They say to avoid the call.  They say it’s a sweet, melodic call that pulls you deep into the forest.  Those that listen to the call are never found again.  That the forest swallows them whole.

Every year someone goes missing.  Every year all the white suburban families like mine come up here to the lake and one of them goes missing.  It’s happened since I was a little girl.  My parents, for the first few years, started searches.  Posted flyers on behalf of the grief-stricken family.  Attempted to get the local media involved.  My parents were appalled at the lack of help they received.

Then, as the years continued, they understood.  It happens every year.  Every year some family thinks it won’t be theirs until one of their children leaves never to return.  No one knows where.  No one knows why.  It just happens.

My family are as numb to it as the rest, now.  We put on a show and console the family, happy it wasn’t ours.  And then we leave.  Pack up back home and forget it ever happened.

As I grew up, summer after summer, I got to know the other kids.  Some of them had brothers or sisters taken.  Some have been around too long.  Either way, we get together after the parents are asleep and half-drunkenly warned us not to venture far in the dark.  We’ll get together in what we call the ‘beach’, but is actually just a bunch of coarse sand and rock by one part of the lake shoreline.  Someone builds a fire.

And then, the stories begin.  Haunted forests.  Serial killers.  Cults of parents making sacrifices.  UFOs.  All the kids swear by their own story, and the arguments go on until the thick darkness envelops us all.

This summer, the last summer, I sat away from the fire and the people.  I’m eighteen and too old for those campfire tales.  I smile as a couple of kids almost come to blows over stories.  I remember standing up for Peggy, my lake friend, as she said it was a sea monster that took the people.

I also notice the kids eyeing me and the few others my age.  I know why they look at me.  I don’t appreciate it much.

The sounds of small stones falling turns my head.  Another guy from across the lake, cute enough, although far too rich to normally hang out with us, sat down next to me.

“Hey,” he said.

I smiled.  I remember talking with Peggy about how men his age would be mature.  Now I am that age and realize we all still have a lot to learn.

“You remember before we got old when it was us giving those stories?” He said.

“I don’t remember you hanging with us much,” I reply with a smile, “You were too busy with your other rich friends.”

He looks hurt.  I wince.  Two of his friends have gone missing since those days.

“Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s okay, not like anyone else seems to care,” he said, looking out at the lake.

“No, it’s not.  I keep forgetting how many of us have lost someone.  You’re Craig, right?  I’m Zoey” I said, grabbing a rock and throwing it at the lake. 

“Yeah, but I know who you are already.  We’ve been coming here the same number of years.”

I stay silent.  I remember Craig, but not as well as he remembered me it seemed.  I decided to break the ice.

 “You think it’s a sea monster?”

He laughed.  “No.  I know what it is.”

I smiled.  “I thought you said we got too old to be telling these stories.”

“It’s no story.”

The way his voice grew quiet and vulnerable held my attention.  I turned to him.  He broke a twig with his hands in a nervous release of energy.

“They wait.  Until we’re this age.  It’s never kids.  Never adults.  Always teenagers.  Do you ever wonder why that is?”

I nodded.  “Of course.”

“It’s because we’re the loneliest.  Confused.  That's why they can get us.”

“Who?”

He turned toward the ever-expanding darkness.  Beyond the cabins surrounding the lake.

The forest.

“Someone is in the forest?”

“Something,” he said. 

“And how do you know it’s that and not a sea monster?”

“You know that crazy guy over the hills?”

“He’s not crazy, he’s an Indigenous man who is–”

“Yeah, yeah, save me the woke speech,” he said with more than a hint of bitterness in his voice.  “Anyway.  When we were younger.  We knew the dude had beer so we’d sneak into his property and–”

“You broke into his house?”

“No, he kept them outside in a shed.  Anyway, one night he catches us.  Yells at us that this land used to be protected.  Until us white devils, as he called us, started breaking the land and throwing his people off of it and turning it into what it is.  Said the more we desecrate the land with cabins and exclusive, sheltered communities the more the land comes back to reclaim.  Calls out to the lonely and makes them a part of the forest.”

I snickered.  “I prefer the sea monster.”

He threw the broken twig from his hands.  “Fine.  Fuck you.  No one believes until it’s too late.  Like Gerry and Matt.  I saw Matt before he disappeared.  He walked into the forest.”

I felt like an asshole.  We have all lost.  I reached out and touched his arm.  “Sorry.  I lost someone, too.”

“Peggy.”

I nodded, the name choking my throat.  Last year.  One night she never returned from the beach.  My parents told me to stop crying.

“Yeah, well, all I know is, I’m old enough to not have to do what my parents say.  I’m going home this year and then never coming back,” he said, getting to his feet.  He dusted off his butt.  “I suggest you do the same.  Go home.  Never come back.  Before it’s you.”

“Why would–”

“Zoey, I’ve watched you for years.  Hell, I tried to ask you out a few years ago but got scared.  You’re lonely.  You’ve always been lonely.”

His words stab me, but they also twist because he spoke the truth.  Through the flicker of the fire on the beach, I saw him flash me a weak smile.

“Stay safe,” he said.

“Y-you too,” I said.  He started to walk away.  “Hey!”

He turned.

“How about you take me up on that date?”

That weak smile turned strong.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Tomorrow.  Meet me at the picnic benches.  My parents are fishing.  We can sneak off to town.”

“See you then, Zoey.”

I felt something swell inside my stomach.  Eagerness.  I tell myself as cute as he was, he was wrong.  Lonely?  Not me.

With the excitement of a date mixed in with the weariness of the night, my body started to shut down.  I got up after he left and departed the group around the fire.  Someone stole their father’s beer.  I smiled and remembered my first forbidden sip.

I followed the path home.  Someone covered the path with those LED garden lights, replacing the old hanging lights.  Another superstition.  Stay in the light.  The darkness swelled and grabbed young kids.

I thought about what Craig said.  I realized that those that went missing never dipped below a certain age.  And never over a certain age.  I continued down the path, lost in thought of all those I missed.

And Craig.  And, that smile.

A scent floated into my nose.  Sweet, but not overbearing.  I stopped in my tracks.  It smelt full of life.  Like the first scents of spring after a long winter.  Yet, it smelled more than that.  

I turned to the source.  It seemed to come from the dark.  From the forest.

The more I sniffed, the more I could not place the smell.  But, I liked it.  It made my body tingle in more excitement.

Too late, I realized the source of that excitement.  Arousal.  I stood there and sniffed the air.  Took in deep, long drags of the scent.  It filled my whole body.  Made my stomach clench.  My nipples stiffen in the warm, night air.  It made my head swim with thoughts of sensual and outright filthy nature.  I pressed my inner thighs together in an attempt to deny the pulsating pleasure between my legs.

I feel something calling to my soul.  Pulling me.  An irresistible pull toward something.

I opened my eyes to find myself off the path.  In the darkness.  Closer to the forest.  I could practically feel that wonderful scent on my skin.  Everything tingled in a delightful erotic way.  Still a virgin but if sex felt like this I would never stop.

Like how my body could not stop moving toward the scent.  Deeper into the forest.  My head buzzes with warnings from the past.  But the scent.  So sweet.  So captivating.  I’m practically dribbling down my legs from the arousal.

My feet crunch something.  Leaves.  The first sign of fall.  I opened my eyes for the first time in minutes.

And, I have no idea where I am.

The thick, dense forest covers almost all of my vision.  I see the edges of trees, illuminated by blue light from the sky.  But, I have no idea which way I entered.  No idea which way to go.

All I know is, that scent is all around me.  I thought of Craig.  I thought of sex.  I thought of really depraved, animalistic sex with Craig.

I moaned and it felt like a dam breaking in my mind.  The arousal proved too great and I started to caress my tender body with my hands.  Like an itch covered by clothing, I started to strip.  I needed to touch my bare skin.  Oh, how divine it felt when I could caress my nipples and pussy out in the open.  

I felt something, that deep, yearning call inside my soul, praising me.  Tell me to give in to the sensations.

I fell down to the ground.  I started to masturbate.  Orgasms came quickly and with such ferocity that I started to black out.  I covered the ground of the forest with my juices.  My legs shook as another powerful orgasm rippled through my body.  I bit my bottom lip, wondering if all sex would feel like this.  

I did not hear it.  But, I felt it.  I opened my eyes to see something standing over me.  Something covered in darkness.  It looked human-like.  I saw perhaps a leaf or something sticking out of the edges of the thing. 

But, it had the scent.  The scent that made my pussy clench in need.  The scent that made my brain crave it to come closer.

And closer it did.  It crashed into my body.  It felt sweet against my lips.  Sticky.  A little wet and coarse.  The thing enveloped my body.  Way bigger than me.  I spread my legs for it and received something large and thick entering my body.  A cock? No.  But, it filled me.  Fucked me like I never knew I needed.  Deeply. So deep my eyes rolled to the back of my head.  It would not stop.  It continued to fuck me long after I experienced my fifth orgasm.  The scent was everything.  I could not escape it.  I sweated as it continued to fuck me on the forest floor.  

I heard moaning.  I looked over and saw the moonlight dancing on the edge of other objects.  Hands, specifically.  Hands breaking through the ground.

I chuckled.  It all made sense.  As the thing started to melt into me.  As it pressed me into the ground.  As I started to sink into the dirt and leaves.  I understood what happened to those people.

I also knew as I continued to feel the pleasurable effects of penetration, that I would never be alone again.  I felt connected.  I felt alive.

The dirt covered my face.  Fell into my mouth.

I wanted more.

***

I could feel them all.  Every one of them lost in the forest.  All connected now.  Peggy felt happy.  All of them did.

I wish I could speak.  To tell my family, the next day, that I was fine.  Better than fine.  Better a life where I was than the one I could have out there.  The forest showed me that.  Took me.  Claimed me.

I remember rustling through the grass.  Swirling around the picnic bench.  Craig sat there, looking at the ground.  Time passed.  His body grew more and more tense.  Every little twig snap or breeze grabbed his attention.

He wanted it to be me.  He didn’t know it was me.

Instead, he snapped a twig.  Hurled it aside.  And cursed the forest once more for taking someone else.

How could he know.  How could he understand unless it came for him, as well.  But, the forest has me now.  Maybe, if he comes back next year.  Maybe he can be lucky.  Maybe, dear reader, if you are lucky.  One day you’ll be walking.

Walking alone somewhere alone.  In the dark.  Listening to the breeze and rustle of the trees.  And then they smell it.  

And you too will feel the call.