by Rick Hautala
Stop it!
Why do you keep saying you won't do it?
I know you can! You have all the equipment right here, don't you?
You have to do it. You have to cut off Derrick's hands before they do something really horrible!
The Screaming Head: A Campfire Tale
“Maybe we should set up camp here before it gets too dark,” Jack Harper said. He paused in the middle of the trail and waited for his friend, Ryan Gould, who was several steps ahead of him, to realize he was no longer walking along behind him. “It’s gonna be dark soon,” Jack added, raising his voice.
“Yeah? So?” Ryan said over his shoulder but—finally—he had drawn to a stop and turned to look back at Jack.
“It’s just that ... well, I know you know these woods a lot better than I do,” Jack said. He shrugged to relieve the pressure of the backpack’s straps on his shoulders. “But I was thinking we should maybe set up camp before it gets all the way dark, is all.”
Off to his left, through the trees, the glimmer of the setting sun reflected off the wide, bending curve of the Missouri River. A cool breeze laden with the dense scent of pine resin blew through the scrub pines with a high, hissing sound. The land dropped off sharply to the river and, to the east, craggy hills rose up against the deepening blue sky.
Ryan followed Jack’s gaze out over the water to the setting sun. He sighed and shook his head. His voice was low, all but lost beneath the sound of the wind in the trees when he said, “All right then. Let’s find a flat spot to set up. I’ll pitch the tent while you gather some firewood.”
“How come I always get to do the squaw’s work?” Jack asked. He was trying to crack a joke to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t repress the slight shiver that teased up his back as he looked around him. For as much hiking as he did, he was always surprised—and a little irritated—at how he felt a tad uncomfortable around this time of day ... Twilight Time ... just as the sun was setting, and the shadows were deepening black pools under the trees. Once it was fully dark, he had no problem, especially if there was a campfire blazing away. But as evening fell, the forest always made him feel ... not afraid, really, just … uncomfortable.
Ryan leaned forward and rested his chin on the tip of his hiking stick as he surveyed the area. Suddenly his face lit up. “Hold on a second. Do you know where we are?”
Jack frowned and shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, “about twenty miles from the nearest town on the Saddleback Trail in—.”
“No. No,” Ryan said. He pointed with the tip of his walking stick down the slope that led to the river. “You see those rocks down there? The ones overlooking the river?”
“Yeah.”
“ I’m pretty sure that’s Outlaw’s Cave.”
“Outlaw’s Cave?” Jack shook his head. “The name rings a bell. Should it?” He suddenly took a quick step back and shook his head more vigorously. “Hold on. I ain’t sleeping in any cave.”
Ryan snorted laughter and shook his head. “We don’t have to if you’re too scared. We can pitch the tent in the clearing down there. It’s a really nice spot. Once we get set up, I’ll tell you the story about it.”
“Maybe I don’t want to hear the story about it,” Jack said.
As his gaze shifted out over the stretch of the river, he suddenly wished he could fly far away from this place.
“Trust me. You’ll want to,” Ryan said as he shifted his pack into a more comfortable position on his back and started down the steep slope. “It’s a terrific spot. Nice view of the river, too.”
Not entirely convinced, Jack followed several paces behind Ryan.
The trail wasn’t clearly marked, at least not that Jack could see in the gathering dusk, and the footing was lousy, so they slid as much as walked down the first hundred feet or so. Rocks and other debris slid downhill in their wake. Eventually, the ground leveled out on a wide bluff that overlooked the river.
“Yup ... This is the place, aw’right,” Ryan said.
The sun had already dropped below the trees on the opposite shore, turning the river into a wide stretch of dull, beaten silver that was rapidly fading to charcoal gray. Off in the distance, a solitary crow called out, its raucous voice echoing from the cliffs that lined the riverbank.
The spot Ryan was pointing to didn’t look like much at first—just a scattering of boulders against a hill that looked a bit like it had been purposely constructed. Closer to the water, there was a grove of cottonwood trees. Their thin leaves, chattering in the gloom, set Jack’s teeth on edge. At the base of the hill was a huge, solitary oak tree that looked as if it had weathered at least a hundred years or more rooted to this spot.
“I don’t see a—” Jack started to say, but when he caught up with Ryan, who had stopped near the base of the hill, he cut himself short.
“There it is, all right,” Ryan said. “Outlaw’s Cave.”
Jack gave the cave barely a glance. He instantly didn’t like it even though it didn’t look like all that much. A person would have to bend down low to enter it, and he wasn’t the least bit curious about going inside. All he could think about was getting the tent up so they could settle down for the night. After four days in the wilderness, they planned to be out of the woods by tomorrow afternoon, and he wanted nothing but a shower and a good night’s sleep after sleeping on the cold, hard ground for three nights.
“Aww, shit,” Ryan muttered.
Jack turned and looked at him, realizing he must have been staring at the cave mouth much longer than he’d thought. Ryan was kneeling on the ground with his opened pack and was fishing around inside the tent bag.
“What is it?”
“The tent poles ... They’re not all here.”
Ryan frowned and shook his head.
“What do you mean? You packed them up after last night, didn’t you?”
Ryan kept muttering to himself as he fumbled with the tent bag, but even in the deepening darkness, Jack could see that no amount of searching was going to make the tent poles suddenly appear. Either they’d left them behind at their last campsite, or they had dropped out of Ryan’s pack somewhere along the trail. Most of the time, though, Jack had walked behind Ryan, so he would have noticed them if they had fallen out.
“Well,” Ryan said, sighing as he sat back on his heels and brushed his hands together. “Looks like we get to sleep under the stars for our last night on the trail. Don’t worry. We’ll be all right.”
“Long as it doesn’t rain,” Jack said, casting a worried glance up at the sky. Through the trees, he could see patches of indigo sky with a few faint, twinkling stars, but rainstorms could blow up fast in this neck of the woods.
“If it does rain, we’ll wait it out in the cave,” Ryan said casually. “For now, though, I say we scavenge up some deadwood and start ourselves a little fire. Warm up a bit. Then I’ll tell you the story about this place.”
“Gee, I can hardly wait.”
* * *
Not long after that, once night had truly fallen, and the campfire was blazing away, Jack and Ryan spread their sleeping bags out on the ground and sat down Indian-style with the fire between them while theyb ate their last night’s worth of food—baked beans, some pemmican, and two bottles of beer, which they had saved especially for their last night in the mountains. By now, the river was lost in darkness, nothing more than a flat, black strip that didn’t even reflect the faint starlight overhead.
“So, you ready to hear the story about this place?” Ryan asked. He took a long pull of warm beer, emptying his bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he leaned forward. His wide, moist eyes reflected the campfire, and the flickering flames underlit his features, casting deep shadows over the angles of his face.
“Do I have a choice?” Jack asked.
He didn’t like the slight chill that danced up his spine, but he told himself that it was because he was facing the fire, and the night air was cooling off behind him. Above the snap and crackle o
f the fire, he could hear the chattering of the oak leaves in the big tree behind him. A thin column of smoke rose like river mist until it disappeared into the trees overhead.
Against his will, he found himself turning to look over his shoulder to see if he could catch a glimpse of anything—an animal or maybe even a ghost that might be lurking in the woods around them.
Of course, he didn’t see anything.
Still, he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that somewhere out there in the darkness, something was lurking … watching him … and waiting.
“Well,” Ryan said, settling down with his arms resting on his crossed legs. “A long time ago, this cave was the campsite for a bunch of robbers.”
“You mean, like, train robbers?”
“Yeah. They’d lie in wait for any riverboats coming down the Missouri—you know, with furs or gold or whatever—and then they’d attack. The robbers were a family called the Harpes. Hey. Now that I think about it, that’s close to your last name, Harper.”
“Why do I get the feeling you just made up that part?” Jack said, snorting and shaking his head. “Anyway, go on.”
“Well, these guys the Harpes were a ruthless bunch, you see? Mean sons ‘a bitches. They had a reputation for killing everyone on board the riverboat, no matter what. Men. Women. Children. Didn’t matter. They’d kill ‘em all and take anything of value, then bring it all back here, where they’d divvy it up. That’s why it’s called—”
“—Outlaw’s Cave,” Jack said with thinly veiled impatience. “I get it. So then one day they all got caught—some posse caught up with ‘em and killed them all, and the cave is supposedly haunted, right?” Jack wanted to get to the end of the story as quickly as possible so he could try to get to sleep. “And I’ll bet that late at night, anyone who comes out here can see their ghosts in the cave, right? Or maybe they can hear them moaning and groaning in the darkness.”
“Not even close. No, it’s—” Ryan paused and then, lowering his voice for dramatic effect, whispered, “It’s a lot worse than that.”
Jack chuckled nervously and shook his head, telling himself there was no way he was going to let Ryan’s story get to him. He was long past the age of getting spooked by campfire tales even if he wasn’t exactly keen on where they had decided to camp for the night.
“What was it, then?” he finally asked, keeping his voice light only with effort. “What happened?”
“Well,” Ryan said, lowering his voice even more and leaning forward. “One time, this guy got away from the Harpes. Escaped. The outlaws killed his wife and children, but he only took a bullet in the shoulder or something and fell overboard. But he’d gotten a good look at one of them.”
“And that outlaw had, like, a big scar on his face or something, right?”
“As a matter of fact, their leader—the oldest brother, named Jed Harpe—did have a scar all along the left side of his face. But that’s not really part of the story. The Harpes didn’t bother with this guy, you see, figuring he was already dead or drowned, so they looted the riverboat and made off with their booty back to the cave. Only this guy wasn’t dead. As he drifted downstream, he saw where the Harpes put in to shore.”
“So he sneaked back at night and killed them all, and that’s why you can still see and hear the ghosts in the cave, right? Okay. End of story. Good one. What say we hit the sack? We’ve still got plenty of hiking to do tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but you gotta let me finish the story first,” Ryan said. “I promise you, it’s a doozey.”
Against his better judgment, Jack nodded and waved his hand for Ryan to wrap it up quickly so they could get to sleep. He was determined not to let his friend get the better of him with this bullshit story. He was already preparing himself for, later in the night, when Ryan did something to scare the wits out of him.
“So this guy—no one ever says what his name was—made his way back to town and got his wounds healed. He tried to get the townspeople to come out after the Harpes, but no one would listen to him. They were too afraid. These guys were savages, you gotta understand, and there was no way the townspeople were going to go after them. So this guy, determined to get revenge for his wife and children, went out there—came out here—alone.
“Alone. Against—how many?”
“Doesn’t matter because as it turned out, everyone in the gang was away except for Jed, the oldest brother. This guy who wants revenge hides in the brush and waits. Right around sunset, ole’ Jed comes out of the cave and then—BANG!—the guy shoots Jed dead.”
“Okay. The end,” Jack said, his voice rising hopefully.
“Not quite,” Ryan replied as he leaned even closer to the campfire. The flames flickered across his face, painting his skin with orange slashes. His eyes glowed wickedly. “You see, this guy figures the rest of the gang might be close enough to have heard the gunshot, and he knows there’s no way he’d be able to fight all of them without getting killed himself, so what does he do?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. What does he do?”
“He cuts off ole’ Jed’s head and hangs it from one of the branches of that oak tree right behind you. That’s what he does.”
Jack couldn’t stop the shiver that gripped him as he turned slowly around and cast a fearful glance at the towering oak tree. Its leaves and branches shifted slightly in the night breeze, and it didn’t take much to imagine there was a head hanging from one of the branches, slowly twisting and turning back and forth in the wind. Looking back at Ryan, he took a deep breath and licked his lips so he could speak without letting his nervousness show.
“So ... uh, then what happened … to the rest of the gang?”
“Well, according to the story—and this is where it gets really creepy—when they came back to the cave that night, the head was hanging from the tree ... just hanging there, swinging back and forth ... back and forth. Then, when one of them came up to it, ready to cut it down and bury it before going to find and kill whoever’d done this to their eldest brother, ‘ole Jed’s eyes suddenly snapped open, and the head began to scream.”
“Scream?” Jack asked, his voice a tight, faint echo of Ryan’s.
“Yeah, scream,” Ryan said. “I mean really scream.”
Then he leaned his head back so the campfire lit his exposed throat and let out the loudest, most piercing scream Jack had ever heard. He couldn’t help but jump.
“Jesus! Cut it out!” Jack shouted, blocking his ears with his hands as he looked around nervously. “Quit fooling around—”
But he stopped himself because Ryan kept on screaming, his voice rising and falling in wild shrieks that echoed back doubly from the nearby cave and the distant riverbank.
Finally, Ryan stopped screaming and looked at Jack. In the sudden, eerie silence, Jack tried hard to convince himself he didn’t hear an answering screech come from somewhere deep in the woods.
“And that’s what’s supposed to be scary about this place,” Ryan said, his face lighting up with a self-satisfied smirk as he regarded Jack. “They say the brothers were so scared they left the place and never came back, and the head stayed hanging from the oak tree, screaming every night. Anyone who passed by on the river after dark supposedly could hear it. They say the head kept right on screaming until, finally, the flesh rotted away. Once that happened, the screaming finally stopped.”
“Okay,” Jack said, swallowing with difficulty. “You’ve told your little story. What do you say we get some shuteye now?”
“Shuteye?” Ryan said. “Man, you’re starting to sound like a regular buckaroo.”
Jack sniffed with laughter as he kicked off his hiking boots, zipped open his sleeping bag, and slid into it. He had chosen a spot under the big oak tree where there was a small mound on the ground that he could use as a pillow.
Gusts of wind sighed in the leaves overhead, and the firelight gradually faded to a warm, pulsating red bed of coals. But try as he might, Jack couldn’t get to sleep. He kept rolli
ng over from one side to the other and then back again. Even using the little grassy mound as a pillow, he couldn’t get comfortable. It hadn’t taken Ryan long to drift off, though. Less than ten minutes after finishing his story, he was curled up on his left side, facing the campfire and snoring away.
But not Jack.
Despite his best efforts, he found himself thinking about Ryan’s story. It wasn’t long before the shadows overhead and all around him deepened and shifted and then began to take on the twisted, menacing shapes of severed heads hanging from the branches and hands reaching out for him from the night.
Jack kept checking his watch, tracking the slow progress of time as the few stars he could see through the canopy of trees wheeled slowly overhead, keeping their own stately time. Far off in the distance, something—probably a coyote—began to howl. Jack reassured himself that whatever it was, it was far enough away not to bother them, and it certainly was not a screaming head.
The firelight faded, and its heat gradually subsided. Deep shadows closed in. Sometime after midnight, Jack got drowsy and began to drift off. He dipped into sleep like a timid swimmer slipping into cold water, inch by inch, but gradually, he slipped into a dream.
In the dream, a voice was whispering to him from out of the darkness. He couldn’t make out any of the words, but on some level, he understood in that vague, dreamlike way what the voice was telling him. It blended with the hissing of leaves overhead and the faint crackle and snap of the dying fire and the howls of the distant coyote until suddenly, with a roaring intake of breath, Jack sat bolt-upright and let out a shrill scream.
“No!”
His body was rigid, trembling with tension. Every nerve and every muscle was humming like a taut wire. Somehow, he had crawled out of his sleeping bag and found himself sitting up with his hands hooked like claws and fastened to the sides of his face, almost covering his eyes as he stared straight ahead at the nearly dead campfire.
“Oh, Jesus ... Jesus,” he whispered, panting heavily as the dream gradually melted away, and his eyes focused more clearly on his surroundings. Gradually, he realized where he was, and in the dull, amber glow, he saw Ryan lying on his side, staring wide-eyed at him.