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Speaker 1: The first time Ray Haskins noticed something was wrong with

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the orchard, it was a good kind of wrong. From

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his kitchen window, the rose swept down the hill in

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a neat green stripe, each tree heavy with fruit. It

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was picking season, the kind of crisp blue sky morning

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that made his knees ache before he even stood up.

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He poured his coffee, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes,

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and glanced out like he did every morning, and paused.

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The sunrise painted the tops of the trees in gold.

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But it wasn't the light that froze him. It was

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the pattern. On the right side of the orchard, closer

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to the house, the branches hung heavy, just like they should,

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red and yellow apples dotting the lee like ornaments on

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a Christmas tree. On the left side, farther down the

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tree line, the branches were bare, not empty exactly, but thinned,

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as if someone had gone through and done a careful,

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selective harvest. Thing was Ray hadn't sent anyone out there yet.

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He grabbed his coat and his old cap, half finished

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coffee in hand, and headed out, gravel crunching under his boots.

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The air smelled like dew and soil, and the faint

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tang of apple skins, birds chattered in the hedge, grow normal,

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Everything normal until he crossed into the left side rose.

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At first glance, it looked like a crew had already

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come through, picking only the best fruit. The branches that

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yesterday bowed with ripeness now held scattered remnants, misshapen, too small,

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still green or bird pecked. The rest were gone, cleanly plucked.

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No bruised piles underfoot, no broken branches, no fruit on

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the ground at all. Ray stopped scanning the grass. Nothing.

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He straightened and squinted toward the far edge of the orchard,

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where the trees thinned and the forest began, a darker

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wall of oaks and pines, the boundary where his planted

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world stopped and the wild one started. At the base

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of the treeline, something caught the light, a smudge of

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color that didn't belong. He walked down between the rows,

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boots soft in the grass now, and the closer he

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came to the woods, the more the smell hit him. Strong,

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sweet thick apple flesh and sugar, and the faint edge

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of fermentation. They were piled there, hundreds of apples, maybe more,

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nestled in a heap a few feet from the first

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line of trees, stacked like something had gathered them with

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care and gently laid them down. They were the good ones,

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the best ones, the ripest from those rows, perfect color,

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no blemishes, each one that distinctive. Haskins red He'd spent

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decades grafting and nurturing like children. Every apple in that

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pile was one he would have picked for his highest

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priced bins at the market. He felt a pressure in

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his chest, something cold sliding down his ribs. Ray looked

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over his shoulder out of the orchard, then turned back

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to the pile. Who the hell, he muttered, Teenagers, Maybe

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some kids from town playing a prank. But what kind

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of prank involved picking like professional farm hands and stacking

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fruit in the woods instead of throwing it or smashing it.

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He moved closer to the tree line, scanning for footprints,

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tire tracks, beer cans, candy wrappers, any sign of human stupidity.

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The ground was disturbed, but not in the way he expected.

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No bootprints, no tread marks, just flattened grass and a

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faint trail leading into the shadow of the trees, the

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kind of pressed down line that might be made by

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something very heavy, moving the same way over and over.

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He followed it just two steps before the woods wh

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spirted him in that particular way he'd learned to respect

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over the years, a gust of cold air, the hush

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of leaves, the sense not a thought, more like a

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feeling that he wasn't supposed to cross that boundary. He

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stopped toe at the edge, At the edge of the

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shade behind him, his orchard glowed in the morning light.

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Before him, the forest watched, quiet and patient. Slowly he

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backed away. By noon, he'd done the math twenty acres.

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The left half of the orchard represented about ten of them.

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Of those ten, at least a quarter of his premium

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fruit had been removed, not dropped, not damaged, not partially eaten.

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By year, removed and carried to one spot at the

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tree line, twenty five percent of that side, which came

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out to about twenty five percent of his overall profits.

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Ray sat at the kitchen table, PaperWorks spread in front

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of him. Yield estimates, buy her contracts, fuel costs, pencil tapping,

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jaw working. Somebody's stealing from us, he said. His wife, Helen,

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turned from the sink. She wiped her hands on a

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dish towel, then leaned on the counter, staring at him

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over the rims of her glasses. Kids, she asked. He hesitated,

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That's what I thought. But no, no, no, she tilted

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her head. He thought about the pile, the careful stack,

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the selective picking, the faint, oddly wide trail in the grass,

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the way the branches weren't broken, just empty of the

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best fruit. It's too tidy, he said finally. She watched

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him for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then she looked

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past him to the window, out toward the orchard, where

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the left rose looked thinner, sparser. It's not like we

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haven't had strange things happen before, she murmured. He didn't respond.

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He didn't need her to list them. They lived on

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the land. The land kept score, the uprooted peach trees,

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roots torn from the earth like some one had yanked

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it straight up and tossed it aside. The twisted metal

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trash cans that once we used for dog food, lid

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ripped off sides, crumpled like a soda can, forty pounds

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of kibble gone. The feed bags dragged off, the heavy

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ones he himself groan to carry sometimes they'd find shreds

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of sacks half a mile into the woods, the missing chickens,

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dozens in a single night, with no feathers, no blood,

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no trail, just a silent, empty coop and a low,

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uneasy clucking from the survivors. And that one evening years back,

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when they turned on to their long dirt driveway, just

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as soon as something had crossed it. Ray hadn't meant

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to slow down. His foot had done it on its own,

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easing off the gas as the thing moved through the

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beams of his headlights. Too big to be deer, too

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upright to be bare, too fluid to be anything he'd

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ever seen. It had taken three strides to cross the

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width of the road, shadow blotting out the dust, a

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brief flash of matted hair, and something like an arm swinging.

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Then it was gone into the tall grass. He'd glanced

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at Helen. She'd been sitting very still, hands folded tight

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in her lap, eyes wide and focused straight ahead. They

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drive the rest of the way in silence, parked, gone inside,

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and never not once spoken of it. That had been

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their quiet agreement. There were some things you didn't give

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shape to with words until now, apparently, it's just apples,

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he said, forcing a shrug. Probably a bear or I

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don't know, maybe kids. After all, I'm gonna put up

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some cameras. See what's what. Helen's lips pressed into a

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thin line, but she nodded. Just be careful, ray careful,

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he snorted. I'm just looking for idiots stealing apples, but

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the words felt thin in his mouth, like paper trying

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to stand up in a wind. The cameras didn't work.

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He bought four motion activated trail cameras from the farm

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supply store, the kind hunters used, and mounted them on

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posts overlooking the left side rose and the tree line.

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It took him half a day to get them all

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positioned right. He walked back to the house feeling something

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he hadn't felt in a long time, satisfaction. Let's see

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a hide now, he muttered. That night, the wind came up.

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He lay awake, listening to it combed through the branches,

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hearing the familiar creaks of the house shifting, the occasional

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faint thud of an apple dropping. He imagined teens and

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hoodies slipping between the rows, stuffing their backpacks, giggling. At

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three in the morning, when the old grandfather clock in

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the hall chimed. He thought he heard something else, a low,

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steady rustle, almost like someone wading through tall grass. But

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by the time he got out of bed and patted

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to the window, there was nothing, just darkness and the

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faint sheen of moonlight brushing the tops of the trees.

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In the morning, the batteries and all four cameras were dead,

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not low dead. Ray unscrewed one, popped it open and frowned.

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The batteries weren't cheap ones. He'd put them in fresh.

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They should have lasted weeks. He chewed the inside of

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his cheek. Well that's just great, he muttered. The orchard

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looked different again. More of the left half had been

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selectively picked perfectly. Ripe apples were missing, leaving only the rejects.

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At the tree line. There were now two piles of

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fruit side by side, like someone had drawn invisible lines

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in the grass and sorted the apples accordingly. Ray stood

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between them, hands on his hips. Who would steal that

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many apples and not take them? He said aloud. The

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question sounded absurd even as it left his mouth. It

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hung in the morning air, unanswered. The forest did not respond.

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He tried again with brand new batteries. This time he

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added a fifth camera hidden higher in the tree instead

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of on a post. He ran a cable to an

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old car battery he'd rigged as a backup. The setup

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looked ridiculous, a spider web of wires and plastic tied

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to a living branch, but he didn't care. This was

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his land, his livelihood. At night, the wind was dead, calm,

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no creaks, no thuds, just a kind of waiting silence

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that made the house feel smaller. Around two in the morning,

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he woke up suddenly, heart tapping a little faster than usual.

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The room was dim, the red glow of the alarm

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clock numbers floating in the dark to fourteen. Something had

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woken him. He listened. At first he heard nothing, then

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very faintly, almost below, hearing a sound like fabric sliding

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over bark, a soft rhythmic huff, branches shifting, not in

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a chaotic wind tossed way, but in a measured pattern,

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like someone moving very careful among the trees. He slipped

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out of bed, wincing at the complaint in his knees,

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and moved to the window that overlooked the orchard. The

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moon was half full, washing the rose in a cold,

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uneven light. He squinted, trying to make sense of the

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shapes tree trunks, shadows, the pale gleam of fruit. Half

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Way down the slope, something big shifted. It wasn't much,

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a darker shape inside the darkness. Stepping from one row

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to the next. The motion was smooth, almost lazy. An

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arm he thought it was an arm, reached up and

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a branch dipped, then another. Each time there was a

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faint rustle, a saw thump that might have been an

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apple landing in a large, waiting hand. He realized his

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own breath was shallow, his finger tips pressed whitening against

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the glass. The thing wasn't rushing, It wasn't panicked or

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sneaky in the human sense. It moved like someone doing

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a job they've done for years, calm, efficient, confidently, unseen.

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As Ray watched, it worked down the row, always on

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the left side of the orchard, never crossing the invisible

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line toward the right, only plucking from the branches that

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shone with ripe fruit, never touching the green, the misshapen,

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or the ones with dark spots. Selective, deliberate. The absurdity

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rose in him like a wave. Who the hell are you?

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He whispered, as if it had heard him. The shadow paused,

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turned for a second. He'd had the dizzy impression that

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something tall and broad upturned its face, looking toward the house.

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The moon caught just enough of a glint, something like eyeshine,

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a wet reflection, and then just as fast it turned

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away and continued its work, moving toward the tree line.

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He stood there long after it disappeared into the woods,

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The orchard once again a still painting. He didn't go

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back to sleep the next morning. Ray didn't even check

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the cameras. Right away, he went straight to the piles.

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There were three now The fruit was sordid. One piled

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up and held the most perfect of red apples, uniform size,

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textbook examples. Another held slightly smaller ones, still good, but

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not premium. The third pile mixed a few golden varieties

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with red, as if some one had gotten creative. He

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stared the air, heavy with that sweet, almost rotting scent.

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Bees floated lazily over the heaps behind him. The orchard

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stretched up the hill, half picked, half untouched. Only the left,

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always the left. He tried to imagine teenagers doing this,

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teens who cared enough to pick by ripeness and sort

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by quality and then leave the lute. He couldn't teenagers,

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he knew, broke things. They didn't curate them. He went

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to the first camera, opened, the casing dead, the next dead,

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all five dead. The car battery he'd wired to the

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fifth camera was warm, drained. He sat down on the grass,

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knee bent, hands dangling between them, and laughed once, a dry,

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humorless laugh, a humorless sound. This is insane, he said

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to no one. Something about saying it out loud made

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it feel more true. And yet the proof sat all

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around him in mounds. He of stolen unwonted fruit. Who

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would steal so many apples and then just give them

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back to the edge of the woods. The losses kept

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adding up. Over the next two weeks. The left half

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of the orchard became a strange, living ledger of the theft.

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Every night, more of the best fruit vanished. Every morning,

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new piles appeared at the tree line, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller,

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sometimes arranged in odd patterns like arcs and broken circles.

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His spreadsheets began to look like obituaries. Helen watched him

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grow quieter, shoulders tight as he paced the row, ran

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his hands over empty brandes, recalculated in his head. You

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talk to anyone about it, she asked one evening, as

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they sat on the porch, the sky turning pink behind

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the hills. And who am I supposed to talk to?

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He replied, sheriff tell him some phantom fruit pickers stealing

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a quarter of my income and leaving in the woods.

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Like an offering. She didn't answer. The cicadas rasped in

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their slow course. Somewhere down the slope, something cracked a branch.

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You remember that that thing we saw, he asked. Suddenly

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she stiffened beside him. He'd broken the rull, the unspoken pact.

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After a long pause, she said softly on the road.

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He nodded. He didn't trust himself to describe it further.

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I remember, she said. What if it never left? He asked.

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She looked out at the orchard, the left side in shadow, now,

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the right still catching the last light. What if it

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were here before us? She murmured. The ideas settled between them,

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familiar and unwelcome, like an old relative who never quite

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moved out. The third week, he found tracks not clear ones. No,

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not perfect textbook prints, but impressions, depressions. When the grass

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folded under the weight of something that walked on two legs,

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not four. They were broad, longer than his boots, spaced

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too far apart for a man his height to manage comfortably.

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Each step a quiet, heavy punctuation mark leading from the

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middle rows straight toward the trees. He followed them in

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the tree line, heart thudding. The piles that day were

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arranged in a half moon. The central one was taller,

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almost waist high, a mound of crimson and gold domes.

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He stood there, breathing in the sickeningly rich scent. Bees

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buzzed thick around the edges. Somewhere deeper in the woods,

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a branch snapped, This is my land, he said, louder

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than he meant to. His voice sounded thin in the open.

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Another branch cracked, closer this time than nothing. It occurred

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to him slowly that maybe it wasn't theft, Maybe it

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was a kind of bargain, one he'd never known. He'd

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agreed to. He thought of the uprooted trees, the bent

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trash can, the stolen feed, the missing chickens, the horse

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that had neatly broken its neck, trying to get away

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from something. Only it hadn't seen the shadow in the headlights,

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And now this new weird harvest on only half his orchard,

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half for him, half for something else. What if that

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was the only reason the orchard had never been hit worse?

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No barn torn apart, no cattle shredded, no house windows smashed.

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Maybe just maybe the apples, or some kind of attacks.

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But why so many, why so precise? Why only the ripest,

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the most marketable. He imagined a massive, unseen shape in

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the woods, sitting cross legged beside the piles, hands huge

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and gentle, picking up apple after apple. Maybe it took

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a bite from each, Maybe it ate only a fraction

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and left the rest to rot. Maybe it was feeding others, family,

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young ones. He imagined, small shadows, waiting, eyes, bright hands reaching.

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The image should have comforted him. It didn't. It felt

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too human and not human enough at the same time.

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Who steals that many apples? He shouted suddenly, voice crackling,

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Why why do you take so many? What do you

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do with them? The woods swallowed his words. A crow

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cawed from somewhere high and unseen, the sound harsh and amused,

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he turned and walked back up the hill, leaving the

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piles behind like small, colorful graves. On the last night

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of harvest, the sky was low and gray, clouds hanging

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like wet wool over the hills. He brought in everything

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he could from the right side of the orchard. The

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left haft looked ragged, now picked over, the work already

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done by invisible hands. He slept poorly un Near dawn.

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A sound woke him, different from the rest. Not a rustle,

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not a thud, something sharper, A single heavy slap, like

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a giant palm hitting siding. The house shuddered. Helen sat

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bolt upright. What was another slap closer? The wall behind

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their bed trembled. Ray's head pounded so hard he felt

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it in his throat. He swung his legs out of

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bed and grabbed the old flashlight from the night stand,

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though he doubted it would make any difference. Stay here,

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he whispered, though he had no real hope she would.

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He crept down the hall, the boards creaking under his weight.

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At the end of the hall was a small window

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that looked out along the side of the house, down

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toward the orchard. The pre dawn light smeared everything in

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vague blue gray shapes melted together. He reached the window

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and dared to lift one corner of the curtain. For

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a moment, he saw nothing. Then out of the corner

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of his eye, something moved. A shape loomed out of

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the murk, impossibly tall, close enough that he could see

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the way its shoulder brushed against the clapboard siding as

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it walked along the side of the house. Dark hair

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matted along its arms, its back broad enough to shadow

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the window. An arm swung long and heavy, the hand

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bigger than the lid of his own trash can. It stopped,

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turned slightly. He couldn't see its face, not fully, just

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the outline of a head too high for the window frame,

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the suggestion of a jutting brow, and beneath it darkness

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or eyes should be. The hand came up. For a second,

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he thought it might smash the glass, reaching in and

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dragging him through. Instead, it pressed its palm against the wall. Slap.

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The sound vibrated through the wood into his chest. Another

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mark of ownership, he thought wildly, another tally in some ledger.

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Only it understood creature. He could no longer bring himself

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to call at anything else. Stood there for several heart beats.

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Then it lowered its arm, turned and moved away, its

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gait smooth and deliberate. It strode down the slope toward

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the left side of the orchard, passing effortlessly through from

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house to tree, from the human world to its own.

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Ray realized his breath was coming in short, shallow bursts.

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His knees felt hollow. Behind him, he heard Helen's voice,

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thin and shaking. Did you see it? He nodded, unable

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to pull his eyes from the window. Ray. She whispered,

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you're bleeding. He blinked and looked down his hand, still

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clutching the flashlight, shook. A thin line of red ran

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across the back of where he'd scraped the window without noticing.

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Just apples, he thought, just fruit. So why did it

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feel like his entire life was being weighed on some

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invisible scale. The next morning, when the sun finally tore

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through the clouds and lit up the orchard in its

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usual warm gold, he walked down the slope in a

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kind of numb trance. He knew before he reached it

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that there would be another pile. He could feel it

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the way you feel a storm before it arrives. There

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was it sat at the tree line, larger than any

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of the others, a mound of apples almost as tall

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as his chest, glistening with dew. The smell was overwhelming,

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but there was something else on top of it. This

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time he stepped closer, squinting, Nestling among the apples. On

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the very peak of the pile lay a single, intact

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hen's egg, perfectly white, not cracked, not dirty, just sitting there,

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improbable and delicate. Beside it, half buried in fruit, was

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a strip of torn burlap, the same kind he used

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for his feed sacks. It was neatly folded. An exchange,

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00:32:57,359 --> 00:33:02,480
he thought, or a receipt, or a joke, a gift.

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Ray Helen's voice drifted down from the porch, carried onto

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the breeze. You all right, He stared at the egg,

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at the apple mounds that represented a quarter of his profits,

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vanished from his books, but here accounted for in some

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00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:29,799
other way. He felt eyes on him from the woods,

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real or imagined. He no longer cared to decide. Yeah,

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he called back, his voice oddly, steady, I'm all right.

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He reached out slowly and picked up the egg. It

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was warm, warmer than it should have been on a

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cool morning. He held it in his palm, feeling its

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tiny weight, and for the first time since the apples

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had started disappearing, he laughed, a low, strange sound that

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was half hysteria, half surrender. Who would steal so many apples?

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Something that didn't think it was stealing at all, something

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00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:22,199
that had decided this half was theirs and the other

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00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:25,480
half was his, and that was as far as a

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deal in any world that rarely offered fairness. He put

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the egg gently back on top of the pile. I

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see you, he said quietly to the tree line, and

379
00:34:39,679 --> 00:34:43,480
I get it, but we're not going to have to

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00:34:43,559 --> 00:34:50,599
renegotiate next season. The woods didn't answer, but as he

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turned to walk back up the hill, a low gust

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00:34:54,559 --> 00:34:58,159
of wind moved through the trees for the first time

383
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:02,119
that morning, russ the leaves in a way that sounded

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00:35:02,159 --> 00:35:08,039
almost like a reply. Almost behind him, the piles of

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00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:12,119
perfect fruit sat at the edge of the forest, waiting

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00:35:12,159 --> 00:35:17,079
for whatever hand had claimed them in the night, And

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somewhere not too far away, something that walked like a

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00:35:21,519 --> 00:35:26,159
man and wasn't a man at all picked another apple

389
00:35:27,079 --> 00:35:31,760
raised it to its mouth and bit down, sweet juice

390
00:35:32,039 --> 00:35:53,679
running over teeth that had never known a name. Thanks

391
00:35:53,679 --> 00:35:56,760
for listening to the orchard keeper. Out Here among the

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apple trees, the shadows grow long, and some things prefer

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to stay hidden. If you enjoyed the story, be sure

394
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:10,159
to follow Bigfoot's Wilderness podcast for more encounters, mysteries, and

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00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:14,960
brushes with the unknown. Until next time, keep your eyes open,

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00:36:15,679 --> 00:36:18,480
your light's on, and watch the tree line.