Shock Totem 9: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  A voice squawked out of the telephone, jarring Mandy from her trance. “Brattle Police Department. This call is being recorded. What's your emergency?” Mandy sat up straight in shock at the sudden, welcome intrusion. Although she'd been practicing them, she found herself struggling to find the right words.

  “He's gone. You...have to go. He's in the woods.”

  “Who's gone, ma'am? Who's gone to the woods?” The dispatcher didn't ask “What woods?” or “What is he planning to do in the woods?” Everyone in the Brattle Basin Area knew what “going to the woods” meant. They were as well known as The Crossing Tower or Compass Fells or even Schoenborn Mountain. You just said, the Tower, the Fells, the Mountain.

  The Suicide Woods.

  “My father. My father, Skip Clover. He left me a note to say—”

  “How long ago did he leave, Ma'am?”

  She didn't know. She knew how long it'd take to get there—an hour to drive out of town and make it up to the State Park. Ten minutes to park the car and walk to the trail head and who knows how much longer to...find the right spot—but she had no idea when to start the clock ticking. He could have written the note last night after she went to bed or early this morning. Who knew how long it would take him to actually do whatever it was he had planned? Maybe she'd catch a break and he'd just take a hike and change his mind and come home. How long before she had to cross that off as an option?

  All she knew for sure was that it had taken his whole life to write the note. How much time he had left to live after that was left to him.

  3

  The call crackled over the radio, interrupting Rick and Kate's game of Bicycle Tag. They sat in their car, watching bicyclists run red lights, taking bets on which one was going to get “tagged” by a car in cross-traffic. “Unit 19. Proceed to the west entrance of Mt. Schoenborn State Park for a possible 10-56. Skip Clover. Caucasian male, five ten, forty-nine. Thinning brown and blue. Red down parka.”

  Kate sighed and pulled the transmitter up to her mouth. “10-56. Copy that. Unit 19 en route.” Her partner flipped the switch on the lightbar and siren. He shrugged.

  “Hey, the family needs to know whether to put his name in for the gift exchange, right?” Kate didn't laugh. She didn't like the idea of another hike through The Woods. Looking for one always meant finding a couple or more, whether or not the original subject was located. It was depressing and she had been doing her best to get in the holiday spirit. But then, that's when they started to really head to the forest. It didn't matter how many lights you hung in the windows, it was impossible to break through the crepuscular gloom of autumn in Brattle. As they pulled out into traffic, she zipped up her jacket in anticipation of a long hike.

  “The annual body hunt is starting early,” she said. Kate remembered her first hunt better than her first kiss. She'd been on the force less than a year and the town council had decided that it was important to clear the rotters out of woods as soon as the thaw began. Before an unsuspecting hiker—who was unsuspecting anymore?—stumbled across some scene of horror. Her training officer back then was a guy with a bleak gallows sense of humor named Jesse. He'd blanched white at the thought of a thorough sweep of the woods. Since he'd started on the force ten years earlier, he told her, it had just kept getting worse until things were the way they are now. “Some asshole did a story on the news on that place in Chiner or Japan or whateva whereva those people went to scrag themselves. ‘The Sea of Trees,’ or some shit. And that was that. Every sad sack from three counties made for the Schoenborn that year. Yep, it was a record. Twenty-seven stiffs in twelve months. Since then, the record just keeps gettin’ broke, you know. Always anotha one. Sometimes couples go in there together. I say we cut the whole place down. Turn it into a shopping mall or bouncy house playground. Someplace nobody can get hurt. You know?”

  She hadn't known. Not until she found her first body. Most of the women who went to the woods used poison, but that one chose a razor. And Jesse explained that meant this girl got extra attention from the Homicide detectives. “There are plenty a bodies in the forest,” he explained, “and that makes it a great place to bring a murder victim and stage a suicide.” He called it in and left his rookie to secure the scene. “Don't let her leave,” he said, as he stumbled away to find a private place to have a sip—or ten—from his flask. Kate had to stick around for hours to guard the body before the lazy murder dicks showed up, the medical examiner trailing behind. They poked around, careful not to spill their coffee, until one found a straight razor near her body and the M.E. declared her wound consistent with a left-handed, self-inflicted cut. Kate asked how down-in-the-dumps you had to be to slash your own throat. The dicks didn’t say anything and the M.E. just looked at her and walked off, replying, “She's all yours, officer.” And she was. Forever. Some nights Kate would wake up from a nightmare convinced that the girl was standing in the corner of her bedroom, holding the razor, smiling redly from under her chin and waiting for the cop to do something. What was there to do? She couldn't stop her. She couldn't stop any of them.

  And yet, here she was. On her way to find another one.

  4

  Danny pulled his hood over his head to keep the freezing drizzle from running down the back of his neck into his shirt. He kept to the trail, for now. The trees grew close to one another on either side, fighting to survive in a climate with ample moisture but insufficient light. Around them, the corpses of the fallen lay, soggy and rotten, their bark peeling and falling off into the brown needle bed. He forged ahead for maybe another quarter of a mile before venturing off on a barely visible path of desire worn by other infrequent off-trail hikers. Those paths never became well-worn. Too few followed them back out.

  Clambering over a fallen tree that was slowly breaking down in the rain, he steadied himself with a hand that slipped and pushed through the decaying trunk up to his wrist. Soft slick pieces of rotting wood slid up into the sleeve of his jacket. He heaved himself over, pulled his hand out of the compost, shaking off the moldy slime, and checked the gun in his pocket again. Still there. He was shivering. His boots and socks were soaked. The legs of his jeans stuck to his shins and calves and his legs were slowly going numb below the knees. Not much farther. You don't need to go much farther. There's a good spot up ahead.

  He could see it. There was a break in the evergreens where you could get a good view of the mountain. Really see it and feel its fullness. Feel your own emptiness and insignificance and the pull to lie down and slowly crumble into the earth. There was a compulsion to be part of the mountain that tugged at Danny's guts. Like when he was driving on the interstate, sometimes he'd get the urge to jerk the wheel hard to the left or the right and feel the truck go up onto two wheels and flip over into the air. He imagined what it would be like as it came crashing down on the roof. Sometimes at night he'd climb onto the fire escape and look five flights down and think about what it would feel like to jump out into the darkness—just sail away and down. The French called it L'appel du vide.

  It pulled at him.

  A few feet farther into the brush he looked up and saw a flash of red—a down jacket worn by a man perched on a low branch. The man pushed forward and slipped off into space. Answering the call of the void.

  5

  Rick and Kate parked their cruiser at the head of the trail, leaving the lightbar flashing. They walked past the strobing blue beacon and shined their flashlights into the growing darkness up the path. “After you,” Rick said.

  “Why me?”

  He didn't answer. They were here and there were no more jokes to tell. Not until they were on their way back out, with or without Skip Clover. But then, Kate knew Rick wasn't the kind to walk out of the woods without him.

  They walked at a brisk pace, glancing from side to side, looking for a red parka, but all Kate could see were the same dun shades of late autumn. Everyone in Brattle was outdoorsy and wore the same neon brands of R.E.I. and The North Face clothing. Cheerful bright colors m
eant to combat the perpetual gloam of the cloud canopy or stand out against the blinding white snow when it fell. No camouflage. It wasn't that kind of town. Every spring, the department sent everyone but a skeleton crew in the city into the woods to look for those bright yellows and blues peeking up after the thaw—before the weather became too warm and decay could begin again. It was the worst Easter hunt imaginable because every egg was rotten.

  They paused when they came to the first fork in the path. Blazes of paint on nearby trees indicated the green trail leading off to the right, the blue to the left, and another thousand yards up, the “strenuous” red trail broke off on a long, challenging hike up the base of the mountain. Kate didn't bother to ask “Which way?” Most people who walked into the woods without any intention of walking back out eventually left the paths. Green didn't get you deep enough into the woods and only the most elite jumped from the high rocks on red. The blue trail had a reasonable amount of deadfall and debris to find a measure of privacy in the peaceful calm of the forest, and the views of Schoenborn were just as good. She wondered if the person at the Forest Service responsible for marking the trails had a reason in mind for choosing blue. I’d have picked black.

  She paused in front of a sign post and drop box that the department had installed the year before. The sign read, Take a moment! If you are hurting, don't hold it in. Counselors are waiting to listen to you. Please call for help. She flipped open the lid of the box to see how many of the Suicide Hotline flyers remained. They were all gone, replaced by something else. She pulled one out. Bold orange text declaring, IT'S NOT YOUR CHOICE! bordered an anguished cartoon face surrounded by flames. Kate crumpled the religious tract up in her fist and took a deep breath, managing her anger.

  “Come on, let's go,” Rick said as he forged up the blue trail. Kate looked at the mirror installed on the post above the sign. Her image in the fogged glass was a ghostly blue and white blur. Was it a reflection or a promise? She promised herself she’d mention the post to the chief later as she trotted to catch up to her partner before he disappeared into the mist.

  6

  Skip dangled at the end of his rope. The fall felt like it took ages. His jacket caught the branch as he pushed off, preventing him from dropping hard. He'd slumped down a few inches and then slowly broke free in a jerky descent that eventually constricted his windpipe and tightened the noose around his throat, but didn't snap his neck. When he felt the rope go taut and the loop tighten it reminded him of a snake slowly crushing its prey instead of the quick cinch it had to have been in reality. His perception of reality was slowing down the way it did when things went wrong. And he was at the center of time's distortion, hanging like a black hole in space, as light changed, gravity changed, everything that approached him elongated and became drawn out, ghostly and indistinct. He’d read somewhere it took six minutes for a person whose neck didn’t break to strangle in a noose. What had it been already? Five seconds? Ten? He wondered how many eons six minutes would take.

  He didn't see his life flash before his eyes—just a single still moment of someone else's. He saw his daughter sitting at their dinner table where he'd left the note. He saw her reading and weeping. Her head dropped into her hands, hope slipping away as his had done over the years, gently sliding into the black hole he'd become.

  For the first time since Audrey walked out, he felt like trying to live.

  Skip tried to reach for the branch above him. He was pretty sure he couldn't do a pull up if he tried. But he felt like giving it a go. The way the rope pulled up and under his chin, he could barely raise his hands over his head.

  Living or dying, whatever he felt like now was irrelevant. The him of a few distorted eons ago had left the new him with nothing to do but wait out the rest of his life.

  7

  Although it seemed to Rick like she never looked down at the path, Kate never tripped. She'd told him, “Keep your eyes on what's coming ahead instead of on your feet. That way you can keep your head up and maybe see our guy.” It didn't help. Rick stumbled over a rock half buried in the middle of the path. He raised his arms to ward off a low branch that threatened to tear at his eyes as he careened into it. No matter where he kept his focus, the forest sent roots and branches clutching at his clothes and grasping at his feet. The obstacles she ducked around and stepped lightly over no more than a second before him threatened to trip him up, tie him down, drag him under. He staggered another step before regaining his balance and pride. He righted his plastic-covered hat and pulled at the bottom of his jacket, trying not to look so disheveled, although he felt like it was a losing battle.

  Kate turned to face her partner. On any other occasion she'd be smiling at his awkwardness, or at least putting on the pretense of holding back a smile. Not today. Today, she looked pale and half gone. Glancing over her shoulder, he spied a flash of weather-muted yellow. It was a jacket that used to be Day-Glo. The weather had brought it low and dulled its vibrance. For a moment it looked as though someone had hung it on a tree as if to dry it or at least just keep it up off of the damp forest floor. A blink and another look showed him differently. The figure in the distance was propped up by the tree, arms and branches entwined like lovers embracing. There was probably also a rope helping keep the corpse erect, but Rick couldn't see it. No matter how many times he saw a scene like that—and he'd seen it a few times—he never understood how someone could hang themselves to death with their feet on the ground. I think I'd stand up. I’d just...have to stand up.

  There wasn't time to stop and log it and call it in. They had to keep moving. The longer they delayed, the less likely they were to find the man they'd been sent to rescue. He made a mental note to return here once their primary goal was achieved. He didn't want to, but that was someone's son or husband or father. It was someone who deserved to be taken home. It was someone.

  “Should we be shouting his name or something?” he asked.

  “I don't know.” Neither of them had ever been summoned to look for a living person in the woods. Rick was sure that there was some kind of procedure for searching for a suicide in progress that would make the process safer and more effective, but if it existed, Brattle PD didn't want to discuss it or teach it or even acknowledge it. Instituting a protocol meant acknowledging that this was a regular occurrence, and that meant admitting that there was a problem, which no elected official from Mayor on down to dog catcher wanted to do. He needed the win, though. After fifteen years, Brattle was getting to him. He was hearing the call.

  “Let's just push on,” Kate said. “If he hasn't already pulled the trigger, I'd rather not give him a reason to speed things up.”

  “Copy that.”

  8

  Pocket...knife. Pocketknife. Skip fumbled with weakening fingers at his right pants pocket. Since his father had given him a Buck Knife for his eighth birthday, he'd never been without a blade in that pocket. Friends counted on him to have it. A misbehaving string on a blouse at dinner was like a show. “Hey, Skip. You got that knife?” they'd ask with a smile and hold up an elbow to let the loose thread dangle. He'd produce the knife with a flourish and perform as requested. His newest one was a C.K.R.T. Ripple. It was lightweight and opened easily and had a lovely black handle with an elegant gray blade that gently arced up into a point. One year Mandy had gotten him a Japanese tanto-style knife as a gift, but he just felt too silly pulling it out with its odd angles and non-reflective black blade. He wasn't a ninja; he was just a guy who liked to be dependable. He was the person who was able to easily open that box, cut the twine used to tie down the hatchback door, to trim an errant branch on the rosebush.

  The rope. Cut the rope.

  He pawed at his hip. His hands were numbing as his vision narrowed and the world got a little grayer. Pulling up the bottom of his parka, he slipped the knife from his pocket and brought it up in front of his face. Carefully unfolding it, he reached behind his head to find the rope. A light breeze blew through the trees and his body swayed
and disoriented him more. His dulled fingers found the line—strong sport rope designed for shock and to hold several times the body weight of a climber scaling a cliff face...or a mountain. It was built for safety, but it suited this other purpose just fine. Even though that purpose no longer suited him, the rope was doing a workmanlike job indeed.

  The fog of the woods infected him—clouded his mind and muddied his thoughts.

  Cut. The. Rope.

  He reached up with his knife hand and began to saw through the line. The knife slipped several times and he never felt it bite. Not until it bit into his hand and he instinctively let go. He felt it bounce off his shoulder as it fell to the ground.

  Useless.

  9

  Danny carefully stepped around and looked up into the face of the man hanging from the branch. The man's purpling tongue protruded from between white lips and his eyes rolled wildly as he kicked and struggled with knot at the back of his head. Danny bent down and picked up the knife the man had dropped in the spongy needles carpeting the forest floor. It was nice. Sharp and well-cared-for. He looked up and the man's eyes rolled around one last time before fixing on him. They welled with tears. His lips moved. “Help me,” the hanging man mouthed.

  Following the rope up over the branch and back down with his eyes, Danny found where the man had tied it off. He clearly knew how to tie a good knot that wouldn't come loose. Not while there was tension on the line anyway. He also knew enough to tie the end low to the ground. He didn’t want to slip while tying it to a branch, and break his arm or leg instead of his neck. All he had to do when he got up into the tree was pull the loop end over his head and jump.