Have you ever had one of those periods in your life where everything fell apart
all at once. For me, it happened in the winter of nineteen eighty
eight. Right after New Year, I found out my boyfriend was cheating on
me. A week after that, I lost my job, and then a
few days before my birthday in February, my grandfather died. Since I was
no longer gainfully employed, it was expected that I leave for home at once.
Well. I was fine with that, except that the absence of employment
also meant the absence of income. I didn't have the money to pay for
the plane ticket, and there were no trains that could take me from Saint
Louis to nowhere. The thought of riding a bus for sixteen hours when a
car ride would take six was also more than a little stomach churning. Unfortunately,
that meant driving my nineteen seventy seven International Scout too all the way home
in January, with a massive blizzard building out west that was threatening to dump
a foot of snow all over the roads i'd be traveling. I loved that
old Scout. It was ugly as hell and about as reliable as gas stations
sushi, but it was mine. I bought it second hand when I was
sixteen and newly licensed. It carried my belongings from Willard Springs to Saint Louis
when I moved there out of high school, and to be fair, I
had to stop in Fort Madison, Iowa for repairs, and then I got
all the way to Hannibal, Missouri before another mechanic was required. It didn't
help that I'd chosen to follow the river all the way down. It added
extra miles in undue, wear and tear on the old girl. But somehow
the scout and I made it. Of course, that was the middle of
summer, and now five years and a lot more miles later, I would
be making the return trip in a possible snow storm. I got the call
about Granddaddy Friday afternoon. The funeral was planned for Monday, the first,
my birthday. I didn't argue or complain. If a man died on Friday,
he was buried on Monday, three days. That was the rule back
then. The only option was to go home with one bag of clothes in
a small toiletry case. I headed for Willard Springs. It really is in
the middle of nowhere. It's the kind of town where you grow up,
but you don't stay. Those who do stay ei their own farms, or
love off food stamps and government rations, or they serve. The serving options
range from food to gasoline. I didn't see myself as one of those people.
My grades weren't good enough to pursue a degree, but I wasn't about
to waste my life fighting off drunken advances at Dooley's Corner tap, handing out
greasy plates of food at Fat Mattie's Catfish Cafe, or stocking cigarettes behind the
counter at the corner gas. It's the life I got anyway, albeit in
a different location. But I did accomplish one thing. After five years of
school, I had an associate degree, and at that rate, I fully
expected to have my bachelor a year or so before I retired. It was
mid afternoon when I left for home. How I managed to arrive is beyond
me. A four hundred mile road trip with Scout is not my idea of
pleasure. She grumbled and belched ugly black smoke, and hissed menacingly from under
the hood the whole trip. Twice I pulled over to eat, just so
she could have a rest. Each time I turned off the ignition. I
was sure she would never start again, but I couldn't make myself push the
old girl any harder than was necessary. I paid her for her efforts with
gasoline, motor oil, ana, freeze, and all of which she had
a gluttonous appetite for. It must have been nearly ten o'clock when I pulled
into the barnyard where I grew up. There was a light on in the
kitchen, but the rest of the house was dark. I guessed that Mom
and Dad had left the light on for me. They would have been in
bed two hours earlier. Why didn't mind They were already old when they had
me. I was a menopause baby, and my other siblings were all grown
or nearly so when I came along. Old people tend to go to bed
early and rise with the sun. Old farmers get up early and eat breakfasts,
and feed the animals and milk and gather eggs and work on whichever piece
of equipment happens to be broken at the moment, and then when the sun
finally decid to get up, they shake their fists at it for being lazy,
and then they start their day. I turned off the engine and stuck
my keys into my jeans pocket and patted the dashboard. Thanks Scout for getting
me there, and I grabbed my bags and I went inside. There was
a note on the table for Mom, telling me there was a plate of
food in the fridge for me, and that she and Dad would see me
in the morning. I set the plate of meat loaf, potatoes, and
cream corn on the table, and I rooted around until I found a bottle
of root beer. It was the first quiet moment I'd had since the phone
rang that morning. Between figuring out how much money I could afford to spend
and what clothes I needed to bring, and worrying about Scout's ability to get
me there, I hadn't let myself think about my grandfather. My mother's father
was the reason everyone called me Shadow. From the moment I was old enough
to walk where he went, I went. His house was across a wide
gravel road from ours, so he walked over and had breakfast with us most
mornings when he left, unless I had to go to school, I went
with him, and the adventures we had together were worth a lifetime of memories.
We'd go down to the river to Scout for good fishing spots, or
we'd wander around out in the woods checking for signs of deer. In Turkey,
he bought me my first fishing pole and my first BB gun. He
taught me to drive as soon as my legs were long enough to reach the
pedals. Most farm kids learned that skill early, but it was my grandfather
who taught me. He'd taken me into town for coffee at Fat Mattie's or
for a strawberry soda at the County Creamery, and if he got up to
leave and I didn't immediately get up to follow, he'd turn and say,
come on, Shadow, And the name stuck. When I moved to Saint
Louis. He was the one that I called every night. He always seemed
to know when I needed money and things would get tight, and I'd open
my mailbox to find a check from Granddaddy with a note that read, don't
tell your Mama. Over time, the conversations grew shorter and the calls became
less frequent. I settled into my life, and he got over not having
a shadow to follow him around anymore. The last time we spoke was on
his ninetieth birthday. That was in September. I'd sung Happy Birthday to him
and asked if he'd gotten his card, and he bragged about it being the
best birthday card he ever got, like he always did. We talked about
my latest bartending job, and he mentioned that Dooley's was looking for a bartender.
If I ever wanted to move back the fish or Biden, he said,
in that slow country boy voice of his. Old Ted Cassidy didn't quite
the fishing partner you are. I haven't fished since I left home Granddaddy.
I told him, well, that's a shame, was his quiet reply,
with an awkwardness I couldn't quite explain. I said, well, I got
to get ready for work. It's Saturday and the place will be busy tonight.
And then I told him I loved him, and he returned the sentiment.
I suppose, knowing that the last words he heard me say where I
love you, Granddaddy, should have been a comfort, But instead I was
beating myself up for not calling him at Christmas. I blamed my ex for
that. We were at a stage right before a breaking up, when every
conversation was an argument. I should have recognized the signs of a man who
had moved on, but I was naive. A couple of weeks later,
when I discovered the real reason for all the fighting, I hated him now.
I hated him even more. Had I not been preoccupied with that relationship,
I would have I had one more conversation with Granddaddy. I finished my
supper and went up to my old room, and I crawled into bed and
wiped the tears on my pillow, and I fell asleep. We spent the
next two days making arrangements, and as we ran around to the funeral home,
the cemetery, in the florist's shop, the house filled with well meaning
relatives, friends and neighbors. The kitchen table overflowed with cakes and pies and
casseroles. Lying the counters, Mom was forced into a continuous repetition of how
she had gone over to check on her father when he didn't come over for
breakfast that morning. She found him lying face down on the living room floor.
His rifle was lying beside him. At first, she thought he'd killed
himself, but there was no blood or any bullet holes. The corner suggested
that perhaps he'd taking his gun out to clean it and was returning it to
the safe when his heart gave out. No one questioned that theory. After
all, the man was ninety years old. He was taken to the morgue
and the gun was placed back inside the safe. It was a nice funeral,
isn't that what everyone says? He looks so natural? Another meaningless platitude.
How on earth could anyone ever think a man lying flat on his back
inside a velvet line black metal case draped in roses and lilies could be in
his element? I will never know, he will be missed. That was
one I couldn't argue. The dinner afterwards, like all funerals in our family,
was filled with laughter and stories of a young Barton O'Connor, followed by
more tales of older man that I knew. Again and again. People talked
about the tall tales he used to invent. No one could spin a yarn
like Bartie. His sense of humor and wit were sharp and mildly self deprecating.
He loved to good laughed almost as much as he loved a good scare.
More than one local hunter confessed that his stories about the woods surrounding our
farm kept them from wandering on to our property in search of the elusive trophy
buck. Others agreed that Grandaddy had them all convinced that this land was haunted
by demons and spirits or inhabited by monsters. Someone pointed out Granddaddy's genius in
keeping his hunting spot to himself. It was the same with the river that
meandered through the far western pasture on Granddaddy's side of the road. We all
fished his favorite spots with him at one time or another, but not one
person could remember a time when they felt brave enough to wander out there alone
again. It was a testament to Granddaddy's genius. By Monday night, I
was emotional and physically exhausted. Enough of our relatives had followed us home to
prevent the possibility of finding a comfortable seat anywhere in the downstairs. I went
up to bed, but the noise of more memories shared from a half a
dozen conversations below me permeated my room to the point that I gave up and
wandered back down. Are you okay, dear mom asked me when she saw
me slinking down the stairs. I nodded mutely, Correctly judging my lost expression,
she came over and whispered into my ear. If you really want to
escape, and you're not uncomfortable with the idea, your grandfather's house is empty,
you can go over there and have the whole place to yourself tonight.
I must have given her a startled look, because she quickly added, of
course, if it bothers you, no, I said, a little louder
than I meant to. I think that's exactly what I need. Well,
well, then she said, with a smile, why don't you go up
and grab your bag and slip down the backstairs and out the back door.
She didn't have to tell me twice. Nobody locked their doors back then,
even if they were never coming home again. I stepped through the door into
the living room and flipped on the overhead light. It smelled of cleaning solutions
and burnt coffee grounds, a trick used to remove the offensive smell of death
from an enclosed space. Mom, in her eternal frugality, had apparently reduced
the heat inside the house to a mere sixty degrees. My first act was
to rectify that, because I was in no mood to build a fire in
the Ben Franklin stove in the corner. There was a dark stain on the
rug that covered most of the floor that was suspiciously human shaped. I assumed
that Mom, no matter how hard she tried, was unable to remove the
last remaining evidence of Granddaddy's occupation. I should have been repulsed. At the
very least, it should have sent a chill down my spine. It didn't.
I went over to the worn brown leather sofa and I sat down.
A second later, I laid my head down. Good night, Granddaddy,
I said, And moments later I was sleeping. A long, baleful howl
shattered my dreams and sent me into a bolt upright position. And for a
minute I was confused by my surroundings. I wasn't in my little Saint Louis
apartment, nor was I in my big, comfortable bed over my parents' kitchen.
The curtain moving gently in the flowing of the heat from the vent directly
below it drew my attention, and I was instantly aware of my location.
My eyes shot down to the blot on the carpet. What was that?
I asked the on the floor. I didn't expect it to answer. If
it had answered, I probably would have had another stain on the sofa to
clean. But Somehow it felt comforting to know that Granddaddy, however, ethereal,
was there with me. I was debating the possibility of looking out the
window when another howl, this one closer and strangely menacing, echoed through the
house. I haven't been back home in years, so I can attest to
the situation today. But back then wolves were considered extinct in that part of
the country. Yet that was the closest creature I could think of that could
howl like that, And if it was a wolf, it must have been
a massive one. I had just determined to walk over and look out the
window when something hit the side of the house with enough force to shake the
furniture. My next thought was to arm myself. Granddaddy's gun safe was standing
on the short piece of water that framed the wide opening between the living room
and the dining room. Now jumped catlike from the sofa to the middle of
the floor, and again, ignoring the fact that I had landed on my
grandfather, I made another long leap to the safe. It was no surprise
to find it open. Grandaddy never locked it, and whoever had replaced the
rifle hadn't bothered to do so. Either. I grabbed the two forty three
Winchester and a handful of bullets from the box on the shelf. To my
shock, when I broke down the gun to load it, there was already
a bullet insid. Never in my life had I known my grandfather to leave
a bullet and a gun safety or no safety. When he put a gun
away, it was empty. At the window, I gently slid the curtain
aside so I could see out. The sky had paled enough to extinguish the
dimmer stars, but not to the point of allowing a detailed vision. The
security light that stood between the house and the barn helped a little, but
it was old and didn't give off as much light as I would have preferred.
Something moved between the barn and the equipment shed. I was sure it
was a person. No animal would walk on two legs. I wished it
had been an animal. For all their ferocity, animals don't strike the kind
of fear in my heart that people do. If it had been a wolf
and I had shot it, I might have face to find, but not
a murder charge that gives the advantage to the criminal. I'd probably get off
on self defense, but only after an extensive investigation and a lot of undue
press. If I was faced with a need to pull the trigger on a
human being, no matter how much danger I felt myself to be in,
I had better be damn certain it was worth knowing I'd taken a life and
putting myself and my family through the inevitable circus and possibly spending the rest of
my life in prison. These were the thoughts that drove me to the telephone.
I picked it up and called my mom. Five minutes later, Dad
was running across the road with his rifle, ready to do battle, and
as soon as I saw him, I stepped out onto the porch. I
was pointing toward the equipment shed. When he reached the house, he turned
and headed in that direction. I ignored his hand signal to stay where I
was, and I jumped down off the porch to follow. He stopped short
of a little lane that separated the two buildings and glanced over his shoulder.
After pinning me with a look of exasperation and following it with a look of
resignation, he motioned for me to head over to the other end of the
shed while he began a slow, silent step paused walk toward the backside of
the buildings. My eyes scanned the small fenced and pasture as I moved as
quickly and as silently as I could get to the back of the shit at
the other end, everything else was still. Dad was already coming around the
far corner. When I peeked around. We shrugged our shoulders. Neither of
us saw a thing. I took one more long look at the tree line
on the opposite side of the pasture, and I shivered at the feeling of
being watched. The look on Dad's face told me that he felt the same.
After a few minutes, he turned and walked back to the house.
Are you sure it was a person? He asked me. Did you hear
those howls earlier? I asked in reply, what howls? He asked.
I couldn't believe he didn't hear them. Neither our house nor Granddady sat especially
close to the road. But they were no more than three hundred yards apart,
and those howls were loud, and he would have already been out in
the morning milking cows when I heard them. Rather than answer, I said
it was a person. They were upright? Well, come on, then
he said, Mom's got breakfast cooking, get your stuff and come back over
to the house. The sheriff stopped by later that morning at Dad's request.
He and Dad walked around the barn and the equipment shed, and then wandered
around out in the pasture and along the tree line. They didn't find anything,
no footprints, no piece of evidence the culprit may have dropped, and
no proof that I had seen anything. Dad told him about the house that
I had heard, but that he hadn't, and together they decided it was
all a bad dream on my part, brought on by the sorrow of my
grandfather's loss and the long drive home and the exhaustion of planning and executing a
funeral. Well, I was hurt. Grandaddy would have never dismissed my story
like that, but there was no point in arguing, so I let it
go. Every day at noon, Dad came in for lunch. Mom switched
on the little television that was wedged into the corner of the counter, and
they quietly watched the news while they ate. This had been their routine my
entire life. Well, today I joined them at their meal, and they
surprised me with a piece of cake. It was a piece of cake someone
had brought for the funeral, and it had a candle in it. Happy
late Birthday. Mom said, you thought we forgot, didn't you. Well,
no, I lied, But it wasn't like it was the most important
item on the list. There was a group chuckle in an awkward silence.
Dad lit a candle and they sang Happy birthday to me. I dutifully blew
out the candle and I thanked them, and Dad pulled a card out of
his shirt pocket and he tossed it across the table at me. It's the
best we could do, he said apologetically. Dad, I didn't. I
didn't know what to say. Honestly, didn't expect anything. So a card
was more than I could have hoped for. When I opened it, I
got the surprise of a lifetime. And closed was a check for a thousand
dollars. We know you're struggling and losing your job and all. Mom started,
but trailed off when she realized how close she was to venturing into the
land of judgment. It'll help pay a few bills till you get back on
your feet, Dad explained on mom's behalf. And since it's your birthday.
It's a gift, he held up his hand at my attempt to protest.
It's a gift, he reiterated, you won't have to pay it back.
Okay. I was more than grateful at that moment. I was overwhelmed.
The thanks I uttered didn't begin to cover it. I'm going over to Granddaddy's
house in a bit. Mom said, do you want to come over with
me? Help go through a few things. I nodded my head kind a
sardonic smile. That was my eternally pragmatic mother. No time to grieve,
no need for melancholy, no point in extravagant displays of emotion. Do what
has to be done in a timely manner, into the best of your abilities,
and above all, keep right on marching to the beat of the clock
until your own grave opens up and swallows you whole. But first dishes.
We crossed the road to Granddaddy's house against a biting wind. What had the
weather man said? I was too busy blowing out my birthday candle to pay
much attention. I concentrated trying to remember the storm they'd been calling for since
Friday had stalled over Western Kansas. I think he said it would be another
day or two before it hit us. I should have been packing my bag
and hurrying back to Saint Louis before it hit, but maneuvering the Scout through
a heavy snowstorm wasn't going to be easy. I couldn't stay until it passed,
but i'd still be driving on snowpack and ice covered roads with nearly ball
tires. At least I have the money now to buy Scout a new set,
I thought to myself. Maybe I'll go in tomorrow and get her some
Mom flashed a scolding look at me. When we got inside Granddaddy's house,
it was nice and warm because I had forgotten to turn the heat back down.
I'm sorry, I muttered. Well, at least we'll have a nice,
warm workspace, Mom said, as she walked over and dropped the dial
on the thermostead of good five degrees for a little while. I grumbled,
what's that nothing, Mom. Granddaddy's house was unique in that it was a
floor plan of a cabin, but with none of the beauty of exposed beams
and weathered timber. The entire house consisted of a living room, dining area,
and kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom on the main floor with
a loft overhead. We headed up to the loft. It was Grandaddy's office.
An oversized, elaborately carved writing dusk dominated the middle of the room and
looked out of the big picture window on the farm. Matching wooden cabinets,
each with a dozen drawers and a pair of doors, behind which were half
a dozen cubby holes. Sat on each side of it. There was an
old velvet upholstered Queen Anne's style setti along the railing that bordered the stairs,
and in the corner was a leather recliner that matched the sofa downstairs. When
Granny died, Grandaddy built this house and moved in, leaving the massive farmhouse
across the road from my mom and dad to move into with their brood of
children. My siblings remembered a time when Granny and Grandaddy lived in the farmhouse,
but for me, this was the only world Granddaddy ever occupied. I
walked over and sat down at the executive chair, and I began opening drawers.
It was the usual selection of bills, invoices, magazines, and letters.
My Dad had long ago taken over the running of the farm operation and
Granddaddy still dabbled here and there, but none of the paperwork was important enough
to bother keeping. Along one wall of the room there were half a dozen
filing cabinets. Unlike the rest of the furniture, they were metal and cheaply
made. I walked over and slid open the top drawer of the first cabinet.
Folders containing old documents and tax forms intermingled with large envelopes containing photographs.
Why side, this is going to take a while. At four o'clock,
Mom said that she needed to get home and start supper. Do you want
to stay and keep working, she asked hopefully. I glanced down at the
piles of folders and envelopes in front of me. I'd managed to go through
the first two cabinets that afternoon, pulling out what I thought should be taken
over to the house immediately and leaving that which could wait. Photographs were my
top priority. Maybe just a little longer, I said, at least until
I finished this cabinet. I closed the drawer I was working the one,
and slid open the bottom drawer. All right, then Mom said, come
back over at five and I'll have supper ready for you. I nodded my
ascent without looking up. I was staring down into a drawer full of hardcover
note books. The first one was wedged in so tight that I was afraid
i'd damage it before I got it out. I had to pull it up
one side and then the other and jiggle it back and forth, but eventually
it gave way. The cover was scoffed and damaged from where the letters DM
were written with what looked like a felt tip pie in the bottom right hand
corner. The spine gave an arthritic groan as I opened it to see Grandaddy's
bowl meticulous handwriting on the yellow stained pages. January seventeen, nineteen fifty six.
I heard them howling again last night. I asked Lollly this morning if
she'd heard anything, but she said no. I think I might get a
telescope, one of those spy scopes like Sea Captain's jews, and put it
up in the attic. The west windows should give me a clear view of
the woods along the river, so I'm pretty sure that's where they're living.
I can go up there at night after Lily goes to bed and watch for
them shadow. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of my
father's voice calling me from the bottom of the stairs. Yeah, I said,
I've come over to take you home, Now come on down. Well
confused, I stood up up and walked over to the railing. Dad was
standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at me with an angry
expression on his face. He glanced accusingly at the book in my hand,
and then, in a fraction of a second, the look disappeared. I
stared back at him for a moment before he said, you've done enough work
for one day. Your mother's getting supper ready. You need to go help
her. You can finish this work later. Now, there's nothing here so
important that it can't wait. His excuses and explanations were coming at me so
fast that there was no time to reply well. Finally, when he paused
for a breath, I said, but Dad, it won't be dark for
another don't argue with me. I was so shocked by the tone of his
voice that I didn't bother to go back and replace the book or close the
drawer. I walked down the stairs and followed him out the door. It
wasn't until I got home that I realized I was still carrying the book,
I took it up to my room. There wasn't much to making supper that
night. People had brought enough to feed us for a month. Mom had
already put some of it in the freezer and was busy dividing some of it
into cool whip and margarine bowls to send home with my siblings. When I
came in, the food's warming in the oven. It's Italian, she told
me. I think there's some frozen Italian bread in the freezer on the porch.
Can you go grab two loaves for me. I went out to the
screened in porch, where a standing deep freeze stood next to a chest freezer.
I was busy rummaging through the first one when I got the distinct feeling
that I was being watched again. I spun around it and stared into the
woods that edged our back yard. It was too dark to see anything inside
the tree line, but I swore I heard something snort. Stupid city girl,
I chatted myself, It's just a cow. Ours was a dairy farm
cattle. Chuff and snort all the time. You're being ridiculous, I set
out loud as I turned and continued to look for the elusive bread. A
branch breaking behind me spun me back around. It happened so fast that I
wasn't sure what I saw, and all these years later, I still can't
say for certain. It was a large black silhouette with a pair of red
eyes, or it was a place in the trees that looked like a silhouette
before the wind moved a branch and obliterated it. The eyes, well,
maybe they were from a reflection off of something. I turned around and found
the bread, and I went back in the house. What's with Dad,
I asked, as I sat the loaf on the counter. Oh, you
know your father. He's always overly protective, she answered, dismissively, protective
of what I demanded. I'm a grown woman, Mom. Despite the confidence
in my voice when I spoke those words at twenty three, I didn't feel
like a grown woman. Mom recognized a shadow of doubt in my eyes,
and she said, you're our baby shadow. You'll never be a grown woman
to us. It's the price you pay for being born last. And she
patted my cheek as she spoke. It's not my fault I was born last,
or argued, with all the petulance of a five year old Dad came
in then and went to the sink to wash his hands, and we fell
silent in his presence, but he didn't seem to notice. The kitchen door
opened again and my oldest nephew walked in. Because I was born so many
years after my siblings, Dereck was actually a year older than me. He
had followed in the family business, and that he worked on the farm with
my father and brothers. But unlike his father, though he had not yet
purchased his own land, nor did he show signs of ever doing so.
Everyone else in the family assumed Derek was waiting for Dad or old Granddaddy to
die to receive a piece of the family form before settling down and starting his
own operation. Well, I had my own opinion. Derek spent every Saturday
night out at the hideaway on County Road r drinking and dancing and looking for
a piece of taale to bring back to his mobile home in town. He
was enjoying his youth and he wasn't going to let a little thing like making
a living get in his way. Hey, shadow, he said, with
a nod of his head. I thought you'd be heading back to Saint Louis
by, Now, were you just out back? I asked, ignoring his
statement. He screwed up his face and he said, no, Why,
I thought I heard something out there when I went out to the back porch.
I told him, well, it wasn't me, Yeah, probably just
the wind. It sounded like a enough excuse, But I knew Derek.
He was a practical joker from the word go. There was no doubt in
my mind that he was the one out there breaking twigs and snorting like a
bull. I wasn't about to let him see that. It disturbed me,
so I made myself busy opening the Italian bread and putting it on a cookie
sheet to bake. By the time Mom had supper on the table, all
of my siblings and their spouses showed up, bringing with them the rest of
my nieces and nephews. As we sat around the table, gorging ourselves on
lasagna and baked zdi and a white assortment of other casseroles and side dishes and
pies and cakes, the conversation turned to the division of my grandfather's belongings.
After fifteen minutes, my mind felt numb, my plate was empty, and
my belly was full. So I excused myself and I went upstairs. Granddaddy's
journal was lying on the bed where I I'd left it. I picked it
up and reread the opening sentences. In nineteen fifty six, Mom and Dad
were married and had already produced all of my older siblings, but they hadn't
moved into the farmhouse yet. They didn't do that until after my grandmother died
in nineteen sixty one. I stared up at the ceiling. It was a
big, rambling old farmhouse, with a half a dozen small bedrooms on the
second floor, and a walk up attic that could have easily made it into
another bedroom, or even a recreation room if anyone had been so inclined.
I used to play up there when I was little. The boxes and trunks
full of old family memorabilia and covered with dust were an endless source of fascination
for me. I remembered the rocking chairs and dressers, setties, and side
tables, all half draped in old sheets, like ghostly room reminders of past
generations. I had remembered finding a case with a telescope in it. Excitedly,
I had set it up with a plan to sneak back up there.
That night and watched the moon, But to my great disappointment, it wasn't
that kind of telescope at least, I wasn't able to make it work that
way. Instead, I turned it toward the woods and then into the river.
Looking through that scope from my attic perch, the river didn't seem so
far away, but I knew better. I was probably eleven at the time,
and I'd already made many a long walk down there to fish with Granddaddy.
The full moon that night brought the silvery waters to life. Movement caught
my eye, and I zeroed in on two figures wading in without a stitch
on. When they began to turn and splash each other, I recognized them
as my youngest older brother and his fiance. They broke up shortly after that,
so she never became his wife. Embarrassed to be watching something I knew
shouldn't be, I turned and put the telescope back in its case and forgot
about it after that. Well, now I wondered if it was still up
there. Voices below me rose and fell in muted tones and bursts of laughter.
Mom and Dad would be coming up to bed soon, but there was
no telling how long the rest of them would stay downstairs and visit. I
doubted anyone would give a second thought to me going up to the attic,
but for now I wanted it to be my secret, my last little adventure
with Granddaddy. I walked quietly down the long hall that separated the front bedrooms
from the back and ten feet from the inn. The hall jogged around the
corner that closed off the attic stairs. The door opened with a long,
whining moan. I reached up and flipped on the light switch at the base
of the stairs, and the two lights above cast long shadows down onto the
steps as I slowly began my climb. Then I suddenly felt like a complete
fool when I realized I was narrating this entire event and my head like a
Nancy Drew novel. Stop it, I told myself with a cheeky grin.
Upstairs was exactly as I remembered it. Discarded furniture was covered in dusty blankets,
and boxes and trunks lined the walls under the eaves or were stacked in
the middle of the long room. I walked immediately to the west wall and
searched for the case I remembered from my youth. It was there, stuck
between the wall studs under the window. I pulled it out and brushed it
off. It was a cylindrical case that opened at one end, and the
telescope and tripods slid out easily. Age had stiffened the joints that allowed the
tripod legs to spread and support the telescope, but I managed to get it
set up. It didn't take long to find the river, and, like
that night a dozen years earlier, the moon was full and cast a bright
glow on the water. I scanned up and down the banks, wondering what
it was. My grandfather had been looking for thirty years earlier, when he'd
sat up there in the middle of the night shadow. My mother's voice drifted
up the attic stairs were far more pleasant than my father's had been at Granddaddy's
house. Yeah, Mom, I called back. What are you doing up
there, honey? Oh, just reminiscing, I said, with all the
melancholy my voice could muster. Well, if you get anything out, can
you remember to put it back? You used to leave that place mess when
you were a kid. Yeah, Mom, I will. I was grateful
that she couldn't see me rolling my eyes. Mom was right. I was
always going to be her baby. I looked back through the telescope at the
river bank. Although there was nothing of any real interest there, I had
to admit that it was a beautiful scene. It had snowed since Christmas,
and there had been a few warm days, so there were only a few
patches of white here and there. Time had darkened them to a dull gray
during the day, but at night, with the moonlight bouncing off of them,
they glistened like new. As I watched, a rabbit shot out of
the underbrush and crossed one of the patches at high speed. For a brief
second, I chided myself for disturbing it, before remembering that I was too
far away for it to know I so much as existed, much less to
be frightened of my presence. Then, in a moment of suspended reality,
it was there, scooping up the writhing rabbit and bringing the poor thing to
its mouth, and oh my god, I cried. It froze, lifted
its head and sniffed the air, and with deliberate, menacingly gradual control,
it turned its gaze to the attic window and locked eyes with me. Red
glowing eyes. I jumped back and slid across the floor, knocking over the
telescope in the process. A deep, penetrating fear like nothing I had ever
felt before. It gripped me. My heart beat at my chest like a
crazed convict seeking release from a cell. I couldn't catch my breath, and
sweat blossomed on my skin and sent chills through my body. My mind raised
through every conceivable scenario that justified the word that kept forming, but nothing made
sense from that moment forward. I doubt anything has ever made since Again,
even as I raised a trembling hand to my mouth to prevent the word from
escaping, I said, werewolf Shadow? As if my heart hadn't already suffered
enough abuse in the last few seconds. Hearing my name spoken so sharply from
directly behind me sent it into another round of furious palpitations. Dad, I
said, as I scrambled to get up and run into his arms. Uncontrolled
sobs shook my frame. As he wrapped me in a powerful hug, He
stroked my hair and gave me gentle reassurances that it was all going to be
okay. I couldn't imagine how anything was ever going to be okay again,
but it was a comfort to hear him say it, Dad, I think
I saw a shh, he said, when I couldn't finish my thought,
I know, I know. No you don't, I tried to argue,
Yes, I do, he answered, and then I understood he did know.
He knew exactly what I had seen. I pulled back and looked into
my father's face. His dark eyes stared compassionately into mine while he allowed me
to adjust to the reality of what had just happened. A thousand words passed
through my mind that they all refused to organize themselves into intelligible sentences, choosing
instead to dissipate before I could say them. With tears running down my cheeks,
I buried my face in his chest and again I asked, did I
see a werewolf? No, Baby, you didn't, he promised. All
logic was gone at this point. How could he know what I saw?
If he thought I didn't see a werewolf? Did he think I saw something
else? What else was out there that he thought could scare me? So
clearly he was lying to me. Maybe he was placating me. Maybe my
father was a werewolf too, or maybe that thing out there dining on a
rabbit was my grandfather. Grandaddy always did like fried rabbit, But that thing
was eating the rabbit raw you. Lately, I heard my father speak my
given name through a haze that made him feel like he was a million miles
away. I doubt he'd used that name more than a half dozen times since
I was six years old. Now, listen to me. What you saw
wasn't a werewolf, not really. Were Wolves are mythical creatures that change when
the moon is full. I turned my head to look at the window,
accusingly at the moon. That thing out there is what they call in Michigan
a dog man. I laughed at that. The absurdity of a thing that
terrifying being called a dog man was enough to bring me out of my shock.
I pulled back from my father. Then he led me over to a
fragile looking chair that matched the city in Granddaddy's office. Yanking off the day
dusty sheet that covered it, he pressed me down into it. I was
momentarily immersed in a dust cloud, and I fell into a coughing fit that
ended with a sneeze. Not too far from here, they call it the
Beast of Bray Road. He continued, Now, I don't know what they're
really called, but I can assure you they're not werewolves. It doesn't matter
if the moon is full, or if it's daylight or dark. They always
look like that they, I said. When it occurred to me that my
father was speaking in plural, he paused a moment, considering what to say,
and then he shrugged and said, yes, they tell me, I
said, flatly, understanding my request. Dad began his story years ago,
before your grandmother died and they still lived here. Your grandfather told me about
them. I didn't believe him at first. He was always such a great
story teller, you know. I figured it was another one of his yarns.
And then your grandmother got cancer and diet and he decided to build a
house across the road and give this house to us. Well, back then
it was just one farm, Parker O'Connor Dairies didn't exist. I had my
own farm where your brother lives. Now, well I know all this,
I interrupted, Of course you do, he said. We moved in here,
and it wasn't long before I began to hear them howling. That's what
you heard last night. I knew immediately that it wasn't something I was familiar
with, so I asked Bartie. I asked your grandfather what he thought it
was. And that's when he showed me his notebooks. I know you were
reading one today. I saw you holding it. Now. There are things
in the woods around this farm shadow things no one should ever have to encounter.
My immediate reaction was to take your mother and your siblings and moved back
into the old farmhouse. But that would have meant telling her now. I
knew if she found out what's out there, she would never leave your grandfather
here alone. I knew he was never going to leave this land has been
in his family for generations, and that meant that we had to find a
way to stay here and keep ourselves safe. Keeping others away was easy.
Barty had been doing it for years, with all those scary stories he was
always telling. But you kids were another story. The boys were the hardest
to deal with. Your sisters never ventured out into the woods much, but
your brothers loved fishing and hunting. In all the years they were growing up,
your grandfather and I were always keeping a close eye on them. It
wasn't easy. And then you came along. You weren't like Jenny and Kate.
You wandered into the woods when you were two years old, and we
had a time finding you. I was sure one of those things had got
a hold of you, and well he let that thought drift away. Well
that was when your grandfather began to devote himself to you. You were always
one for attention, so it wasn't all that hard to do, the worst
part was when you wanted to go down to the river with him. He
was going there looking for signs of their return, but you wouldn't let him
go alone. I looked at him quizzically, and I ask their return.
They're not here all the time, shadow. They tend to show up in
the fall, and then they're gone by late spring. I don't know where
they come from or where they go, but it doesn't matter. When they
leave, something else comes. My head was spinning. Now something else.
There was something else out there that can make those things leave. What do
you mean something else? I ask those I know the name for several In
fact, they're called bigfoot. I hissed, then uttered a brief oh.
When it occurred to me that I had just seen a werewolf and therefore had
no right to doubt the existence of Bigfoot. Yeah, he said, and
that's not all that's out there, but those are the two worst. Although
I have to admit the Bigfoot seemed to play by the rules. They're almost
human in their behavior. So sta out of their territory and don't interrupt a
hunting expedition. Announce your presence when you enter the woods if you think they're
around, and if you hear tree knox or get something thrown at you,
just walk calmly and deliberately out of the woods. It was all so insane.
I felt suddenly exhausted from all the information that was being heaped on me,
convinced I had just stepped through some type of portal into an alternate reality.
I held up my hands and I said, Dad, stop, this
is too much. He looked at me sympathetically and thought for a moment,
and then he said, you're right. Come on, let's go to bed.
We'll go into town tomorrow and have coffee. We can talk more about
it. Then obediently I followed him down the stairs, feeling as though I
was re entering reality. When I stepped onto the hardwood floor of the hall.
He took me to my bedroom and tuck me into the bed before turning
out the light, whispering a gentle good night and closing the door. Falling
asleep proved to be easy. Staying in that state was another matter. As
soon as I drifted off, my dream showed me images of a werewolf chewing
on a rabbit that sometimes turned into my grandfather. Other times the werewolf became
my grandfather and the rabbit was my mother. Once I drepped that I was
walking through the woods and something began to chase me, I nearly escaped it
until it reached out and grabbed my red riding hood and jerked me backwards,
and each time I woke drenched in sweat and trembling. After several attempts,
I sat up in bed and stared out the window, hoping and praying for
the sun to come up, fearing that it might never do so again.
The next morning, Dad was sitting at the kitchen table when I came down.
I half hoped that he wouldn't be there. If he was out in
the barn doing his normal morning chores. Then I could relegate all that happened
the night before. Tonightmares brought on by all that heavy Italian food i'd eat,
and at dinner, your father says you and he are going to spend
the day together. Mom said, I detected a mild tone of disapproval in
her voice. She likely would have preferred for me to accompany her across the
road to go through more of Grandaddy's belongings, not the whole day. Deb
Dad said, we'll be back by noon and you can have her for the
rest of the day to finish your work at your dad's house. Well,
Mom sighed and said, no, don't rush home on my account. Jenny
and Kate are coming over. They can help me. We'll leave the office
for Shadow, but we can get the bedrooms done anyway. Dev Dad said,
hesitantly, we still don't know for sure who was lurking around the house
the other night. Promise me you won't go over until Jenny and Kate get
here, and promise me you'll take a gun with you. When Mom gave
a dispensive huff, he added, promise me or Shadow and I won't go.
If I hadn't seen what I saw the night before, if my dad
hadn't told me what he did. Hearing him talk about what happened the day
before, as if it wasn't just a bad dream on my part. May
have made me smile, but I did see, and he did tell the
thought of my mother wandering across the road alone was like being punched in the
gut. It occurred to me that she did exactly that. The day my
grandfather died, I felt as though I was going to vomit. Let's go,
shadow, I heard Dad say. I realized he had been saying it
for a few seconds, and I shot him a startled glance, and then
looked pleadingly at my mother shadow. Dad said again, honey, what's wrong?
You look sick? Mom said, She reached over and put her hand
on my forehead. She's fine, Let's go. Dad's voice was beginning to
show impatience. I looked back at him with wide, terrified eyes. My
hands were visibly trembling. For a few beats of my heart, I was
frozen into place. We can't go anywhere, I thought, we have to
stay here and watch over Mom and my sisters. What was wrong with my
father that he couldn't see that? He stared hard back into my eyes and
somehow managed to communicate that we had to leave. I'm fine, I said,
turning back to my mother, we won't be gone long, and something
inside me that I didn't know I possess, lifted me to my feet and
dragged me out the door. Once we were in the truck, I knew
I could speak openly, and I unleashed my anger on my father. How
can you leave mom at home like that? You know she's going to go
over to Granddaddy's all by herself, and even if she waits for Jenny and
Kate, how can you let the three of them go over there alone?
And then another thought occurred to me, How could you have let me go
over there to stay the night? That wasn't my doing? He answered sharply.
I never would have let you go over there by yourself, especially after
Barty he broke off Barty. What I demanded? After Granddaddy died? Did
those things kill him? I searched my memory. It didn't make sense.
The corner said he died of a heart at Mom said she thought he killed
himself, but there was no blood. I saw one of those things tearing
to a rabbit like it was a piece of overripe fruit. If one killed
my grandfather, then there definitely would have been blood. How did Granddaddy die?
I asked, he wasn't killed by a dog man, if that's what
you mean, not directly anyway. It wasn't a satisfactory answer, and Dad
knew it, so he continued. I think the corner had it right.
I think his heart gave out. Dad stopped as if he were gathering his
thoughts, and I waited. He took a deep breath and exhaled. In
all the years that we've been dealing with these things, we've never had one
approach the house. They've come as far as the barn before. Over the
years, we've lost a few chickens in an occasional calf, the dogs that
you thought ran away when you were a kid, barncats and the like,
but they never came all the way to the house. Well, the barns
are close enough, I interjected. Our barns weren't so close to our house,
but Granddaddy's barn and shed were. I pointed that out. Well,
that's true, but your granddaddy never kept live animals in his barn or shed.
They never came anywhere near those before last fall. All that changed,
though with Bigfoot it's different. They slapped the side of the house and look
in your windows. I even had one that was preoccupied with following me around
and watching me doing my chores. One year. I knew it was there,
but I don't think it knew I'd seen it now. Dog Men are
different. They lacked the curiosity that creates incidental human interaction with them. Dad,
what are you some kind of expert? I shot, suddenly feeling an
unreasonable anger toward all his sudden knowledge. No, he exclaimed, No,
I'm not the closest person I ever knew to being close to an expert on
any of these things. Was your granddaddy. And even he didn't know much.
All either of us knew was what he observed over the years. And
what I'm telling you is what I think, and you can take it and
do with it whatever you want. And you think it's perfectly acceptable to leave
mom back at the house, knowing full well she's probably already walking over to
Granddaddy's right now. Accused she won't go, he said, how do you
know does she know about these things? Well, of course not. Do
you think she would have let you go over to your grandfather's house alone at
night if she did? She doesn't know, But he was struggling to find
the words. Finally, he said, she seems to realize she has an
understanding. I guess you'd say that when I say not to do something,
there's a reason she won't go. We'd come to the end of our gravel
road and turned on to the highway, and to the left was Willard Springs.
But we turned right. Where are we going? I asked, We're
circling back around. I'm taking you down to the river. I fell silent,
as a million memories of a million drives with my grandfather following this same
route flooded my mind. At the next gravel road, we made another right
turn, and a mile down we turned left onto a secondary gravel road that
took us over the river. It curved back around and followed the path of
the water for half a mile before forking off to the left again and up
a hill. We reached the top where an old cemetery stood watch over the
valley. They seemed to like cemeteries, dead said. The road twisted around
again, following the ridge back down to the river bed, where we crossed
again. At this point I knew we were on the side of our farm.
All the land from the opposite bank over was O'Connor and Parker Land.
If we got out and walked, we'd end up at Granddaddy's barnyard. And
when Dad turned off the truck and got out, I realized that was exactly
what we were about to do. He pulled a rifle case from behind his
seat. He unzipped it and removed us thirty thirty from his coat pocket.
He produced a handful of bullets. He put seven in the tube and then
added one more in the chamber. Let's go, he said. The water
ran fast in that part of the river, but I knew that we were
heading to a spot where rocks jutted up out of the water, close enough
together that we could cross over without getting our feet wet. At least I
hoped we could. I hadn't come prepared. The sky was gray overhead,
and it hadn't snowed since Christmas, and I was grateful for that. It
meant the waterf would be low, but I was already beginning to see signs
of the impending storm. The air was damp enough to form micropillets of sleep
and we approached the crossing point and Dad went first. He easily navigated the
rocks despite their increasing slipperiness. And then he turned and watched as I followed,
and I struggled and nearly fell in once, but I got across.
We walked along the river on that side for a few hundred yards, and
stopping periodically to look at the tracks. Most of them I recognized rabbits and
raccoons, and possums, a set of coyote tracks, and a ground hog
had all visited the river recently. There were other tracks that I didn't recognize.
They looked canine, but there was something different about them. For one
thing, they were huge. If they belonged to a dog, I couldn't
imagine how big it had to beuly I could. My mind went back to
the attic and the rabbit being scooped up by the creature that was absolutely big
enough to make those tracks. Last fall they started coming up to the house.
Dad told me as we walked. He was speaking quieter now, and
with the wind blowing, I had trouble understanding him. I had to concentrate
hard on his words. They'd never done that before. They come to the
barn to take livestock. But you already said that, I interrupted impatiently.
Yeah, well, last fall they started coming to the house, not all
the way up to it, but definitely to the house yard. You saw
one around the barn. I stopped dead in my tracks. Dad stopped too,
and turned and asked me what was wrong. I seriously felt as though
I might faint. Now, I've never fainted in my life, but at
that moment, that was exactly what I thought I was going to do.
Dad, I said quietly, I didn't just see one in the barn yard,
and I didn't just hear one howl. We locked eyes, and I
said something hit the house that night. Confusion played across his face. Now
I have since come to understand that my father had never considered a house slap,
as he called it, to being anything but bigfoot behavior. He stood
there for a moment and then started walking again. I had to hurry to
catch up with him. Well, your grandfather said he was seeing them around
the house, but he never said anything about slapping to me. He got
into the habit of going out on to his porch and firing his rifle two
or three times at night. It seemed to keep him away. I think,
judging by where they found his body the night he died, that he
had gone to the door to fire his gun, and when he opened it
there was one on the porch. He slammed the door shut and well,
I think the shock of seeing one so close caused him to have a heart
attack. Dad, you don't know that, I retorted, Well, yes
I do, he answered. I saw your mother come running out of the
house, and I knew something was wrong. We met in the middle of
the road and she said that he was dead. She went on to the
house to call nine one one, and I went on over to your grandfather's.
There were tracks all around. It's been warm here these last couple of
weeks, and the ground's pretty soft. I see. I didn't know what
else to say. We were working our way back up to Granddaddy's house.
It was a path that I could walk in my sleep if I had to.
The snow was starting to come down a little harder now. I was
wishing I had on a pair of car hearts instead of the fancy winter dress
coat I'd brought for the funeral. And when Dad put his hand on my
arm to stop me, I looked at him, and he placed his finger
against his mouth ate silence. We listened. I didn't hear anything, and
apparently neither did he, so we started walking again, but this time I
heard it too. Our path divided an open grass meadow from a patch of
woods. Something was definitely moving inside the trees. We stood and listened for
a moment. Nothing moved, so we continued another fifteen steps, and we
both stopped at the sound of footsteps. Dad motioned for us to keep walking.
We were halfway between his truck and Granddaddy's house. At this point,
our direction didn't matter. I found myself staring wide eyed into the dark recesses
of the underbrush and saplings, waiting for something monstrous to suddenly appear and run
out of the woods and attack us both. Dad had fallen slightly behind me,
as if to watch my back. I wanted him next to me,
with one arm around me to protect me. I reasoned that it would be
foolish for him to hold me at that moment. He needed his hands free
to fire his weapon if he needed to. Fifteen more steps and our world
shook with an earth shattering howl, not from our right, where the woods
were, but from the grass meadow to the left. We stopped dead and
looked at each other for a single moment, go Dad said. I responded
by stepping up my pace and walking, but not running, as fast as
I could to get to my grandfather's house. On both sides of me.
Now, I heard the sounds of footsteps. Blades of grass cracked to my
left, while twigs and branches crunched to my right. They're pack animals,
I heard my mind say, wolves are pack animals. We were being hunted.
I wanted to say that to my father behind me, but I couldn't
find the necessary air to form the words. My lungs were already struggling to
gather enough oxygen to keep me in motion. A quarter of a mile,
I guessed I was a quarter of a mile from my Granddaddy's house. The
long grass to my left waved and arched, but I didn't know if it
was the weight of some horrible monster or the increasing wind that was now carrying
enough snow on it to limit my vision. I was grateful that Dad was
behind me with his gun. No matter what, if we had a gun,
I felt like we had the advantage two hundred yards. I told myself,
if we can get to Granddaddy's house, we'll be safe inside. We
can lock the doors, we can barricade ourselves in. We can use the
phone and call for help. We'll be all right in a minute, Dad,
I called over my shoulder. I heard the pounding of his footsteps in
answer. Another one hundred yards and we'd be safe, I could say.
See the barn and the shed. There was the porch of the house,
and we were almost there. Another fifty yards we were going to be Okay,
keep up, Dad, I yelled, we'll make it. I could
hear his heavy breathing behind me. I entered the barnyard and broke into a
dead run. Now I took the stairs of the porch and two steps and
threw open the front door and turned to let my father in. Behind me,
he wasn't there. A cold, empty silence filled the world. Snow
was coming down in twisted angles on angry bursts of wind, but I heard
nothing. It's funny how the world turns gray and the dead of winter.
Insanely, I remembered that it was February third, truly the dead of winter.
The sound of a gunshot somewhere between me and the river brought me back
to my senses. He wasn't with me, but he was still alive.
I couldn't fathom why he hadn't come with me. Was he drawing them off
of me? Had he instinctively run back to his truck while I had chosen
the safety of my grandfather. There was no time to think of that.
Now I had to get to my dad. I flew back down the porch
stairs and across the road. Scout was sitting right where I'd left her five
days earlier. I hadn't even tried to start her in all that time.
I carried my keys in my pocket at all times, and for that I
was grateful. Her door squealed as I opened it and slid into the driver's
seat, and my hands shook as I fumbled to put the keys in the
ignition with the temperament of an old man screaming at the neighbor's kids to get
off as long, she whined to life. Oh thank you Jesus, I
cried as I threw her into gear and nearly went airborne, crossing the road
into my grandfather's barnyard. The path I'd run to get to his house was
barely wide enough to drive Scout down, but I didn't care. In a
few places, I found myself mowing through the grass, but it didn't matter.
As the trail turned and ran alongside the river, something stood up in
the grass and glared malevolently at me. It had the head of a wolf
and eyes that appeared to glow from some inner source, and a mouthful of
lethal looking teeth. I was so busy staring at that thing that I didn't
see the other one on my left until it slammed its body into Scout's side.
The first one burst into action as they both began to run alongside us,
as if to hurt us along well. I knew I couldn't cross the
river in Scout where we'd crossed earlier. There was a place a little further
down where the bottom was rocky, but it meant driving into the water that
might be a foot deeper more. I had no choice. I had to
find my father. Two more shots rang out as I approached the crossing point.
It was my dad. He was firing at the two dog men who
were attacking me. Relief was immediately replaced by panic as I saw a third
come out of the woods and head straight for him. I gunned the engine
and managed to get between them and the nick of time, and Dad wrenched
open the door and jumped in. Where did you go? I screamed at
him. I had to draw them away from you. He yelled back,
now, go, go go. I pushed scouts accelerator to the floor as
we hit the water and the snow was coming down at a blinding rate.
Now get to my truck. We'll take it back, Dad yelled, the
hell we will. I'm not stopping, I exclaimed. We got out onto
the road and scouts rear end fishtail behind us. I thought for a second
about her ball tires, but it was too late. Now I chosen my
path and we had to follow it. And by the time we got to
the primary gravel road, I felt comfortable enough to slow down a little.
Nerves and fear kept me from going too slow, but Scout's tires wouldn't let
me go any faster. The main highway was covered in snow, but we
managed to crawl along to our gravel road, and as we pulled into the
barnyards, Scout heaved a sigh and died. I loved that old truck.
She was ugly as hell, but she was mine. Mom and Dad decided
that I should inherit Granddaddy's truck. I couldn't have been happier. It was
only a couple of years old and had about as many miles as a ninety
year old man who never went any further than the local cafe for a cup
of coffee could put on it. It was an ugly moss green, but
I didn't care. It was mine. Dad made me promise to never tell
Mom what had happened. Our official story was that he had gotten stuck in
the water and I tried to pull us out with Scout. It was too
much for the old girl, and she gave out. There was a long
argument out in the hay barn where no one could hear us, during which
I insisted they sell that farm and move away from there. Dad refused to
entertain the possibility, and I had to accept that they were never going to
leave that place. In the end, he assured me that it was all
going to be okay. He would always be there to protect Mom and my
brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. Because I wanted to believe him,
I accepted his word as law. I drove away that cold February morning,
and except to come home when first Mom and then he died, I never
went back again. I know coward like most people who discover that monsters are
real. I've made it my mission to learn as much about these things as
I can, but I do it through books in these days the Internet.
I don't go out in the woods because I never want to feel hunted again.
Hunted Part two, Keeper of the Woods written by Neilma Finn. Derek
came to see me a month before my mother died. Although he's my brother's
son, Derek is a year older than me, so our relationship was like
that of cousins more than aunt and nephew growing up in my hometown of Willard
Springs. We were close, but he graduated high school and spent a year
away at college before realizing that an advanced education wasn't for him. He came
home at the end of the spring semester and began working on my father's farm
in time to wish me a fond farewell as I packed up my International Scout
and moved to Saint Louis, Missouri. I don't really know why I chose
Saint Louis. Chicago would have been a more logical place given our location.
Minneapolis would have made sense as well. I think I felt like they were
not far enough removed from Willard Springs. Big cities like New York and la
were too far removed. Saint Louis felt right, and here I've lived for
the past forty years. At the time of Derek's visit, I had been
home exactly once. That was when my grandfather died. I was blessed to
have good and loving parents in a large, closely knit family, but my
universe centered around Granddaddy. I followed him wherever he went and mimicked his every
move and did my best to model myself after him. My name is u
Lalley Jane, after my granny, who died before I was born, but
it was my granddaddy who gave me the nickname Shadow. It was a surprise
to hear Derek's voice over the intercom that morning. When I heard the door
buzzer, I assumed one of my fellow tenants had accidentally locked him or herself
out and was looking for someone to open the door for them. Good Lord,
Derek, what are you doing all the way down here in Saint Louis?
I cried as he swept me up in a big bear hug that pulled
me off my feet. I had business down here, so I thought i'd
stop in. He lied, business, Yeah, right, what business could
a dairy farmer have four hundred miles from home? I chilted, Well,
maybe I just wanted to see my favorite aunt, he offered, as he
followed me across the little entry hall into the living room of my apartment.
I lived in an old building, complete with all the character and charm of
arched doorways and French doors, and old fashioned phone niches and outdated electricity,
plumbing and relation systems. But it suited me after all these years. Feeling
a bit melancholy, I said, Oh, I don't know. He put
a little too much effort into his nonchalance. I felt a tinge of suspicion
creep over me, but I let it pass and offered him coffee. When
I came back in with his cup, my two cats had taken up residence
on the sofa beside him. One was glaring at him suspiciously, as if
demanding an explanation for his presence, while the other was busy batting at his
hand in an effort to force him to pet her. Are they planning on
eating me here? Or do they have a den somewhere that they'll drag me
off to, he asked, as I handed him as coffee. Callope,
Calypso, get down, I scolded, Well, they ignored me. Sorry.
They're my watchcats. They like to play good cop, bad cop.
Calope there distracts visitors with her overly friendly attitude, while Calypso works out a
strategy for immediate expulsion if the need arises. I don't think I've ever seen
such large cats in my life. Derek stroked Kellope's back and gave an oof
when she jumped out onto his lap. Wow she's heavy, he said.
They're rag dolls. I explained, they're not the largest breed of cats,
but close to it. I think Maine coons are bigger, and maybe one
or two other breeds. They're actually the friendliest breed I know of. Most
rag dolls think they're dogs. While I sat down in my favorite oversized chair
next to the little gas fireplace and opened my arms for Calypso to jump into
my lap, and with both of us now securely pinned to our seats by
twenty pounds of overly affectionate fur, I ask again why Derek had come so
far for a visit. Well, you know, Grandma isn't well, he
began, after a moment of consideration as to how to proceed. His statement
left me feeling cold inside, and I responded accordingly, Yeah, Derek,
I know. Just because I never go back there doesn't mean I don't keep
in touch. I talked to Mom and Dad at least two or three times
a week, and they come here a lot, especially since you boys have
taken over the dairy business. A lot of the city people don't realize that
farming is a business the same as manufacturing. Over the years, my family
has gone a bit further than selling milk to companies who package it under their
own names. Parker O'Connor is its own label. However, I left that
world when I was eighteen. My knowledge of dairy farming is rudimentary at best,
and my memories of growing up on the farm feature creeks on hot summer
days and my mother's vegetable garden and the elusive blue ribbons offered at the county
fair, and snow covered hills and hollers through which snowmobiles were driven. Nevertheless,
I'm proud of my family, even if I don't fully understand their passion
for milk production. Sitting across from Derek, now, I was painfully aware
that he wasn't here to talk butterfat and protein content of milk with me.
There were questions in his eyes for which I was sure I had the answers,
but that I wasn't entirely sure I could provide. I wasn't accusing you
of anything, he said, calmly. I was just saying that she isn't
well. He softened his voice even more and continued, Now, I know
you love Grandma and Grandpa. You've been a good daughter to them, even
from so far away. They brag on you all the time. Grandpa never
fails to mention how you came home from Granddaddy's funeral and enrolled yourself full time
in college, and you worked hard at it. He gave me a crooked
smile before saying, and we all know how hard you had to work.
School was never your forte Well, shut up, I laughed, relaxing a
bit. Grandma and Grandpa are proud of you, he said. Who would
ever ever have thought anyone in our family would go so far that they'd actually
become a professor at a university. He said this with an easy grin.
Well, I'm not a full professor yet, I corrected, I've only just
recently achieved the rank of associate professor. You know, Tomato, Tomato,
It's still more than anyone expected. Again, he shot me a lazy grin
from you. Anyway, I picked up a pen from my side table and
I threw it at him. The tension was slithering out of the room.
Well, thanks for not brating me about that. And to be honest,
I feel guilty not being there. I hope that my smile hid some of
the self loathing I felt for my cowardice. We spent the next half hour
making small talk and catching up on the happenings of Willard Springs. It was
nice having Derek there. My own brothers were all grown up when I will
born. My sisters were too. Now I was closer to him than I
ever could have been to my siblings. Suddenly Derek asked what happened that week
after Granddaddy died? And there it was a shot in the dark, unexpected
and painful. All the tension flooded back in. Well, how much do
you know, I countered. I know that I hear things in the woods
when I'm working in the barn. I know that whatever's out there howling is
too big to be a wolf. I know that calves disappear and Grandpa blames
it on cootes. And I know we have fewer barn cats in our neck
of the woods than on any farms anywhere else. And I know that I
don't hunt anymore. You don't hunt, that statement said at all? What
have you seen? I asked. He was silent for a moment, debating
how much more to say. All right, I have seen something, actually
more than one. Did you talk to your grandfather about it? I asked,
No, he exclaimed indignantly. I don't want to scare him. I
burst into laughter at that, and it left him sputtering nonsensical words until I
interrupted with your grandfather has known about those things since long before you and I
were born. The expression knocked him over with a feather. Overused as it
may be, was exactly what I was sure I could have done to him
at that moment. No, how, you can't be serious, he stammered.
I was tempted to go find a feather. How do you know my
story of the house that I'd heard while staying at Granddaddy's house on the night
of his funeral, and the figure I'd seen lurking around the barns unfolded between
deep sighs and long pauses. He pointed out that my father would never have
called the sheriff, much less agreed with him if he already knew what was
out there. I suggested that he did that for my mother's sake, and
she didn't know what my father and grandfather knew, and he would have done
anything necessary to keep her from ever finding out. I stood up then and
went over to the far wall of my living room, where several floor to
ceiling bookshelves sagged under the way to too many books, and from a lower
shelf, I removed one of my grandfather's journals. A few days after I
arrived home from his funeral, they were delivered to me with a note that
said for safe keeping, love Dad. I handed the journal to Derek.
He opened it and began reading January seventeen, nineteen fifty six. I heard
them howling again last night. I asked Loally this morning if she'd heard anything,
but she said no. I think I might get a telescope, one
of those spy scopes like a sea captain Ughs's and put it up in the
attic in the west window. Derek stopped reading and I began to laugh.
What are you laughing at? He said, I don't know how I did
that. I said, there are two dozen journals on that shelf, and
that's number two or three. I just reached down and grabbed one. But
that's the very first one I read too. Well, what are these,
he asked, flipping the book over in his hand. What does the DM
stand for? I explained how I'd found the journals while cleaning out the office,
and Granddaddy had kept a record going all the way back to the middle
of nineteen fifty four, when he first heard the howling. He recorded every
date, every sound, every animal taking or missing, and every thought he
had about them from July twenty seventh, nineteen fifty four, to September twenty
two, nineteen seventy five. Most of the entries were no more than a
couple of sentences, stating things like I heard them last night, or bullet
is missing he was a good dog. The more detailed entries were descriptions and
behavioral observations. As for the d MS, I can only guess. I
concluded, why did he stop in nineteen seventy five. Derrick asked, I
don't know. Maybe there are more note books. Maybe he was beginning to
see things that scared him too much. I offered, do you think it
had anything to do with Julianna Denison? Derec wondered aloud, Julianna Denison.
Now I had to think for a moment. The name sounded familiar, but
I couldn't put a face to it. And then it hit me, Oh,
you mean Matt's old girlfriend, the one he was engaged to but never
married. You know, I liked her. The memory of seeing the two
of them skinny dipping in the river that night flooded back to me. Whatever
happened to her? Shadow, Derec said harshly, not understanding his sudden anger.
And I stared back in shock. And seeing that I was at a
loss, he said, don't you remember Uncle Matt almost went to jail for
her. Well baffled, I shook my head. Julianne and Denison disappeared one
night when she and Matt were on a date. They found her body all
tore up. Now, how can you forget something that gruesome? It was
the biggest news ever to hit Willard Springs, and Uncle Matt was damn near
charged with killing her. Dear God, I did remember. I remembered seeing
them in the water in the moonlight, and I remember them splashing each other
and laughing. I remembered them coming together in an embrace, and I remember
her turning and heading for the shore and disappearing in the woods and screaming.
I remembered it all. How could I have forgotten? It was the night
I had slipped up to the attic to play with the telescope when I was
ten, and somehow I'd managed to block it all out. But now the
images came flooding back to me. I could hear the distant screaming and pleading
for mercy. I could see Matt running into the brush and coming out again
and yelling for her. And he swept up his jeans and he pulled them
on as he ran for his truck, and I heard him pull into the
barnyard. I heard him running into the house and my dad calling the police,
or was it my grandfather? Shadow? Shadow Derek's voice was coming from
somewhere far away. I looked up and saw his face inches for mine.
His lips were moving and sounds were coming from his mouth, but I couldn't
understand them. I felt sick. Suddenly, I pushed Calypso off my lap
and shoved Derek away, and I ran down the hall to the bathroom.
By the time I was through, I was wishing I'd eaten more that day.
It would have been easier than the constant wretching. When I finally collapsed
onto the bathroom floor, certain I'd never be able to stand up again,
I dissolved into loud, ugly sobs. Fifteen minutes later, Derek knocked on
the door, shadow, are you okay? No? I was not okay.
I couldn't accept the image of Julianna Denison, except to see a rabbit
running across a patch of snow and being swept up by a monster that until
that moment I never could have believed existed. What was worse, A fraction
of a second before it sank its teeth into the soft fur, the rabbit
turned into Juliana. I pulled myself back to my feet and I opened the
door, and Derek's worried face loomed over me. His hands came up to
support me as I began to sway a bit and gently. He led me
back to my chair in the living room, and then disappeared down the hall
to return with a glass of water. I took it gratefully and sipped gingerly
for several long minutes before I was able to speak again, and Derek listened
in mortified silence as I just the scene I'd witnessed that night when I was
a child. I told him that, as far as I knew, the
telescope was still intact, and then I remembered that Dad had interrupted me the
night I saw the dog man, and I didn't replace it. If Mom
was the one who found it later, it would likely have been tucked back
into a little space under the window. But if Dad went back up the
stairs that night, he may have gotten rid of it to prevent any more
unwanted incidents. We'll see, he said, when I get back. I'll
go there first thing. And look why, I asked, what would you
do with that little monocular? It's over forty years old. You'd be better
off buying a new one, a better one, And then I paused and
nodded, you'd be better off staying away from the subject altogether. I can't,
Derek answered flatly, I understood, and I hated it, but I
understood. After that, we sat in silence, and Derek spotted a short
plastic pole on the coffee table and picked it up to dangle the attached feather
and bells over the cat's heads. They danced around and batted at it,
and then at each other. And MY eyes were fixed on the cats,
but my mind had me trapped in an attic, staring out a window and
seeing something that couldn't be. It could have been an hour before Derek spoke.
It could have been two hours. The cats had long since lost interest
in the dangled feathers, so I doubt it could have been less. And
finally he stood up. I had been so deep in thought that his movement
startled me. Are you leaving? There was an actual fear in my voice,
for which I was ashamed, Yeah, he said, slipping into the
jacket that he draped over the chair earlier. It's getting late. Why don't
you stay, I pleaded, much to myself, disgusted. I'll come back
tomorrow, he promised. How about I come and take you to breakfast.
I thought about that for a minute. Tomorrow felt like a long drive across
a frozen tundra away, but he was right to leave me. I needed
the time to process these new memories to understand them. Okay, I acquiesced,
but not on farm time, I quickly added, I don't get up
before seven am. Look at you, lazy bones, he teased. It
was still early on Saturday afternoon. When Derek left, I felt restless and
uncomfortable, so I decided to head over to my office on campus, where
I had access to the new tool called the World Wide Web, and there
I searched for an hour to find all that I could about the death of
Julianna Denison. The Internet was still young back then and not nearly as helpful
as it is today, and in the end I relented and walked over to
the library, where I scanned through microfish images of old newspapers until I found
what I was looking for. The headlines were harsh and accusatory. Local man
accused of killing fiance while swimming read the first The article relayed the story of
how Matt had taken Juliana down to the river to spend some time alone with
her and talk about their wedding plans for the following summer. There were several
quotes from friends whose names I recognized, and who declared Matt's innocence and his
inability to commit such a heinous crime. The second paper, with a headline
woman attacked and killed in the woods, fiance held for questioning, was more
of the same. This time they interviewed Granddaddy, who adamantly stated that it
had to be a wild animal. No man could do to another human being
what had been done to that girl's body. I flipped the several more articles,
each revealing a little more about the autopsy, the match release based on
the autopsy results, and a search for large predators in and around the river
that ended fruitlessly. The last article declared her death to be a direct result
of wild dogs, all of which it said were rounded up and euthanized.
Juliana's obituary showed a face that I barely remembered. They had obviously used a
school picture. Her hair was long and dark brown and parted in the middle,
with two metal hairbows holding it back from her face on each side.
Her pale eyes were heavily made up in the electric shades of blue that were
popular at the time, and she was wearing a short sleeved light net turtleneck.
I stared at her with little sympathy. I never liked her, Unlike
us, she wasn't a farm kid, and for that she looked down on
us. She lorded her college degree over us, as though it was somehow
made her better. My mother always acted awkwardly in front of her, and
my dad always found an excuse to work on something out in the barn when
she was there, and Granddaddy stayed away altogether. Despite this, the thought
of her being torn to pieces by one of those creatures living in our woods
was disturbing, and I suppose that no one should have to suffer that sort
of fate. I had the librarian print out copies of all the articles I
found, and I took them home with me. Derek and I had been
staring into our cups of rapidly cooling coffee for too long. The din of
people talking and dishes being cleared, and servers rushing past with plates of food
and bacon sizzling on the grill somewhere beyond the lunch counter created miles of distance
across a little formica top table at which we sat. Neither of us could
think of a thing to say. It seemed impolite to march into the topic
that dominated all of our thoughts, but because it was all either of us
could think about, it left us incapable of any other conversation. I gave
up. Tell me your story, huh, I wondered if Derek had fallen
asleep into his own thoughts that he'd forgotten I was there. Oh yeah,
well, he began with the impeccable timing that only a server can have.
Ours approached the table at that moment to refill our cups and assure us that
our food would be out momentarily. I thanked him with a smile and then
turned back to Derek and waited. He took a deep breath and blew it
out slowly. His eyes wandered to the window beside us. Rain was falling
at a steady pace. Outside. Derek wasn't fond of rain, but I,
on the other hand, am a complete pluvial file. Remember that time
we all decided to canoe the Saint Croix and we got all the way down
to Hinckley before we realized we didn't have a way to get back to our
vehicles. It was a diversion, but at least he was talking and we
had to call Grandpa and Granddaddy to drive up and get us. He was
laughing. Now it sounded nice, and then it started raining before they got
there. We had to turn the canoes over and huddle under them for shelter.
We should have stayed at the gas station and had them pick us up
there, I said, smiling back at him. Or we could have paddled
back up stream like I wanted to. And poor Ben, we had to
make him wait there with our canoes while we walked to a phone booth.
And then we got back and he was throwing a fit about somebody tossing rocks
at him. Derek grew silent again as realization dawned across his face. Tell
me your story, Derek said again. We had to wait in silence for
a minute while our server, with his unbearable timing, placed a plate of
eggs and bacon, and a plate of biscuits and gravy, and a plate
of pancakes in front of Derek, and a bowl of fruit and gorilla topped
with yogurt in front of me. You're going to starve to death eating like
that, he chatted. And you're gonna get old and fat eating like that
I retaliated. It was a familiar banter that helped us both relax. Derek
shoved a piece of bacon in his mouth and he grinned, at least I'll
get old, and then, without further prodding, he began, It's been
going on for so long, to be honest, that I can't put a
start date on it. I think I've known since high school, maybe earlier,
that something wasn't right in our woods. Something isn't right in any of
the woods around there, you know how. Granddaddy never let us hunt alone
in the woods, but used to slip in there when we didn't know.
I was sure there must be some trophy buck roaming around in there, and
I was just as sure as I was going to be the one to bring
it in. And I honestly don't know what I would have said to Grandaddy
if I had. There were times in those woods when I seriously felt like
I was being stalked. For the longest time, I thought it was Grandaddy.
I kept expecting him to mention it in the middle of some family dinner,
but he never did, and after a while I convinced myself that it
wasn't him. But for the life of me. I couldn't figure out who
or what it might have been. It was always the same. I'd be
walking and everything would go silent, like a predator was close by, and
then I'd hear footsteps around me. Not stop and look around, but I
never could see anything. It was always so damn quiet. No birds,
no squirrels, no insects, nothing. And then I'd start walking again and
I'd hear footsteps again. Sometimes a stick or a rock would get chucked at
me. That was always when I'd get too spooked and I'd walk out.
But whatever was out there always walked out with me. But when i'd get
to the road, it never came out of the woods with me. Or
if I was down the river and once I crossed it, it would stop
following. I guess that started all the way back in high school. But
I can promise you there are times even today when I go into those woods
that I feel something is watching me, Something doesn't want me there, and
something is chasing me out where. You're lucky there, Derek, I said,
those were probably the Sasquatches. He leaned in suddenly and he said,
do you believe in bigfoot? I thought it was a ridiculous question. Of
course, I believe in bigfoot. I've read all of grandfather's journals, and
I've had countless conversations with my father about the behavior he'd witnessed and the signs
he'd recorded. Although I didn't see a bigfoot in the woods that cold winter
day, what I did see told me that if they can't exist, then
sure as hell a bigfoot can. As quickly as he leaned in, Derek
withdrew, he didn't wait for my answer. It wasn't a sasquatch or a
bigfoot that I saw last spring, he said. I was turkey hunting.
There was a big time that i'd been watching. I couldn't believe my luck
when I managed to call him in on that first day. God, it
was frustrating watching him duck in and out of the brush. I was waiting
for a clear shot. He'd stepped behind the bush and there was a sudden
movement and feathers went everywhere, and the damn thing was gone. It was
just gone. Derek's face mirrored his astonishment as his hands came up to wipe
the air like a giant eraser. I was so shocked that I think I
must have yelled or something, and the next thing I knew, I was
looking at the crown of a head sticking up from behind the bushes. It
kept standing until its eyes were visible. The color drained out of Derek's face
at the thought of what he'd seen that day. Those eyes were like two
coals of fire, staring right into me. He looked at me as if
he were waiting for me to argue with him. But how could I when
I remembered so well that horrible feeling when a pair of similar eyes pinned me
from an impossible distance away, and he continued and its teeth, its canines
were massive. I could see the fear washing over him at the memory.
Those bushes had to be at least as tall as me, at least six
feet, But when it rose up, I knew it had to be well
over that I was down on the ground looking up, but I could still
see its head over the bushes. Derek was beginning to tremble. His face
glistened with sweat as his skin paled to a waxy white, and tears welled
up in his eyes. I sat silently while he pulled himself back together,
and he took a bite of food and he chewed it with his thoughts.
I began to wonder again if he'd forgotten I was there, And then he
looked up and abruptly asked, why did you leave so suddenly after Granddaddy's funeral.
Well, that caught me off guard. Something happened, didn't it.
I mean, that day, after you heard those howls, and after you
found the notebooks, after you saw it kill the rabbit, something else happened,
didn't it. It was like a strange game of live chests we were
playing. The white Queen would question, and the black knight would withdraw.
The black rook would speak, and the white bishop would counter. I could
almost hear a distant, primordial drum beat keeping time, or maybe it was
my heart. Yes, something happened. He held his breath as I told
him how my dad had taken me down in the woods to show me the
signs of the dog men, and possibly to look for an indication that the
Bigfoot were returning. If they were coming back, he'd said, then the
dog men wouldn't be leaving again until late fall. And then we were attacked.
Attacked, he cried, you were attacked, Uh, yeah, I
assured him. We parked his truck on the river, and were walking the
farm road up to Granddaddy's house when we were suddenly surrounded by them. Well,
I marveled at how calm I managed to sound. I wasn't feeling it.
Visions of Juliana and the rabbit were racing through my mind, and now
they were accompanied by the sounds of grass and dead leaves and crystallized patches of
snow being crushed under massive paws. Well, how did you get away?
He cried, causing a disproving stare from some nearby diners. That was one
question I wasn't certain how to answer, how did I get away? The
better question was who followed me out? My father had insisted that he was
never with me, and as soon as he was certain that those creatures weren't
going to follow me, he turned the other way. He had chosen to
die rather than to let them get me. But I know there was someone
or something behind me. I heard footsteps, I heard him breathing, I
felt his presence, And yet I know when I turned around at the door,
the barnyard was empty. If it wasn't my father, who could have
disappeared like that? If it had been a dog, man, would I
still be alive to tell the tale. Over the years, I've entertained the
idea that it was the ghost of my grandfather seeing me to safety, or
perhaps it was a sasquatch. My father was fond of saying that they had
rules. Stay out of their territory and don't interrupt a hunting expedition. Announce
your presence when you enter the woods if you think there are around, and
if you hear tree knocks or get something thrown at you, walk calmly and
deliberately away. Maybe they felt that the dog men were breaking the rules,
and their retaliation was to prevent them from turning me into a meal. Dad
said they always returned in late winter or early spring. Wait, this time
it was me who drew the disapproving stairs from the other customers. What Derek
yelled back? People were staring openly. Now we must have looked like a
couple of looney tunes, yelling back and forth at each other and jumping at
every word. I might have laughed if not for the sudden realization that Derek's
story didn't make sense, It didn't follow the rules. Did you say you
were turkey hunting, I asked, Yeah, what about it spring Turkey season?
Isn't it in like April? It was the last week in April.
Why Having never read the journals and not realizing that his grandfather was as close
to an expert on the subject as a man could be, Derek couldn't have
known that by April the dog men should have been gone, or that they
shouldn't be coming back until the end of summer. Did it look like a
dog, I asked, Well, not exactly. It looked almost like a
I don't know it was really dog like. It was more like a mandrel,
you know, one of those big monkeys with the weird red nose and
white Did it have ears? I interrupted, what I guess, so I
don't really remember. They weren't obvious. No, I guess not confused by
my obsession with the ears. Derek finally asked, what difference does it make?
It makes all the difference in the world, I said. Dog men
generally look like well dogs. I mean, I've read a few instances where
people thought they might look like their high ena, but for the most part
they have a caneine appearance. I thought you were describing a dog man,
but it's the wrong time of year. Derek and all of Granddaddy's journals and
everything. Dad has told me. The dog men leave the areas sometime in
late winter or early spring, and they don't come back until the Bigfoot leave
at the end of the summer or the beginning of the fall. Juliana was
killed in mid September. Right, I pointed out, well, He nodded,
Well, that means the Bigfoot had already moved on. Granddaddy and Dad
had a theory that these things are all migratory. They kept records of what
they saw and when they saw them. I suspected I was speaking too quickly
for Derek to take it all in. Come on, we need to go
back to my place. I'm not saying it wasn't doglike, he was saying.
As I jumped up and signaled to our waiter. I was already throwing
cash on the table when he arrived. Derek shot a moreful glance at his
barely touched food and following me out the door. I was trying not to
run the two blocks back to my apartment in the rain. It was uphill
all the way, and I could hear Derek huffing behind me. Too many
biscuit and gravy breakfasts. I muttered, slow down, he yelled, and
I ignored him. At my apartment, I had to stop and dig my
key out of my pocket, and then I fumbled it and I dropped it,
and it bounced off the cement, stooping into the mud. We both
had to crawl around on our knees and the shrubs to find it, and
fortunately we were already so wet that it didn't matter. At my apartment door,
Derek wrenched the key from my hand and opened it for me with a
look of disdain. He wasn't about to let me draw up another key.
I led the way across the living room to a set of French doors that
opened into a small glassed in sun room that I had turned into my office.
Fall semester had just begun, and I already had a stack of papers
to grade. I pushed them aside and pulled a small chair from the corner
over so that Derek could sit beside me, and then I reached into the
bottom drawer of my desk and withdrew a large d ring binder. It was
full of notebook paper and sheet covers filled with type pages or diagrams in them,
and several drawings. Sections were separated by tab sheets, all of which
had seen better days. I opened the binder and began to flip through it
tab by tab until I reached the section I was looking for. The first
page of that section was a heading sheet that read descriptions and depictions. I
turned to the second page. It had only one word, typed in three
inch tall capital letters, Bigfoot. The next page was a type description copied
from my grandfather's journal, and below it was another description that my own father
had given me via the telephone. The next page listed a variety of descriptions
pulled from the books of those brave enough to put into print their belief in
a creature assumed to be mythical by the general population. I turned the page
again to stare into the first of a dozen or so artist's renditions of the
big hairy beast. What you saw, I asked Derek, as Calypso jumped
into my lap. Did it look like any of these? He was already
shaking his head before he even began to look, and page by page he
looked at the drawings. Then he shook his head. No, I told
you it wasn't a bigfoot. That I saw the next page said dog man,
where the first had said bigfoot. What about these, I asked,
turning the pages with a dog man drawings on them. Derek took his time
looking through these pictures. Included in them were drawings of werewolves by artists like
Frank Frazetta, but I didn't mention that to Derek. He studied each image
and shook his head and then turned the page. I skipped over the next
several pages. They were all creatures that my father and grandfather believed to exist
in the woods and along the river banks around the farm, but I highly
doubted any of them would be what Derek had seen. They included creatures like
pug wodgies, they were easily eliminated by the mere fact that they stood only
three feet tall, and ghosting demons that I dismiss for a variety of reasons.
And finally I got to the last section. It was labeled unclassified.
There I flipped to the drawing and Derek drew in his breath. That's it,
he cried, That's exactly what I saw. My heart fell into my
stomach. Derek had identified a Gugwy Gugwi, he asked, reading the name
under the drawing. What does that mean? It means face eater, I
said, and you, my dear nephew, may be the only man ever
to have gotten that close to one and lived. Derek lifted several pages of
the binder at the top corner and let them slide over his thumb back into
place. What is all this? He asked, dumbfounded. I couldn't answer
him. Did he not understand that he had been face to face with something
even more terrifying than a dog man? Had he failed to see exactly how
close his life had come to being over His face registered no shock, His
manner betrayed no level of concern. He did nothing more than sit there and
stare at the pages. I reasoned that perhaps he was emotion incapable of dealing
with the magnitude of the situation, or maybe he'd simply lost his ever loving
mind. Shadow What are these? His voice brought me back to the moment.
I had to gather myself before I could speak, and finally I managed
to explain the binder. Shortly after I got home from Granddaddy's funeral, Dad
sent the journals to me. I've had them for I stopped, and I
calculated the time that had passed thirteen and a half years. I guess.
At first, I kept reading them over and over again. I guess I
thought I was going to memorize them, and then I realized the information in
them needed to be sorted and categorized. That's when I started making this binder.
Well what are all these other things in here? He asked, flipping
back to the pages showing creatures that he'd probably never heard of. At one
time or another, either Grandy or Dad had seen all of these creatures,
and most of them they didn't have a name. For the ones that Dad
saw, I was able to work with him to identify some only Granddaddy saw.
So they're not much more than an educated guess I actually have this to
thank for my livelihood, what Derek asked, How do you mean? When
I came back here, I had resigned myself to a life of bartending and
waitressing. Jobs weren't hard to come by, and the tips were good.
But then those journals arrived. I was so obsessed with them. I spent
every minute that I could at the library, researching and reading and learning.
I was sitting at a coffee house pouring over one of those books when a
man approached me and asked if I was enjoying his book. Derek's brow shot
up and I laughed, Yeah. He was the author of the book that
I was reading. So we got into a deep conversation on the subject,
and though I wouldn't tell him why I was so f fascinated, he was
impressed by how much I knew and suggested that I consider it as a profession.
I had no idea people actually made mythological studies of profession. But here
I am today. Wow, Derek whispered in amazement. I had no idea,
Derek, how did you get away? I asked. The question was
burning holes in my brain. If he decided to dance around the subject.
I might have picked up that binder and smacked him over the head with it.
But instead he gave me an answer so simple that it didn't make sense.
Something tried to steal its food. Okay, we have to stop this
hole staring at each other in disbelief. Nonsense, I said, even as
I stared at him in disbelief. Straight talk from here on out. Okay,
all right, that's a deal, he said. Then explain to me
how something tried to steal you? I said no, no, not me.
The turkey two seconds and I was already staring in disbelief again. It
took that time. I was after remember he said, oh, oh,
of course, the disbelief faded away. Something tried to take it from him.
I was sitting there on the ground, staring up at that thing,
and it was staring down at me, and I knew I was gonna die.
I can't explain how, but I knew I was going to die.
It's like when a person bleeds out, except it wasn't blood being drained from
my body. It was hope. It took a step toward me, and
I thought, well, this is it. And then I heard this sound
like something crashing through the brush. And it turned around and I heard growls
and snarling like nothing I'd ever heard before. Trees were breaking, and bodies
sounded like they were being thrown around, and something in the back of my
head screamed at me to run. I ran. I turned, and I
ran out of there faster than I've ever run before in my life. I'd
parked my truck on the other side of the river, but I didn't wait
to get to the rock path to cross it. I splashed into that cold
water, gilly poncho and all, and I waited across. I figured I
was either going to be torn apart by that thing he jetted his finger at
the picture in the binder, or be pulled under by my poncho. Drowning
seemed like a better option. Well, thank god I chose a fairly shallow
spot to cross. We had a lot of rain last spring. I really
could have drowned. I drove out of there like a lunatic, and I
haven't been back since. It took all the desire to hunt right out of
me. Why did you think it was trying to steal its food? I
don't know. It was just the impression I got. He said, Did
you see what it was fighting? I asked, well, Derek thought for
a minute and then said no. I imagine it was a dog man or
a bigfoot. Bigfoot maybe, I answered, as I flipped through the pages
of the binder to a sheet that folded out. It was a line graph
showing the active seasons for each of the creatures. Dog men would have been
gone by then. Derek ran his finger across the graph, examining the rising
and dipping lines in their coordinating dates. He traced the red line indicating dog
Man activity, and then went to the blue line for Bigfoot. And after
that, he ran his finger down the left hand column looking for the word
Gugwe. Where's the Gugwi line, he asked when he didn't find it,
It's not on there. I told him they don't have a season. The
only way I can tell based on Granddaddy's notes and what Dad says. The
only way to tell if they're in the area is lack of signs from anything
else. Even the Bigfoot and dog Man are afraid of these things, and
they're not afraid of anything. Derek added, gunfire, I corrected, you
can sometimes chase them away with gunfire. Derek spent the rest of the morning
studying the binder in journals. I gave him a notebook so he could take
some of his own notes. Once I was sure that church was out and
my parents were back home, I excused myself to go feed the cats.
From the other room, I called my dad and I told him everything.
It came as no surprise that he was angry, but I thought it would
be better to tell him over the phone while Derek was four hundred miles away
from him. It would give him time to calm down before he killed him.
That afternoon, Derek headed back to Willard Springs a wiser man. He
promised to call and let me know if he survived his grandfather's fury. Now
that my father had a new Cocain's spard er one who was on site,
I felt a great weight lifted off my heart. I wasn't completely at ease.
My mother's health was failing fast. I knew it was a matter of
time before I'd have to make the long drive back home. That was Sunday,
September nine, two thousand and one. Two days later, the world
would change, and all thoughts of bigfoot, dog men and gugwy were replaced
with the thoughts of terrorism, war and retribution. I didn't speak to Derek
again until October. I went to church on Sunday, October seven, two
thousand and one. I've never been a devoted church goer. I read my
Bible and I pray a lot, But getting up on Sunday morning and putting
on an ice dress and then driving halfway across the town to the Baptist church
of my choice had always seemed to take a back seat to finishing the stack.
Of papers on my desk that had to be graded. That was before
September eleventh. Sunday, October seventh stands out in my memory for two reasons.
That was the day that George W. Bush announced that we had begun
military action against Al Qayeda. It came over the radio as I was driving
home after stopping for a bite to eat, and every house I passed was
flying an American flag. Grocery stores had American symbolism painted all over the front
windows. I had a few students who decided to quit school and join the
military. A couple of them eventually came home in caskets draped in those American
flags. We were a proud country at that moment. Race, gender,
religious beliefs, and most of all, political affiliation were of no importance.
Being an American was the order of the day, the only order of the
day. My second reason for remembering October seven, two thousand and one was
the phone ringing when I got home. I knew it was my father.
I had only recently begun carrying a cell phone and was reluctant to give the
number out to anyone. My parents had it, of course, but they
were old fashioned and I wabbled across the room under the onslaught of two giant
balls of fur who seemed intent on tripping me in their need to say hello,
I'm here. Don't hang up, I cried into the receiver when I
finally got to the phone. You need to come home now, is she
I couldn't bring myself to say the words. She's still with us, but
I can't promise she will be for more than another day or so, So
hurry put her on the phone, Dad, I need to hear her voice.
My own voice was shaking. Now, oh baby, she won't just
do it, please Dad. There was a sigh on the other end of
the phone and the sound of the receiver being placed on the table. A
few minutes later, I heard the extension being picked up in the bedroom and
my father's voice in the background, saying, she's on the phone now,
Mom, I said, trying hard not to let her hear my tears.
Shadow. I will never forget her voice that day. It was so weak,
so unlike my mother's voice. My heart shattered in my chest. I
love you, Mom, I choked out. I love you too, Shadow,
she whispered. There was a moment of silence. I didn't know what
else to say. I was terrified that my father would pull the phone away
from her, even if it was only to hear her breathe. I didn't
want to let go. And then she said, I know, baby,
I know. Hold on, mom. I croaked. This time. I
was completely incapable of stopping the tears. I'm coming home. I know,
baby, she repeated, I know. A second later, my dad's voice
came back over the receiver. He said, she's asleep now, Shadow,
Now hurry home. I'm on my way Dad. I'll be there as soon
as I can. I hung up the phone and called my department head.
We knew this was coming, so we already had a plan. I had
only to let her know that it was time. An adjunct was prepared to
step in and cover my classes for the next two weeks if necessary, and
Doctor Witherspoon offered her condolences and wished me a safe trip. My next call
was to Brad. He owned the bar where I called myself a bartender for
the last time before going to work at the college. A single parent with
a young daughter, he'd often depended on me to watch her on the nights
when I wasn't scheduled. Peyton loved my cats, and whenever I had to
go away, I could always depend on Brad and Peyton to come and take
care of them for me. And then I went into the bedroom and I
packed. An hour later, I had dropped my spare keys at the bar,
and I was driving north to Willard Springs. The last time I had
driven home it was in my old nineteen seventy seven International Scout too. I
loved that old truck. She was ugly as hell, but she was mine.
She died up there, so I came home in my grandfather's Ford truck.
I was determined to take better care of it than I did the Scout.
As a result, it lasted right up until the turn of the century,
when I finally broke down and bought a brand new one, the first
brand new vehicle I ever owned, for my thirty sixth birthday. And now
as I drove, I struggled with the overwhelming fear. I couldn't let it
stop me to get there, I had to see my mom one last time.
I arrived at mom and Dad's a little before eleven PM that night.
It hadn't occurred to me that anyone would be awake. Even more surprising,
the house was full, and I entered through the front door to see Kate
and Jenny in the living room sitting on the sofa together, arms wrapped around
each other. My brother Greg was sitting with them in a chair across the
room. As I made my way down the center hall to the kitchen,
I counted a dozen nieces and nephews, some sitting on the stairs and others
gathered in the side parlor, a few sitting around the big oak table in
the dining room. Each of them in turn raised their heads and nodded to
me. At the end of the hall, I entered the kitchen to find
my oldest brother Mike sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee,
with his wife Penny sitting beside him and gently rubbing her hand up and down
his back. Matt was there too, with his head bent. His wife
was at the sink washing dishes. Derek was leaning against the counter drinking his
own cup of coffee while his wife dried the dishes for Penny. He looked
up and set a soft hay shadow. The others turned to me. Then
they each got up and gave me a warm hug, whispering quiet statements of
relief. At my arrival, I looked around the room, but I didn't
see my father anywhere. Is she again? I stumbled on the question.
I couldn't say those words, I couldn't think about them. She's still here,
Mike said, Dad and Ronald are upstairs with her. Go on up.
I met Dad on his way down. He pulled me into his arms
and let me have a good cry before leading the way up to the bedroom.
He said it would be better if I could get the tears out first,
for mom sake. He must have been right about the tears. When
the door opened, I saw my mother's frail, shrunken frame in the bed,
and I doubt I would have been able to hold up if I hadn't
got some of the emotion out of me first. Ronald, another brother,
stood up and motioned for me to take his chair, but I lifted my
hand in a refusal gesture, and I climbed tenderly into the bed next to
her. Both my father and my brother made to deny me that right,
but one look from me told them there was no point in arguing. Hey,
Mom, I whispered into her ear, watery blue eyes opened and a
face creased with age. Dark purple patches stained the wells beneath them. Her
cheeks, once full and painted in delicate shades of pink, sank inward,
now in ashen tones, and she broke into a smile. Hello, my
baby, she answered, in a voice so weak it was barely audible.
I wanted to feel my mother's arms around me at that moment, more than
I wanted to breathe, but I knew it couldn't be. I didn't dare
to so much as brush against her. She was too delicate and too brittle,
and too close to death. All I had was her presence, and
I knew I wouldn't have that for long. I watched in her silence for
a few minutes before she spoke again. I know, shadow, she said,
repeating the words she'd spoken to me earlier in the day. I wonder
if she did know, if she ever could know how much I missed her
already. Then she turned and stared deep into my eyes, and with more
force and deliberation than I thought she could have mustered, she said, I
know. I spent the rest of the night taking my turn with the rest
of my family at Mom's bedside. For the most part she slept, and
once she opened her eyes and lifted a finger as if to point at her
dresser, and I looked over at it, but I had no idea what
she was asking for. Another time, she opened her eyes and looked as
if she might say something, but she didn't. I couldn't say if her
last words were I know, as far as I was concerned, they were,
but I wasn't. Always in the room, none of us spoke about
our time with her, choosing instead to guard those moments within ourselves. At
first, we'd leave the bedroom and wander downstairs for another cup of coffee or
a can of soda, and each successive visit became more and more wearing,
until we finally began to pick spots along the hallway where we'd collapse into private
reflection until we were called to go sit with her again. We visited her
in groups of two and three except for Dad, and some time in the
night we all reached the unspoken agreement that his time with her should be his
own. I found myself staring at the tall window outside their door that marked
the end of the hall. It looked out over the front of the house
and down into the barn yard, and from the floor all I could see
was the black velvet mat glistening with stars, until the sun began to rise.
Little by little it brightened into a deep blue, separated from the earth
below it by long fingers of pink and gold. How could something be so
beautiful when the whole world is ending, I asked myself. At that moment,
the bedroom door opened and my father stepped out. She's gone, he
said. His eyes were red, and I detected a slight tremor in his
voice, but he was otherwise stoic. Mom would have been proud. Funerals
are for the living. I don't know who said that. I can only
heartily agree. They make those first few days before the reality of loss sing
sin, and the senses are dulled, and go by so much faster.
My mother was no longer with us, and what did she care now if
her mouth stretched done naturally wide across her face, or if the mortician overdid
the makeup. It was her children who stood at the casket and wished they'd
done a better job. The funeral was much the same as my grandfather's or
anyone else's funeral I'd ever been to one hundred faces passed before me. Platitudes
were served in abundance and answered with copious amounts of gratitude. Hands were shaken
and stories were shared, and people laughed and people cried. One second I
was staring into my father's stricken face as he announce that my mother had ceased
to exist, and the next someone was pushing a plate of food into my
hands and telling me what a nice service it was. The dinner was held
at the church, but our family all congregated at the house afterward. Seven
children, all but one of whom had married and produced their own offspring,
and who were now counting grandchildren meant that the house was overflowing with people.
I was surprised to realize that more than half of my relatives came from out
of town. Eighteen years earlier, when I had fled Willard Springs, it
was a novelty, and now it seemed that most of my nieces and nephews
lived elsewhere. How are you holding out? I hadn't heard my father slip
up beside me. I'd been too busy staring around the room trying to figure
out who belonged to who. Okay, I guess, I answered with a
sigh. I could have mentioned that it would be nice to find a place
to sit, but there would have been no point. How are you doing,
he grunted his answer. How long are you staying? He asked,
I don't know, Dad, a few more days, I guess. Doctor
Witherspoon said to take as much time as I need. But I think it
would be better to get back to my students before the adjunct makes too much
of a mess of my lesson plans stay to the weekend anyway. It was
offered as a suggestion, but it felt more like a plea. What are
you going to do now? Dad? You don't farm anymore. There's no
reason to stay in this big old house. I thought about moving into your
granddaddy's house. No one's lived there in years. He glanced down at my
horrified expression and put his arm around my shoulder. Don't worry, it was
just a thought that should tear the place down. Really. He muled over
that thought for a minute, and then he said, none of this younger
generation is interest in farming. Derek and Ben are the only ones, and
Mike doesn't do much anymore. He and Penny like to travel, and Derek
runs his operation and Ben handles Ronalds and Matt's still active, but it's only
because his boys don't farm. And again there was a pause. We had
an offer on the dairy, and I think I'm gonna take it. I
knew our little regional operation was struggling under the onslaught of modernization, but the
thought of never seeing a gallon of Parker O'Connor milk in the store again left
a hole in my chest. I had to remind myself that Saint Louis is
beyond the reach of Parker O'Connor, and that I had therefore not seen a
gallon of that milk in decades. Maybe you could come to Saint Louis and
stay with me for a while, I suggested, hopefully. No, shadow,
I can't do that, he said solemnly. If I could have closed
my ears to his next statement, I would have. It wouldn't have done
any good, though I knew what he was going to say. Someone has
to stay here and keep the woods. It's hot in here, was the
best response I could offer. I walked away from him. Then It wasn't
hot inside. It had, in fact cool considerably over the last several hours,
which made the house a cozy retreat from the impending bad weather. I
had a vague memory of the weather man predicting the frost. It meant that
no one was on the porch when I stepped outside and finally found a seat
in the swing, But much to my chagrin, Dad followed me, as
did Derek. I don't see why you have to keep the woods, I
stated angrily to my father, because there are things out there that can hurt
people. Dad argued, don't worry, Shadow, he has me. Derek
offered, you don't need to be involved in this either. Sat at him.
Tears were welling up in my eyes as the same cold fear that I'd
felt when I saw the dog man attack Scout washed over me. Aunt Shadow.
I looked down at a little girl in a pink dress with a white
cardigan who had suddenly materialized in front of me. I had no idea whose
child she was, despite the dozens of senior pictures that my mother had sent
me over the years, and that I tucked faithfully into an album on my
bookshelf, and despite the hundreds of family photos she'd brought to the Saint Louis
with her on the many visits depicting images of laughing children and loving parents.
I have never been able to separate one from the other. Parker Jeans are
strong. We all have my father's dark eyes and his short, square nose
with the slightly flaring nostrils. We all have the obstinate, clefted chin and
his full lower lip. We all have chestnut earls and ears that stick out
a little too much. We're not the most handsome family, but no one
would call us ugly, no more than anyone could deny a Parker when they
see one. And the little girl in front of me was a perfect specimen
of Parker Jean's in action. What sweetheart, I ask, A shame that
I didn't know her name. Please don't cry, she said, as she
climbed into the swing and wedged herself between me and my father. Once she
was comfortable, she put her hand in mine, and she smiled at me.
I guessed her to be around six. Why do they call you shadow,
she asked, Well, I guess it's because I followed my grandfather around
when I was your age, like his shadow. I told her. Her
hand was warm in mine. It's moments like that when I missed, never
having had children, on my own. I think I would have been a
good mother. Is he your grandfather, she asked, pointing at my and
then, ignoring my father's frustrated huff, she added, mine is Mike.
I looked up at Derek, then realizing that this could be his daughter.
No, sweetheart, he's my daddy. My grandfather was Granddaddy O'Connor. He's
not a father, she said, indignantly. He's a grandfather. We laughed
at her logic. He's my grandfather, Derek told her. But Grandpa Great
is aunt shadows daddy, just like he's Grandpa Mike's daddy, and I'm your
daddy. How come he isn't your daddy? She asked, Well, if
Grandpa Great is your daddy, then Grandpa Mike couldn't be your grandpa. I
tried to explain, Well why not? We all looked at each other,
knowing that this conversation was going to take a while. Why don't you go
play and I'll explain it later, Derek said, But Daddy, go on
kinsey, he said. She slid off the swing and crossed her arms,
and with her head down and her lower lip out, she stalmped away.
She has the Parker personality, I laughed, the shadow Parker personality. Dad
and Derek said simultaneously. I gave them both an exasperated look. I was
still watching Kinsey as she approached her cousins in the yard. When Derek said,
Grandpa's teaching me everything I need to know about the woods. I closed
my eyes. And when he's gone, I'll be here to watch over things.
And when you're gone, I asked, I'm never leaving. He laughed,
but at the sight of my angry face, he added, well,
I should be around for another fifty years or so anyway. I couldn't argue
with that. My father was sitting beside me, well into his eighties,
and he didn't look a day over sixty. My brother Mike looked older than
him. He was still spry and active, and I was sure still driving
down the river every day to look for signs. I felt a chill run
up my spine at the memory of the last walk I took with him.
It would help if you send us your binder, Dad said, gently,
at least a copy of it. I made a mental note to finally purchase
a home computer. I needed to digitize everything anyway. If I bought a
printer to I could make the copies at home and send the whole thing off
and then take my time entering everything into the computer. I wasn't about to
take it into work and have the department work study printed off for me.
I was an expert in mythological studies, but that didn't mean I was supposed
to believe in them. And then, realizing how easily I had accepted their
plans, I said, you wouldn't need that binder if you just stay away
from the woods shadow. My dad groaned. I knew I sounded ridiculous,
but I was afraid. I was afraid that my father was going to wander
out there and run into the same thing Derek had, but this time there
would be no other beast to steal a turkey and inadvertently rescue my father.
I couldn't lose another parent, not yet. I turned my attention back to
the children playing in the yard. They were in the midst of a serious
game of tag. I was thinking how wonderful it was to see children play.
Even as early as two thousand and one, that was becoming a rare
sight. All of their Parker faces were flushed and glowing, and most of
them were still in their dress clothes from the funeral, but they were all
in disarray. I noticed torn and grass stained pants, and rumpeled tops and
ad scuff shoes. Once a neatly platted hair was coming loose, and there
were more than a few ribbons and neckties lying on the ground around them.
And I glanced around and I looked for Kinzie. There were several girls in
pink dresses, but I didn't see her among them. I wondered if she
had gone inside. I need a drink, I said, standing up,
you guys want anything, I'll take a cup of coffee, Dad said,
Derek shook his head. No. Inside the house was a maze of people,
but I managed to make my way to the kitchen, where I made
myself a glass of fruit beer and poured a cup of coffee for Dad.
Penny was standing at the sink doing dishes as quickly as they were being returned,
and still not managing to keep up. Jesse, Dereck's wife, was
on the drying detail. Have you seen Dereck, Jesse ask as I filled
my glass with ice. He's outside talking with me and Dad. I told
her, can you ask him to find Kensey? I don't want her playing
with the other kids until she's changed out of her dress. Well, I
think she's inside somewhere, I said. She was on the porch with me,
and I wasn't sure. I wanted to tell her that she'd been playing
with the other kids already, but there was no point lying. And then
she went out to play in the yard. But I didn't see her before
I came in, so I think she came back inside. Oh okay,
Jesse said, with a sigh, I'll find her. She put down her
towel and headed down the hall in search of her daughter, and I took
the coffee and the soda outside. Hey, if you see your daughter,
let her know her mother wants her, I told Derek. Typical of a
man. He nodded, and then immediately dismissed the request. Look, if
we had that binder here with all the information you have in it, he
began. That binder isn't static, you know, I interrupted. I add
to it and update it constantly. Well, I realized that, but if
we had it here, a copy anyway, it would be a great reference.
You have Granddaddy's journal, so all we have of the notes Grandpa made
since he died. I rolled my eyes and grunted my displeasure. There was
no point arguing with them. At least, if they had the binder,
Derek would have more knowledge. Dad wouldn't need it. Much of the information
in that binder came from him. I looked at Dad then, and I
recognized his age. Time is relentless. It never slows, it never stops,
and it never waits. The future is a blind alley who knows what
lies beyond the next minute. And when my parents came down for a visit
earlier that year, my mother was as healthy and active as ever. A
few months later Dad called to tell me that she had had a heart attack,
and today we buried her. I'll send it, I conceded. There
was no point in arguing. The screen door swung open. Jesse came outside.
Derek, have you seen Kenzie, she asked. We all turned to
look at the children playing in the yawn. I thought she went inside,
I reasserted, she isn't there. I looked all over. Jesse's voice denoted
worry. Well, she's around here, somewhere, Derek told her. But
even as she said the words, we were all moving off the porch and
into the yard, Hey, Derek yelled to the kids, has anyone seen
Kenzie? A boy of about thirteen, said, she went off that way,
pointing toward the barn. None of us spoke as we all headed to
the barn, but we were all beginning to worry. Dad muttered something about
history repeating itself. I was reminded that I too had wandered off to the
barn when I was young. I held on to the prospect of another positive
outcome at the barn. Dad slid open the wide door, and he called
her name. I walked around the far end and started into the pasture,
and beyond it were the woods. Derek turned and looked over toward Granddaddy's house
in the woods behind it. Jesse, go inside and check the house thoroughly,
Derek told his wife. And make sure you check every room, even
the attic. Jesse turned and ran back to the house. And have everyone
help you, he called after her. Dad, I whispered softly, You
don't think He looked at me hard, willing me not to finish the sentence.
Derek, who had finished the sentence in his own mind, sprang into
action. Can I use the ATV? He asked, He's on the hook
in the barn. Dad answered, and then he said, I'll go with
you. No, it was my voice I heard, but I couldn't believe
it was me speaking. You stay here and make sure no one else goes
into those woods alone. I'll go with Derek. I was pretty sure I
had lost my mind. Nothing short of rescuing Derek's daughter would have ever driven
me back into those woods. No shadow, he began. Don't argue with
me, Dad, I'm younger and more agile than you. I doubted that,
but it sounded like a good argument. I marched off to the barn
and I hopped on to the back of the ATV. Derek guided us recklessly
down the tractor path that separated the pastures from the hayfields. As he maneuvered
across the ruts and around the corners, I kept my eyes open for signs
of a little pink dress and a white cardigan. At the woodline, he
turned and slowed down considerably, searching along the undergrowth. We traced the edge
of the woods all the way to the gravel road that split the property in
half, and on the other side, we drove slowly along the trees until
we got to the river. We both called her name repeatedly, and we
listened for an answer, but the constant putter of the ATV's engine drowned out
most sounds at the river. Derek turned off the ATV. We're gonna have
to walk, he said. I was suddenly aware that neither of us had
a gun, But what if, what if my daughter's out there? He
cut me off. He was right, guns or no guns when needed to
find Kinzie. It was late afternoon, we didn't have much daylight left.
I looked down at my feeble shoes and was suddenly glad that my little black
dress had been in the dry cleaners. It meant that I had to bring
dress pants and pennyloafers, otherwise I'd have been standing there in kitten heels.
The sound of two more ATVs buzzing down the road had us turning to see
my dad and Mike coming toward us. They pulled up and climbed off their
vehicles, and Dad gave Dereck a rifle and handed me a nine millimeter glock.
I took it and stared helplessly. We've got everyone else looking around the
house and the yard, Dad said, as he and Mike checked over their
own weapons. If they find her, they're to fire three shots. And
then he looked at me. Do you think you can handle this thing?
He said, I hadn't fired a gun in years. I respect the rights
of others to own guns, but I'm not a gun owner. I've watched
all the movies, and I've had all the day dreams where I take a
pistol in hand and lock and load, and tie a scarf around my forehead
and dip my fingers into the mud and run them across my cheeks and say
something cool like let's roll. That isn't how this played out. I stood
there trembling until my father took back the gun and told me to stay close
to him. It wouldn't have taken down the things that live in these woods
anyway. Three shot faces turned to stare at Mike. He blinked at us
as if he assumed that we knew what he knew, and then he said,
you can't be serious. Everyone knows evil lives here. Mike got the
cool line shadow, and I are going to head this way, Dad said,
choosing not to waste time discussing the things that Mike did or didn't know.
You two head down along the river bank till you get to the rock
path, and then circle back toward the farmhouse and cover the woods behind it,
and keep your eyes on the pastures. We'll meet you on the other
side. I was quickly beginning to realize how utterly useless I was. Mike
and Derek headed down the bank, while Dad and I headed into the woods.
Ten feet in had already felt like night. The dense trees overhead were
like weights pressing down on us. Every step was a cracking twig or a
crunching leaf, and I felt eyes on us. Whether they were predatory or
squirrels, I couldn't say. Fear and anxiety were playing havoc with my senses.
We should have brought flashlights. I was burt. Sh was Dad's response.
He had stopped walking and held up his hand. I stood silently beside
him, and I listened for whatever he was hearing. It was a moment
before the reality set in and I heard nothing. Dad looked at me and
raised his eyebrows as if to say, well, we've come thus far,
and he began walking again. I stayed close to him, remembering that day
a dozen years ago when I thought he was behind me, but he wasn't
that wasn't going to happen again. The undergrowth of woods was varied. Patches
of low growing plants popped out of the leaf matter. In places, empty
limbs lay scattered around in varying stages of decay. Bunch berries with their red
fruit gathered at the base of trees, and moss covered rocks angled outward.
As we climbed the terrain upwards away from the river, we stopped and stared
at a pair of saplings that were snapped in two eight feet off the ground
and bent together to form a perfect X. I looked at Dad and he
nodded. Are they still here? I ask, as quietly as I could.
He pointed to another ex formation that had been knocked down. When the
sasquatch leave, he whispered, the dog men come and push over their markers.
We continued. My feet were beginning to hurt inside my shoes. Night
was approaching, bringing with it a chill that was settling in my bones.
I remembered again the overly jolly weather man saying something about a frost. Was
KINSI cold? Was she alive? Dad? I finally said, we can't
continue to be this quiet? How's kinsy? Going to know we're out here
looking for her. Well, it's better than them knowing she's out there waiting
for us, he answered, and we moved on. When we crossed at
the gravel road, we looked at the setting sun in dismay. Time was
running out. I don't know how long we'd been walking, but I guessed
had taken an hour to get to where we were. My feet were crying
and my muscles were aching, and I made a mental note to get a
gym membership when I got home, if I got home. The woods on
this side were much the same as the other crosses and rock piles, many
of which had been desecrated, and warned us that we were not alone,
that we were not the Apex predators. Dread pushed me closer to my father.
Something snapped behind us, and Dad swung around rifle raised. I mimicked
his motion, but I didn't see anything following the barrel of the gun.
I squinted to see what was making my father draw in his breath, and
a pair of eyes glowed malevolently fifty yards from us. Instinctively, I turned
and put my back to my father, scanning the opposite direction for signs of
being surrounded. There was another pair of eyes at my three o'clock. I
nudged Dad with my elbow and pointed dog men, I asked, and her
eyes. He whispered, I don't think so. His body pushed against mine
as he began to back through the woods, and slowly I moved forward,
acting as our eyes so that we didn't fall over any logs. And then
there was that howl. It was louder than anything I ever remembered hearing,
louder even than the howls that woke me all those years ago in my grandfather's
house. It shook my breastbone and threatened to burst my heart. And Dad
turned then and began to move quickly through the undergrowth. I almost had to
break into a run to keep up with him. We were heading directly back
to the house. Now was he giving up? Was my father as big
a coward as me? And then he made a sharp turn to us right,
and he walked along the ridge line. The drop off was no more
than twenty feet, but the rocks and brambles and dead trees made the thought
of falling into the gully a miserable prospect. I had no idea where he
was leading us. I could only follow. Dad was used to wandering these
woods. He was wearing hiking boots. He changed into his denims and flannels
as soon as we got back from the funeral. In my white dress shirt
and purple mole hair cardigan and penny loafer shoes, I was no match for
him. All around us I heard heavy breathing and low growls, but we
pressed forward. And then it happened. One minute I was behind my father,
doing my best to keep up with him, and the next I was
tumbling over the edge. I'd gotten too close and stepped wrong and turned my
ankle and lost my balance, and thorns gouged at my clothing and tore at
my skin, while rocks and dead branches pummeled my body. It was part
barrel roll and part free fall. As I bounced off the outcroppings and exposed
roots, there was no way to stop myself shadow I heard my father's voice
call from the top of the hill. I hoped that he wouldn't fall as
well. When I heard his footsteps crashing through the brush looking for a path
down to where I was, I rolled to a breathless stop a foot from
a down tree, moss covered and rotting. It must have been lying there
for ages. The bend of the trunk created an arch barely big enough to
crawl under, and I stared into the space, aching with the knee to
recapture the wind that had been knocked out of me. A pair of dark,
frightened eyes stared back. Kinsey, I said, She answered by placing
her finger on her lips and then pointing upward. There was a moment of
understanding then, and I knew what I would see. When I looked up.
My blood froze in my veins. My mind screamed not to look,
but my eyes wouldn't listen. Standing ten yards away on the other side of
the fallen tree, staring over at me, was the largest creature I have
ever seen in my life. It must have been eight feet tall, but
I was on the ground looking up, and from that position it looked much
taller. Amber eyes pierced me as it opened its mouth to bear its canines
at me. They were as long as my index finger, if not longer.
It didn't have ears, not that I could see, but it did
have a snout. I knew instantly what I was looking at. And if
you told me once that he knew he was going to die, because all
hope drained from his body. Until that moment, I couldn't fully understand what
he had meant. Now, however, I was going to die. I
knew there would be nothing to prevent that. Perhaps it's where I drew the
courage to think I would die. But maybe my death would allow Kensey to
live. Kensey, I said, without taking my eyes off the beast,
how could I explain what I had to say? It took a step toward
me, and I glanced up reflectively, and I warned her, it's coming
this way, and when it gets here, she whimpered, baby, listen,
when it gets here and it grabs me. I glanced at her,
now, making sure that she was paying attention. You need to run.
You saw where I fell from right, She nodded her head. You need
to get there. Great Grandpa is up there, and he'll take you home.
The creature was moving ever closer. I laid as still as I could,
and no matter how desperately I wanted to run, I knew I had
to lie still and let it take me, or Kinsey would not live.
It leaned over the tree and sniffed deeply off my scent. I don't know
if they have the ability to smile, or what a smile would mean if
they did, but that's what it looked like. This thing was doing something
in my scent was pleasing to it. In the nano seconds it had taken
me to fall, to hear my father charging after me, and to recognize
my grand niece, and to acknowledge the beasts, and to accept my death,
my mind raced. I was sitting in the lounge at the College Eves,
dropping on a conversation between two of my colleagues from the science department.
They were discussing pheromones and fear. Someone had written a paper on predators playing
with their prey. It had something to do with making the meat taste better.
Was this monster trying to scare me into being a better meal. Even
as I began to stand up, the sound of gunfire erupted from my left.
My father was firing his gun. No, I screamed, it would
go after my dad. I couldn't lose both parents in the same week.
They were all I had. I got to my feet and faced my opponent,
and it leaned down at me, mouth gaping, and hissed. Its
fetid breath in my face. Long claws or raked the top of my head
as it grabbed a handful of my hair and lifted me off the ground.
I grabbed its arm and held on with both hands as I mentally willed Kenzie
to run. As I dangled there, three more gunshots split the air.
It pulled me close, and it opened its mouth wide. I could have
counted the teeth if i'd had time. I kicked at it with my feet,
hitting it in the chest and stomach, and suddenly, from somewhere behind
the monster, another round of rifle fire exploded. Voices were screaming, and
Dad fired several more rounds. Now I felt myself being flung away like an
unwarning toy, and my ribs cracked against the tree and my wrists snapped,
But I was conscious Kenzy was what might heter Now. The monster was turned
around and staring up the hillside at the two men who were firing down on
it. Bullets were hitting it, but none of them seemed to penetrate,
and then one struck its neck and blood spurted in a long arc across the
little holler. I ran. Then I had to get to Kenzie. A
bellowing roar like a shock wave washed over me and nearly brought me to my
knees. But there was no time to look back, no time to assess
the situation. I kept running. I was reminded of Derek's story. Something
had tried to steal its meal. It had turned and fought, presumably to
the death, for the right to the turkey. My nephew would certainly have
provided more meat than the bird had, but this thing was territorial. Owning
what it earned was more important to it than allowing something else to encroach on
it. What it view me the same way. Was it following me to
retain ownership, or was it fighting off the interlopers. I reached my father
almost as soon as Kinsey did. We didn't need to speak. I knew
he was going to stay there and fight it off if it came our way.
My job now was to get my grandniece to safety. A scream like
nothing I'd ever heard before echoed through the woods. As more gunfire pelted the
behemoth. Kensey stopped. She tried to turn around and look back, but
I wouldn't, and fires shot up my leg. With every step, my
wrist ached and breathing hurt and my head hurt, but none of that mattered.
This was my reason for existence. My parents had me so late in
life that I could be here on this day to keep Kinsey safe, to
keep her from seeing the carnage behind us. Another scream assaulted us. This
time it belonged to a man. I didn't have to turn and look to
know what was happening. He was being torn to pieces. Tormented cries mixed
with sounds of bones being crunched and bullets being fired. My knees faltered and
I found myself falling face forward to the ground. There were three men behind
me, my father, my brother, and my nephew, and I love
them all. There was no hoping it wouldn't be this one or that.
At that moment, I knew there'd be another funeral soon. Kinsey cried,
I will never forget the expression on that poor child's face when I looked up
at her. In an instant, all innocence was gone and her childhood was
lost forever, Because Dear God, forgive me, I had let her turn
around. More gunshots rang out. The beast was screaming again, but this
time I heard real pain coming from it, and I was glad. I
wanted it to die. I wanted it to perish slowly and with as much
agony as my father and brother could put on it. I managed to get
up on to my knees, but it was as far as I was going.
Every breath was stabbing pain in my side. My ankle was swelling rapidly,
and bruises were forming everywhere. All I could do was turn around and
watch. And Kenzy climbed into my lap and I held her face to my
chest while she cried. I couldn't let her see what I was seeing.
Derek's body was draped over the log Kinzie had hidden under, and Mike was
advancing on the beasts, emptying his gun into it. With every step.
Dad was moving down the hill toward it, ready to take his turn.
He couldn't fire yet. Mike was too close, but he knew it would
only be a few more steps before he too would open fire and accept his
fate. The monster stood and roared its fury at the sky, enraged by
the pitiful man creature whose bullets had somehow managed to penetrate and spill its blood.
Our greatest moments, our saddest moments, our worst moments, why do
we always remember them in slow motion? What could not have lasted more than
thirty seconds felt like hours. Mike moved ever closer to the beast than Dad
closed in as well, and the beast erupted with one last mighty roar,
and it fell. The longest moment I remember came when my father and brother
approached Derek. From my perch on the hillside, I saw Dad's hand reach
down and feel for a pulse. Mike stood frozen in place, waiting and
praying for an answer he knew he wouldn't get, and Dad dropped his head
and the two men cried. I felt my own tears begging for release,
but something inside me refused to set them free. My memory beyond that point
is vague at best. I remember Kenzie and I being helped onto the back
of an ATV, but where it came from or who was driving it,
I couldn't say. Derek's body was brought back to the house, but again
I have no idea how or by who. Someone called nine to one one.
Kenzie and I were taken to the emergency room via ambulance. Jesse rode
with us. I was great when the EMT told her to stop asking me
questions. He said, my ribs were probably broken and talking was painful.
He was right. Speaking was agony, more so because I had no idea
what to tell her than from the physical pain it cost. She deserved answers.
Her husband was dead, her youngest child was in shock. The medical
bills I received tell me that I was in the hospital for two days.
I had multiple injuries that included cracked ribs, a broken wrist and ankle,
multiple contusions, and a mild concussion. In the end, they bandaged me
and gave me a prescription for the pain and sent me on my way.
I was too heavily medicated to attend Derek's funeral. I wasn't there. When
Kinzie told her story, I got it second hand from my father. She
said that she was mad because she wanted to sit with aunt's shadow, but
her dad made her go play with the other kids. When the other kids
wouldn't play with her, she decided to go out to the barn to see
if there were any new kittens to play with, and while she was searching,
she heard a whistle. It came from behind the barn, so she
went out there to investigate. That was when she saw what she thought was
a big dog that she followed across the pasture and into the woods. It
wasn't until the dog stood up on two legs that she realized her mistake.
Children have no real relationship with time. They haven't had to answer to it
yet, not the way that we adults do. She didn't know how long
she was out there, or the exact order in which the events occurred,
and she only remembered being afraid and knowing that she had to hide. She
was in her third hiding place when I fell down the ridge and I found
her. The police s had come that night. They were taken down into
the hollow where Dereck was killed, but the body of the beast was gone.
They suggested it must have been a large feral dog, after all,
Kinsey had described it as such. My father chose not to argue. Mike
would have objected, but Dad put his hand up to silence him, and
that was enough. Despite all my grandfather's safeguards, my entire family was aware,
had always been aware that something wasn't right in the woods. Matt was
the first to admit it. He talked about the night Juliana had died.
He had always stubbornly declared that he had seen nothing, but that wasn't true.
What he saw when he went into the woods looking for her was more
than he could describe, and he had to run from the scene. And
like me, he berated himself for his cowardice. If he'd been brave,
maybe Juliana could have been rescued. My father assured him that he couldn't have
saved Juliana any more than he and Mike could have kept Derek alive. It
was little comfort to Matt, but it allowed my other siblings to open up
and tell their own stories. None were as horrifying as MAT's, but all
were enough to make believers of everyone. My father, at least was happy
to think that my mother had never known nor had to worry about the well
being of her children. In that respect, that theory was disproven. When
my sister Jenny brought my breakfast up to my room a few days after Derek's
funeral. I was sitting in a chair by the east window. I had
been allowed to come home from the hospital only on the condition did I not
walk up and down the stairs, so I was essentially trapped in my room,
being able to sit at the window and soak in the sunlight. Was
a little compensation for my carceration. And Jenny put the tray of food on
the table beside me, and she helped me adjust my seat so I could
transfer it to my lap, and then she sat down and asked how I
was feeling, and she checked my temperature and fussed over me in her big,
sisterly way. I in turn, picked at the plate of fried eggs
and bacon and toast and took a few SIPs of orange juice before giving up
and settling for hot coffee with a splash of cream, just like Grandaddy used
to drink it. I have something for you, she said, after tucking
one of her mother's crocheted blankets around my shoulders. She reached into a pocket
of her apron and pulled out an envelope. Kate and I found it in
mom's jewelry box yesterday, and she handed it to me and written on it
in mom's precise handwriting, was my name. I looked up at Jenny questioningly,
and she shrugged and said, I guess you'd better open it. It
was a letter that read shadow when you decided to move so far away at
such a young age, I won't deny that I was both hurt and worried
for you. I couldn't understand why you would make such a decision. Your
father will tell you, if he'll admit to it, that I did a
lot of crying those first couple of years. I'd hope that one day you
would decide to come home, And when your granddaddy died, I was sure
that you would. I wouldn't let anyone else move into his house because I
believe that one day you would come back and move into it yourself. All
these years, I've kept it up for you, waiting and hoping. I
also wondered if the day would come when you would regret not being here.
I saw the sorrow you felt for not being with your granddaddy when he died,
and I worried that you might someday feel the same guilt for not being
here for me and your father. And then last spring, while I was
putting in my garden, I began to feel as though someone was watching me.
I looked around, but I couldn't see anyone, so I attributed it
to an overactive imagination. A few days later it happened again, and a
few days after that, and a few days after that. Something had happened
to Derek in the woods a couple of weeks before that. He wouldn't say
what, or even admit that anything did happen, but I saw the change
in him. A grandmother always knows. Yesterday, it all began to make
sense. I was standing at the kitchen sink, snapping beans and getting them
ready to can when I happened to look out at my garden. You can't
imagine what I saw, or maybe you can. I don't know if that's
the reason you've left, but after your granddaddy's funeral, I'm sure that's what
has kept you away. I want you to know Shadow that I know,
I understand. In fact, I'm glad these woods are not safe. Love
Mom. I looked up at Ginny in shock. She took the letter and
read it herself. We agreed not to tell our father that our mother had
been aware of the monsters in our woods. He had taken too much comfort
in thinking that she'd never known. I was reminded of the night when Mom
died. She pointed toward her dresser once that's where her jewelry box sat.
She was telling me then that the letter was there. And I tucked the
letter into my pocket of my robe. Three weeks after that, I was
packing my bag to leave when Kinzie came into my room. By then,
all of her scratches and bruises had mended. I, on the other hand,
still bore quite a few yellow and purple marks on my body. My
right hand was in a cast, and my left leg was in a boot,
and there was little to do for my ribs except to ice them periodically,
and I had long since quent doing that. I'd been warned to stay
in bed and not drive until I was fully mended. I don't know if
that was due to the headaches I was still having from the concussion, or
if driving would somehow mean my bones would take longer to heal, but I
wanted to go home. Kensey climbed up on the bed and watched me quietly
for several minutes, and I smiled at her, and I asked how she
was doing. Fine. She said, Daddy says, you're leaving today.
Yes, I answered, I have to get back to my job. You're
a profess, You're a profess. She was struggling with the word I'm an
associate professor. I said for her, Yeah, that's what Daddy said.
She agreed. Why can't you you profess here? I looked at her then.
Her dark eyes were full of pain that her young life should never have
experienced. Well, there aren't any schools around here for me to profess at,
I answered, honestly. Daddy said you'd say that, but he said
I should say thank you anyway. It hadn't struck me immediately, but when
it did, it was like a lightning bolt of realization that shot through me.
I stopped packing clothes and I stared at the wall for a minute,
trying to make sense of her use of the word daddy. Why was she
speaking of her father in the present tense? For the briefest moment, I
thought maybe Derek was still alive, that I had imagined or maybe dreamt all
of this. But I knew better. I'd seen his body. I had
a cast on my wrist and a boot on my leg to remind me Derek
was dead. You mean your grandfather, don't you, I suggested, thinking
that perhaps she had subconsciously substituted Mike as her father figure. No, Daddy,
she insisted, He also said that I should give you this message.
She cocked her head and screwed up her face as she mentally went over the
words before saying them. He said, he'll keep the woods now. Now
what does that mean? Aunt Shadow? Driving back to Saint Louis, I
heard Kenzy's little voice say over and over again, he'll keep the woods now.
It came at such a shock that I was at a loss for words
to answer her. I had to stop the sudden flow of tears before I
could even find my voice to do so. In the end, I told
her that he was going to watch over the woods and keep us all safe
from the monsters from now on. It was the best answer I could give,
and I suppose it was the truth. Dad drove down to Saint Louis
the following spring to spend a week with me. He'd aged drastically in the
months since Mom died. I suspected that it would be the last time I
saw him, and with Derek gone, there was no reason to give him
the binder. He suggested that I turn it into a book. I didn't
have the heart to tell him that I was already working on that. I
took him to breakfast at my favorite little cafe down the road to celebrate the
sale. Of the dairy business. We took in a Cardinals game and we
watched the Legend of Boggy Creek on DVD, and we laughed at the end
when Bobby Ford was attacked in the yard. The attack itself wasn't funny,
but if you stop the video at the right moment, you can see through
the eye holes of the monstrous masks to the face of the man the costume.
Dad told me that he hadn't seen any activity of any sort since the
previous fall. What didn't surprise me, Derek was always a man of his
word. When it was time for him to go, he hugged me.
I didn't want to let go. We must have stood there for a good
fifteen minutes, hugging and crying. On July twenty seven, two thousand and
two, exactly forty eight years after my grandfather made his first journal entry,
my father died peacefully in his sleep. For once, the funeral was uneventful.