No. You. Don't.

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. My cousin Joel and I saw it the first night of July from the platform we called our treehouse. built high into the ancient oak that stood sentinel on the family farm. We’d asked Grandma Kenzie about it and offered to go check it out but she waved us off. “No need, child,” she’d said, pulling another tray of sugar cookies out of the oven. “Most like a young couple lookin’ out for some privacy up’n the old sugar shack. You best leave ‘em be.”

My great-grandmother Elizabeth McKenzie Youngblood, who my great grandfather had nicknamed Kenzie, still lived in the house she was born in. It was a spacious house, with a wrap-around porch and had an addition at the back that contained the first and second floor bathrooms and a generous kitchen. She had electricity, but the water was from the old well, sunk deep in the earth, and was ice cold and almost sweet. These days, it was just her and her son Frank, who was a lifelong bachelor, living in the house. She insisted she needed all that room for the reunions. Grandma Kinzie, my great grandfather and their eight kids had lived with her parents until the older couple passed, and the farm had come to her. It wasn’t much of a farm. She didn’t harvest the maple sap anymore, nor keep bees, nor tend the orchard, nor keep livestock. She was in her 80s and it was as much as she could do to keep a few chickens and a vegetable garden. Frank was a mechanic and made enough to satisfy their small needs. And her other kids who lived locally, and their families, made sure the house and land were well tended. If something big was needed, every year about 65 people turned up on her porch for a week the beginning of July and would take care of it. We were her wealth, her legacy, her pride and joy. And that week at Grandma Kinzie’s was Heaven on Earth. The joy and peace from being somewhere beautiful, playing hard and eating fine, settled on us like a spell of satisfaction, that would last well into the remainder of the summer once we got home. We wouldn’t miss it, if we could help it.

The weather always seemed perfect. Nice and warm during the day to make playing in the woods and creek enjoyable and cool enough at night for the campfires, barbecues and sleeping. The bedrooms and a few RVs were reserved for the adults and the littlest children, but the rest of us fanned out into sleeping bags on the porch, pop-up tents, and a few of us up in the old tree house. We washed with some natural soap in a smaller deep spot in the creek down stream from the swimming hole, we drank well water from the hose, and we roamed the 200 acres of West Virginian hollers all day long. The older kids went the 2 miles or so into town to the bowling alley or mini-golf. They nearly doubled the available dating pool so the local teens looked forward to our reunion almost as much as we did. Quite a few marriages had come from couples that met during those gorgeous July days. And we always made the parade and local fireworks.

Joel and I were back in the treehouse the next night with a couple of local brothers, Henry and Sam. Henry was okay, but Sam was a bully and you could tell his brother was afraid of him. We had only invited Henry to come spend the night, but Sam came too and when Joel pointed out the candle, Sam insisted on going to see what was going on, maybe scaring the people in the shack, especially if it was a couple making out.

“Grandma Kinzie told us to pay it no nevermind,” I told the others. “Ain’t none of our business, really.” Sam sneered at me,

“You a baby?” he accused. “Always do what your great granny says?”

“We ain’t supposed to look out at the woods at night, neither,” Henry reminded his brother. “Things in the treeline waiting on you to notice them. Things that ain’t good.” Sam punched his brother in the arm and Henry winced.

“I know you’s a baby,” Sam told his brother.

“Let’s go down to the house and make s’mores,” Joel suggested, trying to distract Sam.

“I’m going to the shack. You guys be babies and run to your mamas,” Sam scoffed. We all scrambled down the tree and I hesitated, trying to decide which way to go. After all, it was my family land and Sam was a trespasser. What if he got hurt and needed help? Finally, I decided to follow Sam, hoping I could talk him out of it and get him back to the house. I knew I’d probably be punished for going someplace I’d been told to leave be, but I felt a little responsible for Sam.

He ran ahead into the maple grove that seemed to have been invaded by the more twisty types of trees like beech, elm and oak giving the woods here a more ominous character, made more so by the knowledge we shouldn’t be here and the rules we were told all our lives - to stay out of the woods at night. Even if you thought you heard a voice you recognize call your name or you heard a baby cry or a woman scream, NO YOU DIDN’T. There was a possible shadow man or Not-deer or wampus cat at every turn. And Sam and I were sitting ducks.

Sam was about 10 feet ahead of me and stopped suddenly. “You hear that?” he asked me. I hadn’t heard anything but even if I had, I wasn’t going to admit it. He twisted around, trying to figure out where the sound he heard came from and then took off in a new direction. It was an effort to keep up.

“C’mon, Sam. Let’s go back. There ain’t anyone out here. I’m tired and hungry.” But he kept moving as if I hadn’t spoken. There was a line of thorny trees directly in front of us and he twisted through their branches. When I followed, I realized where we were. The sugar shack cabin was a few yards in front of us, that single candle burning in the window. And there was someone inside. Someone I recognized.

As if in a dream, Sam entered the cabin. He moved in an odd way, kind of jerky, like a marionette. I watched as the thing wearing my great grandmother’s skin reached out and grabbed him by his arm. He made a face, all bravado gone, like he was screaming his lungs out but not one sound emerged. As she held him, he began to turn brown, limbs lengthening and twisting, clothes becoming bark, hair wispy leaves, eyes melting down his changing face. When she released her grip, I stood looking at a mangled, weathered tree that looked vaguely human-esque if you squinted and had an imagination. She muttered something I was too far away to hear and then turned to stare at me directly through the open doorway.

“Come here, Jimmy.” I froze. If you hear something call your name in the woods at night – NO YOU DON’T. “James, I know you hear me; it’s too late for you to run now. Come here.” I stepped inside the door into the shack, which was much cleaner than I expected. The little candle in the window gave off more light than it should and Grandma Kinzie’s face was lit up. She didn’t look any different to me than usual, her kind eyes sparkling and a small smile on her lips. I realized for the first time that I was just a bit taller than her this year and something about that made me feel proud, more like a man than a scared kid. There was an old wash bucket, low and wide, in the middle of the floor with a little dirt in it and planted there was the crooked bent tree that had just a few minutes before been Sam. I thought I had come along with him to keep him out of trouble, but he had run headlong into it.

“You disobeyed me, boy,” she said.

“Are you who you look to be?” I asked. If she wasn’t, I would bet there was a bucket of dirt for me too laying around here someplace. She nodded. “Then, yes ma’am, I did,” I replied. She squinted as she looked me up and down.

“I guess you came after this one,” she said, indicating the tree that had been Sam. I nodded. “Try to stop him?” I nodded again. She sighed. “Frank will come fetch him in the morning. Best to always plant things on a full moon.” She looked out the door to the other trees. “Although they don’t always stay exactly where’s we put ‘em. You know this was once Indian land? Well, ‘course all this nation was Indian land. Your great grandfather was Indian. Shawnee. When I married him and he done told me…. These maple trees ain’t just trees. Couldn’t tap ‘em after that. And then, knowin’ that and knowin’ also that the land demanded sacrifice to keep the blessings these maples done brought us…. Had to make a compromise.” She sighed and sat down on the raised threshold of the doorway. “The villains in stories don’t see themselves as the bad guys, so maybe I’m just makin’ excuses…”

“You ain’t no villain, Grandma,” I told her in earnest. She reached out and patted my hand. I looked to make sure no bark was growing, just in case the magic wasn’t done yet.

“You know Sam kicked a 2 week old puppy to death just ‘cause he thought it t’were funny?” I looked at her in disbelief, my mouth agape. “Uh huh. Threw rocks at his brother too and once held a hot iron to his arm because he said he liked the smell of the hair burnin’.” I looked at the tree in the shack, realizing I had been hanging out with the real monster in the woods this night. “Locals know my woods are dangerous, but since the danger seems to fall on the least civilized of them, there ain’t no big hullaballoo when once or two go missing every couple of years. Can’t imagine anybody’d ask you where Sam is, but I won’t ask you to lie.” She looked at me hard.

“He said he heard some’n calling his name in the woods,” I told her.

“So he did, child,” she answered. “Come help me on back to the house. I think your uncle Caleb’s gonna get his fiddle out.” I took her hand and helped her up. She pulled hard on my arm as I began to walk. “Just because I ain’t no villain to you and nothing dangerous be living on this land, don’t mean things haven’t occasionally passed through and might take an interest in you. Mark my words, boy. And keep to the rules.”

“Yes, ma’am” I promised. I told Henry the truth; he was one you could trust and he just looked sad and resigned. Nobody asked me about Sam. There was a small search effort but one of his shoes was found near the swimming hole and it was guessed he fell in, drowned, and washed down stream. Can’t say he was much missed.

So take it from your friendly Park Ranger, young lady. Stay with your nice family at your campfire near your RV and go in pairs to the wash house. And if you ever see a shadow at the edge of the woods motioning for you to come to them or hear your name called in a familiar voice… No. You. Don’t.