Warning Wind

As I recall, it was a week before my birthday. September had begun ushering in the light autumn winds which shook the yellowing leaves on their scraggly branches. The usually green needles of the yellow pines began to dim to the color of their namesakes. And the tall grass was flattening all around the slopes of the mountain as the last long days of the year began to shorten.

The school year had just begun and I had to walk up the mountain from the bus stop along the mile of dirt road. My parents were usually in town working so they couldn't drive me up the mountain to our house but I knew they were both home, and neither could be bothered to drive down and get me. That's what I was used to anyway, they had stopped picking me up from the bus around 4th grade. Since I was a week shy of 14 I wasn't expecting the driver's service anyway. They were just never usually home together is why I remember hoping, for a slight second, to see one of their cars waiting at the bus turnaround at the bottom of the mountain.

But I trekked my way up the dirt road, five huge school books fattening up my backpack and weighing down on my shoulders. Birds were bustling amongst the tops of the pines, probably hurrying to pack their bags for their vacations down south. I finally trudged up the final steep driveway that led to our house. The green sheet metal roof and sea-foamy blue walls camouflaged itself amongst the wooded area, flat enough for the house to sit on and a car to turnaround.

I crossed the driveway and between the two parked cars to get to the front door and the peace of the forest around got canceled by the muted shouts coming from inside my house. I couldn’t make out what was being yelled but the unmistakable inflection of ‘fuck’ was obvious. Closing my eyes and sighing I shoved the door open. The argument became discernible but that didn’t mean I could make out what exactly was being yelled. I turned the corner by my mother’s studio and looked down the hall where I saw my father in the almost green light that glowed from the lights above.

My dad was in the middle of a loud rebuttal when he caught a glimpse of me from the corner of his eye and let his arms down as he greeted me, “Oh, Randall… how was school?”

I walked by acting like I didn’t just walk into a heated debate and tried a response, “It was o.k.”

“Hey Randy…” My mom called from the couch in the living room.

“Hi Mom” I said, trying to walk away.

My mom sat up and asked, “Are you o.k?”

I glanced back at her but she was glaring at my dad and I told her, “Yeah I’m fine.”

“Do you have homework?” My Dad asked to my back as I retreated to my room.

I called back a last time, “Yeah but it ain’t due for a while.”

As I closed my room door behind me I heard my dad yell, “Ain’t, isn’t a word!”

Once in my room I threw my backpack on the floor and laid back on my bed. Stretching out, I worked the school day boredom out of my joints as my parents could be heard from the living room again, albeit more tame this time. With my head back on my pillow I looked over at my window which was adjacent to me. From the angle I could see the trees towering over our small pond outside and hear the water trickling down from the creek that wrapped around the mountain above our house. The soothing sound of the water seemed to call to me as I was trying to ignore my parents' argument out in the living room.

I answered the call and grabbed my knife in its sheath off of my dresser. Slipping out of my door I turned the immediate corner and stomped up the stairs that were next to my room. This led to the upstairs living room and kitchen which could all use a cleaning. I jumped over the cat and popped out of the back door, onto the back porch, down the porch steps and up the mountain into the woods.

Our property trail led up to the creek where our pond got its water and I cleaned out the grate which filtered all the leaves and sticks which fell in the water. After that I jumped across the plank I had laid across the high embankments of the creek like a bridge and I was off into the national forest behind my house.

I loved it out there in the woods and if I wasn’t messing around with my friends in town after school I would come home and the first thing I would do is hike up into the forest. I knew the woods like the halls of my school and could find infinite entertainment under the stretching green branches of the pines.

I had quit the boy scouts the year before, mostly because I spent more time in the woods by myself than the scout masters ever did. So I made my own adventures and trained for my own merit badges. I would practice walking through the woods silently, studying which plants made the most noise when rustled. I could walk silently even over sticks or run quietly over logs. Back then I didn’t know how active I was. I would speed hike up the mountain up to the abandoned log road without stopping and I would find large branches to curl like weights. Low branches were pull up bars. Once I went to do a pull up on a branch and it snapped, sending me into the sharp sticks beneath. But I digress…

That particular day didn’t turn out to be one of my normal days on the mountain. That day I had decided to test the theory of ‘curiosity killed the cat’. After I had hiked the steep mile up the mountain to the logging road I decided I was bored with the normal conditioning I practiced. I just wanted to explore and forget the out of context things I had heard my parent’s holler so angrily. How could two people have so much to argue about? Their quarrels seemed as endless as the woods.

I turned left and followed the logging road that way around the mountain, for I had been that way many times but far fewer than the adventures I had taken down the right path. That was the path my father taught me to hunt on so the right path was very familiar. The left however, I had never fully explored and for some reason I had some viking wind filling my sails as I bravely trotted along the wrapping logging road.

Many things had grown over the ancient road and I loved observing all of it. Giant white puff mushrooms that seemed to smoke when you prodded them were my favorite find. I would poke them so their spores would float out of the top but insecurely I would retreat and hold my breath in case the mushrooms poisoned the air. Baby pines grew all over the road and I would often push through huge groups of the vibrant green trees.

One thing I hated were the horse flies that would buzz like V8’s and bite the meat off my uncovered legs. I became skilled at letting the giant bastards land on me, then striking like Jet Li. I didn’t kill them every time but they were so big it was easy to tell when I murdered one.

I sauntered full of breath in the cool air of autumn and I came to an opening where the road was relatively clear and the steep hillside running beneath the road to the left was clear of trees. I knew where I was, it was the first place I had seen a black bear. I was much younger and I just watched it look at my father and me. It seemed uninterested and wandered away from us down the hill into the blond grass. But I stopped at the same spot and gazed up at the big blue sky above me and took note of the sun’s place.

It must have been an hour of walking before I came to the end of the logging road. The flat grassy road rounded a corner and when you came around it the road ran into a small mound that would block any vehicle from leaving the road. That is as far as I had ever gone before that day. Usually I would get to the mound and that would be where I turned around. But as I walked up to the dirt pile I couldn’t stop. I hopped up onto the mound and peered ahead of me. A small trail picked up where the road ended but the woods got very thick. I glanced over my shoulder, back to where I had come and heard nothing to convince me to turn around.

So I stepped off the mound and kicked off down the trail that led deep into the mountains. I kept my thumb hooked on the hilt of my knife which hung on my belt and walked like I owned the place as the trees began to shade the trail. Though, outwardly, I could have been mistaken for brave and confident. Inwardly, as soon as I stepped off that mound my heart began to fall and spin into my chest. I almost heard my own voice calling to me from the mound but I knew I had to push on, in the good name of all the explorers before me.

The trail continued for as long as the logging road did it seemed, only not as open and cramped by the trees and bushes drunkenly leaning into the path. Eventually the trail turned downward and I no longer found myself at the top of the mountain. A large house sized boulder could be seen ahead and the trail continued right by it so I decided to take a break there. I was hot and the sun was still high in the sky but I knew it would be dropping eventually.

I pulled the bottle of water I clipped to my belt up to my lips and drenched my mouth, then pulled it away, preventing myself from draining the whole bottle. I relaxed a bit but my heart still felt sunken as I glanced around the woods I had never seen before. Though it was very dense it was still the same scenery as the woods around my house. I leaned on the giant boulder and wondered how it got there. Glaciers is what I eventually concluded had moved the massive rock.

There was an eerie lack of bird’s songs is what I thought as I began heading farther down the green trail. I looked around and didn’t see any birds, but they did have places to be. The trail finally thinned out as the mountain began to flatten out as well. That’s when I laughed at myself for feeling any fear. It’s the woods! What’s there to be scared about? Other than animals, I don’t have to worry about nature. I also realized that there probably wasn’t much to see or discover actually. The giant boulder was cool and I would like to climb it but what else could there really be?

That’s when I noticed something off the trail which seemed like it was about to lead back up the mountain. As the trail turned ahead to my right I looked left down into the draw of the hill on my left. A strange hedge grew in between the crevasse of the conjoining hills and the hedge flowed both up and down the mountain. The hedge stuck out but at the time it didn’t seem that strange to me. Other than the fact that I had never seen a hedge grown anywhere on this mountain. And it was as I was inspecting the hedge from the trail I saw an entrance into the hedge.

At a point in the hedge the branches parted and made a port for the short hedge that even had a bit of wear in the dirt from something using it frequently. This really piqued my imagination. I couldn’t understand what I was looking at from the trail so I left it and began to approach the hedge. And it only became clearer to me as I got closer that this hedge was hollow and made a tunnel running across the mountain.

Quite bewildered I got up close and realized what I thought at a distance were leaves were actually thorns, some an inch long. And the entrance was plain to see. Something used this hedge as some tunnel, like an above ground burrow or something. I slowly advanced thinking some dog sized rat would jump out and spit rabies foam at me but I didn’t hear anything. I darted my eyes around my head and looked back at the trail to make sure it was clear.

I caught my breath and wiped some worried sweat from my brow. I definitely wanted to fall back and just go home and get a snack but I did feel a deep desire to continue. Something I figured actual explorers could relate to.

On my hands and knees I poked my head into the shrub tunnel and looked down it both ways. It was small but not too small, something bigger than me could have crammed through it. So before I thought too much, I chose a direction and began to crawl through the thorny hedge.

I went uphill so it would be easier to come back and it wasn’t more than a minute before I began to get scratched up by the thorns. It was irritating but I thought the cuts felt good and drove me to crawl harder and faster. I refused to think about if the animal that used the tunnel was coming down the other way. It began to freak me out but I had my knife and if I had to fight I would.

But the tunnel kept leading uphill and I began to tire and bleed on my legs from the thorns. I stopped to catch my breath but couldn’t sit all the way up, then I drank some more water and saved about a third of the water.

At that point I really wanted to turn back but I couldn’t do it. I had to find out what was at the end of the hedge. So once again I continued on, telling myself I could turn around once I found the end. The dirt I was crawling on was rocky and I was really pushing myself, scraping my knees as I finally saw an opening ahead of me after the path went downward then flattened out.

I shuffled along and finally shot out of the exit, ready to see some secret meadow or a lake filled with giant trout. But what I found truly couldn’t have been expected. A pond sat still under an actual dome of trees. The sharp hedge ran off from both sides of the exit and wrapped around a dark pond covered in sticks, and the hedge surrounded the body of water and covered steep embankments that trapped the pond in aside from a gap in the trees opposite of where I stood, across the pond.

It should have freaked me out more, I realize now, but I was a strange and curious kid. And though it was so strange a part of me thought it was cool and mysterious. I thought maybe it had been some ancient Indian passageway used to flank frontiersmen in some hundreds year old battle.

Since the small pond was fenced in by the brambly hedge and steep embankments I had no choice but to go through the pond. I looked down at the water but couldn’t see it because the surface of the pond was completely covered with small black floating sticks. I stepped into the pond and the water felt almost freezing. I got both feet into the water and walked till the water was above my knees. My shoes sunk into the soft mud and pushed through the floating sticks. Once the water rose past my waist the temperature stole the life out of me. It was so cold I could hardly stand it and tried to rush to the other end of the pond. I tried to kick my feet up to just stroke to the other end but my right foot was sunken into the soft mud at the bed of the pond.

I refused to panic though and tried to yank my foot free from the mud with the cold water up to my chest. I couldn’t loosen the mud’s grip and I began to feel anxious even though I wasn’t deep enough to drown. But paranoia of being stuck awakened the trapped animal in me and I began to hurriedly pull at my knee but the mud would not free my foot, and in trying to plant my other foot for some leverage it sunk deep into the mud as well. I was soaking wet and just stood up straight and regained my breath then calmed down while looking up at the tall trees blocking the blue sky.

The answer was obvious at that point and I wasted no time to shove my head under water and began digging the mud out from around my feet. I could feel my foot becoming loose but I had to come back up for some air and on the second breath I was able to dig both my feet out of the mud. Once my feet were free I kicked them up and swam through the cold water to the opposite end of the pond. I climbed out of the water and shook myself off like a dog.

Looking down at my feet I saw the dark brown mud sloughing off my shoes and I kicked my feet in the air to remove the rest of the mud. I felt scared but I couldn’t stop investigating the trail. Some mud wasn’t going to deter me and I trudged onward out of the encircled area.

My hair was long and curly, usually always disheveled and it was so thick that when it got wet it hung heavily over my face. So I bowed over to wring my hair out and when I squeezed the water out I felt a bunch of the sticks from the water crunch in my hair. I wrung as much water as I could out of my hair and flung my hair over my head to lay down the back of my neck. I began pruning the sticks out of my hair when I realized they felt strange, nothing like wood. Pulling one of the bigger sticks out I held it before my eyes for inspection.

It didn’t quite register immediately what I was looking at, but after a few moments I glared in confusion. I was looking at some sort of bird’s foot. Grossed out, I dropped the foot and pulled another stick out of my hair. It was another foot missing two of the three talons. Shaking my hair I began ripping all the feet out of my hair that I could grab. Once I felt nothing but gritty dirt in my hair I stopped shaking my head and saw a number of bird’s feet scattered on the ground around me. I stared through discerning eyes and couldn’t grasp any idea of why the pond was filled with bird’s feet.

Now I had a mystery. Where the hell was I? Once out of the dome of the pine trees the area plained out and a small valley lay between the mountain I lived on and some other mountain. There were small rolling hills across the hidden valley and the hills were rather bald with random trees and bushes scattered about. The mountain opposite of mine was rocky and steep, creating a large cliff wall that trailed along the opposite end of the valley. There wasn’t much to see and no apparent trail any more so I wasn’t sure what to do.

I knew I should have turned around long ago but I had come too far so I just walked out into the middle of the valley. I looked back and saw the group of trees that encompassed the pond was about one hundred fifty yards away. But I felt close to something so I continued farther into the valley. The sun had turned from bright yellow to a brazen orange as it began to hang in the sky in front of me. I was growing tired as I noticed the valley narrowing ahead of me before a steep draw was formed between the two mountains.

As I got closer to the end of the valley I thought it would dead end and I would just turn back and for a moment I was relieved thinking this. But one step closer and I saw a new trail, zig zagging up the steep draw and I started wearily pumping my legs up the hill. This was as steep as my path up to my logging road and I had come so far I was moving along very slowly. Stopping for a moment I looked up to see how far the trail went and that’s when I saw another group of cramped trees much like the dome around the pond. The group of trees was sitting on a rocky outcrop about twenty feet above me.

I powered through the rest of the steep trail and almost out of breath finally began stepping up to the group of trees somehow growing out of a large jutting rock. I approached the trees and as I came around them I was shocked to see a small hovel.

What seemed to once have been a log shack had been mounded with dirt. I instinctively grabbed the handle of my knife and my heart seemed to flutter out like a candle’s flame. There was nowhere else to go. This is what I had been looking for but once I found it I regretted the whole journey. What lived there? Were they inside? I saw a chimney but no smoke was pouring out. A small window was still intact but the weight of the mounded dirt was caving in the wood frame and it seemed like at any moment the glass could shatter due to its deforming shape. There was no light in the window. I stared wide eyed at the structure and stopped my shaking legs from running off like a rabbit.

“Hello…” I called out weakly, “Is anyone there?”

…Nothing called back and I waited to hear an answer as the wind whistled through the branches around me.

“Hello?” I tried asking again. And again no response.

The door of the hovel was ancient and barely sealed the threshold of the shack. I was ready to draw my knife as I inched toward the door and reached for the handle, snail-like. I turned the wobbly handle and shoved the door open. The shack was unlit and dank. A fireplace was empty at the far wall next to an antique bed frame covered in animal pelts. I stepped in and allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Across the exposed chimney hung a line of birds hanging upside down with their wings extended. I noticed they had no feet.

Who lived here? I asked myself as I glanced about at the almost barren interior. To the left of the entrance was a wooden table covered in eggshells and bunches of berries. Also on the table was a knife. The knife looked older than anything else in the cabin. It was bronze and hammered and I felt its age as I turned it around in my hands. It was a slim blade and its edge was bent and dented but its jaggedness made it sharp like the tin lid of a freshly opened can of soup.

Suddenly I felt I had been discovered. The wind outside began to howl against the shack and the sound nearly pierced my ears like a shriek. I dropped the bronze blade and drew my own as I jumped through the doorway. The wind swirled around me and as I looked for someone, anyone looking to bust me or hurt me. Wisps of darkness caught my eye as they flowed off the top branches into my view. My gaze craned upward to the tall tree that helped hide the shack and on one of the mid branches was some unexplainable anomaly.

It seemed like there was an invisible fire emanating a foul brown smoke out of nothing. But as the wind swirled about it ripped the smoke away from its contained place and what I could barely see in the smoke still grips me with fear as I recount this now. A pale wrinkled and humorless face floated behind the veil of smoke and it peered at me with malice, its eyes glowing black.

I was taken aback in horror and stumbled backward into the trees surrounding me. The face glared for what seemed like fleeting centuries and I couldn’t bear to look at the thing anymore. So, closing my eyes, I regained my nerves and spun around.

Launching myself off the rocky outcrop I had struggled up just minutes earlier I fell across the trail and bounced back down the draw. I hit many rocks and flipped in the air multiple times but before I knew it I had smacked hard at the bottom into a cloud of dirt. My bell was rung and I felt I had cut myself on my stomach with my knife I no longer held onto. I was mildly injured but my adrenaline and fear kept me fleeing. I pushed myself up onto my shaking legs and looked at the trail of dust I had left down the mountain side from my fall. Then a howl shook the sky and I saw a worm of smoke begin to billow down the draw after me.

I screamed my lungs empty as I turned on a heel and sprinted back across the valley. I bolted off so fast I almost lost my balance and had to catch myself with my hands and keep my legs pumping. I couldn’t look back, for if I did I knew whatever it was would be gaining on me. So I kept my head vice gripped forward as I jumped over rocks and slid down inclines. The wind was still blowing all around me as I spotted the group of trees which surrounded the pond. Channeling my inner horse I sucked in air and kicked my legs as hard as they could as I exhaled fearful fire.

I moved fast and agile and didn’t even slow my pace as I sprinted full force between the domed trees and long jumped straight into the pond, almost half way across. Remembering the mud I didn’t even stick my feet down I just swam across as fast as my arms could pull me and I launched out of the water onto the otherside. Without hesitation I slid on my bleeding legs into the bramble hedge tunnel where I paid even less mind toward my own well being as I practically sprinted, hunched over through the brambly burrow. All over I was getting sliced by the thorns and my hair would catch at places and rip whole strands out of my head.

But I couldn’t stop, what I had witnessed had removed any rational thoughts from my skull. I still couldn’t turn around to see if the brown smoke still pursued me and I ripped the skin off my palms as I ran like some chimpanzee through the tunnel. Finally I saw the hole that I had entered from and I shot back out of it onto my face.

My back was aching from the hunched running I had done and I was gasping for air as I turned over and saw the spot of blood soaking into my side and I lifted my shirt to see the large cut I had in my side going up almost under my armpit. There was also a smaller cut on my right forearm from my own knife. I didn’t feel the cuts but the sight of that much of my blood fueled my fear once again and I pushed myself off the ground and ran back to where I had last seen the trail.

The sun had set considerably by the time I was back on that trail and I could see the sky turning grey ahead of me with the orange sun falling at my back. I ran up the trail as quickly as I could but I couldn’t keep up the same sprint I had earlier. I was forced, by weariness and injured legs, to keep up a pathetic jog where every lift of my legs was a battle. Passing the giant boulder I slightly laughed and rejoiced because I knew I was making progress. After what seemed like a whole nother day I finally came upon the dirt mound that separated the trail from the logging road. I sat and looked back finally but could barely see anything in the waning twilight. So unable to confirm if I wasn’t being chased anymore I got back up and forced my legs to continue running.

I couldn’t hear anything but my own heart beat. A whole pack of wolves could have been bounding up behind me and I wouldn’t be able to tell. Sweat poured over my face and soaked my clothes and finally I came to the fork of the logging road that I knew so well. Stopping once again to catch my breath I readied myself for the last leg. It was finally dark and I was at my wits end. I must say I made record time down that mountainside, practically skipping down. Covering ten feet with each step, using gravity to carry me down the mountain.

Eventually I could hear the rushing water of our creek over my bass drum heart and I finally stopped jogging. I just limped over my plank bridge and could make out the orange lights of my house at the bottom of the hill. I was almost there, to safety. I didn’t care if it was still chasing me. It could kill me in my backyard and I wouldn’t mind. I was still frightened but so tired I was just happy if I saw my house one last time.

But it didn’t come and kill me and I was able to limp up my back porch and back into my house. The lights were on upstairs but no one was in the kitchen or on the couch. I just chugged a large glass of water then slumped my way down the stairs.

For once I didn’t hear my parents fighting and once at the bottom of the stairs I heard my mom call from the other living room, “Randy? Where’d you go?”

“I was just walking up on the mountain mom!” My yell turned to a whimper half way through my sentence. But I left her there, never seeing her and I went to the bathroom to inspect myself. Both my cuts had coagulated and stopped bleeding but I grabbed the hydrogen peroxide and poured it onto some toilet paper to pad my wounds with. It stung like hell but I had felt it many times before and was almost used to it. I had smaller cuts and scrapes all over my body. My knees had been scrapped raw and my legs were sore and bruised. After I bandaged my cuts I saw in the mirror I had some blood that had dried to the side of my face and found a gash in my scalp but it was minor so I cleaned it and left it alone.

A shower felt superb after that ordeal, not too hot though… just warm. My mom had found me after my shower and freaked about all the damage but I just told her I accidentally fell down a hillside. Since I was back in my home it seemed like what had happened was some dream. But I knew it happened and it was real, I would have to be psychotic to do all that damage to myself for no reason. I knew telling my mom would be futile so I just lied and kept it to myself.

Mom had warmed some dinner up for me and when I could barely make it up the stairs she was worried I should go to the hospital but I reassured her I was fine, I didn’t mind the cuts and aches. I couldn’t go to the hospital for what I had seen though and for my whole life I’ve had to recall this isolated instance in my adolescence with shame and deep regret. And still to this day I never take a trail to its end and I never poke my nose into another’s business unwarranted. Because of what happened that night after the rest of the house had fallen asleep.

Though I was more than tired from the adventure I was also wired by the far out terror I had witnessed. So I stayed up that night and played video games in my room to try and escape from my own world and forget the ghoulish face in the smoke. But as the night drew on into the dark and early morning hours I did get ready for bed. And I kept my window open to listen to the running water of the pond while I slept. But as I laid in bed looking towards my window, hearing the trickling water, the wind picked up almost softly and pushed my curtains around almost horizontal. The wind didn’t seem forceful but it was obviously strong enough to fill my curtains like that. And as I witnessed that I heard something inside the wind. Something I couldn’t quite determine but I could hear a faint language that made no sense, with an accent of hate. And I heard the voice speak to me from inside the wind.

I didn’t need to know the language to understand that after my curtains fell still I had been warned by the wind, never to enter the territory of the foul smoke and bird’s feet ever again.