I lived in that house about two years and nothing utterly fucked up happened until this autumn. I moved there initially to work on my novella - a sort of action, fantasy, romantic drama about two trees planning a very slow heist on a logging company. Moving out into a forest felt like the next step to really understanding my protagonists’ rage. Sinking all of my savings into buying a house in the middle of nowhere felt like the next step to becoming a true artiste.
At first, I didn’t regret it. They call the area I live in a temperate rainforest, but that doesn’t do it justice. Even the sunlight here is green, trees bunched so close together sometimes it feels like you’re walking through twilight in the middle of the day, and the peace. There’s no other quiet like this on earth. There is a town, near where I live, big enough for a school and a police station and a road back to civilization. It’s mainly a fueling station for backpackers. We get a little tourist season in the summer, and you can’t really blame them for wanting to be here. I love it here.
Or I did. Before the deer.
It was a normal morning. I made coffee, spent thirty-five minutes writing - which mostly consisted of staring at the screen but I did realize everything I’d written the day before was utter trash, so that’s kind of progress- and then decided to take a walk and come at things again with a fresh start. It was a nice day. The evergreens were, well, green, but there was a bit of autumn color on some of the leaves outside. The air was just starting to get cold. Even before I left the house I caught a faint, horrible smell - like a backed-up public toilet made of rotting vegetables. The source was a deer on my front porch. Or rather, the entrails of a deer on my front porch, which were rather more out than both I and the deer would have preferred.
“Oh, god,” I said, jumping back into my house. Then, for good measure, “Oh, god. Oh, god!”
But god had been and gone and the deer was very dead. I won’t bore you with details about the guts and blood except to say that you don’t realize how much blood and guts a single animal can hold until they are casually draining out of it and onto your front porch.
The wild corpse disposal guys - always a treat to discover a new and exciting occupation in your area - thought maybe the deer had gotten away from a bear in the woods and staggered to my front porch before dying sometime last night. I didn’t take my walk that day. Strangely, the idea of a hungry bear searching the woods for his lost meal put me off. Instead, I covered my porch with vinegar and baking soda to try and get rid of the smell and developed a sudden appreciation for the vegan lifestyle. Still, the disposal guys did a decent job cleaning it up and it is the sort of thing you might expect once or twice, living in the wilds. It could be inspiration for a story.
Only the next day there was another deer. And the week after that, it was the bear.
Most of the bear.
Sometimes it takes weeks between arrivals, sometimes it’s a day but on a regular unspecified schedule, I get a corpse on my front porch. I stopped calling the removal guys after the sixth body - they sent Jeff from the local police department to make sure I wasn’t hunting out of season.
“So, to get this straight,” I said, “You think I’m hunting deer and bears and moose…ses and a tree that one time - ”
“You need a license for logging in these parts, too,” Jeff said, and I ignored him.
“ - With a chainsaw, I imagine, given the state of the bodies -”
“Well, you would need a chainsaw for the logging.”
“ - And then I drag my spoils to my own front porch, getting blood all over my wicker furniture, just so I can call Eavesdale Wild Animal Removal to take it away and burn it.”
“They mostly bury the bodies,” Jeff said before my meaning sunk in. He stood in silence for a moment, starting at my porch, his tongue sweeping back and forth as if the explanation was stuck somewhere between his gums and upper lip. Finally he burst out, like he was having an epiphany, “It’s weird, though, isn’t it?”
After that, I just started burying the bodies myself.
Officer Jeff was right, the bodies were weird. And they weren’t the only weird thing I noticed. I stopped walking, stopped writing, just stared out my bedroom window and I’ve seen things. The odd way the trees sway at dusk. Rumbling sounds, like thunder, only there’s no lightning anywhere nearby. Sometimes, late at night, there were odd lights and shadows in the forest. I know there’s shit I could have been doing. A camera would probably have caught it, I probably should have left the house or called for help. It’s not that I wasn’t scared. I was fucking terrified, but it was the kind of scared where I felt frozen. Like, if I put out a camera I’d see it and if I left I’d never know what it was and both options felt fucking horrifying so I just stocked up on bleach and goggles and plastic bags and took care of the bodies as they came. After a while it wasn’t even that gross, just a routine.
Admittedly the dead of winter was rough, but around the New Year, when the days got longer, I started to feel weirdly hopeful. I even hummed a little tune yesterday while I put on my improvised hazmat suit and checked the porch. I was prepared for a dead animal on my porch that day. There wasn’t one. Or, not really, like an animal, but a - human animal. A guy.
There was a dead guy on my porch.
I did not bury him like the animals. I called the police because of fucking course I did, and Officer Jeff came over to nudge the body and lick under his lip some more.
“Poor guy,” Jeff said, “He stopped off in town a few days ago for supplies. Seemed experienced enough. I think he was heading for the falls to ring in the New Year, must have run afoul of a bear or something.”
I think I played it relatively cool when I begged him to let me stay in town. There was no hotel in town, but Jeff offered me his spare room. It was on the third floor of his tidy, flimsy little white-washed house and his wife Pamela kept up a running commentary while she made up the bed. Her voice was slow and mellow and I suspected it might have been for my benefit.
“We’re gonna have lemon chicken for dinner, I hope you like lemon chicken. Sorry the bedpost is a little scratched up, we have a cat, only I bet you won’t see him. I hope you’re not allergic to cats. Gemma, our daughter, she loves that cat. She’s gonna have to do flute practice this evening, but it’s only for an hour after dinner. She can play Hot Cross Buns now, I hope you like Hot Cross Buns…”
I wasn’t fully listening. The window of the bedroom faced out to the sliver of backyard and then, beyond it, the woods. It was midday, but the trees were so closely bunched together the forest faded into shadow, like it was stuck in perpetual twilight. The walls of the house felt painfully fragile. I felt Pamela step softly behind me.
“Oh, isn’t it beautiful? Our little ones love playing out in those trees, don’t they Jeff? You know, I might send you all out to get some fresh air while I finish the lemon chicken.”
I think I played it relatively cool by screaming, “No!” at the middle of my lungs instead of the top.
“If you didn’t feel like lemon chicken, you should have just said so,” said Pamela.
“Don’t be hurt, Pam,” said Jeff, “It’s just been a hell of a day and we’re both a little rattled. Let’s all stay inside for the afternoon, play some games. It sounds like there’s a storm brewing anyway.”
I did my best to focus on Yahtzee and questions from Jeff’s kids and questions from Jeff as that afternoon wore into evening. “You know what I just realized?” Jeff said over a steaming plate of orange chicken and rice, “This is sort of like that problem you were having earlier with all the animals all gutted on your -”
“Jeff!” Pam said, as she served one of the kids from a heaping bowl in the center of the table. There were six place settings and five of us - me, the couple, their two boys - were already seated. The girl - Gemma - wasn’t down yet from her room.
“Well, it’s just a funny coincidence, that’s all. Isn’t it funny? Not funny haha, of course, but -”
“Funny weird,” I smiled faintly. It was a weird coincidence now, but what was going to happen when backpacking season started in earnest? After the fifth body, Jeff might stop thinking it was funny weird and start thinking it was funny suspicious. I decided right then and there that I was going to get a camera.
“It is weird,” Jeff said, “Because I have to say it, the guy looks exactly like those dead animals that turned up all gutted on your -”
“Jeff!” Pamela said, as one of the kids retched, “That is enough talk about dead animals at the dinner table.” Gemma passed across the dining room doorway carrying a tied-up plastic bag just as Pamela finished scooping her own plate, “Gemma, what’s taking you so long?”
“I can’t tell you,” Gemma said.
Pamela looked up, Jeff shook his head at me in commiseration, and I thanked god for pre-teen angst to change the topic.
“Gemma Marie, are you keeping secrets from your mother?”
“No, I can’t tell you.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you just said not to talk about dead animals at the dinner table.”
I did not play it cool. I shrieked at the very top of my lungs and fell fully out of my chair. The plastic baggie in Gemma’s hand did not look large enough to house a human body, but it had been a long day and I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.
“It’s just a mouse,” Gemma said, through the open doorway behind her, I could see the trees and a small, resentful shadow slinking between them.
“Baxter, you little scamp!” Pamela called after him, and the little cat turned, becoming a shadow with pinprick lamps for eyes. Baxter swished his tail and vanished between the trees, “I’m sorry about that. He’s an outdoor cat and he’s always bringing us his little gifts. Thinks he’s king of the forest, that one.”
“It’s actually because he thinks we can’t feed ourselves,” said Gemma, “He just thinks we’re big stupid kittens who’ll starve without him.”
Last night, I looked out into the trees from Jeff’s guest bedroom with a keener eye. The storm Jeff had predicted never arrived and so the night sky was clear and the full moon bore down, creating a twin pair of massive lights in the forest. I’m not sure how the beast knew where I was staying, but he’d found me. Those huge lantern eyes blinked and there was a sound like thunder and I know this sounds crazy.
But I think I have a new pet.
And I need to convince him I don’t eat hikers.