Then Reggie went to the window and slid it up carefully. The hinges were clean and quiet. Leaning forward, Reggie peered out the window and down. The drop to the yard seemed further from his current perch than it ever had from outside, looking up. Now that he’d made his decision, however, he didn’t want to go back downstairs and run the risk of waking his mom.
Reggie hitched the backpack over his shoulders.
Bending, he ducked under the window and onto the roof. He scooted out over the shingles on his butt, inching closer to the edge with his hands and feet. The drop down couldn’t have been more than seven feet or so, the way the roof slanted down. But it looked like a fall into the Grand Canyon.
He dangled over and let go.
His feet met the lawn hard and he rolled with the fall. The impact was jarring but he got to his feet without injury.
He turned towards the woods and started walking.
It was night, he could think of only one place to start, and it seemed a long, long ways away in the blackness draped across the world.
2.
The forest was a different world at night.
Heavy shadow clung to everything like a growth. Limbs reached out like scratching claws or hung like shrouds, hiding things. The trunks could have been giants’ legs, striding through the dusk and gloom. Night birds warbled sad tunes fit for funereal processions.
Uninvited, his mother’s warnings about bobcats and mountain lions pushed themselves forward rudely in Reggie’s mind. Squatters, too, she’d said. Doing God knows what in the abandoned shacks and cabins scattered throughout the woods. Shuffling around in lightless rooms, peering out through the slats of boarded windows. Waiting for unwary passers-by.
Reggie dug out the flashlight and turned it on.
The beam lighted the world where he pointed it, but it also made him easier to spot for stalking predators. Slavering beasts or bedraggled travellers with rape on the brain would know right where he was.
He turned it off, and the darkness leapt back around him.
Twigs snapped in indeterminable distances about him.
He turned the flashlight back on.
‘Fuck it,’ he said and started walking.
He knew the general direction, but moved mostly by memory. It had only been that very morning, so he was fairly confident he could find his way to where he wanted to go. It wasn’t as if the forest got up and walked about and realigned itself. It was always the same, and all he had to do was take the route they’d taken that morning.
The dark seemed to squeeze in close around him. With every step things crunched underfoot; twigs and dry leaves and small stones. They sounded like bones snapping, and he thought of walking a vast wasteland like in a Mad Max movie, treading upon the remains of people blasted dead and dry by warheads innumerable.
Once, as he walked, a glimmer of something caught his eye, and he turned to face it. Through the dark wall of trees, a glint of moonlight off a reflective surface. Glass or metal. Aware of the dangers of losing his sense of direction in the night, Reggie nonetheless strode towards the dim light.
Soon, he came to the edge of a dip in the ground like a small crater. The soil there was loose and sunk a bit underfoot. Like a dried-out pond, baked empty by the unforgiving desert sun. In the centre of it sat an old car, windows shattered, snaked by weeds and branches.
Skeletal and dead, the car made Reggie feel as if he were in the presence of something malevolent. Or at least best left undisturbed. And so he turned, course corrected, and returned to his previous path through the woods.
At some point he became aware of being followed.
Somewhere about him footfalls padded parallel to his own. Softer and more purposely placed than his, the sound of them carried in the still night air like distant, hushed drumbeats.
He swept the light to one side, saw nothing. Swung it the other way, and saw branches and leaves swaying with the passage of something large. He followed the movement of the thing, the swaying of the shrubbery in its wake. It fell back under the searching light, out of reach of the flashlight beam.
Telling himself animals were wary of people, Reggie pressed on.
He found the dry creek bed by almost falling into it. Like a fissure in the earth it was there before him, shadows hiding the bottom so that it seemed to fall away into forever. A grinning drop into nothingness. But he knew there was a bottom and slid down into it. Small avalanches of grit and dirt rolled with him. Standing, he turned and kept walking, the light showing the way ahead, the twists and turns an earthen maze.
Again, as he followed the bends of the creek he at some point became aware of the padding footfalls, and the whisper-brush of something big displacing the foliage as it passed. Coming from the left, Reggie flashed the light up that way and saw again the lazy swaying of the bushes and low-hanging branches.
Whatever was there was just out of sight behind the growth of the woods. He thought he caught a glimpse of hide – taut, tan, and wide – but he wasn’t sure. He thought there was a brief gleam of light reflected off eyes, but then they blinked away as if they’d never been there at all.
Living in Arizona all his short years, Reggie knew the basics of safety when encountering wildlife. Rangers sometimes visited the schools on Career Days. Make noise, they said. Make yourself as big and intimidating as possible. Don’t panic and run. Wild animals were cautious of humans, and would usually retreat. The behaviours and things of people – clothes, gadgets, cars – confused them and, unless provoked, they kept their distance.
Yet Reggie also knew animals like raccoons or bears that developed the habit of nosing in human refuse for easy meals – or the stupid people that fed them – were more difficult to deal with. An animal that had discovered a routine of effortless food was hard to chase away, and was even more dangerous because of their familiarity, and lack of fear, of people.
But usually noise, big and intimidating, and don’t panic was the way to go.
Reggie bent and with the aid of the flashlight found a couple large, fist-sized rocks. He set his backpack down and took out the knife just in case. At first glance the blade had seemed large and wicked-looking when he’d taken it from the kitchen. Now it looked small and pathetic to his eyes. He yelled a ‘Hey!’ that came out a croak, and tried again.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Hey! Get out of here!’ he bellowed and jumped up and down, waving his arms. He stomped his feet and clapped his hands together. He threw the rocks into the forest where he’d seen the moving branches and the flash of eyes. ‘Get out of here! Go away!’
Reggie heard the impact of the stones. He heard something low and rumbling. It was a warning sound, deep and throaty. It sounded like rolling thunder. The vibrations of its decibels almost tangible in the air.
A fear deep and heavy went through his body. His stomach did little flops then curled up in a tight little ball. His legs felt weak. A shiver went through his frame like an electric charge.
The rumble out there and the slow drumbeat padding of the heavy footfalls provided a cadence for the thumping of his heart.
It came near the treeline again, drawing closer rather than retreating. The eyes flashed a bright yellow, like captured fire. Parts of it were clearly seen this time – a dirty tan hide rippling with muscle, canvas-thick.
Nothing could be that large, Reggie thought in immobilized fear.
The rustling of the woods again. Patches of it seen through the trees; the thunder-rumble of it; the pushing aside of the forest growth. But mostly the eyes, afire, glowing golden like spectral orbs.
Trembling, Reggie knelt, found more stones.
He threw them weakly in its direction. The first disappeared, swallowed by the thick woods. The second struck the enshadowed stalker and bounced off ineffectually.
‘Get out of here,’ he muttered. ‘Go away,’ he whispered, the words like a prayer.
And it drew away again, but slowly, casually, as if mocking him. The impossible beast slunk away, the wood
s moving around it. The eyes faded into the darkness and blinked out. The rumble of its low roar likewise diminished, moving away like the thunder of a passing storm. The weighty slaps of its gargantuan footfalls faded.
Gathering himself, fighting back the tears of terror, Reggie started down the creek bed road again, further into the woods, the night, the darkness.
3.
The drop where they’d rolled the body off was infinite at night. It made Reggie think of the beach vacation he and his parents had taken a few years back. The photos of which he’d looked at earlier that very day. His dad had rented a boat and they’d cruised a couple miles off the Pacific coast. Setting anchor in the early evening, they’d eaten dinner in the calm waters. At night all the ocean turned black, and with the dark sky above it was as if the world had been erased.
Staring down the cliff face, that’s what it was like: looking down into an ocean of blackness. Reggie wondered what it would be like to fall down into such a void. It seemed you’d fall forever. And would you even know you were falling? If you could see nothing, neither height nor depth, would there be any sensation at all? Or just the endless black all around?
He thought of the dead man down there.
Or was he dead? In that emptiness, that swallowing darkness, who was to say?
Maybe the dead got up and roamed in such blackness. Without the light of the world maybe different rules applied. Maybe the deputy crawled around down there, lost, confused, groping for something solid, something to pull himself back to the land of the living. Maybe he knew Reggie was up here, watching, and he was pulling himself up, up, slowly, and at the top he’d pull himself over, snatch onto Reggie, and pull him back down with him, clinging, back down into the void.
Reggie moved cautiously back from the precipice.
He saw the note on the ground by the light of the flashlight, the paper weighted down by a rock. Had it been there before? He hadn’t seen it, but that didn’t mean anything. His attention had been on the approach to the cliff.
It was startling; the note there, white in the night, as if deposited by a phantom hand. Cautiously, he approached it. Wary, he bent, picked it up, read it.
If you’ve come this far, I think you’ll come a bit farther. Though I would be remiss not to suggest otherwise. My world doesn’t have to be yours. It shouldn’t be. But head west if you choose to continue. Come to the high rock, and we’ll talk.
There was no signature, but Reggie knew who it was from.
And he knew the high rock as well. It was there, seen from where he stood. The great finger of darkness crooked against the greater night, beckoning. A tower of stone out of the woods like a rampart.
One could see it from almost anywhere in town.
From his perch atop the cliff, the giant stone finger still stretched higher than Reggie. Looming over the treetops below, the vertical spire poked from the earth like the vestige of a buried kingdom. All he had to do was keep walking towards it, and there was no chance he’d miss it. He could see where the cliff face gradually eased downward, and met the forest floor below.
Turning away from the stone tower, so far and yet so near, shoving the note into his pocket, Reggie started to walk again, empty space dangerously close to one side and deep forest to the other, like a vise squeezing tight.
***
There was a clearing about the ash tree from which the body swung. As if the rest of the world had stepped back in regard of the sombre dead. Under the beam of the flashlight the leaves about the tall, broad tree seemed fire-red, brilliant in the night.
At first Reggie couldn’t make out what it was that hung from the branches. The rope about it stretching from the bough creaked in the evening breeze. Gashes in the hide revealed the raw muscle and flesh beneath, making identification difficult.
He stepped closer until he was almost under it.
Looking up he could discern the droopy ears, the long snout. The hound’s eyes flashed in the light but were otherwise dead. Strung up by the hindquarters, its final gaze was directed at the earth below.
From somewhere about Reggie came the deep rumble again, as if on cue. Whatever had been following him would be attracted by the scent of the pooled, dried blood beneath the swinging canine’s corpse. The padding footfalls slapped their approach upon the forest floor in an anticipatory rhythm. The rustle of the creature’s passing issued a frictional, serpentine hiss.
Reggie cast the flashlight’s beam around him, scanning the edges of the clearing. He waited for it to appear. He trembled at the thought of its approach.
But the footfalls faded again. The thunder-rumble of the monstrous purring drifted away and then was gone as well.
He spotlit the hound again. No beast did that, he knew. The dog had died by human hands and been strung up as a sign, a marker, and maybe as a warning.
The dead dog’s eyes no longer seemed to be staring at the ground. Now they were watching him. And one paw seemed bent and crooked, pointing southwest, back into the woods, and the tower above it all, drawing nearer.
4.
A distance ahead of him shone other lights in the woods. So as not to attract their attention, Reggie turned off his and crouched, watched their progress. The lights blinked in and out of existence as they moved behind things – trees, bushes – and reappeared. They bobbed and swerved and jumped in little dances of movement, like fairies. There were three of them, in no specific formation with each other, bobbing, weaving, jerking about.
He thought of the police on the highway two days ago, spread throughout the fields, searching.
He thought of the body at the bottom of the cliff behind him, eternally waving.
He thought of the hung hound he’d just passed, swaying.
Were they closing in on Ivan? Did they know he was out here?
Wouldn’t the police have sent more than just three men, though? Wouldn’t there have been something more organized, say a methodic grid search like you saw in movies? A helicopter buzzing above with a spotlight and night vision scope?
As he watched, the lights before him blinked out, either by design or distance. Reggie counted to himself, waiting a time before doing anything, then he flipped his light back on and continued forward.
A dead man at the bottom of a cliff; a huge beast stalking the woods; a hung dog; phantom lights; all seemed pieces of something in play. It seemed a design or pattern that he should be seeing, if only he looked hard enough.
Something was happening. Something he was a part of and had to see through to the end. Part of Reggie knew that was foolish. He was a kid, and out here in the woods were some sort of animal, police, and a killer. All three dangerous in their own ways.
He shouldn’t be here. He should be back in bed, fast asleep. Or staying up late and playing video games or watching movies with naked women, like other guys his age did.
And yet the stone finger beckoned, spurring him onward.
Westward, the wind in the trees seemed to whisper in a ghostly murmur, adding its opinion to that of the beckoning stone. Westward.
Reggie listened to this persuasive voice, and moving one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, he started walking again, heading in the general direction of the phantom lights.
***
Somewhere in the forest night someone was singing.
The lilting notes were soft and yet unmistakable. The voice rose and fell, rose and fell, so at first Reggie was certain that it wasn’t very far away at all, and then he could only just hear it and thought it must be carried from a vast distance. The song was unknown, the words indistinct, and sometimes it seemed to blend with the nighttime winds so that he couldn’t tell what was nature and what was human.
Whether man or woman, that too he couldn’t figure. In the snippets he caught as the voice rose, it seemed deep enough for a man, yet gentle enough for a woman. There came to his mind a scene of an old man on a porch front, rocking in an old rickety chair, bellowing notes as the day crawled by. He also
saw an old spinster before a strong hearth fire, humming away the endless days.
The direction was indeterminate as well. The voice seemed to come from all directions and nowhere in particular at the same time. He tried standing still, cocking his head this way and that to pinpoint the source, with no luck.
Again there was the sense of something he should be seeing, understanding. The dead, dog and human; the stalking beast; the beckoning stone; the dancing lights; the ghostly singer; all seemed not merely random and separate events on a nondescript Arizona night. Surrounded by shadows and the whisper of the woods, it was easy to think something might be watching him. Unseen, standing just outside his view, this presence was watching, weighing things, and awaiting an outcome.
Waiting on Reggie.
And then the singing stopped. One last note, words heard yet not understood, carried to one last crescendo and then cut off. Ended as quickly as it had begun, leaving Reggie straining to hear nothing. He waited for a time, in case it should start up again.
When it didn’t, he kept on walking.
***
By his watch Reggie had been walking hardly an hour since leaving home, when he stopped to sit and rest. He slung the backpack off his shoulders and unzipped it. Pulling out one of the bottles of water, he uncapped it, took a couple swallows, and put it back. He sat with his back against a pine, the flashlight between his feet lighting the ground in front of him.
Not for the first time, he thought about turning around and going home. He wondered what he was doing out here in the first place. He wondered why it bothered him so much that Ivan had left. In the dark and silence, he wondered many things, each thought brief and fleeting before being replaced by another.
What would his mom think when she woke and found him gone? What if, while looking for him, she wandered over to the tree house, went up the ladder, and saw all the blood? Would she think something had happened to him? Would she call the police? Once contacted, would the police have some way of knowing that one of their own had been by the house earlier? What then?
Are You Afraid of the Dark? Page 11