PART 1
If you were to drive north east from the Detroit area until the buildings thinned and were replaced by open fields and trees, drive to the edge of the asphalt and continue your way over gravel and dust, and zigzag through the array of dirt roads and stop at a particular stretch of land about 45 minutes in from Lake Huron, you would find the setting of my story.
The setting is important. I want you all to see it vividly in your mind's eye. I want you to be able to smell the scent of dew on the grass, and the dust kicked up from the road when a pickup drives by. I want you to hear the call of red winged black birds and swallows and loons and bullfrogs. I want you to feel the warm summer breeze as it dances on your skin. I want you to experience the paradise that only country life can provide, and appreciate it the same way that I do, because when something goes wrong in a setting like this, it really sticks with you.
Down one of these dirt roads lives my best friend's aunt and uncle. To get to them you have to turn off the road onto a dirty, dusty, driveway, sandwiched between a stretch of untamed bushes and trees and grass. The driveway continues farther and farther back, until it veers to the right and ends in an opening. On the far side of the opening is a gorgeous log cabin, freshly built, and home to my friend's aunt and uncle. Also on the edge of the clearing, but closest to the road lies a barn-turned-house. If you were to walk back behind the barn and work your way through the grass back toward the main road, eventually the grass would give way to cattails and lilies, and eventually those would give way to the reflection of the sky above. This is where their pond is. It is U-shaped, and the land on the far side of it is entirely wild and difficult to approach.
If instead of veering right with the driveway to the opening where the two buildings meet you decided to continue straight (deeper into the lot and further from the main road) you'd walk through an open field with grass uniformly kept about as high as your knees, with the single exception of a lawn-mowed path which cuts across to the far side. All in all its about a football-field's length until the field reaches the woods.
The woods are a conglomeration of pines and maples and beech, densely packed together so even on the brightest of days the woods are heavily cloaked in shadow. The ground here is soft, cushioned by generations of fallen pine needles and moss. If you worked your way deeper and deeper into the woods, eventually you'd come to the edge of a steep ravine, dropping somewhere between 50-75 feet down, where a creek marches through, carrying whatever falls into its path out to Lake Huron. For the sake of my story, the ravine might as well been the edge of the world, with the bowels of hell waiting below.
We had all driven out there on a Friday afternoon in the middle of summer. Kyle had just graduated from high school and this was his graduation party. All of our closest friends were invited, as well as a couple neighbors who lived out there. And when I say neighbors I mean that in the country sense. Their house was a half mile down the road.
That night we decided to head to the woods to play flashlight tag. Kyle, his girlfriend, myself, and one of the neighborhood girls were picked to hide first. We worked our way back some random distance into the woods and decided to just lie on the ground. The darkness was so thick that even by hiding in plain sight, the only way we'd be found is if they shined a flashlight directly on us, or accidentally tripped over us. Its also worth mentioning that I had a walkie-talkie on me, just in case something had happened to someone. Someone on the seeking team had the other one.
Before too long we could see the beam of flashlights cutting through the black at the start of the woods, and the obnoxious grunts and yells of their bravado, no doubt produced to ward away any fear that creeps up on kids who wander into the woods at night. They spread out and combed through the forest, pointing their lights up into the trees, and down by their feet. It wouldn't be too long before they came to where we were lying and found us all. So we decided to split up. Kyle and his girlfriend took off one way, and me and the local girl chose to run deeper and deeper into the woods, until our path abruptly ended at the ravine. We sat back down, and I listened to the steady flow of the creek below mix with the shouts of my friends. It was pleasant.
But I also heard the rustling of leaves, down at the base of the ravine. I remember pushing it from my mind; it was a raccoon or a deer or something. Certainly nothing to get worried about and embarrass yourself over in front of the local girl. So I returned my focus to the flashlights and shouting and worked my mind back into the pleasant state it was in before.
But the rustling kept interrupting. It was almost like it knew it was bothering me. Like it was trying to make sure I focused on it and nothing else. It was obsessive and demanding, and insisted that everything else in the world was second to it.
And then the girl spoke.
"Do you hear that noise down there?" I tried to find any detail of her face to read, but the darkness was too thick. All I remember was her silhouette was very still.
"Yeah. You don't think its an animal or something?"
"At first, yeah. But a coyote or deer wouldn't be down there this long with all the noise everyone is making."
And then the fear crept in. I had reasoned that there was nothing for me to worry about as long as the girl thought everything was okay. She lived out there. She knew about the land and the animals and what was normal and what wasn't. If she wasn't scared there was no need for me to be scared either. But her stillness. The serious tone in her voice. The fact that she was even mentioning the noise. I don't know if she was scared, but I didn't need to read her face to see she was definitely concerned. So I pulled out the walkie talkie and told everyone to find us back by the ravine.
They all showed up a few minutes later. Kyle, his girlfriend, and all the members of the seeking team. One of them had a powerful flashlight; almost like one of those police spot-lights. After we had explained what was going on (and some of the other kids noticed the noises too), we shined the spotlight down into the ravine, and illuminated a small circle of woods in a sea of black. We saw the tops of trees that cut out from the side of the ravine, and through the branches and leaves we were able to make out a bit of land and creek below. Oh, and the movement, too. We saw that, as well. Whatever was down there was conveniently placed beneath the foliage of the ravine wall, protected from our light. And it was about then we realized it wasn't alone.
More rustling rose up from the ravine, but this time it was to the left of where we were standing. It moved with purpose through the leaves, coming closer and closer, until it stopped maybe 50 feet from the source of the first noises. And there was more rustling, this time further out. And it, too, sounded like it was working its way to us. And more. And more. It sounded like the whole ravine had suddenly come alive. Yet no matter where we shone the flashlight, too much of the ravine floor was obscured by the trees that grew beneath us.
It was at this point that Kyle had to leave. The fear had finally overtaken him, and there was no place he'd rather be than safely locked behind the closed door of the cabin. Half the group agreed with him and followed him out. Part of me wanted to leave, too. Especially because the thrill of solving this mystery suddenly becomes less appealing when half the group abandons you. But I decided to stay. So did the local girl. And so did a couple others.
When Kyle lead his group away from us and back toward the edge of the woods, we all pretended to go. The handful of us that remained behind sat very still. We didn't make a noise. And we agreed that nobody was allowed to turn on their flashlight, or else we would give ourselves away. We could hear the movement down below. A bit of noise here. A snap of a twig over there. Then a voice of some sort. It was low-pitched, and almost sounded like someone trying to speak while gurgling water. To this day its the most haunting thing I've ever heard. And I know I'm not the only one who heard it either, because several of us simultaneously broke our vow to keep the flashlights off and illuminated the treetops of the ravine once again.
"You heard it? You heard it?" It wasn't a question so much as a declaration. We all heard it and we all knew it. But sometimes you need the obvious confirmation to keep yourself from thinking you're going crazy.
"Yeah. This is f***ed up. We should have left." I was starting to agree. Rustling noises are one thing. Even when the whole forest is teeming with movement and all your instincts are telling you something's not right, there's always the scapegoat of saying its all in your head. That you exaggerated the amount of noises. That it really was wildlife after all. But that whispery-gurgly sound is something else altogether. And even if you fell back on the notion that all the rustling through the woods has a logical and natural explanation, the voice at the bottom of the ravine breaks everything down.
And so did what happened next.
The rustling was different this time. It started at the base of the ravine, like all the other times. But then it got closer and closer, louder and louder, all at an alarming rate. It was racing up the wall of the ravine, snapping branches and leaving a trail of debris to fall through the canopy and onto the ravine floor. It was maybe 5 seconds altogether before the silhouette pulled itself up, maybe 20 feet away. And when you feel as close to mortality as I felt that moment, you don't take the extra second to raise your flashlight to the beast. You don't notify your friends. You run. You run like the wind because every other option means death. I ran as hard as I had ever run, and I could hear my friends alongside me, panting, snapping through branches, feet stomping through the dead pine needles. We broke out of the woods and into the field and didn't stop running. I felt blood crawling down my face and my arms itched where they had been scratched by branches. My lungs burned. That ravine was far too steep for anything to climb up.
We startled Kyle and the rest of the group with our sudden entrance. We were a wreck. We explained everything that had happened, all out of breath and bleeding. After we told our story and got cleaned up and settled down, Kyle's aunt notified us that over the past week her and her husband had noticed duck carcasses out by the pond. Their bodies and feathers were all in-tact. They were just missing their heads. And they had no explanation for it, because a wild animal is more interested in the meat on the body than the head. I almost had a heart attack right there. It was all too much to take in, for any of us.
Which meant the next night we were playing flashlight tag in the field.
(part II to follow)
