A short story by Erika M Szabo
A young police officer enters the woods to find a missing woman, but it takes all her mental strength to deal with what she finds.
The headlights of the police vehicle cut through the gloom,
creating ripples of shadow and light through the trees. Officer Angela Devon, a
tall, athletic woman in her late twenties pulled up behind the silver car. With
the headlights off, it was parked on the side of the winding road that ran
through the middle of the dense forest.
“This is Officer Devon, pulling up at the location now,” she
spoke into her radio, peering through the windshield. “There is a car here, and
according to the GPS locator, the call came from two hundred yards away in the
woods.” She said, hoping it was just a prank call made by bored teenagers, but
until she knew for sure, she wouldn’t leave. Not if there was even the slightest
possibility that someone was in trouble.
“Copy that,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled through the
receiver, followed by a short burst of static. “I’ll be on standby if you need backup.
Over.”
Angela cut the engine and turned off the headlights. She
leaned back against the headrest with a sigh. Without the headlights on, the
forest seemed to be closing in on her in the eerie light of the full moon,
darkness spilling out through the branches.
She grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment,
switched it on, and then pushed open the driver’s side door and climbed out
slamming the car door closed behind her. The large bluish-white beam flooded
the trees in front of her, creating ghostly shadows in her peripheral vision.
She really did not want to be there, but she was the
only officer on duty who had been able to answer the call. Her partner’s wife
went into labor, and nobody was available to take his place for the night
shift. In their small town, way up in the mountains, and a small department
with only a handful of officers, it wasn’t unusual for the officers to answer
calls alone.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Angela muttered under her
breath.
The 911 call that had come in had been an odd one, to say
the least. A woman crying for help, saying she was being followed by someone
she couldn’t see. In the background, the operator could hear footsteps thudding
in the distance, and heavy breathing, but that was all. The phone went silent
before she could give a location, but they had managed to trace the area where
the call had been made. In the forest by a country road a few miles from town,
the caller identified herself as Bella Mason, a twenty-four-year-old clerk at
the local hotel. Why would a young woman be out here alone, in the middle of
the night? Perhaps meeting someone in secret, Angela thought, and
only hoped she’d lost her phone, and whoever found it made the prank call,
rather than being anything serious.
Hefting her flashlight into the other hand, she made sure
she had her radio, taser, and Glock within reach and stepped into the forest.
Given that the location had been out of town, and it had
taken twenty minutes to get there, Angela had no idea where the woman might be.
She was only one person, and she wouldn’t be able to search the entire forest
on her own, but she would do her best to follow any tracks that she could find.
She wouldn’t leave until she was confident nothing bad had taken place.
Twigs and underbrush crunched under her feet as she moved between
the trees, shining her flashlight in a wide arc. Bugs flitted around her,
attracted by the glow, but she paid them no mind, other than occasionally
brushing a mosquito off her cheek. Despite the cool night, it was humid beneath
the canopy of trees, and a bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck,
making the collar of her uniform stick to her skin.
The woman on the phone had raggedly gasped out ‘Bella Mason’
when the operator had asked for her name, so that’s what Angela began to call
out, her voice echoing through the forest.
“Bella Mason! I’m a police officer responding to your 911
call.”
She winced when the sound bounced between the trees, the
echo growing strange and distorted. She didn’t like the thought of attracting
the attention of anyone—or anything—that might be hiding in the shadows, but
there was no other way she could go about it. She had to hope that Bella heard
her somehow and could give Angela a clue as to where she was.
Seriously though, what was she doing out here in the
middle of the night?
“Bella! Bella, are you out here?” She continued to call out
as she traversed through the trees, brushing branches and silky moth wings out
of her face. “Bella! It’s the police. I’m here to help.”
Nearing the approximate spot where the call came from, the
deeper into the forest she went, the quieter it got. She could no longer hear
the sound of small rodents and insects scurrying in the undergrowth, or nightbirds
ruffling their feathers high up in the trees. Even the wind had fallen still,
no longer rustling the leaves. There was only her own labored breathing, and
the soft crunch of her boots against the fallen twigs on the ground.
It was almost like walking in the graveyard at night.
Everything was so still, so quiet. Angela felt nervous about disturbing the
silence, but she quickly shook that thought away. She was there to answer a
distress call, which meant she had a job to do.
She cleared her throat and wiped away the perspiration that
beaded her forehead. “Bella! If you can hear me, please answer.”
As the echo faded into silence, Angela thought she heard the
faint sound of footsteps behind her. Soft, spongy, like someone walking
barefoot in the sand.
She turned, swinging her flashlight in the direction of the
noise. “Bella? Is that you?”
She saw a fleeting shadow by a wide tree from the corner of
her eye, and Angela felt a shiver of fear twisting her stomach. If it was
Bella, she would have answered. Had I merely imagined it? “Who’s there?”
She croaked out the words, and suddenly, her mouth and throat felt dry. She
swallowed hard and felt the flashlight slipping from the sweat that was
accumulating in her palms.
Get a grip, there’s nobody out here but me and perhaps
Bella, if it’s not a prank. And don’t be a scaredy cat. Your eyes just played a
trick on you with that shadow.
When it was clear there was nobody there, Angela turned
around and continued walking, though now the darkness and fluctuation of light
from her flashlight was making her disoriented, and she couldn’t remember which
way the road was.
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