It was early July when I first saw the path. It was a dark point in a ring of featherbells, and it had a pull to it. An empty wanting sitting in the tree line.
I grew up in a pretty rural part of southern Missouri in a house in the Ozarks. It was a beautiful place, and a beautiful childhood. Dad bought the land empty and built the house himself as a distraction from drinking. Mom put her foot down shortly after I was born and dad knew she was right, so he bought the land and instead of going out after work, he’d go to the land and work on the house. Giving himself a choice between drinking himself to death or building his dream worked like a charm, and he had been 15 years sober when he died.
It hit me hard, but now I can see how lucky I was. I had him long enough to learn all about how to live near and with the land. He taught me carpentry and hunting and fishing and all kinds of things that lots of girls rarely get a chance to learn. In the spring and fall we’d always take a week to go out into the forest and just live there, all three of us. We’d bring about half enough food and try make up for the rest ourselves. Depending on the season, there were mushrooms, berries, cattails, and pawpaws to collect. Dad could always sniff out a good fishing hole, too. Mom was a great camp cook. She’d usually sneak a few things from the garden out in her pack, onions, garlic scapes, peppers, and the like. The kinds of things that make whatever it is you’re cooking smell and taste so good. Dad and I would bring back fish, mom would throw some butter in the pan, and the next thing you knew the forest would smell like caramelizing peppers and garlic. We never saw her pack the good stuff, never saw her chop it, it would just suddenly be there. I suspect witchcraft.
We’d settle in with full bellies and dad would tell stories about strange sounds in the woods, weeping, moaning, of monsters crashing through the underbrush, missing people, and the occasional scratches left on a car door. The good stuff. I’d get good and scared and snuggle up between them while I was still young enough to do so.
I miss my dad, but it’s easy to see him in all the I do and love.
There was a couple, Reggie and Lara, who lived not far away. We were neighbors, but we had 15 acres and they had 25 so you usually had to put effort into seeing them. When dad died, Reggie took me out in the woods and showed me the most magical place I’d ever seen. It was a clearing less than a mile from our house, but it was surrounded by some pretty intimidating looking hollers so if you didn’t know where the pass was, you’d never find it. Well, Reggie knew where the pass was, and then I did too.
The sun would shine in like a ray from god, and there was a single flat boulder in the middle that you could use as a seat and a table. In the early summer it would fill up with pink and purple springcress, and the tree line would be ringed in toothwort flowers, all nodding and mournful. The real show came later in the summer, around July, when the featherbells would light up the tree line like a wildfire. They grow like long grasses, with a line of bright red flowers licking at the air all along the tops of them. I’d sprawl out over the boulder feeling the warmth of the sun, surrounded by the fiery extravagances of the featherbells and soak it all in. I could feel the energy of the place coursing through me. I felt connected, honest and true.
It was a place of great solace for me. I’d hike out along a creek and collect some wisteria, then head to the pass and spend the rest of the day weaving them into a basket on the boulder. Just soaking up the energy of the forest. Mom would occasionally come out to check on me, bring me sandwiches and the like.
“This is a place of longing,” she said once. “It was longing that drew your dad here in the first place. It’s part of the ecosystem here.” I gave her that look that a teenager gives her mom when she doesn’t really get it and wants to be left alone.
“All I’m saying is don’t get lost in it. That longing will eat you alive if you let it. If it starts getting to you, you just head back to the house, and I’ll make a nice pie for you. I love you sweetheart,” she said, and gave me a big hug.
Once I had a good sized basket, I went into the woods and filled it with all of dad’s favorite things, and buried it there with me. It took me all summer, but by the time I was through I felt more connected to my dad and to the forest than I ever had.
During my senior year Lara died of cancer. I brought Reggie out to the clearing with some wisteria and a pack of food. I told him about the basket I made when dad died, and that I would stay out of here for as long as he needs it. He was thankful. It was the last time I saw him. Mom figured he just couldn’t handle being reminded of Lara and moved away, but there were rumors that he went out to the forest and just never came back.There were a couple good years where I was always a little nervous that I’d find what was left of him during a hike. That faded with time and I accepted that mom was probably right. She usually was.
I got a job doing carpentry after graduation and got an apartment in town. I loved my new found freedom, being able to have boys over whenever I wanted, cook what I want, watch what I want. Every weekend I’d go back to the house, and back to my clearing. I’d get to feeling weird and itchy if I was gone too long, like something wasn’t right. There’s a disconnect that happens when you live around people. Like you start to forget what real is. You start thinking that social reality is reality, that rumors and gossip and bullying and politics is real, but you can’t put any of those things in your belly or rub it between your fingers to get the scent of it. Real is a rock in a clearing where I can eat pawpaws and smell the autumn leaves quickly on their way back to the soil. Real is the electric crackling of the leaves raining down, and the fiery blossoms of the featherbells. All that other stuff, that’s just people trying to get you to do things they want.
I was 24 and sitting on the boulder reading a book when I first noticed the hollow place in the tree line. At first I thought maybe a deer had come through and taken out the flowers in that area, but I just couldn’t ignore it. Something about it just felt… Not good, but still welcoming. I could feel a wanting in my chest, a pull of uncertainty. I looked all around the path for signs of what made it. There were no tracks, no footprints, nothing. Just an opening.
It was damp and dark, like the bottom of a holler. The trees leaned over it and filled in the canopy so much that you couldn’t see more than 10 feet down the path. It just dissolved into nothingness. The scent of decaying leaves came out of it. Being where it was at that time of year it should have been drying out and smelling of greenery. This smelled like an autumn rain, toads and nightcrawlers, and it felt like the wrong home. Like when your neighbor is moving and you get a peak at their apartment and it’s just like yours but it’s just empty and wrong. The path was empty and wrong and I wanted it and it frightened me.
I must have spent an hour or more scouting around the path. I’d dig through the forest on either side of it until I hit the edge of the holler, then go back. I’d toss rocks and sticks into the darkness and watch them dissolve away. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and held my arm out as far as I could and saw nothing. The sun started to dip and I resolved to come back another day. I was back the next weekend. The path sat there staring at me. I had almost forgotten about it, but there it was, and I was filled with a hollow wanting. I sat my phone and collection of weaving materials on the boulder and approached the opening. Nothing. Just a big open maw. I could hear the silence seeping out of the place.
I just stood there, staring, wondering, and wanting. Curiosity got the best of me, and I moved into the path to fill the nothingness. It was dark. I mean, more than it should have been. At 20 feet in I could no longer see the tops of the trees, the start of the path, or where it led to. I expected to run into the holler that surrounded this place in no time, but I just kinda kept on moving. The holler never showed up. The quiet of the place put me on my nerves. Forests have a life of their own, the breath of wind and wings flowing through the trees, the pulse of insects and wildlife pushing through the underbrush, a real vitality. That was muted here. Like when you’re wearing a good pair of headphones with the sound off. It’s all just turned down and filled with cotton.
Cotton, darkness, and the smell of nightcrawlers.
I turned the corner and found the biggest patch of jack-o-lantern mushrooms I’d ever seen. It was beautiful, easily 3 feet in diameter and crawling a foot up the side of an old stump. At night I bet you could see them glow from a hundred feet away. I stepped over carefully to check them out. You can’t eat them, but let me tell you they are a sight to behold, and I wanted to behold some sights. It looked like a little fairy city, stems led to caps next to more stems, thick enough you couldn’t see anything past them.
I moved all around them, just taking it in from all sides, when something caught my eye on the forest floor. Something smooth and regular in a sea of irregularity. Man made things stick out here. I got down and dug at the forest floor a bit and pulled out a watch. A nice one, by the looks of it. It looked like it had been here a while. I brushed the dirt off and saw an inscription on the back - “For Reggie, My Beloved”. My heart sunk.
Jack-o-lanterns grow on trees, not people, so I wasn’t worried I’d find him, but finding his watch way out here wasn’t a good sign. I felt a pang of guilt. I pocketed the watch and moved back to the path, thinking I should go let someone know. There’s plenty of time to explore here later. I was filled with a deep longing, a hollowed out desire, and I stood there, fumbling with the watch in my pocket, lost in it all. The darkness, the dampness, and the bright orange of the mushrooms. I remembered my dad, Lara, Reggie, and mom. All the people who made me who I am.
Reality came back in a huge crash from behind me, like a wave of trees falling in my direction. Something massive was in the woods smashing aggressively up the trail I’d just come down. I took off running the other way. Whatever it was, I wanted some distance between us. I got a couple hundred feet down the trail and stopped. I didn’t like the idea of trying to hide in a part of the forest that was new to me. Maybe I avoid the animal, but I didn’t want to do so at the cost of getting lost. I stood still , leaned against a tree, listening.
We don’t get big animals here. Deer are by far the biggest, but that’s it, and I know what a deer running through the forest sounds like. There’s been some talk of buffalo, bear, and mountain lion coming back to the area, but nobody had seen any around here. I had no idea what that could have been, but I wanted to go back home. Dad would have known. He’d tell me what it was and how to handle it. Calm me down and get me home.
I caught a flash of movement at the edge of my vision. Just a bit too far into the darkness to see. It sounded big, but it was moving slow now. I felt the gnawing at my chest. A pulling, a wanting. That hollow desire. I sat quiet and listened to it, trying to figure out what it was, where it was coming from, and where it was going. Waiting and listening for my chance to get past it and get home. More movement, a quiet rustle in the underbrush.
A shape came out of the darkness, dark and thin, wobbling slowly down the path. It coalesced into the definitive shape of a man, thin and gaunt and filthy. It was Reggie. He had been out here all these years, his hair and beard grown out in a brittle frizz.
“Reggie!” I shouted.
“Oh Amy, what are you doing here? Why are you here? I’m so sorry! You can’t be here. It’s not safe!” He said.
“What are you talking about? I’ve been out here my whole life. Where have you been? We need to get you back. You look unwell. What have you been eating and drinking?” I said.
“I can’t. I can’t go back. I belong to it now. I cannot go home,” he said.
“What do you mean? That thing in the woods? It’s probably just a really big deer, and probably more afraid of us than we are of it.” I was channelling my dad perfectly. He was so good in situations like these.
“It’s not an animal, Amy. It’s not anything you have known about. I feel it inside me. I feel it clawing at me, I cannot let you end up like me. You must leave,” said Reggie. “I’m not leaving without you. You’re unwell.” I grabbed his arm and started pulling him down the path, back towards home.
And I felt it. The hollow wanting. The need. It stopped me in my tracks. Reggie twisted out of my grip and pushed me forward, whispering in earnest “You have to go! Now!”
I stumbled forward into the darkness, with the crashing returning behind me, coming quickly. I slipped behind a rock to hide, poking my head out to see Reggie disappear back down the path, into the darkness, holding his hand up and calling out “I am here. I am here.”
The crashing slowed and just on the edge of the darkness I could see it. Its body looked like a tube of smooth, mottled skin, a snake without scales twice the thickness of the biggest tree I knew. It undulated through the air, belly barely scraping the top of the soil, just beyond Reggie. Then a shoulder emerged and a hand reached out of the darkness, grasping at the air. Dirt and grime mixed with a shiny ooze, getting squeezed and mixed together in the cracks of its knuckles. Thick mud caked the underside of its fingernails. The hand searched around in the air before landing on the ground and pushing the body forward and around and back into the darkness. Shortly after another arm emerged from the darkness, repeating the process, and then a thick tail whipped out and around, smashing into a tree along the way. The longing raged inside me as Reggie led it back into the darkness.
I ran. I ran and kept running, through the leaves and branches, until I couldn’t run any more, and found a good tree to lean against out of view. I could still hear the thing shambling around behind me, slow and aimless now. Reggie must have distracted it. I sank down to the ground to catch my breath. Definitely not a deer.
I sat there for a minute, letting my heart slow down, waiting for a calm so I could think this thing through. I can’t keep going this direction. I could probably just run a straight line back, the path wasn’t terribly twisty, or if I could find a holler I could probably follow it back around to the clearing. If that thing sticks to the path, that might be the safer route. Slower, but safer. That only works if it’s the same holler. I could end up just getting lost, which would probably be worse. Straight back is probably safer. If I ran as fast as I could I could probably be in the clearing pretty fast.
A dull throbbing started up in my feet. They pulsed, hot from running. I shifted back and forth a bit to let them calm down and the ground shifted back. I looked down and there were nightcrawlers everywhere. Gnawing at the trees and leaves and wrapping around my shoes. All moving back up the path. Then I felt it, too. The deep, gnawing desire. I could feel it in my heart. A wanting, a longing. I knew what was coming, but I needed to look anyway. My eyes followed the trail of nightcrawlers back up the path. The head of the thing emerged from the darkness, broad and flat, pushed forward by enormous, muscular arms. With every step, its hands reached out, grasping at the air. My heart filled with need and want, an emptiness crying out. A desire ringed with crackled, burnt ends.
Reggie laid in its mouth, legs dangling from one side, arms and head from the other. Long strings of saliva dripped down off of him, mixing with the mud and calling to the nightcrawlers. He turned his head and I caught his eye. Sadness washed over him, and he whispered “Run”. I did. I ran right past them both. The wanting burned at my skin and hollowed me out as I passed inches away. Every part of me sang the adoration of giving in, and I have never wanted more. But my feet kept going, and in time so did I. With the creature behind me I just kept crashing down the path, my every nerve lit up with that hollow need. I crashed out to the clearing, over the pass, and back to the yard where mom was waiting, a fresh pie just out of the oven.