Page 58 of Among the Screaming Trees

Motherfucker. “Anything else, Professor?” was translated by my forearm pressing on his windpipe while his fingers curled uselessly around my skin.

“She saw a small tattoo on my chest…”

I leaned into him, restricting his airflow to the point he’d pass out. No one needs three chapters of a short story, asshole. Spit it the fuck out.

“Of an Aster.” He’d coughed as I released him. The Pepperberry trees were a dealbreaker. He knew how obsessed she was with her parent’s research. One had died before seeing any of her peer-reviewed papers published. The other had pursued the research and medical applications, only for it to dissolve into nothingness. Here one moment, grieving with a daughter he distanced from, and gone the next. Then came the ridicule, the smears of shame tarnishing the work her mother had begun, and her father had received the baton but faltered at the turn. The screaming trees were the same singing trees she remembered being taken to as a young girl. Why the fuck would Wyldan shield her from something so monumental?

And a chest tatt? Who gives a fuck? Lukaz has a dozen or more scattered across his body. I’ve thought about camouflaging my scars with art, too. Why would a tiny flower on his chest cause so much angst? Then realization sweeps through me like the babbling stream receiving floodwater volume. On its own, the tattoo is just another flower. In reality, it’s an Aster. Her mother’s name, the likeness of which is inked into this man’s skin.

“Why?” I demand again, my fists aching to inflict the same punishment on the professor that I did to licentious, lustful gazes from foster families who were intent on acting when dark crept over my bedroom window, or we found ourselves alone.

“Why a flower? I study botany. I thought about an anchor or something real masculine like a bull or a wolf but chickened out. All that needling can be painful, you know.”

“Ast… er. Her mother?”

“It’s a fucking purple daisy. It means nothing.”

Not to her, it wouldn’t.

“I was married, asshole. You didn’t think it could have correlated to my wife?”

I’ve seen deflection before. From a foster dad who swore on his grandmother’s name we were just wrestling in his garage. Nothing to see here, just a stand-up guy taking in troubled youth and teaching ’em how to grapple. The memory has bile rising in my throat before I swallow it down again.

“Her mother,” I repeat, this time with strength. “How?”

Lukaz arrives at the moment the professor opens his mouth to reply. The prof has had too many fucking chances. His blood can drip down five shirts, for all I care.

“Fox,” he wheezes, breaths ragged. “I was on the other side of campus. I took the tunnels and ran as fast as I could. What’s the matter? Where is she?”

I point through Wyldan’s window to the woods beyond, and Luk’s panting stops, his reddened face paling.

“Alone?” he wheezes, and I nod. “Fuck,” he seethes, tearing at the straight strands of his dirty-blond hair not stuck to his sweaty neck. “Her boots. Track her boots!”

Of course, fuck. In all the craziness, I forgot about the tracker in her hiking boots; the pair I’d manipulated right before the Larch. I pull up the app on my phone screen, relieved to see a little dot in the woods, until I zoom out. As I stare, the dot remains unmoving, high on a mountaintop amid cleared terrain and a driveway. Her boots are at the Wyldan house, and Aspen’s feet are not in them.

“You’re a dead man,” I mouth at the bloodied lecturer still slumped against the wall. His fist slides sideways to knock on a dividing door. After a beat, Dr. Bonners steps through the partially open door.

“What?” he demands, searching all faces before landing on his bloodied colleague.

“What did you do?” He seizes Wyldan by his stained shirt, thumping the man against the wall.

“Aspen’s in the woods, alone because this prick did something,” Lukaz explains, looking to me for clarification. When I confirm with a nod, Bonner turns to us. “How?”

“She had some argument with your pal here and took off. She’s not wearing her boots; we already checked the tracker.”

“Nooo…” The doctor releases Wyldan’s shirt, balling his fists at his sides. “How much does she know, Elijah?”

“The trees…” he says, wiping at the blood still dripping from his lip. “And she saw the Aster.”

“Fuck!” Bonner roars at the ceiling, spewing his frustration at a yellowed decorative cornice. “Grab your shit, boys. We have to find her. Let me grab the drone.”

Jack, Luk, and I traipse through the woods, trying to find a break in the canopy to release a drone and determine if we’re on the right track—her track. The issue now is that we’re not heading toward the clearings where we gathered lichen samples under Professor Dickbag’s watchful eye; she took off further south. If she’s intent on locating the Pepperberry trees, she would know an unknown part of the woods needs to be explored, because nothing remotely like their description was seen on the field trip. The Larch? That happens at night for a reason. The slasher-flick horror similarities help fuel the myths of primal behaviors harking back decades and excite the lip and brow piercings right out of the faces of our emo-goth students. Did we happen across any Pepperberry on the Larch? Probably not. If I didn’t notice a new species of rare, machinal tree, then Aspen would have. At night, with a galloping pulse, pursued by masked strangers. Fuck, she could be anywhere.

“How much longer until you get the drone up?” Luk asks again. This is his equivalent of are we there yet, and it’s getting fucking old. Bonner’s compass clacks as he slams it shut, pushing further up a ridge, dodging low boughs and wispy, flexible branches that ache to slap you in the face as you pass. Bonner knows where the Pepperberry grows, or at least the rough location. Close to a remote cabin used by resting hunters and research students. Wyldan stayed back at campus should Aspen return on her own, and not to raise any further suspicion from the college about why a doctor and two students decided to take an afternoon stroll among the spruce and western hemlock.

I saw where her little footprints had indented the compost, disturbed moss on logs as she moved, but that was hours ago. The deeper we go through the woods, past rocky outcrops and snow-covered meadow, the more difficult it is to map anything. Other tracks were too wide to be human, cementing more predacious presences out here. As we continue to climb and Bonner rechecks his compass, my gaze is caught by something snagged on a branch near a topped log too fresh to be claimed by moss. Bonner sees just as I do when a splinter of dissolving sunlight glistens off the strands; some honeyed blonde, another couple hinting at a soft pink.

“She came through here,” Bonner declares, reaching toward the shimmering strands. Lukaz slides to his side, studying the hair like the trained scientist he is. Aspen was here. This is our first confirmation since her footprints petered out hours ago. I motion for them to stay still, so I can scour the area she may have stepped over once more. Leading up to this fallen Sitka, we had to slash our way through whipping branches and across boggy sections masquerading as a track. Bonner deploys the drone while I creep around, fingers tracing the soil particles through patches of snow for anything related to Aspen Aldereyne.