Lassiter Woods

            The woods near the house I grew up in have always fascinated me.  They always struck me as so natural and primal, not like the overly manicured and manufactured feel of the parks around the area; the ones with asphalt paths running in well-measured circuits and lame fitness regimen stops every hundred feet.  No, in those woods the only paths under the shadowy canopy were made by spring runoffs seeking lower ground and animals seeking where all that water from the spring thaws had gotten to.

            There were countless little mysteries in the woods, even along the paths I knew well:  The strange black-barked tree with no branches or leaves until it broke through the canopy of the other trees, but covered in clusters of six inch long thorns all the way up; the ten foot diameter, smoothly rounded granite boulder in the center of a clearing far from any roads in an area where all the naturally occurring rock was limestone;  the rusted skeleton of a tricycle embedded in the trunk of a tree ten feet off of the ground.

            At night it was even stranger.  When I went exploring during the day, no matter what weirdness I found, all I felt was curiosity.  At night, though, the place had a presence to it.  When I went walking after dark, for fear of getting lost or breaking an ankle in some unseen hole, I always stuck to the well-worn and well-known circuit used by the nature walkers and new-age hippies who hated the plastic parks as much as I did.  They’ll probably pave that path with their rubberized asphalt too, one of these days.

            Any time I walked out there after the sun went down I always had the vague feeling of being watched, like there were countless unseen eyes in the darkness, following me.  Early on I wrote it off to normal paranoia of being alone in the dark.  The feelings persisted, though, even when friends were with me, and they said they felt it too.

            The feeling of being watched I could have dealt with, if that’s all it ever was, but it didn’t stop there.  Some nights it was stranger and filled with vague menace, like the spirit of the land, my old familiar companion on my night walks, giving me the clear message that I didn’t belong there that night.  I distinctly remember one night when I was out with my best friend Mikey and we were coming around a bend near the “demon tree” as we had nicknamed it. (The one covered in thorns)  There had been a stronger feeling than usual from the woods that night, causing our discussion of Carrie Torrence’s developing attributes to taper off into silence as we cast our glances more often over our shoulders and into the darkness between the trees.

            As we approached the bend in the path, I started feeling a sense of dread, like every step was taking me closer to some unimaginable horror.  My steps slowed, Mikey’s slowing right alongside me. Right before we would have rounded the bend, we both stopped.  The thought of going around the turn filled me with such abject terror that I couldn’t take another step.  Without even turning, Mikey said softly“Yeeaaahhhh… let’s head back.”  We slowly backed up and walked back up the path the way we’d come.  Halfway back, we laughed at ourselves for being such scaredy cats, saying there was nothing out there.  We still kept walking home, though.  That was about a month before the last time I ever saw Mikey.

            Two weeks later, Mikey came with me for another walk in the dark.  Mikey walked with me a lot that summer because we both had things going on at home we would rather avoid.  He had called me up that night because his parents had found a stash of pot in his brother’s dresser and were having a huge argument and he needed to get out of the house.  We were talking about it as we came to a point where the path split around a large tree.  Mikey suddenly stopped, breaking off in mid-sentence.  “Hey.”  He had called toward the tree, his tone sounding like he was responding to someone. “No, we’re just taking a walk.” He looked down at his watch. “About 11:30.”

            “Who the hell are you talking to?”  I demanded.  He turned to me slowly like he was in a daze.  “What?”  “Dude, you’re creeping me out.  Who were you talking to?”  Mikey just stared at me like I was crazy.  Then he smiled and laughed.

            “You jerk!  Don’t do that to me.”  I punched him in the shoulder.  He just laughed and said “Come on”, walking around the east side of the tree.  We always walked around the tree on the west side when we came this way because it was shorter, but I followed him around the east side anyway.

            During the next couple of weeks Mikey always seemed distracted, gazing off into the distance, jumping at sounds or sometimes at no sound, asking “Did you hear that?”  The joke was getting old, but I didn’t say anything because I could tell he was just trying to cheer himself up.  His eyes were always sort of bloodshot and he yawned more often like he wasn’t getting enough sleep.  Stress at home must have been getting worse.

            When he came knocking at my window at ten-thirty one night, I wasn’t too surprised.  “Come on, I’ve got to show you something.”  He said when I opened the window.  I wasn’t in bed yet, always up late that summer anyway.  I put on my shoes and went out to see what he wanted. We went toward the woods, Mikey telling me about some strange lights out there.  “Probably just hikers with flashlights.”  I said.  “Maybe,” was his noncommittal response.

            We never saw the lights he was talking about, but there was someone else in the woods that night.  We caught glimpses of someone ahead of us at times, but they stayed far enough ahead that they rounded a tree or bush along the twisty path before we could get a good look.  When we got to the farthest part of the path,before it looped around and headed back toward the road, we saw the figure stopped in the trail, turned towards us.

            In the shadows, I couldn’t make out any features, just the silhouette.  The figure raised an arm, beckoning us and stepped off the path onto an animal trail leading deeper into the wood.  “He wants us to follow him, let’s go.”  Mikey said.  “Are you crazy?”  I grabbed his wrist, stopping him.  “We are not following some dark figure deeper in to the woods.  Have you seen a horror movie ever?”  Reluctantly he turned and walked with me back toward the road.  The whole way back he kept talking about wanting to know what that guy was up to.

            I left him at his place and went home.  That was the last time I ever saw Mikey.  His parents called the next day,asking if I’d seen him.  I told them about the walk, but left out the weird parts. The day after, when he still hadn’t shown up, I told everything to the police.  They didn’t seem to believe me,but the woods were searched anyway.  No sign was ever found.

            That was five years ago.  I came back last week for my little sister’s graduation.  Out of nostalgia, I decided to go for a walk through the woods last night. More people seem to hike the trail out there at night now.  I had been absorbed in my thoughts and hadn’t even noticed the guy standing against the tree in the middle of the path until he called out to me and asked for the time.