CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

March 7_"TPLO" free read 786 words

Chapter 37- - -

         Driving out of Knox, I was in The Big Forest proper before I realized it. I did not know now what I had expected: vines crossing the road to trap unwary tires, oaks hanging so low over the road even my low-slung Merc could not make it through. It seemed now as if I had spent my entire young life listening to bedtime tales and fright stories about this region, though I knew full well that I had not: Mamma had never, ever, mentioned The Big Forest except very rarely, in passing, and then it was more of a throw-off afterthought than an actual mention. So where did all these strange ideas arise from? Before today, I did not even remember thinking like this. Maybe Farmer Jennell had put some ideas into my head, with his talk of Old Man Jenks and his hound, dying up here in The Big Forest. As I thought that, I slammed on the brakes: wait! He said Old Mr. Jenks was dead? And the hound? Dead? Of course I knew he was dead-now-he worked with me on the Greenhouse Friday night-he was dead on Tuesday when I passed him as I headed toward Knox, and he stopped to wait for the hound, which now I guessed must have been his own dog-he was, I guess, dead the other day when he came up the driveway to talk to the boys and me-they didn't seem to react oddly. Oh, were they dead too then? Was I? Or would be?  I'm sure he was dead when his old Chevy pickup tore up my drive on Tuesday afternoon during that horrible storm.





         But this part of The Big Forest looked fairly normal: tall pines, but spaces between to where Icould still see the sunlight; forest floor covered smartly with moss, fern growth on some of the trunks. Here and there farther back on the South side I spotted a dead trunk a couple of times, struck by lightning. But for the most part, this seemed to be just plain old ordinary usual forest land. Nothing particularly startling at all. Then I realized that this could not have been the segment which had been so heavily deforested by logging during the State's former timber boom. There was simply too little new growth, and the old trees grew so high and so closely together that this had to be virtually untouched land, not prey to the logging boom or any other kind of approach.





         Well, this didn't seem to be too scary-no, not scary at all. I kept on driving, deeper into the heart of the Forest, wishing now I had thought to buy a bottle of RC Cola while I was in the General Store. My stomach felt so much better and even my heart seemed relieved, as if my anxieties had lifted. The girl Alice crossed my mind again, and I saw her as if she were crossing the road in front of me, her long dusty blond hair held back by a pale wide ribbon, hair wafting in the breeze-Holy What! That was her! I slammed on the brakes and the Merc skidded sideways in the road. Luckily I was just at the beginning of a rather widened spot, perhaps a turn-around, and I didn't skid off the road. Instead my rear tires caught just before the edge of the pavement met dirt. Shaken up, I looked around, through the windshield, and out the passenger windows, but I saw no sign of the girl Alice. However, all the papers had fallen to the floor, but somehow remained inside their respective envelopes and file folders. As I bent down to pick them up from the floorboard, I saw a glimpse of white dress and flowing hair through the side window. I quickly straightened-bumping the back of my head soundly against the rear-view mirror-but nothing and no one was in sight. So I reached down again, collected the papers, stacked them neatly on the seat, then looked in the back seat to see if I could find anything to set on top of them. Sure enough, I found a cardboard shoe box I didn't remember putting in there; I did not even remember ever seeing it, but when I hefted it, I felt some weight, so it would do as a paperweight, and I used it as such, placing it in the center of the paper pile to hold it still and keep it from falling off again. As I checked in both directions and carefully pulled back into the road, still heading into The Big Forest, I felt the winds of my own mortality wafting across my spirit.