Something’s Waiting in the Woods

It all seems so long ago now; like a half forgotten dream. Looking back, I can hardly believe that any of it even happened to me. But every now and again, I’ll see a shadow out of the corner of my eye, or hear an old familiar sound, and I’m brought right back to where it all began.

I was living in my first apartment. I had just moved out from my mother’s house and I felt like an adult for the first time in my life. Only now do I realize just what a child I still was. It was an unremarkable when suddenly there was suddenly a frantic pounding at my door. I opened it to find Timothy, my old childhood friend, looking pale and strung out.

I sat on the couch watching as he nervously paced around my living room, muttering to himself. I tried to get him to calm down; I asked him to sit down, offered him a drink, but he wouldn't hear it. Finally, he said something that I could understand, although I had no idea what he meant.

"There's something waiting for me in the woods," he said terrified, "It's waiting for me to come back. And it knows that I will."

"What are you talking about Tim?" I asked, "What's waiting for you?"

"You'll think I'm crazy, but they're all around us, all the time. We just can't see them. Or maybe we don't want to see them, I don't know. But I saw one in the woods, and it saw me too. And now I know it wants me to come back."

"Timothy," I said, trying to calm him down, "You have to take it easy man. What you're saying...it doesn't make any sense."

"I can't explain it, I think I just need to show you. That's the only way I can get you to believe me."

"Tim, look, I'm not so sure about this. I mean, what are you saying? That you want me to go monster hunting with you out in the woods? That's crazy, man."

"They're not monsters," he said sternly, "I need you to trust me on this. They're out there. I'm not crazy."

Looking back now, I'm not sure why I did what I did. I should have put an end to all that nonsense right there and then, but I guess I always sort of took pity on Timothy. Back in school he was small and frail; a constant target for the bigger, crueler children. Even as an adult, he was still short and frail. From the look of him, I would guess that he spent more money on drugs than he did food. Unfortunately, that was becoming more and more common in our little town.

Whatever the reason was, I agreed to go with him. He told me that we needed to go during the night, that's when we'd be able to see 'Them.' I suggested that we go that weekend, as I wasn't working then and we could stay the night. He agreed. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, I thought. After all, my father used to take me camping when I was a kid, and it's not like this would really be that much different.

So that Friday when I got off work from the lumber mill I packed up what I had left of my camping gear from when I was a kid. It wasn't much; just a small, two-man tent, and a sleeping bag. I loaded up the Jeep and went to pick up Timothy. He was already waiting for me, smoking a cigarette outside his trailer when I pulled. We waisted no time making our way deep into the dense forest that surrounded our tiny mountain town.

I had second thoughts about that trip as we got our campsite put up. Timothy had always been prone to getting lost in his fantasies as a child, and I had hoped that things would change when we grew up; that he would be able to put all that away and lead a normal life; but seeing him in that state just a few days before had me more worried than ever. I hoped that by going with him out into those woods that we would be able to confront his delusions and maybe he would be able to come back to reality.

I first took notice of Timothy back in the fifth grade. He had been in my class throughout school, but for whatever reason I suddenly noticed that small, skinny kid who would always sit by himself at lunch, and not play with any of the other children at recess. He would wear the same dirty clothes every day, and he didn't smell good.

The other kids would bully Timothy relentlessly. They would torment him for his small stature, or for living in the old rundown trailer park with his drug addicted father. Or about his mother who was locked away in a mental asylum. But mostly I think they went after Timothy because they were afraid.

Our town had a population of less than two-thousand people and dwindling, I think we all knew, even at that young age, that there was no real future for us here. We were all scared that we would be trapped here forever working in the lumber mill that loomed over our small community like a prison. Timothy was the perfect victim for those kids to take their fear and anger out on.

I found him one day quietly crying to himself after school. I introduced myself and asked if he would like for me to walk him home. He was skittish and untrusting, like a beaten dog. It took some convincing, but I assured him that I didn't want to hurt him; and he let his guard down, ever so slightly, and went with me.

Timothy didn't say much on that walk home, but I was still able to learn a lot about him. He had a hard time looking at you when you spoke; and the things he said were odd. All I could think was that his mind didn't work in the way others did. Not that he was broken, just different. He seemed so incredibly lonely; I don't think he'd ever had a friend in his life. After that day, I made sure to be by his side as much as I could.

The years went by and I tried to bring him out of his shell, but it never seemed to work. I would introduce him to my friends, but he just never seemed to click with any of them. In high school I would take him to parties; but he would always rather be at home, working on his stories.

Timothy loved to write stories . I can't blame him really; if your life was as bleak as his, you'd be looking for any kind of escape as well. His father would spend more time at a crack house on the bad side of town than at their home. He didn't like to talk about his mother who was locked away in Saint Augustine's Asylum. He would never say exactly what for, but I knew it had something to do with his brother who died shortly after he was born. I learned quickly not to ask about it. Looking back, I'm not sure why nobody ever called protective services about his situation. Maybe when life is hopeless all around you, you don't notice individual suffering.

As we grew into our late teens, I started to lose touch with Timothy. I felt bad about it; like I was abandoning him. But I had tried for so long to help him and nothing worked. He just sank further and further into himself. He had no interest in making friends, of girls, or any type of ambition at all from what I could tell. He only cared about the worlds he invented in his head.

Now here I was, out in the woods with this man I had once called my friend, because he believed himself to be tormented by some unseen entity. I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt for playing into his fantasies. But I hoped it was all for the best. Maybe I could help break him of these delusions and finally save that poor skinny kid like I had failed to do so many years ago.

That night as we sat by the campfire, Timothy couldn’t keep his eyes off of the sky. He seemed absolutely transfixed by the endless blanket of stars above us. For the first time his nerves seemed to calm, and he was able to tell me why we were there.

“There’s a world all around us that we can’t see,” he started, “But every once in a while, we get a quick glimpse.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I responded. I had to try to make sense of all this if I wanted to help him.

“Our senses can’t quite pick up on them,” he answered, “Buy they’re there. All around us all the time. Have you ever thought you saw someone out of the corner of your eye, just for there to be nothing there when you look? Have you ever been alone in a dark room at night and gotten the feeling that there’s someone there with you? I think that’s Them.”

“I don’t know about all that man.” I rebutted, “I think it's just your mind playing tricks on you. Just leftover instincts from the caveman days. There's nothing coming for you."

He just looked at me with a knowing grin, "It's OK. It’s easier to deny than to accept the world might be much bigger and stranger than we ever thought.”

This might be worse than I thought. He seemed so committed to this delusion. But as he spoke, I couldn’t help but feel a chill shoot through my body, and a sudden sense that there really was something hiding in those trees, watching us.

No, I thought to myself, It’s just his paranoia rubbing off on me. I can’t let him affect me like this.

We sat and talked about all this for the better part of an hour. He told me about how people had been seeing these things since the beginning of time, we all just interpret it differently. Ghosts, aliens, schizophrenic hallucinations; all just people trying to justify these things living all around us that our minds can’t comprehend.

He told me about how in the past weeks he had been seeing them everywhere. They would be hiding in the shadows in the corner of a room. He would see them in the fog at the end of an abandoned street at night. But mostly he would see them standing at the edge of the woods surrounding the town.

"It's just like air," he said, "It's all around us, and we just can't see it. But you can feel it. That's how you know it's real."

And then he started to hear the whispering. Quietly at first; so quiet he thought it was just his ears playing tricks on him. But they got louder, and he'd hear them more often. Voices calling out his name when he was nearly asleep, jolting him awake. They would call out to him, telling him to come find them.

That's when he went out into the woods; like something was leading him. He came face to face with "It" out there, although he still wouldn't tell me what "It" was. When I asked, he'd just say that I'd know soon enough.

I didn't see anything that night. But as I drifted to sleep under that infinite ocean of stars, I could swear I heard a voice whisper my name low. At the time I didn't want to admit what I heard; I told myself it was just the wind. But now, I'm not so sure.

Timothy was quiet the next morning as we packed up our gear. I tried to reassure him. I told him that he should be happy we didn't see anything; that all these things were just in his head and now he can put it all behind him. It didn't help. His look was sullen, and all he would say is "I'm so sorry." I don't think I understood what he meant at the time.

He was just as quiet when I dropped him back off at his trailer. I had hoped that my going out with him would help him realize just how ridiculous these stories were, but now he seemed even worse than before. But I supposed there really wasn't much else I could do. You can only help people as much as they'll let you.

I got home and sat down to watch TV. As I sat there in my recliner, my eyes were drawn to a peculiar spot on the wall. There was an uneven spot in the paint that I'd never noticed before. It was circular, and lighter than the rest of the wall around it, with two roughly textured spots in the middle. It looked like a mouthless face, staring at me.

I told myself that it was nothing; just my mind looking for patterns where there weren't any. But still, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. As much as I tried to focus on the show I was watching, I kept getting drawn to that "face" on the wall. I stared at it, and it stared back. It was as if I were in a trance. Suddenly a loud noise from the television snapped me out of it. I looked around, and noticed it was dark outside.

I must have fallen asleep; that was the only explanation. After all, it's not like I had slept well the night before, out on that forest floor with Timothy droning on and on about ghosts and monsters. I couldn't believe how childish he was. He was a grown man for Christ's sake, how could he still believe in such things? I had learned as a small kid what real monsters were.

Most children are afraid of creatures under their beds reaching out to grab their ankles after they turn out their lights at night. Not me. In fact, it was under my bed where I would spend many nights, hiding after my father had too much to drink. He would come home late, slamming the door as he stumbled in, screaming at my mother. That's when I would run and hide.

She would always try her best to calm him down, but it was pointless. I would close my eyes tight, cover my ears and try not to hear the screams and cries coming from the next room. My mother and I would never talk about it the following mornings. We wouldn't mention the bruises on her face. I would just curl up next to her in her bed after my father had left. She'd squeeze me tight, trying to hold back her tears. Sometimes she wouldn't be able to.

That's how things were in our house. Every couple of months my father would sober up long enough to take me out camping or to a baseball game and play the part of a real dad. But I knew the truth. I knew who he really was; and I knew things would be back to that terrible normal soon enough.

I was fourteen the last time that I ever saw him. There was a waitress at diner that he got pregnant, and they left together with barely a word. I was a freshman in high school and she had just graduated. It was humiliating; but in the end it was just another bruise that my mother and I never talked about.

But that was all in the past, and if there's one thing I've always prided myself on, it was my ability to leave my past behind me. Besides, we all know the real thing to be worried about is Timothy's monster in the woods. God, what a fool. But there's nothing more I can do for him. So I decided that I should turn my mind to more pressing matters, like getting some paint to even out that light spot on the wall. Funny thing was, as I looked again, I couldn't seem to find it anymore. I looked right where it had been, and there was nothing there.

I slept restlessly that night, my dreams invaded by shadowy figures and the unpleasant memories of my father. Suddenly I was awoken by the telephone ringing. I looked at the clock on the nightstand; it was nearly three-thirty in the morning. Who could be calling now?

I answered, but there was no response. I repeated my hello two or three times, but there was nothing. I hung up and started to make my way back to the bedroom when something caught my eye outside my front window. At first I thought I was just seeing things, but as I strained my eyes, I'm sure there was a person standing out there. He was standing in the vacant lot across the street; I could just make out his silhouette from the dim street light. He just stood there, staring up at me.

As I leaned closer to the window to get a better look, suddenly the phone rang again, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin. I snatched it up, and as threatening as I could get my voice to sound, asked "who is this?"

No answer.

I didn't give up. I assured my mystery caller that I would find them, whoever they were, and they'd be sorry. Suddenly, I heard something. It was low and quiet at first. Like a strained moaning. It started to grow louder. The voice was dry and creaked like old wood and soon became a distorted, animalistic shrieking that made my stomach drop. I slammed the phone down and stood terrified in darkness. I knew I had to look out the window.

When I looked back to where I had seen the figure before, there was nothing there. For a second I felt relief; but at that moment, I heard a voice, loudly and clearly right next to me.

"Come back," was all it said.

I screamed and ran around the small apartment turning on every light I had. I looked in the closets, I looked under the bed, I checked the shower, but I didn't find anyone else in there with me. Finally, I settled in my chair with the TV on. There was no way I was going back to bed now.

I sat and talked myself down. There was surely a logical explanation to all of this. The phone calls were probably just kids pranking me. The figure outside? Just shadows playing with my mind. There was never anybody really out there. But what about the voice, I asked myself. Well, I'm half asleep remembering Timothy's ghost stories. I just scared myself. That's all it was.

Timothy. That's who's fault all this was. Making me go out into the woods with him; telling me all his stories about being followed and hearing things. Timothy was always crazy, and now he's trying to pass it on to me. I wasn't going to let him though. I knew I wasn't crazy; and I knew there was nothing waiting for me out in those woods.

I didn't get much more sleep that night, and I suppose I used that to explain some of the things that happened the next day. Like before work, when I was standing in line to get coffee and I suddenly heard someone behind me call out my name. I looked around, but nobody was looking at me. I must have just been hearing things.

Or the shadows I kept seeing out of the corner of my eyes, as if someone was coming up to me, just for there to be nobody there when I turned to look. Or the way I felt eyes on me all day. I just tried to push it all out of my head and go on with my day. I can't let Timothy's sickness affect me like this. It's all in my head. I know it is.

I had to get my mind straight; this was going to be a long day. Our lumber mill had less workers at that point than it had ever had. It had been open for nearly a hundred years; the mill was the heartbeat that kept our small town alive. But time had left us behind. Our equipment was old and outdated. Opportunities had dried up, and people had moved away. Simply put, our town was dying.

Most of the people were still there found that it was easier to live off welfare or to cook meth than work in the mill. More buildings were abandoned and boarded up than housed families or businesses. That bad part of town from when we were kids; it spread like a disease, to the point where it was now the entire town.

My father was right to get out when he did. Those of us left now are the hopeless ones with no place else to go. After I graduated from high school my mother moved to Florida where her aunt and cousins lived. She asked me to go too, but I just had to be a man and prove to her that I could make it on my own.

And now look at me; sleeping with the lights on, jumping at shadows and noises. But that was just the beginning. The rest of the week for me was a kind of hell. I laid awake each night unable to sleep. Any time I would start to drift off, a voice would cry out from the darkness, startling me awake.

The days were no better. I would walk around in a daze. Everywhere I went, I would feel eyes on me. I would see what looked like people standing at the end of long streets, or peering at me from behind buildings. I did my best to put all of this out of my mind; to tell myself that none of it was real. But things got worse that Friday night, when I was finally able to fall asleep.

That night, my nightmares came back. Strange, unseen figures called out to me. I tried to escape them, but everywhere I went, there they were. All around me. I awoke with a start, but I didn't know where I was.

I was freezing, my head in a fog. I looked around and realized that I wasn't even in my apartment. I was standing in the vacant lot across the street from my apartment building. How did I get here? I've never been a sleepwalker. It was then that I realized there was something in my hand. I looked down to see that I was holding a large kitchen knife. What the hell was going on? I looked at my building, and there in the window was a figure staring at me through my front window.

I ran across the street and burst through the front door turning the light on, but there was nobody there. That's when I saw it. I looked down and saw that my clothes and the knife I was holding were covered in blood. Oh my god, what had I done? I threw the knife to the floor and ran to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. There was blood everywhere. I couldn't stop shaking.

I didn't know what else to do, so I stripped my clothes and got in the shower. My legs wouldn't stop trembling, and I couldn't keep myself up, so I slumped down to the ground and sat there unmoving until the water turned cold. The sun was just starting to rise when I got out of the shower, and I knew I had to go outside and see if I could find out what happened.

I wandered around the town for hours. I went down every alley, into every field and empty lot, but I couldn't find anything. No bodies, no dead animals, no houses that looked like they'd been broken into. Nothing. So I made my way back to my apartment, and when I entered I noticed that the knife that was on the floor was now gone. I ran to the bathroom where I had left my bloody clothes, but there was nothing there.

I leaned against the bathroom counter with my face in my palms. I must be going insane, I thought to myself. No. I'm not crazy. There has to be a way to explain all of this.

"Timothy," a voice whispered in my ear causing me to jump.

Of course. This all started with Timothy. He filled my head with his nonsense and infected my mind. It was a sickness. You can't see it like some illnesses, but it's there. Just like air, you can feel it. And I knew what I had to do. I packed a backpack with the things I would need, and made my was to Timothy's trailer.

I met Timothy at his trailer early that morning. He didn't look surprised to see me. I told him everything; the voices, the strange figures that followed me. I told him everything except for what happened that previous night. He was so relieved; after all, it's not every day that someone validates your insanity. Lastly, I told him that I thought I figured out what we need to do to make it all stop. A few minutes later, we were making our way back into the woods.

Those woods were thick and went on for miles. They were the lifeblood of our town. For generations we'd fed off that endless ocean of trees, and I know that when the town does finally die, those trees will swallow it back up and leave no trace. You only need walk in a few yards before you can't even see our town through the thicket. But we were going deeper today. Much deeper than I had ever been.

We walked for hours, barley saying a word. Eventually we came to a small creek. Timothy kneeled down to take a drink, not noticing what I was doing behind him. I grabbed the largest rock I could find and stood behind him. I felt a deep, cutting guilt in my stomach. But I knew I had to push those feelings deep down. It only took one swing to make Timothy drop.

I pulled the small shovel from my pack and started to dig. My hands were shaking so bad that I for a moment I didn't think that I would be able to make the hole. But I managed it, and I buried Timothy deep that day. So deep that nobody will ever find him. When I rolled his body into the hole, I could have sworn I heard his voice whisper, "you saw it too." But I knew I was just hearing things.

I left those woods, got in my car and started driving. I drove for days, never looking back. Eventually, I stopped at a town in another state. I got a job in a hardware store and never spoke of my old life ever again.

But that all seems so long ago now; like a half forgotten dream. My life is so much different. I got married, had a successful career, and now my daughter is about to start college. I've led a happy life, but every once in a while I'll see something out of the corner of my eye, or I'll hear something I can't quite explain, and it brings me back. Because as much as I try to hide and ignore it, I know that there is something waiting for me in the woods. And it knows that some day, I'll come back.