Cheryl

​I grew up on a farm in The Commonwealth of Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley to be specific. Rockingham County if you want to be more specific still. The nearest city would have been Harrisonburg, but then again that wasn’t all that close to the family farm. Driving distance on the weekend sure, but it’s not as if I went to school there or anything. My education was, shall we say, a lot less formal than all that.

​My folks were sheep farmers, and they kept a modest little ranch in the shadow of Massanutten Mountain. We had the house, a barn and several smaller outbuildings of varying purposes that I’ll not delve into too deeply here as they don’t have much bearing on the story that follows. Suffice it to say they served a myriad of husbandry functions.

Aside from these structures there were about four acres of fenced in grazing land for the animals and then a small, wooded area, far too small to call it a forest, that pushed right up to the base of the mountain.

We had one neighbor, a family, that lived about two miles to the east of our place. They had a little girl named Cheryl and as I didn’t have any brothers or sisters of my own, Cheryl was my only friend during most of my young life. You might remember my lack of formal education. Well, it comes down to this, Cheryl’s ma and pa worked their plot of land and my ma and pa worked ours. I helped when I was old enough to, but again that’s neither here nor there with regards to this tale. My ma was the only teacher around for the two of us kids and she did her best with what she had to work with. After we had finished up with our book learning, most days Cheryl and I would spend playing in the fields and empty tracts of land surrounding our parent’s respective properties.

Now, as I sit here and write this, I am 36 years old and I haven’t thought about Cheryl or Rockingham County in what feels like an age. Something happened earlier today that brought all of that rushing back to the forefront of my mind. Let’s go ahead and leave that thread where it is for the time being. Don’t worry, we’ll come back to it. In fact, that’s likely where all of this is going to end up finding its conclusion.

To understand what I saw earlier, we must travel back in time to the summer that I was fourteen. Cheryl and I both were, she was my elder by a mere ten days as it turns out. It was midsummer and we had been playing all day long as children do on account of there being no school. Rounders and double ball always ended up being more of a make-up-the-rules-as-we-went sort of game as there were only two of us. I remember we had just finished up a game of cornhole when my ma called us in for supper. Cheryl’s daddy would be by to pick her up later like he always did in the summertime. We were famished and devoured our plates dang near before my folks even got settled in to eat.

We played several no stakes hands of gin rummy to let the sun sink a bit and as the daylight began to wane, we grabbed a flashlight and ventured out for one of our favorite games, ghost in the graveyard. That’s what we always called it anyway, but if I’m being totally honest with you, and why shouldn’t I be? Since there were only two of us it was a lot less ghost in the graveyard and more simply two-person flashlight tag.

We had several rounds in and around the house and the surrounding buildings then we began to venture further afield. Cheryl had just sniffed me out on the verge of two sheep fields, she yelled the requisite “ghost in the graveyard” and tossed the flashlight at me. I flicked the beam off, covered my eyes which was pointless in the near pitch darkness and counted out loud to sixty.

When I hit a minute, I opened my eyes, turned on the flashlight and turned a complete circle straining to see to edge of the light in the hopes that I could catch a glimpse of the still retreating Cheryl. No luck. I spent the next ten minutes or so searching the field I had been found in, thinking that Cheryl couldn’t have made it all the way across the fields and back to the buildings in under a minute without me hearing her rushed passage or catching sight of her hurrying back the way we had come. That left only one option, yep, you guessed it, the woods.

At first, I didn’t think she would choose the woods. Not because either of us feared them, but simply as a matter of fairness, too many places to hide in the tree line. As I had exhausted my other options, I came to terms with the fact that she had broken our unwritten rule about hiding there. Probably to get back at me for beating her so handily at cards earlier I thought.

I cut a diagonal across the field, minding where I stepped so as not to lose my footing and end up facedown in a pile of sheep droppings, to the spot where we had built a wooden A-frame ladder for the purpose of crossing into or in this case out of the pasture without the worry of getting snagged up on the barbed wire.

I climbed the four steps it took to reach the shelf at the top of the ladder and paused, moving the flashlight in long, sweeping arcs ahead of me thinking that Cheryl may have stopped short of the woods and was tucked down into the tall grass somewhere in the hundred yards or so between where my field ended, and the trees began.

​The flashlight beam caught sight of freshly matted down grass leading off toward the woods. This is it. I thought, I have her now, I can follow her backtrail right to her. I hopped down the ladder, skipping all the rungs and moved at a not quite jog in the direction she had travelled. After about eighty feet the flashlight reached the end of the disturbed grasses, this meant she was up there, hunkered down. Not as clever as you’d hoped. I thought with a smile spreading on my lips.

​I hustled to the end of the trail, preparing to shout out “ghost in the graveyard,” chuck the flashlight at her and bolt back the direction that I had come. In the hopes of getting a few extra seconds before she could catch the flashlight and begin her own count.

​When I reached the end of the matted down trail of grass however, she wasn’t there. I shone the light left, right, forward and then let it play back along the trail thinking she might’ve somehow crawled around behind me. Nothing. I repeated this process twice more, not really comprehending what kind of trick she could be playing.

​She had clearly come down off the ladder from my field and walked to this very spot, the tracks I had followed, her tracks proved that. She should’ve been here; this is where the tracks ended. There was no way she could have gone further without continuing the trail she had already made up to this point. There were no trees, no buildings, fences, structures of any kind close at hand that she could have hopped up on and used to fool me in this regard. So, where was she?

​It was now that I started to feel, what? Frightened? Worried? No, neither of those are quite correct, not yet anyway. I was beginning to feel a mixture of mild apprehension and unease, something akin to anxiety I suppose, and I called out to her, “Cheryl?” Breaking the rules, myself now, the written ones as opposed to the unwritten one I had silently accused Cheryl of breaking earlier.

​No response. No human sounds at all other than my own breathing. No rustle of grass on fabric or crunch of shoe on leaf or branch. I continued forward, closing in on the dark mass ahead of me that marked the beginning of the woods.

​After a handful of steps, the flashlight started to pick out the individual trees that made up the first row of the heavily wooded area and I came to a stop about an arm’s length and a half from being able to touch the bole of the first pine. I fanned the light across my side of the evergreen wall, it penetrated several feet in at the shallow angle I was pointing it, hoping to catch a flash of Cheryl’s off-white summer dress. When I didn’t, I called out to her again. Getting no response, I readied myself to declare the game finished and begin chastising her.

Then I heard the faintest scratching sound off to my right and in front of me somewhere. Almost like the sound of paper being torn slowly into strips. I wheeled in that direction, leading with my light and strained to see to the very edge of my vision. I squinted my eyes and willed the beam of light to pick up the source of the sound.

In the woods, about seven layers deep I finally saw her standing there. Her back was toward me and she appeared to be peeling bark off the tree nearest her, accounting for the scratching sound. She didn’t seem to take notice of me, or the fact that she was caught in that beam of light.

“Cheryl?” I said again quieter this time, almost to myself. Something seemed a bit off to me, her normally golden, satiny hair looked raven and sooty. I chalked this up to a trick of the light and the fact that she was in deep shadow.

Nevertheless, she heard me this time and half turned her head back toward me. I couldn’t make out much from this new angle, but I did notice that her mouth was hanging open. Lolling open seemed a more appropriate verb. Impossibly wide, unnaturally wide.

Without uttering a word, she turned fully away from me again and took two quick steps forward. Disappearing from view and out of the reach of the flashlight. My first and really only instinct should have been to turn tail and book it for my house and imagined safety it would provide. I felt like I had to follow Cheryl though. I had to. It felt almost as if I were being compelled to. I know that sounds silly, but what can I say? So, I violated the only inviolable rule of situations such as these. I stepped forward and crossed the threshold into the wood and began to follow blindly the way I believe my friend had gone.

I walked a long time. How long, I can’t rightly say. Seemed like it had to have been hours, but that doesn’t line up with reality. That wooded area only covered about twelve acres square. A kid could walk its diagonal, even in the dark, in a matter of maybe forty minutes.

I began hearing an unfamiliar sound. A droning, keening, whine. Extremely low in pitch. Altogether unlike anything I had heard before and I had lived here the entirety of my fourteen years. We had plenty of white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, coyotes and back then, it wasn’t too uncommon to come across a black bear. Whatever was making this sound, I was positive, was none of those animals. Suddenly I found myself wishing that I had my daddy’s Winchester Model 12 with me.

I stepped out of the trees and into a clearing of sorts. Well, it was a clearing, but not a naturally occurring one. It looked as though three or maybe four layers of trees had been cleared out in a circle probably thirty yards in diameter. Except in the very center there were two Longleaf Pines that had been left untouched. There were what looked to be some type of effigies, straw or maybe they were made from pine needles given the surroundings, hanging from the branches. There had to be hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand. How had Cheryl and I not stumbled upon this before?

Never mind that for the time being, there she was, sitting cross-legged between the pines.

“Cheryl!” I cried, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but we ought to be heading back now. Your daddy’ll be here any minute to pick you up. Best not to keep him waiting, you know how he can get after a long day.”

A smile began to creep across her face, and I swear for just a second, literally no longer than the blink of an eye I saw, well, I don’t know exactly what I thought I saw. It was almost as if her limbs were sort of elongated, not just too big for a fourteen-year-old girl, but grotesquely long for a grown woman even. On top of her head, I saw the shadow of antlers and in her eyes, nothing, just dead black orbs.

Then those images were gone, almost faster than I was able to register them in my mind and this time I was running. I bolted back the way I had come, and the sound of laughter reached my ears. Laughter that was inhuman and guttural. It had a sort of deranged quality to it. Its tone was deep, far deeper than any voice I had ever heard could produce. The laughter came to me from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It could’ve been in my head, in fact, I know it was in my head. The real scary part though was that it wasn’t only in my head. It was very real and awfully close.

I didn’t pause or look around when I burst forth from the tree line. I was sure that if I slowed down even a fraction of a second before I cleared the fence back into my ma and pa’s pasture that, whatever was in that clearing, that not Cheryl, would snatch me up and drag me back to that place.

To this day I don’t know what that place was. It was like I was in another word entirely. Now, I’m not saying I actually went to another world or another plane of existence or what have you. The only thing I know with absolute certainty is that wherever that place was, it was never intended to be found or transgressed by humans. We don’t belong there. We’re nothing but prey there.

As I neared my house, I could see that Cheryl’s dad had indeed arrived. I didn’t know what I would tell him, I didn’t know what exactly I could tell him without sounding like I had lost my mind.

I practically flew across the dooryard, shouldered my way through the front door and into the house. All three adults started, clearly not expecting that sort of entrance from me. I launched into the telling of what happened before they could begin asking questions and likely before they had even had a chance to notice that I came back alone.

As I recounted the events of the previous couple hours, I noticed a shared look pass between my folks. Not a knowing look, I knew that back then, but I couldn’t place what that look might signify. Now I do, that look spoke wordlessly of suspicions confirmed. Of fears validated.

Much of the next several days are a blur to me, Cheryl was reported missing, with much of my story omitted, the Sheriff and some deputies combed those woods but never found Cheryl. Not only did they not find her, or her body, but they literally found no trace of her. At all, nothing. It was like she had simply ceased to exist.

We didn’t see much of Cheryl’s pa after that night. Other than in the course of conducting business that is. My family remained on that plot of land, ma’s still there in fact. My daddy died about a decade back, valve blockage or some such, too much working and not enough relaxing I guess, that caused what they call a Myocardial Infarction.

​I lit out of there pretty quickly after I turned eighteen. I floated around for a time, city to city. I made sure to stick to the cities in those intervening years. Until recently, the thought of being in a rural local gave me the heebie jeebies.

I finally settled down, if you could call it that just outside of Seattle, Washington. I worked fishing charters and commercial fishing gigs for years. Up and down the pacific coast between Seattle and Anchorage.

As of late though, oh probably the last six to eight months I’ve been having a yearning to get back to my roots as they say. I missed the farm, and I came to realize that I missed the woods too. Must’ve been all that time spent on the water that reminded me of what I was missing. So, I up and moved to about the center of Washington State. To a little area known as Esmerelda Basin in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

I got hired on as a hand at a local Tack and Livery shop not ten miles from where I built my house. That’s where I am at the moment telling you all this, in my study on the second floor facing north toward Mount Stuart.

I came home from work earlier today; I get off about five or sometimes a half past if there’s a large order that needs finished. I parked my truck and started toward my house like I do every other day, but as I neared my front stoop, I started to get a peculiar feeling. Not quite déjà vu and not quite trepidation, but something akin to both of those.

It was already pretty dark, being that its early November and it doesn’t help much with visibility, what, with my house nestled right into the forest and all. I stopped halfway up the steps to the porch and turned back to look over and past my truck. I saw something that brought that night Cheryl disappeared back into stark relief.

Just there, at the edge of the gravel, where the carport gave off into the trees, I saw a figure from my past. Not Cheryl in case you’re wondering, but one that I was sure my mind had made up to cope with the stress of the events that happened all those long years ago at my folk’s place.

Now, keep in mind I didn’t see this clearly in full daylight or anything like that, just deep shadows of the forest broken up by an even deeper shadow in the forefront. Vaguely humanoid, bipedal, obscenely long limbs, hocked legs and a crown of antlers.

I fumbled my latchkey clumsily into the lock, went inside and threw the bolt home. After roughly four fingers of Kentucky straight to calm my rattled nerves, I came to some realizations, made some decisions and sat down to get this letter out.

That place Cheryl and I visited, I don’t think its always there and I don’t think it stays in one spot. It comes and goes as it pleases, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it comes and goes as it needs to. I’m starting to think that once you visit it, you can’t ever really get away from it. Unlike Cheryl, I managed to lose it for twenty-two years.

The gatekeeper, for that’s how I think of that, What? Entity? Yea, I suppose that’ll do as well as anything else. The gatekeeper finally caught up to me. I haven’t pieced together why it took so long, I have a feeling that time and space probably has different meaning for it in both its domain as well as in my world.

I think I have to kill it. I don’t even know if it can be killed, but I do have my daddy’s old shotgun this time. I think that’s the only way to get it to leave me forever. I feel like it owns me right now, once you visit its place, its time, you belong to it.

I’d like to say I believe that I’ll be back, and no one will ever find this letter. Truth be told though; my confidence isn’t high on that account. I guess I’m writing this as a warning to whomever finds it. Only two souls alive that might miss me are Howard, my boss at the livery, or my ma. I haven’t been back to see ma in years so it won’t be her and grieved as she might be, she knows enough to leave well enough alone.

So, Howard or whomever finds this. Please don’t report me missing and please don’t try to find me. Just let the cycle end with me. One way or t’other.