I startle awake―something is moving outside the cabin. I can hear the undergrowth crunching under its heavy steps. There is a pale, eerie light streaming through the bedroom window. My brother is a shape on the bed next to mine, a steady rise and fall under a pile of old blankets. I lie in bed and listen as the thing outside circles the cabin. The snap of sodden twigs, the wet suck of mud, the whisper of a moving tree branch. There is no other noise. No call of a night bird, no skitter of possum claws, no howl of wind. I feel my heart pulsing in my chest.

Read Somewhere There’s a Forest in Elegant Literature 27: Wicked Wonderland, published January 2024.