Chris Doty-Dunn
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Bethany is the first to go off the path and not come back.
The three had trudged for miles before it happened, single-file on the line of bare dirt and rocks that cut through the quiet of field and trees. They laughed as they shouted their conversation back and forth, Bethany about starting nursing school in the fall and Pat about taking time off to “find himself.” Henry wanted to become a forest ranger, to be closer to nature. The hike was his idea.
Then Bethany had seen a fawn, she thought, sheltering in the tall grass—“Over here, guys, look!” she’d yelled.
By the time her friends turn, she’s gone, lost in the blanket of green that cascades down the hill to the distant cliffs, the sea smashing white beyond. Pat and Henry go to look for her.
People always look for each other.
“Bethany, this isn’t funny,” Henry yells, then Pat shouts her name louder as the two walk in erratic lines like flies on a corpse, back and forth across the path. Through the grass on one side, through the ancient trunks on the other.
Bethany doesn’t answer.
Her body is already cooling, eyes wide like she’s still looking for the fawn. She’s hidden in the hollow of grass and flowers that grew to look like a baby deer. Daisy chains like ligatures wrap tightly around her ankles and wrists and throat.
“We have to go back.” Henry stomps onto the path again, panting in the silence. “I haven’t had service for miles.”
“Is there a phone at the cabin?” Pat says. “We’re almost there, right?”
“I don’t know. Shit.” Henry’s eyes flicker to the sky. “It’ll be dark soon. You keep looking. I’m gonna run to that rise up ahead and see if I can get a signal.”
Henry sets off up the hill, pack bouncing, and is out of sight in a moment.
Pat spins, looking down the grassy hill and between the tree trunks. He freezes, squinting through branches.
“Bethany?”
“Pat!” Bethany’s voice, coming from all around him.
He rushes off the path and into the trees, only the sound of snapping twigs and his heavy breathing accompanying him.
He stops, shaking like a cedar when the storms blow in off the sea. The shape, made from fresh saplings and red and yellow flowers, is less convincing up close.
Pat realizes too late.
The saplings reach out and take him as the grass took Bethany, pulling him inside where they grow through his skin and flesh and bone and then through flesh and skin again until they find air on the other side, exploding in a riot of green leaves that covers the red.
Henry returns from the hill to find the path empty. His voice is shrill as he dodges in and out the trees, runs through the tall grass, calling his friends’ names.
People always look for each other.
But Henry won’t find Pat or Bethany.
Because I have taken them.
The next time Henry comes out of the trees, back to the certainty of the path, the cabin is there, just ahead. His head swivels left and right, but no explanation comes. He takes a cautious step. And then another, the hint of human civilization a lure.
The shape of the cabin is more convincing than the one I formed to mimic Bethany, since the real cabin is made of wood, too. Henry fills his lungs and holds the breath in as he pushes the door open.
Inside, there is nothing but a dirt floor that churns with worms and beetles, the soil still disturbed from the cabin growing in.
“What the hell?” Henry lets loose his breath and tries to back away, but the ground under him bucks, tossing him inside.
The door slams and the walls and ceiling shrink towards the earth. Henry lets out a yelp that’s silenced as the trunks and branches of my mimicry smash him into the dirt. He’s pulled under where his lungs fill with soil and dried leaves when he tries to scream, and the worms and beetles find their way in.
There’s a moment of quiet along the path.
And then I fill with noise again as the creatures that call me home are no longer silent at the humans’ passing.
The birds and insects return to their songs. Rabbits come out of their dens, squirrels forage, a fox slinks as it hunts. Even the trees relax, letting their branches shake free in the wind as the sun begins to set and the bats come out to swoop and play against the purpling sky.
There will be more people who come along the path. A path they made through me, uninvited.
But I am always learning new shapes.
People always look for each other.
Chris Doty-Dunn writes weird, speculative fiction, often with a queer bent. His work appears in Crepuscular Magazine, Rat Bag Lit, Dream Theory Media, and Sundial Magazine, as well as in anthologies. His drabble “Basic Ghost Girly” was nominated for Best Microfiction 2025. He lives outside Boston, MA with his husband and their two dogs, Weland and Waffles.
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