could, nothing worked. Until a girl found out what was happening. She went to the forest while one of the children was missing, saw something strange from afar and went to check it out. Approaching, she identified an almost naked woman due to her clothes being torn apart. The clothes torn due to her body being mutilated, so instead of skin showing, her insides were on full display. Wrapped in her arms, the missing boy. The two were leaning against the tree, the woman running her hand through the kid’s hair.
The girl ran back to the city and brought the police to the scene. The missing boy and the mutilated woman were still there. They immediately identified who the woman was. How to forget? They were with the crowd that cowardly stabbed her. It was Anabel, injuries identical to the day she died, but impossibly still alive. They tried to talk to her, but were ignored. So, they tried to free the boy by force, in vain. They tried to cut off Anabel’s arm, shoot her, pull her, every possibility present that wouldn’t hurt the boy. All in vain. That mutilated body seemed to be indestructible and immovable.
They then held a vigil. They sat watching the scene, hoping that Anabel would release the boy. They tried to feed him, but the kid wouldn’t open his mouth or interact with anyone who tried, not even with his own parents. He maintained a serene and truthful smile, as if he had reached a state of complete euphoria.
After two days, the boy died. Anabel then got up, looked at the lifeless body and cried. After a few minutes of lamentation, she walked away. Those present at the vigil tried to attack her again, now being able to exert full force. Once again it was useless, that wandering corpse could not be harmed. No more.
As a last option, they decided to follow her. Anabel wasn’t bothered by the footsteps behind her. She ignored everyone, as if they weren’t relevant to her. After a few miles, she entered a river, disappearing under water. They waited on the banks for a few hours, but there was no sign of Anabel. Conformed to their impotence in the face of events, they left after the sun went down and the darkness swallowed the forest.
The deaths and disappearances continued. No age group was safe, even elderly people or young children who practically crawled into the forest would voluntarily hug Anabel, dying days later because they no longer cared about their human needs.
5 years and hundreds of deaths later, the survivors moved away from there, abandoning their homes. It became a ghost town; everyone was afraid of ending up in Anabel’s arms. Even though there was no one for a few dozen miles, the deaths did not stop. No matter the distance, people still felt compelled to go to the forest.
It didn’t take long to figure out something in common between all the victims. Everyone knew Anabel’s story. So, they banned her name. Anyone heard retelling the story was arrested. As many people still retold the story, compelled by “knowing something forbidden”, and at the same time incredulous that something bad would actually happen, more drastic measures were taken. Anyone who passed on the story would have their tongue cut out and be arrested. If there was a written record, they would cut off both of the person’s hands. With these brutal punishments, they managed to contain the spread, at least to a certain extent. People still walked to the forest, but there were no more “genocides”, that is, it never happened like that town, which had a large part of the population consumed by Anabel.
I sighed as I finished reading. This story seemed too coincidental to be a lie. Before I could digest everything I had read and its consequences, almost immediately a soft, feminine voice appeared in my head.
“Come to the forest.”
I got up and started to walk, but stopped before reaching the door, and sat down on my bed. But I wanted to. I looked like a drug addict going through drug withdrawal, a sex addict trying to contain himself seeing a beautiful naked girl lying on his bed.
“Please, I’m so alone. I love you.”
The affable voice penetrated my soul. I went to the computer again and looked up how much the plane ticket was. “If I steal my mother’s card I should have enough.”
“I want to feel your skin, hug you, have you by my side.”
Every time the voice appeared in my head, an injection of endorphins was immediately released, which disappeared after a few seconds, causing the opposite effect, a deep sadness that she was no longer talking to me. I wanted to stay next to the owner of that voice forever.
I don’t know for how long I will be able to resist.
The voice comes and goes. Sometimes it disappears completely for 2 to 5 days. It didn’t take me long to create a theory: this is the time it takes for a human to die of thirst, so when the voice stops, there must be someone there, hugging Anabel.
It’s been 5 months that I’ve been able to resist. Some weeks are easy, she barely talks to me. In others, it’s all day long listening to the voice in my head, the release of endorphins followed by deep depression leaves me wanting to run to the airport immediately.
I accessed the blog where I had initially found the story, it had been deleted. I searched everywhere; it was completely gone. I felt frustrated. I knew why Fernanda died, but I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t clean up her name, let people know that she hadn’t committed suicide.
The voices returned intensely. I don’t know if I can still hold on. It’s been 10 days in a row with her whispering in my ear. The sweet, tempting, venomous voice. Are there no more people who know about her? I needed to do something; I couldn’t live like this anymore.
So, feeling cornered like a mouse being attacked by a cat, I did what I had to do. I started with some “enemies”. I put that in quotes because, well, they’re basically people I don’t like, we all have these, right? I lied saying that Anabel’s story was my creation, so I paid and asked them to correct my story grammatically, or, to people who found this more valuable, I offered a personal favor. For handing out money to making college papers, I showed the story to 8 people.
The result came a month later. Michael, a rich boy who studied with me, came to say he wanted to visit the place where my story took place. My plan had worked. My dislike for him? Well, he always came to brag about how many girls he had fucked over the weekend. The detail? He had a fiancée.
“Do you want to go with me? I’ll pay your ticket.”
So, it worked, I figured it out how I could make the voice weaker and less tempting. I agreed to travel with him, I needed to see it with my own eyes, I needed to have as much information as possible if I was going to live with this curse for the rest of my life.
When we got to the hotel, I placed a metal on the door, so that it would fall down when someone opened it. On the fourth night, bingo. I woke up to metal echoing on the floor. Michael had opened the door and walked out. I called his name, but was ignored. So, I just followed him, noticing a full smile on his face, and Anabel’s voice had stopped talking to me for the first time in weeks. We walked for six hours, the dawn had already revealed itself when he arrived at his destination.
There she was, the girl from the story, the witch from the forest, the loving mother, the mutilated woman. Anabel. My mental image was that she would be a more mature woman, due to the number of children, and that she would be a frightening and grotesque image, a decomposing body that had rotted from living in the lake. But she exuded youthfulness, her face and hair were gorgeous, angelic, perfect symmetry, soft porcelain skin. The scar in place of one of her eyes did not diminish her beauty in the slightest. Made her even more charming. I don’t know how anyone could marry her and still go to war. Honor? What is so honorable about killing another person “for your country”? He could have had a full life alongside the masterpiece that was Anabel.
The difference was from the neck down: The stab wounds turned her chest into almost nothing. The heart, lungs, intestines were on display, it was possible to see the movement of breathing and heartbeat, even if it was not humanly possible for those holey organs to still show such movement of life. There were some stab wounds on the thighs, 3 holes on the right and 2 on the left. At least that was what the holes in the dress showed, unlike the clothes in the chest area that were torn apart, from the waist down Anabel basically looked normal, with just a few tears in the dress that went a little below the knee line.
She opened her arms and Michael walked towards them, hugging like true friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. They then held hands and walked to a tree, snuggling together in silence, both showing a smile full of genuine happiness.
I marked the location on the GPS and returned to the city, walking for another 6 hours. I slept at the hotel, and the next morning I filled my backpack with food and water. I walked for another 6 hours and managed to return to the place where Anabel and Michael were. The two were still in the same position, same expression of euphoria. I tried to free Michael, I tried to give him food and water. I was ignored as if nothing existed outside the radius of those two intertwined bodies.
I waited for two tedious days. With my boredom, I formed some theories in my head, what if a doctor injected food and water directly into Michael’s veins? Would he survive? What would be the ethical dilemma of that? Perhaps he could be the last hostage, someone who would remain forever in Anabel’s arms, alive due to human interference. Or perhaps she would get angry at the attempt to interfere with her “process”.
I thought a lot about Fernanda, I replayed in my mind all the moments we lived together. We were stupid kids when we met. Nothing has changed, today we are stupid young adult. I mean, was. She was. Now she’s just a good memory.
The next morning, Anabel got up, crying. I approached Michael and put my finger on his neck. No pulse. He was dead from dehydration. There was a serene expression on his face, as if he had suffered absolutely nothing in the last few days.
I took my eyes off Michael and looked at Anabel, who was standing looking at him, still lamenting. After a few minutes, she walked slowly, not once making eye contact with me. Three hours later, we arrived at the river, and she walked into the muddy darkness, disappearing. I leaned against a tree and fell asleep; it was already night and it was hours of walking to get back to the nearest civilization, so it was safer to wait for the next day.
I woke up to a strange noise around me. Everything was completely dark, my eyes could barely see a few meters in front of me. Footsteps surrounded me from all sides, laughter came from the trees. I felt a slap on my head, as I turned around, a child ran into the darkness, laughing. An inconsolable cry broke the cacophony, someone was leaning against the tree next to me. I got closer and shone it with my flashlight. It was Michael. I ignored him, obviously I didn’t have much to say, he was there because of me.
I walked into the trees, toward the sound of laughter. There seemed to be a house in the distance. I approached, and, before arriving at the house, dozens of figures seemed to be dancing from one side to the other. I hesitated. Could they hurt me? I couldn’t go back, I needed to know. The closer I got, the brighter everything became, as if the light appeared out of nowhere. When I got close, I could look at the scenery as if it were daytime. Dozens of children and adults were playing, running from one side to the other. They didn’t notice me; they didn’t even look at me. A child bumped into me, almost making me fall. They were definitely real and tangible.
A shadow came running towards me. I closed my eyes, anticipating my end, I had finally been noticed. I flinched and put my arms in front of me, trying to defend myself. The strength of the person running almost knocked me down when they touched me, I felt hands on my back and two arms around me. Warm air in my ear surprised me, as if it were a living person there, and not a being that goes against all known laws of nature. A sob echoed in my ear, a face pressed against mine and I felt my face moisten with drops of tears. I calmed down and left the defensive position, returning the hug.
After a few seconds, the person released me and looked at me, smiling. Her lips opened and the delicate voice was the most pleasant music in the universe to my ears:
“Now there’s a dumbass I didn’t expect to see again.”
It was Fernanda.
“Did you think you would get rid of me so easily?”
My eyes gave way too. Seeing her so full of life, after having gone to recognize her body along with her father, dead for days and insects coming out of her holes, filled me with a feeling of indescribable euphoria.
She told me about everything, about how she lived there now, about how she no longer had anxiety, anguish, fear, existential crises. She couldn’t explain why, but the days were filled with pure happiness, without the worries of the living, without the uncertainty of knowing what comes after death. We talked until dawn. With the appearance of the sun, the house and the people there gradually disappeared, along with Fernanda, who kissed my lips lightly before disappearing completely.
I thought about what could have been, in another life, without us being cursed.
After two days of walking, I arrived at the entrance sign again, indicating the end of the forest.
“Do not go beyond this point, in this forest lies Anabel’s hell.”
I crossed out the word “hell” and wrote “paradise” in its place.
I’ll try to hold out for a few more years, but eventually I’ll join Fernanda and the others. The voice calling me intensifies with each passing day, sweet and penetrating, impossible to ignore.
Now you know Anabel’s story. I’m really sorry to everyone reading this, I have no other choice, I’m still not ready to go there, so I had to make more people know about her. I know I’m selfish, that condemning everyone who read this to death isn’t fair. She will call you all very soon, her voice will whisper in your ears, sweet and comforting. We will probably see each other in person, maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years. You don’t need to resist, what awaits you in the forest is the purest happiness.
Anabel’s paradise