The Woman in the Woods

We picked a small stretch of forest toward the tip of the Yukon territory. To call the country there beautiful doesn’t convey a fraction of the awe Jeremy and I felt driving across narrow, unpaved mountain roads surrounded on all sides by soaring peaks and plunging ravines. Massive fir and spruce trees jutted up from the bluffs, cloaking the range in waves of evergreen. Our route took us over a wide, cold lake so reflective that clouds chased each other across its still surface.

There were no proper towns within a hundred miles of the area we’d chosen to hike. The closest smudge of civilization we could find was a six-building cluster I called an outpost and Jeremy labeled, “Fort Frontier.” We stopped at the settlement’s general store–which was its only store–to grab a few perishables and other supplies we hadn’t brought with us. Afterward, we visited the outpost’s tavern, which also served as its diner, post office, barber shop, and library.

Jeremy and I were the only customers. An older man stood behind the rough bar; he didn’t look up from his crossword when we walked in. The walls were cluttered with packed shelves, the wooden floors creaked, and dusty sunlight fell in slants from windows with thick, uneven glass. Even though it was early afternoon, the sun was already sinking into the mountains on the horizon, covering the valley in long shadows.

“I’m guessing you two aren’t here to pick up your mail,” the old bartender said, setting a pair of glasses on the bar. “What will you have?”

“What have you got?” Jeremy asked as we took up two of the four stools.

“Beer. Whiskey. Vodka, but not much. There might be a half-bottle of tequila in the back but it would be older than I am, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Tough to get supplies out here?” I asked.

“Damn near impossible. It takes planes, trains, and automobiles, and even then, half the shit we need we can’t get. And half the shit we get, we don’t need,” he swept a wind-burned hand around the room with its cluttered shelves. “Orders get screwed up all of the time. Last month, instead of sending me snow shoes, I ended up with two dozen tennis rackets. What the fuck am I going to do with two dozen tennis rackets when there isn’t a tennis court for a thousand miles?”

“Turn them into snow shoes?” Jeremy suggested.

“Hell, I’ll give you a discount if you want to try that, but, just like the tequila-”

“You wouldn’t recommend it?” I asked.

The old man’s smile added another crease to his corrugated face. “Just so.”

“I’ll have a beer,” Jeremy said. “Anything domestic is fine.”

The bartender slid my brother’s glass under the bar’s single tap. “All we have in stock is my homebrew.” He slid the dark and foamy beer across the bar. “It doesn’t get much more domestic than the shed out back. For you, young man?”

I glanced at Jeremy’s beer, which looked thick enough to plug a sinking boat but otherwise fine.

“Yeah, I’ll take the same, thank you.”

We sat and shot the breeze with the old man for the better part of two hours. His name was Clive and he’d been living in the area since Moses was in diapers, if you could believe his stories. I watched the sun sinking in the bar’s dirty mirror, and did my best to nudge Jeremy into moving along, but he wasn’t a guy easily nudged. Our parents called him, “a walking hurricane,” not so much because he was a disaster, more so because there was no earthly way to contain or divert him once he picked a path. It didn’t help that Clive was regaling us with tales of the wilderness, of shock freezes and camps wiped clean by avalanche, of grizzly attacks and hikers lost for decades until their gnawed bones were discovered on some lonely mountainside after a thaw.

After our fifth beers, with the afternoon sky heavy with the blue-over-orange of an October sunset, I stopped nudging and prepared to drag Jeremy out of the bar. Since he was four inches taller and thirty hard pounds heavier, I doubted I could drag him anywhere, but I knew that if we didn’t pitch camp before nightfall it would be miserable and dangerous trying to do so in the unfamiliar dark.

“Day’s a’ wasting, brother,” I said, sliding off of my stool.

Jeremy pushed his glass forward for a refill. “Plenty of daylight left. Sit down and have another. Two more tops and then we’ll look to get ramblin’.”

“I really think we ought to look for a campsite,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder.

Jeremy didn’t move. He just turned to look at me with sleepy eyes and a little smile that I recognized all too well. I yanked my hand away as if my brother’s stool was occupied by a bonfire.

“Didn’t mean to rush you,” I murmured, sitting back on my stool.

Clive watched the failed attempt at extraction without comment, though I thought I noticed a sympathetic twitch of his eyebrows when Jeremy refused to move.

“You boys are going camping in the valley?”Clive asked, placing my brother’s sixth beer on the bar.

“We are,” Jeremy replied, sipping at the heavy foam. “We’ll find somewhere sheltered and close for tonight, then we’re going to make our way toward the lake tomorrow morning. Might do some fishing, pet some bears, and enjoy this fine weather.”

Clive grunted. “I wouldn’t count on the weather staying friendly. My knee’s been acting up all day.”

“You got a weather station in your kneecap?” Jeremy asked.

“More or less. It always aches when snow is coming. Maybe not tonight or tomorrow but soon enough.”

“Little early for snow,” Jeremy said, but I could hear the faintest shade of doubt in his voice.

“Either way, if you boys need somewhere to camp out for tonight, you’re welcome to use the woodshed outback. It’s not exactly the Ritz Carlton, but there’s a stove in there and enough to burn that you’ll stay warm.”

“You see?” Jeremy said, slapping me on the back a little harder than I would have liked. “Nothing to worry about. Wander with an adventurous soul and the universe shall provide.” He upended his glass and drained his beer in one go. “Now, let’s have another round or two to celebrate.”

Clive refilled both our glasses and poured a beer for himself, as well. He drank with us, swapping stories through the night. It was nearly midnight, when we were all more than a little drunk, when Clive pulled out a map of the area and unfolded it across the bar.

“You guys are planning on staying here near the lakeshore, right?” Clive pointed to a sheltered area in the heart of the valley.

“Yeah, in that general area,” I said.

I liked Clive and he seemed trustworthy but I didn’t know him and didn’t love the idea of him having our exact location.

“We’ll set up camp here where the trees should give us a wind break,” Jeremy added, pointing out our exact location.

Clive nodded. “Even though the weather’s been good, there’s going to be a decent amount of snow on the ground across the entire valley. It doesn’t even melt all the way at the height of summer because we’re so high up and the surrounding mountains funnel in storms. At night, even this time of year, it gets colder than the last circle of Hell. The kind of cold that can kill you quick if it catches you.”

“We’re prepared,” Jeremy replied, only slurring a little.

“I’m sure you guys are. I’m not questioning your abilities or experience. Things are just…different in the valley. Uniquely dangerous. Snowstorms pour through the mountains like that beer goes between your teeth. The day can go from clear blue to snow blind in the course of an hour. There’s no reception because of the mountains, either; even satellite phones struggle. Once you’re in the valley, you might as well be on another planet if you need help. One or two folks go missing in the region almost every year.”

I shifted on my stool uneasily. Jeremy had chosen the area and researched it but had neglected to mention any disappearances.

“We appreciate the heads up,” Jeremy said, pushing his glass forward for a refill. “But we’re prepared.”

“I’m sure you are so I’ll let it drop after telling you two more things. If the cold gets too vicious or if some snow whips up, there’s an emergency shelter here.” Clive put a little red X on the map. “It’s not much; a small cabin and an outhouse that the local mountaineering club installed and maintains every summer. There will be some essentials in there like a stove and blankets, maybe even a deck of cards in case you get snowed in.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying to memorize the location of the shelter in case the trip went sideways.

Clive noticed my focus. “I’ll give you this copy of the map to take with you. I have plenty here. There’s one more area I’d like to mark for you.” He moved his pen to a section of forest that spilled into the valley from the north and drew a black circle around the tip of the woods. “I strongly, strongly recommend avoiding this part of the forest. If you need firewood or want to hunt lynx or geese, stick to the western woods on the far side of the lake.”

“Why?” Jeremy asked, leaning forward. “What’s wrong with the north?”

I caught a glint in his eye I did not care for at all.

Clive cleared his throat and hesitated a moment before answering. “It’s hard to explain in a way that will make sense to anyone who hasn’t been there before. The short answer is that part of the valley is dangerous.”

“And the long answer?” Jeremy asked.

“The long answer is that part of the valley is dangerous because of what you might run into in those woods. And I don’t mean wolves or grizzlies or moose. They all avoid that part of the forest. Strange things happen under those trees. Stories about death that comes with the snow. If you find yourselves near those woods, be careful. Don’t trust anything you see or hear. If you run into other campers, don’t follow them anywhere. If you hear cries for help and you can’t see what’s making them, don’t go looking.”

“What if someone is hurt?” I asked. “Or lost. You said people go missing around there a lot.”

Clive shook his head. “I’ve got some flares I can give you if you haven’t brought your own. If you hear something calling for help, send up a flare and wait to see if they come to you.”

“What if they can’t move?” Jeremy asked.

“Then I would suggest you haul ass out of the valley until you get reception and can call mountain rescue. Nothing stays alive in those woods for very long. Nothing trying to get you to go in there is your friend.”

Jeremy took a long pull on his glass. “No offense, but it sounds like a heap of bullshit used to scare tourists.”

“Jeremy,” I said.

Clive sighed. “I understand how it sounds. And I know you’re both grown men and will do whatever the fuck you want. But you seem like good people and I want to at least put the idea of being a little extra wary of that valley into your minds. Most days, the area is safe enough. When it snows, though…well, just be careful. Keep your fires fed and stay close to them. Don’t wander from that heat and that light. And if your instincts tell you something ain’t right, believe them.”

Jeremy put a hand to his heart. “We solemnly swear to be super safe. I will personally restrain my brother if he tries to save anyone.” He finished his beer, which was at least his tenth of the night. “Now, who wants to play a drinking game?”

I woke up to the sound of Jeremy being violently ill in the corner of the shed. Listening to my brother retching caused my own stomach to shiver before trying to crawl out of my throat.

“Jesus,” Jeremy wheezed, spitting onto the hard-packed dirt that served as the shed’s floor. “I do think that old man has poisoned us.”

“It was your idea to try the tequila,” I reminded him, clenching my teeth against a second wave of nausea.

Jeremy spat again, this time into the simmering wood stove. He sat down hard on the ground and began pulling on his boots.

“Alright, little brother, day’s a wastin’. Let’s hit the road.”

Clive was nowhere to be found but he had left us a small bag of extra supplies in the back of Jeremy’s truck, including the map he’d marked for us. It was still early in the morning when we drove away from the outpost toward the valley. Sunrise was better than an hour behind us but the light was still weak and violet at the edges. We were able to follow a gravel road from Clive’s bar down to a weather station that was the last scrap of civilization before coming up on the valley.

After leaving the station, the road turned from gravel into dirt, then from a dirt road into a dirt trail, and finally from a dirt trail into a faint impression on the ground that you might charitably call a path. Jeremy’s truck handled the terrain better than I expected; for the last hour or so before we got stuck, I almost convinced myself we’d be able to take the Toyota with us into the valley. Then, just as I was drifting off listening to Jeremy’s worn-out Waylon Jenning’s eight-track, we hit a series of bumps and came to a hard stop.

“God damn this mud,” Jeremy said when we got out to inspect the issue. “God damn this mud and these buried god damn rocks and this son of a bitch of a half-assed trail. Shit. Shit. It’s not even a trail. It’s like somebody just combed the grass back and then dug a bunch of pits just to fuck with us.”

I nodded along to my brother’s rant, diplomatically neglecting to point out that he’d actually drifted off of the trail and was driving through an overgrown field when we got stuck. We made a go of trying to get the Toyota running again, but no combination of pushing, digging, or dragging with the ATV could shift the truck. After an hour, Jeremy waved for me to stop.

“Light’s already starting to fade,” he said. “If we don’t get moving soon we’ll have to bunker down here with the truck and that’s another day damn near wasted. Help me load up the four-wheeler and its sled. We’ll ride down into the valley, set up camp, and then we can worry about getting Susie here unstuck on our way back out.”

“I never knew you named your truck, ‘Susie.’”

Jeremy gave me the same grin he’d flashed at the bar. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”

I moved my mouth and it almost looked like a smile. “You’re not worried about leaving the truck alone?”

“Well, I’ll lock it. But,” Jeremy gestured to the mountain side around us, a massive, empty space populated almost entirely by spruce trees, boulders, dwarf shrugs, and lichen. “I have this hunch nobody is likely to come along to bother Susie.”

The slope heading down toward the valley was gentle and mostly clear, so we made good time on the four-by-four, even dragging the sled with the bulk of our gear. As always, Jeremy drove while I got to sit behind him balancing the need to hold onto him tight enough not to fall against the equally dangerous prospect of holding him too tight and pissing him off. While my ride wasn’t ideal, I had no complaints about the view.

A strong breeze shook leaves from the white and black spruce, poplars, and the trembling aspen trees that huddled in clusters across the mountainside. Their branches clutched tightly onto the last of their autumn foliage, making the hills around us burn with a hundred shades of orange, yellow, and red. It was like driving into a frozen wildfire broken only here and there by the green needles of sentinel pines and Rocky Mountain fir. The sky above us was bluer than B.B. King after his first heartbreak, with hardly a cloud in sight.

Jeremy wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Whenever I asked a question or made a comment about the scenery, I received a grunt in reply. Instead of pressing the issue, I did my best to relax and watch the wildlife. Grouse flitted from branch-to-branch in the trees around us. I noticed a pair of red fox darting around the rocks on a nearby cliff. There were no signs of larger animals but I figured the bears and moose were either hunkered down for the winter already or wandering the dense patches of forest in the lowlands.

It was midday when we found the mouth of the valley. There was no possible way to miss it. Behind us, we left a mountain at the peak of autumn with short, bright days and small signs of life in abundance. But the valley appeared to already be covered by winter’s shadow. There was snow on the ground, not just a dusting, but drifts four or five inches deep at least. The trees in the valley showed no fall covers; they were bone-bare and wind-bent. The sun was already threatening the horizon when we were traveling; looking up from the valley, only the faintest golden glow could be seen crowning the cordillera.

“It’s like fucking Narnia,” Jeremy muttered, the first words he’d spoken since we left his truck.

“Looks like we have maybe an hour before it’s night-dark down here,” I guessed. “Probably less. Damn, it’s cold. Do you think the ATV will be alright on the snow?”

“Yeah, it’s not too deep and looks hard-packed. We should be alright. Let’s find a good spot and set up camp for tonight.”

It took us twenty minutes to find a suitable area on the edge of a small creek. There were enough trees to keep most of the wind off of us and elevated ground where the snow was thin but our camp was still miserably cold. We found plenty of fuel for our fire among the nearby pines but the wood was wet and burned weakly, throwing out thick, white smoke. It was full dark before I finally got the fire stoked well enough to melt and boil water. While I worked on the fire, Jeremy set up our tent and ran into his own struggles with the wind, which nearly ripped the shelter from its pegs more than once.

“I’m about three seconds from setting myself on fire,” Jeremy grumbled, placing his shivering hands so close to the flames I wasn’t sure he was joking.

We ate a sad dinner of half-frozen, half-burned steak then both went to bed, desperate to warm up. Even with hot water bottles slipped into our sleeping bags and wearing all of the layers we could safely overnight in, neither Jeremy or I got much sleep. We’d packed expecting fall conditions, so our gear wasn’t rated for the temperatures we were dealing with, though we had at least erred on the side of dealing with some winter weather.

I went in and out of consciousness, often woken up by my own shivering or the sound of Jeremy’s teeth chattering. The two of us took turns putting back on our coats and crawling out of the flimsy protection of the tent to stoke the fire and reheat the water bottles. Dawn broke cold and shadowed across the valley and found Jeremy and I both already awake and utterly exhausted.

All night, I’d clung to the hope that the day might bring fairer weather with enough light for us to gather up drier timber, the kind that could fuel a bonfire. Instead, the morning stayed nearly as cold as the night before. Low, fast clouds began slipping in through the mountain gaps not long after sunrise, smothering the daylight. Still, we made a dogged effort to follow the creek toward a nearby grove of spruce that we believed might have better firewood.

“Well, fuck,” Jeremy said not long after we broke the treeline.

A dead moose lay in the middle of the creek a quarter mile upstream from our camp. Something had raked its stomach open, leaving purple ropes of intestines and offal spilling out into the frozen water.

“We should be alright,” I said. “There’s no flow to carry any of that downstream.”

Jeremy paced around the carcass. “Sure but do you know how long the moose has been here? Or how long the water’s been frozen? And is it completely frozen or is there still some movement at the bottom. It’s possible we drank some of this.”

“At least we boiled everything,” I said, but my stomach still twisted at the thought of drinking contaminated water.

“We should move camp upstream just to be safe. I will…”

Jeremy trailed off and turned his face upward. I understood why a moment later when a snowflake landed on my shoulder. Thick, gray clouds had crept in while Jeremy and I were hiking. Snow began to drift down slowly, not much of it, but more than I wanted to see. My brother held out his tongue and caught a flake.

He spat it into the frozen creek. “Fucking Narnia.”

By the time we trekked back to camp, it was snowing hard enough to begin to affect visibility. Our weak fire was holding on for dear life as the snow and a rising wind worked together to strangle it.

“We need to break camp and get to that shelter Clive mentioned,” Jeremy said, surprising me.

I assumed he’d want to tough it out in our tent even if we ended up buried. The nervous glances he kept shooting at the darkening clouds made me realize that he sensed a real storm coming. It took us less than half an hour to get everything loaded onto the sled. Then it was another hour trip by ATV to reach the cabin near the center of the valley. Snow was falling in a whipping haze by the time we reached the small emergency shelter. It was painted red, as was the narrow outhouse next to it. Neither structures looked particularly comfortable but they both at least seemed well-maintained.

Jeremy parked the four-wheeler between the two buildings and covered it with a tarp while I dragged our sled full of supplies into the cabin. The shelter was one main room with a loft above for sleeping. There were a few chairs, a small table, storage areas with tools, blankets, entertainment and other essentials, and, best of all, a wood stove with fuel. A small sign asked that anyone using the stove bring in new firewood when departing so that there would always be some available for emergencies.

“God bless the Alaskan mountaineering clubs,” I said.

By the time Jeremy stomped the snow from his boots and joined me inside, I had the stove burning. He smiled when he saw the fire.

“Thanks, Clive,” Jeremy said. “You might have just saved our asses.”

We used the remaining daylight to inventory the supplies in the shelter while storing what we’d brought along. I gathered snow to melt then boil for drinking water while Jeremy worked on making us dinner. By the time night fell, the cabin was cozy and warm, our bellies were full, and we had time to sit and look out the windows at the blizzard hammering the valley.

The wind howled, driving the curtain of snow sideways and causing the shelter to creak whenever a strong gust came through. It was tough to gauge, but I put the snowfall around at one or two inches per hour, maybe more.

“We’d be buried if we were still in that tent,” Jeremy said, shuffling the deck of cards for another game of Hearts.

I raised my bottle of beer. “Here’s to Clive and the-”

I stopped speaking when Jeremy suddenly held up a hand signaling me to be quiet. He had his head tilted, listening intently for something. I did the same but all I heard was the ever-present moaning wind.

“There,” Jeremy said after a moment. “Did you hear that?”

I got ready to shake my head but then I did hear it. Barely audible over the wind and the crackle of the fire was what sounded like someone shouting.

Jeremy bolted up with me two steps behind him. He opened the door, letting in a blast of freezing air and snow. The sound repeated, clearer now, and unmistakably intentional.

Someone was screaming for help.

“Can you tell where it’s coming from?” Jeremy asked, shrugging on his coat.

“Jeremy…”

He looked up at me but continued tugging on his boots.

“What?”

“Remember what Clive told us?” I asked. “About not chasing after any strange stuff we hear or see around here?”

“He was just trying to scare us,” my brother replied, but he did look a little hesitant as he pulled on his other boot. “Besides, he told us to be careful of the northern woods. We’re still pretty far from there.”

I always had a better memory for maps than Jeremy did. “We were far out at the old camp but this cabin is only about a quarter-mile from the tip of the forest.”

“Somebody needs help,” Jeremy said, his face set in a way that didn’t welcome disagreement. “You want to leave them in a blizzard because a crazy local got carried away telling stories?”

I heard the shouting again. It was faint, carried by the wind, which I realized by the snowfall was blowing down from the north.

“We’ve got Clive’s flare gun,” I pointed out. “Let’s send up a signal first and see if they come to us. Hell, if we go out with visibility this bad, there’s a good chance we all wind up lost and frostbit to the bone.”

Jeremy glanced at the window, confirming that snow was coming down in solid sheets now.

“Fine,” he grunted. “Give me the gun.”

The flare burst open high above the cabin like a tiny, orange sun. It washed the valley around us in a bright, bronze glow that was swallowed by the storm much faster than I expected. I wasn’t able to see anything other than snow and the silhouette of the outhouse in the brief flash of light.

“Send up another one,” I suggested. “Maybe aim it to the north this time?”

“We only have two left,” Jeremy said but he top-loaded another flare into the gun’s stubby barrel and fired it toward the northern forest where the crying seemed to be coming from.

Another orange flash faded quickly. Jeremy and I stood together in the light spilling from the cabin’s windows, shivering and listening.

“I don’t hear it anymore,” my brother said, staring into the darkness.

“Me either. Maybe the flare…”

“Maybe the flare, what?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it scared off whatever was making the noise?”

“It sounded almost human to me,” Jeremy muttered.

“Almost,” I agreed.

We went back inside and played cards in silence for another hour before bed. The wailing didn’t return that night and I began to wonder if Clive gave us the flares for more than just signaling lost hikers.

It stopped snowing at some point during the night and we woke up to find the sky overcast but calm. More than a foot of snowfall blanked the valley with drifts well past our knees. Everything was fresh powder, clean but treacherous; even walking out to use the outhouse felt like trudging through quicksand.

Our original plan before arriving in the valley was to spend a few days hunting and ice fishing while hiking to the far side of the canyon and back. But the delays caused by overnighting at the outpost, getting the truck stuck, and moving camp to the emergency cabin had thrown our schedule into chaos. Jeremy did a quick inventory of supplies while I cooked breakfast.

“We should collect some more firewood while the weather is slightly better than miserable,” he told me while we ate. “I don’t like the look of the clouds; if we get snowed in for more than a few days, we’re at risk of running out of fuel. Let’s take the sled with us and stock up on as much dry timber as we can find.”

Jeremy and I put on our snowshoes and took turns pulling the empty sled. There were scattered thickets close to the cabin but each cluster of trees we visited were snow-soaked and would not burn well.

“Let’s head north and try the forest,” Jeremy suggested. “The canopy there should have provided a little coverage for the wood.”

I looked in the direction he was pointing. It was the same area where the crying last night seemed to come from.

“Jeremy, I-”

“Relax,” he cut me off. “Look, it’s daylight. Nothing came out of the crying last night. It was probably a fox, anyway.”

“Probably,” I agreed, not believing that for a moment. “But there are still some groves closer to the cabin we can check first.”

“They’re all going to be wet or new timber and you know it.” My brother handed me the improvised rope harness we were using to haul the sled without the ATV. “If there are any goblins in the forest, I’ll protect you. Unless you keep bitching.”

I forced a chuckle. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s just be quick. It’s freezing.”

Reaching the northern woods was easy enough, even dragging the empty sled. Our snowshoes kept us from sinking into the fresh powder, so we crunched along at a healthy clip taking turns with the harness. It was a different story once we pressed into the forest, however. Treacherous roots hid just under the surface of the snow, snagging, catching, and tripping. While the trees were sparse enough around the perimeter, they soon narrowed into claustrophobic tunnels as Jeremy and I traveled deeper into the woodland. We had to stop several times to wiggle the sled through tight gaps.

Jeremy at least was right about the canopy offering the underbrush some protection from the snow. The northern forest was mostly aspens and birch but there were pockets of pines that stood together like evergreen towers, their branches sheltering the deadwood below. We brought an axe with us as well as a handsaw; we stacked the driest and oldest looking timber into the sled then topped that pile with a few choice limbs sawn directly from a thicket of fir trees. It was early afternoon by the time we filled the sled. I suggested a few times that we start to head back but Jeremy kept pushing to go just a little farther.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to pile any more timber in,” I said finally, gesturing at the small mountain we’d collected. “It’s already going to be a…”

A woman was watching us from the top of a nearby hill. At least, I thought it was a woman. The wind was kicking up small cyclones of powder all around the forest, limiting my visibility. Dozens of sagging, snow-laden branches being between us didn’t help, either. The dark-haired figure stood alone next to a lightening-split alder tree. It was hard to be sure, but she seemed to be naked.

“Jeremy,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, last one,” he grunted, sawing through a small limb bristling with green needles.

“Jeremy, look.”

He followed my pointing finger until he saw the woman on the hill.

“What in the fresh Hell…” Jeremy muttered, lowering the handsaw until it hung at his side. “Is she…naked?”

“I’m not even sure she is a ‘she,’” I answered.

The figure watching us seemed to be hunched over but still appeared to be much larger than a woman, or even a man, should be. It was impossible to get a clear look given the distance and obstructions, but something about the watcher made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“We should get back to the cabin,” I said, slipping on the sled’s rope harness.

“What if she needs help?” Jeremy asked, staring at the figure. “She might be lost and it’s fucking cold. What if she’s experiencing hypothermia? Paradoxical undressing, and all of that?”

“She doesn’t look like she needs help,” I said, trying to keep an eye on the stranger while shifting the sled to point back toward the cabin.

I noticed that the woman was keeping to the deep shade provided by a tightly-grown pack of evergreens. The day was cloudy but enough sunlight leaked out to paint the forest in bright lanes dotted here and there with shadowed patches.

“Hello,” Jeremy yelled out, tossing the saw into the sled so he could wave both of his arms. “You on the hill! Are you okay?”

“Jeremy,” I hissed.

He ignored me and took a step closer. “Are you hurt? Are you lost? Do you need help?”

The figure tilted its head. Even with the wind picking up, they clearly heard Jeremy, but they didn’t respond or move any closer. In fact, when my brother took a few more steps toward the hill, the woman suddenly darted away, heading north, deeper into the woods.

“Come on,” Jeremy said, hiking toward the hill.

“Are you serious? Jeremy? Jeremy?”

Against my better judgement, I slipped off the harness and followed him. We climbed up the hill slowly, sliding now and then in the deeper drifts. By the time we both reached the hilltop, there was no sign of the woman anywhere in sight. Jeremy knelt next to the lightning-struck tree and looked for footprints.

“Well that’s fucking weird,” he said.

I scanned the surrounding forest one more time before crouching next to Jeremy. He pointed out the trail that he’d found and my breath caught in my throat. The tracks were clear but they weren’t footprints.

They were hoofprints.

Two parallel marks curved at one end and combined at the other. The tracks followed the path we’d seen the woman take until they disappeared in dense brush fifty yards or so away from the hilltop.

“Deer?” Jeremy guessed. “Maybe our voyeur friend was naked except for snowshoes?”

“Shoes would still leave tracks,” I pointed out.

Jeremy shrugged but I noticed his eyes darting around the nearby woods. “We’re good on timber, little brother. Let’s head back.”

I couldn’t shake the prickly feeling of being watched even after we’d left the forest. The sensation followed me on the long trek back to the cabin, made longer by the now fully laden sled. Even with Jeremy and I taking turns, we were both soaked in sweat and exhausted by the time our shelter came into sight.

The sun’s steady collapse into the mountain range added to my discomfort. There was something strange about the valley; even the short, northern days seemed to fade faster than should have been possible. I watched the sunset drain like a yolk into jagged teeth behind the mountains and it made me want to be anywhere else in the world.

“We should leave,” I told Jeremy the moment we were back inside the cabin.

“For what? We just got here.”

“I don’t just mean leave the cabin. I mean we should hike out of the valley today. Now.”

“Back to the outpost?” he asked, smiling that fucking smile I hated.

“No. Maybe. At least let’s get back to the truck.”

He shook his head. “We wouldn’t even make it to the foothills before it got dark and it would be past midnight before we got to the truck, if we could even find it. What’s got you so riled up, little brother?”

Jeremy began adding new wood to the stove while I fidgeted, staring out the window.

“What’s got me riled up?” I asked. “The giant, naked lady with hooves is not enough?”

“Couple things to address there: we’re not sure if it was a woman or even a person. Certain animals can-”

“Certain animals?” I interrupted. “What the fuck kind of animal resembles whatever the Hell that was out there?”

Jeremy shrugged, a gesture I was starting to despise. “Could be an elk seen in a bad light and at a weird angle. Or a bear with a skin condition.”

“And the tracks?” I asked.

“Another argument for the rogue elk theory.”

I gave up, collapsing into a camp chair and holding my hands out to the fire. We sat without speaking for a while, hearing nothing but the wind and the crackling logs. Every few minutes, I couldn’t resist glancing out of the window toward the forest. There was no sign of the figure from the hill but I did get a perfect view of dusk taking the valley along with a stream of heavy clouds pouring in.

“Looks like more snow tonight,” Jeremy remarked, looking out the cabin’s other north-facing window.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s hunker down tonight and plan on hiking out in the morning,” he said, still staring through the glass.

“Oh. Sure.”

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard the faintest touch of worry in my brother’s voice. That unsettled me more than the encounter in the woods or the impending storm. I’d never known Jeremy to sound even a little anxious, nor could I remember him ever wanting to cut a trip short.

Night fell quickly over the cabin. The clouds blocked any hint of stars or moonlight, so the valley around us seemed like an empty, neverending black void. Snow began to fall not long after sunset. The wind snatched it up and lashed it against our shelter with an intensity that grew by the hour.

“Thank God for Clive,” I said again, watching the chaos through the window. With the stove burning and our supper cooking on top, it was damn near cozy inside the little shack.

Jeremy’s reply was drowned out by the same wailing we’d heard the night before, only this time, it was much closer to the cabin. We both stood up. I reached for the flare gun on the table while my brother lifted the axe from where it lay propped in the corner.

“It’s that thing from the woods,” I said, staring out the window but unable to see anything other than darkness and snow.

“We don’t know that,” Jeremy said. “It could be the wind.”

His hands, knuckles white from their grip on the axe, told me he didn’t believe his own words. The wailing returned, even closer, now sounding like it was only a few feet from the cabin’s door. The sound changed from a keening howl to sobbing. I watched in horror as something rattled the doorknob. We’d locked it earlier more out of habit than any expectation that we might have to face intruders.

Something began pounding on the door.

I stood, slack-jawed, pointing the flare gun at the entrance. Jeremy stepped closer to the door, raising the axe to the ready.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, struggling to make himself heard over the wind and the wailing.

There was no answer other than continued banging at the door.

“Who’s out there?” Jeremy roared, and I knew he was scared because he was becoming so angry. “What the fuck do you want? ‘Cause you don’t want to come in here, asshole. And you definitely don’t want me to come out there.”

The knocking stopped.

“Jeremy,” I said when he moved closer to the door.

“Shhh.”

He leaned against the wood and listened.

Outside, the sobbing started to sound like laughter.

“Motherfucker…” Jeremy muttered, taking a step back. “Hey, shitbird,” he shouted, “I don’t know what you’re laughing about. You’re the one out in a-”

The laughter grew loud and frantic. I tried to get a look at whatever was near the door through the window but I couldn’t see a damn thing.

“Fuck this,” Jeremy muttered, reaching for the doorknob.

“Are you nuts?” I whispered. “Whatever’s out there, it doesn’t seem like it can get inside, so let’s just wait.”

“Mother…fucker,” a voice growled from the other side of the door. “Ass…hole. Shit…bird.”

Jeremy and I exchanged a look. The voice sounded human but like it was coming through a wire with a gravel-stuffed tin can on the other end. A window shattered, a rock landing on the rug near the stove.

“Fuck this,” Jeremy said quietly, hoisting the axe and reaching for the doorknob.

“Don’t,” I shouted, but the door was already open, its hinges screaming as the wind, or something else, ripped it from Jeremy’s hand.

There was no one on the other side of the door. Snow began blowing in from the opening as Jeremy inched toward the blackness, axe held high.

“Don’t,” I repeated, this time whispering, but my brother ignored me until he was standing in the narrow streak of light outside the doorway.

After a moment, he looked over his shoulder at me and smiled. “See? If something wants to fuck with you, you just have to-”

Long arms reached out from the night to wrap themselves around Jeremy. The skin on the arms was pale, leathery, and mottled. Smoke came off of the arms wherever they touched the light from the cabin but they were only exposed for a heartbeat until dragging Jeremy off into the darkness. My brother didn’t even have time to scream but I saw his eyes go wide with panic before he disappeared.

“Jeremy,” I shouted, staring out the cabin door.

He screamed then, a terrible, animal sound full of fear and fury. I ran after him without thinking about putting on my jacket or my boots. The only thing I had with me was the flare gun I still clutched in my bare hands.

A few yards outside of the shelter felt like being dropped into the arctic. My feet, covered only by socks, were soaked and frozen within the first three steps. A hard wind stung my eyes and chilled my fingers, nearly drowning me in whipped snow.

“Jeremy,” I yelled again, choking on the powder but still moving forward.

I was chasing the last image I had of my brother, hoping that whatever took him was still moving in the same direction. There were drag marks on the snow but they were fading by the moment. The drifts were so deep, and the wind was a gale, and the cold was draining me with every trudging step. If I went back to the cabin for my gear, I knew what little trail I had to follow would be gone. If I didn’t, I knew I’d be dead from exposure in an hour, maybe less, and close to dead long before that.

Torn between going back and moving forward, I stopped. That’s when Jeremy screamed again, and this time it was a panicked shriek. Desperate to see what was happening, I raised the flare gun at an angle and fired it toward and above the sound of Jeremy’s howl. The flare burst overhead, washing our piece of the valley in a chemical orange light. It was snow-smothered quickly but in those brief, bright moments, I saw a scene that I’ll revisit in nightmares for the rest of my life.

The thing attacking Jeremy was huge, at least nine feet tall, wearing a torn, ragged cloak or jacket. It screamed at the light, dropping lower to run across on three of its four limbs, dragging my brother with the fourth. Jeremy was fighting, swinging wildly with the axe but unable to land a hit as he was yanked across the snow. The creature shook him as it ran, slamming Jeremy against the ground like a cat casually braining a mouse.

When the flare was gone, stolen by the wind and buried in the powder, I tried to move but the shock combined with the cold kept me anchored. Jeremy screamed one last time, his voice so distant that I knew I had no hope of catching up.

“Jeremy,” I repeated, softly this time.

The wind snatched his name away in a breath of steam.

I returned to the cabin for my gear but I was numb and shivering so badly that it took nearly half an hour standing next to the stove before I could tie the laces of my boots. The broken window continued dumping snowfall inside until I duct taped several blankets and a poncho across the opening. By the time I was able to restart my pursuit, the creature’s trail was gone.

After an hour wading through the storm with no luck, I returned to the cabin and swore I’d restart my search at dawn. Some small luck finally broke my way; sunrise burned away the blizzard until it was only a perpetual dusting. Though Jeremy’s trail was long blown away, I knew where I needed to look: the northern forest.

Even with snowshoes and no sled to drag, it took me a good part of the morning to reach the woods due to all of the new snowfall. I followed the path of sawn limbs that Jeremy and I had left the day before when we were gathering firewood. Once I reached the hill where we’d first seen the figure, I realized that I would never see my brother alive again.

A large sheet of what I first took for leather was tangled in the branches of the lightning-split tree on top of the hill. When I got close, I saw that it wasn’t leather, at least not animal leather. The mantle was made from patches of human skin, all sewn together with thick stitches of sinew or tendon. I’d mistaken it for a jacket the night before when I saw the creature wearing it. And I’d mistaken the creature for a person when we’d first encountered it at a distance while it was wrapped in the skins.

I leaned against a nearby tree as my breakfast from the night before came up and landed steaming in the snow. The cloak was tanned and well-preserved. I guessed it was several years old, though some of the patches of skin may have been newer.

Shaking from much more than the cold, I explored the area around the hill for any sign of Jeremy. To this day, part of me wishes I hadn’t. I found Jeremy’s clothes half-buried in snow on the other side of the hilltop. There was no sign of him or the creature, but there was a red stain under a nearby pine. The blood was fresh, at least as fresh as frozen blood can be, and there was so very much of it.

It took me nearly two days to make it back to Clive and the outpost. Bad weather rolled in again, and Jeremy’s truck was stuck deeper than I’d thought, but eventually, I managed to report him missing. By the time the search party made it into the northern woods, the blood was buried or blown away, as were Jeremy’s clothes. I’d kept the sheet of skin, and none of the searchers had an explanation for that, but neither did it help them find my brother.

Jeremy is still considered missing now, even years after our trip, though the general consensus is that he ran afoul of a grizzly. I’ve never stopped looking for him. I return to the valley every summer, to that small cabin where we spent our last days together. I’ve spent weeks hiking through the northern forest. But those woods go on for miles upon miles. They’re peppered with caves and even old mines from the gold rush. If I had a dozen lifetimes, I’d still never be able to explore every acre of that cursed place.

Twice though, during nasty storms that turned the sky grayer than the long-dead, I’ve seen a figure watching me from a distance. I’ve long wondered when it will decide that it’s time for new leathers. When that night comes, I’ll finally have it, or it will have me, and things will be over, either way.

Homebody

I was warming up a bottle for Andi at three in the morning the first time I saw Mr. Haywood on his roof. He was half-crouching on the shingles, back against his chimney. It would have been impossible to see him in the shadow of the bricks if the moon hadn’t been nearly full and so bright. I stared, watching my neighbor for five or ten minutes, wondering the entire time if I was having a peculiar dream.

Andi began to cry, dragging my attention away from the roof. She was seven weeks old and hungrier than a house fire. I blinked away the image of my elderly neighbor on the top of his house and gave my daughter the bottle.

“Just a heads up, darling, but I might be going insane,” I said.

Andi managed to guzzle milk and coo simultaneously. She didn’t offer any commentary on the roof situation. I spent a minute confirming that Andi had a latch on the bottle then returned to looking out our kitchen window at the Haywood’s place. Mr. Haywood was gone, if he’d ever been there at all. That first night, I decided to chalk it up to the special kind of sleep deprivation that swam in the wake of every newborn. That seemed much more likely than my septuagenarian neighbor sweeping his chimney a few hours before dawn.

It took another thirty minutes of rocking Andi in her glider before she was asleep again. Climbing into bed, I considered telling Melissa about Mr. Haywood, but my wife was fast asleep and I didn’t have the heart to wake her. Besides, I reminded myself that it was all probably a dream. I promised myself I’d let it go and not think about the old man on the roof anymore.

Naturally, I was back looking out the kitchen window the next night around three. For the first time since her birth, I had hoped that Andi would wake up and put me on graveyard shift so I’d have an excuse to watch for Mr. Haywood. But my daughter slept through that night, meaning I was extra crazy for staying up. The Haywood’s place was right next to ours, backyard fences touching. It was a two-story house, aging but well-kept with the nicest lawn on the block and possibly on the planet. We’d moved into the neighborhood just a few weeks before Andi arrived. If you’re ever planning a move or having a kid, it’s definitely a great idea to do both at the same time. Very relaxing.

There was no clear moon that second night; the first touch of an autumn storm was rolling in and clouds crowded the sky. A frustration of shadows danced around the Haywood house, shrinking and stretching while I watched. It was impossible to tell if Mr. Haywood was on the roof; the entire Baltimore Ravens’ offensive line could have been camping up there for all I could see.

“This is dumb, go to bed,” I told myself. “There is no old man on the roof. Get some sleep.”

And I did…that night. But the night after, I found myself back in the kitchen at three, feeling silly and crazy in equal measure. As I poured a cup of coffee, I made a promise–a sincere one–that I’d let it go if I didn’t see Haywood on the roof this time. I’m not sure why I was up again, why I even cared if the guy was up there before. Maybe he was patching a leak or fixing the antenna or preparing for fucking Santa. What business was it of mine?

That third night was nasty and damp. It had rained all day and a cold November drizzle still dripped over the neighborhood. Even if Haywood was the kind of fella to crawl around a rooftop after dark, there was no way he’d be up there in that weather. And, of course, how would I see him without a clear sky? I was taking the second-to-last sip of my coffee when the clouds broke and a full, harvest moon shined out through the drizzle. I got a good look at my neighbor’s house in the yellow-blue light and nearly choked on my drink. Haywood was up on his roof again, bundled in a hooded parka, sitting at the peak, leaning against the chimney.

The clouds closed in less than a minute but I was already putting on my boots and a fleece-lined jacket. Some mundane madness had me in its grip; I needed to make sure that what I was seeing was real. I couldn’t think of a good reason for an old man to sit on his roof in the rain in November, much less at three in the damn morning.

Maybe he and his wife are having a Hell of an argument, I thought.

Even with the jacket, it was viciously cold outside. Rain came down in small, staccato drops, somewhere between a shower and a mist. If it got much colder, we’d see snow soon. A white Thanksgiving didn’t sound quite as magical as Christmas. Once or twice, mud almost caused me to slip; it didn’t help that my eyes were up as I crossed the backyard. There was no sign of Mr. Haywood from my property. The chimney blocked too much of my sightline. I’d need to get closer.

I paused halfway over the fence between our place and the Haywood’s when it struck me how weird everything felt. Not just the man on his roof but the fact that I cared enough to…check on him? Spy on him? I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing, only that the mystery of it–the distraction–was appealing.

A touch of guilt crept in as I splashed down on the Haywood’s side of the fences. I was on call and should have stayed in the house in case Andi’s fragile sleep shattered as it did every other night or so. Melissa needed her rest, and it was my turn, and if I was a good dad, I would have just shrugged off the first sighting of Haywood and focused on figuring out the fucking bottle sanitizer that seemed to have been designed by a baby-hating ex-NASA engineer.

But I just needed a quick look. I realized that I was sticking to the darkest parts of the Haywood’s backyard as I moved for a better look at the roof.

And there he was. The old man was wedged in the crook next to the chimney. Haywood had shifted down a little but was still hunched up in his parka. His hood was up and his knees appeared to be pulled into his chest. He reminded me of Andi after one of her sink baths, scrunched and miserable.

I stared up at Haywood for a long few minutes. So I wasn’t hallucinating, that was good. What to do next? Did I need to do anything? I considered calling out to see if Haywood needed help but that didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem likely that he’d accidentally gotten himself up there, nor did it look like he was stuck. If anything, he seemed to be…hiding.

That was too weird for me to process, so I decided to creep back home and to forget the entire adventure. Three steps toward my yard I hit a deceptively deep puddle and went down to my knees in the mud. I must have yelped because I heard the scratch of someone moving across roof tiles above me. When I looked up, Mr. Haywood was standing just above the gutter-line, staring down at me. It was tough to pick out any details–he was barely a shadow in the gloom–but I got the impression his finger was pressed to his lips.

Embarrassed and more than a little freaked, I scrambled to my feet and quickly went over the fence. I slipped back into my house, closing the door gently while listening for any sign of Andi or Melissa stirring.

Lovely silence.

It took another hour before I managed to fall asleep. That night I dreamed of hooded shadows standing on the rooftops across my neighborhood, fingers against their lips, quiet and fearful.

“Do you think our neighbors are a little odd?” I asked Melissa the next morning while cooking us breakfast.

“I mean, I’m not a huge fan of them still having Halloween decorations up in December but at least they’re good decorations.” Melissa sipped at her coffee, smiling. She had avoided caffeine the entire pregnancy and was still barely indulging while breastfeeding. I had no idea how she functioned. “How much do you think that ten-foot tall skeleton cost? Probably like $300, right?”

“Ten-foot tall…oh, you mean the Arbors across the street? No, I mean the Haywood’s next door.”

“The older couple?” Melissa yawned. “What’s weird about them?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Just feeling out the new neighborhood, you know? Mapping out stranger danger for Andi.”

Melissa gave me a sleepy side-eye. Andi, cradled in her arms, seemed to match the look. It struck me, not for the first or even hundredth time, how many features my daughter inherited from my wife. They had the same small, delicate ears, sharp noses, and identical way of wrinkling their foreheads when they thought I was being a dork. The main difference between them were their eyes; Melissa’s were a deep, soft brown while Andi’s were dark blue like my own. I knew eye color often changes when babies get older but I hoped that she’d keep that little piece of me if nothing else.

“Tony, I don’t think we need to worry about the Haywood’s but I like where your head’s at,” Melissa said. “Remember, Andi, ‘stranger, danger.’” She punctuated each word by kissing our daughter on her forehead. “I’ve only spoken to Mr. Haywood a few times but I know he’s a retired teacher and he spends all of his time taking care of his wife.”

“She’s sick?”

“Alzheimer’s, yeah. And, on top of that, her husband was telling me the other day when I passed him on my walk that the poor woman also got diagnosed with colon cancer last year.”

I winced. “Christ.”

“Right? You’d think the universe would lay off but she really got both barrels. I’ve only seen her a couple of times sitting on their deck.”

“Do you ever see them leave the house? I mean, someone has to go to the store, at least.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow. “Why so curious, Tones?”

“I, uh, well, I was going to offer to pick some stuff up for them when I do our shopping. To be neighborly, you know?”

“That’s sweet.” Melissa smiled. “I think I saw them getting groceries delivered the other day but I’m sure they’d appreciate it if you offered.”

I pictured the old man hunched on his roof in the rain, face hidden inside the hood of his jacket, his hand with one outstretched finger held against the shadow where his face would be. Was he telling me to be quiet so his sick wife could rest? Plausible but that still didn’t explain why he was standing on top of his house in the middle of an autumn storm. Maybe he was having some kind of mental break from stress? An unpleasant, unlikely thought squirmed its way into my head.

“When was the last time you saw Mrs. Haywood out on her deck?” I asked.

Melissa yawned the perpetual yawn of a new parent. “I’m not sure. Maybe a month ago?”

“How about Mr. Haywood?”

“Come to think of it, no, I don’t think I’ve seen him for about a week, either. And he always used to be out messing with their little garden or watering the lawn in the morning. I hope nothing’s happened to Mrs. Haywood.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

Later that afternoon, when Melissa was down for a nap, I strapped Andi into her little carrier on my chest and took a walk around the block. I wasn’t able to see the Haywood’s backyard from inside our house with the wooden fence in the way, but their front lawn was only enclosed by a short, wrought-iron railing. The yard was about three-quarters covered in fallen leaves. Most of the properties in the neighborhood looked identical but it was jarring seeing the Haywood’s lawn as anything other than immaculate. Mr. Haywood treated his grass the same way I’ve seen other guys treat classic cars or trophy boats.

“Something’s afoot,” I whispered to Andi, continuing our short walk.

My daughter, bundled up and bright-eyed, giggled in response.

Andi had a restless, wailing night, so I didn’t get a chance to check the Haywood’s roof until the day after. Once Melissa and Andi were asleep, I crept into our kitchen, brewed some coffee, and waited by the window. It was a clear evening with plenty of moon left in the sky. I was just starting my second pot of coffee when Mr. Haywood climbed out of a second-story window and scrambled up the tile.

“I should let this go,” I said out loud.

But I didn’t. Instead, I walked outside.

Two minutes later, I was over the fence again and watching the old man. I’m not sure what I expected to happen. Part of me thought I’d catch him doing something suspicious…more suspicious than spending every night on the roof, I guess. I was just settling in behind a fig tree in my neighbor’s yard when I saw the open window. It looked like an attic window, maybe three feet high. Haywood must have used it to get on the roof and left it up. Even from as far back as I was hiding, I could see something moving in the darkness of the attic.

Mrs. Haywood? I thought.

Maybe she was okay. Maybe they were just a quirky couple. Roof aficionados.

A shadow, thin and crooked, stretched out from the window. Then it stretched farther, and farther, a smaller shadow at the end grasping for the roof.

Grasping.

There was enough moonlight that I was sure I was watching a searching hand attached to an arm at least five or six feet long. It bent and moved more joints than any human arm should have.

Haywood scrambled back from the appendage, moving higher up the roof. The arm withdrew into the attic window for a second before shooting out again, clawing at the closest tiles. Another arm followed, then another, and a third, and a fourth, spilling from the window like bait worms trying to crawl out of a jar.

“Fuck me,” I whispered.

Except, I must not have whispered, because Haywood’s head snapped in my direction at the same moment the arms disappeared into the attic. The old man didn’t say a word but waved me away frantically. The thin arms returned, pawing and scratching at the walls around the window. I heard a heavy sound like furniture dragged across a wooden floor, and then something was squeezing through the attic window. Or trying to squeeze.

Whatever was in the house was too large to get outside. Only a swollen dark lump of…material made it through the window. The four arms twitched violently before retracting along with the protruding mass. Haywood took a hesitant step down the roof but stopped, eyes locked on the window.

I stood in the middle of the old man’s yard under a bright-mooned sky next to a small fig tree, wondering if I was experiencing what insanity felt like.

Haywood turned to me and hissed, “Leave. Go.”

I ran, staring at the attic window until I was over the fence. An hour later, I was still awake in my kitchen with every nearby light on. Every door and window was locked. I’d checked each of them at least four times. Every few minutes, I would push a hole in the blinds so I could watch the fence bordering the Haywood’s property. I kept picturing long, knotted arms reaching over, dragging something heavy behind them.

Andi was having a sleepless night, too, it turned out. I heard her crying around two in the morning and spent the next four hours going through the familiar routine of comfort, bottle, rocking chair, sooth, despair, sleep, and repeat. Andi’s nursery window had large blinds and blackout curtains, so I didn’t notice the night dark gradually fading from the sky like a Polaroid resolving. I glanced at the clock when she was finally sleeping deeply and realized it was near dawn. A few minutes later, when I was sure that the sun must be up, I let out a breath and felt a knot of tension in my stomach relax.

Maybe whatever was in the Haywood’s attic couldn’t get out, but if it could, dealing with that during the day was infinitely better than confronting it in the dark.

I slept for a few hours that morning in the chair in Andi’s nursery but it was a fitful sleep full of dreams of reaching arms. Melissa shook my shoulder around nine.

“Your phone has been ringing,” she told me, handing it to me.

Melissa took Andi from her crib, cooing and thanking our daughter for sleeping in for once. I didn’t recognize the number from the four missed calls. Yawning, I called them back.

“Did you see her?” a man’s voice asked immediately after the first ring.

I felt the hairs go up on my arms. “Who is this? See who?”

“This is Jim Haywood. Your neighbor. Did you see my wife in the attic last night, Tony?”

I froze, not sure how to answer. Maybe I was still dreaming.

“Tony?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Haywood,” I said after a moment. “I’m a little sleep-deprived. New kid. So I’m slow today. Um…how did you get my number?”

“Your wife gave Rebecca and me both of your contact information a few weeks ago in case of an emergency.”

“Rebecca?” I asked.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Rebecca’s my wife. Or, well, it’s complicated. Can we chat in person? You can swing by here and I’ll make us lunch.”

I pictured those thin, grasping arms squeezing through the attic window. “I’m not sure…”

“It’s safe during the day,” Haywood promised quickly. “We can eat on the porch, in the sunshine. Rebecca is…she’s only up and moving after sunset.”

“What does that mean? What in the Hell is going on, Mr. Haywood?”

“Please, call me Jim. And come over as soon as you’re able. I’d like to explain what you saw last night.”

I couldn’t resist. Fifteen minutes later, I was showered, changed, and on my way over to Haywood’s house. I told Melissa that Jim had called and asked me for help changing a smoke alarm. Mel was proud of me for being neighborly.

“And please say hello to his wife for me,” she said as I walked out of the door. “Let her know we’re praying for her good health.”

Haywood had breakfast out when I arrived. It was a sunny day, and warm, but I still felt a chill stepping onto his screened in porch. His open front door revealed a well-lit house with big windows and, what seemed like, every lamp and light on inside.

“Good morning, come on in,” he told me as I climbed the porch steps.

Haywood was an old man of average height and build, with short, gray hair. There was a field of gray stubble on his face; not quite a beard but more than a five o’clock shadow. His eyes were dark blue, flanked by crow’s feet, and warm but they carried heavy bags underneath. Jim Haywood did not look like a man on speaking terms with a good night’s sleep.

“Good morning,” I told him, going through the screen door to the porch.

Haywood gestured toward the food and coffee laid out on a small table. There were hardboiled eggs, toast, bagels, fried potatoes, apples, oranges, and a plate piled high with bacon next to a full pot of coffee. All of it smelled wonderful.

“Have you had breakfast yet?” Haywood asked. “If not, please, help yourself.”

I did, generously. Jim sat with me at the table but didn’t eat, only pouring himself a cup of black coffee. He waited until I finished my first plate to chat. It didn’t take long; I hadn’t realized how hungry I was and I utterly obliterated four eggs and twice as much bacon.

“Hungry?” Haywood asked, smiling above his coffee.

I refilled the plate with potatoes and fruit. “Apparently. Sorry. New baby. We’ve been surviving mostly on casseroles from friends and DoorDash pizza.”

“No need to apologize. Eat as much as you’d like. I get groceries delivered every week and never manage to get through half of them so I appreciate your help trimming the stockpile.”

The morning was growing warmer. There was a thin smear of clouds in the sky but the sun seemed to be burning them away. A woodpecker somewhere nearby was tapping a tree, filling the neighborhood with the echo of that ricochet. It promised to be an unseasonably nice day. Still, any time I glanced at the upper floor of the Haywood’s house, I felt a chill remembering the arms.

Jim Haywood followed my eyes.

“You’re wondering about last night,” he said.

I swallowed the bite of apple I had in my mouth and nodded.

“And you probably want to know what I’ve been doing up on my roof at night,” Jim added.

Again, I nodded, not sure how to verbalize my confused and slippery thoughts.

Haywood sighed. “Every night for the last month, I’ve been climbing onto the roof to hide from my wife.”

I blinked but couldn’t think of anything to say. Jim continued, his voice calm and soft.

“That’s what you saw last night, Tony. That was my wife reaching out from the attic. She’s dead, you see, but I brought her back, and that was a terrible mistake. Because what came back wasn’t really my wife; it looks like my wife–well, it resembles my Rebecca–and it sounds like my wife, but it’s just some evil thing walking around in her skin. And it’s all my fault.”

I think half a slice of toast was hanging out of my mouth as I stared at the old man.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jim said.

“I don’t even know what I’m thinking,” I admitted.

“You’re thinking, ‘what does any of this have to do with hanging out on a roof all night?’”

“I…yeah, I mean, that’s one of the questions I have right now.”

Haywood poured himself another cup of coffee. “This might surprise you but I understand how crazy all of this sounds. If I were you, I’d struggle to make sense of any of it. That’s why I wanted you to come over. So I can show you.”

I felt another chill. It dawned on me that I might be living next to–and currently having breakfast with–an insane person. Sure, Haywood was calm, and his weathered face was honest and friendly, but plenty of psycho killers in history were probably calm and cheerful, whistling while they chopped their victims into chunks of easy-to-dispose of meat.

Haywood must have sensed my discomfort.

“Before you decide that I’m crazy,” he said, “there’s a video I’d like you to watch.”

I stood up. “You know, I’m sorry, I just remembered that I need to do a diaper run. Big hurry. Defcon four and all of that.”

I turned to leave.

“You saw something in the attic last night, didn’t you?” Haywood asked.

That stopped me.

“I’m not sure what I saw,” I said, not leaving but not sitting back down, either.

“You saw Rebecca–what she’s become–trying to drag me back into the house.”

“I saw…arms. A lot of arms. No offense, Jim, but for all I know, you could have a bunch of people trapped in your attic who were trying to signal for help.”

“I think you know that’s not true, Tony. I think you saw that there was nothing natural about the thing pawing at the roof with those long, long arms. Listen, you don’t have to come into the house if you don’t want to but will you wait here on the porch for five minutes while I get the video?”

“Uhh…alright. Okay. Just don’t come back with a butcher knife or a chainsaw or anything.”

Jim grinned. “Deal.”

I debated sprinting off the porch when he went inside his house but curiosity got the best of me. I sat at the small table and poured myself a second cup of coffee then waited. Haywood returned almost immediately. He was carrying a small, gray camcorder.

“I know everybody has a camera on their phone these days,” he said, setting the device on the table, “but I like something with weight to it.”

Jim opened the screen of the camera and angled it toward me, then pressed play. The screen was small and the image had the tell-tale green ting of nightvision, but I saw the video clearly. The camera was recording a static shot of a dark basement. I could make out a narrow staircase in the near background but not much else. The upper right corner of the video was partially obscured; I realized that the lens was being blocked by something in front of the camera, as if it was hidden.

“I recorded the entire night,” Jim said, sitting down across from me, “but fast-forwarded until right before it happens.”

“Before what happ-” I started to ask but then I saw.

The floor of the basement must have been dirt. A thin arm pushed up through the earth, followed by many, many more. The spindly limbs managed to haul a bloated mass of flesh roughly the size of a refrigerator out of the hole.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.

The creature turned, wobbling on a dozen shaking arms. A woman’s face stared out from the middle of the lump. Her features were stretched and distorted, her hair a balding, tangled clump but I recognized Mrs. Haywood.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, standing up so quickly I knocked over my chair. “What the…Christ…what the fuck is that?”

“Rebecca,” Jim said softly, looking up at me. “That’s what I did to my wife.”

The creature on the video suddenly snapped its head to look at the basement stairs. It moved faster than I could follow, a clumsy, ugly blur that took the steps two or three at a time. Only, instead of running on legs, it was dragging its bulk with a dozen thin arms.

Jim stopped the tape after the thing disappeared. He looked at me, waiting.

“Is this some weird prank?” I asked. “It’s not funny.”

“No, it’s not funny,” Jim agreed. “And it’s not a prank. Will you come with me? I can show you more and maybe, well, not explain things, exactly, but at least give you an idea of what’s going on.”

He walked toward his front door but I stayed standing on the porch.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said.

Haywood shrugged. “I understand if you want to leave. This is all a lot. Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m even telling you about Rebecca. No, that’s actually a lie. I know why I’m telling you and why I showed you the tape; this has been going on for weeks and I’m alone in it. When I saw you out there the other night watching me on the roof, the first thing I thought was, ‘at least I have some company that’s not trying to murder me.’”

The old man smiled then went inside his house, leaving the front door open. After a long, troubled moment, I followed him. Haywood’s house was clean, borderline immaculate. It was also cozy with thick rugs over hardwood floors, comfortable looking furniture, and big windows that allowed broad slashes of light to spill into every room.

“Nice place,” I said, trying to reintroduce some normalcy after the video.

“Thanks. I’ve been on a bit of a mad clean lately. Being stuck inside has me looking for anything to stave off the boredom.” Jim stopped in the middle of his living room. “Before we see the rest, would you like another cup of coffee? Or something stronger?”

“Stronger. Stronger would be good.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

We stood in the Haywood’s kitchen with a bottle of Four Roses between us and two short glasses. Jim plopped down a full tray of ice while I looked around. The kitchen was as pretty as the rest of the house. There were photos all over the refrigerator, nearly all of them of Jim with a woman I recognized as Rebecca Haywood. Unlike the thing in the video, the Rebecca in the pictures was kind-eyed, healthy, and constantly smiling. There were photographs from all over the world spanning at least a few decades based on the Haywoods’ ages.

Jim noticed me looking at the fridge. “Rebecca loved to travel. I liked to travel but Becky loved it, and I loved her, so we saw the world together.”

He dropped twice ice cubes in each of our glasses then added a long pour of bourbon behind the ice. We clinked glasses in a toast. The image of the bloated thing pulling itself out of the ground in the basement swam up in my mind; I nodded when Jim offered a second pour.

“You two look very happy,” I said.

“We were. That was all before Becky got sick. We couldn’t travel after that.”

Jim poured himself a third shot. I shook my head when he moved to my glass.

“Did you all have kids?” I asked.

“No. It wasn’t in the cards for us. But we had a full life, a good life, a life I wasn’t able to let go of when Becky was at the end of it. And now she and I are both suffering because of my weakness.”

Haywood was staring at the pictures while he talked; he turned away and finished his drink.

“Jim, what exactly happened? What in the Hell is going on?”

He sighed and gestured for me to take one of the stools near the kitchen’s breakfast nook.

“When it became obvious that Rebecca was coming to the end of it, I started looking for options outside of medicine. I found a bunch that were bullshit and one that was real, one that could keep her alive. But there was a price. And it was high. My poor Becky is the one stuck paying it all because I couldn’t imagine life without her.”

There were tears in Haywood’s eyes. He wiped at them with his sleeve then asked me to come with him to see Becky. I hesitated when we approached the basement but I was too curious to quit, so I followed the old man into the dark. For a moment, I lost sight of Jim as he went down the steps. Then there was a click and a single, bare lightbulb came to life. It cast deep shadows across the basement and the light barely reached the dirt floor.

“She’s there,” Haywood said, pointing at a patch of disturbed earth in the middle of the small room.

I stayed near the top of the stairs, ready to bolt in the event that Haywood was a psycho trying to lure me into the same trap he may have used to murder his wife. He must have sensed my anxiety, because we didn’t linger in the basement. Once we were back upstairs, Jim revealed the final piece of his bizarre show and tell: a box containing a candle, a few, small, carved figures, and a red book.

The book immediately made me uncomfortable, though there was nothing obviously sinister about it. The cover looked like faded leather and the book was roughly the size of a journal. But something about the object made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Still, for some reason, I desperately wanted to open it.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Jim asked. “Like some kind of magnetic effect coming off of that damn book that repulses and attracts you at the same time.”

“What is all of that?”

“Lifesupport,” Haywood said, his voice flat. “I tried, I don’t know how many internet rituals, tourist-trap spells, and prayed to any god or god-adjacent thing that would listen. Then, when Becky was standing with a foot already inside Death’s door, I found this book at a thrift store of all places. A church thrift store, if that matters, and I worry it might.”

I reached for the book but stopped with my fingers hovering above the scarlett cover. “What’s in the book?”

“Nothing good. Instructions. A way to keep someone who should be dead alive. But it changes, them, Tony. It makes them something new, and hard, and hateful. Hateful.”

Jim almost spat the last word. He was staring at the basement door. I pulled my hand back from the book.

“I know how all of this sounds,” Haywood said after a brief silence. “You probably think I’m crazy. Maybe even dangerous. But you saw, didn’t you, Tony? You saw Becky in the attic. She comes up every night from the basement. Every damn night.”

“One thing I don’t understand, Jim…well, there’s a lot I don’t understand here but one big thing is: why are you going on the roof? Why not just leave if your, eh, sort-of-but-not-really-dead wife is stalking you?”

Jim picked up the bottle from the table, poured another glass, but set it down before drinking.

“If I leave, then she will truly die,” he explained. “That was part of the ritual that’s keeping her from truly dying. As long as I don’t step foot outside of this house, Rebecca will stay alive. We are tied here, together.”

“You can’t leave at all?” I asked. “That seems…challenging.”

Haywood shrugged. “You can get everything delivered these days. Even my medicine comes right to my porch.”

“But how did you end up on the roof?”

“That first night after the ritual, I wasn’t sure if it worked. Becky was in bed, barely breathing, completely oblivious to the world. I thought she would die any moment and that the red book was just more bullshit. I fell asleep next to her for just a moment. When I opened my eyes again, she was missing from the bed. This was right around sunset. I searched the house in a panic but couldn’t find Rebecca anywhere. But there was a big patch of churned dirt down in the cellar.”

Jim was staring at the basement door. He took a drink from the glass of bourbon and I saw that his hand was shaking slightly.

“I stood there like a dummy in the basement for a few minutes,” Haywood continued. “Becky was hardly able to breathe; I didn’t see any way, or any reason, for her to bury her damn self like a fox digging a den. Before I could process it, hands–a lot of hands–began clawing their way out of the earth. I ran for the door but stopped when I remembered the condition of the ritual. I didn’t understand what was going on and wasn’t sure I could believe anything I was seeing, but one thought kept ringing loud in my mind: the ritual worked and my Rebecca was alive.

“So, instead of heading for the hills, I waited at the top of the basement stairs, praying that Becky would emerge whole and healthy and alive. What came out of the dirt, though…I knew immediately I’d done something terrible. Becky was twisted, pale, swollen, and wrong. She came out naked other than the dirt that was everywhere. Her skin was wet and raw like a snake just after shedding. And the arms, Jesus, Tony, they were pushing out from her while I was watching. Becky wasn’t Becky anymore; she wasn’t even human.

“But she was alive. She came after me moving much faster than anything that big should be able to move. I ran up the stairs, into the attic, and just managed to climb out onto the roof with her on my heels. Becky couldn’t fit out the window, thank God, so she just stayed in the attic and grabbed at me. Later in the night, she started to talk, and to try to entice me back into the house with a voice that sounded like a trashbag full of horseflies. Every night, it’s the same, and some nights I am tempted to listen to her, but I know it’s not her anymore, not really, and that she’ll kill me if she catches me.”

Hand still shaking, Haywood finished the drink and looked me in the eyes, waiting for my response.

“Jesus, Jim,” was all I could manage. “Jesus Christ.”

I wasn’t sure how much of his story I believed. I’d seen the reaching arms and the tape and the strange dirt in the basement but it was the nauseating vibe coming from the red book that I think convinced me he was being honest.

“Jesus,” I repeated. “If it’s that bad, if she’s that bad, why don’t you leave the house and end it?”

My neighbor let out a deep breath. “I consider doing just that every single day. But I can’t. I can’t, because then it would all be over and Rebecca would be dead and I’d be alone. At least, with the way it is now, I have some hope that she’ll eventually start sounding more like my Becky.”

“That doesn’t seem likely,” I said.

Jim smiled the saddest smile I’d ever seen. “No. No it doesn’t. But it’s not impossible.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess because I don’t have anyone else to tell and you’ve at least seen her.”

“You don’t have any family?”

“None living. The day after it happened, I did reach out to our parish priest. I was hoping he might have some advice or at least an explanation. But he wouldn’t even come inside the house. I figure he must have sensed something bad, something wrong. The fella just told me he forgot an appointment and asked me to give Rebecca his love. He didn’t know she was…”

Jim sobbed. He looked surprised at the sound but then the tears came and he was weeping. I’ve never been comfortable with emotions, mine or other people’s, but his hurt was so raw I felt an overwhelming wave of sympathy. Not sure what else to do, I pulled Jim into an awkward embrace. He began to pull back immediately but relaxed after a moment and cried while I weakly patted his back. I could smell bourbon on his breath and his shoulders felt much thinner than I expected.

“Sorry about that,” he said after a few moments, stepping out of the hug and wiping his eyes dry.

“It’s okay. I’m sorry there’s not more I can do for you.”

“You’ve done plenty just letting me talk. I know this is a damn weird situation but would you mind keeping our conversation between us?”

“Sure,” I promised, and it was an easy promise to make.

Who would believe me if I did try to tell them about Becky Haywood?

Jim walked me to the door. Before I left, an absurd thought struck me and managed to sneak out of my mouth before I could bite down.

“Would you mind if I sat up on the roof with you tonight?” I asked.

Haywood blinked. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“I think so. Yeah. If that’s alright with you.”

“Well, sure, the truth is, I wouldn’t half-mind the company. But what about your new kid?”

“Shoot, yeah. It is my night to wake up with her. Can I join you tomorrow?”

Jim grinned. “Works for me. I’m not going anywhere.”

And that was how my new hobby of spending two or three nights each week sitting on Jim Haywood’s roof. I would wait until Andi and Melissa were sleeping, grab a small cooler with some snacks and drinks and a camp chair, then head to my neighbor’s house. He told me where to find his ladder in the shed and gave me a key for both that and his house. We would shoot the breeze and stargaze and do our best to ignore the scratching and dragging wounds coming from below us in the house.

I usually only stayed for an hour or two since I couldn’t sacrifice too much sleep and still take care of Andi, but I think the time I did spend on the roof was a relief for Jim. We talked about our lives and our wives and sports and home renovations and a little bit of everything else. If we weren’t sitting on top of a house at night in late autumn, we might have been like any normal neighbors chatting across our lawns.

The rooftop talks would have been entirely pleasant if not for Rebecca. The first time I heard her speak I had to suppress an urge to run right off of the roof. Her raspy, buzzing voice came out as a barely intelligible croak drifting up from the attic window. She cooed and coughed and whispered to Jim, saying she was cold, she missed him, and that he should come back inside the house.

Whenever Becky would start talking, Haywood would stiffen and stare straight ahead. I tried not to picture the small attic window with the bloated, Rebecca-thing standing in the shadows, her arms held still and waiting to snatch Jim and drag him into the dark. At some point, the creature caught on that I was on the roof. She began talking to me, as well, asking me who I was and where I lived and begging for my help.

“Something is wrong,” she croaked one night. “I can’t find my husband? Can you help me, mister? Can you come here? Come here. COME HERE.”

She shrieked the last two words loud enough to startle a nearby owl into flight. The Rebecca-thing eventually would grow bored with her one-sided conversation and we would hear her dragging her bulk out of the attic and down into the house.

“This can’t go on forever,” I told Jim. “What are you going to do?”

The wind was up that night and we were both bundled against the cold. Haywood didn’t answer for a long time.

“Becky and I have our anniversary at the end of the week,” he said, finally. “On Friday. I will say goodbye to her that night, I will try one last time to have a conversation with the real Rebecca instead of that…thing wearing her skin. On Saturday morning, I will leave this house for good. I’ll let Becky die. I’ll let her go.”

“That’s good,” I said. “I’m surprised you’re doing it so soon but I think it’s the right thing. It’s not her down there, Jim.”

He nodded. “I know that. I’ve known that since the first night. But it still looks like Becky, well, more or less. I kept hoping that she might get better, even if just for a night, or an hour, or a minute. So I could say goodbye properly like I should have weeks ago. It’s clear to me now, though, that Becky is gone, even if what’s left of her body is still crawling around the house.” Jim turned in his folding chair to face me. “I have a confession to make, Tony. I fear I may have put you in danger by inviting you here.”

“What do you mean?”

“On the nights when I am up here alone, sometimes Rebecca asks about you. I think she’s watched you from the windows downstairs. She knows where you live. She asks about your family.”

My stomach twisted. “What does she ask about?”

“Everything. Little things that would be normal if the questions weren’t coming from…it.”

“Is my family in danger?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

Haywood shook his head. “No. Not as long as I stay in the house. She can’t leave if I’m here. But Tony, there’s a bit of the ritual I haven’t told you about yet. If I die before Rebecca, then she’ll be free.”

I shot up straight in my chair. “Christ, Jim. You mean free like she can roam around free? Like she can follow me home, free?”

A gravely laugh floated up from the attic. I realized that I’d raised my voice and Becky was listening to us.

“Follow you home,” she rasped, echoing me. “Follow, follow, follow. I want to meet the wife. I want to meet the baby. Why don’t you bring them to visit?”

“Go to Hell,” I spat in the direction of the attic window.

The Rebecca-thing responded by laughing. Then it was silent other than the scrape of so many fingernails pulling it across the attic’s wooden floor. I gave Jim a hard look.

“You have to leave the house. You have to leave tonight.”

“Tony…”

“Tonight,” I hissed. “Jim, it’s over.”

“She can’t leave, Tony. I just need one more night. One more chance to reach whatever is left of Becky. I have a plan. There’s another ritual in the red book. A kind of seance. I’ve avoided trying it because, if it fails, that’s it, but I’m ready to accept that. Give me tomorrow and then it’s done.”

I tried to convince him to let it go and to climb down the ladder with me but Jim was adamant that he needed one last anniversary with Becky. Briefly, I considered just throwing him off of the roof, so great was my fear that the thing in his house would come to mine, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I made him swear on Becky’s memory that it would be done after tomorrow night no matter what happened with his seance.

After he made the promise, I left him there on the roof. I went home, glancing over my shoulder again and again back at his house with its black windows and closed curtains. Once, I thought I saw a curtain twitch and I tried not to imagine eyes following me back home. When I was safely inside, I checked the locks on every door and window. Then I made a cup of coffee and sat in the kitchen for the rest of the night, with the largest, sharpest knife we owned close at hand.

I had breakfast ready when Melissa and Andi woke up. We were all a little bleary-eyed; me from my vigil and Mel and Andi from a touch of newborn sleep regression. Andi had been sleeping nearly throughout the night for weeks and we’d been spoiled by the peace but lately Andi had become restless and was irritable that morning. I wasn’t helping the environment; I was constantly fidgeting and checking the windows.

Melissa asked me if I would be okay with her and Andi visiting my in-laws for the day and staying overnight so the grandparents could take a shift. I thought that was a fantastic idea. We spent the morning together as a family. We had breakfast and went for a walk with little Andi bundled up tight in her stroller. The last leaves of the season were falling and the ground was bright with reds and oranges and yellows. Low clouds cast quick shadows on the ground but cleared up by noon leaving the day crisp but beautiful.

After Andi and Mel left, I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing the house and checking on the Haywoods. There wasn’t a single sign of life or movement from their property the entire day. I fell asleep sometime around two or three, exhaustion finally overtaking me. I woke up to the shrill ring of my phone going off.

I couldn’t find the phone at first. My eyes were sticky with sleep and I had to blink and rub them clear. It was dark out and, when I found my phone on the kitchen counter, I saw that it was a little after five. It was Jim calling. My pulse accelerated as I answered.

“Hello?”

“Tony, thank God.”

My neighbor sounded winded, his voice thin and stressed.

“Jim, what’s going-”

“No time,” he interrupted. “Please listen. I’m hurt.”

“Shit,” I said but let him continue.

“I tried the seance, Tony. I had to be in the house for it but I took precautions. I thought I was safe. But it tricked me. It made me think the seance worked and that I was talking to my Becky. It bit me. Christ, Tony, it bit me bad. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig.”

“Fuck,” I hissed. “Are you okay?”

Jim was breathing heavily. “No, I don’t think so. There’s a lot of blood. I managed to get away and to get into the big closet by the stairs. I’ve got the door locked and barricaded. Becky can’t get in but, Tony, the bite is deep. I saw her chew. Rip. Swallow. I’ve got pressure on it but I think I’m gone.”

“I’ll call 9-1-1,” I said.

“No! No. We’re out in the sticks here. It’s at least a fifteen minute response time. Maybe twenty. I’ll probably be unconscious in ten and dead not too long after that. I can’t die in this house, Tony. Do you understand? I can’t be here when I die. It’s been whispering to me. Even now, it’s on the other side of the door whispering. It knows I’m dying.”

“What is it saying?” I asked, my voice tight because I knew the answer.

“It’s going to hurt your family,” Jim said. He’d been stoic, if winded, the entire conversation until that point but he sobbed then. “Tony, I’m so, so sorry. I should have listened to you. Your wife, your poor baby…I’ve put you all in danger. I can’t die in this house.”

I took a shaky breath. “What should I do?”

“Get over here. Distract Rebecca. Try to get her to the back of the house. Then come find me. I’m right by the front door,” his voice was fading and I heard him suck in air trying to rally. “You have to be fast, Tony. Faster than you’ve ever been before. When you get her to the other side of the house, come to the front. I will move the barricade now. Call me when you’re ready and I’ll unlock the door. Then you have to drag me outside. It’s only six or seven steps but you’ll have to be quick. Go. Go.”

Haywood hung up and I was moving in the same instant. I went out of my front door at a sprint. The neighborhood was quiet, dark except for the lights shining through the windows of my neighbors. There were no lights on at the Haywood house, though.

I ran to the back of the property and stopped. There was no time for me to hesitate but, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of how to distract the Rebecca-thing. I considered throwing a rock through a back window but that would only grab her attention for a moment. By the time I ran around the house and entered through the front door, the monster might have returned to guard Jim.

Precious seconds ticked by until the sight of Jim’s ladder inspired me. It was still up against the house from the night before. A light drizzle was beginning to fall and I slipped twice but managed to climb to the attic window. I broke the glass with a rock I’d taken from Haywood’s landscaping, then kicked the shards free so I could jump inside. Just breaking the window might have been enough to get the monster’s attention but I wanted it to hear me moving above it, too.

It was dark inside the attic and my stomach went up to my throat as I hopped from the ladder into the house. I imagined the mutilated Mrs. Haywood waiting for me in the cramped loft, ready to wrap me in a dozen long arms. But the attic was empty other than cardboard boxes and old furniture. I took three hard steps, slamming my feet on the floorboards, then ran for the window.

I heard Rebecca howl from deep within the house, followed by the sound of something heavy and fast coming toward me. Once I was on the ladder, I slid down, nearly falling at the bottom but ultimately keeping my balance and momentum. I was around the Haywood’s house and at the front door in a blink. I used the key that Jim had given me and opened the door at the same moment that I dialed his phone.

“Please be ready, please be ready, please be ready,” I chanted under my breath, stepping into the house.

There were no lights on and I felt the first true ting of panic slide up my spine as I looked around the blackness of the living room. Rebecca Haywood could be anywhere and might reach out to hold me with rough, broken-nailed hands anytime.

“Jim,” I hissed, fumbling with my phone until the flashlight came on. “Come on.”

I saw the closet door in the beam of my phone’s light. Something was thumping upstairs, scratching and thudding directly above me.

“Jim,” I whispered loudly. “We have to go.”

The closet door was locked when I tried it. I dropped my phone on the ground, flashlight up, so I could tug at the handle with both hands.

Nothing.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” I said.

Jim must have passed out before he could unlock the door. I prayed that he’d at least moved the barricade out of the way and then I took three steps back and rammed my shoulder into the closet. I did it again and again but the old door was solid wood. I wasn’t doing any noticeable damage.

A terrible thought came then: what if Jim was already dead and the Rebecca-thing had left the house, searching for my wife and Andi. More thuds from overhead confirmed that the monster was still in the house.

Thumpthumpthumpthump

Something heavy above me was moving quickly. Rebecca was coming.

I made ready for one last mad rush at the door when I heard a faint click from the other side. The closet swung open. Haywood’s face was bone-white in the soft glow from my phone. His shirt was soaked with blood and he had a torn piece of cloth clamped tight to the side of his neck.

“We have to-” Jim began, trying to get to his feet.

His eyes rolled back and he collapsed before he could stand. The thuds from upstairs were getting louder. I tried to pick Jim up in a fireman’s carry but the old man was surprisingly heavy for his thin frame and completely dead weight. I settled for grabbing him under each shoulder and dragging him out of the closet, the heels of his feet sliding across the hardwood floor. He had dropped the makeshift compress when he passed out; a chunk of flesh the size of a deck of cards had been ripped from the space between Jim’s neck and left shoulder. It was spurting blood as I pulled him toward the front door.

Rebecca appeared at the top of the stairs just as we made it onto the porch. I could barely see her in the dark. My phone’s light threw off enough light for me to see her huge outline and all of the jagged shadows that jutted from her body like pins driven through a doll. She shrieked and I nearly dropped Jim and ran in blind panic. But somehow I held onto the dying old man and dragged us both across the porch as the nightmare in the house came crawling down the stairwell.

I hurled Jim and myself back at the last moment before grasping hands with dirty nails could wrap around his ankle. We fell down the steps and landed in the Haywood’s front yard in a tumble. At the same instant, the Rebecca-thing shrank back into the dark house and let loose a keening, far-too-human wail. She disappeared in the shadowy living room and did not follow us. The house was silent after that final scream.

“Jim, wake up,” I said, shaking his shoulder while pressing my hand to the horrible bite. “We’re safe. We’re okay now. Wake up.”

He never did.

Jim was still breathing when I began screaming for help. I wanted to call 9-1-1 but my phone was still in the Haywoods’ living room and I couldn’t bring myself to go into the house again, even though I was pretty sure that the Rebecca-thing was dead. Porch lights began popping on around me in the neighborhood. I heard Jim’s last, rattling breath. I’ll never forget that sound, just like I’ll never forget the look on his face after he stopped breathing.

Jim Haywood looked peaceful, like he was sleeping.

The rest of the night is a blur. Other neighbors came out and tried to help. Whenever they asked what happened, I just said that I didn’t know, that I’d heard a scream and found Haywood in the yard. Someone called the police and an ambulance. I warned the officers that I thought someone dangerous might be inside. Two cops entered the house and were back outside in less than a minute looking pale and terrified. I heard them call in backup and soon enough the neighborhood was swarming with police.

I was repeating my statement to the third detective I’d spoken to that night when the black SUVs rolled in. Serious looking men and women in dark blue suits poured from the vehicles. Two of the suits asked to speak with me privately in my house where they took my statement. After I finished giving them the same story I’d shared with the cops, they politely, but firmly, told me they knew I was bullshitting them and that I should tell them the truth, no matter how strange it seemed.

So I did.

They took in the mad tale stoically, taking occasional notes. I noticed both of the officials–I knew they had to be some kind of government spooks–had white rabbit lapel pins fixed on their dark blue suits. When I finished relating the events starting from the first time I saw Jim Haywood on his roof and ending with his death, my two interrogators thanked me and then suggested, again politely but with just a hint of a menace, that I not repeat my story to anyone. The police would not be asking me any more questions, they promised, and I would be left alone.

They were right.

A third blue suit returned my phone and advised me to call my wife but to only give her the official story about finding Jim already dying in the yard.

Melissa and Andi rushed home. I wanted to hug them both but I still had Haywood’s blood on me so instead, I held Mel’s hand while she rocked Andi. The blue suits continued fluttering in and out of the Haywoods. I saw one who was wearing gloves remove a black, plastic bag from the house. Without being able to see what was in the bag, I still knew with absolute certainty that it was the red book.

I shivered. Melissa squeezed my hand.

“You can go get cleaned up,” one of the blue suits told me. “We know where to find you if we need you.”

How to build a haunted house

The Woman in the Woods

Homebody

How to build
a haunted
house