Hello, my name is Dave. I’m 74 years old, and I’ll be dead in the following year.
I was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer thanks to my addiction to Marlboro. My older sister knew I smoked to calm my nerves, and she always used to ask me what happened that night. I came close to telling her, but now I can’t. She died back in 2018.
Now, near the end of the road, I feel the need to tell my story, even if it’s just to a bunch of strangers. My sister would say I would feel better if I just talked about it, or in this case, wrote about it. So, here we go.
When I was 12, I found a severed head, and its eyes moved.
***
It was June 14th, 1961, and a particularly humid and hot summer. The kind of weather that makes your shirt stick to your back with sweat.
I lived in your average suburban neighborhood with two working parents. My father did door-to-door sales selling vacuum cleaners, and my mother worked at a salon downtown – she might’ve been the only mom in that neighborhood that worked. They didn’t usually get home until the evening, which meant I was free to wander around the neighborhood, go to a friend’s house, or explore the woods when I pleased.
On that day, I met up with Eddie, a boy I had known since 3rd grade, and we met up with George and his brother Michael. We were all the same age, except for Michael, who was 10.
The four of us went down a gravel trail in the park near our neighborhood. We usually would go off the trail and into the woods to play hide-and-seek. We weren’t even that far in when the smell hit us. I would be assaulted with a similar rank smell years later when I found a dead cat baking on the road in the middle of August.
“Jesus, what is that?” Eddie said, pinching his nose.
“Show we turn around?” I asked
“Probably just a dead animal,” George said. “No reason to ruin all the fun over it. Come on.” He began to lead the way, Michael beside him.
So, we followed, and God, I wish we hadn’t.
The odor got worse the deeper we went; it was nauseating. I glanced at Eddie, who leaned over every few steps, threatening to vomit with retching sounds. George began to sway, and he paused, leaning against a tree trunk. And Michael began to wail, his scrunched-up face turning red in seconds. The sound shot adrenaline through me.
George looked at him. “What the hell are you crying about?”
Michael pointed to a tree to our left. “I saw something move behind that tree.”
I stared at the thick trunk and felt the beginnings of a growing terror. None of us saw anything, but Michael rubbed his eyes, looked toward the tree again, and cried louder.
“Fuck this,” I said. “I’m going home.”
“Same,” Eddie said, following.
George wordlessly grabbed Michael’s hand and they trailed behind us.
Now, here’s the part I never could understand. Eddie and I knew these woods inside and out. But it all looked… wrong. Crooked. We found trees with thick, twisting trunks we had never seen before; dead shrubs littered with dead insects; and it seemed to stretch on, endlessly. Time seemed wrong too. We entered at around noon and couldn’t have been in there for more than thirty minutes, but already, the orange glow from the sunset spilled over the ground.
“The trail should be here,” Eddie said, pacing back and forth.
“Maybe we missed it,” George said, “or maybe it’s further ahead.”
“It isn’t. It should be here.”
“Calm down, Eddie,” I said.
The odor came back.
Michael began to cry again.
Eddie stomped the ground. “Shut him up, George!”
Michael pointed at something again, though this time we all saw it.
The head of an old woman, on the center of a tree stump that wasn’t there a moment ago.
“Holy shit!” I yelled.
I don’t know why, but the three of us walked toward it. The head’s eyes were closed, and it looked… fresh.
“What do we do?” Eddie asked.
“Once we get home,” I said, “I’ll tell my parents. They’ll call the police.”
We all became transfixed on the head. No one moved, and no one breathed. We just stared.
The woman’s eyes shot open. She rapidly glanced at all of us.
Her mouth opened, and despite being only a head, the shrilled cries from dozens of damned people overlapped each other, coming out of that woman’s mouth.
Call me a bad friend, but God, I ran, and when I looked back, Eddie was running in the opposite direction, and George was trying to pull Michael away from the head. But the boy seemed set in stone and wouldn’t budge. I turned my head back around and nearly ran into a tree.
It was dark by the time I stopped running; my only source of light came from the moon. I wanted to call out for Eddie, George, or Michael, but fear stopped me from doing so. I wandered for what felt like hours, hoping to find one of them or the trail. I just wanted to go home.
“Dave.”
It was Michael’s voice, but I didn’t see him anywhere.
“Michael, where are you?”
“Behind the tree in front of you.”
“Where’s Eddie and George?”
“They’re here too. Come on, Dave.”
The trunk of that tree might have been thick enough for a skinny 10-year-old to hide behind, but not three people.
“Why don’t you come out?” I said.
Michael did. I could only make out his silhouette in the dark, but I saw he was holding something. He came closer.
The boy cradled three heads in his arms.
He sprinted toward me.
I turned and ran, jumping over logs, running through shrubs, and being whipped by branches, but I never looked back. I really thought at that moment death would have me.
I tripped over myself, falling onto gravel.
I was back on the trail. When I looked back, Michael was gone. I ran back home and never went back to those woods.
***
They never found out what happened to those three boys. The police searched but found nothing.
To this day, I regret not following Eddie or trying to help George and Michael. Maybe the outcome would have been different.
But it doesn’t matter now. George and Eddie are dead, and Michael… I don’t know what became of him. I think that boy saw something that we couldn’t. I just can’t fathom him, with the strength of a 10-year-old, beheading George and Eddie. Also, as to why he was carrying that old woman’s head, along with theirs, I don’t know.
Perhaps when I die, I’ll find out.