Spookyness

Terror in the Trees

*Credit to Steve Friedman on backpacker.com*

We were college students, my girlfriend and I, and we had driven here, to the redwood forest, from San Francisco. I had promised to take her backpacking. She had grown up surfing in southern California, had never spent a night in anything but a feather bed. Being a college student in the mid-’70s, in northern California, my approach to backpacking was “the Earth will take care of us.” Which means I drank water out of streams, ate nothing but bags of granola and cheese and avocado sandwiches, and planned itineraries by asking locals where to camp. I didn’t have a watch, or compass, or a map, because to me, camping was all about not being enslaved by the accouterments of society. It was all about freedom.

To Melissa, though, my brand of exploration meant hunger and crabbiness and “I thought you knew what you were doing when I agreed to come up here with you.”

I told her there was nothing to fret about. I told her that after we ate, our senses would be sharpened, that we’d be fine. What I didn’t tell her was that I had no idea whether we’d find a diner, or gas station, before we ran out of fuel.

And that’s when we saw Ernie’s, just off Route One. A single gas pump on a patch of gravel, and behind it, the diner, a little wooden shack that pulsed cheerfulness through its plate-glass window. It was clean inside, and smelled of pancakes and comfort. The waitress wore a blue polyester uniform with a nametag that said “Kath.” She was a redhead, slim, about 30, and she told us we could sit wherever we wanted. We were the only customers, except for a table of five guys. They all had robes and long beards, but this was northern California in the mid-’70s, so it didn’t seem odd. What did seem odd, what I didn’t notice until I was halfway through our pancakes, is that except for the occasional clattering of dishes from the kitchen and scrape of silverware, the restaurant was silent. The guys in robes hadn’t said a word since we’d walked in. They just stared at the center of their table. When Kath cleared our empty plates, I asked if she knew any places nearby where we might camp for the night.

She did. She told us to continue five miles up the road, then to make a left on a dirt road, and take it another two miles, then when we saw a black boulder on the right, to pull off next to it and take a footpath about a quarter-mile. There was a nice spot next to a creek, a pretty little grove near some of the giant trees. We would be happy there, the waitress promised. She leaned closer and smiled and whispered something. To avoid staring down the front of her blue uniform—Kath had quite a body—I tried to look elsewhere. That’s when I noticed the fresh scars on her wrists.

“What?” I said.

“It’s a secret place,” Kath said. “I think you’ll like it.”

“That seems complicated,” Melissa said as we got in the car. She hadn’t seen the scars. “What if we get lost?”

“We won’t get lost,” I said, trying to believe it. “And she seemed really nice. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”

As we got into the car, I glanced back at the diner. Kath was sitting at the table with the guys in robes. Was it my imagination, or were they talking to her? And was she nodding? And were all of them smiling, looking out the window, straight into our car, as we pulled into the night? Would you believe me if I said it was the first time in my life people smiling made my fingertips icy?

Kath’s directions were perfect. The spot was perfect, a grassy piece of velvet beneath giant redwoods, just yards from a spunky stream. The stars were perfect. Melissa asked if we could sleep outside, she wanted to look at the stars, and the way she felt, nestled next to me, that was perfect, too. We stared at constellations and listened to the quiet rush of the creek and that’s when I heard it.

It was a soft, sibilant, caressing whisper that turned into a sharp crack, which was followed by the longest, most desolate moan I had ever heard in my life.

I imitated the sound for my sister one night, at her cabin in the mountains of Colorado. “If you can tell the story,” she had said, “maybe you can finally put it behind you. Maybe you can get off the meds and move on with your life.”

So I tried. “ssssssSSSSSSSSCRACK!, Oooooooooh,” I said to my sister, and she looked at me, wide-eyed with worry.

“What was it?” she asked, and before I could say anything, I heard a whimper and my sister got up and peered around the corner and there was her four-year-old boy, my nephew, who must have heard us. I don’t know how long he had been there. That was the night Izzy started wetting his bed and waking up screaming. He still hasn’t stopped. Just two weeks ago, my sister took him to a child psychologist, who told her it was a developmental thing, a natural part of the growing-up process, that it was only coincidence that it started the night he heard me make the sound. I have my doubts.

What was it? That’s what I asked myself that night. A bird, no doubt, or some rodent I had never heard before. That’s what I told myself, as I lay under the stars, but I couldn’t help imagining something else. Those moans!

“I want to thank you for bringing me here,” Melissa said. “I never would have gone into the wilderness by myself.”

"Uh-huh,” I murmured to her. Did she not hear the noise?

“This is so great,” Melissa said.

“Uh-huh,” I repeated, softer, terrified that the torturer would hear us, and come for us next. It had to be a torturer, or a killer.

“Shhh, let’s be quiet and enjoy the night,” I said, while I visualized the location of my running shoes, and calculated how fast I could make it out of my sleeping bag and across the creek. Wondering what it would do to Melissa.

Melissa fell asleep, and I listened to her soft breathing, and to the hissing and cracking and moaning, and I silently cursed myself for my cowardice. For not protecting Melissa. For not saving the poor soul being tortured in the woods. For being so terrified of some harmless nocturnal creature.

We woke to a soft dawn. Of course we woke. The only bad thing that happened to us that night was getting soaked with dew. We were in good spirits. Melissa, because she was experiencing her first morning outdoors. Me, because we hadn’t been gutted like fish. I chuckled to myself. This would make a wonderful campfire tale.

We packed up. I made a little fire and we had some coffee. We breathed deeply, all the things people in the wilderness do. Birds sang, the sun shone. How could I have been so paranoid? I told Melissa that tonight, we would do some real backpacking—maybe I’d even buy a map. She laughed, thanked me again for bringing her. I could still hear her laughing as I strolled into the woods behind our tent. I could still hear her laughing, as I unzipped my shorts and found a spot next to a giant redwood and glanced up at nothing in particular. I could still hear her laughing when I saw the handcuffs.

Heavy things, nailed into the tree, about two feet above my head. High enough to hold someone, helpless, naked, moaning. The cuffs were open, held to the tree by two big, rusty nails. Below, smeared on the bark, something thick and viscous and brownish red.

“What’s wrong?” Melissa asked as I crashed into camp.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong.” I didn’t tell her about the cuffs, or the stains. I didn’t tell her that in my rush back to camp, I had nearly tripped over a pile in the brush. In the pile were robes and knives and a long, wet bullwhip. And a strip of blue polyester with a bloody nametag that said “Kath.”