u/Aggressive_Big3236

Part 3

After Mama died, Dad couldn’t take care of us and work full time. Junie and I ended up in the foster system. As much as we wanted to stay together, everyone said nobody would want two boys. They were right. So Junie and I were split up.

I tried to write to him, but I couldn’t find his address. He kept bouncing around between homes. I ended up in a city, with the only wilderness around being perfectly curated parks with trees that didn’t bleed and woodpeckers that sounded normal. I got into a routine. I didn’t make many friends. I didn’t get in many fights.

The next time I saw Junie, his face was on a missing poster in an inner city Walmart. My blood ran cold as his school photo looked back at me from a wall of other missing kids. It was the most recent one on the board. He had run away three months ago from his foster home, about an hour away from where we grew up.

I thought things couldn’t get worse. When I had just talked myself into hoping Junie was somewhere safe and sound, living his best life, a letter and a box showed up.

Dad was dead. They had found him on the back porch in the same chair Mama had died in. I wondered if he had the same marks on his wrists and neck that she had.

The box was the belongings he had left for me. On the top of a few bottles of aftershave and some brown paper bags was a white envelope smudged with grease. It held a note from my dad.

“Willard,

Everything I did, I did for you and Junie. To protect you from the monster. Don’t come back here.”

Also in the envelope was several thousand dollars in cash. Must have been what Dad had left.

Life found a new painful normal to be lived at. I didn’t have aspirations to do anything. I ended up joining a boxing gym just to feel something. Four years passed in a haze of flying fists and silent evenings.

I had gotten home from the gym one night after taking a particularly bad shot to the nose, dripping blood all over the seats of my beater car, when I found two detectives waiting for me at my door.

Detective Biaz and Romero were with the state police. I let them in, more concerned about dripping blood on the carpet of my apartment than anything. 

When I finally got my nose plugged with a towel, we sat in the living room.

“Willard, when was the last time you saw your brother?” said Detective Biaz.

“When I was a kid. Like, fall of fifth grade. That’s when Mama died.”

“Did you ever have contact with him before his disappearance?”

“No. I couldn’t ever find his address.”

“Did you ever have any contact with your father before his death?”

“No, don’t think so.”

The detectives looked at each other like they were about to say something important.

“Willard, are you aware of a series of disappearances that took place around your hometown growing up?”

“No. I mean, what do you mean by disappearances?”

“People would go missing. Hikers. Call girls. Homeless people. You ever hear anything about that?”

“No. Junie and I didn’t have any way to read the news. Did you ever find any of these people?”

Biaz looked at Romero and breathed deeply. “We did.”

“They were murdered,” Romero said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But what’s this got to do with Junie?”

Romero sat forward. “Maybe it’s best we tell you what we know.”

“For the past twenty-five years, people have gone missing in the Tri-county area around your hometown. Like I said, they were usually people in a bad spot who went missing in a remote place. People would call and report them in, we’d send out a search team, nothing would turn up.”

There was a feeling in my gut like someone had just pulled the plug in the tub. Biaz spoke up. “You know what happened to your house after your dad died?”

“No.”

“They auctioned off the land to a development company. That company tore down the house and carved up the land into a bunch of suburban cul de sacs. They got the levee rebuilt.

The police started to get calls complaining about a stink in the grove of dead trees. They went out there, but the smell was so come-and-go they couldn’t ever find anything. The development company brought in a tree removal service to cut all the dead trees down. It was pretty quick work.”

“They found something?”

“One of their woodchippers got clogged. There was a human skull stuck in it.”

That day in the tree rushed back, and the bugs were crawling on my skin as I stared into dead eyes, pleading for it all to be a dream.

“We found the remains of fifty one people shoved into the hollows of different rotting trees. Broken necks, broken bones, signs of a struggle, blunt force trauma to the head. We traced them to missing persons with dental records.”

Romero gave it a second, then continued. “Some of those bodies were from when you were a kid. Do you remember anything from around then that might explain that?”

My mouth was dry. Every rational part of my brain ridiculed me like the kids in grade school as I whispered “The Skunk Ape.”

Biaz and Romero looked at each other. “You know about that murder?” said Biaz.

“What?”

“The Skunk Ape killing?”

“No- I- what is that?”

Biaz started. “About twenty years ago, two young women went missing off some trails around your hometown. They found them about two hundred yards off the path, covered in branches and sticks. Broken bones, broken necks, blunt force trauma to the head. Got nicknamed the Skunk Ape murders by the cops. They said the smell was terrible.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“The manner of death was similar to the victims in the grove. We had thought there might be a connection to a serial murderer.”

I just sat in silence trying to think. I didn’t want to ask the next question. “So what happened to Junie?”

Romero looked down at his shoes. “He ran away and from what we can tell, headed back to your hometown.”

Biaz spoke. “I’m sorry Willard. They found his body two weeks ago in an old oak tree.”

It was like I already knew it. I didn’t know if I should cry because he was gone or laugh because my gut had been right. The world split in two. I sat in silence.

The detectives left after that, saying they’d follow up in the next few days. Minutes stretched into hours in the dead silence of my apartment, only broken by the steady drip of the blood from my nose onto the carpet. It smelled like iron. It made me think of Dad. 

I went to my room and fished the box he had sent out of the closet. I hadn’t looked in it after I read the note and pocketed the cash. I pulled out a bottle of aftershave. The warm spicy smell wafted into the room when I unscrewed the cap. I sat in the familiar scent, thinking of a time when it meant safety for me and Junie. When I had somebody.

I looked in the box and fished out one of the items wrapped in brown paper. Unwrapping it, I turned the black and leather goggles over in my hands. A yellow glint caught the lens as I set them to the side.

The weight of the next item surprised me as I felt the textured grip through the paper. I unsheathed the handgun from its hiding place. There were spots of rust across the cool black barrel. Brass glistened in the magazine of seven like gold teeth.

Something rattled in the bottom of the box under more paper. A pill bottle. One of Mama’s, a painkiller for a disease she didn’t have. I unscrewed the lid. Out tumbled a little piece of metal. It was Junie’s necklace made of nails.

It was like I was there. Wading through the prairie grass no longer over our heads. My brother, older. The look in his eyes was determined as it reflected a lighter’s flame in the starless night. He had to know if what we had seen was real. If trees truly bled. If those yellow eyes were human. If there were bodies in the trees. 

As he stood at the edge of the grove, he didn’t hear the monster creep up behind him. A gunshot like a woodknock took him in the back. And the Skunk Ape Killer removed what I had mistaken for welding goggles all those years ago to look over the body of his son, bleeding into the grove.

My father was the Skunk Ape Killer. Now everything I know smells like death.

Part 3

After Mama died, Dad couldn’t take care of us and work full time. Junie and I ended up in the foster system. As much as we wanted to stay together, everyone said nobody would want two boys. They were right. So Junie and I were split up.

I tried to write to him, but I couldn’t find his address. He kept bouncing around between homes. I ended up in a city, with the only wilderness around being perfectly curated parks with trees that didn’t bleed and woodpeckers that sounded normal. I got into a routine. I didn’t make many friends. I didn’t get in many fights.

The next time I saw Junie, his face was on a missing poster in an inner city Walmart. My blood ran cold as his school photo looked back at me from a wall of other missing kids. It was the most recent one on the board. He had run away three months ago from his foster home, about an hour away from where we grew up.

I thought things couldn’t get worse. When I had just talked myself into hoping Junie was somewhere safe and sound, living his best life, a letter and a box showed up.

Dad was dead. They had found him on the back porch in the same chair Mama had died in. I wondered if he had the same marks on his wrists and neck that she had.

The box was the belongings he had left for me. On the top of a few bottles of aftershave and some brown paper bags was a white envelope smudged with grease. It held a note from my dad.

“Willard,

Everything I did, I did for you and Junie. To protect you from the monster. Don’t come back here.”

Also in the envelope was several thousand dollars in cash. Must have been what Dad had left.

Life found a new painful normal to be lived at. I didn’t have aspirations to do anything. I ended up joining a boxing gym just to feel something. Four years passed in a haze of flying fists and silent evenings.

I had gotten home from the gym one night after taking a particularly bad shot to the nose, dripping blood all over the seats of my beater car, when I found two detectives waiting for me at my door.

Detective Biaz and Romero were with the state police. I let them in, more concerned about dripping blood on the carpet of my apartment than anything. 

When I finally got my nose plugged with a towel, we sat in the living room.

“Willard, when was the last time you saw your brother?” said Detective Biaz.

“When I was a kid. Like, fall of fifth grade. That’s when Mama died.”

“Did you ever have contact with him before his disappearance?”

“No. I couldn’t ever find his address.”

“Did you ever have any contact with your father before his death?”

“No, don’t think so.”

The detectives looked at each other like they were about to say something important.

“Willard, are you aware of a series of disappearances that took place around your hometown growing up?”

“No. I mean, what do you mean by disappearances?”

“People would go missing. Hikers. Call girls. Homeless people. You ever hear anything about that?”

“No. Junie and I didn’t have any way to read the news. Did you ever find any of these people?”

Biaz looked at Romero and breathed deeply. “We did.”

“They were murdered,” Romero said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But what’s this got to do with Junie?”

Romero sat forward. “Maybe it’s best we tell you what we know.”

“For the past twenty-five years, people have gone missing in the Tri-county area around your hometown. Like I said, they were usually people in a bad spot who went missing in a remote place. People would call and report them in, we’d send out a search team, nothing would turn up.”

There was a feeling in my gut like someone had just pulled the plug in the tub. Biaz spoke up. “You know what happened to your house after your dad died?”

“No.”

“They auctioned off the land to a development company. That company tore down the house and carved up the land into a bunch of suburban cul de sacs. They got the levee rebuilt.

The police started to get calls complaining about a stink in the grove of dead trees. They went out there, but the smell was so come-and-go they couldn’t ever find anything. The development company brought in a tree removal service to cut all the dead trees down. It was pretty quick work.”

“They found something?”

“One of their woodchippers got clogged. There was a human skull stuck in it.”

That day in the tree rushed back, and the bugs were crawling on my skin as I stared into dead eyes, pleading for it all to be a dream.

“We found the remains of fifty one people shoved into the hollows of different rotting trees. Broken necks, broken bones, signs of a struggle, blunt force trauma to the head. We traced them to missing persons with dental records.”

Romero gave it a second, then continued. “Some of those bodies were from when you were a kid. Do you remember anything from around then that might explain that?”

My mouth was dry. Every rational part of my brain ridiculed me like the kids in grade school as I whispered “The Skunk Ape.”

Biaz and Romero looked at each other. “You know about that murder?” said Biaz.

“What?”

“The Skunk Ape killing?”

“No- I- what is that?”

Biaz started. “About twenty years ago, two young women went missing off some trails around your hometown. They found them about two hundred yards off the path, covered in branches and sticks. Broken bones, broken necks, blunt force trauma to the head. Got nicknamed the Skunk Ape murders by the cops. They said the smell was terrible.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“The manner of death was similar to the victims in the grove. We had thought there might be a connection to a serial murderer.”

I just sat in silence trying to think. I didn’t want to ask the next question. “So what happened to Junie?”

Romero looked down at his shoes. “He ran away and from what we can tell, headed back to your hometown.”

Biaz spoke. “I’m sorry Willard. They found his body two weeks ago in an old oak tree.”

It was like I already knew it. I didn’t know if I should cry because he was gone or laugh because my gut had been right. The world split in two. I sat in silence.

The detectives left after that, saying they’d follow up in the next few days. Minutes stretched into hours in the dead silence of my apartment, only broken by the steady drip of the blood from my nose onto the carpet. It smelled like iron. It made me think of Dad. 

I went to my room and fished the box he had sent out of the closet. I hadn’t looked in it after I read the note and pocketed the cash. I pulled out a bottle of aftershave. The warm spicy smell wafted into the room when I unscrewed the cap. I sat in the familiar scent, thinking of a time when it meant safety for me and Junie. When I had somebody.

I looked in the box and fished out one of the items wrapped in brown paper. Unwrapping it, I turned the black and leather goggles over in my hands. A yellow glint caught the lens as I set them to the side.

The weight of the next item surprised me as I felt the textured grip through the paper. I unsheathed the handgun from its hiding place. There were spots of rust across the cool black barrel. Brass glistened in the magazine of seven like gold teeth.

Something rattled in the bottom of the box under more paper. A pill bottle. One of Mama’s, a painkiller for a disease she didn’t have. I unscrewed the lid. Out tumbled a little piece of metal. It was Junie’s necklace made of nails.

It was like I was there. Wading through the prairie grass no longer over our heads. My brother, older. The look in his eyes was determined as it reflected a lighter’s flame in the starless night. He had to know if what we had seen was real. If trees truly bled. If those yellow eyes were human. If there were bodies in the trees. 

As he stood at the edge of the grove, he didn’t hear the monster creep up behind him. A gunshot like a woodknock took him in the back. And the Skunk Ape Killer removed what I had mistaken for welding goggles all those years ago to look over the body of his son, bleeding into the grove.

My father was the Skunk Ape Killer. Now everything I know smells like death.

Part 3

After Mama died, Dad couldn’t take care of us and work full time. Junie and I ended up in the foster system. As much as we wanted to stay together, everyone said nobody would want two boys. They were right. So Junie and I were split up.

I tried to write to him, but I couldn’t find his address. He kept bouncing around between homes. I ended up in a city, with the only wilderness around being perfectly curated parks with trees that didn’t bleed and woodpeckers that sounded normal. I got into a routine. I didn’t make many friends. I didn’t get in many fights.

The next time I saw Junie, his face was on a missing poster in an inner city Walmart. My blood ran cold as his school photo looked back at me from a wall of other missing kids. It was the most recent one on the board. He had run away three months ago from his foster home, about an hour away from where we grew up.

I thought things couldn’t get worse. When I had just talked myself into hoping Junie was somewhere safe and sound, living his best life, a letter and a box showed up.

Dad was dead. They had found him on the back porch in the same chair Mama had died in. I wondered if he had the same marks on his wrists and neck that she had.

The box was the belongings he had left for me. On the top of a few bottles of aftershave and some brown paper bags was a white envelope smudged with grease. It held a note from my dad.

“Willard,

Everything I did, I did for you and Junie. To protect you from the monster. Don’t come back here.”

Also in the envelope was several thousand dollars in cash. Must have been what Dad had left.

Life found a new painful normal to be lived at. I didn’t have aspirations to do anything. I ended up joining a boxing gym just to feel something. Four years passed in a haze of flying fists and silent evenings.

I had gotten home from the gym one night after taking a particularly bad shot to the nose, dripping blood all over the seats of my beater car, when I found two detectives waiting for me at my door.

Detective Biaz and Romero were with the state police. I let them in, more concerned about dripping blood on the carpet of my apartment than anything. 

When I finally got my nose plugged with a towel, we sat in the living room.

“Willard, when was the last time you saw your brother?” said Detective Biaz.

“When I was a kid. Like, fall of fifth grade. That’s when Mama died.”

“Did you ever have contact with him before his disappearance?”

“No. I couldn’t ever find his address.”

“Did you ever have any contact with your father before his death?”

“No, don’t think so.”

The detectives looked at each other like they were about to say something important.

“Willard, are you aware of a series of disappearances that took place around your hometown growing up?”

“No. I mean, what do you mean by disappearances?”

“People would go missing. Hikers. Call girls. Homeless people. You ever hear anything about that?”

“No. Junie and I didn’t have any way to read the news. Did you ever find any of these people?”

Biaz looked at Romero and breathed deeply. “We did.”

“They were murdered,” Romero said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But what’s this got to do with Junie?”

Romero sat forward. “Maybe it’s best we tell you what we know.”

“For the past twenty-five years, people have gone missing in the Tri-county area around your hometown. Like I said, they were usually people in a bad spot who went missing in a remote place. People would call and report them in, we’d send out a search team, nothing would turn up.”

There was a feeling in my gut like someone had just pulled the plug in the tub. Biaz spoke up. “You know what happened to your house after your dad died?”

“No.”

“They auctioned off the land to a development company. That company tore down the house and carved up the land into a bunch of suburban cul de sacs. They got the levee rebuilt.

The police started to get calls complaining about a stink in the grove of dead trees. They went out there, but the smell was so come-and-go they couldn’t ever find anything. The development company brought in a tree removal service to cut all the dead trees down. It was pretty quick work.”

“They found something?”

“One of their woodchippers got clogged. There was a human skull stuck in it.”

That day in the tree rushed back, and the bugs were crawling on my skin as I stared into dead eyes, pleading for it all to be a dream.

“We found the remains of fifty one people shoved into the hollows of different rotting trees. Broken necks, broken bones, signs of a struggle, blunt force trauma to the head. We traced them to missing persons with dental records.”

Romero gave it a second, then continued. “Some of those bodies were from when you were a kid. Do you remember anything from around then that might explain that?”

My mouth was dry. Every rational part of my brain ridiculed me like the kids in grade school as I whispered “The Skunk Ape.”

Biaz and Romero looked at each other. “You know about that murder?” said Biaz.

“What?”

“The Skunk Ape killing?”

“No- I- what is that?”

Biaz started. “About twenty years ago, two young women went missing off some trails around your hometown. They found them about two hundred yards off the path, covered in branches and sticks. Broken bones, broken necks, blunt force trauma to the head. Got nicknamed the Skunk Ape murders by the cops. They said the smell was terrible.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“The manner of death was similar to the victims in the grove. We had thought there might be a connection to a serial murderer.”

I just sat in silence trying to think. I didn’t want to ask the next question. “So what happened to Junie?”

Romero looked down at his shoes. “He ran away and from what we can tell, headed back to your hometown.”

Biaz spoke. “I’m sorry Willard. They found his body two weeks ago in an old oak tree.”

It was like I already knew it. I didn’t know if I should cry because he was gone or laugh because my gut had been right. The world split in two. I sat in silence.

The detectives left after that, saying they’d follow up in the next few days. Minutes stretched into hours in the dead silence of my apartment, only broken by the steady drip of the blood from my nose onto the carpet. It smelled like iron. It made me think of Dad. 

I went to my room and fished the box he had sent out of the closet. I hadn’t looked in it after I read the note and pocketed the cash. I pulled out a bottle of aftershave. The warm spicy smell wafted into the room when I unscrewed the cap. I sat in the familiar scent, thinking of a time when it meant safety for me and Junie. When I had somebody.

I looked in the box and fished out one of the items wrapped in brown paper. Unwrapping it, I turned the black and leather goggles over in my hands. A yellow glint caught the lens as I set them to the side.

The weight of the next item surprised me as I felt the textured grip through the paper. I unsheathed the handgun from its hiding place. There were spots of rust across the cool black barrel. Brass glistened in the magazine of seven like gold teeth.

Something rattled in the bottom of the box under more paper. A pill bottle. One of Mama’s, a painkiller for a disease she didn’t have. I unscrewed the lid. Out tumbled a little piece of metal. It was Junie’s necklace made of nails.

It was like I was there. Wading through the prairie grass no longer over our heads. My brother, older. The look in his eyes was determined as it reflected a lighter’s flame in the starless night. He had to know if what we had seen was real. If trees truly bled. If those yellow eyes were human. If there were bodies in the trees. 

As he stood at the edge of the grove, he didn’t hear the monster creep up behind him. A gunshot like a woodknock took him in the back. And the Skunk Ape Killer removed what I had mistaken for welding goggles all those years ago to look over the body of his son, bleeding into the grove.

My father was the Skunk Ape Killer. Now everything I know smells like death.

Part 3

After Mama died, Dad couldn’t take care of us and work full time. Junie and I ended up in the foster system. As much as we wanted to stay together, everyone said nobody would want two boys. They were right. So Junie and I were split up.

I tried to write to him, but I couldn’t find his address. He kept bouncing around between homes. I ended up in a city, with the only wilderness around being perfectly curated parks with trees that didn’t bleed and woodpeckers that sounded normal. I got into a routine. I didn’t make many friends. I didn’t get in many fights.

The next time I saw Junie, his face was on a missing poster in an inner city Walmart. My blood ran cold as his school photo looked back at me from a wall of other missing kids. It was the most recent one on the board. He had run away three months ago from his foster home, about an hour away from where we grew up.

I thought things couldn’t get worse. When I had just talked myself into hoping Junie was somewhere safe and sound, living his best life, a letter and a box showed up.

Dad was dead. They had found him on the back porch in the same chair Mama had died in. I wondered if he had the same marks on his wrists and neck that she had.

The box was the belongings he had left for me. On the top of a few bottles of aftershave and some brown paper bags was a white envelope smudged with grease. It held a note from my dad.

“Willard,

Everything I did, I did for you and Junie. To protect you from the monster. Don’t come back here.”

Also in the envelope was several thousand dollars in cash. Must have been what Dad had left.

Life found a new painful normal to be lived at. I didn’t have aspirations to do anything. I ended up joining a boxing gym just to feel something. Four years passed in a haze of flying fists and silent evenings.

I had gotten home from the gym one night after taking a particularly bad shot to the nose, dripping blood all over the seats of my beater car, when I found two detectives waiting for me at my door.

Detective Biaz and Romero were with the state police. I let them in, more concerned about dripping blood on the carpet of my apartment than anything. 

When I finally got my nose plugged with a towel, we sat in the living room.

“Willard, when was the last time you saw your brother?” said Detective Biaz.

“When I was a kid. Like, fall of fifth grade. That’s when Mama died.”

“Did you ever have contact with him before his disappearance?”

“No. I couldn’t ever find his address.”

“Did you ever have any contact with your father before his death?”

“No, don’t think so.”

The detectives looked at each other like they were about to say something important.

“Willard, are you aware of a series of disappearances that took place around your hometown growing up?”

“No. I mean, what do you mean by disappearances?”

“People would go missing. Hikers. Call girls. Homeless people. You ever hear anything about that?”

“No. Junie and I didn’t have any way to read the news. Did you ever find any of these people?”

Biaz looked at Romero and breathed deeply. “We did.”

“They were murdered,” Romero said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But what’s this got to do with Junie?”

Romero sat forward. “Maybe it’s best we tell you what we know.”

“For the past twenty-five years, people have gone missing in the Tri-county area around your hometown. Like I said, they were usually people in a bad spot who went missing in a remote place. People would call and report them in, we’d send out a search team, nothing would turn up.”

There was a feeling in my gut like someone had just pulled the plug in the tub. Biaz spoke up. “You know what happened to your house after your dad died?”

“No.”

“They auctioned off the land to a development company. That company tore down the house and carved up the land into a bunch of suburban cul de sacs. They got the levee rebuilt.

The police started to get calls complaining about a stink in the grove of dead trees. They went out there, but the smell was so come-and-go they couldn’t ever find anything. The development company brought in a tree removal service to cut all the dead trees down. It was pretty quick work.”

“They found something?”

“One of their woodchippers got clogged. There was a human skull stuck in it.”

That day in the tree rushed back, and the bugs were crawling on my skin as I stared into dead eyes, pleading for it all to be a dream.

“We found the remains of fifty one people shoved into the hollows of different rotting trees. Broken necks, broken bones, signs of a struggle, blunt force trauma to the head. We traced them to missing persons with dental records.”

Romero gave it a second, then continued. “Some of those bodies were from when you were a kid. Do you remember anything from around then that might explain that?”

My mouth was dry. Every rational part of my brain ridiculed me like the kids in grade school as I whispered “The Skunk Ape.”

Biaz and Romero looked at each other. “You know about that murder?” said Biaz.

“What?”

“The Skunk Ape killing?”

“No- I- what is that?”

Biaz started. “About twenty years ago, two young women went missing off some trails around your hometown. They found them about two hundred yards off the path, covered in branches and sticks. Broken bones, broken necks, blunt force trauma to the head. Got nicknamed the Skunk Ape murders by the cops. They said the smell was terrible.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“The manner of death was similar to the victims in the grove. We had thought there might be a connection to a serial murderer.”

I just sat in silence trying to think. I didn’t want to ask the next question. “So what happened to Junie?”

Romero looked down at his shoes. “He ran away and from what we can tell, headed back to your hometown.”

Biaz spoke. “I’m sorry Willard. They found his body two weeks ago in an old oak tree.”

It was like I already knew it. I didn’t know if I should cry because he was gone or laugh because my gut had been right. The world split in two. I sat in silence.

The detectives left after that, saying they’d follow up in the next few days. Minutes stretched into hours in the dead silence of my apartment, only broken by the steady drip of the blood from my nose onto the carpet. It smelled like iron. It made me think of Dad. 

I went to my room and fished the box he had sent out of the closet. I hadn’t looked in it after I read the note and pocketed the cash. I pulled out a bottle of aftershave. The warm spicy smell wafted into the room when I unscrewed the cap. I sat in the familiar scent, thinking of a time when it meant safety for me and Junie. When I had somebody.

I looked in the box and fished out one of the items wrapped in brown paper. Unwrapping it, I turned the black and leather goggles over in my hands. A yellow glint caught the lens as I set them to the side.

The weight of the next item surprised me as I felt the textured grip through the paper. I unsheathed the handgun from its hiding place. There were spots of rust across the cool black barrel. Brass glistened in the magazine of seven like gold teeth.

Something rattled in the bottom of the box under more paper. A pill bottle. One of Mama’s, a painkiller for a disease she didn’t have. I unscrewed the lid. Out tumbled a little piece of metal. It was Junie’s necklace made of nails.

It was like I was there. Wading through the prairie grass no longer over our heads. My brother, older. The look in his eyes was determined as it reflected a lighter’s flame in the starless night. He had to know if what we had seen was real. If trees truly bled. If those yellow eyes were human. If there were bodies in the trees. 

As he stood at the edge of the grove, he didn’t hear the monster creep up behind him. A gunshot like a woodknock took him in the back. And the Skunk Ape Killer removed what I had mistaken for welding goggles all those years ago to look over the body of his son, bleeding into the grove.

My father was the Skunk Ape Killer. Now everything I know smells like death.

Part 3

After Mama died, Dad couldn’t take care of us and work full time. Junie and I ended up in the foster system. As much as we wanted to stay together, everyone said nobody would want two boys. They were right. So Junie and I were split up.

I tried to write to him, but I couldn’t find his address. He kept bouncing around between homes. I ended up in a city, with the only wilderness around being perfectly curated parks with trees that didn’t bleed and woodpeckers that sounded normal. I got into a routine. I didn’t make many friends. I didn’t get in many fights.

The next time I saw Junie, his face was on a missing poster in an inner city Walmart. My blood ran cold as his school photo looked back at me from a wall of other missing kids. It was the most recent one on the board. He had run away three months ago from his foster home, about an hour away from where we grew up.

I thought things couldn’t get worse. When I had just talked myself into hoping Junie was somewhere safe and sound, living his best life, a letter and a box showed up.

Dad was dead. They had found him on the back porch in the same chair Mama had died in. I wondered if he had the same marks on his wrists and neck that she had.

The box was the belongings he had left for me. On the top of a few bottles of aftershave and some brown paper bags was a white envelope smudged with grease. It held a note from my dad.

“Willard,

Everything I did, I did for you and Junie. To protect you from the monster. Don’t come back here.”

Also in the envelope was several thousand dollars in cash. Must have been what Dad had left.

Life found a new painful normal to be lived at. I didn’t have aspirations to do anything. I ended up joining a boxing gym just to feel something. Four years passed in a haze of flying fists and silent evenings.

I had gotten home from the gym one night after taking a particularly bad shot to the nose, dripping blood all over the seats of my beater car, when I found two detectives waiting for me at my door.

Detective Biaz and Romero were with the state police. I let them in, more concerned about dripping blood on the carpet of my apartment than anything. 

When I finally got my nose plugged with a towel, we sat in the living room.

“Willard, when was the last time you saw your brother?” said Detective Biaz.

“When I was a kid. Like, fall of fifth grade. That’s when Mama died.”

“Did you ever have contact with him before his disappearance?”

“No. I couldn’t ever find his address.”

“Did you ever have any contact with your father before his death?”

“No, don’t think so.”

The detectives looked at each other like they were about to say something important.

“Willard, are you aware of a series of disappearances that took place around your hometown growing up?”

“No. I mean, what do you mean by disappearances?”

“People would go missing. Hikers. Call girls. Homeless people. You ever hear anything about that?”

“No. Junie and I didn’t have any way to read the news. Did you ever find any of these people?”

Biaz looked at Romero and breathed deeply. “We did.”

“They were murdered,” Romero said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But what’s this got to do with Junie?”

Romero sat forward. “Maybe it’s best we tell you what we know.”

“For the past twenty-five years, people have gone missing in the Tri-county area around your hometown. Like I said, they were usually people in a bad spot who went missing in a remote place. People would call and report them in, we’d send out a search team, nothing would turn up.”

There was a feeling in my gut like someone had just pulled the plug in the tub. Biaz spoke up. “You know what happened to your house after your dad died?”

“No.”

“They auctioned off the land to a development company. That company tore down the house and carved up the land into a bunch of suburban cul de sacs. They got the levee rebuilt.

The police started to get calls complaining about a stink in the grove of dead trees. They went out there, but the smell was so come-and-go they couldn’t ever find anything. The development company brought in a tree removal service to cut all the dead trees down. It was pretty quick work.”

“They found something?”

“One of their woodchippers got clogged. There was a human skull stuck in it.”

That day in the tree rushed back, and the bugs were crawling on my skin as I stared into dead eyes, pleading for it all to be a dream.

“We found the remains of fifty one people shoved into the hollows of different rotting trees. Broken necks, broken bones, signs of a struggle, blunt force trauma to the head. We traced them to missing persons with dental records.”

Romero gave it a second, then continued. “Some of those bodies were from when you were a kid. Do you remember anything from around then that might explain that?”

My mouth was dry. Every rational part of my brain ridiculed me like the kids in grade school as I whispered “The Skunk Ape.”

Biaz and Romero looked at each other. “You know about that murder?” said Biaz.

“What?”

“The Skunk Ape killing?”

“No- I- what is that?”

Biaz started. “About twenty years ago, two young women went missing off some trails around your hometown. They found them about two hundred yards off the path, covered in branches and sticks. Broken bones, broken necks, blunt force trauma to the head. Got nicknamed the Skunk Ape murders by the cops. They said the smell was terrible.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“The manner of death was similar to the victims in the grove. We had thought there might be a connection to a serial murderer.”

I just sat in silence trying to think. I didn’t want to ask the next question. “So what happened to Junie?”

Romero looked down at his shoes. “He ran away and from what we can tell, headed back to your hometown.”

Biaz spoke. “I’m sorry Willard. They found his body two weeks ago in an old oak tree.”

It was like I already knew it. I didn’t know if I should cry because he was gone or laugh because my gut had been right. The world split in two. I sat in silence.

The detectives left after that, saying they’d follow up in the next few days. Minutes stretched into hours in the dead silence of my apartment, only broken by the steady drip of the blood from my nose onto the carpet. It smelled like iron. It made me think of Dad. 

I went to my room and fished the box he had sent out of the closet. I hadn’t looked in it after I read the note and pocketed the cash. I pulled out a bottle of aftershave. The warm spicy smell wafted into the room when I unscrewed the cap. I sat in the familiar scent, thinking of a time when it meant safety for me and Junie. When I had somebody.

I looked in the box and fished out one of the items wrapped in brown paper. Unwrapping it, I turned the black and leather goggles over in my hands. A yellow glint caught the lens as I set them to the side.

The weight of the next item surprised me as I felt the textured grip through the paper. I unsheathed the handgun from its hiding place. There were spots of rust across the cool black barrel. Brass glistened in the magazine of seven like gold teeth.

Something rattled in the bottom of the box under more paper. A pill bottle. One of Mama’s, a painkiller for a disease she didn’t have. I unscrewed the lid. Out tumbled a little piece of metal. It was Junie’s necklace made of nails.

It was like I was there. Wading through the prairie grass no longer over our heads. My brother, older. The look in his eyes was determined as it reflected a lighter’s flame in the starless night. He had to know if what we had seen was real. If trees truly bled. If those yellow eyes were human. If there were bodies in the trees. 

As he stood at the edge of the grove, he didn’t hear the monster creep up behind him. A gunshot like a woodknock took him in the back. And the Skunk Ape Killer removed what I had mistaken for welding goggles all those years ago to look over the body of his son, bleeding into the grove.

My father was the Skunk Ape Killer. Now everything I know smells like death.

Part 2

Things changed as I went to middle school. Sure, a woodpecker still woke me up every morning and I still got into fights, but the strangest thing was being without Junie. It felt like my arm was missing.

I wanted to go back to fourth grade. I spent my classes daydreaming about being back in the treehouse with Junie. My notebooks filled with sketches of birds and tree forts and grass mazes copied from the more extensive middle school library. I augmented them with appropriate J&W Construction notations.

Junie was fairing better than I was. He talked about how some of the boys that used to give him lip had asked if he wanted to play football at recess. It was good for him.

Our schedules changed too. Sometimes one of us had a half day and rode the bus home early.

It was a Friday in mid October when Junie came home at lunch, but I had school until three. I planned to meet him at the treehouse as soon as I got home.

When I entered the front door and threw down my bag, I could tell something was wrong. The kitchen cabinets had their doors open, a few dishes were smashed on the floor, and the cleaning supplies from under the sink were strewn about. A belt sat on the dining room table.

Mama was sitting in the rocking chair on the porch smoking a cigarette. I slowly opened the screen door and crept out onto the porch. She was looking out at the grove, muttering to herself. 

“Mama?”

She didn’t look at me. Her eyes glazed over as she sipped on a beer; her mouth rounded like a leech. Her baggy shirt clung to her wire frame in the fall chill. The cigarette between her bony scarred fingers shook as she brought it to her mouth. She muttered under her breath.

“Useless little shit. Can’t find where his Daddy hid those pills. Know he’s hiding them from me. Stashed somewhere. Rummaging in the cupboards, getting up in the middle of the night. Hiding them from me. He’s hiding something. Little shit ran off like the useless twerp he is. Hiding like a scared little kitty cat. He wouldn’t listen. Didn’t want to. Needs to listen.”

I stepped off the porch. She didn’t look at me. “I’ll go find him, Mama,” I said. I took off toward our trails.

The sky was overcast grey, clouds low and oppressive. A gentle breeze ruffled the dry, tan grass as I ran along the trails. I got to the tree fort. I called for Junie. I didn’t hear any sobs, not that I expected to. The first platform was bare, save some brown leaves accumulating in the corners. I clambered up the ladder to the second level, popped my head above the platform, and found only empty space.

My thoughts were racing as I observed the prairie and the river. Where could he have gone? It had to be the railroad bridge. I scrambled down out of the treehouse and tore my way to the railroad bridge, not taking our established trail, only Junie on my mind.

As I rushed along the railroad ties, I looked for any sign of his blue school polo. But he wasn’t on the bridge. I scanned the bank and the water. Nothing. I set off on the trails. I called and called until my voice was hoarse. No sign of him. The only sound was the grass rustling in the wind, and a distant woodpecker knocking.

There was only one place left to check. I made my way toward the hollow knocking.

The grove was still and silent. Leaves gathered on the ground, adding to a carpet over years of filth and decay. They lightly crunched beneath my slow steps. 

“Junie?” I called out in a hush. The sound died as it hit the husks of trees.

Further in, I caught my first whiff of the smell. Raw, nasty, pungent rot seeped into my eyes, made a film on my skin. A stink that would stick even after a bath.

“Junie?”

Something crunched against the carpet of leaves. Footsteps approached with a familiar gait. It wasn’t Junie.

Raw fear ran like frozen air over my exposed scalp. The stench intensified as a light breeze shook the dead trees, their creaks like the laughter of old hags. The footsteps were too close to run. Searching for anything, I saw the closest tree’s roots were partially exposed, with a gap into a hollow trunk. I scrambled past the roots into the rotten center of the tree and held my breath.

The tree was hollow all the way to the top. The grey sky illuminated the rotten veins of insect trails running down the tree. My eyes adjusted, and I saw I wasn’t the only occupant of the tree’s hollow. Six inches from my face was a corpse.

The skin was flaky, dried, and I could see patches of bone where it had rotted away. The eyes were shriveled to nothing; black teeth hung agape in the jaw, ready to bite a chunk out of me. There were no clothes, but I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Stringy blonde hair was dried to the skull.

The stench engulfed me, and I suppressed a gasp and gag as I stared in the black pits of hell where the eyes had been. Something small sent a vibration through the tree. Frozen in fear, I tried not to imagine the Skunk Ape climbing a branch to plush me from the center of the tree for spoiling one of his victims. But the banging that followed assured it was only a woodpecker.

The noise from inside the tree was like a jackhammer pounding into my head. The sound echoed in a hollow booming through the tree. The corpse rattled bones and chattered teeth with each of the woodpecker’s drills. And then the pits of its eyes began to move.

Beetles and maggots and flies came pouring from the eye sockets and the mouth, cascading onto me, crawling across my face, my arms, in my hair.

I held my breath and closed my eyes. I thought of holding the bars in place while Dad welded and sparks flew around my face, of his voice telling me to hold still and close my eyes. I felt the heat of the sparks on my skin. It was pain I had endured before. I could face it now.

The leaves crunched outside the tree as heavy footsteps approached and shook the ground. I kept my eyes closed, waiting to hear the angry breathing of the giant beast. The bugs continued to crawl, sparks continued to fly, as I heard a slight breeze through the grove. The sparks were in my waistband, running down the back of my shirt. I was burning. But dad had told me to stay still. 

The silence continued. The sparks burned my ankles, made their way into my shoes and socks. But dad told me to stay still.

Something knocked on the tree. Like knocking on a door. I held my breath.

A piece of wood whacked the trunk three times, and the last of the bugs vacated their skull fort to run down my body, leaving burning trails in their wake. But Dad told me to stay still. 

The knocks echoed through the forest like gunshots. The silence could have lasted for hours. One final beetle crawled over my ankle out the bottom of the tree.

The footsteps seemed to shake the ground as they walked away. As soon as I could, I scrambled out of the tree and ran for the house. The grass brushed away the rest of the bugs as I tore through the prairie. I clambered up the slope to the backyard. My eyes were wet from the dry wind and the relief of being out of the tree. 

I was thirty feet from the porch when through the tears, I saw Junie turning to me. His shirt was as clean as any day he washed it.

“Willard?” he said, looking in confusion at my dirt covered clothes. I wiped my eyes to see the tears on his cheeks. He stood in front of the rocking chair.

Mama was slumped back, her mouth open and foaming, her head held back. Her thin chest did not rise and fall, and her pale skin had red marks on the neck and wrists.

“Junie?” I said. “What happened?”

“I was out looking for you.” His voice quivered to match my own. His necklace turned over in his hands.

I touched Mama’s cooling skin. There was no pulse.

“I don’t know what happened,” Junie said, his voice cracking.

We heard Dad’s truck pull into the driveway.

I hadn’t seen Dad cry before, but it was just a few tears down his cheek. There was no sign of a quiver in his voice as he recounted everything to the sheriff from the kitchen table. They ruled it an overdose and wrapped her body in a black bag and took her away. Like garbage.

I didn’t say anything about the corpse in the tree. Mama was right. I was a curse. It was my fault she was dead. When we found her body, she smelled like death.

Part 2

Things changed as I went to middle school. Sure, a woodpecker still woke me up every morning and I still got into fights, but the strangest thing was being without Junie. It felt like my arm was missing.

I wanted to go back to fourth grade. I spent my classes daydreaming about being back in the treehouse with Junie. My notebooks filled with sketches of birds and tree forts and grass mazes copied from the more extensive middle school library. I augmented them with appropriate J&W Construction notations.

Junie was fairing better than I was. He talked about how some of the boys that used to give him lip had asked if he wanted to play football at recess. It was good for him.

Our schedules changed too. Sometimes one of us had a half day and rode the bus home early.

It was a Friday in mid October when Junie came home at lunch, but I had school until three. I planned to meet him at the treehouse as soon as I got home.

When I entered the front door and threw down my bag, I could tell something was wrong. The kitchen cabinets had their doors open, a few dishes were smashed on the floor, and the cleaning supplies from under the sink were strewn about. A belt sat on the dining room table.

Mama was sitting in the rocking chair on the porch smoking a cigarette. I slowly opened the screen door and crept out onto the porch. She was looking out at the grove, muttering to herself. 

“Mama?”

She didn’t look at me. Her eyes glazed over as she sipped on a beer; her mouth rounded like a leech. Her baggy shirt clung to her wire frame in the fall chill. The cigarette between her bony scarred fingers shook as she brought it to her mouth. She muttered under her breath.

“Useless little shit. Can’t find where his Daddy hid those pills. Know he’s hiding them from me. Stashed somewhere. Rummaging in the cupboards, getting up in the middle of the night. Hiding them from me. He’s hiding something. Little shit ran off like the useless twerp he is. Hiding like a scared little kitty cat. He wouldn’t listen. Didn’t want to. Needs to listen.”

I stepped off the porch. She didn’t look at me. “I’ll go find him, Mama,” I said. I took off toward our trails.

The sky was overcast grey, clouds low and oppressive. A gentle breeze ruffled the dry, tan grass as I ran along the trails. I got to the tree fort. I called for Junie. I didn’t hear any sobs, not that I expected to. The first platform was bare, save some brown leaves accumulating in the corners. I clambered up the ladder to the second level, popped my head above the platform, and found only empty space.

My thoughts were racing as I observed the prairie and the river. Where could he have gone? It had to be the railroad bridge. I scrambled down out of the treehouse and tore my way to the railroad bridge, not taking our established trail, only Junie on my mind.

As I rushed along the railroad ties, I looked for any sign of his blue school polo. But he wasn’t on the bridge. I scanned the bank and the water. Nothing. I set off on the trails. I called and called until my voice was hoarse. No sign of him. The only sound was the grass rustling in the wind, and a distant woodpecker knocking.

There was only one place left to check. I made my way toward the hollow knocking.

The grove was still and silent. Leaves gathered on the ground, adding to a carpet over years of filth and decay. They lightly crunched beneath my slow steps. 

“Junie?” I called out in a hush. The sound died as it hit the husks of trees.

Further in, I caught my first whiff of the smell. Raw, nasty, pungent rot seeped into my eyes, made a film on my skin. A stink that would stick even after a bath.

“Junie?”

Something crunched against the carpet of leaves. Footsteps approached with a familiar gait. It wasn’t Junie.

Raw fear ran like frozen air over my exposed scalp. The stench intensified as a light breeze shook the dead trees, their creaks like the laughter of old hags. The footsteps were too close to run. Searching for anything, I saw the closest tree’s roots were partially exposed, with a gap into a hollow trunk. I scrambled past the roots into the rotten center of the tree and held my breath.

The tree was hollow all the way to the top. The grey sky illuminated the rotten veins of insect trails running down the tree. My eyes adjusted, and I saw I wasn’t the only occupant of the tree’s hollow. Six inches from my face was a corpse.

The skin was flaky, dried, and I could see patches of bone where it had rotted away. The eyes were shriveled to nothing; black teeth hung agape in the jaw, ready to bite a chunk out of me. There were no clothes, but I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Stringy blonde hair was dried to the skull.

The stench engulfed me, and I suppressed a gasp and gag as I stared in the black pits of hell where the eyes had been. Something small sent a vibration through the tree. Frozen in fear, I tried not to imagine the Skunk Ape climbing a branch to plush me from the center of the tree for spoiling one of his victims. But the banging that followed assured it was only a woodpecker.

The noise from inside the tree was like a jackhammer pounding into my head. The sound echoed in a hollow booming through the tree. The corpse rattled bones and chattered teeth with each of the woodpecker’s drills. And then the pits of its eyes began to move.

Beetles and maggots and flies came pouring from the eye sockets and the mouth, cascading onto me, crawling across my face, my arms, in my hair.

I held my breath and closed my eyes. I thought of holding the bars in place while Dad welded and sparks flew around my face, of his voice telling me to hold still and close my eyes. I felt the heat of the sparks on my skin. It was pain I had endured before. I could face it now.

The leaves crunched outside the tree as heavy footsteps approached and shook the ground. I kept my eyes closed, waiting to hear the angry breathing of the giant beast. The bugs continued to crawl, sparks continued to fly, as I heard a slight breeze through the grove. The sparks were in my waistband, running down the back of my shirt. I was burning. But dad had told me to stay still. 

The silence continued. The sparks burned my ankles, made their way into my shoes and socks. But dad told me to stay still.

Something knocked on the tree. Like knocking on a door. I held my breath.

A piece of wood whacked the trunk three times, and the last of the bugs vacated their skull fort to run down my body, leaving burning trails in their wake. But Dad told me to stay still. 

The knocks echoed through the forest like gunshots. The silence could have lasted for hours. One final beetle crawled over my ankle out the bottom of the tree.

The footsteps seemed to shake the ground as they walked away. As soon as I could, I scrambled out of the tree and ran for the house. The grass brushed away the rest of the bugs as I tore through the prairie. I clambered up the slope to the backyard. My eyes were wet from the dry wind and the relief of being out of the tree. 

I was thirty feet from the porch when through the tears, I saw Junie turning to me. His shirt was as clean as any day he washed it.

“Willard?” he said, looking in confusion at my dirt covered clothes. I wiped my eyes to see the tears on his cheeks. He stood in front of the rocking chair.

Mama was slumped back, her mouth open and foaming, her head held back. Her thin chest did not rise and fall, and her pale skin had red marks on the neck and wrists.

“Junie?” I said. “What happened?”

“I was out looking for you.” His voice quivered to match my own. His necklace turned over in his hands.

I touched Mama’s cooling skin. There was no pulse.

“I don’t know what happened,” Junie said, his voice cracking.

We heard Dad’s truck pull into the driveway.

I hadn’t seen Dad cry before, but it was just a few tears down his cheek. There was no sign of a quiver in his voice as he recounted everything to the sheriff from the kitchen table. They ruled it an overdose and wrapped her body in a black bag and took her away. Like garbage.

I didn’t say anything about the corpse in the tree. Mama was right. I was a curse. It was my fault she was dead. When we found her body, she smelled like death.

Part 2

Things changed as I went to middle school. Sure, a woodpecker still woke me up every morning and I still got into fights, but the strangest thing was being without Junie. It felt like my arm was missing.

I wanted to go back to fourth grade. I spent my classes daydreaming about being back in the treehouse with Junie. My notebooks filled with sketches of birds and tree forts and grass mazes copied from the more extensive middle school library. I augmented them with appropriate J&W Construction notations.

Junie was fairing better than I was. He talked about how some of the boys that used to give him lip had asked if he wanted to play football at recess. It was good for him.

Our schedules changed too. Sometimes one of us had a half day and rode the bus home early.

It was a Friday in mid October when Junie came home at lunch, but I had school until three. I planned to meet him at the treehouse as soon as I got home.

When I entered the front door and threw down my bag, I could tell something was wrong. The kitchen cabinets had their doors open, a few dishes were smashed on the floor, and the cleaning supplies from under the sink were strewn about. A belt sat on the dining room table.

Mama was sitting in the rocking chair on the porch smoking a cigarette. I slowly opened the screen door and crept out onto the porch. She was looking out at the grove, muttering to herself. 

“Mama?”

She didn’t look at me. Her eyes glazed over as she sipped on a beer; her mouth rounded like a leech. Her baggy shirt clung to her wire frame in the fall chill. The cigarette between her bony scarred fingers shook as she brought it to her mouth. She muttered under her breath.

“Useless little shit. Can’t find where his Daddy hid those pills. Know he’s hiding them from me. Stashed somewhere. Rummaging in the cupboards, getting up in the middle of the night. Hiding them from me. He’s hiding something. Little shit ran off like the useless twerp he is. Hiding like a scared little kitty cat. He wouldn’t listen. Didn’t want to. Needs to listen.”

I stepped off the porch. She didn’t look at me. “I’ll go find him, Mama,” I said. I took off toward our trails.

The sky was overcast grey, clouds low and oppressive. A gentle breeze ruffled the dry, tan grass as I ran along the trails. I got to the tree fort. I called for Junie. I didn’t hear any sobs, not that I expected to. The first platform was bare, save some brown leaves accumulating in the corners. I clambered up the ladder to the second level, popped my head above the platform, and found only empty space.

My thoughts were racing as I observed the prairie and the river. Where could he have gone? It had to be the railroad bridge. I scrambled down out of the treehouse and tore my way to the railroad bridge, not taking our established trail, only Junie on my mind.

As I rushed along the railroad ties, I looked for any sign of his blue school polo. But he wasn’t on the bridge. I scanned the bank and the water. Nothing. I set off on the trails. I called and called until my voice was hoarse. No sign of him. The only sound was the grass rustling in the wind, and a distant woodpecker knocking.

There was only one place left to check. I made my way toward the hollow knocking.

The grove was still and silent. Leaves gathered on the ground, adding to a carpet over years of filth and decay. They lightly crunched beneath my slow steps. 

“Junie?” I called out in a hush. The sound died as it hit the husks of trees.

Further in, I caught my first whiff of the smell. Raw, nasty, pungent rot seeped into my eyes, made a film on my skin. A stink that would stick even after a bath.

“Junie?”

Something crunched against the carpet of leaves. Footsteps approached with a familiar gait. It wasn’t Junie.

Raw fear ran like frozen air over my exposed scalp. The stench intensified as a light breeze shook the dead trees, their creaks like the laughter of old hags. The footsteps were too close to run. Searching for anything, I saw the closest tree’s roots were partially exposed, with a gap into a hollow trunk. I scrambled past the roots into the rotten center of the tree and held my breath.

The tree was hollow all the way to the top. The grey sky illuminated the rotten veins of insect trails running down the tree. My eyes adjusted, and I saw I wasn’t the only occupant of the tree’s hollow. Six inches from my face was a corpse.

The skin was flaky, dried, and I could see patches of bone where it had rotted away. The eyes were shriveled to nothing; black teeth hung agape in the jaw, ready to bite a chunk out of me. There were no clothes, but I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Stringy blonde hair was dried to the skull.

The stench engulfed me, and I suppressed a gasp and gag as I stared in the black pits of hell where the eyes had been. Something small sent a vibration through the tree. Frozen in fear, I tried not to imagine the Skunk Ape climbing a branch to plush me from the center of the tree for spoiling one of his victims. But the banging that followed assured it was only a woodpecker.

The noise from inside the tree was like a jackhammer pounding into my head. The sound echoed in a hollow booming through the tree. The corpse rattled bones and chattered teeth with each of the woodpecker’s drills. And then the pits of its eyes began to move.

Beetles and maggots and flies came pouring from the eye sockets and the mouth, cascading onto me, crawling across my face, my arms, in my hair.

I held my breath and closed my eyes. I thought of holding the bars in place while Dad welded and sparks flew around my face, of his voice telling me to hold still and close my eyes. I felt the heat of the sparks on my skin. It was pain I had endured before. I could face it now.

The leaves crunched outside the tree as heavy footsteps approached and shook the ground. I kept my eyes closed, waiting to hear the angry breathing of the giant beast. The bugs continued to crawl, sparks continued to fly, as I heard a slight breeze through the grove. The sparks were in my waistband, running down the back of my shirt. I was burning. But dad had told me to stay still. 

The silence continued. The sparks burned my ankles, made their way into my shoes and socks. But dad told me to stay still.

Something knocked on the tree. Like knocking on a door. I held my breath.

A piece of wood whacked the trunk three times, and the last of the bugs vacated their skull fort to run down my body, leaving burning trails in their wake. But Dad told me to stay still. 

The knocks echoed through the forest like gunshots. The silence could have lasted for hours. One final beetle crawled over my ankle out the bottom of the tree.

The footsteps seemed to shake the ground as they walked away. As soon as I could, I scrambled out of the tree and ran for the house. The grass brushed away the rest of the bugs as I tore through the prairie. I clambered up the slope to the backyard. My eyes were wet from the dry wind and the relief of being out of the tree. 

I was thirty feet from the porch when through the tears, I saw Junie turning to me. His shirt was as clean as any day he washed it.

“Willard?” he said, looking in confusion at my dirt covered clothes. I wiped my eyes to see the tears on his cheeks. He stood in front of the rocking chair.

Mama was slumped back, her mouth open and foaming, her head held back. Her thin chest did not rise and fall, and her pale skin had red marks on the neck and wrists.

“Junie?” I said. “What happened?”

“I was out looking for you.” His voice quivered to match my own. His necklace turned over in his hands.

I touched Mama’s cooling skin. There was no pulse.

“I don’t know what happened,” Junie said, his voice cracking.

We heard Dad’s truck pull into the driveway.

I hadn’t seen Dad cry before, but it was just a few tears down his cheek. There was no sign of a quiver in his voice as he recounted everything to the sheriff from the kitchen table. They ruled it an overdose and wrapped her body in a black bag and took her away. Like garbage.

I didn’t say anything about the corpse in the tree. Mama was right. I was a curse. It was my fault she was dead. When we found her body, she smelled like death.

Part 2

Things changed as I went to middle school. Sure, a woodpecker still woke me up every morning and I still got into fights, but the strangest thing was being without Junie. It felt like my arm was missing.

I wanted to go back to fourth grade. I spent my classes daydreaming about being back in the treehouse with Junie. My notebooks filled with sketches of birds and tree forts and grass mazes copied from the more extensive middle school library. I augmented them with appropriate J&W Construction notations.

Junie was fairing better than I was. He talked about how some of the boys that used to give him lip had asked if he wanted to play football at recess. It was good for him.

Our schedules changed too. Sometimes one of us had a half day and rode the bus home early.

It was a Friday in mid October when Junie came home at lunch, but I had school until three. I planned to meet him at the treehouse as soon as I got home.

When I entered the front door and threw down my bag, I could tell something was wrong. The kitchen cabinets had their doors open, a few dishes were smashed on the floor, and the cleaning supplies from under the sink were strewn about. A belt sat on the dining room table.

Mama was sitting in the rocking chair on the porch smoking a cigarette. I slowly opened the screen door and crept out onto the porch. She was looking out at the grove, muttering to herself. 

“Mama?”

She didn’t look at me. Her eyes glazed over as she sipped on a beer; her mouth rounded like a leech. Her baggy shirt clung to her wire frame in the fall chill. The cigarette between her bony scarred fingers shook as she brought it to her mouth. She muttered under her breath.

“Useless little shit. Can’t find where his Daddy hid those pills. Know he’s hiding them from me. Stashed somewhere. Rummaging in the cupboards, getting up in the middle of the night. Hiding them from me. He’s hiding something. Little shit ran off like the useless twerp he is. Hiding like a scared little kitty cat. He wouldn’t listen. Didn’t want to. Needs to listen.”

I stepped off the porch. She didn’t look at me. “I’ll go find him, Mama,” I said. I took off toward our trails.

The sky was overcast grey, clouds low and oppressive. A gentle breeze ruffled the dry, tan grass as I ran along the trails. I got to the tree fort. I called for Junie. I didn’t hear any sobs, not that I expected to. The first platform was bare, save some brown leaves accumulating in the corners. I clambered up the ladder to the second level, popped my head above the platform, and found only empty space.

My thoughts were racing as I observed the prairie and the river. Where could he have gone? It had to be the railroad bridge. I scrambled down out of the treehouse and tore my way to the railroad bridge, not taking our established trail, only Junie on my mind.

As I rushed along the railroad ties, I looked for any sign of his blue school polo. But he wasn’t on the bridge. I scanned the bank and the water. Nothing. I set off on the trails. I called and called until my voice was hoarse. No sign of him. The only sound was the grass rustling in the wind, and a distant woodpecker knocking.

There was only one place left to check. I made my way toward the hollow knocking.

The grove was still and silent. Leaves gathered on the ground, adding to a carpet over years of filth and decay. They lightly crunched beneath my slow steps. 

“Junie?” I called out in a hush. The sound died as it hit the husks of trees.

Further in, I caught my first whiff of the smell. Raw, nasty, pungent rot seeped into my eyes, made a film on my skin. A stink that would stick even after a bath.

“Junie?”

Something crunched against the carpet of leaves. Footsteps approached with a familiar gait. It wasn’t Junie.

Raw fear ran like frozen air over my exposed scalp. The stench intensified as a light breeze shook the dead trees, their creaks like the laughter of old hags. The footsteps were too close to run. Searching for anything, I saw the closest tree’s roots were partially exposed, with a gap into a hollow trunk. I scrambled past the roots into the rotten center of the tree and held my breath.

The tree was hollow all the way to the top. The grey sky illuminated the rotten veins of insect trails running down the tree. My eyes adjusted, and I saw I wasn’t the only occupant of the tree’s hollow. Six inches from my face was a corpse.

The skin was flaky, dried, and I could see patches of bone where it had rotted away. The eyes were shriveled to nothing; black teeth hung agape in the jaw, ready to bite a chunk out of me. There were no clothes, but I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Stringy blonde hair was dried to the skull.

The stench engulfed me, and I suppressed a gasp and gag as I stared in the black pits of hell where the eyes had been. Something small sent a vibration through the tree. Frozen in fear, I tried not to imagine the Skunk Ape climbing a branch to plush me from the center of the tree for spoiling one of his victims. But the banging that followed assured it was only a woodpecker.

The noise from inside the tree was like a jackhammer pounding into my head. The sound echoed in a hollow booming through the tree. The corpse rattled bones and chattered teeth with each of the woodpecker’s drills. And then the pits of its eyes began to move.

Beetles and maggots and flies came pouring from the eye sockets and the mouth, cascading onto me, crawling across my face, my arms, in my hair.

I held my breath and closed my eyes. I thought of holding the bars in place while Dad welded and sparks flew around my face, of his voice telling me to hold still and close my eyes. I felt the heat of the sparks on my skin. It was pain I had endured before. I could face it now.

The leaves crunched outside the tree as heavy footsteps approached and shook the ground. I kept my eyes closed, waiting to hear the angry breathing of the giant beast. The bugs continued to crawl, sparks continued to fly, as I heard a slight breeze through the grove. The sparks were in my waistband, running down the back of my shirt. I was burning. But dad had told me to stay still. 

The silence continued. The sparks burned my ankles, made their way into my shoes and socks. But dad told me to stay still.

Something knocked on the tree. Like knocking on a door. I held my breath.

A piece of wood whacked the trunk three times, and the last of the bugs vacated their skull fort to run down my body, leaving burning trails in their wake. But Dad told me to stay still. 

The knocks echoed through the forest like gunshots. The silence could have lasted for hours. One final beetle crawled over my ankle out the bottom of the tree.

The footsteps seemed to shake the ground as they walked away. As soon as I could, I scrambled out of the tree and ran for the house. The grass brushed away the rest of the bugs as I tore through the prairie. I clambered up the slope to the backyard. My eyes were wet from the dry wind and the relief of being out of the tree. 

I was thirty feet from the porch when through the tears, I saw Junie turning to me. His shirt was as clean as any day he washed it.

“Willard?” he said, looking in confusion at my dirt covered clothes. I wiped my eyes to see the tears on his cheeks. He stood in front of the rocking chair.

Mama was slumped back, her mouth open and foaming, her head held back. Her thin chest did not rise and fall, and her pale skin had red marks on the neck and wrists.

“Junie?” I said. “What happened?”

“I was out looking for you.” His voice quivered to match my own. His necklace turned over in his hands.

I touched Mama’s cooling skin. There was no pulse.

“I don’t know what happened,” Junie said, his voice cracking.

We heard Dad’s truck pull into the driveway.

I hadn’t seen Dad cry before, but it was just a few tears down his cheek. There was no sign of a quiver in his voice as he recounted everything to the sheriff from the kitchen table. They ruled it an overdose and wrapped her body in a black bag and took her away. Like garbage.

I didn’t say anything about the corpse in the tree. Mama was right. I was a curse. It was my fault she was dead. When we found her body, she smelled like death.

Part 2

Things changed as I went to middle school. Sure, a woodpecker still woke me up every morning and I still got into fights, but the strangest thing was being without Junie. It felt like my arm was missing.

I wanted to go back to fourth grade. I spent my classes daydreaming about being back in the treehouse with Junie. My notebooks filled with sketches of birds and tree forts and grass mazes copied from the more extensive middle school library. I augmented them with appropriate J&W Construction notations.

Junie was fairing better than I was. He talked about how some of the boys that used to give him lip had asked if he wanted to play football at recess. It was good for him.

Our schedules changed too. Sometimes one of us had a half day and rode the bus home early.

It was a Friday in mid October when Junie came home at lunch, but I had school until three. I planned to meet him at the treehouse as soon as I got home.

When I entered the front door and threw down my bag, I could tell something was wrong. The kitchen cabinets had their doors open, a few dishes were smashed on the floor, and the cleaning supplies from under the sink were strewn about. A belt sat on the dining room table.

Mama was sitting in the rocking chair on the porch smoking a cigarette. I slowly opened the screen door and crept out onto the porch. She was looking out at the grove, muttering to herself. 

“Mama?”

She didn’t look at me. Her eyes glazed over as she sipped on a beer; her mouth rounded like a leech. Her baggy shirt clung to her wire frame in the fall chill. The cigarette between her bony scarred fingers shook as she brought it to her mouth. She muttered under her breath.

“Useless little shit. Can’t find where his Daddy hid those pills. Know he’s hiding them from me. Stashed somewhere. Rummaging in the cupboards, getting up in the middle of the night. Hiding them from me. He’s hiding something. Little shit ran off like the useless twerp he is. Hiding like a scared little kitty cat. He wouldn’t listen. Didn’t want to. Needs to listen.”

I stepped off the porch. She didn’t look at me. “I’ll go find him, Mama,” I said. I took off toward our trails.

The sky was overcast grey, clouds low and oppressive. A gentle breeze ruffled the dry, tan grass as I ran along the trails. I got to the tree fort. I called for Junie. I didn’t hear any sobs, not that I expected to. The first platform was bare, save some brown leaves accumulating in the corners. I clambered up the ladder to the second level, popped my head above the platform, and found only empty space.

My thoughts were racing as I observed the prairie and the river. Where could he have gone? It had to be the railroad bridge. I scrambled down out of the treehouse and tore my way to the railroad bridge, not taking our established trail, only Junie on my mind.

As I rushed along the railroad ties, I looked for any sign of his blue school polo. But he wasn’t on the bridge. I scanned the bank and the water. Nothing. I set off on the trails. I called and called until my voice was hoarse. No sign of him. The only sound was the grass rustling in the wind, and a distant woodpecker knocking.

There was only one place left to check. I made my way toward the hollow knocking.

The grove was still and silent. Leaves gathered on the ground, adding to a carpet over years of filth and decay. They lightly crunched beneath my slow steps. 

“Junie?” I called out in a hush. The sound died as it hit the husks of trees.

Further in, I caught my first whiff of the smell. Raw, nasty, pungent rot seeped into my eyes, made a film on my skin. A stink that would stick even after a bath.

“Junie?”

Something crunched against the carpet of leaves. Footsteps approached with a familiar gait. It wasn’t Junie.

Raw fear ran like frozen air over my exposed scalp. The stench intensified as a light breeze shook the dead trees, their creaks like the laughter of old hags. The footsteps were too close to run. Searching for anything, I saw the closest tree’s roots were partially exposed, with a gap into a hollow trunk. I scrambled past the roots into the rotten center of the tree and held my breath.

The tree was hollow all the way to the top. The grey sky illuminated the rotten veins of insect trails running down the tree. My eyes adjusted, and I saw I wasn’t the only occupant of the tree’s hollow. Six inches from my face was a corpse.

The skin was flaky, dried, and I could see patches of bone where it had rotted away. The eyes were shriveled to nothing; black teeth hung agape in the jaw, ready to bite a chunk out of me. There were no clothes, but I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Stringy blonde hair was dried to the skull.

The stench engulfed me, and I suppressed a gasp and gag as I stared in the black pits of hell where the eyes had been. Something small sent a vibration through the tree. Frozen in fear, I tried not to imagine the Skunk Ape climbing a branch to plush me from the center of the tree for spoiling one of his victims. But the banging that followed assured it was only a woodpecker.

The noise from inside the tree was like a jackhammer pounding into my head. The sound echoed in a hollow booming through the tree. The corpse rattled bones and chattered teeth with each of the woodpecker’s drills. And then the pits of its eyes began to move.

Beetles and maggots and flies came pouring from the eye sockets and the mouth, cascading onto me, crawling across my face, my arms, in my hair.

I held my breath and closed my eyes. I thought of holding the bars in place while Dad welded and sparks flew around my face, of his voice telling me to hold still and close my eyes. I felt the heat of the sparks on my skin. It was pain I had endured before. I could face it now.

The leaves crunched outside the tree as heavy footsteps approached and shook the ground. I kept my eyes closed, waiting to hear the angry breathing of the giant beast. The bugs continued to crawl, sparks continued to fly, as I heard a slight breeze through the grove. The sparks were in my waistband, running down the back of my shirt. I was burning. But dad had told me to stay still. 

The silence continued. The sparks burned my ankles, made their way into my shoes and socks. But dad told me to stay still.

Something knocked on the tree. Like knocking on a door. I held my breath.

A piece of wood whacked the trunk three times, and the last of the bugs vacated their skull fort to run down my body, leaving burning trails in their wake. But Dad told me to stay still. 

The knocks echoed through the forest like gunshots. The silence could have lasted for hours. One final beetle crawled over my ankle out the bottom of the tree.

The footsteps seemed to shake the ground as they walked away. As soon as I could, I scrambled out of the tree and ran for the house. The grass brushed away the rest of the bugs as I tore through the prairie. I clambered up the slope to the backyard. My eyes were wet from the dry wind and the relief of being out of the tree. 

I was thirty feet from the porch when through the tears, I saw Junie turning to me. His shirt was as clean as any day he washed it.

“Willard?” he said, looking in confusion at my dirt covered clothes. I wiped my eyes to see the tears on his cheeks. He stood in front of the rocking chair.

Mama was slumped back, her mouth open and foaming, her head held back. Her thin chest did not rise and fall, and her pale skin had red marks on the neck and wrists.

“Junie?” I said. “What happened?”

“I was out looking for you.” His voice quivered to match my own. His necklace turned over in his hands.

I touched Mama’s cooling skin. There was no pulse.

“I don’t know what happened,” Junie said, his voice cracking.

We heard Dad’s truck pull into the driveway.

I hadn’t seen Dad cry before, but it was just a few tears down his cheek. There was no sign of a quiver in his voice as he recounted everything to the sheriff from the kitchen table. They ruled it an overdose and wrapped her body in a black bag and took her away. Like garbage.

I didn’t say anything about the corpse in the tree. Mama was right. I was a curse. It was my fault she was dead. When we found her body, she smelled like death.

Part 1

Summer was the best time for Junie and me. Endless daylight hours let us explore farther from home and take on more ambitious building projects in the woods. The summer after our fourth grade year, we took on our most ambitious build yet: a treehouse. We gathered sticks and discarded lumber from around the furthest reaches of the land. We had time to waste dragging a single railroad tie to the perfect tree.

A tree fort would be the first structure we had built that would last us longer than a year, as the river’s annual flooding would always destroy anything we had built on the ground. 

At night, we would sneak down the stairs by the light of a stolen lighter to pinch bent nails from Dad’s tool belt. We found an old hammer in our shed, and even a few pieces of rusty sheet metal to serve as a roof. A leftover notebook from school served as our schematics with which we tried to emulate the blueprints we saw on the dashboard of Dad’s truck.

Each ambitious sketch was emblazoned with “J&W Construction” in the lower right corner. Quantities were counted with tallies, and dimensions were taken in forearm lengths and handbreadths, since we couldn’t afford to lose our rulers from school.

Our project deadline was the beginning of the school year. At that point, I would be in fifth grade and sent to the middle school. We wouldn’t have time to build with waning daylight and homework to do.

Preliminary site survey was completed before the summer began, as once the spring floods had receded, we set out to find ourselves a good tree. Perhaps we found the perfect one. It was possibly a third of a mile from the house past the grove. The oak was solid, tall, and had several low hanging branches that made climbing and construction easier. 

On one side the branches thinned slightly, allowing for a view of the prairie and the river. The dead grove was out of sight, and it made us feel a lot more comfortable being out there. 

We split sticks with a rusty hatchet and built ladder rungs nailed into the side of the tree. Once we felt we were at a good height, we started on a platform. The tree had several branches at about ten feet off the ground we laid sticks and logs between, at least the ones we could lift. That platform would be a living area, and we built a grass and tin roof over it so that July thunderstorms didn’t soak us. Before long, we had enough room to lay down under the roof or under the stars. 

We didn’t sleep out there, but would have if we could. Who would heat up Mama’s microwave meal if we didn’t get back before sundown? We knew there was a whipping if we didn’t. We made a rule that when the sun hit the top of the trees in the dead grove, we’d make our way home. It was just enough time for us to sprint through the prairie and around the grove as the sun’s last rays ducked below the horizon.

By July, we had run out of nails, and had to pinch more than a few from Dad’s tool belt in the dark of night. Junie and I would take turns laying awake. We listened as his truck drove into the driveway, he thudded his way up the stairs, and then waited some more as he and Mama fought and made up. 

On nights when the moon was bright, the house was eerie. White walls full of mama’s promises of pictures gave enough illumination to creep down the stairs and fish maybe five or six long nails out of the toolbelt hung by the front door. On the nights with no moon, we used an old zippo lighter we had stolen from mama to guide our way through the pitch black house.

It was a moonless night on my fourth turn. I flicked the lighter once as door hinges rubbed with bacon grease tried not to whine as they swung into the hallway. I hugged the left side of the stairs, skipping the third step that squeaked no matter how lightly we stepped on it. I turned the corner into the kitchen, hand guiding me along the wall. The windows were black portals to another world staring in at me as I shuffled forward, waiting to bump into the chair next to the front door that held Dad’s tool belt. 

I jumped out of my skin when the kitchen light flipped on. The lighter clattered against the floorboards as my hands went numb. Dad sat at the kitchen table, boots still on, beer in hand. 

“What are you doing up, Willard?” came his quiet gruff voice.

I knew better than to lie to my father, knowing now he probably suspected us all along.

“Junie and I are building a tree fort and we been needing nails.”

“Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I went to bed thinking tree house dreams were probably finished.

I woke up the next morning to Dad making breakfast. It wasn’t any different from the microwave bacon, watery pancakes, and chewy scrambled eggs Junie and I could make, but given that Dad made it, it tasted better.

We sat mostly in silence until Dad spoke up, after a sip from his coal black coffee.

“I need your boys’s help with something. Clean up the dishes and meet me outside.”

We found him by the tin shed, his truck parked with the tailgate and his welding equipment sitting on the ground. Two lengths of metal channel were propped up on old saw horses. Dad flipped up his welding hood and motioned us over. He was holding several pieces of metal rod in one hand.

“Junie, grab some gloves from the backseat of the truck.”

Junie opened the door and fished around under the seat. He pulled out a pair of goggles. “Dad, can I wear these?” 

“They don’t work.  Just close yer eyes.”

Junie got the gloves. Dad told him to hold the end of the channels. Dad handed me one of the rods, which I held in hands draped in oversized leather. 

“Hold it there. Close yer eyes. There’ll be sparks.”

He held up his stick welder and flipped down his hood.

Through his gritted teeth, I heard, “Don’t move.”

I closed my eyes and felt the sparks fly around me. The heat wormed its way through the steel into my hands. I felt small patches of hair singe on my arms. The wind blew through new tiny holes in my shirt. But I didn’t move.

Before I knew it, Dad tore off down the road back to the jobsite, the eight rung ladder strapped into the back of the truck. He left us with a box of nails and the afternoon to continue our work.

It was the last week of August when we made a change to our treehouse design. With the leaves changing and the floor and roof complete, we decided a second level lookout platform could be the finishing touch on the fort. We worked late for that week as we scrambled to find more materials. 

Our deadline approached. It was the day before school, our uniforms laid on our beds after we bolded to the fort the moment a woodpecker woke us. The sun passed in the sky, racing towards the horizon as we scrambled up our ladder rungs dozens of times, precariously clutching one piece of wood at a time, installing it on the lookout platform with two nails, and almost sliding down the tree to grab another. It was like we could hear the bus rumbling onto our driveway in the distance.

As the final hammer fell, Junie and I stood on the platform in proud glory as we surveyed our domain. The shadows spread across the prairie and the river. We turned to the grove and saw its branches consuming the sinking sun, but our accomplishment made us feel invincible against the coming dark.

The feeling didn’t last long. The sun sank even lower as we climbed down. Grass and trees began to blur into a dark horizon. Crickets sang their invisible song, and one last woodpecker tolled the end of the day with his drum. Stars had already winked on in the dark blue night, no moon rising to give us safe passage home. As Junie and I ran, our steps got slower and more uncertain. 

Junie’s voice behind me yelped “Will!” He had tripped. I turned and felt in the dark to help him up.

“I can’t see,” he said softly. “I don’t want to lose the path.”

“I know” was all I could say back. I felt the dread welling up in me as more and more detail faded in the waning light. “Hold on, I got it.”

I felt in my pocket and relaxed at the warm touch of the plastic lighter. Holding it close to my chest, I sparked it. A small yellow flame wavered in the wind and gave me and Junie enough light to stumble forward. We could still barely see what we were standing on, but Junie put a warm hand on my shoulder as a cool breeze blew out the light.

I sparked it again. We continued, shuffling steps forward on what I thought was the path, looking up every so often to see if I was going to hit a tree.

After what felt like ages of slow going, the sky was completely dark save for the pinprick stars looking down at us, whose names we didn’t know and who didn’t know ours. The flame winked out again in a gentle cool breeze, and then I thought I saw the house light. 

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Here, hold the lighter. I think I see the house.” I took a slight step forward and waited to feel the ground. 

I was suddenly sideways, tumbling down a short slope through damp leaves. I flopped hard onto soft ground. I took a moment and waited for the stars to stop spinning. As I shifted, I watched blacker veins across the black sky, reaching to pluck out the stars like cysts. 

We had fallen into the grove.

“Junie?” I said, feeling around for the rustling in the damp compost.

“Willard?” His voice came from my left.

“You ok?”

“I dropped the lighter.”

The breeze blew softly, shaking the trees and making the branches groan and wheeze.

“Let me come to you,” I said, my stomach in my throat, following the sound of his voice through slime and filth. We bumped into each other, and frantically felt around for the lighter. Our hands and arms smeared through dead tree matter in hope of the artificial salvation of plastic. Each pass of my hands was more hurried, my breath tightened in my throat, and the dark became blurry as tears started to well in my eyes.

“I found it!” said Junie, through the quiver in his voice, and I gulped back the tears and rested my arms on him. We steadied each other as we got to our feet. He wiped it off with his shirt, then we huddled close around it. He struck it.

The flame returned and illuminated our small surroundings. A few trees stood around us like undead sentinels waiting to spring to motion and drag us to hell. The light froze them. I looked at Junie’s face, and we shared a moment of relief.

The breeze blew. It smelled like death. The flame danced and winked out.

Junie restruck the lighter. A weaker flame returned. I caught a strange reflection out of the corner of my eye, up and to the left, towards the stars.

Two yellow eyes reflected down on us from a branch high off the ground.

The wind blew and the light flicked out.

Junie and I stood still as stones opposite the hulking mass outlined by the stars, its shadow clear and massive against the dim sky.

A shape resting on the dark branch slid forward and limply flopped onto the ground. I could not tell if it was a deer carcass or a human corpse.

The hulking figure shifted from its crouched position. It jumped down with a thud that shook the earth. It must have been eight feet tall. It made no sound, and no breath made its chest rise and fall. The woods were silent. The night stank of death.

Junie and I turned and ran. Adrenaline aiding animal reflex and night vision, we dodged fallen trees and divots in the earth. We scrambled through dead leaves and thorns. The stench of death made us choke between ragged breaths. I could feel the giant hands reaching for my neck. The slamming footsteps shook my teeth.

We clambered up the slope into the backyard and didn’t stop. Across the yard, around the trees, up the back porch, through the screen door. We turned and looked out into the dark abyss we had escaped and waited. 

Like a gunshot ringing out, a wood knock sounded just beyond the backyard. It made us jump, and we sank below the window sill. We sat there, huddled on the floor, for an hour. I imagined some giant hairy hand slamming through the window and dragging me into the woods to hang me from a tree.

We army-crawled up the stairs before we crept with silent feet to our room, hoping not to wake another monster in Mama. The wood knocks rang through the moonless night. Somehow, we fell asleep.

When a woodpecker’s drilling woke me in the morning, it was early. Junie and I, still covered in dirt, washed up and got ready for school. I tried to wipe away the bags under my eyes to no avail and climbed on the bus.

As we rode away, I looked past the house into the grove. A dead tree near the edge of the grove had fallen and shattered into rotten pieces. Something red glistened on the splinters. When we got home from school, Junie and I stayed inside. We had narrowly avoided the Skunk Ape, and now he was pissed.

Part 1

Summer was the best time for Junie and me. Endless daylight hours let us explore farther from home and take on more ambitious building projects in the woods. The summer after our fourth grade year, we took on our most ambitious build yet: a treehouse. We gathered sticks and discarded lumber from around the furthest reaches of the land. We had time to waste dragging a single railroad tie to the perfect tree.

A tree fort would be the first structure we had built that would last us longer than a year, as the river’s annual flooding would always destroy anything we had built on the ground. 

At night, we would sneak down the stairs by the light of a stolen lighter to pinch bent nails from Dad’s tool belt. We found an old hammer in our shed, and even a few pieces of rusty sheet metal to serve as a roof. A leftover notebook from school served as our schematics with which we tried to emulate the blueprints we saw on the dashboard of Dad’s truck.

Each ambitious sketch was emblazoned with “J&W Construction” in the lower right corner. Quantities were counted with tallies, and dimensions were taken in forearm lengths and handbreadths, since we couldn’t afford to lose our rulers from school.

Our project deadline was the beginning of the school year. At that point, I would be in fifth grade and sent to the middle school. We wouldn’t have time to build with waning daylight and homework to do.

Preliminary site survey was completed before the summer began, as once the spring floods had receded, we set out to find ourselves a good tree. Perhaps we found the perfect one. It was possibly a third of a mile from the house past the grove. The oak was solid, tall, and had several low hanging branches that made climbing and construction easier. 

On one side the branches thinned slightly, allowing for a view of the prairie and the river. The dead grove was out of sight, and it made us feel a lot more comfortable being out there. 

We split sticks with a rusty hatchet and built ladder rungs nailed into the side of the tree. Once we felt we were at a good height, we started on a platform. The tree had several branches at about ten feet off the ground we laid sticks and logs between, at least the ones we could lift. That platform would be a living area, and we built a grass and tin roof over it so that July thunderstorms didn’t soak us. Before long, we had enough room to lay down under the roof or under the stars. 

We didn’t sleep out there, but would have if we could. Who would heat up Mama’s microwave meal if we didn’t get back before sundown? We knew there was a whipping if we didn’t. We made a rule that when the sun hit the top of the trees in the dead grove, we’d make our way home. It was just enough time for us to sprint through the prairie and around the grove as the sun’s last rays ducked below the horizon.

By July, we had run out of nails, and had to pinch more than a few from Dad’s tool belt in the dark of night. Junie and I would take turns laying awake. We listened as his truck drove into the driveway, he thudded his way up the stairs, and then waited some more as he and Mama fought and made up. 

On nights when the moon was bright, the house was eerie. White walls full of mama’s promises of pictures gave enough illumination to creep down the stairs and fish maybe five or six long nails out of the toolbelt hung by the front door. On the nights with no moon, we used an old zippo lighter we had stolen from mama to guide our way through the pitch black house.

It was a moonless night on my fourth turn. I flicked the lighter once as door hinges rubbed with bacon grease tried not to whine as they swung into the hallway. I hugged the left side of the stairs, skipping the third step that squeaked no matter how lightly we stepped on it. I turned the corner into the kitchen, hand guiding me along the wall. The windows were black portals to another world staring in at me as I shuffled forward, waiting to bump into the chair next to the front door that held Dad’s tool belt. 

I jumped out of my skin when the kitchen light flipped on. The lighter clattered against the floorboards as my hands went numb. Dad sat at the kitchen table, boots still on, beer in hand. 

“What are you doing up, Willard?” came his quiet gruff voice.

I knew better than to lie to my father, knowing now he probably suspected us all along.

“Junie and I are building a tree fort and we been needing nails.”

“Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I went to bed thinking tree house dreams were probably finished.

I woke up the next morning to Dad making breakfast. It wasn’t any different from the microwave bacon, watery pancakes, and chewy scrambled eggs Junie and I could make, but given that Dad made it, it tasted better.

We sat mostly in silence until Dad spoke up, after a sip from his coal black coffee.

“I need your boys’s help with something. Clean up the dishes and meet me outside.”

We found him by the tin shed, his truck parked with the tailgate and his welding equipment sitting on the ground. Two lengths of metal channel were propped up on old saw horses. Dad flipped up his welding hood and motioned us over. He was holding several pieces of metal rod in one hand.

“Junie, grab some gloves from the backseat of the truck.”

Junie opened the door and fished around under the seat. He pulled out a pair of goggles. “Dad, can I wear these?” 

“They don’t work.  Just close yer eyes.”

Junie got the gloves. Dad told him to hold the end of the channels. Dad handed me one of the rods, which I held in hands draped in oversized leather. 

“Hold it there. Close yer eyes. There’ll be sparks.”

He held up his stick welder and flipped down his hood.

Through his gritted teeth, I heard, “Don’t move.”

I closed my eyes and felt the sparks fly around me. The heat wormed its way through the steel into my hands. I felt small patches of hair singe on my arms. The wind blew through new tiny holes in my shirt. But I didn’t move.

Before I knew it, Dad tore off down the road back to the jobsite, the eight rung ladder strapped into the back of the truck. He left us with a box of nails and the afternoon to continue our work.

It was the last week of August when we made a change to our treehouse design. With the leaves changing and the floor and roof complete, we decided a second level lookout platform could be the finishing touch on the fort. We worked late for that week as we scrambled to find more materials. 

Our deadline approached. It was the day before school, our uniforms laid on our beds after we bolded to the fort the moment a woodpecker woke us. The sun passed in the sky, racing towards the horizon as we scrambled up our ladder rungs dozens of times, precariously clutching one piece of wood at a time, installing it on the lookout platform with two nails, and almost sliding down the tree to grab another. It was like we could hear the bus rumbling onto our driveway in the distance.

As the final hammer fell, Junie and I stood on the platform in proud glory as we surveyed our domain. The shadows spread across the prairie and the river. We turned to the grove and saw its branches consuming the sinking sun, but our accomplishment made us feel invincible against the coming dark.

The feeling didn’t last long. The sun sank even lower as we climbed down. Grass and trees began to blur into a dark horizon. Crickets sang their invisible song, and one last woodpecker tolled the end of the day with his drum. Stars had already winked on in the dark blue night, no moon rising to give us safe passage home. As Junie and I ran, our steps got slower and more uncertain. 

Junie’s voice behind me yelped “Will!” He had tripped. I turned and felt in the dark to help him up.

“I can’t see,” he said softly. “I don’t want to lose the path.”

“I know” was all I could say back. I felt the dread welling up in me as more and more detail faded in the waning light. “Hold on, I got it.”

I felt in my pocket and relaxed at the warm touch of the plastic lighter. Holding it close to my chest, I sparked it. A small yellow flame wavered in the wind and gave me and Junie enough light to stumble forward. We could still barely see what we were standing on, but Junie put a warm hand on my shoulder as a cool breeze blew out the light.

I sparked it again. We continued, shuffling steps forward on what I thought was the path, looking up every so often to see if I was going to hit a tree.

After what felt like ages of slow going, the sky was completely dark save for the pinprick stars looking down at us, whose names we didn’t know and who didn’t know ours. The flame winked out again in a gentle cool breeze, and then I thought I saw the house light. 

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Here, hold the lighter. I think I see the house.” I took a slight step forward and waited to feel the ground. 

I was suddenly sideways, tumbling down a short slope through damp leaves. I flopped hard onto soft ground. I took a moment and waited for the stars to stop spinning. As I shifted, I watched blacker veins across the black sky, reaching to pluck out the stars like cysts. 

We had fallen into the grove.

“Junie?” I said, feeling around for the rustling in the damp compost.

“Willard?” His voice came from my left.

“You ok?”

“I dropped the lighter.”

The breeze blew softly, shaking the trees and making the branches groan and wheeze.

“Let me come to you,” I said, my stomach in my throat, following the sound of his voice through slime and filth. We bumped into each other, and frantically felt around for the lighter. Our hands and arms smeared through dead tree matter in hope of the artificial salvation of plastic. Each pass of my hands was more hurried, my breath tightened in my throat, and the dark became blurry as tears started to well in my eyes.

“I found it!” said Junie, through the quiver in his voice, and I gulped back the tears and rested my arms on him. We steadied each other as we got to our feet. He wiped it off with his shirt, then we huddled close around it. He struck it.

The flame returned and illuminated our small surroundings. A few trees stood around us like undead sentinels waiting to spring to motion and drag us to hell. The light froze them. I looked at Junie’s face, and we shared a moment of relief.

The breeze blew. It smelled like death. The flame danced and winked out.

Junie restruck the lighter. A weaker flame returned. I caught a strange reflection out of the corner of my eye, up and to the left, towards the stars.

Two yellow eyes reflected down on us from a branch high off the ground.

The wind blew and the light flicked out.

Junie and I stood still as stones opposite the hulking mass outlined by the stars, its shadow clear and massive against the dim sky.

A shape resting on the dark branch slid forward and limply flopped onto the ground. I could not tell if it was a deer carcass or a human corpse.

The hulking figure shifted from its crouched position. It jumped down with a thud that shook the earth. It must have been eight feet tall. It made no sound, and no breath made its chest rise and fall. The woods were silent. The night stank of death.

Junie and I turned and ran. Adrenaline aiding animal reflex and night vision, we dodged fallen trees and divots in the earth. We scrambled through dead leaves and thorns. The stench of death made us choke between ragged breaths. I could feel the giant hands reaching for my neck. The slamming footsteps shook my teeth.

We clambered up the slope into the backyard and didn’t stop. Across the yard, around the trees, up the back porch, through the screen door. We turned and looked out into the dark abyss we had escaped and waited. 

Like a gunshot ringing out, a wood knock sounded just beyond the backyard. It made us jump, and we sank below the window sill. We sat there, huddled on the floor, for an hour. I imagined some giant hairy hand slamming through the window and dragging me into the woods to hang me from a tree.

We army-crawled up the stairs before we crept with silent feet to our room, hoping not to wake another monster in Mama. The wood knocks rang through the moonless night. Somehow, we fell asleep.

When a woodpecker’s drilling woke me in the morning, it was early. Junie and I, still covered in dirt, washed up and got ready for school. I tried to wipe away the bags under my eyes to no avail and climbed on the bus.

As we rode away, I looked past the house into the grove. A dead tree near the edge of the grove had fallen and shattered into rotten pieces. Something red glistened on the splinters. When we got home from school, Junie and I stayed inside. We had narrowly avoided the Skunk Ape, and now he was pissed.

Part 1

Summer was the best time for Junie and me. Endless daylight hours let us explore farther from home and take on more ambitious building projects in the woods. The summer after our fourth grade year, we took on our most ambitious build yet: a treehouse. We gathered sticks and discarded lumber from around the furthest reaches of the land. We had time to waste dragging a single railroad tie to the perfect tree.

A tree fort would be the first structure we had built that would last us longer than a year, as the river’s annual flooding would always destroy anything we had built on the ground. 

At night, we would sneak down the stairs by the light of a stolen lighter to pinch bent nails from Dad’s tool belt. We found an old hammer in our shed, and even a few pieces of rusty sheet metal to serve as a roof. A leftover notebook from school served as our schematics with which we tried to emulate the blueprints we saw on the dashboard of Dad’s truck.

Each ambitious sketch was emblazoned with “J&W Construction” in the lower right corner. Quantities were counted with tallies, and dimensions were taken in forearm lengths and handbreadths, since we couldn’t afford to lose our rulers from school.

Our project deadline was the beginning of the school year. At that point, I would be in fifth grade and sent to the middle school. We wouldn’t have time to build with waning daylight and homework to do.

Preliminary site survey was completed before the summer began, as once the spring floods had receded, we set out to find ourselves a good tree. Perhaps we found the perfect one. It was possibly a third of a mile from the house past the grove. The oak was solid, tall, and had several low hanging branches that made climbing and construction easier. 

On one side the branches thinned slightly, allowing for a view of the prairie and the river. The dead grove was out of sight, and it made us feel a lot more comfortable being out there. 

We split sticks with a rusty hatchet and built ladder rungs nailed into the side of the tree. Once we felt we were at a good height, we started on a platform. The tree had several branches at about ten feet off the ground we laid sticks and logs between, at least the ones we could lift. That platform would be a living area, and we built a grass and tin roof over it so that July thunderstorms didn’t soak us. Before long, we had enough room to lay down under the roof or under the stars. 

We didn’t sleep out there, but would have if we could. Who would heat up Mama’s microwave meal if we didn’t get back before sundown? We knew there was a whipping if we didn’t. We made a rule that when the sun hit the top of the trees in the dead grove, we’d make our way home. It was just enough time for us to sprint through the prairie and around the grove as the sun’s last rays ducked below the horizon.

By July, we had run out of nails, and had to pinch more than a few from Dad’s tool belt in the dark of night. Junie and I would take turns laying awake. We listened as his truck drove into the driveway, he thudded his way up the stairs, and then waited some more as he and Mama fought and made up. 

On nights when the moon was bright, the house was eerie. White walls full of mama’s promises of pictures gave enough illumination to creep down the stairs and fish maybe five or six long nails out of the toolbelt hung by the front door. On the nights with no moon, we used an old zippo lighter we had stolen from mama to guide our way through the pitch black house.

It was a moonless night on my fourth turn. I flicked the lighter once as door hinges rubbed with bacon grease tried not to whine as they swung into the hallway. I hugged the left side of the stairs, skipping the third step that squeaked no matter how lightly we stepped on it. I turned the corner into the kitchen, hand guiding me along the wall. The windows were black portals to another world staring in at me as I shuffled forward, waiting to bump into the chair next to the front door that held Dad’s tool belt. 

I jumped out of my skin when the kitchen light flipped on. The lighter clattered against the floorboards as my hands went numb. Dad sat at the kitchen table, boots still on, beer in hand. 

“What are you doing up, Willard?” came his quiet gruff voice.

I knew better than to lie to my father, knowing now he probably suspected us all along.

“Junie and I are building a tree fort and we been needing nails.”

“Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I went to bed thinking tree house dreams were probably finished.

I woke up the next morning to Dad making breakfast. It wasn’t any different from the microwave bacon, watery pancakes, and chewy scrambled eggs Junie and I could make, but given that Dad made it, it tasted better.

We sat mostly in silence until Dad spoke up, after a sip from his coal black coffee.

“I need your boys’s help with something. Clean up the dishes and meet me outside.”

We found him by the tin shed, his truck parked with the tailgate and his welding equipment sitting on the ground. Two lengths of metal channel were propped up on old saw horses. Dad flipped up his welding hood and motioned us over. He was holding several pieces of metal rod in one hand.

“Junie, grab some gloves from the backseat of the truck.”

Junie opened the door and fished around under the seat. He pulled out a pair of goggles. “Dad, can I wear these?” 

“They don’t work.  Just close yer eyes.”

Junie got the gloves. Dad told him to hold the end of the channels. Dad handed me one of the rods, which I held in hands draped in oversized leather. 

“Hold it there. Close yer eyes. There’ll be sparks.”

He held up his stick welder and flipped down his hood.

Through his gritted teeth, I heard, “Don’t move.”

I closed my eyes and felt the sparks fly around me. The heat wormed its way through the steel into my hands. I felt small patches of hair singe on my arms. The wind blew through new tiny holes in my shirt. But I didn’t move.

Before I knew it, Dad tore off down the road back to the jobsite, the eight rung ladder strapped into the back of the truck. He left us with a box of nails and the afternoon to continue our work.

It was the last week of August when we made a change to our treehouse design. With the leaves changing and the floor and roof complete, we decided a second level lookout platform could be the finishing touch on the fort. We worked late for that week as we scrambled to find more materials. 

Our deadline approached. It was the day before school, our uniforms laid on our beds after we bolded to the fort the moment a woodpecker woke us. The sun passed in the sky, racing towards the horizon as we scrambled up our ladder rungs dozens of times, precariously clutching one piece of wood at a time, installing it on the lookout platform with two nails, and almost sliding down the tree to grab another. It was like we could hear the bus rumbling onto our driveway in the distance.

As the final hammer fell, Junie and I stood on the platform in proud glory as we surveyed our domain. The shadows spread across the prairie and the river. We turned to the grove and saw its branches consuming the sinking sun, but our accomplishment made us feel invincible against the coming dark.

The feeling didn’t last long. The sun sank even lower as we climbed down. Grass and trees began to blur into a dark horizon. Crickets sang their invisible song, and one last woodpecker tolled the end of the day with his drum. Stars had already winked on in the dark blue night, no moon rising to give us safe passage home. As Junie and I ran, our steps got slower and more uncertain. 

Junie’s voice behind me yelped “Will!” He had tripped. I turned and felt in the dark to help him up.

“I can’t see,” he said softly. “I don’t want to lose the path.”

“I know” was all I could say back. I felt the dread welling up in me as more and more detail faded in the waning light. “Hold on, I got it.”

I felt in my pocket and relaxed at the warm touch of the plastic lighter. Holding it close to my chest, I sparked it. A small yellow flame wavered in the wind and gave me and Junie enough light to stumble forward. We could still barely see what we were standing on, but Junie put a warm hand on my shoulder as a cool breeze blew out the light.

I sparked it again. We continued, shuffling steps forward on what I thought was the path, looking up every so often to see if I was going to hit a tree.

After what felt like ages of slow going, the sky was completely dark save for the pinprick stars looking down at us, whose names we didn’t know and who didn’t know ours. The flame winked out again in a gentle cool breeze, and then I thought I saw the house light. 

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Here, hold the lighter. I think I see the house.” I took a slight step forward and waited to feel the ground. 

I was suddenly sideways, tumbling down a short slope through damp leaves. I flopped hard onto soft ground. I took a moment and waited for the stars to stop spinning. As I shifted, I watched blacker veins across the black sky, reaching to pluck out the stars like cysts. 

We had fallen into the grove.

“Junie?” I said, feeling around for the rustling in the damp compost.

“Willard?” His voice came from my left.

“You ok?”

“I dropped the lighter.”

The breeze blew softly, shaking the trees and making the branches groan and wheeze.

“Let me come to you,” I said, my stomach in my throat, following the sound of his voice through slime and filth. We bumped into each other, and frantically felt around for the lighter. Our hands and arms smeared through dead tree matter in hope of the artificial salvation of plastic. Each pass of my hands was more hurried, my breath tightened in my throat, and the dark became blurry as tears started to well in my eyes.

“I found it!” said Junie, through the quiver in his voice, and I gulped back the tears and rested my arms on him. We steadied each other as we got to our feet. He wiped it off with his shirt, then we huddled close around it. He struck it.

The flame returned and illuminated our small surroundings. A few trees stood around us like undead sentinels waiting to spring to motion and drag us to hell. The light froze them. I looked at Junie’s face, and we shared a moment of relief.

The breeze blew. It smelled like death. The flame danced and winked out.

Junie restruck the lighter. A weaker flame returned. I caught a strange reflection out of the corner of my eye, up and to the left, towards the stars.

Two yellow eyes reflected down on us from a branch high off the ground.

The wind blew and the light flicked out.

Junie and I stood still as stones opposite the hulking mass outlined by the stars, its shadow clear and massive against the dim sky.

A shape resting on the dark branch slid forward and limply flopped onto the ground. I could not tell if it was a deer carcass or a human corpse.

The hulking figure shifted from its crouched position. It jumped down with a thud that shook the earth. It must have been eight feet tall. It made no sound, and no breath made its chest rise and fall. The woods were silent. The night stank of death.

Junie and I turned and ran. Adrenaline aiding animal reflex and night vision, we dodged fallen trees and divots in the earth. We scrambled through dead leaves and thorns. The stench of death made us choke between ragged breaths. I could feel the giant hands reaching for my neck. The slamming footsteps shook my teeth.

We clambered up the slope into the backyard and didn’t stop. Across the yard, around the trees, up the back porch, through the screen door. We turned and looked out into the dark abyss we had escaped and waited. 

Like a gunshot ringing out, a wood knock sounded just beyond the backyard. It made us jump, and we sank below the window sill. We sat there, huddled on the floor, for an hour. I imagined some giant hairy hand slamming through the window and dragging me into the woods to hang me from a tree.

We army-crawled up the stairs before we crept with silent feet to our room, hoping not to wake another monster in Mama. The wood knocks rang through the moonless night. Somehow, we fell asleep.

When a woodpecker’s drilling woke me in the morning, it was early. Junie and I, still covered in dirt, washed up and got ready for school. I tried to wipe away the bags under my eyes to no avail and climbed on the bus.

As we rode away, I looked past the house into the grove. A dead tree near the edge of the grove had fallen and shattered into rotten pieces. Something red glistened on the splinters. When we got home from school, Junie and I stayed inside. We had narrowly avoided the Skunk Ape, and now he was pissed.

Part 1

Summer was the best time for Junie and me. Endless daylight hours let us explore farther from home and take on more ambitious building projects in the woods. The summer after our fourth grade year, we took on our most ambitious build yet: a treehouse. We gathered sticks and discarded lumber from around the furthest reaches of the land. We had time to waste dragging a single railroad tie to the perfect tree.

A tree fort would be the first structure we had built that would last us longer than a year, as the river’s annual flooding would always destroy anything we had built on the ground. 

At night, we would sneak down the stairs by the light of a stolen lighter to pinch bent nails from Dad’s tool belt. We found an old hammer in our shed, and even a few pieces of rusty sheet metal to serve as a roof. A leftover notebook from school served as our schematics with which we tried to emulate the blueprints we saw on the dashboard of Dad’s truck.

Each ambitious sketch was emblazoned with “J&W Construction” in the lower right corner. Quantities were counted with tallies, and dimensions were taken in forearm lengths and handbreadths, since we couldn’t afford to lose our rulers from school.

Our project deadline was the beginning of the school year. At that point, I would be in fifth grade and sent to the middle school. We wouldn’t have time to build with waning daylight and homework to do.

Preliminary site survey was completed before the summer began, as once the spring floods had receded, we set out to find ourselves a good tree. Perhaps we found the perfect one. It was possibly a third of a mile from the house past the grove. The oak was solid, tall, and had several low hanging branches that made climbing and construction easier. 

On one side the branches thinned slightly, allowing for a view of the prairie and the river. The dead grove was out of sight, and it made us feel a lot more comfortable being out there. 

We split sticks with a rusty hatchet and built ladder rungs nailed into the side of the tree. Once we felt we were at a good height, we started on a platform. The tree had several branches at about ten feet off the ground we laid sticks and logs between, at least the ones we could lift. That platform would be a living area, and we built a grass and tin roof over it so that July thunderstorms didn’t soak us. Before long, we had enough room to lay down under the roof or under the stars. 

We didn’t sleep out there, but would have if we could. Who would heat up Mama’s microwave meal if we didn’t get back before sundown? We knew there was a whipping if we didn’t. We made a rule that when the sun hit the top of the trees in the dead grove, we’d make our way home. It was just enough time for us to sprint through the prairie and around the grove as the sun’s last rays ducked below the horizon.

By July, we had run out of nails, and had to pinch more than a few from Dad’s tool belt in the dark of night. Junie and I would take turns laying awake. We listened as his truck drove into the driveway, he thudded his way up the stairs, and then waited some more as he and Mama fought and made up. 

On nights when the moon was bright, the house was eerie. White walls full of mama’s promises of pictures gave enough illumination to creep down the stairs and fish maybe five or six long nails out of the toolbelt hung by the front door. On the nights with no moon, we used an old zippo lighter we had stolen from mama to guide our way through the pitch black house.

It was a moonless night on my fourth turn. I flicked the lighter once as door hinges rubbed with bacon grease tried not to whine as they swung into the hallway. I hugged the left side of the stairs, skipping the third step that squeaked no matter how lightly we stepped on it. I turned the corner into the kitchen, hand guiding me along the wall. The windows were black portals to another world staring in at me as I shuffled forward, waiting to bump into the chair next to the front door that held Dad’s tool belt. 

I jumped out of my skin when the kitchen light flipped on. The lighter clattered against the floorboards as my hands went numb. Dad sat at the kitchen table, boots still on, beer in hand. 

“What are you doing up, Willard?” came his quiet gruff voice.

I knew better than to lie to my father, knowing now he probably suspected us all along.

“Junie and I are building a tree fort and we been needing nails.”

“Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I went to bed thinking tree house dreams were probably finished.

I woke up the next morning to Dad making breakfast. It wasn’t any different from the microwave bacon, watery pancakes, and chewy scrambled eggs Junie and I could make, but given that Dad made it, it tasted better.

We sat mostly in silence until Dad spoke up, after a sip from his coal black coffee.

“I need your boys’s help with something. Clean up the dishes and meet me outside.”

We found him by the tin shed, his truck parked with the tailgate and his welding equipment sitting on the ground. Two lengths of metal channel were propped up on old saw horses. Dad flipped up his welding hood and motioned us over. He was holding several pieces of metal rod in one hand.

“Junie, grab some gloves from the backseat of the truck.”

Junie opened the door and fished around under the seat. He pulled out a pair of goggles. “Dad, can I wear these?” 

“They don’t work.  Just close yer eyes.”

Junie got the gloves. Dad told him to hold the end of the channels. Dad handed me one of the rods, which I held in hands draped in oversized leather. 

“Hold it there. Close yer eyes. There’ll be sparks.”

He held up his stick welder and flipped down his hood.

Through his gritted teeth, I heard, “Don’t move.”

I closed my eyes and felt the sparks fly around me. The heat wormed its way through the steel into my hands. I felt small patches of hair singe on my arms. The wind blew through new tiny holes in my shirt. But I didn’t move.

Before I knew it, Dad tore off down the road back to the jobsite, the eight rung ladder strapped into the back of the truck. He left us with a box of nails and the afternoon to continue our work.

It was the last week of August when we made a change to our treehouse design. With the leaves changing and the floor and roof complete, we decided a second level lookout platform could be the finishing touch on the fort. We worked late for that week as we scrambled to find more materials. 

Our deadline approached. It was the day before school, our uniforms laid on our beds after we bolded to the fort the moment a woodpecker woke us. The sun passed in the sky, racing towards the horizon as we scrambled up our ladder rungs dozens of times, precariously clutching one piece of wood at a time, installing it on the lookout platform with two nails, and almost sliding down the tree to grab another. It was like we could hear the bus rumbling onto our driveway in the distance.

As the final hammer fell, Junie and I stood on the platform in proud glory as we surveyed our domain. The shadows spread across the prairie and the river. We turned to the grove and saw its branches consuming the sinking sun, but our accomplishment made us feel invincible against the coming dark.

The feeling didn’t last long. The sun sank even lower as we climbed down. Grass and trees began to blur into a dark horizon. Crickets sang their invisible song, and one last woodpecker tolled the end of the day with his drum. Stars had already winked on in the dark blue night, no moon rising to give us safe passage home. As Junie and I ran, our steps got slower and more uncertain. 

Junie’s voice behind me yelped “Will!” He had tripped. I turned and felt in the dark to help him up.

“I can’t see,” he said softly. “I don’t want to lose the path.”

“I know” was all I could say back. I felt the dread welling up in me as more and more detail faded in the waning light. “Hold on, I got it.”

I felt in my pocket and relaxed at the warm touch of the plastic lighter. Holding it close to my chest, I sparked it. A small yellow flame wavered in the wind and gave me and Junie enough light to stumble forward. We could still barely see what we were standing on, but Junie put a warm hand on my shoulder as a cool breeze blew out the light.

I sparked it again. We continued, shuffling steps forward on what I thought was the path, looking up every so often to see if I was going to hit a tree.

After what felt like ages of slow going, the sky was completely dark save for the pinprick stars looking down at us, whose names we didn’t know and who didn’t know ours. The flame winked out again in a gentle cool breeze, and then I thought I saw the house light. 

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Here, hold the lighter. I think I see the house.” I took a slight step forward and waited to feel the ground. 

I was suddenly sideways, tumbling down a short slope through damp leaves. I flopped hard onto soft ground. I took a moment and waited for the stars to stop spinning. As I shifted, I watched blacker veins across the black sky, reaching to pluck out the stars like cysts. 

We had fallen into the grove.

“Junie?” I said, feeling around for the rustling in the damp compost.

“Willard?” His voice came from my left.

“You ok?”

“I dropped the lighter.”

The breeze blew softly, shaking the trees and making the branches groan and wheeze.

“Let me come to you,” I said, my stomach in my throat, following the sound of his voice through slime and filth. We bumped into each other, and frantically felt around for the lighter. Our hands and arms smeared through dead tree matter in hope of the artificial salvation of plastic. Each pass of my hands was more hurried, my breath tightened in my throat, and the dark became blurry as tears started to well in my eyes.

“I found it!” said Junie, through the quiver in his voice, and I gulped back the tears and rested my arms on him. We steadied each other as we got to our feet. He wiped it off with his shirt, then we huddled close around it. He struck it.

The flame returned and illuminated our small surroundings. A few trees stood around us like undead sentinels waiting to spring to motion and drag us to hell. The light froze them. I looked at Junie’s face, and we shared a moment of relief.

The breeze blew. It smelled like death. The flame danced and winked out.

Junie restruck the lighter. A weaker flame returned. I caught a strange reflection out of the corner of my eye, up and to the left, towards the stars.

Two yellow eyes reflected down on us from a branch high off the ground.

The wind blew and the light flicked out.

Junie and I stood still as stones opposite the hulking mass outlined by the stars, its shadow clear and massive against the dim sky.

A shape resting on the dark branch slid forward and limply flopped onto the ground. I could not tell if it was a deer carcass or a human corpse.

The hulking figure shifted from its crouched position. It jumped down with a thud that shook the earth. It must have been eight feet tall. It made no sound, and no breath made its chest rise and fall. The woods were silent. The night stank of death.

Junie and I turned and ran. Adrenaline aiding animal reflex and night vision, we dodged fallen trees and divots in the earth. We scrambled through dead leaves and thorns. The stench of death made us choke between ragged breaths. I could feel the giant hands reaching for my neck. The slamming footsteps shook my teeth.

We clambered up the slope into the backyard and didn’t stop. Across the yard, around the trees, up the back porch, through the screen door. We turned and looked out into the dark abyss we had escaped and waited. 

Like a gunshot ringing out, a wood knock sounded just beyond the backyard. It made us jump, and we sank below the window sill. We sat there, huddled on the floor, for an hour. I imagined some giant hairy hand slamming through the window and dragging me into the woods to hang me from a tree.

We army-crawled up the stairs before we crept with silent feet to our room, hoping not to wake another monster in Mama. The wood knocks rang through the moonless night. Somehow, we fell asleep.

When a woodpecker’s drilling woke me in the morning, it was early. Junie and I, still covered in dirt, washed up and got ready for school. I tried to wipe away the bags under my eyes to no avail and climbed on the bus.

As we rode away, I looked past the house into the grove. A dead tree near the edge of the grove had fallen and shattered into rotten pieces. Something red glistened on the splinters. When we got home from school, Junie and I stayed inside. We had narrowly avoided the Skunk Ape, and now he was pissed.

Part 1

Summer was the best time for Junie and me. Endless daylight hours let us explore farther from home and take on more ambitious building projects in the woods. The summer after our fourth grade year, we took on our most ambitious build yet: a treehouse. We gathered sticks and discarded lumber from around the furthest reaches of the land. We had time to waste dragging a single railroad tie to the perfect tree.

A tree fort would be the first structure we had built that would last us longer than a year, as the river’s annual flooding would always destroy anything we had built on the ground. 

At night, we would sneak down the stairs by the light of a stolen lighter to pinch bent nails from Dad’s tool belt. We found an old hammer in our shed, and even a few pieces of rusty sheet metal to serve as a roof. A leftover notebook from school served as our schematics with which we tried to emulate the blueprints we saw on the dashboard of Dad’s truck.

Each ambitious sketch was emblazoned with “J&W Construction” in the lower right corner. Quantities were counted with tallies, and dimensions were taken in forearm lengths and handbreadths, since we couldn’t afford to lose our rulers from school.

Our project deadline was the beginning of the school year. At that point, I would be in fifth grade and sent to the middle school. We wouldn’t have time to build with waning daylight and homework to do.

Preliminary site survey was completed before the summer began, as once the spring floods had receded, we set out to find ourselves a good tree. Perhaps we found the perfect one. It was possibly a third of a mile from the house past the grove. The oak was solid, tall, and had several low hanging branches that made climbing and construction easier. 

On one side the branches thinned slightly, allowing for a view of the prairie and the river. The dead grove was out of sight, and it made us feel a lot more comfortable being out there. 

We split sticks with a rusty hatchet and built ladder rungs nailed into the side of the tree. Once we felt we were at a good height, we started on a platform. The tree had several branches at about ten feet off the ground we laid sticks and logs between, at least the ones we could lift. That platform would be a living area, and we built a grass and tin roof over it so that July thunderstorms didn’t soak us. Before long, we had enough room to lay down under the roof or under the stars. 

We didn’t sleep out there, but would have if we could. Who would heat up Mama’s microwave meal if we didn’t get back before sundown? We knew there was a whipping if we didn’t. We made a rule that when the sun hit the top of the trees in the dead grove, we’d make our way home. It was just enough time for us to sprint through the prairie and around the grove as the sun’s last rays ducked below the horizon.

By July, we had run out of nails, and had to pinch more than a few from Dad’s tool belt in the dark of night. Junie and I would take turns laying awake. We listened as his truck drove into the driveway, he thudded his way up the stairs, and then waited some more as he and Mama fought and made up. 

On nights when the moon was bright, the house was eerie. White walls full of mama’s promises of pictures gave enough illumination to creep down the stairs and fish maybe five or six long nails out of the toolbelt hung by the front door. On the nights with no moon, we used an old zippo lighter we had stolen from mama to guide our way through the pitch black house.

It was a moonless night on my fourth turn. I flicked the lighter once as door hinges rubbed with bacon grease tried not to whine as they swung into the hallway. I hugged the left side of the stairs, skipping the third step that squeaked no matter how lightly we stepped on it. I turned the corner into the kitchen, hand guiding me along the wall. The windows were black portals to another world staring in at me as I shuffled forward, waiting to bump into the chair next to the front door that held Dad’s tool belt. 

I jumped out of my skin when the kitchen light flipped on. The lighter clattered against the floorboards as my hands went numb. Dad sat at the kitchen table, boots still on, beer in hand. 

“What are you doing up, Willard?” came his quiet gruff voice.

I knew better than to lie to my father, knowing now he probably suspected us all along.

“Junie and I are building a tree fort and we been needing nails.”

“Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I went to bed thinking tree house dreams were probably finished.

I woke up the next morning to Dad making breakfast. It wasn’t any different from the microwave bacon, watery pancakes, and chewy scrambled eggs Junie and I could make, but given that Dad made it, it tasted better.

We sat mostly in silence until Dad spoke up, after a sip from his coal black coffee.

“I need your boys’s help with something. Clean up the dishes and meet me outside.”

We found him by the tin shed, his truck parked with the tailgate and his welding equipment sitting on the ground. Two lengths of metal channel were propped up on old saw horses. Dad flipped up his welding hood and motioned us over. He was holding several pieces of metal rod in one hand.

“Junie, grab some gloves from the backseat of the truck.”

Junie opened the door and fished around under the seat. He pulled out a pair of goggles. “Dad, can I wear these?” 

“They don’t work.  Just close yer eyes.”

Junie got the gloves. Dad told him to hold the end of the channels. Dad handed me one of the rods, which I held in hands draped in oversized leather. 

“Hold it there. Close yer eyes. There’ll be sparks.”

He held up his stick welder and flipped down his hood.

Through his gritted teeth, I heard, “Don’t move.”

I closed my eyes and felt the sparks fly around me. The heat wormed its way through the steel into my hands. I felt small patches of hair singe on my arms. The wind blew through new tiny holes in my shirt. But I didn’t move.

Before I knew it, Dad tore off down the road back to the jobsite, the eight rung ladder strapped into the back of the truck. He left us with a box of nails and the afternoon to continue our work.

It was the last week of August when we made a change to our treehouse design. With the leaves changing and the floor and roof complete, we decided a second level lookout platform could be the finishing touch on the fort. We worked late for that week as we scrambled to find more materials. 

Our deadline approached. It was the day before school, our uniforms laid on our beds after we bolded to the fort the moment a woodpecker woke us. The sun passed in the sky, racing towards the horizon as we scrambled up our ladder rungs dozens of times, precariously clutching one piece of wood at a time, installing it on the lookout platform with two nails, and almost sliding down the tree to grab another. It was like we could hear the bus rumbling onto our driveway in the distance.

As the final hammer fell, Junie and I stood on the platform in proud glory as we surveyed our domain. The shadows spread across the prairie and the river. We turned to the grove and saw its branches consuming the sinking sun, but our accomplishment made us feel invincible against the coming dark.

The feeling didn’t last long. The sun sank even lower as we climbed down. Grass and trees began to blur into a dark horizon. Crickets sang their invisible song, and one last woodpecker tolled the end of the day with his drum. Stars had already winked on in the dark blue night, no moon rising to give us safe passage home. As Junie and I ran, our steps got slower and more uncertain. 

Junie’s voice behind me yelped “Will!” He had tripped. I turned and felt in the dark to help him up.

“I can’t see,” he said softly. “I don’t want to lose the path.”

“I know” was all I could say back. I felt the dread welling up in me as more and more detail faded in the waning light. “Hold on, I got it.”

I felt in my pocket and relaxed at the warm touch of the plastic lighter. Holding it close to my chest, I sparked it. A small yellow flame wavered in the wind and gave me and Junie enough light to stumble forward. We could still barely see what we were standing on, but Junie put a warm hand on my shoulder as a cool breeze blew out the light.

I sparked it again. We continued, shuffling steps forward on what I thought was the path, looking up every so often to see if I was going to hit a tree.

After what felt like ages of slow going, the sky was completely dark save for the pinprick stars looking down at us, whose names we didn’t know and who didn’t know ours. The flame winked out again in a gentle cool breeze, and then I thought I saw the house light. 

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Here, hold the lighter. I think I see the house.” I took a slight step forward and waited to feel the ground. 

I was suddenly sideways, tumbling down a short slope through damp leaves. I flopped hard onto soft ground. I took a moment and waited for the stars to stop spinning. As I shifted, I watched blacker veins across the black sky, reaching to pluck out the stars like cysts. 

We had fallen into the grove.

“Junie?” I said, feeling around for the rustling in the damp compost.

“Willard?” His voice came from my left.

“You ok?”

“I dropped the lighter.”

The breeze blew softly, shaking the trees and making the branches groan and wheeze.

“Let me come to you,” I said, my stomach in my throat, following the sound of his voice through slime and filth. We bumped into each other, and frantically felt around for the lighter. Our hands and arms smeared through dead tree matter in hope of the artificial salvation of plastic. Each pass of my hands was more hurried, my breath tightened in my throat, and the dark became blurry as tears started to well in my eyes.

“I found it!” said Junie, through the quiver in his voice, and I gulped back the tears and rested my arms on him. We steadied each other as we got to our feet. He wiped it off with his shirt, then we huddled close around it. He struck it.

The flame returned and illuminated our small surroundings. A few trees stood around us like undead sentinels waiting to spring to motion and drag us to hell. The light froze them. I looked at Junie’s face, and we shared a moment of relief.

The breeze blew. It smelled like death. The flame danced and winked out.

Junie restruck the lighter. A weaker flame returned. I caught a strange reflection out of the corner of my eye, up and to the left, towards the stars.

Two yellow eyes reflected down on us from a branch high off the ground.

The wind blew and the light flicked out.

Junie and I stood still as stones opposite the hulking mass outlined by the stars, its shadow clear and massive against the dim sky.

A shape resting on the dark branch slid forward and limply flopped onto the ground. I could not tell if it was a deer carcass or a human corpse.

The hulking figure shifted from its crouched position. It jumped down with a thud that shook the earth. It must have been eight feet tall. It made no sound, and no breath made its chest rise and fall. The woods were silent. The night stank of death.

Junie and I turned and ran. Adrenaline aiding animal reflex and night vision, we dodged fallen trees and divots in the earth. We scrambled through dead leaves and thorns. The stench of death made us choke between ragged breaths. I could feel the giant hands reaching for my neck. The slamming footsteps shook my teeth.

We clambered up the slope into the backyard and didn’t stop. Across the yard, around the trees, up the back porch, through the screen door. We turned and looked out into the dark abyss we had escaped and waited. 

Like a gunshot ringing out, a wood knock sounded just beyond the backyard. It made us jump, and we sank below the window sill. We sat there, huddled on the floor, for an hour. I imagined some giant hairy hand slamming through the window and dragging me into the woods to hang me from a tree.

We army-crawled up the stairs before we crept with silent feet to our room, hoping not to wake another monster in Mama. The wood knocks rang through the moonless night. Somehow, we fell asleep.

When a woodpecker’s drilling woke me in the morning, it was early. Junie and I, still covered in dirt, washed up and got ready for school. I tried to wipe away the bags under my eyes to no avail and climbed on the bus.

As we rode away, I looked past the house into the grove. A dead tree near the edge of the grove had fallen and shattered into rotten pieces. Something red glistened on the splinters. When we got home from school, Junie and I stayed inside. We had narrowly avoided the Skunk Ape, and now he was pissed.

Mama would tell us about the flood when she was in one of her moods. She would say how the day she gave birth to Junie, the levee broke and washed away every house within eight miles of the river. All except our house, being high enough on the hill to only need to replace the sheetrock up to my height as a two year old at the time. She lamented the loss of the neighbors, who never rebuilt, and the grove behind the house, which died after the water submerged the tree trunks. Now the trees stood as monoliths of death next to empty fields, black rotting fingers of branches grasping at the sky that got greyer as Junie and I got older.

Mama talked about it like it was our fault, but only when she was in one of her moods. That was only when she had run out of pills and decided to come out of her bedroom. Dad would return from jobsites late in the evening smelling of slag and iron and aftershave to replenish her pills, along with the milk and the freezer meals. He rarely spoke to us, like some mute ghost that eventually appeared in the middle of the night and the early morning to make a toolbelt and workboots appear and disappear.

Despite what was haunting us, most of our childhood was as normal as two boys on their own could have had. We rode the bus to school together. We played on the land around our house together. We cut each other’s hair. We washed each other’s clothes. We learned how the world worked together. And we learned how to fight together.

Junie and I got bussed to a nice public school in town since we were in the district. We stood out like herons in a pond against the pressed uniforms and expensive shoes with our sneakers full of holes and rumpled shirts. As clean as we tried to keep ourselves, there was only so much a bar of soap and a buzzcut could do.

I don’t remember what most of our fights with other kids were about. Usually a few of them just made fun of us, and then we beat them until they’d shut up. One particular fight, though, was about woodpeckers.

I was in the third grade, and we were learning about birds. Miss Anderson, some blonde young twenty-something, was playing bird noises and having us identify them. I knew them all, given I lived outside on summers and weekends, but I didn’t speak up. Finally, we got to a knocking sound. It was somewhat familiar to me, but wasn’t right.

“Can someone name that sound? Yes, Chelsea?”

“A woodpecker!”

“That’s right!”

I knew woodpeckers because their incessant banging acted as my alarm clock every morning for half the year. Their knocking echoed through the dead grove with a hollow bass and a rattling that made my skin crawl, but these were absent on the recording. It was only natural that I mumbled under my breath, “that ain’t what woodpeckers sound like.”

“What was that, Willard?” said Miss Anderson.

I had learned to speak up when questioned. “That ain’t what woodpeckers sound like, ma’am.”

“Oh, but it is, Willard. These are professional recordings. Perhaps you’d like to bring in a recording of your own sometime to share with the class.”

The class laughed, and I just looked at my desk.

“And remember, Willard, the word is ‘isn’t’, not ‘ain’t’.”

More laughter. The snot nosed jerk behind me kicked my chair.

Junie and I gave him and a few others a good beating behind the playground at recess for that. We knew how to not leave marks, and eventually, they learned not to tell on us. It was strictly physical.

As Junie and I sat on the swings for a moment when the bell rang, he fidgeted with the two nails tied with a string Dad had welded for him as a necklace. It looked like a letter in a made up language.

“Why’d we fight ‘em?”

“They don’t know what woodpeckers sound like.”

He grunted in reply and we headed back inside.

We weren’t stupid. It was just that instead of picture books and PBS, we had an old stack of sportsmen magazines with pages torn out and the warning labels on tobacco products. I learned words from the soap operas that blared through the door of Mama’s bedroom, and Junie learned to read off the back of a cereal box.

But more than that, we learned by being outside. We had trails marked through the prairies to our tree forts. We made a map to the old railroad bridge, and we made fishing poles out of sticks and twine. Life was most simple when we were covered in dirt, halfway through building some contraption we had seen in a book from school. We would play after school into the waning hours of light, then run home as fast as we could before the Skunk Ape got us.

He was real, alright. The debate over his existence was the catalyst for more fights at school, but our experience had shown him to be real. We even knew where he lived: the grove of dead trees behind our house. There were nights we ran parallel to those trees and caught the glint of his yellow eyes. Sometimes the wind changed, and our paths were drenched in the smell of rot and death. The grove always smelled like that. The Skunk Ape was no friendly forest protector. He was a killer who preyed on the flesh of living things and relished the stench of their corpses. That’s why he loved the rotting trees of the grove and its poisoned soil. His heralds were the woodpeckers, who banged against those trees with delight that more might die.

Part of the reason nothing grew back in the grove was the consistent flooding that filled it and drowned any new plants. They had never rebuilt the levee, probably in an attempt to kill the Skunk Ape. Dad didn’t have to tell us twice not to go there. We had seen the warning take form each spring when our stomping grounds were submerged. 

We knew the grove was cursed, but the cursed and haunted has an allure to young boys that is hard to explain. A fascination with monsters starts to form, and soon, trails cut closer to the grove. Our fears by my fourth grade year were morbid curiosities, until the day we pissed off the Skunk Ape.

There was a prairie next to the grove that had grass at least two feet above our heads. It shook and rattled in the wind like it was hollow. Junie and I would follow game trails through it to make mazes for ourselves to get out of. We’d search for birdnests to see if we could find eggs or chicks.

One day while army-crawling our way along a trail, Junie found a gun.

It was a handgun, semiautomatic, big and black. The only guns we had ever seen were in the sportsman’s magazines, so we were wicked excited when we found it.

“I bet someone was out here hunting and dropped it,” Junie said, reverently holding it like it was a crucifix.

“Maybe they were hunting the Skunk Ape,” I said, half-joking.

“You think you could kill him with a gun this small?”

“Well that depends on how big the bullets are.”

“And how big the Skunk Ape is. How many bullets do you think it has?”

“I don’t know. Let me see.” He handed it to me, pointed at the ground.

I flipped it around in my hands and flipped a switch on one side. “Safety,” I said. I flipped it back on.

I pushed a button on the handle. The magazine popped out the bottom. I could see the brass shining out of the slot on the side. “Looks like at least five.” I handed the mag to Junie.

“How many can it hold?”

“Seven, I think.”

“Cool.” I passed him the gun, and he inserted the magazine.

“Careful. There’s one in the gun already, probably.” I pulled back the slide a little to see another shining brass case in the chamber.

“Can we keep it?” Junie said.

“Maybe we should ask Dad.”

“He won’t be home until late.”

“Maybe we could stash it somewhere.”

“The teepee?”

“No, it’ll rain.”

“The railroad bridge?”

“Not if it floods.”

“We could put it under the floorboards in our bedroom.”

“That’s a good spot.”

“How we gonna get it in the house without Mama seeing it?”

“Just wait until later tonight. We could hide it under the front porch till then.”

We sat in silence as our prize lay on the grass. The most interesting things we had ever found were an old oar washed up on a sandbar or an arrowhead by the railroad bridge.

“Can we shoot it?” asked Junie.

“We gotta save the bullets.”

“Well we got six. Can we shoot one a piece? Then we have four left.”

“I’m good with that.”

“What should we shoot?”

We stood and looked around. The grass shortened as it sloped down into the dank darkness of the grove.

“Let’s shoot one of them trees.”

“Ok, how about that one?” Junie pointed to the nearest one, about the size of a person.

“Yeah, that’s good. You go first.”

Junie held the pistol up with two straight skinny arms, imitating the stances we saw in magazines. 

“Which eye do I close?”

“Your right one,” I said. “I think.”

“Ok.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Switch off the safety.”

“Ok.”

“Aim.”

“I’m doing that.”

“Then squeeze the trigger.”

Bam! The shot rang out through the grove as the pistol bucked in Junie’s hand. The woods went silent as we turned to each other, surprised by the noise. Then we turned to the tree.

The shot struck the tree at its center about six feet above the ground. A large chunk of wood cratered from the round. I was about to turn to Junie to congratulate him on a great shot and ask for my turn when I saw it.

A crimson stream was trickling down the side of the tree, staining the rotten white and brown wood a deep red. 

The tree was bleeding.

The wind changed. It brought with it the stench of death.

The forest was silent for a few moments. Then, a sound crescendoed over anything living. Heavy running footfalls crunched leaves and squelched mud, and the shot’s ringing echo directed them right to us.

Junie and I turned to each other and ran. Junie dropped the gun into the grass. The hulking thuds shook the ground over our hare-like footsteps. We weaved through grass and trees, the footsteps coming through the grove to our right.

We sprang out of the prairie and into our unkempt yard. As we waded through leaves the footsteps disappeared. Still, we bounded up the back porch and slammed the screen door behind us before we rounded to the back window and poked our heads over the sill. Not as much as a leaf stirred beyond the window, and the only sound came from our labored breathing. 

The slamming screen door had woken Mama. After half an hour, she yelled down the stairs to heat her up something for supper. Junie and I reluctantly turned from the window and retreated to the safety of the kitchen, drawing the blinds behind us.

Despite the warmth of the microwave dinner filling our stomachs, the fear ate at our insides. Sitting at the kitchen table, darkness crept into the corners of the house. As the forks scratched our plates, a crack exploded through the quiet air. A wood knock.

It sounded again. A large stick slammed against a tree with inhuman force. Ice ran in our veins as it struck again and again and again. The steady rhythm accompanied us up the stairs to our bedroom. It seemed loud enough to make our teeth rattle as we brushed them. 

I fished the box cutter I had stolen from Dad’s toolbelt from under my mattress. I held it close as the knocking followed us as we put on our bed clothes and climbed under our scratchy sheets. Then it stopped.

We laid awake long into the hours of the night, waiting for another knock.

The noise of Dad’s truck pulling into the driveway must have scared the ape away as the moon was peaking through our window. His footfalls creaked on the stairs as I slid the boxcutter under my pillow.

Our door cracked open to the solemn face of our Dad, scattered with stubble, the smell of iron and aftershave following him. It cleansed our minds of the decay and rot of the grove. 

“You boys all right?” he said, voice gruff.

“Yes, Daddy,” we said.

“You get to bed now,” he said. “You got school in the morning.”

He was about to shut the door when Junie spoke up as he turned his necklace over in his hands. “Daddy, do trees bleed?”

He paused, brow furrowing, but answered plainly. “No Junie, they don’t have blood. Go to sleep now.” His words made it sound like it was the law, and my mind stopped racing after that. 

He shut the door, and we finally went to sleep.

We avoided even passing near the grove for a whole week. When we finally got up the courage to go back, the gun was gone and the bleeding tree had tipped over in a storm. The rotten wood had shattered into thousands of soft pieces that still smelled of death. We didn’t get close, but some of them were stained red. A woodpecker’s hammer echoed through the grove like laughter and sent us running back to the house.

Mama would tell us about the flood when she was in one of her moods. She would say how the day she gave birth to Junie, the levee broke and washed away every house within eight miles of the river. All except our house, being high enough on the hill to only need to replace the sheetrock up to my height as a two year old at the time. She lamented the loss of the neighbors, who never rebuilt, and the grove behind the house, which died after the water submerged the tree trunks. Now the trees stood as monoliths of death next to empty fields, black rotting fingers of branches grasping at the sky that got greyer as Junie and I got older.

Mama talked about it like it was our fault, but only when she was in one of her moods. That was only when she had run out of pills and decided to come out of her bedroom. Dad would return from jobsites late in the evening smelling of slag and iron and aftershave to replenish her pills, along with the milk and the freezer meals. He rarely spoke to us, like some mute ghost that eventually appeared in the middle of the night and the early morning to make a toolbelt and workboots appear and disappear.

Despite what was haunting us, most of our childhood was as normal as two boys on their own could have had. We rode the bus to school together. We played on the land around our house together. We cut each other’s hair. We washed each other’s clothes. We learned how the world worked together. And we learned how to fight together.

Junie and I got bussed to a nice public school in town since we were in the district. We stood out like herons in a pond against the pressed uniforms and expensive shoes with our sneakers full of holes and rumpled shirts. As clean as we tried to keep ourselves, there was only so much a bar of soap and a buzzcut could do.

I don’t remember what most of our fights with other kids were about. Usually a few of them just made fun of us, and then we beat them until they’d shut up. One particular fight, though, was about woodpeckers.

I was in the third grade, and we were learning about birds. Miss Anderson, some blonde young twenty-something, was playing bird noises and having us identify them. I knew them all, given I lived outside on summers and weekends, but I didn’t speak up. Finally, we got to a knocking sound. It was somewhat familiar to me, but wasn’t right.

“Can someone name that sound? Yes, Chelsea?”

“A woodpecker!”

“That’s right!”

I knew woodpeckers because their incessant banging acted as my alarm clock every morning for half the year. Their knocking echoed through the dead grove with a hollow bass and a rattling that made my skin crawl, but these were absent on the recording. It was only natural that I mumbled under my breath, “that ain’t what woodpeckers sound like.”

“What was that, Willard?” said Miss Anderson.

I had learned to speak up when questioned. “That ain’t what woodpeckers sound like, ma’am.”

“Oh, but it is, Willard. These are professional recordings. Perhaps you’d like to bring in a recording of your own sometime to share with the class.”

The class laughed, and I just looked at my desk.

“And remember, Willard, the word is ‘isn’t’, not ‘ain’t’.”

More laughter. The snot nosed jerk behind me kicked my chair.

Junie and I gave him and a few others a good beating behind the playground at recess for that. We knew how to not leave marks, and eventually, they learned not to tell on us. It was strictly physical.

As Junie and I sat on the swings for a moment when the bell rang, he fidgeted with the two nails tied with a string Dad had welded for him as a necklace. It looked like a letter in a made up language.

“Why’d we fight ‘em?”

“They don’t know what woodpeckers sound like.”

He grunted in reply and we headed back inside.

We weren’t stupid. It was just that instead of picture books and PBS, we had an old stack of sportsmen magazines with pages torn out and the warning labels on tobacco products. I learned words from the soap operas that blared through the door of Mama’s bedroom, and Junie learned to read off the back of a cereal box.

But more than that, we learned by being outside. We had trails marked through the prairies to our tree forts. We made a map to the old railroad bridge, and we made fishing poles out of sticks and twine. Life was most simple when we were covered in dirt, halfway through building some contraption we had seen in a book from school. We would play after school into the waning hours of light, then run home as fast as we could before the Skunk Ape got us.

He was real, alright. The debate over his existence was the catalyst for more fights at school, but our experience had shown him to be real. We even knew where he lived: the grove of dead trees behind our house. There were nights we ran parallel to those trees and caught the glint of his yellow eyes. Sometimes the wind changed, and our paths were drenched in the smell of rot and death. The grove always smelled like that. The Skunk Ape was no friendly forest protector. He was a killer who preyed on the flesh of living things and relished the stench of their corpses. That’s why he loved the rotting trees of the grove and its poisoned soil. His heralds were the woodpeckers, who banged against those trees with delight that more might die.

Part of the reason nothing grew back in the grove was the consistent flooding that filled it and drowned any new plants. They had never rebuilt the levee, probably in an attempt to kill the Skunk Ape. Dad didn’t have to tell us twice not to go there. We had seen the warning take form each spring when our stomping grounds were submerged. 

We knew the grove was cursed, but the cursed and haunted has an allure to young boys that is hard to explain. A fascination with monsters starts to form, and soon, trails cut closer to the grove. Our fears by my fourth grade year were morbid curiosities, until the day we pissed off the Skunk Ape.

There was a prairie next to the grove that had grass at least two feet above our heads. It shook and rattled in the wind like it was hollow. Junie and I would follow game trails through it to make mazes for ourselves to get out of. We’d search for birdnests to see if we could find eggs or chicks.

One day while army-crawling our way along a trail, Junie found a gun.

It was a handgun, semiautomatic, big and black. The only guns we had ever seen were in the sportsman’s magazines, so we were wicked excited when we found it.

“I bet someone was out here hunting and dropped it,” Junie said, reverently holding it like it was a crucifix.

“Maybe they were hunting the Skunk Ape,” I said, half-joking.

“You think you could kill him with a gun this small?”

“Well that depends on how big the bullets are.”

“And how big the Skunk Ape is. How many bullets do you think it has?”

“I don’t know. Let me see.” He handed it to me, pointed at the ground.

I flipped it around in my hands and flipped a switch on one side. “Safety,” I said. I flipped it back on.

I pushed a button on the handle. The magazine popped out the bottom. I could see the brass shining out of the slot on the side. “Looks like at least five.” I handed the mag to Junie.

“How many can it hold?”

“Seven, I think.”

“Cool.” I passed him the gun, and he inserted the magazine.

“Careful. There’s one in the gun already, probably.” I pulled back the slide a little to see another shining brass case in the chamber.

“Can we keep it?” Junie said.

“Maybe we should ask Dad.”

“He won’t be home until late.”

“Maybe we could stash it somewhere.”

“The teepee?”

“No, it’ll rain.”

“The railroad bridge?”

“Not if it floods.”

“We could put it under the floorboards in our bedroom.”

“That’s a good spot.”

“How we gonna get it in the house without Mama seeing it?”

“Just wait until later tonight. We could hide it under the front porch till then.”

We sat in silence as our prize lay on the grass. The most interesting things we had ever found were an old oar washed up on a sandbar or an arrowhead by the railroad bridge.

“Can we shoot it?” asked Junie.

“We gotta save the bullets.”

“Well we got six. Can we shoot one a piece? Then we have four left.”

“I’m good with that.”

“What should we shoot?”

We stood and looked around. The grass shortened as it sloped down into the dank darkness of the grove.

“Let’s shoot one of them trees.”

“Ok, how about that one?” Junie pointed to the nearest one, about the size of a person.

“Yeah, that’s good. You go first.”

Junie held the pistol up with two straight skinny arms, imitating the stances we saw in magazines. 

“Which eye do I close?”

“Your right one,” I said. “I think.”

“Ok.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Switch off the safety.”

“Ok.”

“Aim.”

“I’m doing that.”

“Then squeeze the trigger.”

Bam! The shot rang out through the grove as the pistol bucked in Junie’s hand. The woods went silent as we turned to each other, surprised by the noise. Then we turned to the tree.

The shot struck the tree at its center about six feet above the ground. A large chunk of wood cratered from the round. I was about to turn to Junie to congratulate him on a great shot and ask for my turn when I saw it.

A crimson stream was trickling down the side of the tree, staining the rotten white and brown wood a deep red. 

The tree was bleeding.

The wind changed. It brought with it the stench of death.

The forest was silent for a few moments. Then, a sound crescendoed over anything living. Heavy running footfalls crunched leaves and squelched mud, and the shot’s ringing echo directed them right to us.

Junie and I turned to each other and ran. Junie dropped the gun into the grass. The hulking thuds shook the ground over our hare-like footsteps. We weaved through grass and trees, the footsteps coming through the grove to our right.

We sprang out of the prairie and into our unkempt yard. As we waded through leaves the footsteps disappeared. Still, we bounded up the back porch and slammed the screen door behind us before we rounded to the back window and poked our heads over the sill. Not as much as a leaf stirred beyond the window, and the only sound came from our labored breathing. 

The slamming screen door had woken Mama. After half an hour, she yelled down the stairs to heat her up something for supper. Junie and I reluctantly turned from the window and retreated to the safety of the kitchen, drawing the blinds behind us.

Despite the warmth of the microwave dinner filling our stomachs, the fear ate at our insides. Sitting at the kitchen table, darkness crept into the corners of the house. As the forks scratched our plates, a crack exploded through the quiet air. A wood knock.

It sounded again. A large stick slammed against a tree with inhuman force. Ice ran in our veins as it struck again and again and again. The steady rhythm accompanied us up the stairs to our bedroom. It seemed loud enough to make our teeth rattle as we brushed them. 

I fished the box cutter I had stolen from Dad’s toolbelt from under my mattress. I held it close as the knocking followed us as we put on our bed clothes and climbed under our scratchy sheets. Then it stopped.

We laid awake long into the hours of the night, waiting for another knock.

The noise of Dad’s truck pulling into the driveway must have scared the ape away as the moon was peaking through our window. His footfalls creaked on the stairs as I slid the boxcutter under my pillow.

Our door cracked open to the solemn face of our Dad, scattered with stubble, the smell of iron and aftershave following him. It cleansed our minds of the decay and rot of the grove. 

“You boys all right?” he said, voice gruff.

“Yes, Daddy,” we said.

“You get to bed now,” he said. “You got school in the morning.”

He was about to shut the door when Junie spoke up as he turned his necklace over in his hands. “Daddy, do trees bleed?”

He paused, brow furrowing, but answered plainly. “No Junie, they don’t have blood. Go to sleep now.” His words made it sound like it was the law, and my mind stopped racing after that. 

He shut the door, and we finally went to sleep.

We avoided even passing near the grove for a whole week. When we finally got up the courage to go back, the gun was gone and the bleeding tree had tipped over in a storm. The rotten wood had shattered into thousands of soft pieces that still smelled of death. We didn’t get close, but some of them were stained red. A woodpecker’s hammer echoed through the grove like laughter and sent us running back to the house.

Mama would tell us about the flood when she was in one of her moods. She would say how the day she gave birth to Junie, the levee broke and washed away every house within eight miles of the river. All except our house, being high enough on the hill to only need to replace the sheetrock up to my height as a two year old at the time. She lamented the loss of the neighbors, who never rebuilt, and the grove behind the house, which died after the water submerged the tree trunks. Now the trees stood as monoliths of death next to empty fields, black rotting fingers of branches grasping at the sky that got greyer as Junie and I got older.

Mama talked about it like it was our fault, but only when she was in one of her moods. That was only when she had run out of pills and decided to come out of her bedroom. Dad would return from jobsites late in the evening smelling of slag and iron and aftershave to replenish her pills, along with the milk and the freezer meals. He rarely spoke to us, like some mute ghost that eventually appeared in the middle of the night and the early morning to make a toolbelt and workboots appear and disappear.

Despite what was haunting us, most of our childhood was as normal as two boys on their own could have had. We rode the bus to school together. We played on the land around our house together. We cut each other’s hair. We washed each other’s clothes. We learned how the world worked together. And we learned how to fight together.

Junie and I got bussed to a nice public school in town since we were in the district. We stood out like herons in a pond against the pressed uniforms and expensive shoes with our sneakers full of holes and rumpled shirts. As clean as we tried to keep ourselves, there was only so much a bar of soap and a buzzcut could do.

I don’t remember what most of our fights with other kids were about. Usually a few of them just made fun of us, and then we beat them until they’d shut up. One particular fight, though, was about woodpeckers.

I was in the third grade, and we were learning about birds. Miss Anderson, some blonde young twenty-something, was playing bird noises and having us identify them. I knew them all, given I lived outside on summers and weekends, but I didn’t speak up. Finally, we got to a knocking sound. It was somewhat familiar to me, but wasn’t right.

“Can someone name that sound? Yes, Chelsea?”

“A woodpecker!”

“That’s right!”

I knew woodpeckers because their incessant banging acted as my alarm clock every morning for half the year. Their knocking echoed through the dead grove with a hollow bass and a rattling that made my skin crawl, but these were absent on the recording. It was only natural that I mumbled under my breath, “that ain’t what woodpeckers sound like.”

“What was that, Willard?” said Miss Anderson.

I had learned to speak up when questioned. “That ain’t what woodpeckers sound like, ma’am.”

“Oh, but it is, Willard. These are professional recordings. Perhaps you’d like to bring in a recording of your own sometime to share with the class.”

The class laughed, and I just looked at my desk.

“And remember, Willard, the word is ‘isn’t’, not ‘ain’t’.”

More laughter. The snot nosed jerk behind me kicked my chair.

Junie and I gave him and a few others a good beating behind the playground at recess for that. We knew how to not leave marks, and eventually, they learned not to tell on us. It was strictly physical.

As Junie and I sat on the swings for a moment when the bell rang, he fidgeted with the two nails tied with a string Dad had welded for him as a necklace. It looked like a letter in a made up language.

“Why’d we fight ‘em?”

“They don’t know what woodpeckers sound like.”

He grunted in reply and we headed back inside.

We weren’t stupid. It was just that instead of picture books and PBS, we had an old stack of sportsmen magazines with pages torn out and the warning labels on tobacco products. I learned words from the soap operas that blared through the door of Mama’s bedroom, and Junie learned to read off the back of a cereal box.

But more than that, we learned by being outside. We had trails marked through the prairies to our tree forts. We made a map to the old railroad bridge, and we made fishing poles out of sticks and twine. Life was most simple when we were covered in dirt, halfway through building some contraption we had seen in a book from school. We would play after school into the waning hours of light, then run home as fast as we could before the Skunk Ape got us.

He was real, alright. The debate over his existence was the catalyst for more fights at school, but our experience had shown him to be real. We even knew where he lived: the grove of dead trees behind our house. There were nights we ran parallel to those trees and caught the glint of his yellow eyes. Sometimes the wind changed, and our paths were drenched in the smell of rot and death. The grove always smelled like that. The Skunk Ape was no friendly forest protector. He was a killer who preyed on the flesh of living things and relished the stench of their corpses. That’s why he loved the rotting trees of the grove and its poisoned soil. His heralds were the woodpeckers, who banged against those trees with delight that more might die.

Part of the reason nothing grew back in the grove was the consistent flooding that filled it and drowned any new plants. They had never rebuilt the levee, probably in an attempt to kill the Skunk Ape. Dad didn’t have to tell us twice not to go there. We had seen the warning take form each spring when our stomping grounds were submerged. 

We knew the grove was cursed, but the cursed and haunted has an allure to young boys that is hard to explain. A fascination with monsters starts to form, and soon, trails cut closer to the grove. Our fears by my fourth grade year were morbid curiosities, until the day we pissed off the Skunk Ape.

There was a prairie next to the grove that had grass at least two feet above our heads. It shook and rattled in the wind like it was hollow. Junie and I would follow game trails through it to make mazes for ourselves to get out of. We’d search for birdnests to see if we could find eggs or chicks.

One day while army-crawling our way along a trail, Junie found a gun.

It was a handgun, semiautomatic, big and black. The only guns we had ever seen were in the sportsman’s magazines, so we were wicked excited when we found it.

“I bet someone was out here hunting and dropped it,” Junie said, reverently holding it like it was a crucifix.

“Maybe they were hunting the Skunk Ape,” I said, half-joking.

“You think you could kill him with a gun this small?”

“Well that depends on how big the bullets are.”

“And how big the Skunk Ape is. How many bullets do you think it has?”

“I don’t know. Let me see.” He handed it to me, pointed at the ground.

I flipped it around in my hands and flipped a switch on one side. “Safety,” I said. I flipped it back on.

I pushed a button on the handle. The magazine popped out the bottom. I could see the brass shining out of the slot on the side. “Looks like at least five.” I handed the mag to Junie.

“How many can it hold?”

“Seven, I think.”

“Cool.” I passed him the gun, and he inserted the magazine.

“Careful. There’s one in the gun already, probably.” I pulled back the slide a little to see another shining brass case in the chamber.

“Can we keep it?” Junie said.

“Maybe we should ask Dad.”

“He won’t be home until late.”

“Maybe we could stash it somewhere.”

“The teepee?”

“No, it’ll rain.”

“The railroad bridge?”

“Not if it floods.”

“We could put it under the floorboards in our bedroom.”

“That’s a good spot.”

“How we gonna get it in the house without Mama seeing it?”

“Just wait until later tonight. We could hide it under the front porch till then.”

We sat in silence as our prize lay on the grass. The most interesting things we had ever found were an old oar washed up on a sandbar or an arrowhead by the railroad bridge.

“Can we shoot it?” asked Junie.

“We gotta save the bullets.”

“Well we got six. Can we shoot one a piece? Then we have four left.”

“I’m good with that.”

“What should we shoot?”

We stood and looked around. The grass shortened as it sloped down into the dank darkness of the grove.

“Let’s shoot one of them trees.”

“Ok, how about that one?” Junie pointed to the nearest one, about the size of a person.

“Yeah, that’s good. You go first.”

Junie held the pistol up with two straight skinny arms, imitating the stances we saw in magazines. 

“Which eye do I close?”

“Your right one,” I said. “I think.”

“Ok.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Switch off the safety.”

“Ok.”

“Aim.”

“I’m doing that.”

“Then squeeze the trigger.”

Bam! The shot rang out through the grove as the pistol bucked in Junie’s hand. The woods went silent as we turned to each other, surprised by the noise. Then we turned to the tree.

The shot struck the tree at its center about six feet above the ground. A large chunk of wood cratered from the round. I was about to turn to Junie to congratulate him on a great shot and ask for my turn when I saw it.

A crimson stream was trickling down the side of the tree, staining the rotten white and brown wood a deep red. 

The tree was bleeding.

The wind changed. It brought with it the stench of death.

The forest was silent for a few moments. Then, a sound crescendoed over anything living. Heavy running footfalls crunched leaves and squelched mud, and the shot’s ringing echo directed them right to us.

Junie and I turned to each other and ran. Junie dropped the gun into the grass. The hulking thuds shook the ground over our hare-like footsteps. We weaved through grass and trees, the footsteps coming through the grove to our right.

We sprang out of the prairie and into our unkempt yard. As we waded through leaves the footsteps disappeared. Still, we bounded up the back porch and slammed the screen door behind us before we rounded to the back window and poked our heads over the sill. Not as much as a leaf stirred beyond the window, and the only sound came from our labored breathing. 

The slamming screen door had woken Mama. After half an hour, she yelled down the stairs to heat her up something for supper. Junie and I reluctantly turned from the window and retreated to the safety of the kitchen, drawing the blinds behind us.

Despite the warmth of the microwave dinner filling our stomachs, the fear ate at our insides. Sitting at the kitchen table, darkness crept into the corners of the house. As the forks scratched our plates, a crack exploded through the quiet air. A wood knock.

It sounded again. A large stick slammed against a tree with inhuman force. Ice ran in our veins as it struck again and again and again. The steady rhythm accompanied us up the stairs to our bedroom. It seemed loud enough to make our teeth rattle as we brushed them. 

I fished the box cutter I had stolen from Dad’s toolbelt from under my mattress. I held it close as the knocking followed us as we put on our bed clothes and climbed under our scratchy sheets. Then it stopped.

We laid awake long into the hours of the night, waiting for another knock.

The noise of Dad’s truck pulling into the driveway must have scared the ape away as the moon was peaking through our window. His footfalls creaked on the stairs as I slid the boxcutter under my pillow.

Our door cracked open to the solemn face of our Dad, scattered with stubble, the smell of iron and aftershave following him. It cleansed our minds of the decay and rot of the grove. 

“You boys all right?” he said, voice gruff.

“Yes, Daddy,” we said.

“You get to bed now,” he said. “You got school in the morning.”

He was about to shut the door when Junie spoke up as he turned his necklace over in his hands. “Daddy, do trees bleed?”

He paused, brow furrowing, but answered plainly. “No Junie, they don’t have blood. Go to sleep now.” His words made it sound like it was the law, and my mind stopped racing after that. 

He shut the door, and we finally went to sleep.

We avoided even passing near the grove for a whole week. When we finally got up the courage to go back, the gun was gone and the bleeding tree had tipped over in a storm. The rotten wood had shattered into thousands of soft pieces that still smelled of death. We didn’t get close, but some of them were stained red. A woodpecker’s hammer echoed through the grove like laughter and sent us running back to the house.

Mama would tell us about the flood when she was in one of her moods. She would say how the day she gave birth to Junie, the levee broke and washed away every house within eight miles of the river. All except our house, being high enough on the hill to only need to replace the sheetrock up to my height as a two year old at the time. She lamented the loss of the neighbors, who never rebuilt, and the grove behind the house, which died after the water submerged the tree trunks. Now the trees stood as monoliths of death next to empty fields, black rotting fingers of branches grasping at the sky that got greyer as Junie and I got older.

Mama talked about it like it was our fault, but only when she was in one of her moods. That was only when she had run out of pills and decided to come out of her bedroom. Dad would return from jobsites late in the evening smelling of slag and iron and aftershave to replenish her pills, along with the milk and the freezer meals. He rarely spoke to us, like some mute ghost that eventually appeared in the middle of the night and the early morning to make a toolbelt and workboots appear and disappear.

Despite what was haunting us, most of our childhood was as normal as two boys on their own could have had. We rode the bus to school together. We played on the land around our house together. We cut each other’s hair. We washed each other’s clothes. We learned how the world worked together. And we learned how to fight together.

Junie and I got bussed to a nice public school in town since we were in the district. We stood out like herons in a pond against the pressed uniforms and expensive shoes with our sneakers full of holes and rumpled shirts. As clean as we tried to keep ourselves, there was only so much a bar of soap and a buzzcut could do.

I don’t remember what most of our fights with other kids were about. Usually a few of them just made fun of us, and then we beat them until they’d shut up. One particular fight, though, was about woodpeckers.

I was in the third grade, and we were learning about birds. Miss Anderson, some blonde young twenty-something, was playing bird noises and having us identify them. I knew them all, given I lived outside on summers and weekends, but I didn’t speak up. Finally, we got to a knocking sound. It was somewhat familiar to me, but wasn’t right.

“Can someone name that sound? Yes, Chelsea?”

“A woodpecker!”

“That’s right!”

I knew woodpeckers because their incessant banging acted as my alarm clock every morning for half the year. Their knocking echoed through the dead grove with a hollow bass and a rattling that made my skin crawl, but these were absent on the recording. It was only natural that I mumbled under my breath, “that ain’t what woodpeckers sound like.”

“What was that, Willard?” said Miss Anderson.

I had learned to speak up when questioned. “That ain’t what woodpeckers sound like, ma’am.”

“Oh, but it is, Willard. These are professional recordings. Perhaps you’d like to bring in a recording of your own sometime to share with the class.”

The class laughed, and I just looked at my desk.

“And remember, Willard, the word is ‘isn’t’, not ‘ain’t’.”

More laughter. The snot nosed jerk behind me kicked my chair.

Junie and I gave him and a few others a good beating behind the playground at recess for that. We knew how to not leave marks, and eventually, they learned not to tell on us. It was strictly physical.

As Junie and I sat on the swings for a moment when the bell rang, he fidgeted with the two nails tied with a string Dad had welded for him as a necklace. It looked like a letter in a made up language.

“Why’d we fight ‘em?”

“They don’t know what woodpeckers sound like.”

He grunted in reply and we headed back inside.

We weren’t stupid. It was just that instead of picture books and PBS, we had an old stack of sportsmen magazines with pages torn out and the warning labels on tobacco products. I learned words from the soap operas that blared through the door of Mama’s bedroom, and Junie learned to read off the back of a cereal box.

But more than that, we learned by being outside. We had trails marked through the prairies to our tree forts. We made a map to the old railroad bridge, and we made fishing poles out of sticks and twine. Life was most simple when we were covered in dirt, halfway through building some contraption we had seen in a book from school. We would play after school into the waning hours of light, then run home as fast as we could before the Skunk Ape got us.

He was real, alright. The debate over his existence was the catalyst for more fights at school, but our experience had shown him to be real. We even knew where he lived: the grove of dead trees behind our house. There were nights we ran parallel to those trees and caught the glint of his yellow eyes. Sometimes the wind changed, and our paths were drenched in the smell of rot and death. The grove always smelled like that. The Skunk Ape was no friendly forest protector. He was a killer who preyed on the flesh of living things and relished the stench of their corpses. That’s why he loved the rotting trees of the grove and its poisoned soil. His heralds were the woodpeckers, who banged against those trees with delight that more might die.

Part of the reason nothing grew back in the grove was the consistent flooding that filled it and drowned any new plants. They had never rebuilt the levee, probably in an attempt to kill the Skunk Ape. Dad didn’t have to tell us twice not to go there. We had seen the warning take form each spring when our stomping grounds were submerged. 

We knew the grove was cursed, but the cursed and haunted has an allure to young boys that is hard to explain. A fascination with monsters starts to form, and soon, trails cut closer to the grove. Our fears by my fourth grade year were morbid curiosities, until the day we pissed off the Skunk Ape.

There was a prairie next to the grove that had grass at least two feet above our heads. It shook and rattled in the wind like it was hollow. Junie and I would follow game trails through it to make mazes for ourselves to get out of. We’d search for birdnests to see if we could find eggs or chicks.

One day while army-crawling our way along a trail, Junie found a gun.

It was a handgun, semiautomatic, big and black. The only guns we had ever seen were in the sportsman’s magazines, so we were wicked excited when we found it.

“I bet someone was out here hunting and dropped it,” Junie said, reverently holding it like it was a crucifix.

“Maybe they were hunting the Skunk Ape,” I said, half-joking.

“You think you could kill him with a gun this small?”

“Well that depends on how big the bullets are.”

“And how big the Skunk Ape is. How many bullets do you think it has?”

“I don’t know. Let me see.” He handed it to me, pointed at the ground.

I flipped it around in my hands and flipped a switch on one side. “Safety,” I said. I flipped it back on.

I pushed a button on the handle. The magazine popped out the bottom. I could see the brass shining out of the slot on the side. “Looks like at least five.” I handed the mag to Junie.

“How many can it hold?”

“Seven, I think.”

“Cool.” I passed him the gun, and he inserted the magazine.

“Careful. There’s one in the gun already, probably.” I pulled back the slide a little to see another shining brass case in the chamber.

“Can we keep it?” Junie said.

“Maybe we should ask Dad.”

“He won’t be home until late.”

“Maybe we could stash it somewhere.”

“The teepee?”

“No, it’ll rain.”

“The railroad bridge?”

“Not if it floods.”

“We could put it under the floorboards in our bedroom.”

“That’s a good spot.”

“How we gonna get it in the house without Mama seeing it?”

“Just wait until later tonight. We could hide it under the front porch till then.”

We sat in silence as our prize lay on the grass. The most interesting things we had ever found were an old oar washed up on a sandbar or an arrowhead by the railroad bridge.

“Can we shoot it?” asked Junie.

“We gotta save the bullets.”

“Well we got six. Can we shoot one a piece? Then we have four left.”

“I’m good with that.”

“What should we shoot?”

We stood and looked around. The grass shortened as it sloped down into the dank darkness of the grove.

“Let’s shoot one of them trees.”

“Ok, how about that one?” Junie pointed to the nearest one, about the size of a person.

“Yeah, that’s good. You go first.”

Junie held the pistol up with two straight skinny arms, imitating the stances we saw in magazines. 

“Which eye do I close?”

“Your right one,” I said. “I think.”

“Ok.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Switch off the safety.”

“Ok.”

“Aim.”

“I’m doing that.”

“Then squeeze the trigger.”

Bam! The shot rang out through the grove as the pistol bucked in Junie’s hand. The woods went silent as we turned to each other, surprised by the noise. Then we turned to the tree.

The shot struck the tree at its center about six feet above the ground. A large chunk of wood cratered from the round. I was about to turn to Junie to congratulate him on a great shot and ask for my turn when I saw it.

A crimson stream was trickling down the side of the tree, staining the rotten white and brown wood a deep red. 

The tree was bleeding.

The wind changed. It brought with it the stench of death.

The forest was silent for a few moments. Then, a sound crescendoed over anything living. Heavy running footfalls crunched leaves and squelched mud, and the shot’s ringing echo directed them right to us.

Junie and I turned to each other and ran. Junie dropped the gun into the grass. The hulking thuds shook the ground over our hare-like footsteps. We weaved through grass and trees, the footsteps coming through the grove to our right.

We sprang out of the prairie and into our unkempt yard. As we waded through leaves the footsteps disappeared. Still, we bounded up the back porch and slammed the screen door behind us before we rounded to the back window and poked our heads over the sill. Not as much as a leaf stirred beyond the window, and the only sound came from our labored breathing. 

The slamming screen door had woken Mama. After half an hour, she yelled down the stairs to heat her up something for supper. Junie and I reluctantly turned from the window and retreated to the safety of the kitchen, drawing the blinds behind us.

Despite the warmth of the microwave dinner filling our stomachs, the fear ate at our insides. Sitting at the kitchen table, darkness crept into the corners of the house. As the forks scratched our plates, a crack exploded through the quiet air. A wood knock.

It sounded again. A large stick slammed against a tree with inhuman force. Ice ran in our veins as it struck again and again and again. The steady rhythm accompanied us up the stairs to our bedroom. It seemed loud enough to make our teeth rattle as we brushed them. 

I fished the box cutter I had stolen from Dad’s toolbelt from under my mattress. I held it close as the knocking followed us as we put on our bed clothes and climbed under our scratchy sheets. Then it stopped.

We laid awake long into the hours of the night, waiting for another knock.

The noise of Dad’s truck pulling into the driveway must have scared the ape away as the moon was peaking through our window. His footfalls creaked on the stairs as I slid the boxcutter under my pillow.

Our door cracked open to the solemn face of our Dad, scattered with stubble, the smell of iron and aftershave following him. It cleansed our minds of the decay and rot of the grove. 

“You boys all right?” he said, voice gruff.

“Yes, Daddy,” we said.

“You get to bed now,” he said. “You got school in the morning.”

He was about to shut the door when Junie spoke up as he turned his necklace over in his hands. “Daddy, do trees bleed?”

He paused, brow furrowing, but answered plainly. “No Junie, they don’t have blood. Go to sleep now.” His words made it sound like it was the law, and my mind stopped racing after that. 

He shut the door, and we finally went to sleep.

We avoided even passing near the grove for a whole week. When we finally got up the courage to go back, the gun was gone and the bleeding tree had tipped over in a storm. The rotten wood had shattered into thousands of soft pieces that still smelled of death. We didn’t get close, but some of them were stained red. A woodpecker’s hammer echoed through the grove like laughter and sent us running back to the house.

Mama would tell us about the flood when she was in one of her moods. She would say how the day she gave birth to Junie, the levee broke and washed away every house within eight miles of the river. All except our house, being high enough on the hill to only need to replace the sheetrock up to my height as a two year old at the time. She lamented the loss of the neighbors, who never rebuilt, and the grove behind the house, which died after the water submerged the tree trunks. Now the trees stood as monoliths of death next to empty fields, black rotting fingers of branches grasping at the sky that got greyer as Junie and I got older.

Mama talked about it like it was our fault, but only when she was in one of her moods. That was only when she had run out of pills and decided to come out of her bedroom. Dad would return from jobsites late in the evening smelling of slag and iron and aftershave to replenish her pills, along with the milk and the freezer meals. He rarely spoke to us, like some mute ghost that eventually appeared in the middle of the night and the early morning to make a toolbelt and workboots appear and disappear.

Despite what was haunting us, most of our childhood was as normal as two boys on their own could have had. We rode the bus to school together. We played on the land around our house together. We cut each other’s hair. We washed each other’s clothes. We learned how the world worked together. And we learned how to fight together.

Junie and I got bussed to a nice public school in town since we were in the district. We stood out like herons in a pond against the pressed uniforms and expensive shoes with our sneakers full of holes and rumpled shirts. As clean as we tried to keep ourselves, there was only so much a bar of soap and a buzzcut could do.

I don’t remember what most of our fights with other kids were about. Usually a few of them just made fun of us, and then we beat them until they’d shut up. One particular fight, though, was about woodpeckers.

I was in the third grade, and we were learning about birds. Miss Anderson, some blonde young twenty-something, was playing bird noises and having us identify them. I knew them all, given I lived outside on summers and weekends, but I didn’t speak up. Finally, we got to a knocking sound. It was somewhat familiar to me, but wasn’t right.

“Can someone name that sound? Yes, Chelsea?”

“A woodpecker!”

“That’s right!”

I knew woodpeckers because their incessant banging acted as my alarm clock every morning for half the year. Their knocking echoed through the dead grove with a hollow bass and a rattling that made my skin crawl, but these were absent on the recording. It was only natural that I mumbled under my breath, “that ain’t what woodpeckers sound like.”

“What was that, Willard?” said Miss Anderson.

I had learned to speak up when questioned. “That ain’t what woodpeckers sound like, ma’am.”

“Oh, but it is, Willard. These are professional recordings. Perhaps you’d like to bring in a recording of your own sometime to share with the class.”

The class laughed, and I just looked at my desk.

“And remember, Willard, the word is ‘isn’t’, not ‘ain’t’.”

More laughter. The snot nosed jerk behind me kicked my chair.

Junie and I gave him and a few others a good beating behind the playground at recess for that. We knew how to not leave marks, and eventually, they learned not to tell on us. It was strictly physical.

As Junie and I sat on the swings for a moment when the bell rang, he fidgeted with the two nails tied with a string Dad had welded for him as a necklace. It looked like a letter in a made up language.

“Why’d we fight ‘em?”

“They don’t know what woodpeckers sound like.”

He grunted in reply and we headed back inside.

We weren’t stupid. It was just that instead of picture books and PBS, we had an old stack of sportsmen magazines with pages torn out and the warning labels on tobacco products. I learned words from the soap operas that blared through the door of Mama’s bedroom, and Junie learned to read off the back of a cereal box.

But more than that, we learned by being outside. We had trails marked through the prairies to our tree forts. We made a map to the old railroad bridge, and we made fishing poles out of sticks and twine. Life was most simple when we were covered in dirt, halfway through building some contraption we had seen in a book from school. We would play after school into the waning hours of light, then run home as fast as we could before the Skunk Ape got us.

He was real, alright. The debate over his existence was the catalyst for more fights at school, but our experience had shown him to be real. We even knew where he lived: the grove of dead trees behind our house. There were nights we ran parallel to those trees and caught the glint of his yellow eyes. Sometimes the wind changed, and our paths were drenched in the smell of rot and death. The grove always smelled like that. The Skunk Ape was no friendly forest protector. He was a killer who preyed on the flesh of living things and relished the stench of their corpses. That’s why he loved the rotting trees of the grove and its poisoned soil. His heralds were the woodpeckers, who banged against those trees with delight that more might die.

Part of the reason nothing grew back in the grove was the consistent flooding that filled it and drowned any new plants. They had never rebuilt the levee, probably in an attempt to kill the Skunk Ape. Dad didn’t have to tell us twice not to go there. We had seen the warning take form each spring when our stomping grounds were submerged. 

We knew the grove was cursed, but the cursed and haunted has an allure to young boys that is hard to explain. A fascination with monsters starts to form, and soon, trails cut closer to the grove. Our fears by my fourth grade year were morbid curiosities, until the day we pissed off the Skunk Ape.

There was a prairie next to the grove that had grass at least two feet above our heads. It shook and rattled in the wind like it was hollow. Junie and I would follow game trails through it to make mazes for ourselves to get out of. We’d search for birdnests to see if we could find eggs or chicks.

One day while army-crawling our way along a trail, Junie found a gun.

It was a handgun, semiautomatic, big and black. The only guns we had ever seen were in the sportsman’s magazines, so we were wicked excited when we found it.

“I bet someone was out here hunting and dropped it,” Junie said, reverently holding it like it was a crucifix.

“Maybe they were hunting the Skunk Ape,” I said, half-joking.

“You think you could kill him with a gun this small?”

“Well that depends on how big the bullets are.”

“And how big the Skunk Ape is. How many bullets do you think it has?”

“I don’t know. Let me see.” He handed it to me, pointed at the ground.

I flipped it around in my hands and flipped a switch on one side. “Safety,” I said. I flipped it back on.

I pushed a button on the handle. The magazine popped out the bottom. I could see the brass shining out of the slot on the side. “Looks like at least five.” I handed the mag to Junie.

“How many can it hold?”

“Seven, I think.”

“Cool.” I passed him the gun, and he inserted the magazine.

“Careful. There’s one in the gun already, probably.” I pulled back the slide a little to see another shining brass case in the chamber.

“Can we keep it?” Junie said.

“Maybe we should ask Dad.”

“He won’t be home until late.”

“Maybe we could stash it somewhere.”

“The teepee?”

“No, it’ll rain.”

“The railroad bridge?”

“Not if it floods.”

“We could put it under the floorboards in our bedroom.”

“That’s a good spot.”

“How we gonna get it in the house without Mama seeing it?”

“Just wait until later tonight. We could hide it under the front porch till then.”

We sat in silence as our prize lay on the grass. The most interesting things we had ever found were an old oar washed up on a sandbar or an arrowhead by the railroad bridge.

“Can we shoot it?” asked Junie.

“We gotta save the bullets.”

“Well we got six. Can we shoot one a piece? Then we have four left.”

“I’m good with that.”

“What should we shoot?”

We stood and looked around. The grass shortened as it sloped down into the dank darkness of the grove.

“Let’s shoot one of them trees.”

“Ok, how about that one?” Junie pointed to the nearest one, about the size of a person.

“Yeah, that’s good. You go first.”

Junie held the pistol up with two straight skinny arms, imitating the stances we saw in magazines. 

“Which eye do I close?”

“Your right one,” I said. “I think.”

“Ok.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Switch off the safety.”

“Ok.”

“Aim.”

“I’m doing that.”

“Then squeeze the trigger.”

Bam! The shot rang out through the grove as the pistol bucked in Junie’s hand. The woods went silent as we turned to each other, surprised by the noise. Then we turned to the tree.

The shot struck the tree at its center about six feet above the ground. A large chunk of wood cratered from the round. I was about to turn to Junie to congratulate him on a great shot and ask for my turn when I saw it.

A crimson stream was trickling down the side of the tree, staining the rotten white and brown wood a deep red. 

The tree was bleeding.

The wind changed. It brought with it the stench of death.

The forest was silent for a few moments. Then, a sound crescendoed over anything living. Heavy running footfalls crunched leaves and squelched mud, and the shot’s ringing echo directed them right to us.

Junie and I turned to each other and ran. Junie dropped the gun into the grass. The hulking thuds shook the ground over our hare-like footsteps. We weaved through grass and trees, the footsteps coming through the grove to our right.

We sprang out of the prairie and into our unkempt yard. As we waded through leaves the footsteps disappeared. Still, we bounded up the back porch and slammed the screen door behind us before we rounded to the back window and poked our heads over the sill. Not as much as a leaf stirred beyond the window, and the only sound came from our labored breathing. 

The slamming screen door had woken Mama. After half an hour, she yelled down the stairs to heat her up something for supper. Junie and I reluctantly turned from the window and retreated to the safety of the kitchen, drawing the blinds behind us.

Despite the warmth of the microwave dinner filling our stomachs, the fear ate at our insides. Sitting at the kitchen table, darkness crept into the corners of the house. As the forks scratched our plates, a crack exploded through the quiet air. A wood knock.

It sounded again. A large stick slammed against a tree with inhuman force. Ice ran in our veins as it struck again and again and again. The steady rhythm accompanied us up the stairs to our bedroom. It seemed loud enough to make our teeth rattle as we brushed them. 

I fished the box cutter I had stolen from Dad’s toolbelt from under my mattress. I held it close as the knocking followed us as we put on our bed clothes and climbed under our scratchy sheets. Then it stopped.

We laid awake long into the hours of the night, waiting for another knock.

The noise of Dad’s truck pulling into the driveway must have scared the ape away as the moon was peaking through our window. His footfalls creaked on the stairs as I slid the boxcutter under my pillow.

Our door cracked open to the solemn face of our Dad, scattered with stubble, the smell of iron and aftershave following him. It cleansed our minds of the decay and rot of the grove. 

“You boys all right?” he said, voice gruff.

“Yes, Daddy,” we said.

“You get to bed now,” he said. “You got school in the morning.”

He was about to shut the door when Junie spoke up as he turned his necklace over in his hands. “Daddy, do trees bleed?”

He paused, brow furrowing, but answered plainly. “No Junie, they don’t have blood. Go to sleep now.” His words made it sound like it was the law, and my mind stopped racing after that. 

He shut the door, and we finally went to sleep.

We avoided even passing near the grove for a whole week. When we finally got up the courage to go back, the gun was gone and the bleeding tree had tipped over in a storm. The rotten wood had shattered into thousands of soft pieces that still smelled of death. We didn’t get close, but some of them were stained red. A woodpecker’s hammer echoed through the grove like laughter and sent us running back to the house.