Kyle was near the edge of the woods on the far end of the yard
when he first saw the beasts. He had been dreaming, yet it was
the type of vivid dream young children have, whereupon walking the veil between the
reel and the imaginary becomes almost translucent. Kyle woke his sheets drenched in sweat,
and stumbled downstairs for breakfast, anything to take his mind off the nightmare.
Ellen Gratty knew something was wrong as she watched her youngest son drown his
pancakes in syrup, his eyes glazed as if they too had been coated in
Vermont's own Is everything okay, sweety, she asked him, half hoping he
would finish a fortful of buttermilk flapjacks before answering, but her son merely nodded.
He looked pasty white the color of his napkin, and Ellen could see
that his hands trembled. After washing his breakfast down with orange juice and avoiding
his mother's gaze, Kyle said, I had another bad dream. This had
been nothing new in the Grady household since they had moved from Philadelphia to the
country. Michael Grady, Kyle's father, had wanted to relocate to rural and
Connecticut for the past five years. It'll be good for the kids, Mike
had told his wife, not that she needed her arm twisted. The city
had been fun when they were single, but it was no place to raise
children. Their car had been broken into several times, and some of Kyle's
classmates had already begun vaping, and one of them was hospitalized. The house
they were looking at, in the northwest corner of Ohio, a rustic three
story colonial, had ten acres, more than enough room for the vegetable garden
Ellen had always dreamed to cultivate, as well as a healthy place for seven
year old Kyle and his brother Luke to run around in. There was even
space for a pool. A dreamer husband had, like Clark Griswold on the
vacation movies. Yeah, a country life, totally isolated from the city,
far from traffic and the smog and the crime and the crowds and the stress.
She looked at her son's blank expression, perhaps too isolated. She thought,
I'm so sorry, Hun. She combed over his damp hair. Was
it very bad, very bad? Didn't begin to describe it. It was
the worst, he answered, softly, looking toward the window at the woods
beyond the yard. He had been walking in his dream along the edge of
their property that bordered dense forests on all sides. Their new homes, set
halfway up the largest hill in town, cannot be seen until halfway up their
steep drive. They had neighbors, of course, is even most private ranchers
in the most desolate areas of Texas and Arizona half neighbors. But Kyle had
never seen their houses. They were through the woods, and he did not
go into the woods. Chickadees and finches fluttered from branch to branch, enjoying
the afternoon summer sun of his dream. Then the birds scattered in all directions,
and Kyle saw the trees moving. Before he knew what was chasing him,
he was sprinting back towards the house. All he knew was the things
chasing him were on all fours and made an awful noise. He could hear
them crashing through the brush as they exited the wood and entered the artificial security
that was his backyard, and he looked back over his shoulder, and what
he saw made him scream. They were dogs, four of them, but
unlike any other dogs he had ever seen. It would have been more accurate
to call them hell hounds than anything else, because hell was the only conceivable
place to burst such creatures. The beasts were about as tall as Kyle,
and their heads bent like charging rams, lips drawn back revealing crocodile grins,
and their eyes were like two hot coals, and a mass of dark fur
fixed on their kill. They were the stuff of fantasy, what evil sorcerers
kept his pets or were ridden into battle by goblin cavalry. Dressed from snout
to tail in spiky armor. They were so fantastical, so otherworldly, that
Kyle was amazed. He didn't immediately wake upon seeing them. Yet they were
all so so real. The grass being trampled beneath their talon claws was real,
and so was his fear. That couldn't have been more real. The
beasts were closing in on him, and his house now seemed miles away,
and it was at that point, somewhere between the woods and the mirage of
the house ahead of him, Kyle's legs surrendered. It was as if concrete
had been pumped through his veins, and they became dead weight, and he
stumbled forward falling to the ground hard. He woke just as he could feel
the breath of his phantom pursuers on his neck, moving his heart on.
Any kid, said mister Grady when he got home from work. Yes,
but this is different, Michael. He's really bothered by these dreams and they
seem to be getting worse. I just think I'll speak to him, he
told his wife, I still glued to the stack of sales receipts in front
of him. Sensing his wife's displeasure, he clicked his pen and added,
I'll talk to him tonight. Hey sport, Michael Grady peeped around his son's
bedroom door. His son was in bed, leafing through a comic book.
On the cover, Doc Savage was slicing his way through jungle vines with a
machete. Kyle glanced up at his father with half smile. It's time to
start thinking about bed, isn't it. His father liked this expression, which
was a very bad thing to say, but it made little sense to Kyle.
He was already in bed and reading helped him go to sleep. It
would be like his father saying time to start thinking about dinner table, when
what he really meant was eat your vegetables now, his father looked about the
room as if out of practice communicating with his son. Most of the walls
of the bedroom were still bare, decorated with discolored shapes where past pictures had
once hung. Ellen suggested they take Kyle's shopping for his choice of paint color.
He needs something to brighten his mood, she had said, And it
wasn't until recently that Michael had begun to notice this was true. Both his
sons had been adventurous back in the city, often bounding ahead of their parents,
pointing and laughing, aware of the traffic. They were streets smart.
There had been acting vivities at the why, sleepovers and pizza parties, all
the things Mike never thought would stop after moving to the country. Luke,
their older son, had been reluctant to leave his school, but during the
first few weeks in their new town, had quickly made close friends. Your
mother tells me you had another nightmare. Seems like this is becoming a nightly
thing, Kyle didn't respond. Funny, I don't recall having many bad dreams
as a kid, but your mother did. Really, Oh yeah, she
told me she used to have a reoccurring dream of a big purple gorilla chasing
her, and one night she turned around and yelled, why are you chasing
me? And the gorilla just said, I just wanted to say hello.
Kyle tried to hold back his smile, but the image of his mom being
chased by a friendly gorilla made him laugh seriously. He asked his father.
Mister Grady held up a hand scout's honor. Now listen, yeah, all,
I know, these are new surroundings for you. The country is nothing
like Philly. I realize that, but you really have less to worry about
here than in the city. Mister Grady paused and started making a list in
his head. Bears, snakes, limes, disease, poison, ivy,
poison oak, a lot less. He said, yeah, I know.
Kyle answered begrudgingly, scratching his nose. Okay, Michael thought, now run
with it. Hey, you know, Luke is having some friends over tomorrow.
Maybe he'll let you go exploring the property with them, to say,
His son looked hesitant at this proposal was an understatement. He quickly shook his
head. He didn't want to disappoint his father, and the truth was he
wanted desperately to spend time with his brother and his friends as they explored the
woods. He wanted to not be afraid, but his nightly visions were speaking
to him, warning him to stay out of the forest. Play in the
yard. They were saying, where you'd have some chance of reaching the house
where the monsters can't get you. Sure things sport, his father said,
trying to keep a positive attitude, He reached out and hugged his son,
now sleep well in the doorway, He turned and asked, can I leave
the light on for you? No, Dad, it's okay, and the
room fell into darkness. By one thirty in the morning, Kyle was deep
in sleep. His eyes flitted back and forth beneath their lids, and in
his dream he was near the edge of the property again, within feet of
the woods. It was just an afternoon strolled beneath the blue sky. His
hands were in his pockets of his shorts, and a breeze caressing the top
of each tree. A scream suddenly cut through the tranquil walk, coming from
the deep in the woods, and Kyle jumped in his bed, almost knocking
the bedside lamp from its stand. He was completely awake and alert in his
dark bedroom, but he could still hear the screaming. This wasn't a dream.
Kyle had once walked in on his father watching a clockwork orange and during
the scene where young Alex has his eyes forced open with metal hooks, Kyle
now felt like that, except instead of being strapped to a chair, he
felt frozen in his bed and his eyes wide and beginning to water and piercing
through the window into the night. His small hands clenched the bed sheets,
and his heart thundered in his chest like the sound of stampeding hounds in his
dreams. The scream was blood curling, the scream of a woman being murdered,
and the volume was all over the scale. It was loud enough to
have woken him, and then retreating to a muffled sound, as if a
hand were trying to cover the victim's mouth. The scream faded out and then
erupted once more before cutting out completely. The last sounds were so pitiful that
the tears welling in his eyes began to freely pour down his cheeks. He
stayed awake in bed for what seemed like hours, until sheer exhaustion swept over
him and he fell asleep. When daylight came, Kyle ran to his father
and told him what he had heard in the night. He would not hide
behind his nightmare any longer. The noise had been proof that there was something
terrible in the woods, and his father was a man who needed proof.
He expected his father to reach for the phone to call the police and report
a murder, but instead his father said it was a rabbit and returned to
slurping his coffee the way a child slurps his soup. Oh what, Kyle
said? It was a rabbit, you heard I heard it too. It
was a great horned owl. Most likely. Kyle's jaw dropped and his father
had clearly lost his mind. Rabbits and owls one of the first things Kyle
remembered learning in school were the sounds animals made and owls hooted in rabbits,
well, they just wiggle their noses, his father explained, Yes, Kyle,
owls hunt rabbits. They're one of their favorite meals. And the rabbits,
well, they scream. I know it's hard to believe, but it's
true. I first heard it while hunting in upstate New York. Scared the
pants off me. He folded his newspaper. You're going to hear a lot
of new sounds out here, Kyle. I'd rather hear carl alarms, he
answered. Luke's friends arrived at noon the following day, and his brother asked
him if he wanted to tag along and build forts with them in the woods.
Kyle thought the offer sounded rehearsed, as if their father had taken his
brother aside and told him exactly what to say. Let's have a water balloon
fight instead, Kyle suggested he didn't and his brother going into the murder woods,
despite having a band of friends in tow. Now, maybe another time,
you sure you won't come, And he didn't ask a third time.
Kyle watched as the group disappeared into the thick forest, his heart sinking into
the pit of his stomach. It was nearly July and the empty carcasses of
firecrackers still lay strewn in the grass. It was one of those humid summer
days that required cool water, and seeing how his parents had not broken ground
on their swimming pool, the sprinkler would have to suffice for the closest beach
was a two hour drive. The pond and lake were also out of the
question. Since Kyle had heard his father talk of snapping turtles and their ability
to separate toe from foot. Uncooling the stubborn snake that was the garden hose,
Kyle attached the sprinkler head and turned the knob, with three rusty squeaks
lighted in the fan of water arcing before him, projecting a colorful spectrum in
its mist. He was conscious of where he was in the yard, looking
over his shoulder at the woods every few minutes. He was a fast runner,
one of his few physical attributes, perhaps faster than his older brother despite
his shorter legs, and he knew he could easily make it to the safety
of the house had anything burst forth from the trees to devour him. Looking
down at his fingertips and seeing they had become small prunes, Kyle was about
to call it a day when he began to feel as if he were being
watched. He looked across the yard, lush and green like a golf course
of a country club, expecting to see his brother, or mother or someone
standing there, but there was no one. The sprinkler hissed at his feet,
and then something caught his eye just over the stone wall that bordered the
northwestern edge of the yard. Kyle froze a statue in the fountain and squinted,
focusing his eyes on a patch of woods behind the stone wall, where
two eyes seemed to be staring back at him. At first thought, these
were the eyes of one of the horses or cattle that grazed the meadows beyond
their stone wall, a farm operating to the north of the fields, which
Kyle had never seen but had no reason to doubt existed. But Kyle had
seen enough horses and cows in his young life to know their eyes, and
those animals had eyes on the sides of their heads, and the eyes staring
from the woods sat side by side. Kyle's next two suspects chilled him to
the bone, and he shivered, stepping away from the water, hitting his
shoulders. The eyes belonged either to a peeping tom, a stranger spying on
him from the woods, or to a mountain lion, which had been spotted
in the area at higher elevations. Both had been known to be hornful to
children, and so not stopping to turn off the hose, Kyle sprinted to
the front door of the house without looking back over his shoulder. Did you
have fun outside? His mother called after him as Kyle bolted upstairs. A
short while later, he could hear his father hollering from the foot of the
stairs. Will you come out here please. Kyle opened his bedroom door and
didn't have to be told why he was being called. Each carpeted step was
littered with blades of wet grass, forming the shape of a seven year old
foot. Dad, I saw something in the woods. I don't want to
hear it, Kyle, Now clean this up, his father said sternly.
Chance, the family tabby cat, appeared around a corner and sniffed the grass
with curiosity. Purring, he began to eat some, making a small smacking
sound. Thanks Chance, but I can manage, and walked off, defeated
to retrieve a towel. As parents go, Coyle's were very sociable people,
and dinner parties had become a weekly occurrence. Being the new family in town,
they wanted to make friends and acquaintances, and what better way to leave
an impression than with his father's cooking and his mother's talents as a gracious hostess.
Guests would leave all fed, albeit rather tipsy, and if they didn't
respond, in kind with an imitation to a dinner party, cocktail sworet our
backyard barbecue. Their names would be added to his mother's shit list. This
was not a physical list, but rather a rolodex in her head that she
would occasionally rifle through and pull out a name and with a bitter undertone,
say, oh, that's so and so we invited them to our New Year's
Eve party, but have not seen the inside of their home. That evening's
dinner guests and potential future shit list honorees were mister and Missus Wilkinson, who
lived at the end of the street in a house painted the color of unhealthy
yurine. Missus Wilkinson was a published author, but his father couldn't have cared
less about that, for mister Wilkinson was a big game hunter, having been
on safari numerous times. Kyle's father wished to hear stories of these hunts and
pick his brain with questions on rifles and permits in the local land. Around
a quarter past seven, Kyle, who was quarantined to the upstairs during these
adult only parties, could hear the all two familiar sounds of slit drums.
The year they had moved into their Connecticut home. His parents, it seemed,
owned only three records which they would play during these dinner parties. The
best of Linda Ronstat, the best of Joan Baez, and the soundtrack to
the nineteen eighty seven film Out of Africa, which was now playing. Turned
the home into some exotic marketplace of smells and sounds. An hour later,
Kyle had grown restless for a bowl of ice cream, and he quietly made
his way down the stairs into the kitchen. He could hear his father's commanding
tone coming from the dining room. I just don't get it. I thought
this part of the state was supposed to have healthy population, a whitetail,
but it's like something has chased them off or killed the entire population in the
area, his father told the dinner guest. The man responded, but his
volume was much softer than Kyle's father, Or perhaps the man simply didn't want
their wives to overhear the conversation, who were happily engaged in their own topic
of discussion involving the planting of perennials. Whatever the reason, Kyle had to
tiptoe closer to the dining room to hear the man speak and even then only
heard bits and pieces dead deer carcass high up tree. He expected his father
to repeat the story back in his booming voice as is to clarify, but
he just looked at the dinner guests with an expression of bewilderment. At that
moment, his mother got up to fetch her dessert of homemade apple pie keeping
warm in the oven, and Kyle dashed back upstairs for risk of being seen.
Sleep was fitful that evening. His mind raced to find the answer as
to who or what could have placed a dead deer high in the canopy of
the trees, and he wondered if it was still there, one dead eye
reflecting on the moon, waiting to be snacked upon. The summer months rolled
into fall, and by deer season his father had finally bagged his first buck.
This was only after several frustrating days sitting in the woods, cold and
without so much as a deer track or scat piled a sight. Calling mister
Wilkinson, they decided to try their luck in the neighboring county, and Kyle's
father blamed the disappearance of the deer in the woods to coyotes, but admitted
that he hadn't heard the familiar course of yipping as a pack of hungry codes
took down a deer. It was a good thing too, or Kyle would
have been having nightmares about that. Mister Wilkinson also pointed out that codies don't
hide their kills in the top of trees, and now that the trees had
lost their leaves, the woods seemed somehow less intimidating to Kyle, knowing that
if there were creatures in the woods looking to eat him, they would be
easier to spot. So it was that on the afternoon of November fifth,
Kyle skipped out the front door, his knapsack slung over his shoulder, and
crossed the front porch to the garage. The smell of blood wafted from the
open door, and Kyle could see his father's tractor sitting like a sleeping dragon,
waiting for the snows to melt in the grass to return. Kyle glanced
toward the rear of the garage, where he thought the machette might be stored,
and what he saw sent his stomach into a cartwheel. His father's kill
hung from the rafters, its front legs bound by a thick rope the image,
reminding him of torture methods used in medieval dungeons. The accused dangling about
a foot off the floor and head craned back. The animal was opened from
gullet to groin, and the enterds and organs since removed, and Kyle could
make out the ribs that lined the gaping hole. Newspaper were strown about the
floor. Beetled Bailey smiling up at him, his helmet crusted in dried blood,
pulled down over his eyes. But the worst part about the grizzly display
was the deer's tongue limp as the head hanging like a flap of meat and
pinched between the deer's teeth as if trying to hold back one last scream.
Kyle looked away, and his father was an excellent cook, and he had
always enjoyed the venison meal's place before him, But now seeing the source of
those meals in front of him, he doubted if he would ever eat deer
again. He suddenly felt ashamed seeing this deer and had to remind himself of
what he came inside the garage, for the smell was becoming unbearable, and
he scoured the walls for the machete. He found it hanging on a hook
behind his mother's gardening tools. Snatching it off the wall, he walked briskly
back toward the door, catching the deer out of the corner of his eye.
Watch yourself out there, it seemed to say. Kyle marched across the
lawn, filling his lungs with the chilly November air and avoiding his father's office
window. He approached an area along the edge of the woods, not far
from where the eyes had watched him several months before. Here some stones had
been removed from the wall, revealing a path cut through the trees. This
is where his brother and band of merry adolescent men had made their way.
He recalled that they had come back with cuts and scrapes from the many briers
along the path. But they didn't have this, he thought, removing the
machete from its leather scabbard, blazing in the sun's reflection. Kyle didn't like
sharp things, but it was for this reason he had brought the blade.
It was, not, however, the only reason. Kyle only hoped the
thorn bushes would be the only victim of his merciless blade. Placing one foot
on a secure stone, Kyle lifted his weight up and over the wall,
landing on the other side. That's one small step for Kyle, and with
a new found confidence, began hacking at the thorn bushes that blocked his sending
small twigs and nesting birds flying in all directions. He pressed on farther from
the house until he found himself in a clearing at the base of a steep
meadow, trees surrounding him on all sides. This is where he had seen
the livestock grazing from the upstairs window. Looking down at his feet, he
noticed what it first resembled a pile of frozen mud, was actually a cow
pie. He knelt down to investigate. Poking at the thing with a gloved
finger hard as a hockey puck, he ripped it from the ground dead grass
stuck to the underside, and with a flick of his wrist, flung it
into the woods like a frisbee. After a few minutes, Kyle had reached
the top of the meadow. Looking back, he could make out the small
gray box that was his house, about the size of a model train structure.
Turning, he continued along the top of the ridge until he came to
a curious structure covered in dead vines near a small stream. Upon closer inspection,
he discovered that the structure had once been a farming plow, but with
time it had decomposed to a rusty skeleton. He crouched down his back against
the frame of the plow, and Colin zipped his bag and removed a sandwich
he had brought lunch on the off chance that the woods were not dangerous that
he could sit and enjoy a meal there. Halfway through his peev and Jay,
he thought this to be true, but the atmosphere changed quickly. The
dogs emerged from the trees. Not the hell hounds of his nightmares, but
it was a pack of coyotes. He had never seen them in the while
before, only in pictures. They were smaller than wolves and looked unhealthy.
They were hungry. One of them looked to be salivating, like a cartoon
cody who was always trying to chase the road run. They surrounded him,
eight or nine of them, all bobbing their heads, none of them wishing
to keep eye contact for too long. Kyle reached for the machete line next
to him, when suddenly there was a sound above his head. He heard
metal being struck, followed by a tikety tick of something sharp. Something had
jumped on top of the plow. Kyle flung himself around and saw what looked
to be the largest of the coyotes, the pack leader, baring its teeth
at him. If any of them came close to resembling the monsters of his
dreams, it was this one. It was the alpha male. It will
rip out my throat or be run through by my machete. Kyle thought running
was not an option. They were faster and there were too many of them.
He had to stay and fight. But at that fight or flight moment,
the woods became silent around them, and a powerful stench entered his nose.
It was the odor of urine and feces and skunk and rot, mixed
with the smell similar to that of their golden retriever after coming in from the
rain. The smell burned its nostrils and made him feel sick. The coyote
smelled it too, and they could sense that something bigger was near, and
they turned tail, bolting north into the timber yipping in fear from what Kyle
could not see. The coyote facing him. The leader held its ground but
scanned the tree line. Clearly, the hunger of this animal outweighed any fear
of death, and instead of retreating with its pack, the animal dug its
heels and leapt at the boy. Kyle shut his eyes, raising the machete
up with both hands. There was a great gust of wind, followed by
a loud yelp. When Kyle opened his eyes, he saw that the coyote
was now seven feet off the ground, suspended in the air by the grip
of the largest he had ever seen. Kyle blinked, his vision returning and
quickly realized this was not a man, for it was covered in head to
toe in thick, reddish brown fur. Its shoulders were massive, whiter than
a tractor, and it stood on its legs as thick as telephone poles.
It held the kicking code in one fist, the size of a boulder.
But it was the creature's face that Kyle was fixed upon. It was not
quite human, yet not animal, with a flat Semian nose, but eyes
similar to a man. In fact, they were the same eyes he had
seen peering at him through the trees weeks before. It lifted its furrowed brow,
softening the deep wrinkles, and it let out a loud grunt, exhaling
hair through its mouth. And then it shifted its gaze to the struggling animal
and with the flex of its bicep, snapped the code's neck with the ease
of breaking dried spaghetti. It let out another grunt, and, as if
not satisfied the dog was dead, grabbed the animal by the tail with its
other hand, and with the speed of a rancher lassoing a steer, it
whipped the animal against the trunk of a nearby tree. There was a thunderous
crack as the animal exploded on impact, sending blood and enterds hurling in all
directions. The beast had swung so hard that pieces of the coode's ribs had
embedded into the tree. Kyle didn't know if this was done to impress him,
or if this was some kind of territorial sign to all local coyotes and
any other animal for that manner. The creature uncurled its fingers, dropping the
bloody stump of the tail, and it started at the boy again. Kyle
was shaking uncontrollably now and had emptied his bladder but managed to mount the words
thank you. The creature's lips parted and it grimaced at him with a mouth
of dirty teeth, and Kyle wondered if this was meant to be a smile.
And with that, the creature turned and with fluid steps, walked back
into the brush, the trees closing behind it until all he could see were
the swaying branches of pine saplings. Soon, the sounds of the forest returned,
unmuted, rising in clarity. Kyle walked back to his house, dazed,
but with a little smile, for, as it turned out, there
were monsters in the woods after all, and the biggest of them had his back.