“So, I heard this story,” Elizabeth said, leaning forward. “About some kids out in the woods. They kept hearing—”
May groaned. “I saw that subreddit last week too. It was stupid. Why would a rapist hide in the woods? It doesn’t make any sense. If he’s looking for victims, he’d be better off… anywhere, pretty much. The internet is a liar.”
“Just cause it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s automatically untrue,” Ailey said. “It must come from somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said, “like the girl who was playing the elevator game in that hotel in LA, and then they found her dead in the water tower. Like the game worked or something.”
“Stupid stories,” May consoled Piper. “They’re just memes.”
“You’re memes,” Piper said. “What does ‘meme’ even mean.”
“Like, cultural ideas.”
Ailey scoffed and leaned back on her palms. “Every idea is a cultural idea.”
“Memes are cat pictures,” Piper said.
“They’re supposed to be an idea that, like, hits something primal. It’s important to people, somehow. Cat pictures or whatever,” said May.
“So they’re basically just good ideas,” Ailey said. “That’s what you mean.”
“Maybe it’s how we do mythology now,” May said.
Piper waved a hand at the canopy. “What is it about cat pictures? What’s the primal idea there? Cute cats?”
May sniffed and rolled her eyes. “I don’t pretend to understand white people.”
“Ooh, reverse racism,” Elizabeth said. “Plus I know for a fact you liked those pictures I posted of my mom’s kitten, so.”
Piper groaned. “I think all the turkey jerky gave me gas.”
“My condolences,” said Ailey to May, who was Piper’s tentmate.
They sat in the quiet, the rhythm of the river holding them.
“So I saw this story,” Elizabeth said, and Piper groaned again. “No, no, it’s not scary. Not really. It’s just some legend. It seemed like it might have been made up, but I couldn’t tell, and I ended up doing a bunch of research.”
“By research,” Ailey said, “do you mean going down a click-hole?”
“That’s not research?”
“I think it’s interesting,” May said, “how stories get changed around on the internet. People making up legends. Like Slender Man—people got obsessed with it, and that made it almost true. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t an old story. People got into it and that made it as real as, I don’t know, Santa or the Virgin Mary. It makes me think all stories are real at some point. There’s something that’s so compelling we have to tell the story over and over again. Like we’re trying to refine it.”
“Right,” Elizabeth said. “Exactly. I wanted to know where this one came from. Have you heard of Stick Indians?”
“That sounds racist,” Ailey said.
“Stick Native Americans,” Piper said. A trace of sunlight flickered over her closed eyes.
“They call it Stick Indians. I didn’t make it up.”
“Repeating things doesn’t make them not racist,” May said. She hadn’t meant to say it so vehemently. She glanced around their circle to see if anyone had flinched, and relaxed her shoulders.
“Okay, so,” Elizabeth said. “Someone posted this story—it was obviously a story, it had characters and a plot and whatever; real stories aren’t that well organized. A bunch of kids were out camping and were hassled by this tree monster. Whatever, it was dumb, but I hadn’t heard about Stick Indians before.”
Now Piper watched Elizabeth, interested. Ailey poked at the fire.
“Anyway. I looked around and there wasn’t much info. A couple old websites with Yakama Indian legends, but all the sites had basically the same story, and you could tell it was copy-pasted. That first site I saw referenced some books I couldn’t find on Amazon, but I later I saw the same titles in a couple different places. Enough to make me think the books might at least be real.”
“You could try a library,” Ailey said. “Like, where actual research is done.”
May snorted. “You’re such a snob. You just said like five minutes ago that the internet isn’t automatically false.”
“I’m a tactile-experience snob,” Ailey said. “I like the real world. I don’t hate the internet.”
“You definitely don’t hate Instagram,” Elizabeth said.
“See? I don’t hate Insta.”
“Aww,” Piper said, “she has a cute nickname for her BFF.”
“My cousin has a dog named Hashtag,” Elizabeth said. “But guys: Stick Indians—that’s what the Yakama people say, apparently, so it’s not racist and don’t yell at me—they’re, like, leprechauns or sasquatches or fairies—”
“Um, vague?” Ailey said.
Piper laughed. “They’re either huge or tiny, and they’re evil or maybe they’re good, so anywhere in there, go ahead and pick something.” She pressed a hand to her belly. “Ow.”
“Fart it out,” Ailey said. “You’ll feel better.”
“It’s not like I’m trying to keep it in over here.”
Elizabeth gave Piper the side-eye but kept talking. “Yeah, exactly, everything’s really vague about what they actually are. But the idea is they’re forest spirits who look like trees. Troublemakers. They fuck with travelers. They protect the places men shouldn’t enter.”
“See,” Ailey said to Piper. “You’re safe. It’s only a problem for men. For once.”
“Prostate cancer,” May said.
“Dude, my uncle had prostate cancer and it was hella my aunt’s problem,” Ailey said. “She was exhausted all the time.”
“Okay, you win.”
“They have flutey voices and make whistles and snaps to try to lure people into the woods,” Elizabeth continued. “You aren’t supposed to whistle at night or the Stick Indians will get you.”
“Huh,” May said. “That’s a Nigerian superstition too, I think. Same thing. Don’t whistle at night or the evil spirits blah-blah-blah.”
Elizabeth’s voice took on a storyteller quality, oracular. “At night, the Stick Indians creep up to people’s tents and push a stick through the flap and poke the people inside. Think about it: You’re sitting, it’s right before bed, you’re minding your own business, and all of a sudden this branch comes sliding into your house, all silent and slow, and just pokes you.”
“Are you seriously telling us a scary dick story right now?” May said. “Push a stick through a flap? For real?”
Piper rolled to her side and wheezed, giggling.
“I’m starting to worry about you,” Ailey said.
“No, no, it’s really fucking scary!” Elizabeth said. “Think about it! Like, dick or no, it’s creepy as fuck.” She waited until Piper stopped snorting, then continued. “Some of the legends say the Stick Indians guard the gate to the underworld. Or else they patrol the sacred parts of the forest, where nobody is supposed go.”
“Oh, okay,” May said, “I know this story. ‘This is their space, not ours, beware.’ That sort of thing.”
Ailey said, “Lots of scary stories are like that. Humans encroaching on everything, ruining it all. Like everything belongs to us.”
“Bullshit,” May said. Again, it came out more forcefully than she’d intended. She moderated her tone, didn’t want to be that girl. “I don’t like those kinds of stories. For a bunch of reasons. For one, I don’t think humans are evil by nature. We don’t ruin everything. We’re just animals doing what animals do. And for another, I can’t tell you how many times in the universe a black person was told that they couldn’t do a thing because it didn’t belong to them. Bullshit. It’s not race, it’s all humans. We belong in whatever environment we can get by in.”