by Otto Penzler
I asked Bea for more coffee. The spooky yarn as pedagogy? Interesting. I sped through the stories again. The weeping woman wasn’t just a scary old hag; she provided a cautionary example of what happened to someone who failed to come to terms with grief, who could not let go of a loved one who had died. The Old Man of the Ozarks? More than a crotchety old cannibal, he was the bogeyman who kept kids from deserted buildings. And any little boy or girl who heard about the James Strangler would surely not get too close to the river’s edge. Too bad the kids from Eureka Springs hadn’t been told that one.
Whomever had left the book at BC’s door had done me a favor. He or she had made me realize that ghost stories were just that—stories. I thought of the sound from the woods and my weird walk with the librarian with the bad haircut and I felt myself blush, right there at the counter of Gus’s Diner. Odd and creepy rural folk? Definitely. Supernatural? Negative. It was good to have regained some reportorial perspective.
I was composing the lede in my head—“If you want a long life for your kids, you might consider scaring the wee ones to death”—when I noticed something sticking out of the back of the book. It was a single sheet of single-spaced paper, yellowed and crackling. Typed across the top of the sheet, “The Curious and Disturbing Case of Ukiah Clemons.”
I read it while I drank more coffee. The story was different from the others. It read more like a police report than a tall tale. There was no obvious anthropological value in the text. And, according to the property records attached, there definitively was a Ukiah Clemons. He was the fourth oldest of eight, the son of a blacksmith. By the only accounts that could be trusted—and there weren’t many of those—the Clemons family was, like many rural Missouri clans of that era, poor and desperately invested in survival. The blacksmith was a moonshiner and drunk who barely made ends meet. His wife was highstrung, prone to long bouts of silence interrupted by episodes of screaming and minor violence, always directed at one child or another. There was chronic sickness and relentless hunger. Young Ukiah was a lonely child, and other schoolchildren shunned him. It might have been because he tended to cling to his mother’s skirts, or because he wept easily. It might have been because he was always so hungry; other children reported seeing him in the woods at all hours, digging in the dirt, at times chewing on wriggling, squealing things that looked like squirrels, or snakes he hadn’t even bothered to kill. People said that when Ukiah’s father discovered the boy eating a snake in bed one night, he tied him to a tree and used his bullwhip. After that night, people said, Ukiah stuttered. He stuttered until the day he disappeared.
“The exact date that Ukiah walked into the woods is still disputed,” the paper said. “What is beyond doubt—from school records, from tax rolls, and from birth and death certificates—is that after his eighth birthday, there was never a documented sighting of him again.”
According to the yellowing manuscript, some stories said he didn’t even make it to the woods. One account had him dying at home of pneumonia. Another legend had him bleeding to death from wounds suffered at his father’s bullwhip.
The most grisly account presented Ukiah, mad from hunger, suffocating and then cutting up and eating his baby sister, then being chased into the woods by his mother, who hung herself from a Sumac tree that very night.
I heard a clattering noise from the counter and looked down. My hands were shaking again. I dropped my fork, continued reading.
“Why such a gruesome and apparently pointless narrative has endured for so long,” wrote the nameless author of the paper, “and why it still pops up from time to time, is a mystery greater than the fate of Ukiah himself.”
I stuck the paper back in the book, and walked back to the hotel. Had the insane librarian dropped the book off? Was the waitress just playing a joke on me? Back at the hotel, BC informed me that a woman named Sissy had called me five times this morning, that it was urgent I call her back.
I walked up the steps to my room and started making notes for my mood piece. Maybe I would use the strange sounds in the woods. “The eerie moans have haunted visitors to this area for decades,” I wrote. That was probably true. I described the flapjacks, “friendly, hearty, reassuring fare that offers stark contrast to the terrible mystery that occurred down by the river and through the woods.” I had a lot, but I needed more. I knew that if I didn’t spend a night in the woods, then I’d be back on the Animal Beat faster than someone could say “Pork chop city for the trick pig.” I didn’t plan to call Sissy back until I had my piece ready.
I walked back down to the desk, asked BC where I could hire a guide to take me camping.
“I can do it today,” he told me.
“Today?” I squeaked.
He told me to be ready in an hour.
“But what about food, and water, and equipment, and a tent and.… ”
“I’ll take care of it.”
An hour later, a little after noon, we drove toward the librarian’s. After twenty minutes, just when I was wondering with a chill whether he was taking me back to the chattering thing by the ash pit, BC jerked his wheel and we lurched left and into the undergrowth. Dark branches whipped the windshield and I might have squealed, or screamed, because BC said, “Hold on now.” We drove another thirty minutes, though “drove” isn’t the right word, because most of the time we were bumping and lurching. We stopped long after we had left anything that anyone might refer to as a road. The air was thick and sour and all around was a low, insect whine. This was way too much mood.
I got out and sunk to my shins in muck. BC reached into the bed of his pickup and grabbed two backpacks.
“Here,” he said, throwing one at me. “Put this on.”
We walked for at least two hours. We walked up muddy hills and across streams and we walked through patches of witch hazel and clouds of black flies. We walked until I didn’t think I could walk any more.
We stopped at a treeless patch of dirt, a rough circle surrounded by dogwood and maple trees. (I asked BC; he told me.)
“I’ll set up camp here,” BC said. “Why don’t you relax?”
I sat down heavily.
“I’m thirsty,” I said.
“I got something,” BC said. “But first we gotta eat. It’s dangerous to be hungry out here.”
I vaguely remembered reading that people could live a long time without food, that in fact it was riskier to be thirsty. But BC seemed to know what he was doing, so I leaned on my backpack, and the next thing I knew, BC was shaking my shoulder and it was dark. He had a fire going, was stirring two cans with a stick.
“Grub’s ready,” he said.
“What’s that sound?” I said. It was like a woodpecker, but more human. It sounded like the Huh-huh-huh sound at the librarian’s house, but now it said, Duh-duh-duh-doe, duh-duh-duh doe. It came from deep in the woods, from the direction we had hiked in from. Is this what sobriety was like? Was I going to be hearing that damned noise as long as I didn’t drink?
BC looked at me and laughed. I had never heard laughter sound so cruel.
“Lots of sounds in the woods, boy,” he said. “Here, eat up.” He thrust a can of pork and beans at me.
I didn’t like how he had called me “boy,” but I was ravenous. I hadn’t realized how ravenous until I smelled the pork and beans. I ate until my stomach hurt.
“Can we have some water now?” I asked. I couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty.
“Got something better,” BC said and thrust a plastic bottle filled with yellowish liquid into my hand. “Take a pull on this, you won’t worry about no mountain sounds.”
I took a drink and spat it out.
“I don’t drink alcohol anymore,” I said.
“Better start,” BC said.
I was angry for just a moment. He didn’t know any better. And I was thirsty. And no one ever needed to know about tonight. It was just me and BC and the noise, the Duh-duh-duh-doe. Maybe a couple swigs would make it shut up.
I took a pu
ll from the bottle and suddenly the woods seemed safer and softer. I took another pull and another, and I decided that life was good, and the Ozarks were a rugged but wonderful place, and that I would definitely ask the blue-eyed waitress out on a date when I had flapjacks tomorrow. I resolved that Beatrice and I might make a life together. I decided that we deserved a life together. I had another pull and the Duh Duh Duh DOE turned into a scream, a relentless, urgent scream, but I couldn’t be bothered with it; Why had I ever stopped drinking? Every swig made me more relaxed, and happy, and I was definitely a boozer again, and I wondered why I had ever thought I wasn’t a boozer and I took another pull and I was going to clap BC on the back and thank him for being such a good hotel manager, and faithful guide, for being my friend, and then I passed out.
I woke in a puddle of vomit. I could see the glowing embers of the dying fire, but BC wasn’t on his bedroll. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. I saw a shape at the edge of the fire circle. It was BC and he was doing something on a rock. It looked like he was sharpening a knife.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DOE! The noise was behind me and I turned, startled. It was a strangled cry. Now I saw a light, too. The light was dancing, in the same location as the cry. I looked back at BC, but he kept doing what he was doing. I wasn’t drunk anymore, and I wasn’t stupider than usual. Asking for BC’s help might have been my most reasonable next move. Staying put would have made sense, too. I wish I could tell you why I followed the light into the woods, but I can’t. All I can tell you is that I did follow it.
I crawled on my belly the first fifty yards.
When my head bumped into a log, I stood up. I didn’t feel hungover. I didn’t feel quite sober either. I felt like I was floating, like I had spent my life in these woods. I followed the light over hills and through ravines. My feet must have hit the ground, but I couldn’t feel them. It was more like I was leaping, or dancing. As I moved, I breathed, and as I breathed, I could feel the woods breathe. I was one with the woods, and with the thing I was following. As I was floating through the woods, I heard eating sounds—I don’t know how else to describe them. Lip-smacking, chewing, tearing exclamations, and wet grunts, and soft sobbing. I don’t know how long I followed the sounds and the light, only that it was so long that the embers from the campfire were gone before I came to another clearing, one we had not passed before. Now the sound was everywhere. The eating, and the sobbing, and the screaming. Then slobbering and then the scream again and then it was deafening, a shrill, witless screaming.
I knew that the sounds were impossible. Maybe hitting my head on the log had affected my hearing. I shook my head, but the sounds grew louder. At the clearing, I realized the sounds weren’t all around me—they were coming from the edge of the woods on the other side of the treeless circle. I walked into the clearing, and the light on the other side didn’t move. I saw a shape in front of the light. The noise was coming from the shape.
I moved closer. It wasn’t tall enough to be a bear, but it was upright. It had to be a wolf, or some kind of feral dog, on its hind legs, with its forelegs resting on some slim branch I couldn’t see. But it was so skinny … so bony, like an undersized, malnourished chimpanzee, or ground sloth. Its head was shaking from side to side, chewing. Was it looking at me?
I moved closer. Its head was large and angular, and covered with fur, and its eyes were moist and ravenous.
I moved closer and saw that the fur covered only the head, and that the face was pink, and that the forelegs weren’t leaning on anything. They were holding something. And they weren’t forelegs. They were arms, covered in ragged, torn scraps.
I moved closer, until I was only ten feet away. Closer.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be.
“DUH DUH DUH DUH DOE,” the little boy said.
I stopped breathing.
It could not be a little boy. It could not be a little boy holding a kerosene lamp. I told myself I would never ever ever drink again.
“DUH DUH DUH DUH DOE,” the little boy said. He put down the kerosene lamp. He was wearing a coonskin hat. There was something wrong with his mouth, something messy. I should have run. I should have screamed. But I did nothing. I was one with the woods. I couldn’t feel my feet. The boy walked closer. I realized what was wrong with his mouth; his lips were smeared with blood. He was holding something wet and dripping.
“DUH DUH DUH DUH DOE,” the boy screamed.
“What?” I said, and he moved toward me and I saw what he was holding. It was a hand, a tiny little fist, a baby’s fist. Two fingers had already been chewed off.
“DUH DUH DUH DUH DON’T TRUST HIM,” the little boy cried. “Duh Duh duh DON’T TRUST THE BAD MAN WITH THE KNIFE.”
And then the little boy reached out his hand and he took mine and his hand was colder than death, slick with blood. “I-I-I-I’m your fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-friend,” he bawled.
I heard a high, keening wail, an awful shriek of pain, and terror. The little boy in the coonskin cap stared at me with dead eyes, and the shrieking wouldn’t stop, and then I realized the shrieking was coming from me.
A large man with the sad, liquid eyes of an otter slapped me.
“What?” I tried to say, but what came out was “Wulb!”
“He’s alive,” the large man said, then wrote something on a clipboard he was carrying.
“Wuh-wuh-wuh-wulb?” I said.
I was at the Cox Medical Center, the doctor told me, in Springfield. Fishermen headed to the James River had found me at dawn, passed out at the edge of Highway 176. They had brought me here. Doctors suspected alcohol poisoning, which turned out to be true, but when they ran tests, they also found large amounts of Ibogaine, a powerful hallucinogen used by certain tribes in South America. They also found LSD, horse tranquilizers, Ecstasy, and methamphetamines.
I thought of BC and the drink he had given me.
“You’re lucky you’re alive,” the otter-eyed doctor told me. “Having fun with happy pills at home’s one thing, but in the woods? That’s plain dumb.”
“But,” I tried to say but what came out was
“Blib.”
After he left, a nurse came in and whispered to me.
“Your girlfriend’s been calling,” she said. “She sounds angry.”
“My girlfriend?”
“Sissy.”
“Why haven’t you been returning my calls?” Sissy said, when I got her on the phone.
“I’ve been calling you for two days! We found him.”
“What? Who? No, I found him. He …”
“Little Boy Blue, you boozing, animal-loving, mood-piece happy idiot! He never disappeared into the woods. His mom’s no-good ex snatched him. Kevin’s source in the highway patrol fed him the inside dope, told him everything. And Deadline Ed got the cops in Eureka Springs to fill in the gaps. The ex’s cocktail waitress girlfriend wanted a kid, but she wasn’t so keen on being pregnant. She convinced the no-good ex that kidnapping was a great solution. So they invited Little Boy Blue and his sister and their folks to St. Louis, then hired one hillbilly from Branson to trail the car and to call another hillbilly to grab the kid when he saw a chance. He saw the chance when the kids were playing by the stream outside Gus’s Diner. It was the second hillbilly’s idea to smear raccoon blood on the little girl and tell her if she said anything, he’d come back and snatch her, too. He took her shoes, too, so she wouldn’t get back to the restaurant as fast.”
My head hurt. My eyes hurt. My feet hurt. I wanted to stop hurting. I wondered what time it was. I wondered if there was a bar nearby.
“And the coonskin hat?”
“Weird thing about that. No one knows where that came from. After the boy was found, the little girl kept babbling about a stuttering child in the woods, how he was hungry but didn’t want to hurt anyone. She said he gave her the hat. She kept crying and yelling to the cops that they had to go back and save the kid. Finally, a paramedic gave her a sedative to shut her up. She’ll probably sleep for a week.�
�
I would find the bar, and I would treat myself to a beer and I would drink until I didn’t hurt anymore. I would remind myself that scared little girls make up stories every day and that hallucinogenic drugs make even flinty-eyed imbecilic cub reporters imagine things, and I would drink some more and I would go back to school and I would become an accountant. I would drink lots and lots of beer.
“So Little Boy Blue’s okay?”
“Yep. Home sweet home. A pizza delivery guy saw his picture on the news and spotted him at the no-good ex’s house. The no good ex and his shifty gal pal are going away for a long, long time. Deadline says the cops are still looking for the first hillbilly. But Kev’s working on a piece about how they arrested the second one yesterday, the snatcher. They caught him in the woods near Goodnight Hollow. A nasty piece of work, that one. Top suspect in five or six murders down there in Deliveranceland, but they never had enough evidence to convict him. He liked knives, though, everyone knows that. It’s funny, huh?”
“Funny? What’s funny?”
“A psycho like that, with all those knives, running a hotel.”
I thought I was going to throw up.
“What did you say his name was?”
“Clemons.”
“His first name?”
“Balthazar, though everyone down there called him BC.”
I shut my eyes, saw the man by the rock, backlit by fire. I saw the man in the woods, sharpening his knife. The bad man.
“Hey!” Sissy said. “Are you still there? Or are you tripping your juicehead wonderdog skull off?”
“No, I mean yeah. I’m still here.”
I could hear her sigh.
“Right. Sure you are. The nurse told me all about your pharmaceutical celebration in the trees. I wish I could say I was surprised. Get your ass back to town. We got a kids’ turtle race that needs to be written up. And then it’s time for the state fair and the Biggest Pumpkin in Boone County contest. Guess who’s covering it?”
Kev and Deadline won state reporting awards for their Little Boy Blue coverage and got raises. Sissy spiked my mood piece. She told me no one cared about local legends, or spooky dishwashers, or librarians with emotional problems. (It turns out that Mrs. Loomis was bipolar, that after she miscarried, which led to her divorce, she started seeing forest children and was institutionalized briefly, and that shortly before the kid from Eureka Springs was grabbed, the librarian had gone off her meds and joined a coven of Wiccans. That explained the dead flowers and the haircut.)