The forest is a quiet wasteland. Grassy meadow laid flat. Debris everywhere. Nothing destroys like nature.

A million miles away a police siren whirs, grows louder. Ella wakes at the foot of a tree, at first thinking the noise is coming from inside her throbbing head. She looks up at the trees, stripped bare, and awareness sweeps through her like a dream.

She rushes through the forest and into the muddy field. A swath has been cut across, like a new road, and continues right through where her house once stood. It’s now across the old road—smashed against a hillside.

The only thing more broken is her heart.

“Mom! Dad!”

Her entire body shakes as she stumbles towards it. A tear rolls down her cheek and falls in a mud puddle. Turns it saltier than the sea.

The house is a mangled mess. Everything twisted to the side like some kind of creepy carnival fun house only here, the scares are real. Ella grabs the door handle but before she can pull, it twists to the side and crushes her right hand. She doesn’t shriek, doesn’t even cry out, for what she sees inside is far worse. There is no mother or father there. Not even an entry. No anything. Just a strange blackness blacker than anything she’s ever seen. Black holes don’t get this dark.

And it’s moving, bowing out to meet her. Everything tells her to run, but she can’t, she’s frozen stiff. A black tendril reaches out to her, is about to touch a tear on her cheek when she’s suddenly yanked away.

“Stay back, Ella,” says the man who’d done the yanking. It’s her neighbor, Frank. Hillbillyish, but in an endearing sorta way. He carries her to his truck.

Back at the house, the darkness pours out in all directions, as if it were water and every way was down.

A police car now pulls up and the siren finally stops. The county sheriff gets out.

"She alright?” he says.

Frank opens the truck door and puts Ella on the seat. “Stay here, ok?”

She’s a blank stare. Frank and the Sheriff hurry to the house, stepping over the darkness like it’s not even there and becoming a pair of cutout figures in the growing stark-black landscape.

“She have any other family around?” the Sheriff says quietly to Frank.

 “An uncle out in Oregon, I believe, but that’s it. I’ll try and get a hold of him.”

Her uncle. A man Ella’s met only once, during a summer road trip to the coast many summers ago. She’d spent more time playing with the neighbor boy, whose name she’s since forgotten.

The toad crawls out of her pocket and onto her shoulder. He looks at the house, opens his mouth as if to croak again but instead:

“Oh dear.”

Now you or I or even a passing traveler from ancient Greece might find this strange, dear stranger, a toad talking as a human does, but Ella doesn’t even flinch. To her, a much more unbelievable thing has just happened. It’s certainly more believable than this tendril of darkness snaking along the ground towards her dangling feet.

With it comes an icy hot wind that washes over her. It’s enough to kick start what’s left of Ella’s heart and she scrambles quickly through the truck, out the other side, and doesn’t stop there—darts faster than a toad can jump, over the road and back into the forest.

“Hey!” Frank shouts as he and the Sheriff chase after.

“Where’re you going?” the toad says, holding onto Ella for dear life. Her steps crackle with the sound of broken branches.

“Away,” she says.

“Away where?”

“Anywhere but this.”

She runs faster. What else is a girl to do? What would you do?

Through the meadow she goes, even faster! and into the old oaks and then suddenly, realizing she cannot run on water, puts on the brakes. She trips over the rowboat and lands hard on a big oak root, an inch from kissing the river. It’s higher than before and much fiercer.

Ella slides under the boat and curls into a ball.

This isn’t happening, it can’t be happening.

The toad, who’d fallen onto a rock, stares at her.

“They’ll find you here,” he says.

Ella closes her eyes and rocks back and forth. He looks her over uneasily and can’t help but think to himself, but it is happening. It is.

More tears roll down Ella’s cheek, down the path the earlier ones had started.

“I know of a way out,” the toad continues. “Downstream, in the boat.”

“That just goes to Frank’s farm.”

“No, trust me.”

Through the meadow comes the thudding feet of Frank and the Sheriff. They stop at the boat and look around frantically.

“Ella!” Frank shouts.

At the sound of this, Ella’s eyes jolt open. She stands and, in one fluid motion, flips the boat into the river, grabs the oar, and hops in.

Frank lunges for her just as the toad tries to hop in too, which results in Frank getting a slimy handful of toad instead of her. The toad CROAKS, body bulging through his finger, causing Frank to shriek like a little girl and drop him into the river.

Plop! The toad goes under, but pops up moments later beside the boat. Ella scoops him out and down the river they go.

“Come back!” Frank shouts. He starts following her along the riverside when the Sheriff stops him.

“I’ll get the car,” he says. “We’ll pick her up downstream.”

Frank eyes the swift moving river, not so convinced.

“If she makes it that far.”

Next Chapter: 3. Not So Gently down the Stream