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danditcher · 4 years

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what’s on dogwood lane

The field at the front of the house was, like mentioned before, well taken care of; well mowed. But Micah was standing all alone half way on the grass and half way on the gravel, looking out over the rolling fields, and it appeared to be never ending. You’re standing in front of a graveyard, and maybe even on top of one. A voice in his head rasped, making him feel a sense of discomfort. What a thought to have when you’re all alone, and so frightening. His heart skipped a beat, but not in the puppy love sort of way, in the way that told Micah something was going to happen to him if he weren’t careful. Scared. You’re scared. The voice said to him again. And normally Micah would have already known such a thing, but the feeling was so powerful that it felt foreign. Nonexistent. And he was alone. Very much alone.

He began to ask himself of all the things he had been told by McCall earlier that day, but he was unable to recall his warnings. He knew of the warning against Micah going up to Dogwood in the first place, but he didn’t remember what he said on the topic of if Micah did decide if he was going to do it anyway. Maybe they didn’t even discuss that. Even though Thomas McCall was not someone Micah would consider much of a friend, both boys knew that Micah was not a kid to defy orders. He was coachable in baseball and in school, and he hardly ever got into trouble. All things everyone knew. So, the possibility of McCall not even figuring Micah would go against his pleas not to cross that border was really high. So high that Micah began to feel like a liar.

One of his feet crunched away in the gravel. The noise was penetratingly loud, his ears sensitive to it. His eyes began to burn because he’d refused to blink for longer than he would have ever thought humanly possible, the crisp air of old October stinging his eyes to boot. His legs, he felt, were beginning to drag through the wet grass like a ball and chain was attached to them. His throat became scratchy. His heart kept racing. And racing. And racing. Beating faster and faster. But he continued on towards the Monroe House because he had to prove something. That McCall wasn’t bullshitting him.

Upon approaching the house, he told himself that there wasn’t anything he should be worrying about because it wasn’t like the houses he’d seen from horror films or read about in those Stephen King books he loved so dearly, this was a real house. Not something envisaged by a horror writer, it was all real. Maybe too real. The windows were a little dusty, and the gutters were a little over stuffed with fall leaves and debris that storms had blown around, but the front pillars were nicely upkept, and the outer walls were free of any visible cracks. Micah envied the place for a moment before remembering what he was told he was bound to encounter. The front door had a notice on it about it being up for sale, and Micah took a moment to read it, laughing to himself because he knew that if any of what McCall had said was true, no one was going to buy this house and it would go to waste. Deteriorate and rot. Die. And at the realization, Micah shuttered again. His body felt cold, but his hands were hot with sweat.

He couldn’t be sure how long he stood on the front porch of the house before deciding he didn’t want to go inside, but it was a good while of being indecisive. The result of those moments was him remembering that it would have been very illegal to go into the house and look around while it was under a bank’s custody. He was already in knowledge of how illegal it was for him to even be up on the property in the first place.

“You’re not scared of what Thomas told you, it’s because you know you’re doing something illegal you fucking wet rag.” He told himself. And he couldn’t counter his own statement because he was asking himself of the consequences of his actions, and he was afraid of his answers, but deep down he knew that wasn’t all true. For the moment, though, it seemed to satisfy his churning stomach and beating heart. He decided that no, no cop would be making his rounds up on the property, and not a single soul would know of his presence. And he ate the voice that began telling him that a few souls knew he was here. A few did.

But he pretended to not have let that try to cross the threshold of his mind, he pushed it back and shut the door on its face. He shuddered against the chilly autumn wind and set his jacket soundly on his shoulders with a snap and jingle of the zipper, puffing his cheeks and breathing outward. His attention directed entirely back to the house, but this time he was focused on getting off of that front porch.

For a moment he felt like he could hear everything for an unprompted reason, and it made his body jolt backward and off of the front porch step. He heard the birds screaming from in the trees, crows, robins, cardinals, birds of all types making the horrifying noise at him. He could hear the wind blowing around him and the house, he could hear the deer tromping between the pine needles and over the creek that ran into town. He could hear the breathing of resting coyotes that were saving their energy for a night’s hunt. He could hear rustling, steps on a rock, the pshk of said rock being shoved aside through the dead pine needles and dirt. He could hear a snap.

Then silence.

Then the birds screamed again, but they were distant this time. He wasn’t hearing them next to his ears. This time he felt they were screaming for him and not to him. And for one of the worst moments of his life, he thought of screaming humans instead of birds.

It took him a moment to recover from the thought and it took him a moment to realize that his ass was on the concrete of the paved way a step off from the porch. He blinked his head free of the terrifying thoughts and pushed himself up, a pain shooting through his ankle. He figured he clipped it on the edge of the step as he fell backward. His heart had began racing again, this time in such a hurry that it pained him to breathe, which he knew was not normal (he figured he knew a lot of things about his current being that day, but he didn’t). He brushed the strips of grass and shiny dust off of his jacket and jeans, not thinking about anything other than those screams. The almost human screams that stretched out further than any bird call would ever reach. The screams were almost agonizing to listen to, even from so far from the tree line. That’s what Micah’s mind averted to when he listened to the cry of those birds. Pain staking and morose, jamming death into his eyes without a second thought. The snap he heard was not one of a tree limb, Micah knew. And the thought intensified the chill in his spine. The fear in his heart. His eyes closed for a quick moment before reopening. He figured he had all the proof he needed that this place was not the same as the rest of Socser, but his mind told him to find out what that scream had been. You already know what it was. You know. But he didn’t know. You do, though, Micah. He stepped off of the walk way and in front of the stark white garage door that had sat closed for undoubtedly a few years and went around the house to inspect the tree line.

A window was placed at exactly Micah’s waist height, dusty but accessible to be seen through. And that’s exactly what he did. He took a second to peer through the window and inside what looked like the kitchen. It wasn’t set up like a model home Micah had seen around town from time to time, it was stripped of any furniture or wall paper or tiles. It looked like the inside of Justin McCall’s car repair shop, gray, blank and devoid of life (which it was). Micah stared inside, his eyes scanning slowly so not to miss anything, but he found there was nothing worth missing. Other than a painting on the wall, one rather out of place as well. He squinted inside, trying to see past the layer of dust caked onto the window because he wanted to see what that painting had to tell him. Art had a voice, and he wanted to hear this one. But as he strained his eyes more and more to get a gander at the painting, he slowly began to piece together how out of place it actually was. The walls were stripped bare and free of any paper or nails or holes, save for the one painting on the wall that was in an antique frame. The frame was gold, the color chipping off, but as far as Micah could tell, there were no flakes of gold on the floor. The painting itself was of a large dog next to a man in a suit that resembled an 1880’s frontier man style. The dog was of a breed Micah had likely seen before, big, hairy and lifeless, maybe a Saint Bernard, or a Bernese Mountain Dog. The man standing next to the dog was stout, fat and had a handlebar mustache that complimented his lifeless eyes better than the grayness of his suit or the resolution of the painting.

His tongue lifted to the roof of his mouth as he backed away from the window and continued towards the forest. His teeth grinded together noisily before he was ten feet from the window and his body was able to ease down. Unravel. He wanted to fall over. He egged his legs on to collapse, to keep him from travelling any further towards the tree line, but they wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t cave from underneath him even though they wobbled and wavered like jelly.

And before he knew it he was standing at the foot of the giant, gazing up at trees that never seemed to stop. They didn’t move out of the way to pardon the sky, they rose above it, into it. They were the sky. And Micah was the idiot who was about to stand under it while it fell. It was at this moment that common sense hit him like a freight train. What was he about to do? He had no rope, no tape, no way of marking his way out of that forest. He wouldn’t be so quick to think people haven’t gone missing in those trees, and he wasn’t about to put another tally up on a detective board in the Socser police station. He wasn’t going to be the one on a milk carton. But instead of leaving, he sat down at the mouth of the beast, staring almost longingly up at the tree tops. It seemed accurate. To call this place a beast and label Micah as its post meal snack. Micah wondered what it ate before him. What was big enough to satisfy its hunger? And why did Micah have to be the next victim? Because you’re dumb enough to succumb to its beauty, Mike. The voice told him. It was his own voice, but from a different him. Like it was his future self warning him of what’s to unfold if he were to cross into those pine trees. Maybe he’ll never be heard from again, or maybe he’ll be just fine.

Sitting down in the cool grass, dew soaking into the seat of his pants, he found that he’d like to come back alive from the property, and the only way to assure that would to be leaving it all together. He had nothing to prove to Thomas McCall anymore, and certainly no reason to stick up on the hill. His long fingers began to drum on the roof of his thigh in an unestablished rhythm, pairing with the anxiety to actually move along somewhere. Whether that be into the forest and possibly come into contact with whatever screamed for him, or his home, waiting for his mother to arrive and then go to sleep in his warm bed. He had choices.

He chose the former.

When he pushed himself up off the ground, once more patting himself free of the grass and dirt from his seat, he knew the forest was calling to him. And maybe it wasn’t Thomas McCall he was going to refute, but the forest itself. The beast. Because Thomas had told him not to cross the gate. Not because of the possibility of him not emerging from those trees, but because he’d go insane. If Micah were to leave now, he’d come back in well mental health, while maybe paranoid, but good all around. So, he’d proved Thomas wrong in that sense. But this forest was beckoning him inside, telling him that he won’t come back alive. Micah wasn’t too sure if he would or not, but he did know that if he did, he would have beaten the giant. The beast itself.

His legs began moving ahead of his body, everything above his waist being forced to catch up. He felt like he was on autopilot though he knew this was a perfectly conscious decision of his. The trees seemed to move aside for him, their arms lifting and granting him access into their world, a different world than what he lived in. He could hear them chanting a ritualistic poem as he passed by them, whispering under their breath to him, telling him which way to the scream. His body became clammy again, and as he turned his head over his shoulder to get a last peek at the house (the gold frame of the painting barely visible) he became suddenly aware that this may be the very last time he entered a place alive.

Just as he expected, all there was to the forest was trees. They had lost their magical appearance about five minutes into his walk and he figured that was because he had no idea of where he was going. Being forced to calm himself down on his way in led him to realize that he held no knowledge of where he was going, and he decided to focus on the things that could happen just from him getting lost in the woods and not the things that would happen if an apparition jumped at him from behind a tree.

There was a sneaking serenity to the forest now that he was deeper in. He kept his eyes all over the terrain, knowing that he had no way of defending himself if an animal decided to make him its next meal. He had learned some things from the “WORST CASE SCENARIO” guide book his grandma got him for Christmas a year prior because he was going on a camping trip with a few friends that January. If coyotes got to him, he could make a few loud noises, throw some things. Deer are often spooked easily. He wasn’t sure how many bears there were in Texas, but he did know how to get away from both a black bear and a grizzly bear. The grizzly is to play dead while the black bear is to fight and scream, and to never climb a tree. Because as he remembers in a nature documentary, black bears are excellent climbers.

[...]

One thing that stuck with him after that story was that cougars don’t make the noise of a tiger or lion, instead they yowl; scream as Mr. Milo had put it. They scream at you until you’re dead, or until you put a bullet through their thick skull, they scream. And they scream like dying humans.

Suddenly Micah’s body ran cold like it had back on the front porch step of the house, and he stopped walking. His head directed upward, and his green eyes scanned the trees cautiously to be sure no cat was up there spying on him and waiting for a perfect time to pounce. His heart started up again, running the marathon of anxiety and fear as he continued to walk. He had gone far enough. He stopped in a place where the trees moved aside for him, contained him in one spot for eternity. Or until another tree grew where he stood, throwing him to the sky and away from the property. A rock was stuck in the ground under a sixty-foot pine tree, calling for Micah to sit down. His legs were calling to him as well, telling him that sitting down for a little bit would be the optimal choice. He obeyed the pleas and sat down on the rock, pulling his knees close to his chest. It made a comfortable seat. His eyes stayed on the ground in front of him, but his mind began to wander.

He figured he had come far enough into the forest. He could hear cars whizzing by, and he knew he was close to the I-26 rural highway, the one that led into Socser if you went far enough. But if you went through Socser and continued on to reach I-30, you’d eventually reach Dallas, and then Fort Worth stood behind it. But if you took a left onto McCathy before reaching Socser’s city limits and kept straight, you’d go through Paris and eventually reach Sulphur Springs. That is if you never took any turns. For a moment, Micah sat and listened to the cars buzzing by him in short bursts. At least he knew which way he could go if he needed an escape. That thought made his body subconsciously lean toward the direction of the noise, hopeful that it will comfort him even in the slightest bit.

He became comfortable in his spot on the rock, looking out into the trees to see if he could see anything in them. Part of him felt he saw movement behind the trees, and part of him felt like he could hear the crackle and crunch of the dirt and fallen needles. Part of him felt like there was something deeper in those woods. He shifted again, his lips parting with his piqued interest. He wasn’t sure what he was hearing or seeing, but he began thinking that it was okay because it wasn’t anything that could hurt him. If it wanted to hurt him it would have already. And he knew that.

He licked his lips with anticipation as his legs healed from their walk. The wind was quick to pick up. Micah looked up at the sky and saw it was growing dark with clouds. He could hardly see the sky past the towering trees and spread pine branches that expanded across the width of the sky. He stood, figuring evening was upon him and if he didn’t leave now, rain would be too.

“Such cliché bullshit.” Micah murmured to himself as he pushed his body off of the rock. He stood in wait for a moment to let a car pass by on the highway, and he followed the noise, hoping the fence would lead him back to the front of the property. As he does so, a crisp bite of air nips at his ears and fingertips for a moment. He doesn’t find it much out of the ordinary seeing as winter is closing in, but it’s what followed that truly frightened him. Micah, go, they’re coming for you. . . go! The same voice from before said to him. Except it wasn’t the same voice, and the only way he knew that was because before the voice was in his head. Now, it was being whispered horrifyingly into his ear. His head whipped around to meet open air. Air that he felt was getting thinner and thinner the longer he remained in place. Air that he became reluctant to breathe in. He licked his lips again and began walking towards the sounds of cars faster than before. Because if he knew anything, he didn’t want to be caught here when the rain hit. And he didn’t want to be here any longer than he needed to be.

The cars got closer and closer as he walked, but no high way was visible from where he was walking. Leaves behind him began to crackle. A stick snapped somewhere from behind him, making his whole being leap from his skin. He turned around to inspect what may have caused the noise, but there was nothing. He examined the ground for anything that could have made the noise and lying in the dirt there was a stick snapped in half, wood crumbs surrounding it. Micah’s stomach fluttered with intense fear, his face growing hot. Another snap at his left side and he turned. Vacant area of grass and dirt. He decided now that it was probably a cougar, just like the one Mr. Milo had been attacked by, and if he didn’t get out of there fast, he wouldn’t be getting out of there at all.

He swallowed the saliva building in his throat, because he’d begun to believe that he may actually hurl. As he began picking up his speed to get away from the area, he felt his jaw tighten. He couldn’t stop to puke. He just couldn’t. You better hurry, Micah. She’s just behind you! The voice rasped in his ear. Cue the heart pounding, and Micah felt like he was about to die. And what an odd thought to have while on a property that was known for killing people. Or multiple deaths. Run!

And he didn’t hesitate to follow the orders of a voice with no body. The latter voice had been different from the rest, in turmoil. While the rest had been aggressive or monotonous, this one was begging him to run, begging him to get out of there before She came, whoever She was. Micah would consider himself a fairly quick runner, being in all sports his small town school could offer, but he didn’t feel like he was running fast enough to beat whoever it was he was running from, he felt it was hot on his heels, and he didn’t dare turn around. The cars on I-26 were rumbling right in front of him, but he couldn’t see the highway itself and the closer he got the closer the sound became. But he never saw the cars.

He took one stupid moment to stop in his tracks and whip his head from side to side to find if the street could be seen from his place. His chest was heaving, his lungs were burning, his heart was beating out of his rib cage. He couldn’t find the damn highway. If you stop running she’ll catch you, you have to move, man. He told himself, thankful he could control his own inner thoughts. He wasn’t even sure what he was running from, but that desperate voice in his ear was all he had needed to get his ass moving along and away from the danger. Man, we just defined fight or flight. He told himself. He didn’t suppose he was wrong.

The moment he decided to begin moving along again, he felt fingers wrap around his thin neck, the tips pressing into his flesh. He blinked and threw his hands behind him to ward off whoever it was with their filthy hands around his throat. The more he struggled, the tighter their grip became, and he was soon left struggling for air, hitting the arm of what he presumed was a woman from the previous encounters with the voice, and staring up at the dark sky. There was no voice this time, no one telling him he shouldn’t have come up here, no god extending a hand towards him to take him to the afterlife, and certainly no one to die with him. He was alone. And he was petrified. The emotion he had felt in that convenience store while McCall was telling him the way the property fucks with the minds of its inhabitants, it was an 80 mg dose of fear, and he was the idiot who didn’t read the back of the bottle to gauge how much he was supposed to take. And he’s now overdosed.

There were no breaths escaping from his throat. Only wheezing.

McCall said it’s all a mental thing. It’s not real! Micah’s eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t coherently speak, but he gripped onto the frail arm in which the hands were connected to, and he dug his nails into it. His body shivered as his fingernails punctured the skin and went into the flesh, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it would’ve been that easy to do with anyone else’s skin. His heart sank when his vision began fading. You’re not fucking real! He screamed, but not aloud. Not real, bitch! But nothing happened. He was really looking towards a pass to purgatory, probably. More tears. More noises of a dying rabbit (or boy, whatever). More fear.

Right before he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness, the fingers slipped from his throat, and he gasped so loudly, he was sure it frightened the animals in the surrounding area. As he drew his hands from his throat, he examined his nails, which had punctured through the attacker’s skin. His nails had no signs of blood on them and when he whipped his head around, there weren’t even signs of an attacker. And when he took another glance down at his own hands for the last time that day, he watched the pads of his fingers go from white to olive, his heart fell from his chest down to the floor. His air loss was real. The woman had not been.

He had been strangling himself.

He took off running once more, watching but not really seeing where he was going. He heard cars right in his ear. But instead of them getting closer and never arriving, he comes to the high way almost immediately, automobiles rushing by seemingly not paying Micah any attention. There was a white picket fence shielding the property from the rest of the world, and he forced his body to fly over it with momentum he’s never built up in his life. He felt like he hung in the air for ages, gasping onto a breath he never even had. He didn’t land quite the way he preferred, his ankle clipping a rock or ledge and rolling out from under him. Then he found himself lying in the dirt and leaves, breathless and afraid. Thomas McCall had been right. And Micah had been a fool.

It took him two hours to get around to the opposite end of the property and it would have taken him a significantly less amount of time if he would have been going the correct direction the first thirty minutes of his painful trip. It also would’ve taken him less time if his body had been in working order. His ankle was swollen to the size of a golf ball, throbbing excruciatingly so that he could hardly make his way to his bike. He was pretty sure it was bleeding because he had managed to trip down and onto the road, catching one of the most sensitive hits on a thorn bush and had to yank it free from the tangles of points in the stems. Pulling his ankle free had been a task in its own accord, but attempting to stand back up on that ankle was worse

Once he got back to his bike, he sat down in front of the gate. I’m safe here. Nothing will reach me here. He was tired, in pain and unable to move his body any more than a few inches to the right or left, and even then it was a spotty chance of him falling to the ground, wheezing like a dying French Bulldog. He’d had no chance to calm himself down after being strangled on the hill, he’d left before he got the chance because he couldn’t waste another second of his too precious life up on that hill without feeling like it was going to be thrown on the line and stomped on.

He was wheezing heavily by his bike. His ankle was wheezing along with him, or maybe it was weeping from the pain, he wasn’t sure. Micah was on the brink of tears from how horrible the pain was. He knew pain like this didn’t just ameliorate after some ice, a hot bath and good sleep, this was going to stick with him for a long while. He had been right about the bleeding. Thick, bright red blood trickled from his ankle slowly, but it wasn’t enough to concern Micah. He pressed his right forefinger to the bruised and bloodied appendage and stared at it for a good while. It was really what he was concerned about. He had already pushed Her away. But he hadn’t forgotten about how it was his own hands choking him, closing in around his throat, pressing their tips into his cords. He hadn’t forgotten about the voice whispering in his ear telling him to “Run!” while he was still trapped up by that rock. He hadn’t forgotten how the cars were buzzing in his ear, but no highway was to be found. Micah didn’t forget.

He gave a few tender rubs to his ankle while he sat in thought on the gravel in front of the pipe gate on Dogwood. No rain had fallen from the heavy clouds above him, but it had gotten darker than when he emerged from the trees. Too much darker. He had been too wrapped up in his ankle beforehand that he didn’t realize how cold the air was growing around him and how close night fall was. He’d have to stand up soon if he wanted to be home by his curfew without his mom asking questions. He couldn’t see that happening, though.

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