This is a story I've told for a long time. Take it for what it's worth.
WARNING: LONG POST!!
Before the internet and mobile phones, kids played more
outside especially in the summertime. Those long days turned into welcomed cool
nights with a big sky full of stars overhead. Summer was vacation. Summer was
campfires with hot dogs and roasted marshmallows. My family had a backyard with
a fire pit, a kickball diamond, and a swing set. We had a DIY mini golf and a
monkey swing. We also had a fence; a white wooden board fence that separated
the Yard from the Woods.
Right behind the fence, my father had a vegetable garden and
the mini golf was just next to that. There was also a basketball hoop and a
concrete slab for free throw practice. It was as if my parents were trying to
tame the unruly woods behind the house; those woods that ran back down the hill
to the river. Those woods got so dark at night that they seemed to swallow up
the light. Those woods made the strangest sounds.
Right behind the fence, where the garden lay, was a
battlefield. It became a constant struggle to push back the woods and its
unruly weeds. It became a No Man’s Land where no one was sure if it was Yard or
Woods. After all, it lay behind the fence and the fence separated the Woods
from the Yard. But it was also groomed and utilized as we did the Yard. So
which was it? I admit that as a child I never gave it a thought. All of it,
even the Woods back to the river was ours. Maybe it wasn’t a proper yard, but
we owned it. We were the masters of it.
One Summer, though, I was made to doubt it. I realized that
things that were said in daylight needed to be proven in darkness. I learned
that there was a reason we had a fence. The thing that makes me doubt my
memories is because the story sounds like the prank of a child. Like a silly
fright. Like the best con. Allow me to elaborate on the details of how it all
went down on that warm summer evening.
Because there was no school, we were allowed to stay up
later in the summer. It meant we could still be playing outside as the sun set
behind the west tree line on the other side of the road. Not that we saw it.
That was visible from the front yard and we weren’t allowed to play out there.
We only played in the back yard, in front of the fence. As was popular at the
time, we loved to play kick ball. As the light began to dwindle, my older
siblings would remark about the chill in the air and how dark the woods looked.
They would remind their younger sister about the monster in the woods; Green
Eyes. Green Eyes was one of those non-descript monsters; a generic run-of-the
mill fright machine. It had an appetite for children who wandered from home.
Most people, especially adults, didn’t believe it but my older siblings knew it
was there. Or so they said.
Once they set the stage with this information, the kickball
game would proceed as usual and the story would recede into the back of the
mind. At least, until the ball was kicked away; back behind the fence and
toward the woods. It could be said that it was done on purpose, part of the set-up
of what was to come. Once the ball came to rest and it was just visible along
the tree line in No Man’s Land, just before the deepest dark of the Woods, the
arguing would ensue. Who would go retrieve the ball? It was almost time to go
in, almost bedtime. The ball had to be retrieved or we’d get in trouble for not
picking up our things. My argument was he who kicked it should go get it. But
the older siblings overruled and said the youngest should go. After much debate
and a warning from our Mother that it was soon time to come in, I yielded with
the promise that they would walk with me.
So we set off, my older brother, my older sister, and me
toward the ball. We passed through the opening in the wide white fence. It
seemed to glow in the twilight. It was the only visible, discernable marker of
the yard in the expanding darkness from the Woods. I slowed my pace as I passed
the garden but they were close behind me. I stepped close to the tree line and
leaned in to grab the ball. I felt a quick push from behind and both my
siblings yelled, “Green Eyes!”
Adrenaline surged and my breath caught in my throat. I heard
the sound of their hastily retreating feet. I turned to look back and they were
already gone; already past the fence. Scared and panicked, I ran after them. My
memories are dim here. I remember getting back to our porch steps and seeing
them laughing at me. Shaking their heads, their eyes revealed the prank. They
had set me up for a fright and it had worked. Even my Mother was amused.
But there was more to it than that. As a frightened child,
you want comfort. The fact that it was all just some ghost story was what I
believed. But over the years, nothing has really changed in the backyard. And
that fence…that fence. I wonder sometimes, if it is just a decoration or if it
truly keeps something out. I remember
those green eyes; that chill.
My siblings were long gone. They had already run out through
the fence opening and no doubt were laughing even then. But when my panicked
self turned back to the woods, it was there. It was coming for me. Those
glowing green eyes were like a hungry predator. They were fixed and focused but
attached to only darkness. I saw the ball begin to roll deeper into the woods
as if being pulled on a string. I turned to run away my adrenaline surging into
my legs. I ran but seemed to make little progress. Why was the fence so far
away? Why was I so tired?
The coldness of the Woods whispered behind me, slowing me
down, holding me there. The shadows reached out from the trees. I could feel
the tickle of insects crawling up my back. I
just need to make it to the fence, I thought. I had to get back into my
yard. Somehow I knew it had no power there. I could hear the steady beat of
something moving through the downed leaves of the woodland floor. Too
hysterical to look back, I surged ahead and made a last effort to get past the
fence.
I was aware of the smell of ozone and the deep wet odor of
mold and dead leaves. The smell of decaying trees, of rotting, festering,
fallen wooden bodies filled my nostrils. My hair seemed alive with electricity
but my legs were molten lead. I could hear something behind me like a quiet
rumble. Was it the grumble of an unfed stomach or a taunting laugh?
With the terrible fear of the truth behind me, I surged
toward the fence and sprinted through its opening. I heard the faint despondent
groan of the Woods but could find no courage to look back. Was all this my over
active imagination? Was all of this exactly what the pranksters had wanted to
achieve? With age, I have become less certain.
Despite my parents’ reassurances, I have noticed things
about the Woods at night. Fireflies stay at its perimeter never venturing too
deep into the trees. Sometimes a breeze will blow those gangly trunks and
leaves but nothing moves in the Yard. Often
in the Summer during a little campfire, the leaves will begin to rustle as if
being moved by a large animal. It could be a deer, even a bear but no other
signs are ever seen of them. I have often heard the high-pitched yipping of
coyotes in the night. It carries long and far across the river but not in our
Woods. Never have they been in our Woods.
My neighbors used to have a motion sensor light out in their
backyard which was adjacent to ours with no barriers between them; no fence, no
line, no nothing. While outside one night with friends, the light popped on. My
younger brother swore he saw a deer but no one else, not one of us, saw it. He
wasn’t sure it was a deer but what else could it have been?
The fence is white and practically glows at night. It is
easily discernable from the deep dark of the Woods behind it. My father
diligently repairs it every year. My mother paints it every other year to keep
it pristine. It never stays broken, it is well maintained, and it never lets
the Woods too close. I have come to believe that the fence keeps it out. The
fence is the last line of defense like a grand castle wall under the
bombardment of siege towers.
My parents still maintain that they just want the fence to
look nice and last long. But when the long nights of the Summertime bring
campfires and s’mores, no one ventures beyond the fence.
I wrote this story many years ago when we still kept the
fence. But as the years have rolled along, No Man’s Land became less utilized.
There were no kids to throw the basketball and no kids to play mini golf. My
father’s garden was slowly moved into the Yard and the plots behind the fence
were left fallow. Slowly, progressively, wantonly, the Woods reclaimed the
land. The garden that we had made of the mini golf became overgrown with
wildness. Berry bushes and long grasses moved in and refused to leave. The deep
dark of the woods spread its shadow long past the tree line and right up to the
edge of the fence.
Its little wonder the fence began to fall apart. No amount
of paint could hold it together. Its planks were rotten and the boards were practically useless. I had to admit that I told my parents on several occasions
to just take it down. It was an eyesore. Down it came. And something strange
happened. Without the fence, the Woods advanced. No Man’s Land was annexed
quickly and now the very edge of the yard is threatened to be overrun with
unruly berry bushes and wild honeysuckle. The night no longer has a white edge
that defines the wild from the civilized. No border between chaos and order.
The dark Woods seem to advance every year and I wonder if maybe that’s why we
no longer hear the whippoorwill at night; if that’s why the fireflies have
gone. Even the sky above is no longer so big. The trees have grown up to
obscure it from sight.
It’s as if the Woods is trying to push us away. It no longer
wants us here. It never wanted a yard, or a fence. It wants wildness and
freedom. No borders, no owners. In times like these it is easy to find the
wrongness in the Woods but maybe it isn’t wrong. Maybe true freedom is messy
and scary. Maybe what we all want deep down is what the Woods wants too. Maybe
there is truth in there, in that deepness, unlike the deception of the Yard;
the Yard that is whipped into shape, tamed, and broken. The Yard yields to its masters and bows
easily. So unlike the Woods.
Whether the Woods holds a monster, I cannot say. Nor can I
say that those green eyes don’t look familiar.
-Wy
