by JoAnna Carl
But why would the sack have attracted an animal? There was nothing edible in it.
Then I got close enough to see the casts I had made. They were smashed to pieces.
“Oh no!” I yelped out the words.
Well, that eliminated animals. No animal would have broken up the casts. Someone had kicked or stomped on them or hit them with a club.
I stomped my own foot. “Son of a gun! Drat!” I said. Or something like that.
“Well, by golly, I’ll just make another set,” I said.
I turned to the corner of the workshop, where the tub had protected the tracks.
The tub had been tossed aside, and the area it had hidden had been raked thoroughly.
The tracks were gone.
I could have cried. The evidence had been destroyed.
I didn’t know if I should cry or swear. As I was trying to decide, I heard a noise.
It was a branch breaking, and it came from the direction of the nature preserve.
I have never understood what possessed me, but I turned and ran toward the sound.
Chapter 14
Why did I do that? Looking back, I’m not sure.
Maybe I ran toward the strange sound simply out of anger. I’d worked hard making molds of those tracks. It hadn’t taken a lot of physical labor, true, but it had taken mental effort because it wasn’t a job I was familiar with. I had done something I wasn’t at all sure I could do, something I’d had only rudimentary lessons in accomplishing. And I’d succeeded. To see my work destroyed—well, it made me mad as all get-out.
So I ran down that path, ready to tear into whoever had ruined the tracks and the molds I had made.
I was so mad that I’d gone at least a hundred yards before I realized I was running headlong into a situation I dreaded and always tried to avoid. It took me that long to come to myself and realize I was surrounded by deep woods and there was someone dangerous near.
Cold fingers slid down my spine. My running steps slowed to a walk. Then my walk slowed to a sort of tiptoe; I edged along, trying to look in every direction at once—at the trees, through the trees, behind the trees.
After all, you never can tell when something scary is going to jump out from behind a tree. Trees are like that. They hide things—animals, dangerous maniacs, monsters, snakes, poison ivy, crawly insects, small dinosaurs, nameless fears, even harmless little creatures like squirrels that could startle you.
But most of all, trees hide the sky. They make you feel closed in and claustrophobic. They make it hard to breathe.
One tree is a friend, providing shade and beauty. A thousand trees are a net of spiderwebs, every branch grabbing and trying to catch you, or camouflaging unknown enemies.
I shuddered and stopped in my tracks. I almost turned and went back.
But ahead I could see the fence that marked the boundary of the nature preserve. At least I could go that far. I might still be able to get a look at the person who had smashed the molds and destroyed the footprints.
So I walked on. I tried to step out firmly, but I didn’t run. In fact, it would have been hard to run on that path. It wasn’t a maintained path, but merely a partly overgrown trail, narrow and covered with leaf mold and scattered branches and twigs.
Forcing myself to be brave helped, of course. When I came to the fence, I paused and looked ahead. I saw nothing significant. Nobody yelled boo. Nobody jumped out with a club. No wild animal howled.
I decided I could check on what was on the other side of the boundary. I climbed up, using the barbed wire like a ladder and holding on to the nearest fence post, then jumped down on the other side. The path continued, still faint and hard to see. I walked along, watching my footing. After all, rationally I knew that the worst danger in a forest is the chance of tripping and breaking a leg. If I got stranded in the nature preserve, it might be a long time before someone found me. So I pussyfooted along, stepping carefully and reminding myself that my cell phone was in my pocket. Of course, it might not have any service in an area this remote.
After another twenty-five yards I came to a wider path, the walking trail that circled the entire nature preserve. I felt as if I had reached civilization. Here was a trail that showed signs of attention. Logs were laid along the sides to delineate its borders. The occasional small stump showed that it had been deliberately cleared for the use of hikers.
Silence hung heavy. I didn’t hear footsteps or twigs breaking or anything else that indicated I wasn’t alone. No hikers appeared. There was no sign of anybody else anywhere. I stared up and down the new trail. There wasn’t anybody. The person who had destroyed the tracks seemed to have escaped. I decided I might as well go back.
I turned around, and between the fence and me a bush moved.
Immediately I knew the person I had chased was still there.
If a whole lot of trees and bushes move in a forest, it means the wind is blowing. But if only one moves, that’s a different matter. Something moved that bush, and it wasn’t the wind. The wind wouldn’t move only one thing at a time. Some living creature made that bush move.
That was the moment I realized what a bad position I’d placed myself in. I had begun the chase simply hoping to see who had destroyed the tracks. I wanted to give that person a piece of my mind. If I’d come up behind him on the trail, I would have scolded him. I had been so mad I hadn’t stopped to realize that my chasing him might make him feel very threatened.
Now, belatedly, I realized I was in an awkward, even dangerous, position. After all, there had been a murder near this place four months earlier. I didn’t expect the killer to still be hanging around, but bad things had happened near there, and I’d been foolish to forget it. I shouldn’t have come, and I ought to have turned back.
But that suspicious bush was between me and the fence. I decided I wasn’t going back down the path that led to the Reagans’ house. Even if I made it to the fence without getting ambushed, I’d be in an extremely vulnerable position as I climbed over, using barbed wire as a ladder.
So how was I going to get out of there? I turned back to the public path. When Joe and I had hiked it a couple of months previous, in early spring, the undergrowth hadn’t been nearly as thick, and I hadn’t been alone, so my tree phobia hadn’t bothered me. Now I was going to have to tackle it on my own. At least I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the area.
The main path circled the boundaries of the nature preserve, following a four-mile route, according to the signpost I remembered at the main entrance. But other paths crisscrossed through the center of the area.
I turned left, west. I wasn’t sure of exactly where I was, but I thought that would be the shortest route to the entrance. I certainly didn’t want to walk three or four miles going the long way round, and I was afraid to tackle the paths that cut across the middle; I’d get lost in a minute.
I walked rapidly, but I didn’t run. Running could lead to falling, and if the guy behind the bush—I decided it was a man—came after me, he might catch up while I was trying to get back on my feet. There was also that broken-leg scenario to consider. So I walked fast, but I didn’t run.
When I saw a dead branch on the ground, I picked it up. It was too long and heavy to lug along. By cracking it against a tree and stepping on the shattered end, I was able to break it off into a club about the size and weight of a baseball bat. It wasn’t much, but having it made me feel better.
The trail was open and level, neatly maintained by the nature preserve staff, so I moved right along. But now and then I looked back to see if anyone was coming after me.
I never saw anything but trees. That was the good news and the bad news.
I never saw a giant wolf, slobbering and ready to tear my throat out. I never saw a maniac, rolling his eyes madly.
But trees could be hiding anything and anybody. Trees made everything dark and gloomy. Trees hid the horizon. Trees kept me from taking a deep breath.
I reminded myself that I came from pioneer stock on both
the Michigan and Texas sides. I was tough. I was certainly not going to be sent into a panic by an object rooted to the ground, an object that couldn’t chase me or even throw pinecones.
I kept walking as rapidly as possible, and I kept looking back down the path. Once I came to a straight stretch of trail that extended several hundred yards. For that piece of trail, I ran. Then I jumped behind a cedar tree and peeked through its branches, looking back to see if any follower came out behind me.
None did. But I would have sworn something back there had moved.
Or maybe I couldn’t swear to it. I thought the undergrowth shook, but no figure appeared on the path.
After two or three minutes, I decided there were three explanations. First, the follower wasn’t very close. Second, he didn’t want to catch up with me. Third, the whole thing was my imagination. I ran for another hundred yards, then returned to my quick walk.
I tried to reassure myself. I thought of the moving bush, the one that had sent me on this excursion. I told myself that if the person who destroyed the tracks had been hiding behind the bush, he didn’t seem to mean me any harm. He could have attacked me as I climbed the fence to get into the preserve. I’d been in an extremely vulnerable position at that moment, and nothing had happened.
Pooh, pooh, I told myself. You’ve overreacted completely. The guy may have wanted to destroy evidence, but he obviously didn’t want to hurt you.
I was feeling so confident that I didn’t even hesitate when I came to a fork in the path. I simply remembered the map board at the entrance to the nature preserve. Staying on the perimeter trail required always taking the left-hand path. Ignoring the path that probably cut across the middle of the preserve, I went on.
I had walked quite a way by then. Surely the entrance to the nature preserve wasn’t too much farther. I’d passed a lot of the educational signboards that explained what was in the preserve. Look at the beaver dam, look at the beech trees, look at the irises that marked where a pioneer cabin had stood. I began to feel confident that I’d be out of there shortly.
Then what was I going to do? Walk back down the gravel road to the Reagans’ house, where my car was? Call Joe and ask him for a ride? Call Wildflower and ask her to pick me up? I certainly wasn’t going to hitchhike.
I was thinking ahead, about how to get home, when the trail made a hard right.
And a tree ran out and attacked me.
Now, I’m not saying I fell over a tree or ran into a tree or tripped on the root of a tree. I mean that a cedar tree about six feet tall came out of a side path on my right and ran at me.
It was growling. I jumped backward and gave a shriek that would have passed for the rebel yell passed down in my dad’s family.
The tree kept coming. I swung my club and gave it a pretty good rap on its left side. That didn’t bother the tree. One of its branches whacked me in the face, and another shoved at my midsection, knocking the wind out of me. I fell back—I believe it’s known as “ass over teakettle”—and landed on my back in a large bush of some kind. Then the tree ran down the path to my right.
It left me stuck in the bush, gasping for air. It must have been a full minute before I rolled out of the prickly shrub and found myself on my hands and knees on the path. Even then all I could do was try to breathe. After several more minutes of gasping, I began to catch my breath. Then I began to analyze what had happened.
First, my club had been of little use. I’d been so startled by the idea of an attacking tree that I had managed only one blow, and that one hadn’t seemed to bother the tree.
Second, what had seemed to be a tree had actually been a person holding a large branch. A stray limb might have hit me in the face, but those hadn’t been twigs that punched me in the stomach. That had been somebody’s fist.
Third, I couldn’t possibly describe the tree-person. He’d seemed tall, but a branch might have been sticking up higher than his head. He’d looked green, but that was clothing. Could he have been wearing camouflage? Or the forest green–patterned clothing popular with hikers and bird-watchers? His face had been hidden by the tree branches he carried, but from the few glimpses I could see showing through, it had also been a strange color of brown—not a human color. I decided the tree-man had painted his face. Maybe he had covered it with dirt.
Fourth, the tree-man seemed to know where the paths led. He must be familiar with the preserve. He had cut across the middle of the preserve and cut me off.
Fifth, I had to get out of there.
I got to my feet, picked up my club—it might be some protection sometime—and started walking rapidly. I had to get back to civilization.
I had walked less than five minutes when I heard voices. This was not, at first, reassuring. After all, rotten guys can talk. But I kept going, and I saw yellow spots through the trees. I turned around a curve and saw a group of around twenty little boys, all in yellow T-shirts and khaki shorts.
Campers. The nature preserve was used by all sorts of youth and children’s groups, of course. These little guys were accompanied by three big strong masculine adults wearing yellow shirts marked COUNSELOR. They looked incredibly handsome. I was willing to bet those three guys could fight off a tree without turning a hair.
I walked up to them and joined their group. I held my club behind me, hoping I didn’t look threatening. And I realized I had been right about being close to the nature preserve’s entrance. The boys and their counselors were clumped around the first educational exhibit on the trail, the one that explained the history of the preserve.
The tallest counselor was expounding on the exhibit.
“The first Horace T. Fox cut down trees,” the counselor said. “You may have already learned that Michigan was practically stripped of its trees early in its history. The pioneers came in, cut the trees, built sawmills, and shipped lumber on the Great Lakes. America was building towns and cities, so lots of lumber was needed. The entire state of Michigan was stripped of its trees.”
The counselors and the boys were eyeing me, obviously curious as to why a giant blond woman, panting slightly and holding a club, had suddenly joined their group, but I smiled, and no one asked me what the heck I was doing.
“Today, areas like this one are called ‘second growth.’ The trees here grew up to replace the trees the pioneers cut down. But the great-grandson of Horace T. Fox saw that forests should be preserved, as well as cut down and used to build houses and stores. So he gave this preserve—thousands of acres of trees—to the public so that people can enjoy forests.”
Then a sound came from the parking lot. Someone gunned a motor.
“Oh no!” I said aloud and vigorously.
I ran to the short path leading to the entrance, turned hard, and rushed into the parking lot.
An absolutely ordinary gray sedan was digging out of the lot. It threw gravel as it turned onto the road. And then it was gone.
I didn’t see it well enough to guess the make or see the license plate or get a peek at the driver.
Had it been my pursuer?
Chocolate Chat
In her book The Healing Powers of Chocolate, author Cal Orey devotes a chapter to home remedies involving chocolate. Here are some of her suggestions.
Anxiety—Although chocolate contains small amounts of caffeine and some sugar, it’s still soothing to the emotions. She suggests a half ounce of premium dark chocolate and a glass of water before an event you feel may cause anxiety.
Bone Loss—A daily serving of chocolate milk or hot chocolate will add milk to your diet, and milk contains magnesium, manganese, and calcium for bone health.
Digestive Problems—Try chocolate with peppermint.
Hot Flashes—Try a cold chocolate drink, or have a couple of truffles that contain green tea.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)—Hot cocoa to the rescue. Use cocoa with a high cocoa content, but cut calories by using one or two percent milk.
Chapter 15
“Can I help you?�
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I jumped all over and whirled around when I heard the voice behind me, but it was only one of the yellow-shirted counselors. He looked to be about twenty, a big ugly guy with a crew cut and muscles. I toyed with the idea of telling him the whole story. Then I toyed with making up a lie—“I had a fight with my boyfriend, and he’s driven off and left me.”
I finally went with an abbreviated version of the truth. I told him I believed someone had been stalking me through the preserve. I had hoped to get a look at him, I said. Now I thought he had cut through the woods, gotten into his car, and driven off before I could see who it was.
“You probably think I’m one of those women who belittles—I mean, believes! I sound like one of those women who has the idea men are after her all the time,” I said. “I don’t think I am.”
He smiled. “Is your car here?”
“No. I was visiting friends whose property adjoins the preserve, and I entered from the south side. My car’s over there.”
“Would a ride back help?”
I sighed with relief. “It would be a lifesaver. Of course, your only alternative is allowing a strange and possibly deranged woman to join the campers on their nature walk. I do not want to go back the whole way alone.”
“Let me tell the other counselors where I’m going.”
My new pal’s name was Dick. I held on to my club as he gave me a lift back to the Reagans’ drive in the camp’s van. I told him to come by TenHuis Chocolade for a free box of chocolates. We parted happily.
I said good-bye to the Reagans, and I almost left without telling them about the disaster that had happened to the tracks. I decided I had to, however. If someone was still prowling around their property, they had a right to know.
Rosy replied by showing me a little plaque outside their front door. THESE PREMISES GUARDED BY SMITH&WESSON.
“I’ll remember that,” I said. “If I have to come back, I’ll call first.” He chortled happily. He certainly didn’t seem nervous about the prowler. That was interesting. After all, there had been a murder practically next door.