The One in the Woods

 

10/27/10 1139

The great “Land hurricane’ blasts outside, remarkable weather. I have decided to look in on these old stories and I have found them not as embarrassing as I feared. In fact, a couple I barely remember and one not at all. I am going to retype them in this hopefully more coherent form. Photocopying from the papers, due to column length and so forth, yields a mess. Besides, the papers are astonishingly old, brittle and getting yellowed now.  So I wish to wrangle these little efforts of mine into one place and this is my challenge. I intend to make few changes, will correct typos, maybe correct something that doesn’t harmonize or could be improved, but no substantial changes will be made. I will include everything that was a part of the publications

PUBLSHISHED IN THE CHSIAGO COUNTY PRESS/June 9, 1988                                                                                          

SCRIBE’S CORNER, page 3

                                                                                The One in the Woods

                                                                                 By JEFFREY B. SMITH

                    Already too may years ago, I worked as an orderly in my hometown hospital. One morning I was delegated, probably by some relieved and reprieved R.N., the duty of sanitizing an old bachelor who had been brought in by the ambulance. (Mine was not a coveted task. Once I pulled a similar hermit’s boot off and major portions of his gangrenous toes and foot came with it. The stench was truly wretched.)

                    The old man, on this particular morning, was in pretty bad shape. Not only was he suffering from exposure, he was feverish, combative and his hygiene left a lot to be desired. He also had two curiously parallel cuts, quite purulent, streaking across his frail chest and abdomen.                

                    First, I should explain a bit about his region where the old man lived. It’s a genuine wilderness that stretches, more of less, from southwest of Onamia near Hillman, eastwards around the great lake Mille Lacs and the sweeps into a broad arc that nearly reaches to Duluth. Sure there are  few miserable towns here and the, but except for a railroad track or two, a few lonesome highways and maybe some tentative township roads, there’s nothing much worthwhile up there.

                    Also this area seems, judging from the patients we had, to have a disproportionate number of odd characters eking out existences there.

                    For example, there was one lady who was unquestionably psychotic. She would give detailed descriptions of unfathomably unappealing events, such as canning summertime suckers, and then, without warning, would break into the most moving Shakespearean soliloquy. Quite unique. Meanwhile, her husband would be out in the parking lot stealing employee block heater extension cords.

                    And there was one old man who spoke with a great deal of authority and familiarity about Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright and yet, lived in an abandoned camper.

                    There was also, in that area, squalid intermarried and incestuous families. Every once in awhile on Main Street, you’d catch a glimpse of grim and pathetic mutant children packed into again station wagons, peering out like overwrought aliens in derelict and dilapidated spaceships. Disturbing, but tolerated – I guess it as just out of everyone’s jurisdiction.

                    So it seemed that this area was a sanctuary for those who were uncomfortable with the mainstream. Or perhaps it was the other way around. At any rate, I was about to find out that other things, not just eccentric or unacceptable people, found refuge out there as well.

                    As I dabbed at he old man’s wounds, I asked how he got them. Since he had been distant and mute, I was surprised when this brought a response.

                    “The Mutamar,” he hissed.

                    “the what?” I asked, stunned.

                    He became impatient, “The Clacker! The Clacker!” He repeated urgently and then began opposing grubby and neglected fingernail against his thumbnails, forcefully and frantically, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.

                    The old man would say no more, end even though I suspected he was disoriented, I was real interested. I had consumed and catalogued many stories like it in the past.

                    Like the guy who once told me of how a blue light hung and hovered below the railway trestle while he was spearing pike at the river dam one night.

                    Or the time two different and distinct fishermen, in the span of about two weeks, told me they would never again venture out upon Mayhew Lake. Thy both mentioned “swirls and things,” but their troubled expressions led me to think that this was more than unexplained currents.

                    I have driven by Mayhew Lake several times since and I admit I can’t ever quite get a clear view of it. True, the roads are a distance from the lake, but there’s something about that lake that’s unyielding; no matter what the weather conditions or the time of day, its surface remains curiously impenetrable.

                    The next day, I went in to see the old man again. I asked about “the creature” and he became quite agitated.

                    “Little mind,” he sneered, and stabbing a shaky finger towards me shrieked, “A foolish consistency, that’s the Hobgoblin!” gobs of spit hung on his quivering jaw.

                    With that he curled up and turned himself, slowly and painfully, towards the wall. He as chilling badly and I noticed that his wounds were already necrotic, putrefied mounds of suppurating flesh. I will always regret my juvenile invasion of his privacy – a shameful intrusion. He died that night.

                    One November night, several years later, my wife and I would make a visit to her sister. My sister-in-law lived up in Onamia with her man, Ron. We brought our new baby along for their approval.

                    After a largely obligatory endorsement of our child, Ron began heading me towards the porch. He was always restless around the house and had, clearly, other plans for the night. After mumbling something about “checking our deer hunting spots,” we were headed for the door.

                    We left them there adoring my kid. I felt sheepish though, something to do with the knowing looks from the women. See, we all knew what chaotic twists a night out with Ron could take. None of us, however, could’ve imagined the twists this night held in store for Ron and I.

                    Ron had himself a big V-8 Cherokee. He used it for “cash jobs,” like plowing snow. It sported a menacing looking brush bar on the front, full time four wheel drive and huge all terrain tires. Truly a righteous piece of American iron.

                    As we cruised out of the cruelly intimate Onamia city limits, Ron hooked a big arm behind my seat and snagged a twelve-pack of Red White and Blue up between us. So it would be a night of “road drinkin’. At least we would be patriotic about it.”

                    The Marshall Tucker Band as chugging on the 8-track and the twelve pack was half gone when we rumbled past Koski’s Store. The fluorescents were still on in the store and the neons were lit in the tavern. A row of used farm implements and a gas pump separated the place from the blacktop. A few pickups and a flatbed were out front.

                    Koski’s Store always loomed larger than life in my consciousness. A frontier outpost, a mythical place where we heard, as children, that kids our own age drove around in pickups and, rumor had it, around July Fourth you could buy fireworks. Later we’d hear that juveniles, again our own age, could by beer there.

                    We had inflicted damage on the remainder of that twelve-pack by the time we reached an area remote enough to hold the promise of “deer sign.” I suspected this would probably mean looking for the reflections of deer eyes in our headlights. This would then somehow correlate with the number of deer available to be blasted to death on some frigid morning later in the month.

                    Ron wheeled into a little road, no more than a trail. It appeared to be an old logging trail, an outfit form Milaca sporadically logged these regions, and soon we were scrambling over branches, rocks and piles of slash.

                    He as getting into it too. All pursuit of deer has now evaporated in the light of “doin’ some four-wheelin’.” He was downshifting and lurching over what seemed to me, insurmountable obstacles.

                    We were beyond the edge of the logged area and gradually were arcing back towards it, when we heard the unmistakable screech of a blowout. Our progress became instantly more strained and we ground to a halt.

                    As you may have suspected, Ron as an abusive guy. He was abuse to his equipment, his body, I suspect my sister-in-law and most of al, to the English language. I always considered my speech profane and usually felt quite accomplished in the swearing arena, but Ron could often leave me humble.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Continued on page 4.

His permutations and juxtapositions were beyond profanity. He had it propelled beyond a science, beyond an art,  you might say he had plumbed an entirely new dimension.

                    With just such an original oath, he fished a feeble flashlight out of the glove box and slid the lug wrench out from under his seat. (I hate to even speculate just why he kept it there.) The left rear hub had a jagged log spiked into it. The log, in turn, was jammed against a couple of trees. The valve stem was mashed into oblivion. He commandeered a hatchet, (I think he kept most of his possession in that truck0, and began hacking away at the log.

                    I occupied myself with lowering the spare, blindly. It’s dark up there in the woods on an overcast November night. Beside no glow from the Twin Cities contaminating the sky, there’s also no intrusion from those obscene blue yard lights. (“SECURITY LIGHTS” I head Ron scoff once, “Best thing ever invented. You can see just what you want to rip off. Hell, you can practically waltz right up to the gas barrel. And, it they do come out, YOU can see THEM.”)

                    I lowered the pare and with great difficulty, got the jack set and began hosing the vehicle into the air. Ron slid off the flat and I lugged the spare over to him.

                    “Listen,” he whispered hoarsely. In the frail light I could see his hands were trembling.

                    “I got a real bad feeling,” he stammered and dropped the lug nuts.

                    “What are you talking ab-,” but he cut me off. “Shut up! Listen!” he demanded.

                    I did.

                    It was still, not a whisper of sound. It was as silent s ever could be conceived. A total and omnipresent quiet. With it came to me an overpowering sense of dread. A crippling promise of impending doo. There was no denying that we were on the brink of something. Something dire.

                    “Let’s get that wheel on,” I said, surprised at my own control.

                    Ron squatted down and lofted the wheel onto the hub – a wheel that I could barely drag over to him – as I groped around in the grass for the lug nuts. I think that’s when it began.

                    CLACK…CLACK…CLACK. It began loudly and it remained at that same steady volume. And it was close too.

                    Then I realized, then I knew.

                    “Ron, put those on! Quick, I’ll hold the light.”

                    CLACK…CLACK…CLACK…CLACK.

                    I don’t think it was big, maybe about as big as your mother. But it had mass, density, inertia…whatever physicists want to call it. And what it lacked in size it made up for in intensity. A pure undiluted aura of menace it projected, a complete encompassing malevolence and rancor. Ron dropped the first nut I handed him and he began fumbling in the dark for it.

                    “Here!” I passed him another.

                    CALCK…CLACK…CLACK…CLACK.

                    It was not moving fast, but its progress was undeniable. Brush and trees and branches were crackling as if a locomotive was bearing down upon us in the woods. Its motion, not dramatic, was inexorable. Relentless. Ron was fiddling with the tire iron.

                    “Finger ‘em!” I yelled and poked another nut at him. I was doing a poor job at holding the light steady.

                                       

                                                            Watch for the conclusion of “The One in the Woods” next week  in Scribe’s Corner.

PUBLSHISHED IN THE CHSIAGEO COUNTY PRESS/June 16, 1988                                                                                      

SCRIBE’S CORNER, page 3

                                                                                The One in the Woods

                                                                                  By JEFFREY B. SMITH

Part II of a two-part story.

                    Now the sound that was really terrifying me was not coming from the atrocity in the woods behind us, but instead, it was coming from Ron. He wasn’t really crying or whimpering. It was more like bawling sobs with each rapid exhalation. It was a piriful and tragic sound and ultimately more disquieting that the sound in the woods.

                    CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK. It was deafening now.

                    We had three nuts fingered onto the lugs and the behind us sounded like some crazed Geiger counter approaching ground zero.

“Drive!” I screamed and dropped the light. By the time I reached my door he had that V-8 fired up. Before I was in my seat, he was lunging the Jeep forward. It came off the jack and there was a sickeningly shrill screech. I had my door shut but could not get settled in my seat, the truck was pitching madly. I managed one last look back and saw the flashlight shining up towards the branches and then something dark blocked it from my view.

                    Now it was Ron’s time to shine and it was a virtuoso performance. Craning forward over the steering wheel, elbows out and jacking fiercely back and forth at the wheel, nearly braining me with the lug wrench he was still clutching. He dropped it with his first upshift.

                    He punched a hole in that crummy woods. By sheer dead reckoning, he somehow had us back on the trail. Outrageous shuddering, opposite-lock powerslides and then, with full throttle blast-offs, our headlights would be illuminating naked branches against a night sky, this would be followed by full windshield vies of the ground coming up to meet us. I swear I could see every pebble.

                    Like the tools, the tapes, the empties and everything else that wasn’t bolted down, I was crashing about that cabin.  Once, after I had myself strapped in, I witnessed my feet doing a mad fandango under the dash, totally beyond my control.

                    Finally, with a series of elegant fishtails, we were thundering down the township road. Bellowing into the night, we’d swing through country crossroads and he’d be heel and toe braking, downshifting and blipping the gas like he was driving a Countach.

                    I’ve seen, and taken part in some great drives, but this display will always be outstanding It was powerful and yet sensitive, majestic, awesome and inspired. It made me want to cheer and weep. It was epic. I hope those who appreciate opera, ballet, or any form of human achievement, may have just such a performance to cherish. The ride alone would’ve made that night remarkable and we weren’t even done with the night – yet.

                    When we made the county road he stopped. Grabbing the lug wrench he said, “Gotta tighten those lugs.”

                    I joined him back here. Given all the jouncing, all the adrenalin, and not to mention, all the beer, I felt a powerful need for a different relief. He joined mat the roadside.

                    As we stood there by the ditch he said, “It was real…wasn’t it?”

                    “Yeah, it was real.” I agreed.

                    “The we both know it,” he said, “and let’s not go telling anyone about this. I don’t think no one will believe us and those that would, why hell, they won’t be the kinda folks we want to hang around with anyway.”

                    I had to admit he was right. Already, in my mind, I had begun organizing expeditions and preparing interview but now, after hearing Ron, I began to picture those sleazy tabloids at the check-out with their headline blaring things like, “I saw Elvis on a U.F. O.!” or “We Feed Bigfoot!” – I decided to keep my mouth shut. Besides, Ron lived up there.

                    Ron began to grieve for his lost “spoker” wheel. He lamented the passing of the flashlight, hatchet, and the jack especially, and vowed to retrieve them “come hunting season.”

                    We started back towards the Jeep when he stopped, pointing to the tailgate he whined, “Look at that, would ya?”

                    Two parallel scratches dug across the end gate. Beginning near the center of the window, they swiped down towards the bumper below the left rear tail light, they even etched into the glass.

                    We had come that close.

                    “Geez, now I gotta get that fixed too,“  he grumbled. Ron was beginning to get annoyed.

                    We wheeled into the parking log at Koski’s. A pickup and the flatbed remained. Silently we sat down at the bar. The darkened store was through a big doorway to our right. I could see murky rows of canned good, a row of boots on the floor and lined up like terracotta soldiers, a rack of overalls. The air was stale, with a damp subliminal Copenhagen undercurrent. The floor squeaked when anyone moved and an A.M. radio was crackling out tinny polkas, trying desperately to pick up the signal from Little Falls.

                    “Two beers please.” My voice sounded distant, disconnected.

                    Koski brought the beer and Ron stopped him.

                    “C’mon, don’t you got anything stronger than this?” Ron smiled reassuringly and tossed a crumpled ten on the bar. He had a peculiar talent for perceiving these things.

                    Koski eyed us for a few seconds, shrugged and reached under the bar. He set a nearly-full fifth of Old Log Cabin in front of us. He then snatched up the ten, stuffed in into his shirt pocket, turned and went to rejoin he friend at the end of the bar. He snapped off that irksome radio as he walked by it, the station was signing off in a sheet of static.

                    “Looks like we’re havin’ pancakes tonight,” he muttered into my ear.

                    We drained the beers and silently began drinking the warm Log Cabin from beer glasses. We stared at the back bar with it’s rows of Unbreakable Combs, greasy Slim Jims, unfortunate Blind Robins and the undisputed champion of barroom cuisine: Pickled Turkey gizzards.

                    In barroom wagers I’ve eaten them; rubbery goiters bobbing in a bilious broth. (Come to think of it, barroom wagers must constitute the majority of their sales.) They remind me of that unlucky calf fetus in the jar at the back of Biology Class. You can almost catch faint whiff of formaldehyde.

                    I had, for an instant, the image of the toothless woman conspiratorially sharing with me her secret recipe for canned suckers. I shuddered

                    A blazer pulled up at the gas pump. The driver came In to pay for the gas.

                    “Hey Buck!” he said to Koski, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Guess what, I just saw,  a bear at the 4-H wayside! A good one too.”

                    Without missing a beat, in a move that was pure Ron, he blurted, “Huh, you shoulda seen what we just seen back there in the woods.”

                    I  was stunned but had no time  to respond because that big guy in the corner was on his feet and snarling, “Why don’t you mind your own business…hippie?”

                    This guy was big malicious looking brute. Imagine a hayseed, hirsute, maniacal Merlin Olson run amok.

                    Ron tensed and slowly and deliberately turned around on his stool. He got to his feet and faced the man, I noticed he was holding on to the bottle -  he never let go of the bottle when he was drinking in public.

                    Calm, almost serene, came his reply, “I’ll decide just what business is……Hillbilly.”

                    Again silence. Again a feeling of impending doom. A quiet with the peace. A stillness that promised only damage.

                    Well. Blazer, he took a step backwards, I was aware of Buck Koski slowly slipping his hand below the bar while he began to edge towards the cash register The two men faced each other. It seemed as if giant unseen levers were ratcheting already straining coils inside each man and the next notch would explode the overwound mechanism, releasing a fast reservoir of violent destructive energies.

                    Then came a sound. Not the sound of destruction, but the sound of… salvation. A booming, clapped-out Chevy Nova came slewing into he parking lot. The unmistakable thud of Deep Purple could clearly be heard, sound to me, at that time, more like “Amazing Grace.”

                    I seized upon the minor distraction. “Mister,” I began, my voice way to shrill, “I promise you that my friend here and me didn’t see anything tonight and….if we did, I guarantee that we have forgotten it.”

                    I didn’t know what he was trying to hide; maybe a still, or a chop shop, or perhaps a pile of deer carcasses whose previous inhabitants were now employed in someone’s “Homestyle Sausage” at the local markets. Whatever it was, I felt it just couldn’t justify consummating these preliminaries.

                     I continued, “I’ll be happy to buy a round if we can just forge tit.”

                    Buck Koski slapped the bar, “There’s a winner!” he beamed, hopefully. He began to filling a pitcher for the big man.

                    Blazer mumbled something and sidled out the door. Slopping beer over the sides, Koski brought he pitcher over and set it on the guy’s table. The big man grunted and slumped down in his chair.

                    The punks form the  Nova, two scruffy guys and a forlorn, mousy looking girl, came swaggering in.

                    “Hey, this guy’s buying around!’ buck hollered to them They nodded vaguely at me and laid claim to a freebee. That’s a pretty cut-rate way of  selling a few beers I though as I paid up.

                    We hung out there a respectable amount of time, but I wanted to get out. Ron was visibly irritable. The punks were slamming out a too-noisy game of pool and Merlin Olson, over there in the corner, seemed uneasy. Finally, Ron grabbed the bottle and said, “Let’s go.” We did.

                    As I climbed in to the Jeep he said, “Hold on a minute,” and grabbed the lug wrench. Again a sinking feeling, but he just squatted beside the Nova. Soon he tossed three lug nuts in to me and started up the Jeep. He backed out and stopped behind the Nova.

                    “I forgot!” he slapped the wheel, “I need a jack.” Leaving the engine idling and his door open, he stooped over the Nova. He jammed the tire iron into the trunk and began prying mightily. With a n abbreviated groan ad s shower of rust, the trunk yielded and sprung open. He rummaged around for awhile and fished out a jack, a chain, and a star wrench. He tossed them behind his seat and climbed in.

                    “Dirty hick bumpkins,” he growled and we tore out of there.

                    Yeah, Ron could be pretty disgusting. A redneck you might say. But it was just that antisocial flair that made him interesting to be around, infrequently. We had some laughs.

                    We saw each other a few times since that night, but never discussed it much. He never did repaint that scratch on the tailgate and I was happy about that. He did replace the spoker wheel, it never did match the others and I never asked why he didn’t retrieve the original. He decided to go hunting down a Dalbo that year, something about “corn fed deer,” as I recall.

                    Anyway, he “lit out” eventually, in the direction of Gillette, I believe. Never heard form him again and, unless he makes some sort of astounding conversion, I’m confident that I never will. I hope he can find a refuge, somewhere, that can be comfortable with his particular eccentricities.

                    So I do feel some guilt when I read, or hear about someone, perhaps a hunter, disappearing or being lost up there.  I tell myself that strange things can happen when you are off your stomping grounds. Although official explanations claim the victim was unfamiliar with the region or inexperienced, I suspect otherwise.

                    I also suspect something else. Something that’s been nagging at me since that night. I believe that big grizzled man at Koski’s was guarding more than just an illicit backwoods enterprise. Call it coincidence, but I think it’s thicker. You see that night, after the confrontation, he was edgy. And he had a particularly vexing habit of clicking his nail against the table.

                                                                                                 The End

                                                          

                   

                    Jeffrey B. Smith, 33, has lived in the Chisago Lakes Area for 10 years and currently resides in Chisago City. He enjoys, ‘Hearing and telling stories, rock and roll and above all, my wife, my son and my daughter.” 

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CHISAGO COUNTY PRESS

B Section, page 1 – Thursday, October 27, 1988             

                                                                                The Shafer Slosher

                                                                               By  JEFFREY B. SMITH

                   

                    I had always wanted to believe in ghosts. I’d enjoy hearing people tell of their experiences with haunted houses, ghosts or even U.F.O.’s. But no matter how good the story, I’d end up skeptical because of the storytellers themselves. They always seemed a bit wigged-out, you know?

                    However, I now am certain that perfectly sane people have experienced ‘unexplained phenomena.” It’s just that we don’t like touting it around to the guys in the car pool or the crowd at the tavern. To dwell on these experiences too much would invite doubt about that very sanity. You see, for me, it wad a deep and intense personal experience. It shook me and changed my perception of reality, and the perception of myself.

                    Back in my hippie day I rented a run-down farmhouse out there near Shafer. I waned a place where I could raise some plants, play my guitars (loud) and generally do what I please. It lasted about four days.

                    Back in my hippie days I rented a run down farm house out there near Shafer. I wanted a place where I could raise some plants, play my records (loud) and generally do what I pleased. It lasted about 4 days.

                    One night, after working the second shift at the plant, I settled into my chair for some late night T.V. Before I had cracked open my beer I heard something upstairs. Although I had been alone up there a few minutes before there was no denying that someone, or something, was there now. A slow gritty, dusty kind of scraping sound was coming from up there. As if  a scaly something of considerable bulk was sliding along the floor. The sound stopped only to be followed by the familiar squeak of the bathtub taps being slowly opened and then, the rush of water.

                    Maybe I should’ve run but I was rooted. I sat rigid in my chair, my blind gaze was fixed on the T.V. but all my senses were trained upon the sounds above my head. I would not leave the familiar comfort of my chair to run out into the night. Nor was there any way I would go up there and pull on that light.

                    The water kept running and soon I could hear slapping-like splashing in the tub. As if something with fins, or flippers, was beginning to frolic up there. Occasionally I’d hear loud, large waves of water slop onto the floor. The slippery squeak of flesh contacting the tub surface was followed by a gush of water spraying down above me, as if something was wallowing in my tub. These deluges would be interspersed with periods of gentle, rhythmic wave-like sloshing. And above all this there were gross, sloppy, slobbering snorts and snuffles as if a giant snorkel was siphoning.

                    Well, I never saw the author of those sounds. I did not move from my chair. Not even when the water began cascading down the steps and my socks became wet. Not even when my body was shaking uncontrollably – and it wasn’t from the chill. No, I vaguely recall ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS concluding to be followed by an old movie, something about John Forsythe in a T.V. studio, I think. Then came a scratchy rendition of THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER flowed by a shrill test pattern. Then an eternity of static broken, finally, by that test pattern, and again, that pathetic version of the national anthem. I didn’t even move when a goateed professor attempted to teach me Latin. (That should’ve made anyone move out.) No, even though the noises stopped towards morning, I didn’t get up until it was broad daylight and High Downs was conducting CONCENTRATION. I stood right up and walked out to the mailbox. My hand was aching, I looked down, my unopened beer can was dimpled form my fingertips.

                    Well, I loaded up all mu possessions, except for what I left in the bathroom, (I never even looked in there – not even out of the corner of my eye.) and was out of there by sundown. Walked right out on tow months rent.

                    I moved in with a buddy in his trailer near Almelund – until his old lady kicked me out. It was nice to be able to explain all the nighttime sounds I heard there in his trailer.

                    All in all, I’m proud of myself. I sleep well. I’m not afraid of the dark. I don’t agonize over that night. I accept it as just another unexplainable event in a lifetime that is rarely defined by logic.

                    And yet, when I come home at night from those rare second shifts and I shower before bed, I still hesitate before sliding that shower curtain back.

                                                                                                The End