Speaker 1: The first time Ray Haskins noticed something was wrong with
Speaker 1: the orchard, it was a good kind of wrong. From
Speaker 1: his kitchen window, the rose swept down the hill in
Speaker 1: a neat green stripe, each tree heavy with fruit. It
Speaker 1: was picking season, the kind of crisp blue sky morning
Speaker 1: that made his knees ache before he even stood up.
Speaker 1: He poured his coffee, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes,
Speaker 1: and glanced out like he did every morning, and paused.
Speaker 1: The sunrise painted the tops of the trees in gold.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't the light that froze him. It was
Speaker 1: the pattern. On the right side of the orchard, closer
Speaker 1: to the house, the branches hung heavy, just like they should,
Speaker 1: red and yellow apples dotting the lee like ornaments on
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree. On the left side, farther down the
Speaker 1: tree line, the branches were bare, not empty exactly, but thinned,
Speaker 1: as if someone had gone through and done a careful,
Speaker 1: selective harvest. Thing was Ray hadn't sent anyone out there yet.
Speaker 1: He grabbed his coat and his old cap, half finished
Speaker 1: coffee in hand, and headed out, gravel crunching under his boots.
Speaker 1: The air smelled like dew and soil, and the faint
Speaker 1: tang of apple skins, birds chattered in the hedge, grow normal,
Speaker 1: Everything normal until he crossed into the left side rose.
Speaker 1: At first glance, it looked like a crew had already
Speaker 1: come through, picking only the best fruit. The branches that
Speaker 1: yesterday bowed with ripeness now held scattered remnants, misshapen, too small,
Speaker 1: still green or bird pecked. The rest were gone, cleanly plucked.
Speaker 1: No bruised piles underfoot, no broken branches, no fruit on
Speaker 1: the ground at all. Ray stopped scanning the grass. Nothing.
Speaker 1: He straightened and squinted toward the far edge of the orchard,
Speaker 1: where the trees thinned and the forest began, a darker
Speaker 1: wall of oaks and pines, the boundary where his planted
Speaker 1: world stopped and the wild one started. At the base
Speaker 1: of the treeline, something caught the light, a smudge of
Speaker 1: color that didn't belong. He walked down between the rows,
Speaker 1: boots soft in the grass now, and the closer he
Speaker 1: came to the woods, the more the smell hit him. Strong,
Speaker 1: sweet thick apple flesh and sugar, and the faint edge
Speaker 1: of fermentation. They were piled there, hundreds of apples, maybe more,
Speaker 1: nestled in a heap a few feet from the first
Speaker 1: line of trees, stacked like something had gathered them with
Speaker 1: care and gently laid them down. They were the good ones,
Speaker 1: the best ones, the ripest from those rows, perfect color,
Speaker 1: no blemishes, each one that distinctive. Haskins red He'd spent
Speaker 1: decades grafting and nurturing like children. Every apple in that
Speaker 1: pile was one he would have picked for his highest
Speaker 1: priced bins at the market. He felt a pressure in
Speaker 1: his chest, something cold sliding down his ribs. Ray looked
Speaker 1: over his shoulder out of the orchard, then turned back
Speaker 1: to the pile. Who the hell, he muttered, Teenagers, Maybe
Speaker 1: some kids from town playing a prank. But what kind
Speaker 1: of prank involved picking like professional farm hands and stacking
Speaker 1: fruit in the woods instead of throwing it or smashing it.
Speaker 1: He moved closer to the tree line, scanning for footprints,
Speaker 1: tire tracks, beer cans, candy wrappers, any sign of human stupidity.
Speaker 1: The ground was disturbed, but not in the way he expected.
Speaker 1: No bootprints, no tread marks, just flattened grass and a
Speaker 1: faint trail leading into the shadow of the trees, the
Speaker 1: kind of pressed down line that might be made by
Speaker 1: something very heavy, moving the same way over and over.
Speaker 1: He followed it just two steps before the woods wh
Speaker 1: spirted him in that particular way he'd learned to respect
Speaker 1: over the years, a gust of cold air, the hush
Speaker 1: of leaves, the sense not a thought, more like a
Speaker 1: feeling that he wasn't supposed to cross that boundary. He
Speaker 1: stopped toe at the edge, At the edge of the
Speaker 1: shade behind him, his orchard glowed in the morning light.
Speaker 1: Before him, the forest watched, quiet and patient. Slowly he
Speaker 1: backed away. By noon, he'd done the math twenty acres.
Speaker 1: The left half of the orchard represented about ten of them.
Speaker 1: Of those ten, at least a quarter of his premium
Speaker 1: fruit had been removed, not dropped, not damaged, not partially eaten.
Speaker 1: By year, removed and carried to one spot at the
Speaker 1: tree line, twenty five percent of that side, which came
Speaker 1: out to about twenty five percent of his overall profits.
Speaker 1: Ray sat at the kitchen table, PaperWorks spread in front
Speaker 1: of him. Yield estimates, buy her contracts, fuel costs, pencil tapping,
Speaker 1: jaw working. Somebody's stealing from us, he said. His wife, Helen,
Speaker 1: turned from the sink. She wiped her hands on a
Speaker 1: dish towel, then leaned on the counter, staring at him
Speaker 1: over the rims of her glasses. Kids, she asked. He hesitated,
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. But no, no, no, she tilted
Speaker 1: her head. He thought about the pile, the careful stack,
Speaker 1: the selective picking, the faint, oddly wide trail in the grass,
Speaker 1: the way the branches weren't broken, just empty of the
Speaker 1: best fruit. It's too tidy, he said finally. She watched
Speaker 1: him for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then she looked
Speaker 1: past him to the window, out toward the orchard, where
Speaker 1: the left rose looked thinner, sparser. It's not like we
Speaker 1: haven't had strange things happen before, she murmured. He didn't respond.
Speaker 1: He didn't need her to list them. They lived on
Speaker 1: the land. The land kept score, the uprooted peach trees,
Speaker 1: roots torn from the earth like some one had yanked
Speaker 1: it straight up and tossed it aside. The twisted metal
Speaker 1: trash cans that once we used for dog food, lid
Speaker 1: ripped off sides, crumpled like a soda can, forty pounds
Speaker 1: of kibble gone. The feed bags dragged off, the heavy
Speaker 1: ones he himself groan to carry sometimes they'd find shreds
Speaker 1: of sacks half a mile into the woods, the missing chickens,
Speaker 1: dozens in a single night, with no feathers, no blood,
Speaker 1: no trail, just a silent, empty coop and a low,
Speaker 1: uneasy clucking from the survivors. And that one evening years back,
Speaker 1: when they turned on to their long dirt driveway, just
Speaker 1: as soon as something had crossed it. Ray hadn't meant
Speaker 1: to slow down. His foot had done it on its own,
Speaker 1: easing off the gas as the thing moved through the
Speaker 1: beams of his headlights. Too big to be deer, too
Speaker 1: upright to be bare, too fluid to be anything he'd
Speaker 1: ever seen. It had taken three strides to cross the
Speaker 1: width of the road, shadow blotting out the dust, a
Speaker 1: brief flash of matted hair, and something like an arm swinging.
Speaker 1: Then it was gone into the tall grass. He'd glanced
Speaker 1: at Helen. She'd been sitting very still, hands folded tight
Speaker 1: in her lap, eyes wide and focused straight ahead. They
Speaker 1: drive the rest of the way in silence, parked, gone inside,
Speaker 1: and never not once spoken of it. That had been
Speaker 1: their quiet agreement. There were some things you didn't give
Speaker 1: shape to with words until now, apparently, it's just apples,
Speaker 1: he said, forcing a shrug. Probably a bear or I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe kids. After all, I'm gonna put up
Speaker 1: some cameras. See what's what. Helen's lips pressed into a
Speaker 1: thin line, but she nodded. Just be careful, ray careful,
Speaker 1: he snorted. I'm just looking for idiots stealing apples, but
Speaker 1: the words felt thin in his mouth, like paper trying
Speaker 1: to stand up in a wind. The cameras didn't work.
Speaker 1: He bought four motion activated trail cameras from the farm
Speaker 1: supply store, the kind hunters used, and mounted them on
Speaker 1: posts overlooking the left side rose and the tree line.
Speaker 1: It took him half a day to get them all
Speaker 1: positioned right. He walked back to the house feeling something
Speaker 1: he hadn't felt in a long time, satisfaction. Let's see
Speaker 1: a hide now, he muttered. That night, the wind came up.
Speaker 1: He lay awake, listening to it combed through the branches,
Speaker 1: hearing the familiar creaks of the house shifting, the occasional
Speaker 1: faint thud of an apple dropping. He imagined teens and
Speaker 1: hoodies slipping between the rows, stuffing their backpacks, giggling. At
Speaker 1: three in the morning, when the old grandfather clock in
Speaker 1: the hall chimed. He thought he heard something else, a low,
Speaker 1: steady rustle, almost like someone wading through tall grass. But
Speaker 1: by the time he got out of bed and patted
Speaker 1: to the window, there was nothing, just darkness and the
Speaker 1: faint sheen of moonlight brushing the tops of the trees.
Speaker 1: In the morning, the batteries and all four cameras were dead,
Speaker 1: not low dead. Ray unscrewed one, popped it open and frowned.
Speaker 1: The batteries weren't cheap ones. He'd put them in fresh.
Speaker 1: They should have lasted weeks. He chewed the inside of
Speaker 1: his cheek. Well that's just great, he muttered. The orchard
Speaker 1: looked different again. More of the left half had been
Speaker 1: selectively picked perfectly. Ripe apples were missing, leaving only the rejects.
Speaker 1: At the tree line. There were now two piles of
Speaker 1: fruit side by side, like someone had drawn invisible lines
Speaker 1: in the grass and sorted the apples accordingly. Ray stood
Speaker 1: between them, hands on his hips. Who would steal that
Speaker 1: many apples and not take them? He said aloud. The
Speaker 1: question sounded absurd even as it left his mouth. It
Speaker 1: hung in the morning air, unanswered. The forest did not respond.
Speaker 1: He tried again with brand new batteries. This time he
Speaker 1: added a fifth camera hidden higher in the tree instead
Speaker 1: of on a post. He ran a cable to an
Speaker 1: old car battery he'd rigged as a backup. The setup
Speaker 1: looked ridiculous, a spider web of wires and plastic tied
Speaker 1: to a living branch, but he didn't care. This was
Speaker 1: his land, his livelihood. At night, the wind was dead, calm,
Speaker 1: no creaks, no thuds, just a kind of waiting silence
Speaker 1: that made the house feel smaller. Around two in the morning,
Speaker 1: he woke up suddenly, heart tapping a little faster than usual.
Speaker 1: The room was dim, the red glow of the alarm
Speaker 1: clock numbers floating in the dark to fourteen. Something had
Speaker 1: woken him. He listened. At first he heard nothing, then
Speaker 1: very faintly, almost below, hearing a sound like fabric sliding
Speaker 1: over bark, a soft rhythmic huff, branches shifting, not in
Speaker 1: a chaotic wind tossed way, but in a measured pattern,
Speaker 1: like someone moving very careful among the trees. He slipped
Speaker 1: out of bed, wincing at the complaint in his knees,
Speaker 1: and moved to the window that overlooked the orchard. The
Speaker 1: moon was half full, washing the rose in a cold,
Speaker 1: uneven light. He squinted, trying to make sense of the
Speaker 1: shapes tree trunks, shadows, the pale gleam of fruit. Half
Speaker 1: Way down the slope, something big shifted. It wasn't much,
Speaker 1: a darker shape inside the darkness. Stepping from one row
Speaker 1: to the next. The motion was smooth, almost lazy. An
Speaker 1: arm he thought it was an arm, reached up and
Speaker 1: a branch dipped, then another. Each time there was a
Speaker 1: faint rustle, a saw thump that might have been an
Speaker 1: apple landing in a large, waiting hand. He realized his
Speaker 1: own breath was shallow, his finger tips pressed whitening against
Speaker 1: the glass. The thing wasn't rushing, It wasn't panicked or
Speaker 1: sneaky in the human sense. It moved like someone doing
Speaker 1: a job they've done for years, calm, efficient, confidently, unseen.
Speaker 1: As Ray watched, it worked down the row, always on
Speaker 1: the left side of the orchard, never crossing the invisible
Speaker 1: line toward the right, only plucking from the branches that
Speaker 1: shone with ripe fruit, never touching the green, the misshapen,
Speaker 1: or the ones with dark spots. Selective, deliberate. The absurdity
Speaker 1: rose in him like a wave. Who the hell are you?
Speaker 1: He whispered, as if it had heard him. The shadow paused,
Speaker 1: turned for a second. He'd had the dizzy impression that
Speaker 1: something tall and broad upturned its face, looking toward the house.
Speaker 1: The moon caught just enough of a glint, something like eyeshine,
Speaker 1: a wet reflection, and then just as fast it turned
Speaker 1: away and continued its work, moving toward the tree line.
Speaker 1: He stood there long after it disappeared into the woods,
Speaker 1: The orchard once again a still painting. He didn't go
Speaker 1: back to sleep the next morning. Ray didn't even check
Speaker 1: the cameras. Right away, he went straight to the piles.
Speaker 1: There were three now The fruit was sordid. One piled
Speaker 1: up and held the most perfect of red apples, uniform size,
Speaker 1: textbook examples. Another held slightly smaller ones, still good, but
Speaker 1: not premium. The third pile mixed a few golden varieties
Speaker 1: with red, as if some one had gotten creative. He
Speaker 1: stared the air, heavy with that sweet, almost rotting scent.
Speaker 1: Bees floated lazily over the heaps behind him. The orchard
Speaker 1: stretched up the hill, half picked, half untouched. Only the left,
Speaker 1: always the left. He tried to imagine teenagers doing this,
Speaker 1: teens who cared enough to pick by ripeness and sort
Speaker 1: by quality and then leave the lute. He couldn't teenagers,
Speaker 1: he knew, broke things. They didn't curate them. He went
Speaker 1: to the first camera, opened, the casing dead, the next dead,
Speaker 1: all five dead. The car battery he'd wired to the
Speaker 1: fifth camera was warm, drained. He sat down on the grass,
Speaker 1: knee bent, hands dangling between them, and laughed once, a dry,
Speaker 1: humorless laugh, a humorless sound. This is insane, he said
Speaker 1: to no one. Something about saying it out loud made
Speaker 1: it feel more true. And yet the proof sat all
Speaker 1: around him in mounds. He of stolen unwonted fruit. Who
Speaker 1: would steal so many apples and then just give them
Speaker 1: back to the edge of the woods. The losses kept
Speaker 1: adding up. Over the next two weeks. The left half
Speaker 1: of the orchard became a strange, living ledger of the theft.
Speaker 1: Every night, more of the best fruit vanished. Every morning,
Speaker 1: new piles appeared at the tree line, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller,
Speaker 1: sometimes arranged in odd patterns like arcs and broken circles.
Speaker 1: His spreadsheets began to look like obituaries. Helen watched him
Speaker 1: grow quieter, shoulders tight as he paced the row, ran
Speaker 1: his hands over empty brandes, recalculated in his head. You
Speaker 1: talk to anyone about it, she asked one evening, as
Speaker 1: they sat on the porch, the sky turning pink behind
Speaker 1: the hills. And who am I supposed to talk to?
Speaker 1: He replied, sheriff tell him some phantom fruit pickers stealing
Speaker 1: a quarter of my income and leaving in the woods.
Speaker 1: Like an offering. She didn't answer. The cicadas rasped in
Speaker 1: their slow course. Somewhere down the slope, something cracked a branch.
Speaker 1: You remember that that thing we saw, he asked. Suddenly
Speaker 1: she stiffened beside him. He'd broken the rull, the unspoken pact.
Speaker 1: After a long pause, she said softly on the road.
Speaker 1: He nodded. He didn't trust himself to describe it further.
Speaker 1: I remember, she said. What if it never left? He asked.
Speaker 1: She looked out at the orchard, the left side in shadow, now,
Speaker 1: the right still catching the last light. What if it
Speaker 1: were here before us? She murmured. The ideas settled between them,
Speaker 1: familiar and unwelcome, like an old relative who never quite
Speaker 1: moved out. The third week, he found tracks not clear ones. No,
Speaker 1: not perfect textbook prints, but impressions, depressions. When the grass
Speaker 1: folded under the weight of something that walked on two legs,
Speaker 1: not four. They were broad, longer than his boots, spaced
Speaker 1: too far apart for a man his height to manage comfortably.
Speaker 1: Each step a quiet, heavy punctuation mark leading from the
Speaker 1: middle rows straight toward the trees. He followed them in
Speaker 1: the tree line, heart thudding. The piles that day were
Speaker 1: arranged in a half moon. The central one was taller,
Speaker 1: almost waist high, a mound of crimson and gold domes.
Speaker 1: He stood there, breathing in the sickeningly rich scent. Bees
Speaker 1: buzzed thick around the edges. Somewhere deeper in the woods,
Speaker 1: a branch snapped, This is my land, he said, louder
Speaker 1: than he meant to. His voice sounded thin in the open.
Speaker 1: Another branch cracked, closer this time than nothing. It occurred
Speaker 1: to him slowly that maybe it wasn't theft, Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a kind of bargain, one he'd never known. He'd
Speaker 1: agreed to. He thought of the uprooted trees, the bent
Speaker 1: trash can, the stolen feed, the missing chickens, the horse
Speaker 1: that had neatly broken its neck, trying to get away
Speaker 1: from something. Only it hadn't seen the shadow in the headlights,
Speaker 1: And now this new weird harvest on only half his orchard,
Speaker 1: half for him, half for something else. What if that
Speaker 1: was the only reason the orchard had never been hit worse?
Speaker 1: No barn torn apart, no cattle shredded, no house windows smashed.
Speaker 1: Maybe just maybe the apples, or some kind of attacks.
Speaker 1: But why so many, why so precise? Why only the ripest,
Speaker 1: the most marketable. He imagined a massive, unseen shape in
Speaker 1: the woods, sitting cross legged beside the piles, hands huge
Speaker 1: and gentle, picking up apple after apple. Maybe it took
Speaker 1: a bite from each, Maybe it ate only a fraction
Speaker 1: and left the rest to rot. Maybe it was feeding others, family,
Speaker 1: young ones. He imagined, small shadows, waiting, eyes, bright hands reaching.
Speaker 1: The image should have comforted him. It didn't. It felt
Speaker 1: too human and not human enough at the same time.
Speaker 1: Who steals that many apples? He shouted suddenly, voice crackling,
Speaker 1: Why why do you take so many? What do you
Speaker 1: do with them? The woods swallowed his words. A crow
Speaker 1: cawed from somewhere high and unseen, the sound harsh and amused,
Speaker 1: he turned and walked back up the hill, leaving the
Speaker 1: piles behind like small, colorful graves. On the last night
Speaker 1: of harvest, the sky was low and gray, clouds hanging
Speaker 1: like wet wool over the hills. He brought in everything
Speaker 1: he could from the right side of the orchard. The
Speaker 1: left haft looked ragged, now picked over, the work already
Speaker 1: done by invisible hands. He slept poorly un Near dawn.
Speaker 1: A sound woke him, different from the rest. Not a rustle,
Speaker 1: not a thud, something sharper, A single heavy slap, like
Speaker 1: a giant palm hitting siding. The house shuddered. Helen sat
Speaker 1: bolt upright. What was another slap closer? The wall behind
Speaker 1: their bed trembled. Ray's head pounded so hard he felt
Speaker 1: it in his throat. He swung his legs out of
Speaker 1: bed and grabbed the old flashlight from the night stand,
Speaker 1: though he doubted it would make any difference. Stay here,
Speaker 1: he whispered, though he had no real hope she would.
Speaker 1: He crept down the hall, the boards creaking under his weight.
Speaker 1: At the end of the hall was a small window
Speaker 1: that looked out along the side of the house, down
Speaker 1: toward the orchard. The pre dawn light smeared everything in
Speaker 1: vague blue gray shapes melted together. He reached the window
Speaker 1: and dared to lift one corner of the curtain. For
Speaker 1: a moment, he saw nothing. Then out of the corner
Speaker 1: of his eye, something moved. A shape loomed out of
Speaker 1: the murk, impossibly tall, close enough that he could see
Speaker 1: the way its shoulder brushed against the clapboard siding as
Speaker 1: it walked along the side of the house. Dark hair
Speaker 1: matted along its arms, its back broad enough to shadow
Speaker 1: the window. An arm swung long and heavy, the hand
Speaker 1: bigger than the lid of his own trash can. It stopped,
Speaker 1: turned slightly. He couldn't see its face, not fully, just
Speaker 1: the outline of a head too high for the window frame,
Speaker 1: the suggestion of a jutting brow, and beneath it darkness
Speaker 1: or eyes should be. The hand came up. For a second,
Speaker 1: he thought it might smash the glass, reaching in and
Speaker 1: dragging him through. Instead, it pressed its palm against the wall. Slap.
Speaker 1: The sound vibrated through the wood into his chest. Another
Speaker 1: mark of ownership, he thought wildly, another tally in some ledger.
Speaker 1: Only it understood creature. He could no longer bring himself
Speaker 1: to call at anything else. Stood there for several heart beats.
Speaker 1: Then it lowered its arm, turned and moved away, its
Speaker 1: gait smooth and deliberate. It strode down the slope toward
Speaker 1: the left side of the orchard, passing effortlessly through from
Speaker 1: house to tree, from the human world to its own.
Speaker 1: Ray realized his breath was coming in short, shallow bursts.
Speaker 1: His knees felt hollow. Behind him, he heard Helen's voice,
Speaker 1: thin and shaking. Did you see it? He nodded, unable
Speaker 1: to pull his eyes from the window. Ray. She whispered,
Speaker 1: you're bleeding. He blinked and looked down his hand, still
Speaker 1: clutching the flashlight, shook. A thin line of red ran
Speaker 1: across the back of where he'd scraped the window without noticing.
Speaker 1: Just apples, he thought, just fruit. So why did it
Speaker 1: feel like his entire life was being weighed on some
Speaker 1: invisible scale. The next morning, when the sun finally tore
Speaker 1: through the clouds and lit up the orchard in its
Speaker 1: usual warm gold, he walked down the slope in a
Speaker 1: kind of numb trance. He knew before he reached it
Speaker 1: that there would be another pile. He could feel it
Speaker 1: the way you feel a storm before it arrives. There
Speaker 1: was it sat at the tree line, larger than any
Speaker 1: of the others, a mound of apples almost as tall
Speaker 1: as his chest, glistening with dew. The smell was overwhelming,
Speaker 1: but there was something else on top of it. This
Speaker 1: time he stepped closer, squinting, Nestling among the apples. On
Speaker 1: the very peak of the pile lay a single, intact
Speaker 1: hen's egg, perfectly white, not cracked, not dirty, just sitting there,
Speaker 1: improbable and delicate. Beside it, half buried in fruit, was
Speaker 1: a strip of torn burlap, the same kind he used
Speaker 1: for his feed sacks. It was neatly folded. An exchange,
Speaker 1: he thought, or a receipt, or a joke, a gift.
Speaker 1: Ray Helen's voice drifted down from the porch, carried onto
Speaker 1: the breeze. You all right, He stared at the egg,
Speaker 1: at the apple mounds that represented a quarter of his profits,
Speaker 1: vanished from his books, but here accounted for in some
Speaker 1: other way. He felt eyes on him from the woods,
Speaker 1: real or imagined. He no longer cared to decide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he called back, his voice oddly, steady, I'm all right.
Speaker 1: He reached out slowly and picked up the egg. It
Speaker 1: was warm, warmer than it should have been on a
Speaker 1: cool morning. He held it in his palm, feeling its
Speaker 1: tiny weight, and for the first time since the apples
Speaker 1: had started disappearing, he laughed, a low, strange sound that
Speaker 1: was half hysteria, half surrender. Who would steal so many apples?
Speaker 1: Something that didn't think it was stealing at all, something
Speaker 1: that had decided this half was theirs and the other
Speaker 1: half was his, and that was as far as a
Speaker 1: deal in any world that rarely offered fairness. He put
Speaker 1: the egg gently back on top of the pile. I
Speaker 1: see you, he said quietly to the tree line, and
Speaker 1: I get it, but we're not going to have to
Speaker 1: renegotiate next season. The woods didn't answer, but as he
Speaker 1: turned to walk back up the hill, a low gust
Speaker 1: of wind moved through the trees for the first time
Speaker 1: that morning, russ the leaves in a way that sounded
Speaker 1: almost like a reply. Almost behind him, the piles of
Speaker 1: perfect fruit sat at the edge of the forest, waiting
Speaker 1: for whatever hand had claimed them in the night, And
Speaker 1: somewhere not too far away, something that walked like a
Speaker 1: man and wasn't a man at all picked another apple
Speaker 1: raised it to its mouth and bit down, sweet juice
Speaker 1: running over teeth that had never known a name. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the orchard keeper. Out Here among the
Speaker 1: apple trees, the shadows grow long, and some things prefer
Speaker 1: to stay hidden. If you enjoyed the story, be sure
Speaker 1: to follow Bigfoot's Wilderness podcast for more encounters, mysteries, and
Speaker 1: brushes with the unknown. Until next time, keep your eyes open,
Speaker 1: your light's on, and watch the tree line.