The Woods: The Complete Novel (The Woods Series)

by Milo Abrams

  "Ahh," he yelled as he grabbed his ankle. "Fuck!" The wind blew in huge gusts, whipping rain against him like stones. He crawled back to the truck then pulled it up to the front of the barn. When he stopped, the tires started sinking in the softening yard. He hobbled out and into the barn, which was dark and starting to rattle in the wind.

  "James!" he yelled. He struggled to get over the tool box and limped over to the ladder. "James, are you up there?" He looked up into the hayloft and saw rain whipping by the top of the ladder. Unable to climb the ladder with a twisted ankle, he watched the water run down the edge of the floor, and listened. With no sounds coming from above he limped back to the truck and put it into reverse. The tires spun in the wet mud, digging the truck down deeper.

  "No, you fucker, come on!" He put the truck back in drive and was able to move forward slowly as the back tires only made the hole they had dug longer. He inched into the barn, pulling as far up as he could until the front of the truck was diagonally against the opening on the front. He threw the truck into reverse and stomped on the gas. The Red Rocket ripped up the wet earth as it spun its tires in the mud, slowly moving backwards until it caught the gravel in the driveway. Nolan let out a sigh as he pulled back out into the dirt road, realizing it wasn't much better. He hesitated, looking at his house and wondering if he should stay there in case the boys somehow came.

  It took almost another hour for Nolan to get back to the city. As he pulled in the driveway, Margaret came running out. Her face sank as she saw him hobble out of the truck and toward the house.

  "You're hurt? Are you okay?" she said rushing over to him.

  "Yes," he winced as he limped, "I slipped on the porch and twisted my ankle. Did you get a hold of the police?”

  She nodded and then helped him into the house. Soaked, they sat at the table to catch their breath and try to get a grip on reality. The storm’s dark clouds had spread across the sky like ink in water and with the power out, she had resorted to their emergency candles for light.

  "At first I couldn't get through. When I finally did, the operator said the station was flooded with calls about the power being out and all sorts of things. I told them our son was missing and she put me on with the sheriff. He said that the storm was too heavy to start a search. As soon as the storm lets up they'll be able to, but right now it's impossible."

  Nolan frowned. "I figured. You can't see out there, it's definitely better in the city, but you wouldn't believe how many accidents there are."

  "Nolan," she whimpered, "is our boy going to be okay?"

  He hated when she looked at him like that—her eyes round and wet. It broke his heart to ever say anything to hurt her. She was as vulnerable as he had ever seen her. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay, that he was sure that it was just a mistake and James and the others were at another friend's house or something. He wanted to say everything was okay but he couldn't lie to her. He didn't know if everything would be okay, so he reached out and embraced her, hugging her tightly and gently caressing the back of her head as she cried into his shoulder.

  27

  Had the boys stayed where they were they would have been swept away in the flood. The creek overflowed quickly and swept everything away that was within five-hundred feet of its banks. Luckily, they happened to run in the right direction to avoid getting caught in the catastrophe, but not to find their way out. They pushed on, sloshing through the mud until they reached higher ground. They were deep within the woods now, miles from home and completely lost. At the top of a hill the land leveled off, and while it was still raining heavily, several trees had fallen around another small stream that formed from runoff from the flooding.

  "We need to find a place to try and get out of the rain," Jack said.

  "How the hell are we going to do that?" Owen asked.

  James pointed to another hill across the small stream where the trees had fallen across, leaving natural bridges. "Look there!" Near the top of the hill was an indentation in the hill that looked like a small cave. "We can go there. It looks as good as anything else."

  They reached the fallen trees and had two choices: try and cross through the running water, or use the fallen trees as a bridge. Owen started down the hill toward the water when Jack yelled for him.

  "We don't know how deep that is!"

  "Does it matter?" Owen yelled back. "We're already soaked and it's still raining."

  "It does," Jack said, "rushing water can be quite deceiving. If it's deep enough it'll throw off your center of gravity and you'll be swept downstream."

  Owen looked at him. "You're shitting me.” Jack shook his head in response. “Well maybe we can jump it?"

  "Maybe," Jack reasoned, “but just listen to me. Last time you rushed into a situation, look what happened."

  "Are you blaming me for us being lost?" Owen erupted.

  "I didn't say that," Jack stammered, "but you nearly got killed falling down that hill."

  They all thought it was Owen's fault, in a way, that they were lost. No one said anything because they were all afraid to. The trail of blame could have been traced back to any of them. Owen caved and decided to use the trees as bridges instead. He climbed up on top of a fallen trunk and gripped the bark with his fingers.

  "Man, it's really slippery. There’s no way we’re walking across this," he said. He lowered himself so that his stomach was flat on the tree and began crawling across the trunk. Jack and James watched him nervously through the rain until he reached the other side.

  "Okay, you're next," James said to Jack.

  "Why me?" Jack asked. He was afraid and rightfully so. It was a long crawl through the rain, and a big fall into furiously rushing water.

  "I have to be here to jump in and save you if you fall," James smiled.

  That didn't make Jack feel better but he carefully climbed up the trunk anyway and began crawling. Halfway across, he looked down at the rushing water and felt dizzy as the rain pelted him from above.

  "Don't stop!" Owen yelled, "you can do it!”

  "I'm going to puke," Jack yelled.

  "You got this," James cheered on, "I'm right behind you." He climbed up on the trunk and started crawling behind him.

  They joined Owen on the other side and stumbled along the hillside until they reached the small cave. It wasn't a cave at all, they found out, but just a large part of the hill that looked like it had been dug out. Inside, they were able to get out of the rain and sit on dry dirt. There was just enough space for them to sit up with the ceiling of the hole just inches above their heads. It extended back fifteen feet into the hill and was nearly ten feet wide.

  "This is amazing!" Jack exclaimed.

  "This is perfect," James said suspiciously, "maybe even a little too perfect."

  "What do you mean?" Owen asked.

  "It looks like it's been dug out, like someone made it on purpose. What if the monster did this and we're sitting in its cave!" James looked around frantically.

  "Hmm," Jack said, "well, I'll agree that it looks like this was dug out, maybe, but I don't think this is the monster's home."

  "How do you know?" James held up the rifle and scanned the other hill across from them.

  "Where is everything?" Jack asked. "Where's the gas tank? Surely if it wanted something like that it would have tools or supplies for fire or something."

  "Unless it didn't steal it?" Owen suggested. "What if it really was a thief?"

  "No way," James said, "we saw it on the picture. It was heading to the barn that night. Jack's right. This can't be where it lives, but that doesn't mean it didn't make this."

  "It's perfect though," Jack said, "because our backs are in the hill, we're out of sight and we only have one direction we are vulnerable from."

  "You say that like we will be here awhile," Owen said to him.

  They looked out into the rain. "We don't know when this will stop," Jack said, "and we have no idea where we are. If we don't figure out something
soon, we might be here for the night. And given the fact that that thing can see in the dark—I don't want to be."

  It seemed gross at first, but the single orange in James’s bag had gotten dirty and partially squished during their journey. They hadn't eaten in hours and it was the only thing they had left so they divided it up and quickly finished it off.

  “There’s only one water left,” James said. He reached in his bag and pulled the last bottle of water out that he had packed for Duffy. Owen looked to Jack for some sort of input. He was usually the only to have any foresight.

  “Well,” Jack began, “we can't see out in the storm and frankly I think it's too dangerous to go wondering around. We have this nice dry spot and so I think that we should wait out the rain.” James and Owen listened and nodded as he spoke. “But we need water. We have to find a way to collect the rain water.”

  James reached into the bag and withdrew Duffy’s water bowl. “Hey we can use this! I forgot it was in there.”

  “Ew, I'm not drinking out of your dog’s bowl,” Owen’s nose wrinkled.

  “It's just a water dish,” James said, “here, we’ll rinse it out first.” He reached outside their little hole just far enough to let the rain hit it. It only took a minute for the bowl to start to collect enough water to roll around inside.

  The rainstorm was the heaviest they had ever seen. After the bowl nearly filled once, they dumped it out to refill again. After a half an hour, there was enough in the bowl to fill half of one water bottle. Jack was thrilled that they had more water, but Owen was still concerned. The long silence between them had finally been broken by Owen’s sudden and spontaneous worry.

  “And what about the monster?” he asked.

  Jack’s eyebrows scrunched together as he thought about what to say. “This cave is the best chance we've got. Since there's only one way out it won't be able to sneak up on us.”

  “Yeah,” James interrupted, “but it also means that it could trap us in here.” The boys looked at one another in grim realization. Not only were they on the monster’s territory, but they were also cornered in a little hole in the hillside, which the monster itself may have dug out.

  “This is starting to sound like a bad idea,” Owen said.

  James changed positions and quickly took Jack’s defense. “I think Jack’s right. We’ve been trying to find our way out of here all day and look, we’re sitting in a hole in a hill, stuck in the rain. We are definitely safer in here than wandering out there. We’re lucky it didn't get us out there.”

  “Yeah, but…” Owen sputtered out. He didn't have the book smarts that Jack or James had, but he had street smarts, and he knew one thing for certain. “If that thing is uh, what's it called?”

  “Nocturnal?” Jack asked.

  Owen nodded, “Right, that. If that thing sleeps all day, then we didn’t get lucky that we didn't see it. But if it's up all night and we aren't, what then?”

  James and Jack looked at each other in gut wrenching worry. They hadn’t considered that. Owen sat forward and pretended to draw a plan in the dirt with his finger.

  “Boogeyman,” he said. “It’ll get us in our sleep if we stay here. We need to make a break for it and find a way out of these damn woods before night. Every second we waste in here is one where that thing could wake up and find us.”

  Jack was stunned. It was the most sense that Owen had ever made concerning anything important. He looked at James who just shrugged. James quickly realized that he wasn't a leader and that this was no longer a mission to rescue his beloved dog. They were three little boys trapped deep in the woods with a real and dangerous monster that could be anywhere. He thought back to the pool of blood in the backyard just days earlier. It was something he hadn't told his friends. As far as they knew, the monster was able to rip the gas tank off a car but it had never shown any other sign of hostility. As he tried to remember the details of what happened that day, a sudden realization struck him.

  “The whistle,” he unintentionally whispered to himself.

  “What?” Owen asked.

  James realized that his friends had been watching him the whole time. “There was something I didn't mention,” he said.

  “What? About what?” Jack asked nervously.

  “The monster,” James said. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Something else happened, something strange, that I forgot to tell you.”

  “Well spit it out!” Owen yelled.

  James struggled to hold his thoughts together. “Uh, okay. When I built the deer feeder...”

  After a pause, Owen’s frustration started to show. “What? Jesus Christ James, just tell us!”

  “Okay, okay. Well I built the feeder and took it out to the field and set it up. That was the first time I heard this weird whistle come from in the woods.” Jack and Owen hung on his words like campers listening to a scary story around the fire. “It was this super loud whistle, that's the only way I can describe it. Then something came running from the woods toward me.”

  “What was it?” Jack asked softly.

  James shook his head, “I don't know. I just ran back to the house. But it was hot and I think I passed out or something. When I woke up I found the deer feeder back on the porch.” Owen looked at him wide-eyed. “But I never put it on the porch. It went straight from the barn to the backyard.”

  Jack was deep in thought. “So it ran out of the woods at you and then moved your deer feeder?”

  “I don't know,” James said, “but when I moved the deer feeder back out there I saw some blood on the grass. Okay, not some, but a lot of blood. It was all over like something had just been killed.”

  Jack and Owen didn't know what to say. They had their first piece of evidence that the monster in the woods was not only dangerous, but a killer.

  “It reminds me of something my dad said. He told me this story about when my uncle was camping and said he saw a Bigfoot and how the Native Americans believed in these Bigfoot-like creatures that would whistle to hunt. He said the whistle would confuse the prey, or something.”

  “So, the monster is a Bigfoot?” Owen asked.

  “No way, we saw the picture,” Jack said, “it doesn't look big enough and where’s the hair?”

  “Well maybe all its hair was burned off!” Owen protested, “Or maybe it’s a kid so it’s not so big! Maybe it just hasn't had time to grow its hair yet!”

  “Maybe,” James interjected, “or maybe the stories were wrong. Maybe they weren't seeing a Bigfoot or whatever, maybe they were seeing what we are seeing.”

  “If that's true, then this thing has been here a long time,” Jack said.

  “Okay wait, so then it was hunting,” Owen said scratching his head. “If those things are the same, then it was hunting. You said they use the whistle to confuse whatever they are hunting. So, the thing must’ve been hunting and killed whatever it was hunting in your yard!” Owen was beaming with pride over his analysis of the situation.

  James just frowned. “It must be the deer,” he said. Even though he hadn’t cared about watching the deer before, he remembered standing at the sink and seeing the small family in the backyard. They were like his family, and now he wondered if the monster had killed one of them. Was it the mother or maybe the father that had run off to leave his family behind? No, he thought, the father was too fast. He heard the trouble coming before it came. Maybe it was the baby. The thought was too much for him.

  “This doesn't explain the deer feeder being moved,” Jack pointed out.

  This was true, but just then James started to connect the dots. “No it doesn’t, but the other thing I noticed was that the next day the blood was gone.”

  “What do you mean gone?” Jack asked.

  “Like completely gone,” James explained, “like it had never been there. There wasn’t a spot on the ground anywhere. It made me think I was crazy.”

  “So, did it like lick it all up or something?” Owen asked. James smiled that he had the same thought.


  “I've got it,” Jack said. “It makes sense now. Whatever it is, it's intelligent. It took the gas tank off of your dad’s car but it didn't take anything else. It took it with a purpose. It must've also had a purpose for moving the deer feeder and cleaning up all of the blood.”

  “And what's that, Brainiac?” Owen asked.

  Jack smiled. “It didn't want to be seen.”

  “But it sat at the backyard every day, I saw it every day!”

  “I don't know, James. That's all I've got.” Jack sat back against the dirt wall of the small cave and listened to the rain. They all needed time to process everything that had just talked about and the rain wasn't letting up.

  James pulled the bowl back in and poured it into the half-full bottle. He put the bowl back into the rain and then handed the bottle to Jack. “If we’re going to go back out there we will need to have some water. It might take us all day to find our way out of here. I say we fill at least one more bottle before we go.”

  “That’ll be like another hour or so,” Jack reasoned.

  “Well it was early morning when we woke up and we've probably only been out here a couple hours. Wait, Jack, you can check the time on your phone!”

  Jack had nearly forgotten about it. He pulled it out and then turned it on.

  “I bet it's only like noon,” Owen said.

  James nodded, “That would still give us all day. We could collect some water for the trip and be home before dinner!”

  Jack dropped the hammer of reality on them quickly. “No we won't,” he said turning the phone back off and putting back into his pocket. “It's already four twenty-one.”

  Owen choked on the water he was trying to swallow. “What?” he coughed out. “Where did the day go?”

  “Must've been walking longer than we thought,” James said as he ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay we’ll just wait maybe an hour, get as much water as we can and go for it. It’s summer so it won't get dark until way later. We should have at least four hours or so, right Jack?”

  Jack nodded.