As if it were yesterday, I remember that as soon as I came to that section of trees, I was besieged by an unreasonable sensation of discomfort. The discomfort, at this point, wasn’t fear—it was more a malaise that had descended on me heavy as a wool blanket. I thought it had to do with my overextending myself while on vacation, because I was used to a much more controlled environment and an earlier bedtime.
The trees seemed far more shadowy than they had appeared from a distance, and I had the impression of being watched. No, that isn’t quite right. Not of being watched so much as of a presence in the general locale. Something so close, that I should be able to see it, but couldn’t.
I marked this down to exhaustion, and went about finding a good place to hide. I could hear the seekers beginning to run toward the woods, and then I heard someone scream, having been tagged immediately. I chose a place between two trees that had grown together high and low in such a way as to appear to be a huge letter H placed on a pedestal; the trees met in such tight formation they provided a near singular trunk and the bar of the H was an intermingled branch of both trees. I darted behind them, scooted down, and put my back against the trunk.
No sooner had I chosen my spot than it occurred to me that its unusual nature might in fact attract one of the seekers. But by then, I felt it was too late and pressed my back against the tree, awaiting whatever fate might come.
From where I sat, I could see the deeper woods, and I had an urge to run to them, away from the grove of trees where I now hid. I also disliked the idea of having my back against the tree and being discovered suddenly and frightened by the hunters. I didn’t want that surprise to cause me to squeal the way I had heard someone squeal earlier. I liked to think of myself as too mature for a child’s game to begin with, and was beginning to regret my involvement in the matter.
I sat and listened for footfalls, but the game went on below me. I could hear yelling and some words, and I was bewildered that no one had come to look for me, as my hiding place wasn’t exactly profound.
After awhile, I ceased to hear the children, and noticed that the moonlight in the grove, where the limbs were less overbearing, had grown thinner.
I stood up and turned and looked through the split in the H tree. It was very quiet now, so much in fact, I could almost hear the worms crawling inside the earth. I stood there peeking between the bars of the H, and then I saw one of the children coming toward me. I couldn’t make out who it was, as they were drenched in shadow, but they were coming up the slight rise into the ragged run of trees. At first, I felt glad to see them, as I was ready for my part in this silly game to be over, and planned to beg off being a seeker.
However, as the shape came closer, I began to have a greater feeling of unease than before. The shape came along with an unusual step that seemed somewhere between a glide and a skip. There was something disconcerting about its manner. It was turning its shadowed head left and right, as I would have expected a seeker to do, but there was a deeply ingrained part me that rejected this as its purpose.
The closer it came, the more my nervousness was compounded, for the light didn’t delineate its features in any way. In fact, the shape seemed not to be a shadow at all, but the dark caricature of a human being. I eased behind the trunk and hid.
Dread turned to fear. I was assailed with the notion that I ought to run away quickly, but to do that, I would have to step out and reveal myself, and that idea was even more frightening and oppressive. So I stayed in my place, actually shivering. Without seeing it, I could sense that it was coming closer. There was a noise associated with its approach, but to this day, I can’t identify that noise. It was not footfalls on leaves or ground, but was a strange sound that made me fearful, and at the same time, sad. It was the kind of sound that reached down into the brain and bones and gave you an influx of information that spoke not to the logical part of your being, but to some place more primal. I know that is inadequate, but I can’t explain it any better. I wish that I could, because if I could imitate that sound, most of this story would be unnecessary to tell. You would understand much of it immediately.
I spoke of shivering with fear, but until that day, I didn’t know a person’s knees could actually knock together, or that the sound of one’s heart could be so loud. I was certain both sounds would be evident to the shadow, but I held my ground. It was fear that held me there, as surely as if my body had been coated in an amazingly powerful glue and I had been fastened and dried to that tree with it.
Eventually, I steeled my courage, turned and peeked between the trunks of the H tree. Looking right at me was the shadow. Not more than a foot away. There wasn’t a face, just the shape of a head and utter blackness. The surprise caused me to let out with a shriek—just the sort I’d tried to avoid—and I leapt back, and without really considering it, I broke around the tree and tore through the woods toward the house as if my rear end were on fire.
I looked back over my shoulder, and there came the thing, flapping its arms, its legs flailing like a wind-blown scarecrow.
I tripped once, rising just as the thing touched my shoulder, only for a moment. A cold went through me as it did. It was the sort of cold I imagined would be in the arctic, a sensation akin to stepping out of a warm tent, soaking wet, into an icy wind. I charged along with all my might, trying to outrun the thing I knew was right behind me. It was breathing, and its breath was as cold as its touch on the back of my neck. As it ran, the sound of its feet brought to mind the terrors I had felt earlier when I first saw it making its way through the woods—that indescribable sound that held within it all the terrors of this world, and any world imagined.
I reached the edge of the woods, and then I was into the clearing. I tried not to look back, tried not to do anything that might break my stride, but there was no stopping me. I couldn’t help myself. When I looked back, there at the line of the woods, full in the moonlight, stood the thing waving its arms about in a frustrated manner, but no longer running after me.
I thundered down a slight rise and broke into the yard where the topiary animals stood, then I clattered along the cobblestone path and into the house.
When I was in the hallway, I stopped to get my breath. I thought of the others, and though I was concerned, at that moment I was physically unable to return to those woods or even the yard to yell for the others.
Then I heard them, upstairs. I went up and saw they were all in the Evening Room. When Jane saw me, her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak. The others went about joshing me immediately, and it was just enough to keep me from blurting out what I had seen. It seemed that everyone in the game had been caught but me, and that I had been given up on, and that switching the game about so that the other side might be the pursuer had been forgotten. Hot chocolate was being served, and everything seemed astonishingly normal.
I considered explaining all that had occurred to me, but was struck with the absurdity of it. Instead, I went to the window and looked out toward the forest. There was nothing there.
Jane and I shared a room, as we were the closest of the cousins. As it came time for bed, I found myself unwilling to turn out the light. I sat by the window and looked out at the night.
Jane sat on her bed in her pajamas looking at me. She said, ”You saw it, didn’t you?”
She might as well have hit me with a brick.
“Saw what?” I said.
“It,” she said. “The shadow.”
“You’ve seen it too?”
She nodded. “I told you the woods were strange. But I had no idea until tonight how strange. After the game ended, the others thought it quite funny that you might still be hiding in the woods, not knowing we were done. I was worried, though.”
How so? I thought, but I didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.
“I actually allowed myself to be caught early,” Jane said. “I wanted out of the game, and I planned to feign some problem or another and come back to the house. It was all over pretty qui
ck, however, and this wasn’t necessary. Everyone was tagged out. Except you. But no one wanted to stay in the woods or go back into them, so they came back to the house. I think they were frightened. I know I was. And I couldn’t put my finger on it. But being in the woods, and especially the nearer I came to that section where it thinned and the trees grew strange, I was so discomforted it was all I could do to hold back tears. Then, from the window, I saw you running. And I saw it. The shadow that was shaped like a man. It stopped just beyond the line of trees.”
I nodded. “I thought I imagined it.”
“Not unless I imagined it too.”
“But what is it?” I asked.
Jane walked to where I stood and looked out the window. The man-shaped shadow did not appear and the woods were much darker now, as the moon was beginning to drop low.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve heard that some spots on earth are the homes of evil spirits. Sections where the world opens up into a place that is not of here.”
“Not of here?”
“Some slice in our world or their world that lets one of us, or one of them, slip in.”
“Where would you hear such a thing?” I asked.
“Back home, in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. They say there was an H tree there. Like the one in these woods. I’ve seen it in the daytime and it makes me nervous. I know it’s there.”
“I hid behind it,” I said. “That’s where the shadow found me.”
“Lansdale was home to one of the three known H trees, as they were called.”
This, of course, was exactly what I had called the tree upon seeing it.
“It was said to be a portal to another world,” Jane said. ”Some said hell. Eventually, it was bulldozed down and a housing project was built over the site.”
“Did anything happen after it was torn down?” I asked.
Jane shrugged. “I can’t say. I just know the legend. But I’ve seen pictures of the tree, and it looks like the one in the woods here. I think it could be the same sort of thing.”
“Seems to me, pushing it over wouldn’t do anything.” I said.
“I don’t know. But the housing division is still there, and I’ve never heard of anything happening.”
“Maybe because it was never a portal to hell, or anywhere else,” I said. “It was just a tree.”
“Could be,” Jane said. “And that could be just an odd tree in the woods out there.” She pointed out the window. “Or, it could be what the one in Lansdale was supposed to be. A doorway.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“Neither does a shadow chasing you out of the woods.”
“There has to be a logical explanation.”
“When you figure it out,” Jane said. “Let me know.”
“We should tell the others,” I said.
“They won’t believe us,” Jane said, “but they’re scared of the woods. I can tell. They sense something is out there. That is why the game ended early. I believe our best course of action is to not suggest anything that might involve those woods, and ride out the week.”
I agreed, and that’s exactly what we did.
The week passed on, and no one went back in the woods. But I did watch for the shadow from the backyard, and at night, from the window. Jane watched with me. Sometimes we brought hot chocolate up to the window and sat there in the dark and drank it and kept what we called The Shadow Watch.
The moon wasn’t as bright the following nights, and before long if we were to see it, it would have had to stand underneath the back yard lights. It didn’t.
The week came to an end, and all of us cousins went home.
There was an invitation the next summer to go back, but I didn’t go. I had tried to dismiss the whole event as a kind of waking nightmare, but there were nights when I would awaken feeling certain that I was running too slowly and the shadow was about to overtake me.
It was on those nights that I would go to the window in my room, which looked out over a well-lit city street with no woods beyond. It made me feel less stressed and worried to see those streets and cars and people walking about well past midnight. And none of them were shadows.
Jane wrote me now and again, and she mentioned the shadow once, but the next letter did not, and pretty soon there were no letters. We kept in touch by email, and I saw her at a couple of family functions, and then three years or so passed without us being in communication at all.
I was in college by then, and the whole matter of the shadow was seldom thought of, though there were occasions when it came to me out of my subconscious like a great black tide. There were times when I really thought I would like to talk to Jane about the matter, but there was another part of me that felt talking to her would make it real again. I had almost convinced myself it had all been part of my imagination, and that Jane hadn’t really seen anything, and that I misremembered what she had told me.
That’s how the mind operates when it doesn’t want to face something. I began my studies with anthropology as my major, and in the process of my studies I came across a theory that sometimes, instead of the eye sending a message to the brain, the brain sends a message to the eye. It is a rare occurrence, but some scientists believe this explains sincere ghostly sightings. To the viewer, it would be as real as you are to me as I sit here telling you this story. But the problem with this view was that Jane had seen it as well, so it was a nice theory, but not entirely comforting.
And then out of the blue, I received a letter from Jane. Not an email. Not a phone call. But an old fashioned letter, thin in the envelope, and short on message.
It read: I’m going back on Christmas Eve. I have to know.
I knew exactly what she meant. I knew I had to go back too. I had to have an answer.
Now, let me give you a bit of background on my Aunt’s place. She and her husband separated and the house and property were put up for sale. I knew this from my mother and father. They had been offered an opportunity to buy the house, but had passed due to the expense of it all.
Interestingly enough, I learned that Jane’s family, who had later been offered the opportunity, could afford it, and plans had been made. Jane’s father had died the year before, and a large inheritance was left to Jane’s mother. No sooner had the house been bought than her mother died, leaving Jane with the property.
Perhaps this was the catalyst that convinced Jane to go back.
I acquired Jane’s phone number, and called her. We talked briefly, and did not mention the shadow. It’s as if our conversation was in code. We made plans: a time to arrive and how to meet, that sort of thing.
Before I left, I did do a bit of research.
I didn’t know what it was I was looking for, but if Jane was right, her hometown of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, was a former home to an H tree. I looked it up on the Internet and read pretty much what Jane had told me. As far back as the Native Americans there had been stories of Things coming through the gap in the H tree. Spirits. Monsters. Demons. Shadows.
As Jane had said, the H tree had been destroyed by builders, and a subdivision of homes was built over it. I looked for any indication that there had been abnormal activity in that spot, but except for a few burglaries, and one murder of a husband by a wife, there was nothing out of the average.
Upon arrival at the airport I picked up my rental car and drove to a Wal-Mart and bought a gas can, two cheap cigarette lighters, and a laser pointer. Keep in mind, now, that I was doing all of this out of assumption, not out of any real knowledge of the situation. There was no real knowledge to be had, only experience that might lead to disappointment, the kind of disappointment that could result in a lack of further experience in all matters. I had that in mind as I drove, watching the sun drop in the west.
When I arrived at the property and the house, it had changed. The house was still large and regal, but the yards had grown up and the swimming pool was an empty pit lined at the bottom with broken seams and invading weed
s. The topiary shrubs had become masses of green twists and turns without any identifying structure.
I parked and got out. Jane greeted me at the door. Like me, she was dressed simply, in jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She led me inside. She had bought a few sandwich goods, and we made a hasty meal of cheese and meat and coffee, and then she showed me the things she had brought for “protection” as she put it.
There were crosses and holy water and wafers and a prayer book. Though I don’t believe that religion itself holds power, the objects and the prayers, when delivered with conviction, do. Symbols like crosses and holy water and wafers that have been blessed by a priest who is a true believer, contain authority. Objects from other religions are the same. It’s not the gods that give them power, it is the dedication given them by the believer. In my case, even though I was not a believer, the idea that a believer had blessed the items was something I hoped endowed them with abilities.
I placed great faith in the simple things—like gasoline and fire starters.
Shortly after our meal, we took a few moments to discuss what we had seen those years ago, and were soon in agreement. This agreement extended to the point that we admitted we had been, at least to some degree, in denial since that time.
Out back we stood and looked at the woods for a long moment. The moon was rising. It was going to be nearly full. Not as full as that night when I saw the shadow, but bright enough.
Jane had her crosses and the like in a small satchel with a strap. She slung it over her shoulder. I carried the gas can, and had the lighters and laser pointer in my pants pocket. By the time we reached the bleak section of woods and the H tree was visible, it was as if my feet had anvils fastened to them. I could hardly lift them. I began to feel more and more miserable. I eyed Jane and saw there were tears in her eyes. When we were to the H tree, I began to shake.
We circled the tree, seeing it from all angles. Stopping, I began to pour gasoline onto its base, splashing some on the trunk from all sides. Jane pulled her wafers and holy water and crucifixes from her bag, and proceeded to place them on the ground around the tree. She took out the prayer book and began to read. Then, out of the gap between the trees, a shadow leaned toward her.
Weird Detectives Page 25
