The Pines

The Pines

Wind blasted my hair as I stuck my head out of the back seat window. I smiled and took in the warm summer air, yelling just for the thrill of it. We were cruising through Georgia on our way to Jacksonville to move Kyle into his dorm. I looked ahead. More pine trees. Rows of them as far as the eye could see, backward and forwards. Quickly, I sat back down and glanced over at Kyle.

“Kyle, when are we gonna get to the next town man?” I asked. 

“Yeah Kyle, where are we buddy? I gotta pee so bad,” Will added, yelling from the passenger seat. He turned around and stared at Kyle who was passed out, snoring like a baby. I saw my chance and smacked his face a few times before he emerged out of deep sleep and muttered some indistinguishable words. Kyle looked around the car for a bit, eyes half shut, as he slowly regained consciousness. The car made a sudden turn and he swung sideways snapping him out of his post-nap trance.

“Matt, you suck at driving,” he said, adjusting his position.

“Glad you could join us, Kyle!” Matthew laughed from the driver’s seat. “You were knocked back there for a minute.” I looked over at my buddy.

“Dude, where are we? All our phones died like an hour ago” Kyle pulled out his phone and saw that it still had some juice. All of Matthew’s outlets had stopped working years ago so we couldn’t charge ours. Kyle pulled up maps. After a few moments of anticipation, the navigator finally made his announcement.
               “We’re in central Georgia on some old highway, none of the names will load.” He jammed his phone back into his pocket and looked around at the surroundings. More and more lumber in perfect rows.

“Guy’s, we’ve been going past these rows of pines for like two hours now. Is anyone else just a little concerned?” I asked. “We gotta be lost, Matthew. It never takes this long to get through the lumber district.”

“Dude, I know where we are going. My dad used to always use this route on our way to Nana’s.” Matthew responded. There was an uneasiness in the way said it. He looked straight forward and tapped the wheel.

“That’s where we get all our paper ya’ll,” Will remarked staring deeply into each passing row of pine. We all stared out of the open windows and into the dark man-made forest. Row after row; the trees would never end. A ding came from Kyle's phone. He reached into his pocket and took out his device, which was being overloaded with notifications.

“You got service back there?” Matthew asked, looking back, taking his tired eyes off the road. The car swerved again.

“Chill dude your gonna kill us. Matthew, you need some sleep bro, but yeah, I got one bar,” Kyle was looking at maps. All the sudden, the voice navigation turned on and blurted at max volume in its robotic voice,

“In 0.1 miles turn right. Turn righ-” I heard a loud sound like metal on wood and his phone died mid-sentence. The car went dead quiet. The ere vibes of the lumber farms already had us on edge, but for some reason, this was the scariest thing that ever happened. Matthew had stopped the car to follow the map's directions, but there was no right turn. It was only rows of pine.

It might have been the fact that it was well after 2am and we were desperately craving sleep. Or maybe the fact that we had just watched a horror movie at Matthews's place. Whatever the reason, the whole group was in an absolute panic. Then we made the stupidest decision of our lives.

“Aight ya’ll, I gotta pee.” Will was the first to break the silence. There was grumbling, but reluctantly we joined our friend on the edge of the road, facing into the endless forest. We all stared straight ahead down one of the lanes of pines. I strained to see farther down the lane. The darkness deep into the forest was so intense that it seemed to almost suck the light out of the night like a void into the abyss. The rows of trees kept going back as far as you could see until they melted into the infinite blackness. Finally, Will finished and we turned back around to get in the car. My heart sank. The car was gone.

Let me just tell you, the panic that I felt when I saw there was no car was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Complete vulnerability. No where to run too. Just four boys, lost in an almost unnatural loop of trees. I turned over to Kyle, but he wasn’t next to me. I glanced behind me and saw the woods. I looked dead ahead and saw only the road and more trees on the other side. I was now all alone. There I was in the middle of a road with nothing around except pitch blackness and rows and rows of pine wood.

My lip quivered. I had never been so alone and hopeless in my life. My friends were gone, the car was gone, and I was still there trapped in a hopeless maze of perfectly rowed wood. All the sudden there was a noise from the opposite side of the street. A stick cracked on the forest floor. I stared in the direction of the noise. I saw only darkness. Then another stick cracked, and a leaf crumped. Something was moving closer to the road, almost crawling its way out of the forest. I stared even harder into the woods and saw out of the corner of my eye a small movement. My heart was pumping so loudly that anything in a mile radius could have heard it. My hands and legs shook violently as I saw the figure emerge from the edge of the woods.

It was crawling towards me at an unearthly speed. I turned and sprinted towards the side of the road we had parked, and into one of the pine lanes. I didn’t dare look behind me at whatever had crawled out of that god-forsaken forest. I just kept running, deeper and deeper into the pines. My right foot planted into the ground and hit something hard that sent a flare of pain all the way through my leg. I was on the ground, flailing around in pain when the creature caught up to me. I saw it through blurred vision as I rolled around on the ground. It came closer and I saw its hideous face staring at me. It was deformed and bloodshot in the eyes. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I tried to run, but my legs wouldn’t respond. It came closer and closer and seemed to form some sort of demented smile on it’s crusted mouth. This was it. Death seemed inevitable. I said a prayer and closed my eyes as tight as I could, but nothing happened.

I opened them and I was back in the car, but the creature's face was still there. I blinked again and I saw Kyle’s face looking at me, unconscious. We were upside down. I strained my arm around and undid my seatbelt, only to fall face-first into the ceiling of the car. I awkwardly opened the upside-down door and gingerly stepped outside. Matthew's car was wrapped around a tree and smoking. My right leg throbbed with pain as I bent down to open the mangled driver door. Everyone in the car was miraculously unscratched. They, however, had been knocked out by the impact of the car hitting the tree. After my friends woke up Matthew explained that when he took his eyes off the road, his exhausted hands had slipped from the wheel and sent them flying into the woods. I was overjoyed that all my boys were unharmed. I told them the dream I had had, and we all swore right then and there that horror movies and late-night road trips weren’t the best combo. Especially in Central Georgia’s lumber district.