Encounter

For the next few weeks, nothing much happened. My mom had tried to enroll us in the local school, but it was already out for summer. They told her they’d just go ahead and advance us to the next grade levels when school started up in the fall, which meant I’d be trekking the fifteen miles to Whispering Hollows High for my senior year, and Grayson would at least spend the start of her sophomore year there. I knew she was still trying to figure out a way to go back home. I wanted to go back as well, but I had resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to finish high school first.

Maybe they had an advanced program here where I could graduate after the first semester of my senior year and start college in January. I had decided to look into that. But as the days got longer and warmer, and the forest somehow seemed even more alive, I was glad not to have any school work to worry about. 

Gray spent almost all of her time in her room, talking to her friends however she could get them. If she had a signal, she was on her phone FaceTiming them. If she didn’t have enough bars for that, she was texting or using some other messenger app. While I did check in with Vicky and Maria at least once a day, the longer I stayed at Grandma’s house, the more the forest seemed to call to me.

I’m not sure why that is. It was subtle at first. I hadn’t noticed just how frequently I’d find myself outside in the yard until Max said to me one day when I was headed out the back door, “See you for super.” I’d paused in the doorway and looked at him. He was right. I had been spending nearly the whole day outside for at least the last week. I hadn’t taken a snack with me, just filled up my bottle of water, but I hadn’t noticed I’d been out past lunch. I decided he was right--if I was going to be out there, I needed to take a snack and pocketed an apple out of Grandma’s fruit bowl. If my mom was doing the shopping, we would’ve had something else I’d rather take--granola bars, chips, something like that, but Grandma was very particular about the food she picked up at the market in town every two weeks and wouldn’t budge much, not even when Gray nearly through a screaming fit about getting her favorite cereal. Grandma was set in her ways, despite the fact that Mom and Max were chipping in on the bills since there were so many of us.

Why some things were bothering Grayson so completely, and I didn’t care, I couldn’t say, but when I was out in the woods, I was able to lose myself in my thoughts and nothing bothered me anymore, not the move, not the new rules, or the threat of graduating from a weird school. All I wanted to do was walk around in the woods, staring at the beautiful flowers that sprang up in the strangest places, listening to the vibrant birds calling from the trees and fluttering around, and sitting on a stump in the shade, closing my eyes and feeling the call of nature all around me.

I remembered what Grandma had said about keeping the house in view. For the first several days, I did just that. I didn’t go anywhere without making sure I could see the house. But then… during the middle of our second week there, when I’d spent hours in the woods, I decided it would be okay to go just a little further, so long as I could keep a specific tree in my sights, one with a crooked trunk that protruded a little to the left that I knew was right in the line of sight of Grandma’s house. I ventured away from there a few times, keeping the tree in my sights, but I never went anywhere that I couldn’t see my new landmark from, not until the beginning of the third week of our stay. Then, something came over me that I just couldn’t fight.

I was sitting on a stump near a new patch of flowers I’d found since I strayed to the other side of the tree, looking at the beautiful white blooms with golden tassels protruding from their centers when a familiar sound hit my ear.

I’d heard it every day since I’d started coming to the woods, though not always at the same time. Sometimes, it was just for a few minutes. Other times, it went on for hours. Sometimes it was loud. Other times, it sounded so far away, I could barely hear it. But I could always feel it. The thump, thump, thumping in my chest, just as I had the first time I’d heard it on my first trip into the woods. It sounded like someone chopping wood.

That day, a Tuesday, just a little after two o’clock in the afternoon, according to the watch I’d taken to wearing since I saw no reason to dig my phone out of my pocket every few minutes when there was no signal anyway, I heard the thumping again, but rather than tuning it out or waiting for it to finish, this time, I decided to see if I could figure out where it was coming from.

Leaving my tree was a little frightening. I realized I couldn’t possibly walk to another house and still be able to see Grandma’s cottage or the tree I’d marked as my new landmark. No, if I was going to find the origin of the sound, I’d have to walk deeper into the woods, so I’d be forced to find other posts, other trees or stumps or plants, to help direct me back home. As I went along, I tried to notice unusual growth in the trees or particularly vibrant plants and give these names that I could remember in order so as to find my way back to Grandma’s house. I knew it was dangerous and I was probably not following my grandma’s instructions to the letter, but today, the thumping seemed to be calling to me, and I needed to see what it was and where it was coming from.

In the back of my mind, I imagined an old man, hunched in the back, with gray hair and a pipe protruding from his mouth, standing outside of a little log cabin, taking a little time each day to make sure he had enough wood for winter. I figured I’d stand on the perimeter of the woods and look at him for a moment before fading away between the trees. I’d follow my path home, and the next time I heard the thumping in the woods, I’d know exactly who it was. My curiosity satisfied, there’d be no reason for me to go out again.

It seemed like a logical plan, so as I made my way through the trees, finding my landmarks and listening to the sounds grow louder, I filled out the imagine in my mind, even adding a curl of smoke coming from the chimney where he was cooking a stew for his evening meal, and a lame, old hound dog for his companion.

I had the sweatshirt I’d gotten for my birthday tied around my waist in case it got chilly, as it did sometimes in the forest. As I walked deeper into the woods, I realized I was starting to shiver a little, so I put it on over my white T-shirt and pulled it down. It was a little big so it covered most of the top of my jeans, but that was okay. It was so comfortable, I was glad it was cool enough to wear it. I rested the hood on the back of my head and slipped my hands in the pockets, wondering what the old man would call his dog. Probably Copper or Rascal or something like that.

So lost in my own imagination was I that I didn’t realize I’d come to a clearing until the trees stopped. The noise I’d been following was so loud now, I knew whoever was making it had to be in this clearing. I could smell smoke from a wood burning stove, and between the thumps of what had to be an axe, I could hear the occasional deep breath.

I expected to have to look around to find the person in the clearing, but that wasn’t what happened at all. As soon as I stepped from between the trees, I saw him. My mouth dropped open as I took him in. He wasn’t an old man, not even in the least. He was young, maybe my age or slightly older, with dark hair and a muscular frame. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans and had paused to wipe his brow with the back of his hand when I stepped out from between the trees right across from him.

It was his eyes that I noticed most of all. They were the most dazzling sapphire blue. My eyes are also blue, but they are more of a stormy grayish blue color. I had to imagine his would glow in the dark, they were so bright. I couldn’t miss them--they were trained right on me, wide with surprise as he took me in.

I thought he might say something, might call to me, ask me who I was and what I was doing there. The house behind him, larger than Grandma’s, two-stories with several windows and an attached garage, was much nicer than what I was expecting. There was no old hound dog, no old man, no pipe, no nothing like anything I’d constructed. Just this young man looking at me, an intruder who’d materialized out of the woods to stare at him. 

As soon as he opened his mouth to say something to me, I did the only thing that made any sense at all. I turned around and began to run.