The Real

by James Cole

  “You need some help?” Jeremy asked as clearly and expediently as possible. The left rear bumper of the truck protruded into the road and as he passed by, he checked for traffic from behind. The road was empty.

  “It’s looking more and more that way,” replied the stranded motorist.

  When Jeremy made his way around to the front of the truck he asked, “Any idea what’s wrong with it?”

  The man was again face down as he tinkered with the engine. He answered without looking up. “Might be the alternator.”

  “What’s it going to take to fix it?” Jeremy asked.

  The man straightened up and meticulously wiped his hands on a dirty old cloth. “Probably a new alternator,” he replied with a straight face.

  Satisfied that his hands were clean, the black man turned and peered unflinchingly, directly into Jeremy’s eyes. What Jeremy saw rendered him speechless. It was his eyes – his striking, pale-blue eyes.

  When Jeremy was finally able to speak, he asked, “You want me to call someone – maybe a tow truck? I’ve got my phone right here.”

  “No, I can fix it. I just need to get it home somehow. I live just down the road. I don’t suppose you could give me a tow, could you?”

  “I’m afraid my car is not suited for towing.”

  The man stepped out into the road to get a better look at Jeremy’s little car.

  “No, I reckon not.” He rubbed his chin as he looked thoughtfully at the truck’s engine.

  “By the way, I’m Jeremy.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance. They call me Grady.” After studying the situation a bit longer, Grady added, “If I had a fresh battery, I could get her home.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a fresh battery?” Jeremy asked before awkwardly adding, “I guess if you had a fresh battery you wouldn’t still be sitting here on the side of the road.”

  Grady smiled. “I do have a battery charger at home.”

  “I can take you,” Jeremy volunteered, “if you like.”

  “That’ll work,” the man said jovially as he proceeded to loosen the battery cables.

  Grady rode with the battery between his legs on the floorboard. He had thoughtfully placed a newspaper on the mat to prevent any battery acid from leaking onto the floor mat.

  Grady’s house was only a few miles down, on the threshold of the break in the road and the Keep Out sign. Jeremy had never noticed the small house, as it was set back from the road and was barely visible from the pavement. At the end of the long dirt driveway Jeremy stopped the car and shifted to neutral but did not kill the engine.

  “I could give you a ride back to your truck when the battery is done,” offered Jeremy. He thought he could easily kill a couple more hours at the lake. This would be his second trip out there today but he meant to see his favor through to the end.

  “I wouldn’t want to put you out,” Grady was saying.

  “I think I might just ride out to the lake and swing back by in a couple of hours to pick you up.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “What?” asked Jeremy, not catching the man’s meaning.

  “You don’t want to go past the break in the road.”

  “Why not?” asked Jeremy.

  “Those woods have a history of strange happenings, things that don’t concern you.” Grady’s tone was more threatening than the weathered Keep Out sign had ever been. “Why don’t you come inside and sit a spell instead?”

  Jeremy was about to decline but reconsidered. What would it hurt? The blue-eyed black man probably didn’t get too many visitors way out here.

  *****

  Inside, Grady insisted on cooking a meal for his guest. “It’s the least I can do,” he said.

  Jeremy sat at the table and watched his host scurry around the time-worn, but scrupulously clean, kitchen.

  He prepared a traditional breakfast, despite the hour. “Come fill your plate,” Grady instructed as he dumped homemade biscuits from a cast iron skillet onto a paper towel. “And have some juice – I squeezed it myself.”

  Jeremy loaded his plate and settled into his seat at the kitchen table.

  Apart from complimenting his host on the good food, Jeremy found it difficult to keep the conversation going. Grady contributed nothing to their interaction other than a propensity to stare. At times his head bobbed in a subtle up and down motion as if he were grooving to the beat of pleasing music. As the latest period of silence stretched toward the extreme, Jeremy retreated into a defensive mode, directing his attention down at his plate and his thoughts toward an exit strategy.

  Finally Grady broke the silence. “You’ve got potential,” he announced.

  Jeremy shook loose from his reverie. Grady’s gaze was direct and unwavering, and those blue eyes of his were just about too freaky to regard.

  Jeremy swallowed. How long had he been working that same bite of omelet? “Potential for what?” he asked.

  “Potential for great good.”

  “Well, thank you, Grady.” Jeremy replied in a tone he hoped was not patronizing. “I’m not sure how you arrived at that conclusion, but I appreciate the compliment.”

  Quickly, Grady added, “Don’t let it go to your head because you’ve also got an equal potential for bad. Potential is a double-edged sword, and you could still go either way.”

  “Then I suppose I’ll just have to make it a point to use my potential for good.” Jeremy offered a wink and a smile in an attempt to counter the weightiness.

  “See that you do.” If Grady were kidding around it was with the driest of humor. “And, remember what I said before about the break in the road – don’t ever cross that line.”

  “Why not?” Jeremy fought back the urge to tell Grady that it was none of his business where he did or didn’t go. “I know the road is closed.”

  “There’s danger on the other side.”

  “Danger?” asked Jeremy. “What danger?”

  “Reefers Woods.”

  “I wouldn’t know Reefers Woods from Old McDonald’s Farm,” quipped Jeremy.

  “Just stay to this side of the break in the road and you’ll be okay.”

  “Tell me why.” Jeremy was adamant.

  “Do you really think you want to know?” Grady’s blue eyes were afire. “Before you answer, realize that with this knowledge comes great responsibility. By knowing more you must do more.”

  “Sure, why not?” replied Jeremy flippantly.

  “Alright, then, if you insist. You see, a bunch of kids died out there a while back – burned to death by the woods witch. People will say she died along with them, but I know better. She still comes around, even after all this time. I know, cause I’ve seen her, and I’m telling you right now, she ain’t someone you want to mess around with.”

  “Woods witch, huh?” Jeremy didn’t remember ever hearing that particular term yet something about all this rang familiar.

  “The witch burned her friends alive, and she’s killed other folks who’ve ventured in. You spend much time in there, she’ll get you too. Hers is an evil soul.”

  Jeremy racked his brain, trying to remember a previous reference to a fire, people burned alive… and hippies – something about hippies.

  “Listen to me good, Jeremy,” continued Grady. “Reefers Woods holds the source of certain objects of desire, both good and evil.”

  It took him a moment to dredge it up but Jeremy remembered having been told a ghost story soon after he moved to Destiny two years ago. “Hippie queen,” he said out loud and laughed as it came to him. “You scoundrel. You really had me going there for a second.”

  Grady glared at him from his end of the table.

  “Let me guess how it ends.” Jeremy recounted the tail end of the ghost story as it had been told to him: “The hippie queen – that is, the woods witch – still haunts Reefers Woods to this very day, and sometimes, on dark, moonless nights, her flaming ghost appears, hoping to find victims to kill and souls t
o steal.” Jeremy snickered. “Like that silly old ghost story is going to scare me off.”

  Without breaking eye contact, Grady very deliberately wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” he said. “You go in those woods and you could lose things you don’t even know you have.”

  “On account of the woods witch?” asked Jeremy contemptuously. “I’m a scientist, Grady. I don’t believe in witches.”

  “Then I suppose it wouldn’t do no good if I told you about the nymphs and devil dogs either?”

  Jeremy had had enough of this ridiculous conversation. He downed the rest of the odd-tasting fruit juice and pushed away from the table. “That really hit the spot,” he said politely, “but I really should be going now.”

  Grady followed him out the door onto the old tongue-and-groove front porch. Just when Jeremy thought he might get away clean, Grady’s voice rattled out from behind.

  “I can see that you have a mind not to listen.”

  Jeremy stopped and turned around. “I’m listening,” he mumbled impatiently.

  After a brief stare-down, Grady asked, “If your eyes could be opened to truths and realities you never knew existed, would you want to see?”

  As Jeremy fidgeted at the ambiguity and the implied assumptions of the question, he realized something: Grady’s speech patterns were not consistent. Sometimes he spoke more like the country bumpkin Jeremy had at first assumed him to be, but at other times, including the words with which he posed the pending question, Grady communicated in a more elegant fashion.

  “Uh, huh,” Jeremy muttered affirmatively, hoping that this would somehow mollify his ranting host. He had passed the point of being able to pretend that this was a normal interaction between sane human beings.

  “Well?” Grady asked expectantly.

  By now Jeremy had backed down the steps, making for his car which was only a few paces away. “I’m not sure what you are asking,” he replied.

  Grady held his position on the porch. “Why do you think our paths crossed, Jeremy? Don’t you know everything happens for a reason?”

  Jeremy stopped when he reached his getaway car, turned, and forced himself to meet Grady’s forbidding gaze. “Our paths crossed because we happened to be on the same road at the same time.”

  “But why did you stop?” asked Grady. “And why did my truck break down then and there?”

  “I don’t know. It just happened, that’s all – a coincidence.”

  “You’re wrong, Jeremy. Nobody else stopped to help.”

  “Whatever you say, Grady.” It wasn’t worth the effort to argue.

  “Just remember, Jeremy – and this is very important – there are no coincidences.”

  “Right, right – no coincidences.” Jeremy no longer tried to conceal his patronizing tone.

  “And don’t tell anybody about our little talk,” Grady warned, “or anything else about me either. And whatever you do, don’t tell nobody about my blue eyes.”

  “All right,” Jeremy mumbled as he swung his leg into the driver’s side.

  Before Jeremy closed the door, the ranting man squeezed in one last admonition: “Otherwise, people could get hurt.”

  As Jeremy turned the car around in the driveway, he could not peel his eyes from Grady, who stood motionless on the porch, his arms straight by his side as if wrapped in duct tape. Jeremy watched in the rear view mirror through the dust cloud kicked up by his hasty departure, waiting – indeed wishing, for Grady to break rank and move.

  But he didn’t. Grady did not wave, and he did not take a seat in the old-timey rocking chair on the porch. He didn’t turn and go back inside to clear away the dishes from their meal and he didn’t go about the business of getting his broken-down truck fixed. He didn’t raise a hand to cover a giggle at the tall tales he had passed off as truth to an unsuspecting Good Samaritan. He just stood there in his apparent rigor mortis and watched Jeremy drive away.

  People could get hurt. Grady’s last words, obviously a threat, echoed ominously in Jeremy’s head. On first impression, Grady seemed to be an uncomplicated man with simple thoughts. In one short hour he had dispelled that notion. It occurred to Jeremy that sometimes the more you know, the less you understand, especially when it comes to the inner workings of a human being, especially one who is delusional.

  It wasn’t until Jeremy came upon the broken-down truck that he remembered why he had agreed to kill time at Grady’s house in the first place – he had promised to give him a ride back to his vehicle. It didn’t matter, however. Jeremy had no intention of going back.

  *****

  On the drive back to town, Jeremy managed to dredge up all his recollections related to the hippie queen ghost story. It had been two years ago in the autumn of 2006, soon after he first moved into the dormitory, when some of his hall-mates had informed him of a time-honored tradition at the University: the retelling of the hippie queen ghost story to first-time students.

  Jeremy remembered how they gathered in a circle with beers cracked and candles lit. The ghost story mirrored Grady’s version, beginning with hippies burned alive by their evil leader, the hippie queen, and ending with her flaming ghost still roaming the surrounding woods, waiting to devour anyone who dared venture in. The one part Jeremy recalled from the initial telling that Grady failed to mention concerned a monument, an angel sculpture that had been mysteriously placed over the hippie queen’s grave soon after her burial.

  With a smile, Jeremy remembered how he and his drinking buddies had piled into a car for an ill-advised ride, ostensibly to track down the reputed grave. The trip, however, had been cut short after one of his friends threw up in the rear seat of the car, and they never made it to any grave. At the time, he had assumed the story to be purely fictional, nothing more than a typical round-the-campfire ghost story. But, after hearing it twice now, Jeremy wondered if parts of it could be true. Grady certainly seemed to believe.

  At home, Jeremy conducted an internet search, starting with Reefers Woods and hippie queen and woods witch, but no relevant links came up. After ten minutes of fruitless search, he stumbled across searchable archives from the local newspaper going back 50 years. He didn’t know if this was common practice for newspapers in the internet age, but it certainly fit his current need. In no time he found several articles devoted to the 1969 fire that took the lives of seven young people. Although the word commune was never used, it did say that they had been living illegally in a rudimentary structure deep in the heart of the Sticks River National Forest. Another article revealed the names of the victims and their hometowns. One girl’s body went unclaimed and was, it said, laid to rest in a local cemetery. Her name was Claire Wales and though the newspaper articles never referred to her as such, Jeremy knew that he had uncovered the identity of the elusive hippie queen.

  Jeremy spent the better part of the next two hours canvassing the archives for information on the fire, Sticks River National Forest and Claire Wales. All relevant articles he printed out and saved in a folder. Though he could not find many particulars, he learned that Claire’s main legacy – besides the ghost story inspired by her death – was her paintings, which were apparently of some artistic worth.

  Using the newspaper archives as a primary source, Jeremy verified more of what Grady had told him. Grady was correct in saying that there had been others who had since lost their lives in Reefers Woods. One year after the commune fire, a man committed suicide by gunshot while sitting in his car at Sticks River Landing. Also, around the same time, a biologist from the University went missing in the same area and was never heard from again.

  Jeremy had a curious streak, and all these details he uncovered about the hippie queen, the fire, and Reefers Woods were plenty to entice his inquisitiveness. He wanted to investigate further the details of the ghost story inspired by Claire, specifically, the part about the stone angels that supposedly guarded her grave. The first step in that process would be to visit the grave to verify
the existence of the monument, but none of the articles revealed the location or the name of the cemetery where the hippie queen was buried.

  Regardless of Grady’s warnings and all his other mumbo-jumbo, wild horses couldn’t keep Jeremy on this side of the Keep Out sign at the break in the road. In that vein, the seed of a plan germinated in his mind. Perhaps he could arrange some sort of overnight stay in Reefers Woods, just to prove Grady wrong – all witches, nymphs and devil dogs be damned.

  *****

  Reefers Woods – July, 1969

  (Thirty-nine years ago)

  Lotosland

  When Claire began her graduate school stint in the fall of 1967, never in her wildest dreams would she have guessed that two years later she would found a commune in the middle of the Sticks River National Forest.

  Her introduction to the area had come while she was still a student. Claire would get up before dawn and drive out Sticks River Road until she reached the old cemetery road turnoff. Coaxing her old jalopy over the three-mile-long dirt strip was arduous under the best of conditions. The road, which was little more than a narrow pair of ruts to begin with, became two mud-filled trenches after a rain. On the days that she dared drive all the way in, she parked her car at the road’s end in the shade of a grove of cypress trees at the edge of the cemetery. Typically, she would tromp through the woods all day, gathering plant samples for her research project, and hike back to her car before dark.

  Claire rapidly tired of this exhausting routine and set up a camp site down by the river. Once she overcame her fear of spending nights alone in the woods, her love grew for the otherworldly serenity of the forest. When she discovered a long-abandoned homestead in another part of the woods, she moved her base camp next to it. After a few repairs, she was able to use the covered front porch as a storage area for her ever-increasing cache of supplies and as a shelter from the summertime thunderstorms. Soon she began fixing up other parts of the house. That marked the beginning of the commune that would come to be known as Lotosland in the stretch of woods that would come to be known as Reefers Woods.