Okay, he thought. Sam was on the bridge the whole fucking time. He had been knocked out when he fell and he had imagined the rest. Right?
He didn't think so. After all, they had just been chased by the lunatic.
“Can you take us to that tree?”
“Of course. I have to.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“He's not well,” John said. “The bleeding hasn't stopped, and he's burning up.”
Patrick and Sam knelt next to Dean.
“Dean?” Patrick said. “We can't stop moving. That thing could be headed in our direction. And we still have to find Tim.”
“I know that.”
“Can you walk?”
“I don't know. Maybe.”
“Let me help you up.”
The insects of the night cheered Dean on loudly as Patrick and John helped him back to his feet. Dean whimpered. “I sliced it up pretty damn good, didn't I?”
He glanced at Dean’s blood-soaked socks. “Yeah, buddy. You did. But it should be okay.”
“Easy for you to say.”
They moved at a slow pace, but Dean didn't complain once, except for the occasional hiss of air through his teeth.
Sam directed them.
John said, “Tell me again where we're going?”
“I honestly don't know,” Patrick said. “A tree with a noose, I guess.”
“And why the fuck are we doing that?”
“I don't know,” he admitted. “I guess I just thought that it might have a path leading to it that we could follow out of here or something.”
“If it even exists.”
“It does,” Sam said.
Dean was using a makeshift crutch to help him walk. John had found a newly-fallen branch on the ground which was shaped closely enough to work, and he had accepted it graciously.
What time is it? he wondered. It was impossible to see the sky through all the trees, but even if he had been able to, he wouldn't have had a clue how to tell time by the moon and stars. It had to be at least three in the morning.
“I think this is what my cousin is always talking about when he warns me to stay away from white people,” Dean said. “We got ourselves into some real white people trouble this time.”
Everyone laughed.
“I'm sorry,” Patrick said. “Really, I am.”
“It's not your fault,We all wanted to go on this trip.”
“I wonder if our parents have figured it out yet?” John said, thinking of Ronnie and his rage. “You know, that we're missing.”
He let out a short bark of a laugh. “I doubt it. The fucked-up thing is that we planned this so well, they won't be looking for us for a few days.”
They walked on for another half-hour, taking short breaks when they absolutely had to. Dean was getting very anxious. “Are we close?” he asked Sam.
“Yes,” Sam said. “Very.”
“We're going to have to stop when we get there,” said Dean. “I can't do this anymore. I feel like I'm dying. So dizzy.”
“It's right up here,” Sam said. “Over this hill.”
Coming over the hill, Patrick could see that the area was slightly open. The moonlight lit the small patch of land and, in the middle of the clearing, there was a tree.
The Hanging Tree.
Dean froze. “I… I've… I've seen this. I didn't think we'd actually find anything, but I've seen this.”
“What do you mean, you've seen this?” he asked.
“In my dream. I told you… with the girls. And the snakes. This is bad. We need to leave.”
“We know we need to leave,” John said. “We're trying to leave. We're also trying to find our friend.”
“He's gone,” Dean said, his chest hitching. “I'm sorry, but he's gone. We need to go. Now.”
“You need to rest before you fucking die,” Patrick said. “Just sit down for a while. I've got to piss. Then we can talk.”
He walked away a few yards and began peeing on a log when he heard a rattling noise.
“D'you guys hear that?” he called. Finishing, he zipped his shorts and turned to join the group when he heard the noise again. It seemed to be coming from the log.
“Patrick, get away from there!” Dean screamed.
He turned around and looked at the log. A swarm of pissed-off snakes, wet with urine, raced towards him. Screaming in terror, he bolted in the opposite direction. One of the snakes lunged at him. Its fangs sank into the fabric of his shorts, just missing his skin.
John had taken off his shirt and was clicking the lighter and cursing, “Light, you motherfucker!” Finally, the lighter produced a flame, and John's shirt—dry by now, had been for an hour or more—caught fire. As Patrick raced past him, John waved the flaming end of his shirt. The snake leading the chase struck at the flame but quickly retreated after feeling the heat on its face.
Soon, all the serpents had disappeared.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Carefully, the group gathered enough wood and leaves to start a small fire, mostly for the light it would provide, but also because it would keep away most predators. Although it was very warm outside, and they were huddled around the flames, they still shivered.
“Snakes don't chase people,” Dean said.
Patrick hadn't spoken much since the incident. He felt stupid, really. There had to be an old saying somewhere about pissing on a snake nest and how you shouldn't do it. He felt the back of his shorts where the snake had nearly bit him. There were two punctures in the material. His blood turned to ice.
“I'm telling you,” Dean said. “This place is pure evil. We could be sitting on top of a portal to Hell or something.”
Sam spoke up. “That tree is where they hanged him. He told me. The village people made him this way.”
“That's horseshit,” John said. “I don't believe he told you anything.”
“It's not horseshit,” Dean said. “I read about this online. There was a man. I think he was a goat farmer or something. He got chased out of his home because he was black, and the locals didn't like him. They hanged him, and then they found his house and killed his family.”
“So, we're believing he's a ghost then?” Patrick asked. “A demon?”
The fire was causing their shadows to dance on the trees around them. The only sound was the crackling of the fire.
“Whatever he is,” Dean said. “We've seen him. You can't deny that. He chased us.”
“I'm so hungry,” Sam said, in his small voice.
“I think we all are,” Patrick responded.
“There's something else,” Dean continued. “I read that the locals know about this noose hanging here. They say that, no matter how many times it gets taken down, it's back again the next day.”
John stood up. “Let's pull the fucker down then. At this point, I'm ready to sit here and watch it. Don't have much else to do, do I?”
Patrick thought about what John said. He thought about what Sam had said. The Goatman had supposedly wanted Sam to take the rest of them to this place. But why hadn't the Goatman hurt Sam? He’d had every opportunity.
“What if he really is a ghost?” Patrick said.
John sighed loudly.
“I'm serious,” he continued. “If he told Sam to take us here, and this is where he was hanged, maybe we're supposed to do something. You know, to set his spirit free or something.”
“Like what?”
He thought for a moment. But it was Sam who spoke up. “Let's burn the noose down,” he said.
Patrick said, “Let's burn the whole goddamned tree down.”
Sam approached the tree first. It was a massive old oak tree with hollow places all throughout the trunk. Apprehensive, he placed his hands on the wood. “Are you sure about this?” he asked his brother.
“Why not?”
Sam stepped back from the tree. “I don't know,” he said. “I just have a strange feeling.”
“Everything out here gives me a strange feeling,” John said
. “I'm for it. Thing gives me the creeps. Dean?”
Dean was sitting on the ground, nursing his leg. “I was thinking. Maybe the fire will act as a beacon. For Tim.”
Patrick hadn't thought about that. What if the blaze attracts something or someone else?
They could move on if that happened, he figured. They could get attacked here with or without a fire, anyways.
“I say we do it,” he said. “I don't know why, but I think we should.”
“Better get to burning, then,” Dean said.
Patrick nodded to John. “You have the lighter. Let's do this.”
John inspected the tree. There was a good-sized pile of leaves around the base. That would be plenty to get it going, he thought. But, when he approached the tree, he decided to light the noose on fire first. Clicking the small lighter, he brought the flame to the bottom of the rope and held it underneath it.
The lighter went out.
John clicked the lighter again and held it to the rope.
The lighter went out again.
“What the hell?” he said, frustrated.
John tried to light the rope three more times, and each time, the flame extinguished on its own.
“Try lighting the leaves around the base,” Patrick said.
John lit a small pile of leaves around the base of the tree with no problem. The flames jumped around quickly on the dry tinder. Sam and Patrick helped him fan the flames, and within a few minutes, the bark on the tree had caught fire.
John went around the base of the tree, lighting the dry leaves and even catching the dead vines that were wrapped around the base of the tree on fire. It was a slow process, but in a matter of minutes, the entire base of the tree was crawling in flames. Dean laughed and cheered. “Smokey the Bear is going to be pissed,” he said.
“Only you would think that joke is funny,” Patrick said in his best cartoon bear voice.
“Patrick,” Sam said. “Who is that?”
Sam pointed. There was a young girl standing on the other side of the tree, staring at them through the flames.
“Hello?” Patrick called.
The girl stood there, staring. She had the same entranced look Sam had when he had found him on the bridge.
“Hey,” Sam said. “It's okay, you can come here.”
John backed up a few steps until he was close to Dean.
The girl started edging her way around the blaze.
“It's okay,” Patrick said. “Are you lost?”
The girl looked to be about nine or ten. She wore a tattered old sundress the color of a wilting red rose.
“What's your name?”
“I'm Luna.” She stood in front of them, arms at her sides.
“Are you lost?” he repeated.
“No.”
Sam looked at him apprehensively.
“Okay,” Patrick said. “Where did you come from?”
“My house.” The girl pointed in the direction she had come from. “It's just over there. Are you lost?”
He felt sick. The girl's blank expression made him uneasy.
“Yes,” Sam said. “We're lost. Do you have a phone?”
“Why are you burning the tree?”
The boys were silent.
“Why?” the girl asked again.
“We're trying to help someone,” Sam said.
“You need to come with me now.”
“Are you going to take us to a phone?” Patrick said.
“Was there another one of you?” The girl asked.
“Yes! Have you seen him?”
“Come with me,” the girl said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It still hasn't been explained to me how a teenage boy from another state could do my job better than myself. I don't know if I believe in anything even remotely supernatural, but I do feel like that's my stubborn side showing. If you knew what I knew, you'd call me an ignorant bastard.
I feel like these talk show folks expect me to say something deeply profound about life and death. They figure this old man has seen enough to have an opinion about the mysteries of life. Well, I can tell you this: everything doesn't happen for a reason. If that flies in the face of all you've been told, well, I apologize for that, but I wouldn't be doing you any favors by lyin' to you.
Sometimes—a lot of times—there is absolutely no rhyme nor reason to a situation. You hear about babies being born with incurable diseases, damned from conception, and there's always some loon to say how it's all God's plan.
God doesn’t have a plan for you.
Just ask them boys I found in the woods twelve years ago.
Elmer Davis shot up in his hospital bed and gasped for air. Tiny plastic tubes protruded from his nose, his arms, his crotch.
Uncomfortable was the understatement of the century.
His vision was blurry and he felt nauseous. Slowly, his sight began to return, and Elmer saw his IV drip. Moving on to the table on the far side of the room, he saw flowers, food, and cards.
When he turned his head to the other side of the room, he gasped. There was an old man sitting in a chair, watching him.
Elmer closed his eyes, opened them, blinked, and the man was still sitting there. Staring.
“Who are you?”
The old man straightened his back until it made a loud cracking sound, sighed, and sat forward in his chair. “My name isn't important.”
Elmer pulled the breathing tubes out of his nose and small drops of blood leaked out, staining the hospital sheets.
“That's normal,” the old man said.
“What is going on?”
“You tried to warn the boys, yes?”
Elmer's eyes narrowed. He was trying to piece together the moments that had led to his arrival in this hospital bed. “What boys?” he said. But he knew.
The old man smiled. “I know it's probably not the most ideal situation for you. I understand, trust me when I say that. But you are really their only hope.”
“What can I do?”
“You'll know,” said the old man. “And don't beat yourself up if you can't fix it. You can't fix everything all the time. But you do need to go. Now.”
The lights in the hospital went out abruptly, and there were screams coming from all directions down the hall. Elmer was shaking and weak. He began pulling all the tubes and wires off—and out of—his body, wincing and gasping in pain.
A few moments later, the power returned, but the lights kept flickering. The weather outside was ramping up to a violent storm, the winds howling and thunder booming. Outside his room, Elmer could see nurses rushing past, yelling to each other. Elmer's nose was bleeding even harder now.
Elmer looked to the chair where the old man had sat. The old man was gone.
There was a pile of clothes at the end of the hospital bed. A pair of blue jeans, a Linkin Park T-shirt, a hat, and a pair of Converse shoes. Hurriedly, Elmer put the clothes on and stumbled into the hall.
The panic had not died down, and Elmer could hear nurses shouting about the generator. Elmer heard the word tornado a few times, and a woman was standing down the hall screaming about her husband's blood pressure pills.
Quickly, he worked his way down the hall, looking for the staircase. A couple of nurses glanced at him like they recognized him, but they kept going in the other direction, preoccupied with the confusion. Soon, Elmer found the stairwell and descended the staircase.
Reaching the ground floor of the hospital, Elmer saw his mother in the café, sitting alone and eating a sandwich. He wanted to walk in there, to tell her he was okay, but he couldn't. He had something to do.
In the upper deck of the parking lot, Elmer stood, scanning the vehicles. His Jeep was probably still at the school, he figured. He would need to find his mom's Honda. The rain was coming down in sheets and lightning raced across the sky. A shout came from behind him. One of the nurses.
“Hey! Stop! You aren't fit to leave!”
Without turning around, he broke into a
run down the center of the parking lot.
“Where the hell is security?” he heard the charge nurse say in frustration.
He was getting soaked. Thunder shook the parking deck, and several of the car alarms began screaming. Water ran in small rivers to the drains in the corners of the parking deck, but Elmer's shoes had already become soaked through.
Where is the damn car?
A bolt of lightning struck a tree a quarter-mile away, and the light illuminated the entire area for a moment. Elmer saw the Honda, a red Civic, one row over. Security had made it outside and was calling after him. Elmer's heart was racing.
He reached the car and began fumbling underneath the frame for the magnetic hide-a-key. His fingers closed around the small box, and he pulled it free. His hands shaking, he looked up and saw a guard with a flashlight three vehicles away. The box slipped out of his fingers and fell to the ground, the river of water carrying it away.
“Shit!” Elmer yelled. He was sure they would catch him and haul him back to his hospital bed. He couldn't let that happen.
In a panic, he fished around in the dark for the box, nabbing it just before it could swirl down the storm drain.
“Stop, kid! What do you think you're doing?”
Elmer pulled the key out of the box and let the box drop to the ground. He unlocked the car, and jumped in the driver's seat, closing and locking the door just before the guard could grab him.
The guard tapped on the window.
“You need to think about what you’re doing!” he shouted.
Elmer started the car and turned on the headlights.
The guard stood back. He pulled out his radio and shouted something into it.
Backing the car out of the spot, Elmer left the hospital parking garage.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The girl from the woods assured the boys that her house wasn't far. She didn't say much else. Patrick and John helped Dean walk, since his leg seemed to be getting worse rather than better.
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