That Bloody Road Trip

Chapter 11

We just sat there, all three of us, at the bank of the river, trying to catch our breath and understand what the hell had just happened to us.

The river illuminated the enormous moon above us, reflecting it so brightly that the entire surface looked as though someone had placed a giant halogen light over the water and turned it all the way up. Everything around us seemed brighter than it should have been—the trees, the rocks, the water, even our own faces.

I pulled the aroko from my trouser pocket and examined it again.

For whatever reason, it looked completely dry, even though my trousers were still damp from the river. I supposed the water must have touched the package somehow and forced it out of my pocket. That was only a theory, because at this point, theories were all we had.

The thing was wrapped in what looked like wool or some kind of thick cloth, and it was strangely tiny, not even bigger than my phone. I still had absolutely no idea what was inside it, but I knew one thing: we had been entrusted with it.

And whatever was waiting for us inside that forest, losing it could mean losing our only reason for being alive.

I returned the aroko to my pocket and touched the side of my head where Tony had knocked me out earlier, when I was chasing the illusion of my mother.

My fingers stayed there for a while.

Maybe one day I would actually see her again. Maybe one day I would hear her voice and know that it was really her.

But I had to get her out of my mind for now unless I wanted the forest to kill me with another beautiful lie.

I looked at Tony.

He was still murmuring about those women, still talking about how real they had looked, how beautiful they had been, and, for some reason, how enormous their backsides were.

Stephen was sitting beside him, occasionally nodding as if he had seen the same thing and was confirming Tony’s testimony.

I almost laughed.

But there was something bothering me.

Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Tony.

No, not yet.

Whatever it was, I could deal with it later.

For now, we had to move.

“Let’s continue,” I said. “Let’s just continue.”

Tony was reluctant to stand. He remained near the edge of the water, staring at the spot where the women had appeared, almost as though he expected them to return if he waited long enough.

I walked over and knocked him lightly on the head.

“Stand up, Tony.”

He looked at me.

“You told me my mother wasn’t there. You told me I was chasing something that didn’t exist, yet you’re here pining over three women who were never here either. So stand up. Stand up before you start another episode.”

He eventually stood, grumbling under his breath, while Stephen got up as well.

We started moving again, leaving the river behind us and following the path we had somehow managed to find.

The forest seemed even quieter now.

But the silence wasn’t peaceful.

It felt watchful.

As we walked, the voices returned.

Those strange fragments of memories that appeared without warning—sounds from the past, conversations, moments we had buried so deeply that we had forgotten they existed.

They would suddenly play in our heads, disappear, then return again, almost like a broken recording.

I looked at Tony.

“You dey hear voices too?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he replied immediately. “I dey hear them. E dey disturb me. I no like am.”

Then he smiled.

I stared at him.

“Why are you smiling?”

He shrugged.

“I think na that moment when I dey do something with girls, and their moaning dey ginger me.”

I almost slapped him.

“This boy is too much. You are in the middle of a cursed forest, fighting illusions that are trying to kill you, and you’re smiling because you’re remembering women?”

He only grinned.

I turned toward Stephen.

“Stephen, you dey hear anything?”

He looked at me with a genuinely curious expression.

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

There was something almost condescending about the way he said it, as if the rest of us were discussing a problem that didn’t concern him.

I shook my head and looked ahead again.

Maybe Stephen was immune.

Maybe his mind worked differently.

Maybe the illusion hadn’t found anything it could use against him yet.

I had thought perhaps I would be the one who escaped this whole thing untouched, but after seeing my mother, I knew better.

The forest had already reached inside my head and found the one thing capable of making me forget everything else.

We kept walking, deeper into the unknown, with no idea where we were going, who we were going to meet, or whether the people who had sent us here had any idea what they had actually thrown us into.

Our only purpose was still the same: deliver the aroko, establish contact with whoever lived beyond this forest, and somehow survive long enough to come back.

We weren’t the Avengers.

We weren’t warriors.

And we certainly weren’t prepared for whatever this place was.

But we had already stepped into the trap.

There was no point pretending we could simply walk back home.

So we continued.

One step after another.

Deeper into the forest.

Then I heard it.

“Steve.”

I stopped.

“Steve.”

It was my brother’s voice.

“Steve, it’s time we fight again.”

My heart immediately sank.

I remembered the last time we had fought, the way he had almost knocked my teeth out, the way I had spent years avoiding actual confrontation with him after that.

I couldn’t even remember what had started the fight anymore.

But I remembered the lesson.

Whenever something heated happened between us, I found a way to apologize, walk away, or simply keep my mouth shut.

I could walk with him, run with him, train with him, and run drills with him.

But fighting him was something I had no interest in doing again.

I knew what that right hand could do.

And I had no desire to find out twice.

“Steve, it’s time we fight again.”

I looked forward.

He was standing there.

My brother.

He was wearing his MMA fighting gear, small gloves wrapped around his hands, his body positioned like someone who had already decided that violence was the only conversation we were going to have.

He looked exactly as I remembered him.

Except there was something wrong with his face.

Something empty behind his eyes.

Then he spoke.

“I once caught you with my girlfriend. Do you have anything to say about that?”

My stomach tightened.

“What?”

“That’s the only girl I ever loved, and I saw you kissing her. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You’ve done enough.”

He started walking toward me.

“I’ll make you suffer.”

I looked over my shoulder.

“Tony?”

Nothing.

“Stephen?”

Nothing.

They were there, but they weren’t reacting.

They weren’t moving.

They weren’t even looking at me.

My brother kept coming.

I stepped backward until my back touched a tree.

There was nowhere else to go.

He moved closer, raised his right hand, and threw a punch directly at my face.

I ducked.

His fist crashed into the tree behind me with such force that the sound alone made my heart jump.

I knew exactly what would have happened if that punch had connected.

“Do you want to kill me?” I shouted.

“Maybe.”

He stepped forward again.

“I’m going to make you suffer. Maybe I’ll kill you in the process. I don’t know.”

For the first time, I saw something in his eyes that made me believe him.

He looked hungry.

Furious.

Almost possessed by the need to hurt me.

At that point, I stopped thinking about whether it was an illusion.

If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to die crying like a bítch.

I was going to fight.

He came at me again, throwing another right hook.

I ducked underneath it and immediately used the takedown technique he had taught me years ago.

I caught him with both hands, drove forward with my leg, and tried to take his balance.

My brother understood the technique, so normally he would have used his leg to brace himself.

But this time, something was different.

He was slower.

Maybe it was age.

Maybe the illusion wasn’t capable of reproducing him perfectly.

Or maybe I was simply stronger than I remembered.

Whatever the reason, I knocked him off balance.

He hit the ground.

I moved over him, raising my fist, ready to punch him in the face.

He immediately parried with one hand, then the other.

Before I could react, that awful right hand came through.

He struck the side of my head with such force that I bounced away from him.

My vision blurred.

My head became heavy.

For a moment, I couldn’t tell which direction I was facing.

The pain made me angry.

The anger made me stand.

“I’m going to kill you this time.”

He charged again.

His right hand came.

I ducked, caught his arm, and punched him hard around the bicep, trying to weaken the arm he relied on most.

He seemed slower now, and I took advantage of it.

I pivoted, moved behind him, wrapped my arms around his body, and slammed him into the ground.

He groaned.

I jumped on top of him.

Then I started hitting him.

Everything came rushing back at once.

The way he used to beat me when we were younger.

The punches.

The fear.

The helplessness.

All the times I had swallowed my anger because I knew I couldn’t beat him.

I hit him with all of it.

Every memory became another punch.

Every humiliation became another punch.

Every moment I had spent afraid of him became another punch.

I wasn’t just fighting the man on the ground anymore.

I was fighting every version of my brother I had ever feared.

Then someone grabbed me.

I felt a hand pulling me backward.

I struggled against it.

Another force pushed me away.

Then something slapped the side of my face.

I spun around, ready to attack whoever had touched me.

Stephen was standing behind me.

His expression was one of absolute horror.

“Are you going to kill Tony?”

I froze.

“What?”

“You’re going to kill Tony?”

I stared at him.

Then I looked down.

My stomach dropped.

There was blood everywhere.

The face beneath me wasn’t my brother’s.

It was Tony’s.

Tony’s face was swollen, bloody, and barely recognizable.

His eyes stared back at me with the kind of confusion that made my entire body go cold.

My hands were still clenched into fists.

My chest was rising and falling violently.

I looked at my hands.

Then at Tony.

Then back at Stephen.

I had never been fighting my brother.

I had been beating Tony.

I slowly pulled myself away from him, unable to speak.

I didn’t even know how to apologize.

What could I possibly say?

Sorry, I thought you were my brother?

Sorry, the forest made me believe you were someone else?

Sorry, I almost beat my friend to death because an illusion showed me an old wound?

Tony remained on the ground, breathing heavily, blood running down his face.

Stephen stared at me with an expression of fear and disbelief.

Neither of us spoke.

For several seconds, the forest was completely silent.

Then I understood something far worse than the illusions themselves.

The forest didn’t need to kill us.

It could make us kill each other.

I looked into the darkness ahead of us.

And for the first time since we entered that forest, I wondered if the greatest danger wasn’t what the forest could show us, but what it could make us do to the people standing beside us.

Maybe that was the real trap.

Maybe the forest didn’t need claws.

It didn’t need monsters.

It didn’t need to chase us through the darkness.

All it needed was our minds.

Our memories.

Our fears.

Our anger.

And the people we trusted most.

I looked at Tony lying in the dirt, then at Stephen standing beside me.

For the first time, I was afraid of the three of us.

Not because of what was hiding in the forest.

Because of what the forest could turn us into.

I swallowed hard.

“Oh, this is the hell our pastors have been preaching about all these years?”