Chapter 1

I know this is probably such a common and very cliche thing to say, but I SWEAR on my life I saw something in those woods. I saw it a lot. That's the part nobody ever gets. It wasn't once.

I suppose context is good.

I did deliveries for the elders on a reserve up north in Ontario. For almost three years I was the one people called. Nothing official. The people I delivered to hadn't driven in decades, or just couldn't get a car on welfare, so somebody had to bring them their prescriptions and groceries. I had a quad and a lot of free time, so it became my job. Pills, insulin, a bag of flour, sometimes just a carton of smokes and a note from a grandkid. I'd load everything into one big canvas bag, swing it onto my back, and go.

The roads reach all of those houses, but nine times out of ten it's just faster to cut through the forest on the muddy trails. Going by road could take over forty minutes one way. The trails were more like 15 to 30 minutes there and back. I guess it's easier to cut trees than to pave roads. I'll also say the residents don't love it when I fly past their houses on the road, so the trails kept everybody happy.

People who've never ridden a quad at night don't understand how small the headlight actually is. You get maybe five meters of trail, and everything past that is pitch black with a little moonlight. Your eyes stop trying to see ahead of the light. You stop looking at the trees and start looking at the ground in front of you, because that's all you can see. And if you're not looking at the ground, you're looking at your phone, trying to figure out where you are on the trail.

The first time, I thought it was a post. Something tall and thin standing off the trail, right where my light barely reached. Then my light swung across it while I was dodging a puddle, and it wasn't a post anymore. It was a guy. Just standing there, or maybe jogging, I couldn't tell. I never got a proper look.

I figured he worked late, or he was heading home from a buddy's place. Plenty of people walk the trails out here, same as me. I didn't think about it much.

But I saw him again. And again. Always off to the side, always right at the edge of where my light gave out. Never closer. Never farther. I'd get a glimpse of a hoodie or a shape, and then my light would move on and he'd be gone. I never thought about it for longer than a few seconds. It was just the guy who's always out here. After a while, I stopped noticing I was noticing him.

Anyway. It was a Tuesday, a few weeks ago.

The order was for an older lady, a pill bottle with a bunch of long names on it that I couldn't pronounce. It was my last order of the night, and it was far out, near the land boundary of the reserve. It was one of those addresses where the paved road stops and the gravel starts. Google Maps said about 30 minutes one way, and I wasn't about to spend an hour out there if I didn't have to. The trails were quicker, so I took the trails.

There was one trail I almost never used. It cut through a stretch of cedar swamp, ten feet wide at most, maybe a few hundred feet long. On a quad that's under a minute, even going slow. The cedars grow so tight out there that the trail feels like a tunnel, and the branches would sometimes end up across it, so I'd have to get off the quad and drag them out of the way. Cedars have shallow roots on all that rock, so whole trees come down every time the wind picks up. That's part of riding trails. It always felt more like a hallway than a trail. I never liked it, but I never thought about why. I'd never timed it, because who times a few hundred feet? You're through it before you've even finished being annoyed at the branches.

That night was a lot darker than usual. The clouds had rolled in, and the ridge was blocking whatever was left of the horizon, so there was no moonlight, only my headlight. Five meters of trail, then nothing. I had the bag on my back and my phone in one hand. The blue dot showed I was about 200 feet from the entrance, give or take. The trail wasn't on the map, and service is garbage down in there anyway, so I had to go off memory for where it headed.

I rode into the narrow part and kept my eyes on the ground like always.

The trees sounded different in there. I can't explain it better than that. On the open trails you hear the wind, the engine, and the bag rustling against your jacket. In there, it was like the engine was the only thing making noise in the whole forest. Everything else was holding still. The air smelled sweet and wet, like moss and cedar, and it was cold in a way that didn't match the season.

I figured I was almost through, so I looked down at my phone to check the dot.

I had only moved about 50 feet. It felt like I'd driven 200. Huh. Probably spotty data and bad GPS out here. That's normal.

The weird part was that I felt like I'd been riding for 30 minutes. For a few hundred feet of trail. I should have been out the other end already, and the trees on either side of me were exactly as close as when I started.

So for the first time ever, I started counting. The moment I hit 10 minutes, I was out. Ten minutes, for a stretch I could have walked in two. I was on a gravel road, and would you look at that, there was a porch, a light, and a house. A blue house, just like I'd been told. Okay. She took her pills, thanked me, and told me to drive safe. I rode back through the trail and it took under a minute, like it always had. I told myself I was just tired, and that was the end of it.

The next week I had another delivery for her. It was late again because I'd had so many stops, and all I had left was her order. The clouds were gone this time. The sky was packed with stars.

Same trail, because it's always the same trail when you're running late. Except this time I only made it halfway in, or whatever halfway is in that place, before my light hit a big cedar lying across the path. It had blown over, soaking wet and covered in moss, with its roots clawed up out of the ground and slabs of rock still stuck in them. I killed the engine but left the key on so the headlight stayed lit, and got off to drag it out of the way. It took a while. It was heavy, and I was already annoyed.

I turned around to walk back toward my quad, headlight right in my eyes, and there was something standing on the trail behind it.

My light didn't reach back there. It only points forward, and with the engine off and my foot nowhere near the brake, the taillight was dead too. That whole stretch behind the bike was black. But the trees open up a little right over that part of the trail, and the stars were bright enough to cut a strip of sky out of the dark. He was standing dead center in it, twenty feet past the bike or so. I couldn't see a face or any detail. It was only a shape against the sky. It looked like a younger guy in a hoodie and baggy pants, I think. And I knew that shape. I'd seen it a dozen times at the edge of my light, and I'd never once asked myself why it was always keeping pace with me.

Now, there was something wrong about him besides the fact that it was 10pm and he was standing on a muddy trail. I don't judge, walking these trails beats the road, same as me. But he looked wrong, and I can't describe it. Every part of me said I was too close. It was a deep, hollow feeling in my chest, the same one you get swearing in front of your mother for the first time as a kid, or almost falling.

He spoke in a voice deeper than anyone his size should have. "Hey, it's late. Why are you out quadding?"

It didn't sound sincere. It didn't sound like a real question. It had the tone of a parrot imitating a person. It was wrong. It was so, so wrong.

I have never moved so fast in my life. I jumped on, started the engine, and gunned it so hard I couldn't even feel the bumps anymore. I looked back over my shoulder and he was walking toward me, a bit too fast to be walking, but it didn't look like running either. I turned back to the trail just as my front wheel caught a slick shelf of rock under the mud. The bars ripped out of my hands, I slid into a ditch, and BAM. Lights out.

I woke up the next morning. I looked to my right and my quad was in the ditch, rolled over against a tree. But I was lying flat on my back in the middle of the trail, and not like I'd taken a nap. It was more like I'd been placed there. My bag was sitting on my left, zipped.

It took me a few minutes to realize I wasn't dreaming. I rolled over, got up, and went through the bag. Nothing was missing except the meds. The meds I was delivering. I climbed down into the ditch and got the poor quad back onto her wheels. She was flooded and sunk into the muck up to the axles, and she wouldn't even turn over. I wasn't getting her out on my own. But I wasn't dead, even if I felt like shit.

My phone screen was cracked, and only one message showed through: "Thanks for the delivery!" along with an e-transfer for about 60 bucks from the lady. She normally paid me 30.

Now, I never actually made it to her house. I want to be clear about that.

I left the quad where it sat, looked around, and walked back the way I came, out toward the road. I jogged most of it, and I kept an eye out the whole time to make sure that thing wasn't nearby.

The nearest house on the road belonged to an older man. He took one look at me, patched up my head and hands, and called 911. They said it was "probably sleep deprivation," and the doctors agreed, even though somehow I didn't have a concussion. A few days later I'm back home, wondering what the fuck happened.

I know people will say it was lack of sleep. I slept a few hours before I got on that quad for those deliveries, and you don't get that tired in three hours that you start seeing and hearing things. Not like that. Not with a voice that asks you a question that isn't really a question.

Once I could move properly, I went back with a buddy on his bigger quad. He hooked a tow rope to my poor baby and pulled her up out of the muck and onto the trail while I steered.

I keep coming back to the message. I never reached her door, and she still thanked me.

My only real takeaway is that there's something in those woods. Or someone. And it wasn't asking a question.

I haven't called her. I keep telling myself I will. Her number is still in my phone, and so is the e-transfer, the extra 30 dollars and all. I can't bring myself to delete it, and I can't bring myself to ask.

I don't take the trails at night anymore. I take the road, the long way, forty minutes one way, and I don't mind it. Sometimes I still catch myself looking at the edge of my headlight, at the spot where it gives out.

Whatever stood on that trail knew her name, her address, and what she was owed. It knew I was late. It knew exactly what to say to me, and what to say to her.

I just keep wondering what she saw when she opened her door.

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