The Woods: The Complete Novel (The Woods Series)
Page 6
He started thinking about everything that happened over the last couple days and tried to put the pieces together. He wasn't sure about the existence of Bigfoot or the Native American guides' claims of supernatural powers, but one thing that did stick with him was the ability to imitate any bird. James thought about how his dad said the Seeahtik would kill their game with hypnosis, and the noises he was hearing from inside the woods. He knew from school that Ohio had a rich Native American history, but trying to draw parallels left him coming up short. It was a long shot to connect Ohio’s history, ancient Native American Bigfeet, and a monster living in the woods behind his house. But the one conclusion he had made was that there was something eerily similar with all three.
The whistle.
That night, James had another nightmare but this time he wasn't lost in the woods—he was in his room.
He sat up and gasped for breath. It was the sound of pounding that startled him. He could hear it off in the distance, through the walls and out into the field. It pounded like thunder slowly rolling in but in a rhythm. He stood up in the dark and tried to move the blanket covering his window but it wouldn't move. He pressed his ear up against the wall, knowing it was an exterior wall of the house and listened.
Boom boom, he heard.
He started counting three seconds between each set of two booms.
Boom boom.
It was dull like thunder, but it didn't crest or roll down into a low growl.
Boom boom.
The sound was steady and hollow.
Boom boom.
It started getting closer.
Boom boom.
It sounded like it was just outside and it sounded like...drums.
Boom boom.
Immediately Native American drums came to James's mind with their animal skin stretched tops tied around dark wood centers. Suddenly the sound stopped. It was replaced with a faint whistling noise like that of a tea kettle. It sounded like it was coming from the other side of his bedroom door. He walked to the door and pressed his ear against it to hear the whistling sound better. That's when there were two large bangs on the door.
BOOM BOOM!
The door shook from the impact but stayed shut. Banging and howling started coming from the walls, leaving James screaming as he jumped into his bed and pulled the covers over his head.
Day Four
10
James didn't sleep well that night. By the time he woke up, his dad was already gone, and a note on the fridge said he was working at the hospital all day and would be back late that night. These sorts of notes were necessary because Nolan's work schedule was chaotic and James was too young to care about when his dad worked. He poured himself some cereal and sat at the table to eat. In the corner by the door he saw the feed bag which was still half full and had an idea.
Obviously, the deer feeder was attracting deer with what he saw the day before. Without any way to know whether the blood was from a deer the creature had killed or not, having seen the creature along the tree line while a deer was at the deer feeder gave James hope that the previous plan to lure wolves was working with the creature. If monsters are anything like animals then this should work, he thought.
He finished his cereal and grabbed a large kitchen knife and the bag of feed. Now half empty, he could easily carry it. The knife was solely for protection—just in case. He carried it down the steps and past the barn, but the distance to the deer feeder at the end of the field was more than he had anticipated. He set the bag down several times to rest before he made it to the feeder, and to his surprise, it was empty. Completely empty. Not a single apple core or grain of feed was left inside. He gripped the kitchen knife in his right hand so tightly his palm ached. He listened but there was nothing except the eerie quiet of the wind.
He left the deer feeder for the tree line. At the edge of the field he stood between the familiar and the unknown. Standing there peering into the impenetrable green of the woods, he couldn't explain the unsettling tingle that caused the hairs on his arms to stand up. It was as if someone was watching him. The feeling seemed to conflict with reality as he looked down the wall of trees that stretched for miles and saw nothing. He peered as deeply into the woods as he could from the edge of safety but saw nothing. It seemed too quiet. No twigs snapping, leaves rustling, or strange echoing whistles. At that moment, it looked like any other stretch of woods in any other place in the world, and James would have felt like a normal boy had he not had been standing there gripping a kitchen knife for dear life with a gnawing feeling inside his abdomen that left him feeling hollow and afraid. He watched and waited but nothing happened. There was no monster to be seen or heard. He slowly backed up, walking backwards until he reached the deer feeder and took the bag and emptied it into the plastic barrel. Today he had nothing to do but watch and wait.
He went back to the kitchen and gathered some snacks, a couple bottles of water and root beer, then put them in a cooler he found in a cupboard. His day was going to be spent in one place so he needed everything within arm’s reach. Like a great many detectives before him, James was prepared to spend the day gathering evidence of the monster on a stakeout. Forgetting that cordless phones aren't cell phones, he brought it with him not knowing the hayloft of the barn would be out of range for the phone signal to its base. He made a second trip to bring a blanket to lay on and settled in.
Luckily for him, it wasn't as hot as it had been and so being up at the top of the barn wasn't unbearable. A refreshing breeze periodically blew through the hay door, bringing with it a reassuring comfort to a very uncomfortable situation. He was impressed with his set up, and had enough jerky and root beer to last him the whole day. But he didn't like the danger of the hay door since it opened from the floor. It was more danger than he was comfortable with, so he rummaged around the barn for a hammer, nails, and some boards. Again playing carpenter, he placed two boards across the bottom of the hay door so that he couldn't accidentally roll out. He positioned the first board in line with the floor with enough space between the top of it and the bottom of the second board so he could be on his stomach and still be able to peek out with his binoculars into the field. After finishing he sat back and bared nearly every tooth in pride.
"This isn't half bad," he said to the empty barn. His new habit of speaking to himself out loud in the absence of other people was hard to break. "I'm really starting to change my mind about this country thing. You never get to see clouds like this back in the city! Everything is so gray and blah!"
He studied the tree line for a long time but couldn't find any places where it looked like something had obviously come from. Everything was quiet, and after a couple hours and too many root beers later, James was starting to realize that being on a stake-out wasn't nearly as glamorous as he had imagined. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.
"Maybe I've just been seeing things," he said mid-yawn as his head drifted down to rest on his arms, "maybe my dad was right."
James was surprised that there hadn't been a single deer in the yard all day. With no idea that they were nocturnal, he was left with nothing to look at but the empty yard and the trees. He did notice that since he could barely see over the tops of the trees, the woods stretched much further back than he thought. His dad said that the property encompassed many acres of wooded area but James didn't realize that it was more like a forest. He was unable to see an end to it and assumed it was the very same stretch of trees he saw on their way to the hardware store. His imagination started to run away with his thoughts, and soon he was thinking about the tales of giant creatures living in the vastness of the planet's oceans. Because of the amount of space under the water, their existence was—at the very least— unable to be disproven. To James, the immense expanse of greenery perfectly fit in with the seemingly infinite countryside, and behind his dad's house was a big green ocean of trees. "Who knows what could be living in there," he said.
James was nearly a teenager, and being as such, it was e
asy for him to fall asleep. Just sitting in the car too long and he was out in minutes, drooling with his head drooped to one side in a position that would surely be uncomfortable for anyone who was awake. The combination of an uneventful day in the field, a belly full of junk food and root beer, and the perfect mix of warm weather and cool breeze was a coma inducer. After just a few hours, James fell into a deep fatherly snore.
The nap allowed his body to make up for the lost sleep from the night before. He simply blinked out of existence without the presence of dreams or thoughts until the loud noises of metal banging below him suddenly woke him up. The world was a messy blur as his heavy lids shot open mere inches from a small puddle of drool on his blanket. Below him in the barn, sounds of the drawers in his dad's tool box being opened and closed along with the clanging of wrenches banging together filled the air. It took him a minute to really wake up and as he sat up on the blanket, the wood floor underneath him creaked. He jumped as a loud bang came from below.
"Dad?" James yelled. He stood up and rubbed his eyes. He wondered how long he had been asleep. Looking out the hay door, he saw the sun was lower in the sky toward the horizon. At noon, the sun was nearly straight above him, meaning he had been asleep for a few hours.
He slowly walked to the ladder in the middle of the hayloft and peeked down. "Hello?" he called down. There was no answer. Slowly, he started to descend the ladder and at the bottom he saw his dad's tool chest tipped over with tools lying all over the ground.
"Dad?" he called out again, running out of the barn and into the driveway. His dad's truck wasn't there. A shiver of fear rippled up his neck and he ran into the house, locking the door behind him. Terrified, he closed all the curtains and blinds, made sure the windows were locked, then huddled in his room, afraid of whatever was in the barn with him. He tried not to think about it but a gnawing suspicion had him thinking the very creature he was looking for all day snuck right under his nose.
11
James had holed himself up well in the blankets in his room. So much so that he fell asleep again. Since living out in the middle of nowhere without anyone around meant you didn't have to lock your doors or windows, Nolan was surprised when he gripped the door handle to come in and walked straight into the door face-first. He fumbled for his keys in the porch light, eventually finding the right one. It was one of a couple times he had ever actually unlocked the door. Once inside, he was bewildered by all the lights being on.
"James?" he called out. "What's with all the lights?"
James finally awoke in the muffled cave of blankets when his dad opened his bedroom door.
"Hey, what's going on? Why'd you lock the door?" he asked concerned.
James groggily unearthed himself from the blankets, relieved to see his dad was home. "Someone was here," he said.
"What? Who?"
"I was up in the hayloft all day looking for...deer. I fell asleep and woke up to someone in the barn below me."
Nolan's face turned serious. "What? What happened? Are you all right?" He grabbed James's shoulders and began looking him over.
"I'm okay. By the time I climbed down no one was there," a look of panic filled James's face. "Dad, I think it was the monster from the woods."
Nolan stopped, closed his eyes and sighed. "James, there are no such things as monsters. C'mon, let’s go check out the barn."
"No!" James screamed, "I'm not going back out there!"
"I need to see if anything is missing," Nolan said, waving his son along to come with him. "I need you to show me what happened. Did you call the police?"
James eyes darted from side to side. He looked up mid-thought, "No, I didn't think to. But, I did leave the phone up in the hayloft."
"Why did you take the phone out there?" Nolan asked.
James shrugged, "In case anyone called."
"James, it's out of range of the receiver. Even if someone did call, you wouldn't have heard it, and you wouldn't have been able to call anyone either. It's not like a cell phone. Dinosaur technology, remember?"
James felt stupid not knowing that and at the same time anxious at the fact that if the monster had decided to come up after him he wouldn't have even been able to call for help. Nolan opened the front door and grabbed James's hand. James quickly pulled it free and froze.
"C'mon James," he urged.
"I'm not going out there, there's a monster out there!"
Nolan knelt down to meet his son face to face, "Listen, there are no such things as monsters, especially not around here. I'm sorry I told you that stupid story about your uncle and the Bigfoot. None of that is real. These woods around here have been surveyed and explored many times, I'm sure. We aren't really in the middle of nowhere here and there are no dangerous animals out there. At most there would be a bear, or maybe a bobcat, but I promise there are no monsters. This isn't the Amazon rain forest, it's Ohio. It's okay, I'll be with you the whole time."
Nolan had managed to reassure his son. "Okay," James agreed.
They walked outside together, the pitch-black night still and quiet beyond the protective glow of the porch light. Rod shaped insects buzzed around at inhuman speeds like little rockets as they walked from the gradually fading light of safety toward the thick blackness of the new moon night. The barn had two lights connected to the same switch on the inside of the big door. One hung above the car and the other was at the back end of the bottom floor connected with a line of metal conduit between them. James stood before the barn opening squeezing his hands into anxious fists. He looked out into the backyard and saw nothing but black emptiness. The feeling of being watched crawled up his neck and down inside is skin, finally settling into a sour ball in his stomach. He tried to look through the dark and wondered if they were alone. His fear acted like a paradoxical magnet toward the woods, creating a strange curiosity that simultaneously pulled him toward what his fear was pushing him away from.
Is there something there staring back at me? Is there something there waiting for me?
Nolan reached into the dark mouth of the open barn and fumbled around for the light switch. James watched nervously, imagining the monster in the dark barn getting ready to reach out and snatch his father. Eventually, Nolan found the switch and flipped it on but only the back light came on.
"Damn it," he said, "blown light bulb." The light from the rear of the barn was enough to allow them to see Nolan's large tool chest still lying face down on the floor with wrenches and screws scattered around it.
"See?" James said pointing at the floor. "The monster was in here going through your tool box. I must have spooked it or something when I moved up there."
Nolan looked over the tool box with a skeptical eye. "What a mess. James, monsters aren't real, but this does look like an animal was in here." He pointed out how the tool box had fallen face down and hadn't been thrown or really moved. "Probably raccoon or groundhog or something looking for food. You're right," he put his arm around James, “you probably spooked it and that's what caused it to knock the tool box over. It's too late to be cleaning this up now. I'll get it in the morning."
He flipped the light off and they walked back to the house. James eyed the backyard as they walked.
Inside, Nolan noticed the bag of feed missing. "You fill up the feeder today?"
"Yeah, "James said as he sat at the table, "I went out there and it was completely empty, but I didn't see a single deer all day."
"No worries. They're probably feeding at night. We can always get more."
James was torn between his curiosity to see the monster in the woods and avoiding it at all costs. His fear told him to tear down the deer feeder and not try to lure anything around. Let it be, his dad's old records said. Maybe if he would just let it be then it would go away and not come back. On the other hand, his dad didn't believe him and he couldn't deny what he had seen. His curiosity ate at him and he not only wanted to see it better, he wanted to prove it was real. Otherwise, he thought he just might go crazy.
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br /> He just shrugged at his father's comment about the deer feed, but Nolan wouldn't give up that quickly on the one country-type thing his son had ever taken interest in. "All right, well how about this, tomorrow we'll head into the city and pick up one of those game cameras?"
James looked at his father with a raised eyebrow.
"You know what I'm talking about?" Nolan asked.
James thought for a moment, "I don't think so?"
"It's great," Nolan said excitedly, "you strap the thing to a tree and it has a sensor on the front and anything that walks within so many feet in front of it will set off the motion sensor and it snaps a picture. Doesn't matter if it's night or day because at night it'll take it with infrared night-vision. You know, when it's all green?"
Of course James knew about night vision and IR cameras, it was a popular feature in the computer games he played. "That would be awesome! But, aren't those expensive?" He felt bad about all the money his dad was spending on his little project. When the family was together, they lived well and never went without. With Nolan being a successful cardiologist they made plenty of money but he never made extravagant purchases or bought more than they needed.
"Don't worry about it," Nolan said, "we'll get one. It'll be great, you'll see."
It would be, James thought. He finally had a way to spy on the woods without having to stakeout from the barn all day, and he would finally be able to see the monster in a way he never could have before. At night.
Day Five
12
James hardly slept, but it wasn't because of nightmares. They seemed to vanish as quickly as they had appeared. He woke up the next morning bubbling over with excitement over the game camera. Crawling out of bed, he made his way to the kitchen to get an early start to the day, but of course his dad was already awake. It seemed he never slept.