“There you are,” Emily said as Jack walked back out of the woods. “I hope you at least covered what you left behind? Wouldn’t want to disturb the next visitors with your scent.”
Jack didn’t understand what she was saying for several moments before it occurred to him. “What, no, I just took a leek.”
His fiancé raised her eyebrow skeptically. “You took ten minutes to take a leek in the woods? Well, no shame old man. Happens to people like you at your age. Oh, did you trip too?” She leaned in to look up at Jack’s forehead with a frown. “I’m not bringing it up again, but maybe avoid running into branches when you see them?”
“I,” Jack attempted to protest. “I, well, it came out of nowhere.”
Emily just sighed and shook her head before turning around. “Come on, let’s get this over with, I guess. Work’s really spoiled my mood for this hike.”
Jack reflexively moved to keep up with her, but his mind was racing. He hadn’t been gone but for a few minutes, hadn’t he? But he’d been hurt; he certainly still felt where he’d tripped and slammed into the branches. But what could really prove that something happened to him?
A thought occurred to him, and he took out his phone. This part of the mountain had poor cell service; cellular data included.
“Hey Emily, what time do you have on your phone?” Jack called.
“10:15,” she said after activating her phone.
Jack looked down. His phone displayed the time across the middle; ‘10:10’. He’d somehow lost 5 minutes of, what? Reality? Awareness? He’d literally stepped out of time for five minutes-
Jack quickly shook his head to clear away the escalating fear-inducing thoughts.
“Hey, Jack, you okay?” Emily’s voice caused Jack to look up. She’d stopped and turned around to look at him, concern in her expression. “Hey, you look really pale. Was it, painful?” Her gaze dropped to his pants, causing Jack to blush in awkwardness.
“No! No,” Jack coughed. “I, okay hear me out, this might sound, no, this will sound strange.”
“I’m listening,” Emily said.
Jack showed her his phone. “I wasn’t gone ten minutes, I was only gone five. But, for a few minutes, I think I was somewhere else. Somewhere, dangerous, I think.”
Emily kept her face neutral as she looked from his phone up to Jack’s face and back. She pursed her lips, and took out her phone.
“Our phones, all smartphones, keep the time display updated using the internet while connected,” Jack continued. “They can desync when turned off and turned back on somewhere without internet connection, but I haven’t done that.”
“Okay, that’s strange I’ll give you that,” Emily tilted her head. “But then, what exactly are you saying happened?”
“I don’t know,” Jack groaned, throwing up his hands in annoyance. “One moment I was finishing peeing and walking back towards the picnic stop, the next I walk out of the woods and find an empty clearing next to the cliff. Then, a group of, something I don’t know, began moving towards me every time I looked away. I ran back to where I peed, tripped, and then I heard you calling me. And, in that short amount of time, I lost five minutes.”
“That sounds like some backrooms type shenanigans to me,” Emily said slowly.
“Kind of what I was thinking, yeah,” Jack agreed, rubbing the back of his head. “So, what? You believe me?”
“Would you believe me if I told you that story?” Emily asked.
“Considering some of the other stuff I’ve seen, yeah,” Jack muttered under his breath. He coughed at Emily’s confused expression. “I mean, seems like a lot of trouble to hide bathroom problems from you.”
“Yeah,” Emily nodded, “I can’t really ignore the phone discrepancy. You’re not exactly the programming tech type, and this seems like a weird occasion to lie.” She shrugged. “But, what should we do about it?”
Jack opened his mouth, then closed it. He considered for a moment. “Don’t walk through the woods alone?”
“Sounds like a lesson learned to me,” Emily agreed as she walked over to take his hand. “Look, whatever happened, if it’s a one-off thing then forget about it. If it happens again,” she frowned, “then I hope you’re with someone to either back you up or call an ambulance.”
“Fair enough,” Jack slowly nodded, then sighed. Emily gave him a smile and squeezed his hand before the two resumed their walk back to the parking lot. “Guess like you I’m not quite over last week,” he remarked. “Seeing things coming after me and what. I didn’t even mention the mushroom.”
“What, you walk through a circle of mushrooms?” Emily joked.
“Is that, like, a thing you’re not supposed to do?” Jack asked curiously.
Emily rolled her eyes. “Okay, I know I have a little more worldly knowledge from my extended family, but you seriously don’t know about the old-world caution of avoiding mushrooms shaped in a circle?”
“If it’s a European thing, then no,” Jack admitted.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Emily wagged her finger at him. “It’s a thing with fae, you know: elves, dwarves, goblins-”
“It’s a dungeons and dragon’s thing- ow!”
“Quiet you,” she admonished, having slapped his hand. “I mean the original legends and not the dumbed down modern stuff. Mushroom rings were said to be portals to the realm of the fae, and if you accidently stepped into one, you’d be pulled in against your will. I think part of those stories were. . . time moving differently, and that if you ate something there, you’d be trapped forever.”
“Anything about tree people then?” Jack asked slowly, remembering what he had seen.
“I’m not exactly an encyclopedia of monsters and myths,” Emily said dryly. “I save my brain storage for laws, crimes, and stressing over my still new fiancé who still seems a bit unstable. You’d be better off looking that stuff up yourself.”
“Right,” Jack said. “Well, maybe I did step into another world. I guess that would be cool, though not the fun isekai way of dimension hopping. I guess I can’t expect truck-kun out here in the mountains.”
Emily giggled, causing Jack to begin chuckling too as they made their way back through the mountain trail under the colorful tapestry of fall.
***
The breeze followed them all the way back to their car, an earthy scent lingering in the air that made Emily sneeze once they entered the parking lot.
“Gah, I knew I forgot something,” she sniffed. “I didn’t take an allergy pill. Must be ragweed in the breeze.”
“That’d be a bit odd this far up,” came a deep southern drawl from beside the couple. “Though I suppose it could have been swept up from the valley if it ‘er windy enough.”
Jack and Emily turned to find an older man dressed in a park ranger uniform resting on a hammock. The ranger nodded his hat politely. “Ma’am, sir. Good trip up the trail?”
“Yes, uh, Mr. Nathan,” Emily said, reading the name off the ranger’s badge. “Had to cut it short because of a work emergency though. It was a lovely view.”
“Yup, I agree,” the ranger smiled. “Rotating to Smokey Trail always brings a smile to my face. Glad we finally got some sun to share with the forest; just in time for the coming winter.” The ranger stretched before hopping out of the hammock. “Well, that’s it for my break. Have to do a patrol up the trail, so you kids have a safe drive back home.”
“Will do sir,” Jack said, reaching out to shake the other man’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Ranger Nathan reached out and shook Jack’s hand, only to pause. “Hey, you have a tumble?” the ranger asked eyeing Jack up and down. Jack blinked, and looked down. He hadn’t quite realized that traces of his fall were on him; Emily certainly hadn’t pointed it out. He looked up to meet the ranger’s gaze, and was taken aback by the strong stare. Jack repressed the instinct to gulp.
“Had a run in with a tree,” Jack joked. “The tree won.”
The ranger kept his stare only for another moment before he snorted and stepped back. “Yeah, I don’t advise taking on nature barehanded. Sorry to scare you son, just needed to check if you were a troublemaker.” The ranger grimaced at the questioning looks on Jack and Emily’s face. “Ah, see, we’ve had a little trouble with some miscreants this year looking for truffles. The idiots don’t know what they’re doing and dig around the tree roots, causing damage. Anyone who looks like they’ve been in the dirt we have to check now.”
“By staring into their eyes?” Emily asked with a raised eyebrow.
“That’s just looking for guilt,” the ranger explained with a grin. “I was actually checking your boyfriend’s hand for dirt and calluses. On that note, you aught to workout some kid. Girls like to be carried once an awhile.” He winked, causing the couple to blush. The ranger laughed, smacked Jack on the back, and walked away while whistling a tune.
“Ow,” Jack muttered. “Wouldn’t want to be caught as a miscreant by that guy.”
Emily only laughed as the two made it back to their car and strapped in. Emily drove this time, aiming to drop Jack off at the apartment before heading on to work. She wasn’t going to bother dressing up since ‘if they don’t like the way I dress on the weekend, then they shouldn’t call me into work during my me time’. On the way back, one Emily’s fellow interns called, and the two got into a conversation that Jack quickly tuned out. Instead, he opened his phone, noting the time correction, and began looking up fae and tree people like Emily had advised.
Like she’d said, there were plenty of articles talking about mushrooms and fae, though oddly enough very little about the tree people Jack had seen. The closest he found were ‘tree devils of New Hampshire’ and ‘tree folk’, with little to go on that hadn’t been sucked up into more modern monsters and story characters. Fae were the same, though the sheer dilution of identity from differing cultures made it hard to say what could be truer for mythological monsters and beings.
While he was at it, Jack also looked up other ‘USA’ origin monsters. He was disappointed to find not much for his troubles. Sure, there were a decent number of native american legends, but most ‘american’ monsters had very little to read about and, to be frank, mostly comprised of larger or more dangerous forms of wildlife. Though, amusingly, the names for many of them were frankly very American. Jack got a kick out of names like ‘Two-toed Tom’ and ‘Sink Hole Sam’; though the monsters they referred to were not at all laughing matters.
Jack was so engrossed in his reading he jumped when Emily called his name once they reached the apartment. Jack gave her a farewell kiss and hopped out, watching as Emily drove away. The young man returned to the apartment to drop off the blanket and change clothes, deciding to take a shower as he entered.
One hot water spray later, and Jack was feeling good as new. He wandered into the living room and took a seat on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. With Emily gone, his plans for the day were shot. Hell, with work closed and nothing else to look forward to for awhile, Jack honestly felt a little bored and lazy. He flipped on the TV and idly flipped through the channels for anything good before turning it off again. He didn’t feel like trying to open a streaming service to browse either.
In his idle thoughts, Jack couldn’t help but reflect again on the harrowing experience he had in the woods. He leaned back into the sofa and looked up at the ceiling, letting the memories play across his vision on the blank canvas above him. Was it because of what, like Emily had suggested, he’d done, stepping into a mushroom ring? Surely, he’d done that before though, right? He’d been in the woods plenty of times on hikes. Was there something he’d done differently, like stepping on the mushroom?
‘Or,’ he couldn’t help but shiver ominously, ‘is it because I am different now?’
His left hand reached up slowly to trace the scars still on his face, the small pieces of the stitches still there playing against his touch. The tips of his fingers made it to the bottom of his eye and stopped there.
What was happening to him, Jack didn’t know. Despite nothing happening in the woods, every instinct in his body had been screaming at him to flee, that he’d been in danger. How could he know if that was true though? More importantly, how did he know what he saw had been real? If it had been, had Emily also been in danger?
Another shiver ran down Jack’s spine at the thought, alongside a raw, angry emotion the bubbled inside of him. He wouldn’t let her face that danger, he couldn’t. Jack looked back down at his phone and swiped over to his contacts, pulling up the number for the nearby gym he went to on and off and the year membership he shared with Emily.
While he couldn’t be quite sure what his future held, Jack could do his best to prepare for it.