Blood in the Woods

by J. P. Willie

  “Well, I’m not. I’m happy, you know why?” I gave her my best sarcasm.

  Angela’s face was gloomy and I could tell she was hurting too, but I didn’t care; I really wanted to say something hurtful just so I could feel better.

  “Why, Jody?” Angela was emotionless.

  “Because now, I can finally ask out all the other girls who’ve been dying to go out with me. And to be honest, you’re quite boring and I’m glad it’s over. Maybe the next girl will let me feel her tits.” I turned and walked away.

  I looked back once after I got halfway down the hallway and saw Krystle hugging Angela. Angela was crying and I pretended I felt better, but it was a lie; I was heartbroken.

  Less than a week later, I began dating a hotheaded redhead named Laura who was very attractive, but most importantly, she lived in Independence – a small town that bordered Tickfaw. To me, that meant one thing – her parents knew nothing about me. I didn’t think Jack and my reputations had traveled that far, but then again, I could’ve been wrong. Thank God I was right, because I really hit it off with Laura, and I liked her a lot. I wasn’t really over Angela yet, but Momma told me there were too many other fish in the sea, and that I shouldn’t tie myself down to one young lady at such a tender age. I never actually told Laura that I was moving away anyway, but she ended up finding out by word of mouth at school.

  I wanted to just slip out of town unnoticed and say goodbye to the only person who really mattered: Jack.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BEGINNING OF THE END: 1993

  The Louisiana heat swept quickly across the state, coming around the corner faster than an outbreak of chicken pox in a kindergarten class. And before I knew it, it was hot as hell again and there was a little less than a month left in the school year.

  My time here was coming to an end and to make things worse, Laura asked me to the end of the year dance. Yes, she asked me – who said chivalry isn’t dead? I didn’t want to go, though, because I knew I couldn’t dance. To be honest, I still can’t dance – all I do is gyrate wildly behind girls and dry hump their asses, and that’s about it.

  I knew Jack wouldn’t want to go either, because dances were never really our thing. I told Momma I didn’t want to go – but she told me I was going whether I liked it or not. The dance was in two weeks, and she suggested that I start watching MTV to learn some moves; she said if I didn’t, I’d look like a stiff out on the dance floor.

  So I took Momma’s advice and watched the damn music videos. I watched one by Ace of Base, studying them as they danced around, pop-locking and two-stepping all over the place, wearing their trademark loose denim jeans and ADIDAS sneakers. I tried swaying from side to side like the girls, but it really wasn’t going so hot; I was fucked and I knew it. But, that didn’t stop me from trying to learn at least something.

  I practiced for the next two weeks – everything from the Running Man to the Roger Rabbit and, believe it or not, I eventually got them both down pretty good. I went out into the living room to show Momma my new moves, and she gave me kudos for having learned them so quickly; I was stoked and ran out of our trailer to go show Jack.

  Once I showed Jack my new dance moves, which I proudly preformed out on Rhine Road, he scratched his head and looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

  “So that’s what that thumping sound was. I heard it every time I came over to your damned house – I thought it was your Mom chasing you through the trailer with the belt again.”

  “Nope, it was just me practicing my moves,” I confessed.

  “You’re really serious about this dance shit, huh?” Jack asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as I walked over to my bike. “Maybe it’s because it’s my last dance here, or maybe because I didn’t want to look like a retard around Laura.”

  “Makes some sense, I suppose. I’m not even going to dance when I go.”

  “You’re going?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah. You didn’t think I was going to stay home and play with myself while you go to the dance and hang out with all the hot girls, did ya?”

  “I was hoping you were going to come,” I told him.

  “I was thinking though, since you’re about to move and this is the only dance we’ve ever been to at Nelson together, maybe we can ride our bikes to the dance – no kids have ever done that before; we can go out in style. What do you think?”

  “Are you crazy? Momma and Mrs. Renee will never let that shit fly. The school is seven miles away, they bitch when they find out we go two streets over.”

  “It can’t hurt to ask,” Jack said. “Maybe they’ll let us do it. We’ll play the Jody’s about to move card on them, and see how it goes.”

  “Good thinking – let’s ask them.”

  Renee said there was no way in hell it was going to happen but, to our surprise, Momma said she didn’t mind. Renee ended up recanting her statement which led to her agreement, and I was thrilled about it; it’s not every day a twelve-year-old kid gets to ride his bike to the end of the year dance; in a small town like Hammond, we’d be seen as total legends. Jack would be on the handle bars and I would arrive sweating and breathing heavily after hauling his rear all the way to the school – it was going to be epic.

  Not too long after our request for the ride of our lives, people started showing up at the trailer, since it was for sale. Even for being as ugly as it was, our home sold quickly, ending up with a young, newlywed couple out of Hammond. Shortly after that, Momma, Hunter and I began moving all our belongings over to Memaw’s house; it didn’t take us all that long, since we didn’t own all that much stuff. Plus, some of the beds stayed in the trailer for the young couple to keep; Memaw said they needed them more than we did, and that she was going to buy Hunter and I brand new sets once we moved in to our new house.

  When we finally got settled in at Memaw’s, I decided I wanted to stay in Uncle Jerry’s old bedroom, which was the room next to the front door. Momma and Hunter took the guest bedroom, but most nights Hunter ended up sleeping with me anyway. Memaw stayed put in her room most of the time, reading and catalog shopping; and that’s how it was in Memaw’s house – everyone just doing their own thing.

  ***

  One night, I went to the kitchen to get me something to drink, and when I opened the refrigerator door the light from inside lit up the room like a lantern in a cave, casting small shadows throughout the room. When I looked to my left, Memaw was sitting at the kitchen table. Her eyes were pink and her nose was runny. She tried wiping her eyes, but I knew she was crying.

  “What are you doing up, Memaw?” I asked her.

  “Nothing, sweetie. I just can’t sleep.”

  “Yeah. Me either,” I said.

  I pulled a chair up next to her, sat down, cracked open the Coke I had taken from the fridge and gulped it down my dry throat.

  “It’s just hard with your Pepaw being gone. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since he died,” Memaw told me, wiping the shiny tears from under her eyes.

  “I know. I miss him too,” I sympathized.

  There was a short moment of silence, – so quiet, I heard the crickets chirping outside.

  “You remember when Pepaw brought you home that electric drum set?” Memaw broke the silence.

  “Yeah. I still play it.” I cracked a small grin. “I remember he taught me how to hold the sticks underhand like a jazz drummer – but I wanted to hold them overhand, like a rock and roll drummer.”

  “Pepaw loved jazz.” Memaw sported a small smile, too. “Anyways, you need to get back to bed. Don’t you have school in the morning?”

  “Yeah, but we’re not doing anything. It’s the end of the year, and all we do is sit around and stare at each other.”

  “Oh. Well that doesn’t sound too educational,” Memaw said.

  “I know, but what’s there to teach?” I asked.

  “I’m sure there’s something them teac
hers could be teaching ya’ll.” Memaw said. She stood up and went over to the refrigerator.

  When she opened the door, the cold, crisp light spread throughout the kitchen again, giving everything a golden glow, and Memaw’s skin went from a translucent white to yellow mustard, and the stove shone like gold, as if touched by King Midas himself.

  I happened to glance over to the backdoor window that Pepaw had installed himself, and I caught sight of a shadowy figure. I jolted back, sending my chair dragging across the floor, and spilling my Coke in the process. Memaw let out a shriek and looked over at me with one hand over her heart and the other on the closed refrigerator door.

  “What is it, Jody?” Memaw was clearly startled.

  “Nothing – nothing,” I said, bending down to pick up my Coke. “I just thought I saw something in the window,” I confessed, bringing the half-empty soda can back up to the table.

  I took one more glimpse back at the window, and whatever had been there before was gone. I hurried over to get the paper towels out of the pantry to clean up the mess I’d made, my heart beating a million miles a minute. And by the time I had ripped the plastic wrapping off and unraveled the towels, Memaw was back in her chair at the kitchen table with her eyes fixed on the door.

  “What did you see, Jody?” There was no emotion in her voice.

  “I don’t know. It was probably my eyes just playing tricks on me, it’s late and I’m tired,” I told her, trying hard to cover up the fact that I was still shaken up.

  Truth was, I didn’t know what I had seen – it had all happened so fast. There were only two logical possibilities: it was either the figment of my imagination, or one of them.

  “I saw something on the back porch, three days before Pepaw died,” Memaw confessed, and her words chilled me to the core. “It was around five in the afternoon, and I saw a shadowy figure standing on the back porch. I even called out, but it didn’t move or reply. At first, I thought it was your uncle, ‘cause I was expecting him around five-thirty; but it wasn’t him. I felt weird, and a cold chill rushed through my body, and it felt to me as if I was staring Death right in the face.”

  I tried swallowing as Memaw regaled me with her terrifying experience, but I just couldn’t; my throat was bone-dry once again. Eventually, I forced myself to speak.

  “You don’t think you saw Death standing on the back porch, do you, Memaw?” I asked her, my voice quiet.

  “It was either Death, or a demon of sorts, that’s the only thing I could compare it to. Who really knows what either looks like?” Memaw shook her head. “But one thing’s for sure, whatever that thing was, it wasn’t friendly.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “I felt it in the air. Like something just wasn’t right.”

  “What happened then?”

  “It went away, eventually. I turned around to pick up the phone to call Uncle Jerry, and when I turned back, the shadow thing was gone.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Memaw?” I asked her. I bent over with the paper towels to clean up the spill.

  “I don’t know, Jody,” Memaw said. She looked down at her feet, stared at them briefly, and then rose up from the table. “Go ahead and go to bed, sweetie; I’ll clean the rest of that up for you. You need your rest.”

  “Thank you.” I handed her the paper towels.

  Before I walked out of the kitchen, I turned back and gave Memaw a small kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Memaw.”

  “I love you too.”

  I said no more and left the kitchen, not even thinking about looking back at that door.

  That night, I stayed awake for hours with my covers pulled up to my nose, thinking about what Memaw had told me and what I had seen at the door, it was all so scary to me. What creeped me out the most was that both of us had seen something so similar, and in the same spot, but at different times. I tossed and turned the rest of the night, hoping that whatever I saw was something human, and not spiritual; you can kill a man, but I wasn’t sure on how to take on Death or a demon, and for the first time in years, I was scared about something other than the Devil worshippers.

  ***

  It was the day before the dance, and I remember it being hot as hell. The love bugs were everywhere – flying around and being the nuisances that they were every year. Jack and I just swatted the pesky bugs away from our faces, or caught the ones that just wouldn’t go away and squished them.

  Jack had heard through the school grapevine that there was a creek by Rhine Road, not too far away, up through the woods toward Albany. It sounded like a good idea to go try to find it since we were tired of jumping in ditches to cool off, so we decided to embark on a new adventure.

  “Where is this creek supposed to be at?” I asked him as we made our way toward the bend in Rhine Road. Jack was, as usual, riding comfortably on my handlebars.

  “When we get to the bend up here, we have to ditch the bike and head left through the woods,” Jack told me. “It’s a bit of a hike, so I hope you’re up for it.”

  “I’m always up for anything, you know that.”

  “Good. Now hurry up – it’s hot as balls out here.”

  “Well your highness,” I replied, “why don’t you get your ass off the handlebars and let me ride up there for a change.”

  “Aw, come on, Jody. We’re almost there.”

  “Whatever,” I said, “but you’re riding me back when we get done swimming.”

  “Deal,” Jack said.

  We got to the bend in Rhine Road where it turned right and swept down toward Angela’s house. There, we stopped. To the left was the old, beaten-down driveway that I had seen with Justin that fateful day.

  “I wonder what’s down that driveway,” I pointed towards it.

  “I dunno,” Jack shrugged his shoulders.

  “Didn’t you say we go left at the bend?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, but I don’t remember anything about a driveway. The kid did say we had to go through the woods, though.” Jack pointed over at the woods across the street.

  “Who the hell told you where this creek was at?”

  “I can’t remember his name.” Jack scratched his head. “It’s that kid that used to get off the bus right before Angela.”

  “You mean Jacob McKenny?” I really hoped that wasn’t the guy.

  “Yeah.” Jack snapped his fingers like he just solved a math problem. “That’s the guy.”

  “You know he doesn’t like us,” I was blunt.

  “Really? Why?”

  “Oh gee, I don’t know, Jack, maybe because I punched him in the back of the head one day when he was getting off the bus.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember that,” Jack said. He placed his hand under his chin as if deep in thought. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “He told me about this place before you rocked his noggin.”

  “Oh. Well then, that makes everything better, then.” I played the smartass.

  “I think he was telling the truth; he said his Dad has taken him fishing back there a couple of times. But I can’t remember how he said to get there. I know it’s kinda in that direction,” Jack said, his finger fully extended to the left, “but which way do you want to go?”

  “Let’s see.” I uncrossed my arms and stretched out my right. “Eeny, meeny, miney, moe.”

  “Aw, come on with that shit, Jody,” Jack laughed a little, “which way?”

  “Let’s go through the woods,” I decided.

  “Woods it is, then,” Jack concurred, and we set off.

  I stashed my bike in a set of bushes about thirty feet into the wood line. The smell of sap and pine needles was overwhelming in the oppressive heat and we were literally pouring with sweat. I soon heard the buzzing sound of the countless mosquitoes as they discovered we were in their territory, and they quickly launched their hungry assault upon our bloodstreams. Jack and I began to run, frantically swatting and slapping our skin along the way.

  Eventually, t
he onslaught from the mosquitoes died down and we were able to slow down. “I hate those damned things,” Jack grumbled, he had a pissed-off look on his face.

  “No shit. Why do our parents even pay the bug man to drive up and down the street spraying that mist stuff into the air? It doesn’t kill ‘em, so why waste the money?”

  “Good point,” Jack agreed. “At least they’re gone now.”

  “Yeah, for now,” I stated the inevitable; the damn things always come back.

  We pressed further into the woods, unclear at some points if we were even headed in the right direction, but we kept on going anyway. The trees did their best at blocking out the sun, but were not winning the fight, and streams of sunlight managed to escape through the leaves and down into the woods; and it was beautiful, as if we were walking through a painting. White and blue flowers were scattered all over the soft ground, and we’d run into small piles of vivid green moss as we made our way through the woods.

  After walking about another five minutes, the woods suddenly became thicker; briar patches and clusters of poison ivy appeared like unwanted guests at a dinner party. I tried my hardest to squeeze through the briars without being cut, and to my surprise, I did manage to come out on the other side unscathed. Jack, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. I could hear him let loose some choice cusswords every now and again as the vicious thorns pierced almost every part of his body. I just hoped that my blood brother could make it through without getting that dreaded double dose of pain – poison ivy inside a deep cut; I’d had that once before, and it wasn’t a fun time. As soon as we made it through the thickest part of the woods, Jack and I stopped in our tracks to re-orient ourselves.

  “Shhh – you hear that?” I asked him.

  “What?” Jack responded.

  “Sounds like running water to me.”

  We stood a moment, acclimating our ears to the eerie silence. A handful of birds were chirping, but once we blocked those out, we heard the soothing sound of running water.

  “We’re here!” Jack yelled, and took off like a bullet.

  “Wait for me!” I called out, but Jack ran at full pelt, yelling like a crazy person.