Short story: "Watchers" by L.D. Smith

Here is "Watchers," by Mat-Su College student L.D. Smith.

Watchers

by L. D. Smith

His boots sank into the softened ground, rain-swollen mud swallowing the tread with a quiet squelch. Ritch Aulda hopped out of his Jeep Wrangler and stretched, shoulders rolling with the loose confidence of someone who'd never had a reason to doubt his body. Lovoc Raaftainn slid out from the passenger side right after him, already gathering the bags with the same careful, deliberate movements he'd always had.

"Alright, this is the spot," Ritch said, swinging a pack over one shoulder. "Rain like this means Neerie'll be out. I can feel it."

Lov adjusted the lens on his camera, fingers moving with that old photography-club precision. "You say that every year. When's the part where you finally give up?" He let out a breath, eyes drifting toward the wet treetops beading with runoff.

"I'm telling you," Ritch said, that jockish grin lighting his whole face. "We'll find a Neerie."

Lov rolled his eyes and shoved an extra camera into Ritch's chest. "You named it. It's just a White-tailed Ptarmigan."

He glanced past Ritch, brow furrowing. "And I doubt we're even supposed to be out here. This doesn't look like one of the trailheads open to visi—"

Ritch waved him off and gave him a light smack between the shoulders. "You worry too much. Trail guys told me it's fine back here. Nothing dangerous."

Lov didn't look convinced, but Ritch was already heading toward the narrow cut in the brush that barely counted as a trail.

"We'd better get moving," he called over his shoulder. "Sun's not going to wait."

Later, with the light starting to thin.

They'd been hiking for hours, and the forest felt different now. Lov couldn't explain it, only that something in the air had changed. It felt thicker. Harder to pull into his lungs. The trunks stood closer than they had miles back, crowding in like they'd grown while he wasn't watching.

Ritch walked ahead, eating up the trail with that restless, athletic stride of his, eyes flicking from branch to branch for any flash of white. If he was bothered by the way the woods had tightened around them, he didn't show it.

Lov tried to match his pace, but the straps on his pack kept digging into the wrong spots, and his attention kept snagging on the trees. The aspens stretched in pale columns in every direction, thousands of them, each one marked with those dark, round scars. They dotted the bark like healed burns. Perfectly placed. Too centered.

He looked away. Looked back. They were still there.

"Ritch, wait up," he called, breath hitching. "Don't leave me—"

A cold wind pushed through the thicket before he could finish. It swept through the aspens with a long, thin hiss, and for a moment the whole grove seemed to lean toward him. The trunks drew closer in the corners of his vision, narrowing like a throat.

Lov stopped. The dead, heart-shaped leaves crushed under his boot with a sound that felt too loud for the quiet settling over them.

He tried to steady his breathing. He tried not to look at the bark.
But curiosity tugged anyway.

He peered through a row of trunks, then another, and another, like looking down a long tunnel of pale wood. It took a moment to find the one that had grabbed his attention. It looked exactly like the others at first. Same pale body. Same dark oval scar. Same height.

But then the shape shifted.

Not much. Just enough. A slight tightening of the center, a shadow deepening where the "pupil" should've been. Like it was adjusting. Like it was finding him in the dim light.

Lov's pulse spiked hard in his throat.

The bark blinked—no, not blinked, he told himself, just his eyes doing something weird—but the feeling didn't go away. That one scar kept holding him. Pinning him.

A hand clapped his shoulder, and Lov jolted so violently his flashlight rattled in his pack.

Ritch laughed, completely unaware. "Dude, seriously. You're not gonna find any birds staring holes in the dirt. Come on." He nudged him forward, warm and easy and oblivious.

Lov forced himself to move. Forced his gaze off the tree.

Right. Trees don't stare. Trees don't do anything.

He tried to believe it.

Their campsite, just as the light finally gives out.

Ritch pressed the last tent peg into the damp earth and sat back on his heels. The ground was still holding the day's rain, soft enough that the peg slid in with barely a fight. Behind him, Lov coaxed the fire along with careful little breaths until the sparks caught and the flame steadied. The smoke drifted low, mixing with the smell of wet moss.

"Long day," Ritch said, easing himself onto a stump and stretching his arms out toward the heat. "At least we're done traveling. Tomorrow, we track down Neerie."

Lov didn't answer. He sat opposite the fire, face half-lit, gaze stuck on the dark shapes between the trees. His shoulders were tight in that way Ritch recognized from every time Lov's nerves started grinding at him.

"Lovoc," Ritch said, soft at first. "Hey. You good? You've been staring at those trees like they owe you money."

Lov blinked, like he was waking up. "Sorry. I'm fine, just... weird being off a maintained trail. These trees look like something out of a horror movie." His voice dipped, almost embarrassed. "Didn't think it'd get under my skin, but it kinda is."

Ritch stood up without warning, snapped a branch off a fallen limb, and held it like some medieval stage prop. "Fear not, weary dame," he declared, dropping into a dramatic pose. "Your noble knight shall bravely defend you from... trees."

He gave Lov's shoulder a playful nudge. Lov tried not to smile and failed a little.

"There's nothing out here but black bears," Ritch added, his voice gentler. "And I brought enough bear spray to fumigate the whole mountain. You're safe. Promise."

Lov touched Ritch's wrist, a small grounding motion. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Ritchie."

He rose with a stretch that seemed to deflate him. "I'm heading to bed. Gotta be up early if I want the cameras placed before sunrise." Another yawn slipped out, long and unguarded.

By the time Lov crawled into the tent, he was already halfway asleep. The sleeping bag swallowed him, warm and immediate, and his eyes shut before he could even think.

Somewhere outside, Ritch's voice cut through the quiet.

"Dude, I heard a call. I swear it sounded like Neerie. I'm gonna go check it out. Stay in the tent!"

Lov barely managed a groggy noise—something between agreement and dismissal.

"...kay..."

Then he was gone from the world.

Deep into the night.

A sharp crack snapped Lov awake.

He shot upright, breath already short, and reached instinctively toward Ritch's cot.

Empty. The sleeping bag still neatly rolled. No sign he'd ever come back. No scuff in the dirt to show he'd even lain down.

Lov pushed past the zipper and stuck his head into the cold air. The fire was nothing but a faint scatter of embers. The quiet wasn't night quiet. It was a held breath. The forest around him felt wrong in the same way a room feels wrong when someone's been staring at you.

"Ritch?" he whispered, as if speaking too loud might draw something closer.
Nothing answered. Even the insects had cut out.

He grabbed the flashlight, smacked it until the bulb flickered to life, and swung the beam across the clearing. The aspens caught the light like a hundred pale faces. Their dark knots reflected just enough to look wet, as if they'd been staring too long without blinking.

"Ritch!" The name carried farther this time, but it felt thin, swallowed before it even reached the first line of trees.

Barefoot in cold dirt, he found the trail without meaning to. Heavy footprints pressed deep into the mud. Drag marks pulled through moss like something had been taken rather than left. Broken branches pointed inward, guiding him deeper without offering direction.

A cold wave rolled up Lov's spine. He followed anyway.

By fifteen minutes in, the panic he'd tried to smother was settling in his chest like a stone. The deeper he went, the tighter the forest pulled around him. The aspens grew closer, crowding his shoulders, their pale trunks lined with those dark knots. The farther he walked, the more the knots seemed to line up at eye level. Staring straight at him. Watching him pass like he was slipping between rows of faces.

"Ritch..." His voice cracked on the name.

The light caught something metallic ahead. A dull glint between trunks.

He rushed toward it, chest tightening.

Ritch's camera hung from a branch, the strap twisted like it had been yanked. The lens was cracked straight through. The housing was dented inward, not scraped or dropped, but crushed.

Lov's throat tightened. "Ritch... what were you doing out here..."

A long, slow creak answered him. Not wind. Not weight shifting. Not branches rubbing. Wood. Bending.

Lov spun, light shaking in his hand.

One of the nearest trunks shifted. Its largest knot—dark, round, set perfectly at face height—slid just a little, like it was swiveling to keep him in view. When he blinked, the shift didn't reverse. It stayed fixed on him.

Lov backed up fast, heel catching on a root. He went down hard, cold mud soaking through his clothes. His flashlight rolled, spinning light over dozens of trunks.

And now there was no doubt.

Every knot was turned toward him.

Not scattered. Not accidental. Aligned.

A forest of fixed pupils, all set on the same point.

A thousand still faces, watching without blinking.

Something wet tapped the back of his hand.

Lov flinched, wiping it on instinct. The smear it left behind was thick and dark.

Another drop kissed his cheek.

He looked up.

And froze.

Ritch.

High in the canopy, bound like an offering, like a cruel parody of ascent, Ritch hung suspended in the pale grip of the aspens. Their limbs threaded through him with impossible precision, disappearing into fabric, into flesh, into places Lov's mind refused to linger on. The branches held him open to the forest like something displayed.

His arms were stretched wide.

Not broken. Not slumped.

Stretched.

As if he had chosen this.

His eyes were open. Fixed on nothing. Or maybe on everything at once. There was a softness there that didn't belong, something almost serene, like he'd finally stopped running after the thing he'd been chasing all his life.

Red traced slow paths down his cheeks, but his expression didn't match it. Not fear. Not pain.

Recognition.

Lov's throat closed around his name. No sound came out. Just air scraping against itself.
Then Ritch moved.

A small motion. A tilt of the head, as if hearing him properly for the first time.

The branches responded.

They tightened, subtly at first, then with intent, lowering him through the canopy in slow, careful increments. Like something being handed down rather than taken.

His head lolled, then corrected itself mid-descent. His gaze found Lov through the trees.

And held him.

Closer.

Closer.

Lov couldn't step back. Couldn't even remember how.

The flashlight shook in his grip, throwing broken light across bark, across skin, across the impossible geometry of the body being delivered into it.

When Ritch reached the ground, it wasn't a fall. It was an arrival.

Something in his chest moved first.

A pressure. A hesitation. Then a quiet opening, like wood splitting after too much rain. Bone unfolded beneath skin with slow, patient inevitability, not tearing so much as rearranging. From within, pale hands began to emerge, testing the air like something waking up after a long sleep.

They did not reach for Lov at first.

They steadied Ritch.

As if orienting him.

Then more arms followed, slipping out with careful familiarity, brushing against Lov's legs, his waist, his wrists. Not grabbing yet. Just confirming he was there. Making sure he wouldn't leave.

Lov tried to speak.

"Ritch..."

It came out wrong. Small. Broken.

And then Ritch finally answered him.

Not with words.

With a hand on his cheek.

Cold. Familiar. Anchoring him in place like it always had in life, like it always did when Ritch leaned too close during jokes that lasted a second too long.

His thumb brushed once beneath Lov's eye.

Almost gentle enough to be mistaken for care.

"R-Ritch..." Lov tried again, weaker. "What... happened..."

Ritch leaned in.

Not rushed. Not violent.

Certain.

Their foreheads almost touched first. A pause that felt like breath held between two people who had always been one sentence away from something they never said out loud.

Then the kiss.

Cold. Wet. Heavy with the taste of iron and sap and something like rain that never belonged to this place. It lingered too long to be accidental, too precise to be human.

For a moment, it almost felt like an answer.

Something white burst upward from the shrub line behind them, wings tearing through the stillness in a frantic blur. Feathers scattered into the air like something trying to become real before it was noticed.

Lov's eyes followed it without thinking.

A reflex.

A hope.

A mistake.

The sound that followed wasn't loud.

Just final.

Snap.