Please read the first part of this interview here: PART 1
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[Interviewer Notes: John returns to the dining room five minutes later, his eyes red and puffy. He takes his seat without saying anything, and downs the rest of his beer.]
ME: Mr. Owens…John, if you need more time, we can even finish this at a later date…
JOHN: [interrupting] No, no, I’m fine, I’m fine. I just needed a minute. I haven’t…I hadn’t read that note in a long time. I used to read it every day. That’s why it looks the way it does. Eventually, my…my therapist told me to try only reading it every other day, then once a week. It took a while, but I was able to finally put it away.
ME: Are those…the last words she ever said to you?
JOHN: Yeah. [sniff] In writing, anyways. You know I don’t remember the last thing she actually said to me, out loud. I’ve always told myself that it was “I love you”. She never forgot to tell me when she had to go somewhere, not even if she was mad at me. So I hope that it’s true.
After I finished reading the note, I was in a panic. Went straight to the gun safe, and immediately I saw that her shotgun was missin’. I grabbed my own and my revolver. I hadn’t noticed when I got to the house, but she’d left her car and our old Jeep was gone, too. I knew the trail going back to the clearing was probably just wide enough for the Jeep, and I figured Sharon probably thought so as well.
This next part I regret almost as much as not bein’ there in time - I called my buddy Scott, and I called David, her youngest brother who’d started helpin’ out some at the farm. We agreed to meet at the old farm ASAP. I pulled in right as Scott did; we didn’t wait for David. We took the truck back as far as we could, but there were fallen trees blockin’ the trail. The brush had gotten so thick, nuthin’ but brambles and briars everywhere. Sometimes after a fire, brush grows back thick from all the extra sunlight and ash, but this was…unnatural.
Scott had a machete, and we hacked our way to the clearing as fast as possible. The ground between those sycamores was still completely bare. And on the other side, front end crumpled against a bone-white trunk, was the Jeep. We both started hollerin’ for Sharon, and then Scott shouted my name. He’d…he’d found her bag. Her old Army rucksack, which she’d kept all those years. It’s hangin’ twenty feet up. One of my shotguns was layin’ on the ground below, along with three spent casings. I picked up the gun, and it was slick with something wet and sticky. I…I didn’t have time to register what it was.
Next thing I know, Scott’s yellin’ that he sees something movin’ through the trees. He takes off towards a perfectly clear path through the brush that’s followin’ the creek upstream. I follow him, hollerin’ for him to stop. It feels like, as I’m runnin’ down the path, it’s gettin’ narrower. I kick somethin’ in the dirt–it’s Scott’s machete. I grab it and start hackin’, branches and briars are tearin’ at my shirt as I run. I make it to rocks, and I’m tryin’ to climb over–it was a lot easier when I was eleven–and then I hear Scott start to scream.
By the time I slide down the other side, Scott is completely gone. I’m turnin’ around in circles, yellin’ for him, and I almost fall into the pit. I look down. At first I think it’s still empty, but then I see in the middle there are two skulls. Two human skulls.
There’s a noise from above me, a raspy hiss like branches and leaves rubbin’ together. Somethin’ falls past me, somethin’ white. It hits the floor of the pit with a crack. It’s a third skull. I look up to see a face. Not a tree, but Scott’s face, bloody, torn, and limp, hooked on a branch with shreds of skin and clothing danglin’ from it. Then the branch moves, and now I see the other face. And it’s smilin’ at me.
I can’t move. I’m just starin’ at both faces, at the thing, at what’s left of my friend, hopin’ to God that it’s not real. I see other branches, other bits leaves and vines sort of…comin’ together in the tree above me. I hear more rustling, comin’ from all around me now. Then my brain starts workin’ enough that I remember I can move my legs.
Now I’m runnin’ as fast as I can, faster that I ever thought I could. I wasn’t in the best shape then, but adrenalin is a hell of a drug. I’m swingin’ the machete at every branch and vine that even looks like it’s gonna touch me, and I don’t dare look back. Somehow, I make it to the clearing…and I trip. I roll, the wind knocked out of me. The rustling and cracklin’ is comin’ closer. I manage to roll over and sit up, and I can see movement in the trees all around me, like the burnt forest is alive.
Twenty feet in front of me, on the biggest sycamore in the whole forest, a grinning face is starin’ right at me. Then the trunk below it splits open, and a thick, deep red sludge like old bearing grease gushes out and splatters on the ground. Where it hits, white roots thrust up from the dirt. No, not roots – bones. Femurs and ribs wrapped in brambles and vines reaching up from the soil, that red gore oozing and crawling over them as they twist themselves into something that’s sort of human-shaped but all wrong, with bits of dead wood and briar and the bones of dozens of dead things twisted up in it and pokin’ out all over*.*
It–whatever it is–stands up, and I see something forcing its way up through the body, and out of top pops one of the human skulls supported by vines, followed by two massive antlers that fix themselves to either side of it. It reaches a clawed arm towards the still-smilin’ face on the tree and peels it away, putting in over the skull like a mask. The eyes are just two empty holes, and so is the mouth when it opens to shriek at me. It sounds like…like the buzz of a million cicadas. Like cracklin’ fire and branches creakin’ in a storm. Like everything you hear at night when’ you’re campin’ in the woods that you tell yourself isn’t no concern.
[John shudders, his breathing quick and raspy. He takes a moment to collect himself before continuing.]
It picks up Sharon’s old rucksack–the thing that had tripped me, the thing that this monster had put there on purpose–and it reaches its long wood-and-bone fingers inside. Then it tosses the bag aside, and it shows me what it found. It’s…it’s a box turtle shell.
Then tree creature makes a sound that I swear was laughter of some kind, and then it opens its mouth even wider–that’s when I see that it’s bottom jaw is actually coyote jaws, and they part wide like a snake–and it shoves the whole shell in and swallows it whole. When it’s done, it grins at me again. It’s fucking with you, I thought. As fast as it took Scott, you should be dead by now.
I could see more of the creatures now entering the clearing, all bent bones and bits of the woods, each head a different animal skull but all with those gawd-awful tree bark faces stretched over them. I look around frantically. The machete was somewhere in the clearing, and so is Sharon’s gun, but I couldn’t see either of ‘em. Like an idiot, I’d left my own shotgun in the truck, and there were too many of those things between me and the Jeep. Then I remembered what I’d stuck in my belt at the last minute. I pull the ol’ .45 out and aim, and half of the creature’s head disappears in a shower of bone and red gore, one antler flying away into the briars. It falls back, screeching, and I waste no time firing on the others. More faces and limbs explode before my gun clicks empty. And then the first creature is gettin’ back up. A chunk of turtle shell sliding up the side of its neck, replacing the piece of its skull that’s missing. It’s still smiling.
Now I’m scramblin’ backwards on my ass along the ground, watching the creatures advance on me, until my back is pressed against the Dragon Oak–
ME: Wait…I’m sorry, did you say–
JOHN: I did, and it didn’t register to me that it shouldn’t have been there until the ground under me started to tremble, and the old log began to move.
I tumble forward, looking up just in time to see the rest of the creatures backing away. I whip around, stagger to my feet and I look up at the Dragon Oak–yes, up, because the head of it is now some ten feet above me, dirt and ash rainin’ down on me. The knot below the branching horns splits open, and the eye inside is glowing with amber light. It looks down at me, then turns its gaze to the creatures. They’re flexin’ their claws, hissin’ and screechin’.
The Dragon Oak shudders, but not in fear. A long crack opens up in the ground, heaving and spreading out from the head and curving this way and that between the burnt trees of Sharon Gibson’s woods. Its woods. Sharon’s woods. My woods.
The crack keeps goin’…200 feet…300 feet, then all at once it bursts open. The enormous body, like the creatures, seemed to be made of the woods itself, a mixture of roots, rocks and earth, and from within a core that glowed hot like embers. The “skin” continues to ripple and tighten, and now it’s as if it’s covered in scales as hard as stone, with yard-long spikes of carved wood runnin’ the entire length of its back.
The mouth of the great dragon of the woods splits upon, and it roars. God, what a sound. The creatures shriek their reply. Thick white roots shoot up from the ground, wrapping around the beast, trying to pull it down. It breaks free of them easily. I move to put the beast between myself and the hoard. As I do, a few of them lunge at me. The ground shakes, and there’s a blur of scales and teeth, and the dragon has at least two of them in its jaws. It rears up, swallows both in a single gulp–like a turtle shell–and it roars again. Now its whole body is radiating an intense heat, I can see glowing through cracks in its body. It rears back, and a jet of flame fifty feet long erupts from its mouth, sweeping the clearing. Gibson Woods is on fire once more. But now, the only thing left to burn are those twisted demons and the thorns and thistles that followed them out of that curs-ed ground.
As…awe-inspiring as this spectacle was, I decided then that the best thing I could do was to just get the fuck out of there. The creatures are tryin’ to run, too, but they’re surrounded. The mighty sycamores that ring the clearing come crashing down behind me, and I can feel the ground heaving as I run. Next comes a different kind of roar, and the orange glow and wave of heat against my back tells me that the fire found the Jeep. I don’t stop until I’m out of the trees. I’m pantin’ hard, droppin’ to my knees, and that’s when I realize I’m kneelin’ on the ashes from dozens of burnt cows. I can’t help it, I just start laughing. Then…then I’m cryin’. And I can’t stop. [John pauses, wipes his eyes and sniffs]
Then..then I feel the ground shake, and out of the orange haze I see the head of the dragon appear. It peers down as I jump up and try to back away, not knowing if this thing saw me as a friend or…something else. Then it just sort of…bows its head to me, turns, and disappears back into the smoke.
[There’s a long pause between both of us.]
ME: Damn. I mean, uh, wow, that was some story. So, um…what happened next?
JOHN: What I told the police and fire fighters was that Sharon had a psychotic break–the note was proof enough–and that she’d gone out to the farm to finish burnin’ down the woods. Sharon had succeeded in her plan, spreading gasoline everywhere but then accidentally blowing up the Jeep and herself right as we got there. I’d called Scott, he’d come and got caught up in the blaze. They eventually found bones under a fallen tree that they say were his. I know some of the investigators made it back to the bone pit at some point. They never told me what they found. My guess is any remains were long gone by that time.
They questioned me pretty hard–three major fires in just over a year, three people dead–but I was clearly distraught, and the details added up well enough to make the investigators happy. At least enough that I wasn’t charged with anything.
I was…not in a good place after all that. I took several months off work. I spent time with Caleb and Hannah so I wouldn’t have to be alone. We had funerals for Sharon and Scott. His poor wife…I couldn’t look at Allison during the service. She didn’t blame me, at least not to my face. David won’t talk to me, though. I think he blames himself more than me–he didn’t show up that night until after it was over. We were all grieving, though, so I get it. Folks around here, they look at me different, you know? Sometimes it’s with pity. Sometimes it’s somethin’ else. Suspicion, maybe. I know how people talk.
I feel like I’ve lost so much, but also gained…I don’t know, knowledge that there are things in this world I don’t understand? That sounds cliché but it’s true. How the fuck do you make sense of all that? You can’t. You just…accept it as your new reality and try to move on.
ME: Did you ever go back in the woods?
JOHN: Hell no. As far as I’m concerned, no person sets foot on the other side of that ridge as long as I live. That’s why I moved out here. I mean, it didn’t feel right at the place Sharon and I had built together. Didn’t feel right livin’ in my ol’ childhood home, either. The leaking roof and rotting floors made the decision to tear it down and rebuild a lot easier.
ME: And you’ve never seen anything…strange, since moving out here?
JOHN: Nope. Like I told ya, I won’t go back in those woods. But it’s been eight years, and I haven’t seen a single one of those faces. Outside of my dreams anyhow.
ME: I have one more question, Mr. Owe–John, sorry, and then I think we can wrap this up. I know you said you don’t know what those creatures were, but have you thought about why they were there? Like why here? Why in those woods?
JOHN: Like I said, kid, I have no idea.
ME: None?
JOHN: Is it that important to you?
ME: [long pause. John clears his throat] Well, it’s important to me to try to understand these phenomena, why they happen and who the people are that get involved. Looking for patterns, clues, anything that can help explain them, especially for others that…that might have had similar experiences.
JOHN: Sounds to me like I’m not the only one who has questions that they’d like answered.
ME: You’re not.
JOHN: [sighs] The best I can give you, is that I think maybe the Dragon Oak…whatever you wanna call it…is some kind of, I don’t know, nature spirit? Just somethin’ that’s always been part of the forest, same as the birds and the trees. And it was there to keep those other things…whatever they are..in check. Keep ‘em from leavin’ the woods. Keep ‘em fed. When the first fire came through, it wiped out their food supply and drove the dragon somewhere else, at least for a while. So they got restless. Ol’ Harry Gibson saw them and started feedin’ his cattle to the fuckin’ things, and then they took him. And everything got worse from there.
I have this feelin’ though, that maybe there’s more to it than that. I think Sharon and her family…and now myself…were connected to those woods somehow. Maybe Harry was trying to give those things an offering of sorts. Maybe the collection plates at Liberty Creek Freewill Baptist wasn’t the only place he was takin’ from.
I dunno…hell, I’m sure someone else out there can figure it all out better than I can. All these years, and still more questions than answers. But maybe that’s for the best. A part of me thinks we’re all better off not knowin’ the truth.
[Interviewer’s Notes: We concluded the interview there, chatting a little bit more but mostly about things irrelevant to the story. We shook hands and I thanked John profusely for finally sharing his story. Before I left, John led me to the edge of his backyard. At one corner was a pole, on top of which was mounted a coyote skull, yellowed with age. Next to it was a young oak tree.
John said, “The only thing they found after the fire was Sharon’s old bag, somehow still intact and only slightly charred. There was nothing inside except for a single large acorn. So, I planted it. This tree and that skull are here to remind me of the two things that save my life. And to remind anything that comes out of the woods how theirs will end.”]