The Things in the Woods

“Did you know,” Miles says, “that most people who’ve had alien encounters recall seeing owls?” He pushes his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose, making the thin wire frames poke his forehead before he continues. “It’s because of their eyes! They’re big and round - like owls’ - so the aliens camouflage themselves in people’s memories as them.”

“Not all owls have big eyes,” I mutter, earning a frown from my sister. She’s chosen to buy it, or at the very least play along.

“What type of owls do they see, Miles?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. Whichever of his mother’s tabloids he’s chosen to reference apparently hasn’t given him a ton of information. “Whatever any kind you find in the woods! Lots of UFO phenomena happen in the woods.” He looks over his shoulder at our kitchen window, his excitement growing as he sees the trees framing our property line. Now I understand why Miles has this new habit of inviting himself over to our farm after school. My sister is a little slower with the revelation.

“Aliens aren’t real, Miles,” she says gently. “At least not in Kentucky. You’d probably find Sasquatch in these woods before ET.”

“We should go see!” he declares. He pushes his glasses up his nose again as Maggie gives me a look. The revelation has finally hit her.

She’s no less gentle as she says, “It’ll be dark soon, and your mom doesn’t like when you’re late for dinner. Let’s get your bike.’

He throws a disappointed, longing glance at trees, and Maggie flicks my arm quickly. I can recognize a cue.

“How about I drive you home, Miles? I’ll let you pick the radio station.”

He brightens at that, but we don’t listen to a single song on the 10 minute drive to his house. He sits shotgun with his head halfway out the window, his eyes darting over the oaks and pines, his fingers reaching out as if to scour them until Maggie, wedged between us, hits his hand to keep him from breaking bones on a road sign pole. She throws me an elbow after each hand-swat, a nonverbal warning to slow down. I take the few turns as slowly as boredom allows, but I refuse to let any passenger in my truck not appreciate the bumps of our hometown roads. A summer of driving between New Mexico and Arizona has taught me to despise flatness and appreciate hills. Each crest and fall at just the right speed can make a stomach lift just the right amount - not enough to cause nausea, put enough to put a kid’s smile on my too-mature-for-her-age sister’s face and pull Miles’ focus from the woods and back on the road. He laughs and lifts his hands as if the road’s a rollercoaster, and he hiccups and snorts on the next descent, a particularly ticklish bump that even draws a chuckle from me.

We pull into the long driveway before Miles’ house. The sun is low enough that his porch light is on. The curtains of the sitting room are still opened, so we can see his mom situated in her recliner and watch as his sister Sam stands up from the sofa having been partly blinded by my headlights.

Sam. Shit.

Maggie rubs her elbow against my rib, not to chastise but to brace.

“Maybe we can check out the woods behind your house tomorrow,” Miles says. He’s unbuckled his seatbelt, but he hasn’t made it out of the truck yet.

Maggie says, “Maybe,” with her usual encouraging tone, but she’s still looking at his house like I am. Sam left the sitting room. “How’s your sister, Miles?”

Before Miles can answer or even wonder why she’s asked, the front door opens.

Shit.

Miles calls to Sam, and she comes down off the porch, pulling her black and blue flannel shirt around her like a coat. It’s a thick flannel - I know because I gave it to her - but the air’s too chilly for it to do much. She comes to my window as Miles finally hops out. He thanks Maggie for inviting him over and runs inside. Maggies slides to the passenger seat and buckles herself as I roll down my window.

“Miles said you’ve been back a few weeks,” Sam says to me. She tucks her hair behind her ear, an anxious habit she’s had since we were kids in elementary school.

“He’s right.”

“You avoiding me?”

Maggie makes a sound in her seat, and it’s hard to tell if it’s a laugh or a groan, but Sam hears it and narrows her eyes. “How ya doin’, girly? You trying to date my brother?”

That gets an actual laugh, although a very polite and self-deprecating one, from Mags. “Nah, he’s too smart for me. If I dated him, I’d have to move to a coast or try to get into some prissy ivy league school to keep up with him. I’m good on that.”

“Good for you, honey. Someone should be around take care of your mama’s farm if your brother won’t.”

I lick my lips, having expected that petty jibe; there hasn’t been ‘a farm’ to take care of in over 10 years. And even though I’ve decided to stare directly forward like the beams of my headlights, I’m very much aware of the heat coming off Sam’s eyes as she glares at me, incensed I’ve chosen to ignore it.

“Technically it’s Daddy’s farm,” Maggie says. The heat of Sam’s stare instantly cools. Maggie leans over to look at her, sparing mere scraps of kindness where she afforded Miles heaps of it. “And as Mama’ll be out of the hospital soon, my brother can do as he damn well pleases.” Maggie hits the button to raise my window, never breaking eye contact with the reprimanded Sam as the glass rolls up--

--Until we hear the crunching snap of a twig on the other side of the yard. Sam’s head swivels at the sound, and I discreetly grip Maggie’s wrist. There’s a slight ruffling and fluttering, but with the sun having disappeared and the sky going a murky blue-gray, we can’t see anything but the dark outlines of the trees at the edge of porch light’s reach.

Sam sighs heavily, shaking her head. “Damn owls. You’d think they’d know their own weight, but nope. They break more branches than--”

She stops as she sees us. I don’t know what she sees exactly, but it must be something in Maggie’s face or her posturing. Clocking this belatedly, Maggie leans back. She fixes her seatbelt as if neither Sam nor I are there anymore then waits patiently with her hands in her lap.

All that justifiable resentment Sam has towards me for dumping her after graduation - I feel that drain out of her as if through a sieve, sifting from her heart down to the gravel at her feet. She makes no move to gather it up, and I keep my voice low to confide in her, “Mom’s getting better, but it’s taking longer than we thought. It gets a little hard, ya know?”

Sam almost kicks up some of that resentment dust, because she does know. She went through something similar with her dad a few years earlier and doesn’t need reminding. But I watch in real time as she realizes I was angling for empathy, not sympathy. She nods, reluctant to give me any credit, and I don’t fault her that.

“Drive safe, Dan.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

Maggie and I ride home in silence until we reach the driveway. As I turn off the main road, she says very quietly, “You shouldn’t act like Mama’s the problem.”

“She’s not a problem.’

“Then why let Sam think she is?”

The internal lights of the car aren’t much to see by, but they’re enough to show Maggie’s stern brow, hard like our dad’s used to be. She’s aged twenty years in two seconds, and I wish she could act like the actual preteen she is. At the same time, I need her to realize how juvenile her question is.

“You want me to drive back to Miles’ so you can tell them the truth? ‘Er, sorry, Sammy, Dan lied to you again. I’m really having a tough time because I adopted a new pet and won’t let Danny kill it--’”

“Stop it!” she shrieks. Shrieks. Loud and high pitched, and I slam on the brakes because I hear the tears before I see them. I hear the tears and the guilt as she screams her portion of our new, ridiculous script: “I didn’t adopt him! He’s hurt! We should help hurt people--”

“He’s not ‘people,’ Maggie! He’s the reason Mom’s nuts!”

“IT WASN’T HIS FAULT AND YOU CAN’T KILL HIM!”

She throws open the door and leaps out, bolting towards the old barn. Her thudding boot steps fade in seconds, but a sob cuts across the field and hits me like a jolt. I grit my teeth and make a concentrated effort to punch the roof rather than slam my fist on the horn. Then I turn off the engine, pocket the keys and start after her.

The barn is maybe 100 years old, or at least that’s what Dad always sai. With the exception of a few chickens, it hasn’t had animals in over a decade, but it still has that stale animal smell. Maggie’s left the door open. As I enter, I wonder as has become habit since Mom went in for her psych eval how much we could get for the barn alone. It’s not much more than them empty chicken coup, a few rusted pales and pretty decent lawn mower, but its bones are still solid. Cursed now, but pretty solid.

I stare up toward the loft and hear the soft hooting, almost cooing. Closing my eyes, I let the anger come and go. When I open my eyes, Maggie is sitting with her feet dangling over the edge and a flashlight lantern at her side. A barn owl is on her shoulder, and I cringe.

Freddie.

She named the damn thing Freddie.

“We’ve talked about this, Mags,” I say tightly. “You don’t touch it.”

She frowns at me defiantly, and I start to turn. We’ve had this argument enough times for her to know where my steps are headed. To get Daddy’s gun. She shifts and I hear the fluttering. Hear it because Freddie wants me to hear it, just like I’m supposed to hear hooting instead of cooing and see an owl instead of--

I swallow and let out a deep breath as I reface them. ‘Freddie,’ no longer touching her, hovers behind Maggie’s shoulder. I know I’ve sneered or something, because Freddie cocks his head like the owl he imitates. Unlike an owl, however, two thin sharp teeth are revealed as his small round mouth opens. He lets out a soft - but very sinister - clicking sound.

“Mom should have shot you,” I say, glowering.

“Mom was trying to help him,” Maggie counters.

“If you were a foot smaller, Mags, he would’ve eaten you.”

Freddie makes the clicking sound again and moves behind Maggie to pop out from her other shoulder. His hands hang off his wrists like little dinosaur claws, and I briefly note that the oven mitts Mags has tapped around the thin milky-white wrists have holes in them. He’s been trying to chew himself free again. I keep looking at his eyes though, those big black ovals. Miles’ talk about owls and camouflage…The kid wasn’t wrong, per se, but where owls rely on fur and beak shapes to make their eyes seem bigger and appear as predators, this thing was actually more vulnerable for its true eye shape. One good hit with a sling shot could blind him, or just a really good rock throw.

Freddie clicks and hisses, but Maggie does a soft tongue click that makes him coo.

“Mags, please come down from there.”

“Say you won’t shoot him.”

“No.”

Her face hardens and I almost laugh.

“Mags, Dad used to shoot these things all the time.” I don’t know why I ever think that line will help. She always gets so jaded when I say it. Sighing, I fetch a pale and turn it over to sit on it. “Mom’s supposed to come home next week. If your ‘friend’ isn’t healed by then, what are you going to do? Keep playing nurse in secret? You can like him all you want; he’s still the reason she’s gone a little…” I bob my head a bit, and she frowns harder.

“Mama isn’t crazy. She’s just older. If Daddy had told her about the things in the woods, she wouldn’t have been so surprised. It’s just shock is all. She just needs time to accept it.”

“Accept what, huh? That you’re adopting an alien?”

“He’s not an alien! He’s a Freddie.”

“Call it want you want, it still eats kids and critters, and the second it ‘heals', it’ll make a feast outta you, OR - or - it’ll take you to its lair in the woods where it lures people and eat you there!”

“Shut up!”

“There’s a reason Dad always shot at owls, Mags. You’re too smart to be this stupid.”

“Stop being such a jerk!”

I hear the tears again, but more importantly, Freddie hears them. There’s a quiver in Maggie’s chin as she fights the tears and she actually fails. Two tears break through - one from each eye - and the only reason I haven’t shot Freddie while Mags is at school (or even after he ate our chickens) is precisely because of what he does next. Freddie nudges that big round head of his against her shoulder, nuzzling her bicep and cooing. His pointy little ears shiver as she gently strokes the triangle of white between the big, black eyes.

No matter what she says for Miles’ sake or what I say to be a jerk, Maggie isn’t stupid or dumb. She’s optimistic. Hopeful. Maybe she’s even right. Maybe Freddie isn’t an actual predator, an alien like the I-want-to-believers say or a cave goblin like the old wives’ tales claim. Maybe if he hadn’t been so injured from whatever had bitten him, he would’ve managed to keep up his owl disguise and spare Mom the trauma of seeing an actual…creature.

Or maybe he would’ve snatched Mags with his little raptor claws and run away to eat in peace.

I shake my head, picking a lane. For better or worse - at this moment - Freddie was her pet. She’s already lost her dad, her mom’s sanity, and her chickens. And she’ll lose me, too, as soon as this mess gets sorted and I can go west again. If I go west again. I’m not sure I’ll make it across state lines knowing Freddie is around. But…as I watch him bend his short, spindly legs beside her with his arms still poised as if to scratch, Freddie looks more like a guard dog than threat. And if people in this town have always dealt with ‘owls’, it could be that Freddie is a rarity, not an anomaly. Still…

“I don’t think you’ll ever be able to tell Mama, Mags.”

She sniffles and looks down. Freddie looks too, cocking his head as he notes the shift in my tone like Maggie has.

“If she sells what’s left of the farm in the next year or so, you won’t be able to keep him in this barn. Looks like he doesn’t even want to stay now,” I nod at his oven mitts.

“He’ll want to stay longer than you,” she says. And even though there should be spite in that retort, there isn’t any. Unlike the exchange with Sam, this is purely factual.

“I don’t know what I want. But I know I don’t want you to feel alone. Ever. You can always call me, just like you did when you found him. I promise I’ll always come home.”

Freddie coos, still looking at me, and I get the eerie feeling the thing understands me, that maybe we’re the pets being adopted and not the other way around. Maggie wipes her face and swings her legs back onto the loft. I hear her set up the radio (“to keep Freddie company,” she says), then she grabs the flashlight and climbs down. Even though it's dark in the loft, the light from the lantern shows Freddie’s gaping eyes as he watches her hug me. I can tolerate that gaze for a few seconds longer than usual tonight, which I do before telling Maggie we should get back to the house. She calls goodnight to Freddie, and we leave beneath the sound of soft cooing that evolves into distinct hoots.