Fairy Ring

Into the woods, into the woods

Note: Forgive mistakes and all that jazz— had to rush it. This was originally intended to be much longer— and darker— but see it as a sneaky snack, why don’t you?

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The image shows a young woman in her mid-twenties. She has an open, expressive face and a thin-lipped mouth. A fall of loose brown curls spills down to her shoulders. Her wide blue eyes stare out from behind wireframe glasses, sparkling with good cheer. Behind, the woods are a blur of browns and yellows. The sounds of her feet plowing through the leaves is a rhythmic slushing.

“Hey guys!” she says. “It’s almost Halloween, and you know what that means! It’s time to get into some spooky business.”

She lets out a ghostly moan.

“No Hallow’s Eve would be complete without the decorations, of course. I’m sure a lot of you already have your pumpkins picked out and your boxes dragged out of storage. But for those of you who’re still looking for ideas or inspiration, I’d like to show you some of my favorite Halloween DIY’s—starting with a creepy scarecrow. And you won’t have to spend a lot, because most of what we need can be found right here, in nature’s store.”

The view flips, shows a bobbing view of the woods, a shock of green visible through the trees up ahead before the woman’s face fills the screen again. The footsteps start up again, rushing through the thick carpet of leaves.

“Now, what’s most important when it comes to a good scarecrow, is the branches,” she continues, slightly winded. “Most people tend to go for a basic T-shape, which, you know, is fine.” The light changes as she steps from the trees, the glasses flashing like twin molten coins. “But what I’ve found is that if you use a branch with a specific shape, you can really get that—”

She looks down.

“Oh shit.”

The image dissolves in a streak of color, before cutting out.

***

Molly saw both things at once: the mushroom she’d kicked apart, lying in two pieces on the grass that made up the clearing, and the circle it had been a part of—a neat bracelet of purplish-black gems, perhaps five feet across.

A fairy ring, wasn’t that what they called it?

Yeah, she thought so. This one was strange, though. She’d never seen mushrooms like these. Tall and narrow, with caps with the color of fresh bruises pulled down over thick indigo stems, they almost looked like fingers pushing up through the short, yellowed grass. Fingers, yes. But blood crept into her cheeks as she stared at the dark fungi marching around the clearing, pearls of dew still clinging to them, because their shape had brought something else to mind, at first glance.

Molly pushed the thought away and raised the phone again. The recording was still going. With a sharp stab she aborted effort number five, a frustrated hiss escaping from between her clenched teeth. She’d been wandering around the woods for almost two hours now, hoping to get the next upload over and done with before eleven, so she could start putting the project together. Now it was pushing towards noon and she had nothing. Two takes almost had her falling flat on her face. On the other two the lighting had been bad. And now this. A frustrated, anxious feeling leapt up from her belly, thinking of all the work she still had to do today.

Your own fault for putting it off.

Yes. Molly sighed. Yes. And unless the search for materials went smoothly, this meant she would be working all day. She depended on the extra income her channels and hobby store generated—almost enough to pay the rent these days. So: content.

Molly wasn’t much for Halloween. Because it was one of the major DIY high days she went through the motions, always sure to pick up some new followers—and a customer or two—with her how-to’s and hobby projects. But she was always more cutesy than scary. Competition being what it was, she’d forced herself to push it a little. Last year, hard up for something to drop, she even went so far as to record a nighttime video, showcasing her own decorations. While editing, she managed to scare herself a few times.

Molly considered the fairy ring before her. There was always something eerie about them. She seemed to remember a connection between witches and the circles of mushrooms found in the woods. A meeting place of some kind, wasn’t it? Silly, of course. But it was easy to imagine this one as a place where they danced or gathered. Or died? She wasn’t sure. Of all the monsters, witches never really did it for her. Clowns, though—

Inspired by the moment, she lowered herself to a crouch and swiped the camera to photo mode, holding the phone this way and that to get the perfect angle. At least she’d get a post out of it. But as she reached over to remove the broken mushroom that was ruining the shot, she made a face. It had a surprising weight. The bulbous cap was warm to the touch; loose, like the thin rubber skin of a water balloon. And it smelled bad. Not just the deep wet smell of a mushroom but a sharp, metallic stench that stung her nostrils, made her eyes water. She dropped it in the grass next to her, wiping her hand on her thigh.

When the picture was taken, she pushed up from the ground in a hurry, eager to escape the vile odor emanating from the circle. But despite her best efforts, Molly found she didn’t like the snapshot. The low angle she’d settled on made the mushrooms look like dark figures marching towards the camera. Or headstones. The intended caption --Magical encounter in the woods— refused to flow from her fingertips, the invisible words stirring the hairs on her body. She aborted the upload.

Foiled again.

The click of the screen lock cut through the silence, made her aware of the deep quiet that had settled over the surroundings. Looking up at the tree line, her ears pricked up, listening for the secret noises of the woods. But there was nothing, only the rush of blood in her ears as her heart began to beat a slow, vibrating drum against her ribcage.

A phantom tickle between her shoulder blades began to tug at her chin. She resisted it as best she could but in the end she glanced back, finding nothing but the trees bordering the clearing.

You’re freaking yourself out, Molly told herself.

Yes. Thinking about Halloween, her mind rustling up thoughts of witches for the picture, she’d managed to give herself the creeps. There wasn’t anything special about a ring of mushrooms in the woods, was there?

Nope.

But still. Her eyes crept to the hole by her feet, where the one she’d kicked had stood, completing the circle. Bad luck, wasn’t it, to enter a fairy ring? But what about breaking it? She couldn’t imagine that was much better. And now, when her gaze slid across the ring of black fungi, it wasn’t fingers

-- dicks—

they resembled, but candles. Black candles. Like the ones used in unspeakable rites.

She wanted to laugh it off, but the laughter got stuck in her throat. All she could manage was a weak, wavering smile that wilted into a grimace. Molly raised a trembling hand to her brow, wasn’t surprised to find it slick with sweat.

Again her eyes returned to the fairy circle

The witches’ circle.

and her heart sped up as went from one to the other, counting. Twelve. The one that lay mangled in the grass by her left feet made thirteen.  

This is where they danced.

Stop, she told herself.

A soft sound from behind made her whirl around, heart hammering away.

Nothing but empty woods. But was it her imagination, or had the shadows between the trees deepened since last she looked?

Molly swallowed. All thoughts of content had fled from her mind some time ago; now all she wanted was to get home. She traced a slow circle of her own, trying to find where she’d entered the clearing. With a sinking feeling, she realized that everything looked the same and she had no idea what direction she’d come from. Why hadn’t she been paying attention? Fighting the rising panic, she made for the tree line across from the hole in the fairy ring, when something rushed through the undergrowth to the right. She jumped, almost dropping the phone she still held in a death grip.

Again, there was nothing. But when she turned back around, her heart lurched. A flitting movement between the trees, there and gone in the flutter of an eye. Black and slithering. Like the edge of a robe.

This is where they gathered.

Something miserable tried to crawl up her throat, crumpling her face.

You’re seeing things.

Another furtive sound had her spinning, the woods becoming a blur. Molly came to a stop in an awkward stumble. It took a beat for the trees to congeal. Closer together now, weren’t they? The shadows between them darker still. She felt almost sure of it. Her breath tore in and out, never seeming to fill her lungs.

One hand pushed up her glasses, rubbed at the eye beneath. As her glasses lowered, she stared at the tree line, the seamed, pale face staring back. Between one eyeblink and the next, it was gone.

No.

Molly sucked in a surprised breath, fell back a step. A shiver worked through her. It had been right there. The face of an old woman, peering out from beneath a black hood, her eyes two deep dark holes gouged into her sagging flesh. She had offered the wide, childish grin of the toothless. But there had been nothing pleasant about it. Leering out at her, the woman’s expression had spoken of hunger. Of greed.

Molly turned to run, pulled up short after one stumbling step.

It took her mind a beat or two to catch up with her eyes. Before, she’d been maybe three feet from the tree line. Now, some impossible jump had occurred, snapping her back to the middle of the clearing.

The shiver became a shudder as she lowered her gaze to the ground, already sure what she would find. Still, she couldn’t keep down the sob.

She was standing in the middle of the fairy ring.

This is where they died.

“No,” she whimpered, starting forward again, her thoughts swirling in a formless mass. Reaching the edge, she cringed, somehow sure she wouldn’t be able to leave the ring of mushrooms. But she stepped from it easily. Making for the tree line, she glance back over her shoulder. One foot hooked behind the other and she almost went flying.

A moan escaped her.

Again she’d been snapped back to the middle of the clearing, placed back in the fairy ring. The light had changed, spatters of dying sunlight turning the grass the color of rust. Molly’s breath plumed in the cold, impossible evening air, tears blurring her vision as she spun around.

When she stopped, something struck her thigh and her pulse spiked. Blinking through tears, she looked down at the phone in her hand, and for several seconds, she couldn’t make sense of it. Then her heart galloped.

Face ID failed. Panic snapped at her heels as useless, trembling fingers began to skate and slip over the screen, swiping in the wrong direction four times before the passcode screen appeared. Another rushing sound in the woods made her flinch, and another whimper escaped her. The light from the screen was getting brighter and brighter. Either that, or the day was getting darker. She didn’t dare look. Bathed in the cold white light, her teeth began to chatter.

Molly let out a miserable noise when the locked screen shuddered for the second time. Forcing herself to take a second, she tapped the numbers with deliberation, counting them off in her head, hovering above the last one for a beat before pressing down.

Click.

The light intensified, made her squint. Frantic, she began to tap away at the screen, squealing in frustration when force of habit kept returning her to Instagram. Her heart was thundering in her chest, almost—

Almost—

The phone in her hand began to tremble when she realized that the thumping wasn’t just coming from inside her ribcage. It was coming from the woods, as well. A low thudding she had mistaken for her own heartbeat. Yet, even now, she could detect a rhythm; a fast, pulsating sweep marked off by accents on every fourth or fifth beat. THUD- thudthudthudthud-THUD- thudthudthudthud-THUD-thudthudthudthud

A drumbeat, played on a thick, loose skin.

As she listened, the sound swelled, its rhythm ending in a roll, before starting over again. Its relentless beat worked its way into her own body, vibrating in her chest and pulling at her heart. It seemed to heat up the very air around her. The phone in her hand dipped.

Now there were other sounds as well. The thin, reedy call of a flute; the stir of strings. A strange, clashing melody that should’ve been dissonant, but wasn’t. As sweet and sharp as a knife slashing across a throat, it pulled the air from her lungs, brought tears of rapture to her eyes.

Molly let out a gasping sob.

As the music filled the world, she saw them. White faces pushing up from the darkness. The women smiled at her. But these were not malicious smiles. The women regarded her with warm and welcoming expressions.

When they began to laugh and clap, Molly was puzzled at first. But when she looked down, she noticed that she was dancing, her feet shuffling in the short grass in a complicated jig.

Meeting the eyes of the onlookers, Molly was dumbfounded. Then a slow grin split her lips, and laughter bubbled up from her throat. She beckoned, and one by one, they slipped from the trees, to dance with her beneath the wheeling stars.

***

The livestream lasted for three hours and seventeen minutes. The broadcast, great parts of it a dizzying blur that most of Molly’s followers quit before too long, showed the young woman spinning around, laughing and screaming. From time to time, she could be heard talking to invisible people, although most of what she said was gibberish.  

The clip was quickly taken down, in no small part because after the phone is launched from the woman’s grip around the two-hour mark and lands some distance away, she can be seen undressing, dancing naked in the clearing before disappearing into the woods. Yet some enterprising individuals took the effort to save the clip and, considering its interesting content, it has been widely viewed and shared since. Experts and enthusiasts are confident that the red mist clouding the air around Molly in the video are toxic spores, emanating from the black mushrooms that can be seen on the 1:38:15 to 1:38:47, and the 1:55:06—1:55:24 mark, causing strong hallucinations. Mycologists have yet to identify the fungus in question, pointing out that the poor quality of the clip presents significant difficulties in that regard.

Most are more interested in the series of images between 0:22:15 and 1:39:26, convinced that the swirling clouds of spores show ethereal figures, cavorting around Molly. Women, whose faces age from one frame to the next. Some are even convinced that the billowing cloud at 1:31:03 shows a horned man, sitting on a stool.

Neither Molly’s body nor her phone were ever recovered.