In The Forest Of Harm by Sallie Bissell

Joan recalled with a coy smile. “What can I say? He was crazy about old Italian chests.”
    Mary laughed. “Here.” She turned to Joan and held out her backpack. “You and your old Italian chest hang on to this strap. That way you’ll stay attached to me. Alex, you grab the strap on Joan’s knapsack, and you’ll be attached to her. We’ll caravan that way. If anybody loses their hold, yell and I’ll stop.”
    â€œWe cowboys call this a pack train in Texas,” Alex grumbled as she grabbed Joan’s knapsack.
    â€œWell, we Indians call it a caravan in North Carolina.
    Although I guess by now we’ve crossed over into Tennessee.” Mary noticed Joan’s pale face. “Don’t worry. I know this looks spooky, but it’s really not that bad.”
    â€œAre you sure you know the way?”
    For an instant Mary wondered if she was being foolish—overconfidence was what killed most people here. But she’d trekked through the Ghosts a thousand times with Jonathan, and the woods were slowly beginning to seem like home again. She could do this. Anyway, the Ghosts weren’t what frightened her out here. “Just pretend we’re on that subway to Coney Island,” she told Joan, smiling.
    With Alex and Joan tethered behind her, she took a deep breath and stepped into the thick vapor that curled catlike around her shins. The ground was spongy beneath her boots. Moss furred the tree trunks and the only sound that reached her ears was the muted footsteps of her friends. As she watched thin fingers of mist caressing the dark trees, Mary wondered if perhaps she’d been wrong to decide this was an underground spring. Maybe she and Jonathan had been right the first time, when they’d chalked it up to ghosts.
    â€œThis is really creepy,” Alex muttered.
    â€œI can’t see past my nose. Anything could be watching us from the trees.” Joan’s voice rang high and thin.
    â€œDon’t think about it,” Mary replied. “Keep your eyes closed if it makes you feel better.”
    â€œNo, I’m okay.” Joan gave a jittery laugh. “This must have been a hell of a place for a Halloween party, though.”
    They walked on, pushing resolutely through the gauzy white silence. Mary realized she hadn’t heard Alex in a while. “Hey, Alexandra, are you okay?”
    â€œJust enjoying the view.” Alex’s muffled voice came out of nowhere. “Which is either a solid cloud bank or Joan’s butt.”
    â€œYou got a problem with my butt?”
    â€œNo, but if you break wind, I’m a dead woman.” Though they all laughed, Mary could hear the tension in Alex’s joke. For someone who’d grown up under the broad blue skies of Texas, traipsing through this soupy white miasma must be disconcerting.
    â€œHow much longer is this trail?” Alex called.
    â€œMaybe half a mile.”
    â€œWell, at least it’s mostly flat.”
    They walked on in silence, as if wishing to pass unnoticed by whatever the mist might conceal. Whispers echoed like thunder here, quiet words resounded as shouts. Alex started to whistle, but her bouncy little tune sounded vaguely desperate in the still air, and she finally gave it up, trudging along accompanied only by the soft
squish
of her own footsteps on moss and rotting leaves.
    Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the Ghosts ended. The trail emptied into a wide clearing, where two wood-peckers busily drilled for bugs in a copse of sun-speckled pawpaws.
    â€œBoy,” Joan said as the warm sun began to dry the sweat from the back of her neck. “I’m glad that’s over.”
    They rested, tasting the sharp, piney smell of the breeze, then hiked on, still going up. By the time they crested the one minor Unicoi mountain they’d begun climbing in the early afternoon, the sun was falling westward into the trees. At a tall hickory Mary found the