Fishing in Brains for an Eye with Teeth (Thirteen Tales of Terror)

by William Markly O'Neal

  And like his father and grandfather before him, John began losing his hair at the age of seventeen. By the time he was nineteen, his hair line had receded so far he decided to go bald. His friends gave him crap when he first shaved his head but they all finally admitted he looked better fully bald than partially bald.

  Once again, Drake started the conversation with a statement rather than a request. “We’re going camping, dawg. All of us. Hunting and fishin’ on Bullet Lake. Tom is going to score an ounce of the green. Roger’s got us covered on beers. It’s gonna be sweet.”

  Drake was surprised when John didn’t offer a single objection. John sounded eager, in fact, when he asked, “When?”

  “Tentatively, we’re talking the second weekend in June. I haven’t talked to Kyle yet.”

  John promised, “I’m there, dude. Just let me know when.”

  “Your granddad still owns that place on the lake, right?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Sweet. And we can use your tent, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Cool.” Now that their plans were made, Drake felt the need to harass John a little. “I can’t believe you’re actually going to tear yourself away from your K-Mart wench.”

  John was in love. He moved in with Angie Bailey four months ago. They met at K-Mart, where they both work.

  John returned the ball to Drake’s court. “I can’t believe your wife is giving up the keys to your shackles for a night.”

  Neither would ever admit it but they were eager to see each other.

  Finally, a couple of days later, Drake got a hold of Kyle, who was away at college.

  Kyle Cain was odd looking, a big nose and big ears, with jet-black hair he wore in an unflattering Beatles mop. He was the smartest of the Five; he always earned the best grades in high school; and no one was surprised when he got a scholarship to a small college in Virginia. He intended to be veterinarian one day. He’d always loved animals.

  Drake secretly admired Kyle’s spirit, considering how tragic his life had been. Kyle was the only one of the Fearless Five who’d truly faced death. Both of his parents were murdered when Kyle was only twelve years old. He was raised by his grandparents.

  Then, shortly after his sixteenth birthday, his grandfather died, making him ‘the man of the house.’

  In Drake’s opinion, Kyle had the most cause to be rebellious and yet, of all of them, he was the most responsible. He was even more dutiful than Roger.

  Drake hadn’t talked to Kyle in months when he finally reached him on the phone one day during his lunch break. He was sitting at a picnic table in back of the building where he worked.

  Drake and Kyle engaged in small talk first, catching up. Kyle asked about Jody and the baby. Drake asked if Kyle had a girlfriend yet (and wasn’t the least bit surprised when Kyle said he didn’t.)

  Then, finally, Drake got to the point, “We’re going on a hunting trip. All the guys. It’ll be like old times. The Fearless Five Ride Again.”

  Kyle didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about the prospect. “I don’t know, man.”

  “What do you mean, you ‘don’t know?’ We haven’t gone hunting in forever! Tom’s gonna score some weed. Roger’s bringing the whiskey. John’s got the tent. We’re all set, dude.”

  After a pause, Kyle said, “I’m just not into that shit anymore.”

  Drake was genuinely confounded. “What shit? Hanging with your dawgs?”

  “No, dawg. Hunting.”

  Drake winced. Of course Kyle had no interest in hunting. Kyle didn’t like hunting all that much when they were kids (he would always come up empty handed in the trophy department, claiming he missed). Now that he was dedicated to becoming a vet . . . . Drake slapped his forehead. “I’m an idiot, dude. I didn’t think.”

  Drake could almost hear Kyle’s smile as he replied, “What else is new?”

  “You don’t have to carry a gun. You still fish, right? Fishing isn’t against the Veterinarian Code of Ethics, is it?”

  Kyle snickered. “No.”

  “I didn’t think it would be, considering every Vet’s office I’ve ever been in has a fish tank.”

  Kyle laughed.

  “So you can fish, right? And you can still get good and fucking stoned with your buddies. You still like the blunts, right, dawg?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And whiskey? You didn’t give up Jack Daniels, did ya? Because I remember at my bachelor party when you—”

  “Alright, alright!” John conceded. “I’m in. When are we going?”

  They planned the hunting trip for the second weekend in June.

  ******

  Trinity County, Indiana, was located in north central Indiana. The Trinity County Seat was Middleridge, a farming community with a population of barely 13,000. Built on the banks of the narrow Hook River, Middleridge had a K-Mart, but no Wal-Mart. There was a small strip mall but no indoor malls. There were nine churches in town and thirteen taverns. WWMI 1212 A.M. Radio, the self-proclaimed ‘Voice of Trinity County’ signed off the air every night at sunset. The local newspaper— The Middleridge Daily Messenger— reported much more often on crop futures than on violent crime (with the notable exception being that incident a few years back where five young women were murdered by a serial killer).

  In the western part of the county was Bullet Lake. It wasn’t as large as other bodies of water in the surrounding counties but it had always been a favored recreation spot. Flagg City—situated on the eastern side of Bullet Lake— was once a true city but now it was only a tiny place, a seasonal community with a population that swelled in the summer and died in the winter.

  Only a small section of dense woodland on the western banks of Bullet Lake had a wicked reputation among the locals. Near the place where Trinity Creek emptied into Bullet Lake, it was said there was once an Indian burial ground, back in the mid-1700s. Before Indiana became a state in 1816, Delaware Indians had built several settlements on the banks of Bullet Lake and all along the Hook River.

  On least three separate occasions over the last century, groups of local boys who went looking for the Indian burial grounds either disappeared or met with tragic fates. A local legend took root to explain the disappearances, what was called both ‘The Legend of Bullet Lake’ and ‘The Legend of Injun Joe.’

  John Womack’s grandfather owned land on the western side of Bullet Lake, near that notorious woodland. Drake, Tom, John, Roger, and Kyle had heard the old ghost story told repeatedly.

  They were just too intelligent to believe it.

  ******

  Tom Pascal still lived with his parents, who had moved recently to a farm a couple miles south of Middleridge. On the day of their hunting trip, the Fearless Five met at the Pascal homestead and struck out from there. They took Drake’s four-wheel-drive pick-up, cruising down old country roads, passing recently planted corn and soybean fields.

  The Womack family owned five acres of land right on Bullet Lake. There was once a cabin there but it was hit by lightning twenty-seven years ago and burned to the ground. John’s grandfather never had it rebuilt.

  As boys, whenever John and his friends went camping on the lake, they used tents.

  Drake took his pick-up truck off road, driving down a rough trail between two cornfields, until they finally reached the land owned by John’s grandfather. Most of the property was overgrown and covered by a fairly dense forest. Drake parked his truck.

  There was a deadfall of trees the guys needed to navigate around in order to get to a trail that led through the woods. Eventually that trail came to a clearing on the banks of Bullet Lake. It was quite a walk to the campsite but they had come prepared. All their party supplies were loaded into coolers and they had brought two dollies they could use to wheel their supplies in.

  It was a warm afternoon, a bit muggy, but generally good weather, with no rain in the forecast. After smoking a little marijuana and cracking five beers, the guys quickly and efficiently unloaded t
he truck, trekked back through the woods, and set up camp. John had a huge tent, big enough for all five of them to sleep in.

  Kyle brought with him his fishing pole, as did three of the other four, but he was the only one not carrying a gun.

  As they finished erecting the tent (as well as their first round of beers), John asked, “So what first? Hunting, right?”

  Drake slapped Kyle’s shoulder. “The wuss here isn’t hunting this year. He’s, like, all animal-friendly now that he’s Doctor Doolittle.”

  Tom grinned at Kyle and said, “I didn’t know you could talk to the animals.”

  Grinning ominously, Roger held up his rifle. “Can you call up a deer for me?”

  “Fuck you guys,” Kyle said. “And the horses you rode in on.”

  Looking comically confused, John said to Drake, “Wouldn’t that be animal abuse?”

  As Drake and Tom laughed, Roger said to John, “You put out a salt block, right?”

  John nodded. “A couple weeks ago, yeah. Right after dickhead here,” he shoved Drake, “got permission from his keeper to go on this trip.”

  Drake shoved John back. “Let’s not bring up that shit again, k?”

  As usual, Roger was eager to shoot something. To John, he said, “Show me where it is.”

  “I’ll go too,” Tom said, picking up his own shotgun.

  John nodded. “A’ight.”

  Tom looked at Drake. “What about you, man? You coming?”

  “Nah,” Drake said. “I’ll hang with Kyle.”

  The three went off in search of game while the two stayed behind.

  After smoking another blunt, Kyle admitted to Drake, “I need to call my dad.”

  Drake grinned at Kyle as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket. “Yeah. I need to call Jody.”

  Kyle rolled his eyes and grinned.

  “What?” asked Drake.

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “Yeah. But you gave me a look.”

  Kyle walked off in one direction, punching buttons on his cell phone, while Drake wandered off in a different direction doing the same.

  Kyle came straight here from college. He drove most of the way from Virginia yesterday, spent last night in hotel in Cincinnati, and finished the rest of his trek this morning. Kyle called his parents to let them know he was back in the county and would see them tomorrow afternoon.

  Drake had a slightly longer conversation with his wife, answering twenty questions.

  After that, Drake and Kyle smoked another blunt and guzzled more beer.

  It was about twenty-five minutes after Tom, John, and Roger left that Drake and Kyle heard gunshots, not all that distant.

  “Sounds like they found something,” said Drake. After a moment’s pause, he asked Kyle, “So, aren’t you going to grab your little black bag and go make a house call?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t be a house call, would it? More like a nature call.” Drake laughed uproariously at his own joke.

  Kyle couldn’t help but laugh too.

  Three more gunshots echoed through the forest, one right after another.

  “Holy crapping shit!” Drake looked off in the direction of the gunfire. “What did they run into? A goddamn herd of something?”

  Three more gunshots rang out. Now it was Kyle’s turn to say, “Goddamn!”

  Drake grabbed his gun. “I wanna see what they got.” He looked back at Kyle. “You coming?”

  “Sure.”

  It was late in the afternoon as they entered the forest, just an hour before sunset, and the shadows were long. Drake led the way, his rifle raised. Kyle followed, feeling very empty-handed without a gun.

  After trudging along for a few minutes, there was another gunshot, which allowed Drake to adjust his course. “This way,” he said as he began to hurry. Kyle could tell Drake was getting excited about the prospect of shooting something.

  Suddenly, they heard Roger yell at the top of his lungs, “WOOHOO!”

  Drake hurried even faster.

  A few seconds later, they heard John say quite clearly in a loud voice, “They’re never gonna believe it!”

  Drake cupped one hand to his mouth and shouted, “HEY!”

  “Drake!”

  “Dawg!”

  “Dude! You’re not going to believe what we found!”

  The two groups were still many yards apart but after a few more minutes, the Fearless Five eventually came together again, in the middle of the woods.

  “You’re not going to believe it, man!”

  “What?”

  “Check this out!” Roger thrust out a hand, shoving a dangling dead thing into Drake’s face. Kyle gasped when he saw the size of the animal.

  “That’s the biggest goddamn squirrel I’ve ever seen in my life!”

  John chattered excited laughter. “Wait until you see the deer we bagged!”

  Tom looked at Drake and said with a perfectly straight face, “It’s Bountiful Woods.”

  Kyle looked skeptical, Drake even more so. “No way.”

  “Way!”

  Roger was still holding up his squirrel, which had a bloody stump where its oversized head should be. “Will you look at the size of this fucking thing! And it just walked right up to me so I could shoot it.”

  “No way,” Drake said again.

  Tom grabbed Drake by the shoulder. “It’s the truth, man. It’s just like the legend. The place is crawling with game!”

  John was getting so excited, he began to pace. “Squirrel, possum, coon, ground hogs, crows as big as fucking vultures!”

  Tom exclaimed, “Even after we shot the first deer, the other animals didn’t run away! They just sat there! It’s like Roger said! That squirrel walked right up to him like it fucking wanted to die.”

  “It’s heinous, man!” Roger looked at his squirrel one last time, and then cast it aside so he could again grip his rifle with both hands. “You gotta see!”

  Drake unconsciously licked his lips. “Yeah.” He told them, “Show me.”

  And so Tom, John, and Roger led Drake and Kyle deeper into the woods, headed toward the lake, then suddenly veering north. There was no trail. The forest floor was mostly covered with last year’s leaves and a few old logs, not at all difficult to traverse. But then the grasses got longer, and bushes started cropping up, and the trees thickened. The guys fell into single file. Roger led, cutting a swath through the underbrush.

  The trees were really crowding each other now. Kyle remarked, “This is nuts!”

  John laughed that excited nervous laugh of his, saying, “Tell me about it.”

  They quickly came to a rusty wire fence, adorned with numerous rusty metal NO TRESPASSING signs.

  Drake exclaimed, “No way!”

  Kyle shook his head, confused and disbelieving. “This wasn’t here before!”

  Tom shook his head, answering, “No. It wasn’t.”

  A huge smile on his face, Drake shouted, “No fucking way!”

  When they were kids, they first heard the ghost story from John’s grandfather. The tale of Injun Joe gave them all a good scare but it particularly frightened Roger. He had nightmares for weeks.

  As teenagers, they repeatedly went searching for Bountiful Woods, a place said to be protected by the spirit of the old Delaware chief. Legend held the area was a sacred place, a forest that had grown up atop forgotten Indian burial grounds. The animals that lived in the woods were supposed to be three times the size of normal animals. The giant beasts never left Bountiful Woods and they were unafraid of white men. They stayed near a cove where they were protected by an avenging ghost.

  The animals were believed by many to be the Delaware Indians reincarnated.

  As John’s grandfather told the tale: Bountiful Woods was surrounded by a wire fence— three acres of land had been sectioned off from the rest of the forest. Those three acres were watched over by Injun Joe.

  ‘Injun Joe’ was the name given to the phantom
by fur traders who came to Bullet Lake in the early days of statehood.

  According to legend, a previous generation of local men, back at the turn of the Century, put up the fence that surrounded the forest.

  It was said anyone who crossed the fence to kill animals on the other side would face the wrath of Injun Joe.

  John’s grandfather told the (then) boys about an incident that took place in the 1960s. A group of local boys found Bountiful Woods and made the mistake of defiling it. They hunted there, killed numerous animals, only to be killed themselves by the vengeful spirit who protected the sacred place.

  According to John’s granddad, none of the bodies were ever found.

  Search though they did, the Fearless Five never found anything even remotely fitting Bountiful Wood’s description.

  When they were sixteen, they made the most thorough search of the area, going up and down the western side of Bullet Lake. They spent two days that summer looking for the Indian burial grounds . . . and found nothing but leeches, bullfrogs, mosquitoes, and poison ivy.

  They had searched this particular area, where they were standing now; they knew they had searched this area. It wasn’t that far from their campsite and they had searched up and down the lakeside repeatedly over the years. There was never a fence here, never any NO TRESPASSING signs.

  This was new. And yet it looked so very old.

  Drake suddenly turned to John and gave him an accusatory stare.

  “What?” said John. “You think I did this?”

  Tom teased, “Ooookay. It finally all makes sense to me now! He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He’s actually been out here every time he was supposedly with her!”

  John gave Tom an unhappy look. “Get real, dude.”

  “Then who . . . ?” Drake turned to look at Roger who immediately said, “Whut?”

  John spelled it out for him, “Did you put up this fence, Lunkhead?”

  Roger looked annoyed. “Are you nuts?”

  Tom said, “We’ve all got better things to do with our time, dawg.”

  John nodded. “Amen, brother.”