My cousin and I booked a 5 day trip to our grandparents old house when it listed on air bnb, and for some reason I just couldn’t shake this restlessness ever since I saw the confirmation email.
We packed up the car and my husband asked if I wanted him to come up with us. I said no it was something my cousin wanted us to do together, I knew he hadn’t taken the time off and with work deadlines he’d be doing himself a disservice to go hang out in not even a cool place for the week. I told him traveling made me nervous and it was true. It did, being away from home, away from my stuff made the distance feel even farther.
The trip was long but pretty uneventful. We left really early in the morning about 5:30am and got there around 4:30pm. Everything from the highway onwards was almost the same. The last 20 years hadn’t really changed anything in this old town. The long road that led to the property was miles and miles long with small homes nestled deep in off the main road. The area was still predominantly very wild. We didn’t see a single person out besides 2 trucks when we first turned on leaving the shadowy area behind.
As we pulled into the driveway. All the memories I had created there with my family came flooding back, the ugly speckled hallway I ran down as a child, knocking on every door, waking everyone up on the weekends, the stone fireplace in the back living room where my grandmother laid plastic so the couches were never really set on, the small pantry area where the washer and dryer barely fit and when it got too hot would melt any chocolate in the room. We spent the next 30/40 mins just wandering around reminiscing.
I walked into my great grandmother’s old room I remember watching law and order svu all night in here, the dramatic bedroom furniture African themed was gone and replaced by a dresser, a queen-sized bed. It was a different room meant for a different life.
He sat in his old bedroom alone for a bit, the same room that my grandfather died in years later was the room he grew up in.
Guess it was that type of trip for him.
I could hear him crying quietly in his room, and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing much of him for the rest of the night. After a while I heard his light snores and as the rain came of course….. He snored louder.
I could hear him snoring across the hall and knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the noises
I left my sleeping pills at home, figuring I’d be passed out from all the driving and bonding. Work stress was the reason I didn’t sleep well to begin with and for the next week I wasn’t going to be doing any work.
It was cold for October and the rain made it even colder. The house grew icy as it got later and later i thought it would be fun to light the fireplace. I had only lit it a few times as a kid and I remembered how cool it was. I sat in the back living room reading a book on my phone. My back to the wrap-around porch, the fire burning small on the few logs I added.
The fire burned and it started to get smoky pretty quickly in the living room. I put the fire out but was still stuck in this smoky ass room. I reached over to open a window behind me, and stopped before I pulled the shade up. There was a shadow on the outside of the window, just a small sliver of something. I slid down the couch slowly onto the floor. Kicking myself. I’m an adult why be afraid of a small shadow? But still, I didn’t move or breathe. I stood up quickly realizing I wasn’t 10 anymore and the shadow on the bottom of the window was gone.
I looked around the room not wanting to turn on a light and saw the crank for the outside vent I turned it open and let the smoke out. I was thankful I didn’t have to open a window.
What was outside of the window, what was leaning against it? Why was it there? Why was I here again?
My cousin’s snores reminded me. Oh yeah him. Our grandfather died when I was a kid and he was a teenager. My cousin was obsessed with my grandfather and took it the hardest when he found out he was sick. The day he died the only day my cousin had taken for himself in months was the day my grandfather passed. In the few moments he was alone, he was gone.
My cousin had been plagued by guilt, and no matter how many times we told him cancer killed our grandfather he blamed himself.
I eventually went to sleep across the hall from him. I preferred the proximity to the annoying snores.
I watched the window until I couldn’t keep my eyes up existing to see a shadow moving against the outside window.
In the morning we went to the small kitchen for breakfast realizing that the window treatments our grandmother had installed were removed for a more modern look. It removed privacy as well. We saw a hundred thick old trees, decades and decades old. I thought about how much they had seen, wishing they could talk to us. while we sat and ate. I didn’t want to tell him about the shadow. It sounded stupid saying it now. There are animals outside, he’d agree. So I let it go and we focused on catching up and looking around.
We walked around the property, talking about our family and all the fun we had as kids. my idea of course to see if I could see anything that could have been explained the night before. There wasn’t much, but right under the porch awning but still, in the dirt, I saw an impression of a large paw print.
My cousin saw it and said it looked like a bear print but I didn’t see anything like that. Bear prints don’t look like huge dog prints.
We shrugged it off and drove to the grocery store a few miles away.
The small store was pretty empty, we recognized the butcher, and our cashier was my grandparents old neighbor growing up. The woman was older than dirt when I was a child and still looked as ancient as she had ever had.
She recognized my cousin and knew me by name. She asked what we were doing out here and how had we been when we told her we were renting our grandparent’s house for the week she looked really surprised.
The old Hawkins house she said again.
We nodded there was no other house.
She said there had been a lot of issues in the woods around that area for years. My grandparent’s property has been sold and purchased and sold and purchased over and over again. Already 5 different people she’s introduced herself to. One day some contractors came in did some work and the house sat for 5 years. She moved shortly after that. when her goats were ripped apart in her backyard pen and her chickens killed for the 3rd time that year she was done. She was old, she raised a few small goats for the company and it was awful to have to clean up their dead mangled bodies.
She said an old man had hit something coming down the road a few years back really really late one of those days when the trees and the clouds eat up the moon. What he hit looked like a tall muscular bear but furrier. It limped off into the woods and was gone before he could get out of the drive. The car was totaled hair and blood covered the hood. He was talking in circles when the police came. The next few years had been rough for everyone on the road.
Apparently, the town was dying, poverty, drugs and animals being killed on this road had sadly become normal.
We were shaken when we left the store and I thought about my own encounter in the woods behind their house when I was a kid. When I was going to mention it to my cousin he started to tell me about his own encounter.
He said his friends had been drinking and smoking at my grandparent’s house one weekend they were away. My aunt and uncle were pretty strict so watch the house really meant get high and a little buzzed with friends in the woods no where near the house..
They had dragged a picnic table a few hundred yards back into the woods, so they wouldn’t be visible or able to be smelled from the road in case anyone stopped by. They set it up with a few camping lanterns and relaxed It was barely 5:30 but with the thick trees it was as dark as the night.
They had been out there for a few hours and were having fun and laughing making fun of their friend Mark for not losing his virginity to his girlfriend after almost 2 years.
The forest went quiet like she was waiting for someone else to speak and they all felt like they were being watched all of a sudden.
The guys who had been laying on the ground, and leaning against the trees moved closer to the lanterns and all sat huddled together on the same side of the table.
They listened but heard nothing but their heartbeats screaming in their ears. They were all afraid.
My cousin told them they should go inside but none of them wanted to get away from the table. They sat there in silence and eventually the noise came back to the forest. They finished their beers and ran towards the house as fast as they could suddenly.
My cousin said he stayed behind and cleaned up some, it was only a few hundred yards from the house. If he moved his head back and forth he could kind of make out where the house should have been.
He cleaned up bottles and collected the lanterns the idiots ran through the forest without them.
He heard crunching sounds in the distance, a birds wings slapping the air, and looked around, nothing was there that he saw but the lights only illuminated about 10 feet around him. He was annoyed his friends left him. But he was 17 and the riffle he always took into the woods was at his side.
He started to turn back and head towards the house when he saw something run behind him near the cave. He thought it was some of his friends and called for them to stop. The crunching kept on but it sounded fuller and louder. He grabbed the gun dropped the bag of bottles and bolted for the house. As he turned back he towards the cave to see if he was being followed something stood up a bit still hunched over beside the cave entrance 30 or 40 feet from where they were sitting.
He ran quickly and ran face-first into one of his friends. After he hadn’t been back after a few mins they felt bad and came back.
My cousin said he couldn’t explain he just got up and ran home past them. They all hit the back door panting. Looking scared but not really sure of what.
My cousin finally calmed down after his friends gave him a beer and he sat there still holding his gun shaking talking about a huge dog like creature he saw out there.
He rubbed his palms hard on his jeans as we sat in the parking lot.
Once we got back to the house the color in his face came back and he wondered if the table and weed and bags were still back there. It was bright and sunny, the trees had thinned some for the upcoming winter so, we could see pretty deep into the forest.
Once he mentioned an old pocket knife he thought he may have dropped that my grandfather gave him. I finally gave in and we trekked back there.
The table was there and fragments of broken bottles were there. The weed was hard as a rock in a little baggie and the remaining stained lantern was donzo.
We stood out there staring at his teenage mess we saw the cave and he motioned for me to come over.
It was right there, he pointed.
Sort of crouched down. He stood beside the cave and the side of the entrance came up to almost his shoulder.
It was crouched and almost bigger than this.
That’s huge I thought.
He moved away frowning, the smile he had, had faded.
We started to walk back home and we heard crunching and breaking branches in the background. We turned but saw nothing.
I had a ball in the pit of my stomach and I walked quickly back over the white fence and we got inside.
I was kind of angry at him. He wanted us to go into the woods to go back into that nightmare with fresh eyes.
I can’t help but think of whatever was out there on the porch just the night before.
Was it what he saw, what that man hit?
We ordered dinner from a Thai restaurant a town over and ate it in the kitchen as the sun went down. The rain started up again and the house grew colder by the minute. The insulation was something that hadn’t been messed with. A wind sound and breeze in the kitchen cooled our coffee and my cousin went looking for the draft.
He pulled the cord for the ladder that led to the attic, and saw there was a hole behind where the fireplace was, and it was covered by a black sheet, He knocked on the ceiling right near where the wood had been broken and moved carefully on the plants in the middle of the floor, he saw the outside of the forest, there had been pieces of boards torn off, and scratches on the inside of the wall, it looked like dried dark blood or ink maybe and shells littered the floor, dust piled over them, and sleeping bag looking cloths sacks were in the far corner hidden, books candles jugs of water were up there. He got down quickly and brought back a casing.
He told me what he saw, and I didn’t know what to say. I told him about what Miranda and I saw when we were kids what was outside of the window and what ran past me outside. For a second I thought it was a dog, but it was so dark that night. I only looked for a second. I was on the ground hiding in the bushes.
We finished eating and grabbed a few beers we sat in the living room saying nothing the storm beat on and we started to hear a whimpering outside.
In between the rain pounding and the wind howling, we heard a small whimpering outside. Little yelps and barks told us it was a dog or a puppy trapped out in the rain. People often dump their pets along this road.
We both grabbed our raincoats and ran outside.
It was hard to see much, it was rainy and stormy. The barking was high pitched and demanding. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere. We ran past the benches and the caves. We watched them as fade as we listened for the puppies’ cries. It had to be a puppy.
The sound was so loud and then suddenly we found what was making it, as the sounds changed to a higher pitch whine. It turned around the dog creature looked like a creepy old dog but upright. It’s dark hair was plastered to its dog head, it looked a Doberman and a cross between the werewolves from underworld.
The creature stopped making the sound, it got what it wanted. We were out there. Most of it was concealed by the trees and the darkness. My cousin pulled out a gun from his jacket and fired at it. It screamed a guttural noise and ran, we ran towards the house. We were back inside in just a few mins we ran faster than we ever had.
I cried once we were safe and he handed me the gun and grabbed another from his lockbox. He had come with a lot of ammo, and another gun. I sat the gun beside me and it fell heavy on the ground.
What the fuck. I asked him. Did you come here to kill it.
Why bring me along.
Miranda’s sister told me, what happened to you guys.
It let you go, it let me go too. When it came around all the bad thing started. We have to kill it.
He ran out into the night again, leaving the porch door wide open. I closed it and started to pack. I was annoyed that we had made ourselves at home everywhere. Because there were clothes, snacks, and shoes everywhere. I packed us all up and held the gun at my side and looked around the side of the door. I could see the car, but the whole side of the house I couldn’t see.
I sat in the car, in the reverse position ready for anything.
I heard something after a few mins the rain was starting to slow down, and I heard my cousin calling my name.
I debated what I should do, and put my head out the window and screamed car over and over. I saw him coming from around the house, his head bleeding. He was shooting his gun that had run out of bullets and I took it away from him as he got inside the car.
He reversed the car hard and ran through the wet grass leaving an angry muddy tire print all the way to the road. I headed for the highway as he cried beside me. I see something moving in the woods and went from 45 to 70 quickly. We drive for hours and didn’t stop until Georgia. We grabbed breakfast st McDonald’s and sat in their dark parking lot. As soon as we parked he asked if we could get back on the road.
He asked to drive but his hands stopped shaking and I didn’t want him driving in his condition.
He said when he left the house he knew it would be at the cave so we went inside but it wasn’t there. He sat at the dark back of the cave to get out of the rain when he saw a small creature run past the entrance. It looked like a puppy but the proportions were all wrong it’s legs were too long and it kind of looked like a child wrapped in fur the small, the odd canine face made it clear it wasn’t a person. He said he ran out of the cave and saw the large wolf creature in the woods the small one peering out from behind its leg. It screamed go and threw a rock at my cousin that hit him in the head. He said he dropped the other gun and ran.
When we got back home. I told my husband that the neighborhood was dangerous and the house was in a bad condition so we didn’t want to stay.
He didn’t ask too much about it, I was thankful and my cousin has avoided me like the plague for the last few months. My mom told me he’s thinking of moving back to NC this year, and he mentioned to his mom that my grandparent’s house was for sale.