I’ll never forget how devastated I was when my parents told me we were moving from Madison to Hawthorne, Wisconsin. I had lived all 12 years of my life up to that point in Madison. It was my home. All my friends were there. All the things I liked to do were there. My life was there. And Hawthorne…Well, Hawthorne was lucky enough to be called a town. I had begged my parents not move. Cried my eyes out every night. Threatened to run away and live like a homeless man on State Street, because even that would be better than leaving Madison. But my father had been offered a better position at the new plant in Hawthorne, and no amount of my begging could sway him.
“Besides, we’re only going to be about 2 hours or so away from Madison,” My father would say. “We can always come visit over the weekends. Not every weekend. But when there’s time.”
2 hours might as well have been 20 hours.
But nothing could stop the inevitable. And so in August of 2002, my parents and I moved to Hawthorne, Wisconsin.
Hawthorne was small, but like a lot of small Northern Wisconsin towns, not without it’s own splendors. There was a lavish amount of woods that surrounded the town. Our move happened as the trees were turning to a mixture of gold, bright red and brownish leaves. And there were clear creaks and streams all through out. The water was so clear it made the water back in Madison look like mud. And there seemed to be an endless amount of walking trails. Far more trails then the hiking signs indicated.
My father took us out a lot during those first few weeks of living in Hawthorne. He constantly talked about how beautiful the scenery was. How we didn’t have it like this back in Madison or Milwaukee(where my mother and father both grew up).
My mother would respond with something like “No, but we had a mall. And movie theaters.”
“They have a theater here,” my dad would respond.
“A theater, dear,” my mother would say. “With one screen. That only shows one movie. One movie that is over a year old.”
“Ah shit Shelly, who needs movies when you have all this!” My father would say and gesture to the woods around us. “Don’t you think so Eric?”
“Sure, dad.” I would say bemused. And truth be told, when the sun filtered through those woods, with their golden and bright red leaves, it WAS a sight to behold. Once while on one of these nature walks, a sand crane walked by me that was so big I thought it was a dinosaur at first. Some kind of per-historic raptor that had staved off extinction and remained hidden until now. The crane regarded me with bored curiosity and then simply kept walking until it disappeared into the woods. I had certainly never experience anything like that in Madison.
My father had tried his hardest to convince my mother and I on the glory of Hawthorne, but deep down I couldn’t help but think he was really just trying to convince himself. But no matter how you try to shake it, a small town is a small town. And Hawthorne was small. I went from a middle school with almost 200 7th graders alone, to a school with just 20. There was no mall, but a series shops located on Main Street(which was a pittance compared to State Street in Madison). No arcade, but the one burger joint in the town had two pinball machines out front. Only one of them worked though and that one sometimes ate your quarters. Although the burger manager would always give you your quarters back if that happened. I suppose that was the balance of small towns. Half the shit didn’t work, but the people were nice and fair.
The only thing that actually got bigger was our house, but even then, there was a terrible old quality to it. The floor boards constantly creaked, the air was dusty, a lot of the paint was chipped, and even though we had cable and all the amenities of a modern house….it just felt old. Hawthorne felt old. Not necessarily the people, and definitely not the lavish woods, but something about the air and the look of the town; the roads and architecture. It all felt…used. Like how the pages in a book can turn yellow after time. Hawthorne was past it’s prime. Had stayed out in the sun too long. Had turned yellow.
“It’s like it’s still the 70s here,” my mother once said during dinner. She had not been adjusting well to the move and spent most of the time on the phone talking with her friends back in Madison.
“Huh? I don’t know what you mean,” My father said taking a swig of his spotted cow. “The plant here, it’s going to change things Shelly. It’s going to really modernize this place. Hawthorne is about to be on the map. Don’t you think so Eric?”
“Sure, dad.”
I might have felt similar to my mom, if not for Ethan, the boy who became my best friend. Ethan was one of my 20 classmates at Hawthorne Middle School. At my old middle school, I had a different teacher for each subject. Here at Hawthorne, I had one teacher through out the whole day, Mrs. Crawford. One teacher, one class.
On my first day in class, I had been asked to stand up in front of everybody and talk about myself. Almost all the kids in the class grew up in Hawthorne with each other, but being the new kid I was a complete stranger. I stated some of the obvious things: That I was a fan of the Packers, Bucks, and Brewers(which got cheers from the other boys in class), that I liked to go bicycle riding, I liked reading, my favorite ice cream flavor was cookie dough etc… Then sheepishly, maybe because I was a little embarrassed, I had mentioned that I was fan of the cartoon Dragon Ball Z. That received some bemused looks from the class. Clearly the hit anime had not made an impact in Hawthorne the way it did with my friends and I back in Madison.
But when I sat down at my desk, the boy who was sitting next to me, tapped me on the shoulder. I looked over and he was looking at me with a huge grin on his face, and his horned rimmed glasses were shining brightly. Then he said in an excited whisper: “Kamehamehah!”
Which was the famous move/catchphrase of Dragon Ball Z’s main character, Goku. As he said this he opened up his desk and inside were numerous Dragon Ball Z manga (that is japanease comics) along with other titles and drawings that he himself had drawn. The boy in the glasses might has well have opened up a treasure chest filled to the brim with gold coins.
“Holy shit.” Was all I could say.
The boy took out one of the Dragon Ball Z manga, and began to flip through it. I noticed it wasn’t even in english. The pages showed scenes that had not yet happened in the show. Not in America at least.
“Want to know about Super Saiyan 3?” The boy said grinning.
“Super saiyan-WHAT?”
That’s how I met Ethan. Turns out he had been introduced to anime and manga when he was very young by one of his cousins who lived in Milwaukee. Since than Ethan would occasionally go to Madison with his Mom on the weekends and scour the local comic book and geek shops for anything DBZ or anime related. Ethan was an even bigger anime head than I was, and although it had caused him much grief with his classmates in Hawthorne, who were ignorant of a lot of media from other countries, it didn’t stop Ethan from pursuing his passion. But Ethan was no longer alone. Ethan had me, a fellow DBZ fan.
Ethan and I became fast friends. When we weren’t geeking out over the newest episode of Dragon Ball Z, we were running through the woods, pretending we were in some fantasy land. Ethan and I were both big fans of the film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and were eagerly anticipating the release of the sequel, The Two Towers, in December.
“Although, it won’t come to Hawthorne for a while,” Ethan said somberly. We were sitting in the grass next to a pond that glimmered in the autumn woods. “It takes a while for things to get here. We didn’t get Fellowship here until a couple months ago.”
“We can always get one of our parents to take us to Madison to see it,” I said. And then that brought something else to mind. “You know I still haven’t been to your house.”
Ethan by this point had already been to my house multiple times. Both my parents were happy to see I had made a friend, but my father especially pleased. Probably because it meant I wouldn’t complain about living in Hawthorne as much.
But I had never been to Ethan’s house, and anytime I mentioned coming over he would brush it off or say he couldn’t that night. Ethan was a usually cheerful and good natured kid, and the only time I ever really saw that slip away was when I mentioned hanging out at his place.
“My house?” Ethan said bemused. This was his de-facto response. Acting as if he suddenly remembered that he in fact had a house. “Oh, my house. My house is lame, dude. Super lame. So are my parents.”
“My parents are lame too,” I said shrugging.
“No they aren’t. Not like mine.”
This is how it went. Ethan would shrug off any request to hang out at his place like Superman reflecting a speeding bullet. I had never even seen Ethan’s parents. He always walked to and from school; alone. And any time I called his house(although usually he called mine), he was always the one who picked up the phone. Never his mom or dad. And the calls were always very short, as if he wanted to hang up as soon as possible.
I had begun to wonder, was there something wrong with his parents? Were they weird or disfigured or…something else? In my mind I imagined Ethan walking into his home which was completely dark. Then suddenly two tall white figures would step out of the shadows and greet Ethan. They had faces which were too long and teeth that were too sharp.
“Welcome home, son,” the things that were Ethan’s parents would say.
I tried my best to wipe those kinds of thoughts away. They were mean spirited and nonsensical. So Ethan had lame parents and he didn’t want me to come over. So what. That didn’t mean he was hiding anything or that there was anything wrong with his home.
The school year droned on. A frigid and bitter winter came to Hawthorne, destroying the beauty and luster of the woods. It did however, make for some awesome sledding hills. Eventually April came, and so did the sun, and by early May the greenery had returned to Hawthorne and the woods began to bristle and come alive again.
It was in mid-May as the school year was waning down, that I decided to do something that I would come to regret. Normally when school ended, if Ethan and I were not going to hang out together, we would go our separate ways, as our houses were in complete opposite directions. This time though as Ethan and I walked out of the school building on that Friday afternoon, instead of turning towards my home, I started following Ethan.
“What are you doing?” Ethan asked. There was a humor in his voice, but something else underneath. Nervousness. “You said you didn’t want to hang out today.”
“I changed my mind,” I said nervous myself. “I thought we could hang out…at your place.”
Ethan went immediately pale, then shook his head. “No. Not today dude. Sorry I can’t.”
“Come on,” I said a little agitated. “I still haven’t even seen your place yet. And you always talk about how cool your room is.”
“My parents are - “
“Lame! I know. But they can’t be that bad,” I sad defiantly. “I’ll only stop by for a few minutes.”
I put my hands together in a pleading manner, like a toddler asking his parents for ice cream. It might seem weird to some that I wanted to hang out at Ethan’s house so much, but back in Madison my friends and I always spent time at each other’s houses. As silly as it sounds, my friendship with Ethan felt incomplete not having been to his house even once.
Finally, Ethan sighed.
“Okay, fine. But just for a couple minutes. Serious Eric, I can’t hang out too long tonight.”
“Hell yes!” I said clapping Ethan on the back.
I was struck by how far off Ethan’s house was. Hawthorne was a small town, and most of the homes were stretched apart from each other to give the appearance of a town bigger than it was. But Ethan’s house was FAR. I was shocked that he walked this distance to and from school everyday. Especially that he had done it during winter.
Eventually we made to a long dirt road that led up to Ethan’s house. The road was surrounded by woods, and as we went along I noticed a yellow barricade on the side of the road blocking a path that went into the woods.
“What’s that?” I asked hitching a thumb at the barricade.
“An old path that cuts through the woods,” Ethan said. “It takes you straight to Juniper Road.”
“Oh sweet,” I said. “I’ll take that on my way back-“
“NO!” Ethan’s yell almost caused me to fall over. I would have had he not grabbed me by the shoulder. “You can’t go down that path, Eric. Ever.”
“But why?” I asked shocked. “It’ll be faster that way then going back the way we came.”
Ethan’s eyes darted from me to the old yellow barricade. Finally, regaining his composure he spoke. “It’s just not safe. There’s a lot of tree fall, and the path is very bumpy. And if it gets dark you could hurt your ankle walking in the woods.”
“Oh…” was all I could muster. I didn’t bring up the fact that Ethan and I had spent plenty of time running around in the woods at night, sometimes even playing ghost in the graveyard with some other kids from class, and none of us ever hurt our ankles or tripped over tree fall. My eyes had gotten remarkably good at adjusting to night in Hawthorne.
But nothing more was said of it and we walked on.
As we got closer to Ethan’s house, I noticed two things. One, his house had that unmistakable old look to it that my house and all the other houses in Hawthorne had. And two, I could hear the sound of a man and woman yelling. The yelling grew louder and louder as we got closer to the house. Ethan’s shoulders slumped and as we walked up the front porch steps, he looked back at me, sighed and then ushered me in to the front door.
Ethan’s parents were having an argument to end all arguments. They were in the kitchen, screaming bloody murder at each other.
“I ALWAYS PAY THE BILLS. I PAY FOR EVERYTHING. YOU PAY FOR NOTHING.” Ethan’s mother was screaming.
“DO NOT TALK TO ME THAT WAY, BITCH.” Ethan’s father responded.
Back and forth they went, ripping each other apart at the top of the lungs. There was almost a rhythm to their verbal assaults. It told me that this wasn’t some first time blow up happening after festering over some time. No. These screaming matches happened a lot. They were an every night thing at Casa de Ethan.
Ethan’s mother stormed out of the kitchen and into the hallway, where she saw us taking off our shoes. She looked startled to see me. And then a look of embarrassment came over her.
“Oh, Ethan sweetie,” said said tears in her eyes. “I didn’t know you were bringing a friend over. You must be Eric. Ethan’s told us so much about you.”
I nodded, embarrassed as well. “It’s nice to meet you-“
“Come on,” Ethan said nudging me on my shoulder. As we walked up to his room and I took one look back at his mother, who was already storming back into the kitchen. When Ethan closed his bedroom door, I could hear the fighting starting up again downstairs. The walls were not thick.
Ethan’s room was as amazing as he had advertised. All sorts of posters and collectible figures adorned the walls(those thin walls that did nothing to blot out the screaming coming from downstairs). His shelves were filled to the brim with manga and comic books. He had a wide aray of high quality action figures.
I sat into a chair in the corner of Ethan’s room, and Ethan sunk onto his bed. His shoulder’s slumped, his face was red with embarrassment. He took off his glasses and wiped the tears that were forming around his eyes. I felt a tremendous amount of shame come over me. His parents were not vampires or anything like my stupid imagination had conjured
His parents were in a toxic marriage. They fought. Loudly, bitterly, and frequently. And Ethan had been so embarrassed by them he had done everything he could to stop me from coming over.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Ethan eventually said in a quiet voice. “I told you my parents were lame.”
“It’s okay dude,” I said. “My parents fight too.” That was true, but their fights were nothing like the screaming match that was going on in Ethan’s kitchen. And in all the times I had visited my friends’ homes in Madison, I never once heard their parents fight. But in the end that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had forced my friend to reveal an embarrassing part of his life. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I shouldn’t have, I didn’t think…I really am sorry dude.”
“It’s like this all the time,” Ethan said. “They never stop. I just wish they would stop screaming. If you want to leave I understand.”
“To hell with all that dude,” I said and I got up and clapped Ethan on the shoulder. “I’m still down to hang if you are.”
A small smile broke over Ethan’s face. “Want to see the Gundam I’ve been building?”
The fighting didn’t die down, but after the initial shock and embarrassment Ethan regained some of his humor and a lighter mood came over us. We spent the next couple of hours geeking out over the cool shit in Ethan’s room.
It was finally quiet as I was leaving. I said goodbye to Ethan, and as I was opening the front door to leave, I made eye contact with Ethan’s father, who was sitting stoically in the living room. He had that same look of embarrassment on his face that Ethan’s mother had.
“You know we were just joking, son?” He said nursing a beer. There was a shaky nervousness in his voice, like a child who had just been caught doing something they shouldn’t have. “His mother and I weren’t really fighting. Just jokes. That’s all.”
“Sure,” I said. And walked out.
It was dark out.
I made my way down the dirt road, not even daring to look back at Ethan’s home, out of shame. I felt awful for forcing my friend to reveal what he considered a very embarrassing part of his life.
I came by the yellow barricade. I looked down the dirt road and thought of how much more walking I had to do to get home. It would be a long walk.
The path goes straight down to Juniper Road.
Ethan had also warned me not to take it though. But at this point I just wanted to get home and sleep and put this embarrassing night behind me. I still felt a tremendous amount of shame for forcing Ethan to take me to his house, and I didn’t want to spend a long walk thinking about it. Cutting through the woods to Juniper Road would save me at least 15-20 minutes of walking.
And there was something else. As if something was…pulling at me. Nudging me on to take the path.
You can’t go down that path, Eric. Ever.
For the second time that night I betrayed my friend.
The moment I moved past the barricade and started down the path, I knew something was…off. It was like the air had changed, felt heavier somehow.
It’s just not safe. There’s a lot of tree fall, and the path is very bumpy.
The path was not bumpy at all. And I didn’t notice any tree fall directly on the path. The moonlight perfectly illuminated the woods, and I could see quite clearly. It should have been a fairly easy and decent walk. It seemed perfectly safe, but still….something felt off. And Ethan had been so adamant about me not taking the path. As I walked on I suddenly had that feeling children do when they go down into the basement and run back up the stairs, worried that something was right behind them. And if they weren’t fast enough…
Something moved in the woods. I looked behind me in the direction I had heard the sound. I saw nothing. Heard nothing. No crickets. No owls hooting somewhere in the distance. The night was dead silent. Feeling anxious I began to walk a little faster. The path continued on straight ahead, sloping downwards a little now. I began to breath heavily. I now wanted to desperately get out of the woods. The path stretched on and I walked faster, almost breaking into a jog.
I heard the sound of twigs snapping behind me. Something inside told me not to turn around, told me to keep moving, keep moving, keeping moving you stupid idiot keep moving-
I turned around.
At first I saw nothing, and a I breathed a sigh of relief, but then as I looked on I DID see something.
There was a shape standing behind one of the white oak trees that lined the side of the path. It was just a few feet from where I was standing. No, not just a shape….a person. I could see their right hand gripping the side of the trunk, as well as part of their shoulder jutting out from behind the tree. The rest of their body was obscured by the white oak.
The hand was gray and wrinkled.
“H-h-hello,” I said weakly. “Is someone there?”
A shrill chuckle broke out from behind the tree. And then …a face peered around the trunk. And in the moonlight I could see it was unmistakably an older woman. Her hair was white and thin like spider-webs. Her face was gray and wrinkled, just like the hand that clutched the tree bark. Her eyes were sunken and yellow; like two black holes and at the center of each hole, a dead sun. Their brilliant light snuffed out light years ago. Her mouth was wide, too wide. And it was curved upwards in a horrible cheshire cat grin.
Her teeth were black and rotten.
For a moment we simply stared at one another. In that moment I wanted nothing more than to be back in my home. That home with it’s chipped paint, creaky floor boards, and dusty air. That home which felt so old and used like all of Hawthorne, but not was old as the thing that was in front of me. No this woman was more than old and used. She was ancient. Decrepit.
And then after that terrible brief silence, she spoke.
“Hello,” she said in a voice softer than I expected. Soft, but there was also something unmistakably wrong with her voice. It had a tinny, almost nostalgic quality to it; like I was listening to it through an old record player. “Have you come here to stay with me?”
“I’m sorry I have to go,” I said politely in a shaky voice. I could feel the strength returning to my legs. I started to walk backwards.
“Go? Go where?” The woman said and her cheshire cat grin turned into a deep frown. Somehow that was worse than the grin. Far worse. The gray hand that had been resting on the tree was now scraping it. Clawing at it. I could hear her sharp nails digging into the bark, splintering it. “Won’t you stay?”
“I’m sorry!” I quickly turned around and ran. As I did, the old woman let out an awful wailing sound. So awful was the sound I thought my ears were going to bleed. As I ran I could hear her chasing after me. I wanted to believe there was no way she could catch me. She was so old looking and I had youth on my side, but I dared not look back.
She sounded so close.
As I run for one horrible moment I thought I felt her breath on the back of my neck as she let out another shrill laugh. Even worse was when I thought I felt that gray hand gently scrape the back of my shirt.
But I never looked back.
I kept running down the path, and as I neared the end I noticed a problem. This end of the path was also blocked by a yellow wooden barricade. There was no way I was going to stop and move it like I had done to it’s twin on the other end of the path. I was certain that if I stopped for even a moment, she would catch me. I simply mustered all my remaining strength, ran full speed at the barricade, and then leaped over it like an Olympic track runner jumping over a hurdle.
Unfortunately I was not as graceful.
I got one full leg up and over and for a second I thought I would make it across, but my left knee banged the top of the barricade as I came over it and I came crashing onto the ground on the other side. As I writhed in pain on the ground I was certain it was all over. The woman would be on me soon, and god only knows what would happen then.
But nothing grabbed me. No sharp nails dug into my skin or clawed my eyes out. Nothing happened. Nothing.
I laid there for a moment, catching my breath. I was relieved that I could hear crickets chirping in the night. And that awful feeling of heavy air was gone. As I sat up I became aware that I was sitting on a well paved road. Well paved by Hawthorne’s standards at least. It was Juniper Road. I had made it to the other side.
I looked up at the path. The yellow barricade had been knocked over, but of the old woman there was no sign. Just the empty path leading back into the woods. I thought for one hopeful fleeting moment, that perhaps I had imagined the whole ordeal.
Then I saw it. A little bit up the path. A few feet from the edge of Juniper Road.
That awful gray hand. It was once again scraping the side of a tree, as the rest of her hid behind it. Then her head poked around and those horrible yellow eyes glared at me.
“Oh, won’t you come by again? Won’t you please come by again sometime?” And she let out an awful sound and for the life of me I could not tell if it were a laugh or a cry.
This time I didn’t respond. I simply ran. My battered left knee screaming in agony as I did. I ran down the well lit road and never looked back.
I remember waking up in my bed the next morning. I had blacked out the rest of the night, either from hitting my head when I crashed over the barricade, or from the shock and trauma of it all. I was still wearing the clothes I had worn the night before. I had no memory of making it home the night before or of walking up to my bedroom and collapsing onto my bed. And given that I could hear my mother downstairs whistling as she made breakfast, I could only assume that I did not tell my parents what had happened nor that they were even aware that anything had happened to me.
I lifted up my left pants leg and saw what I had felt: There was a horrible black bruise on my left knee. I touched it and immediately winced in pain.
Despite the evidence of everything that had happened the night before, as I laid there in my bed, listening to my mom make breakfast and the birds chirping outside…I had begun to doubt that anything had actually happened at all.
You know that feeling when you wake up from a dream, and as you try to recall it, you can already feel it slipping away into nothingness? Into that void where all forgotten dreams ago. And the more you try to remember the more it pulls away from you? And then it’s gone completely. That was happening to me right then and there. The night before was fading away. Like a bad dream. And it was that reason, and I suppose because I was still a kid, and also I suppose because I was still ashamed of what I experienced at Ethan’s house, that I decided not to tell my parents about what had happened.
I changed clothes and made my way downstairs. Despite my bruised knee, I was able to walk without a limp. My mom heard me coming down and called “Breakfast in five!”
“Okay,” I responded. “I’m just going to get some fresh air.”
I walked out my front door. It was a beautiful spring day, and the sun hitting my skin had never felt better. I walked over to the tree in our front lawn and sat against it. I thought of a wooden sign my mom had hung in our living room back in our Madison house. The sign had said: “This too shall pass.”
I shook away the memory of the night before and let the fresh spring air wash over me.
This too shall pass.
Feeling a little renewed and relieved to be in the sun, I got up. But as I was about to make my way back inside, I noticed something.
There are on the side of the tree…were claw marks. Deep claw marks, that had splintered the bark of the tree. But these were not the claw marks of some stray animal that had come by. No, they were too big. Too deep. Too hateful. And already that fading dream was climbing it’s way out of the void where nightmares are suppose to go after you wake up. And I knew instantly what I was looking at.
These marks had not been not made by the claws of some animal.
They had been made by fingers.
Human fingers, that belonged to a gray and wrinkled hand.
And as I looked up, I noticed that the tree was directly in front of my bedroom window.
I screamed.