The ritual had always been the same at Casey Collins household, particularly on Saturday night. By 8:30 P.M., whether they were genuinely tired or not, Casey’s parents retired to their bedroom and dimmed the lights. From his vantage point in the yard outside, Casey was comforted to know that nothing had changed on the evening that he and Kyle planned their excursion to Murden’s peach grove. At a time not long ago, Casey was still naïve enough to question the activity that went on behind his parents’ bedroom door, but tonight he was banking on a prolonged distraction. If all went as he hoped, his parents may have already forgotten about the tent pitched in the center of their backyard.
The fireflies’ lights sprinkled across an endless tapestry of lawns on this early evening. As with many kids, Kyle was always fascinated by the lightning bugs’ ability to glow. As a younger boy, he remembered collecting the flying beetles in glass jars and using them as lanterns as he and his friends marched throughout the darkened neighborhood. The insects provided a magical quality to the grasslands and remained a symbol of youth to those who paused to embrace their fond recollections from time to time.
While Kyle watched the fireflies, Casey turned his attention to a nylon knapsack inside the tent. Kyle waited patiently as his friend fumbled with the switch on his flashlight. After conquering this, Casey shone the flashlight’s beam on the knapsack’s contents.
“Let’s make sure we got everything we need,” Casey said, peering at a camera, two roles of film, a tripod, and a pocketknife. Kyle trained his eyes on the bag, too, and assumed credit for packing all of its contents, including the rusty blade that he hadn’t thought to touch since his last Boy Scouts outing nearly two years ago.
Casey lifted the pocketknife from the knapsack’s pouch and dangled it under the flashlight’s beam. “You mind telling me what you’re planning to do with this thing?” he chuckled.
“We might need it,” Kyle thought.
Casey snickered at his friend’s ignorance. “Why not pull out all the heavy artillery,” he joked, “like your pea-shooter and water pistol?”
“You got any better ideas?” Kyle grimaced, yanking the closed knife from his friend’s hand and stuffing it in his shirt’s pocket.
Casey needed only to pat the wood of his Louisville Slugger once before slyly stating, “Trust me, man, if we run into any ghosts out there tonight, I got a hunch it’s gonna take a whole lot more than that little penknife of yours to scare it off.”
“Maybe so,” Kyle conceded, “but it’s the best I could do. I don’t plan on using it anyway. Remember, our goal is to stay out of sight.”
Without further comment, Casey unzipped the tent and directed his flashlight’s beam toward the house. The sound of crickets drowned out the noise of Kyle’s heavy breathing. As Casey had anticipated, the bedroom on the second floor was already dark. He glanced at his Yankee-themed wristwatch and made a mental note of the time.
“Okay,” Casey whispered, motioning toward the yard. “The way I figure it, we got about two hours before my mom comes out here and starts snooping around. You think that’ll be enough time to see whatever it is you think is in that peach grove?”
After Kyle responded with a single nod, the boys scampered from the tent with knapsack and baseball bat in hand, leaving a lit flashlight behind to illuminate the tent’s interior. Aside from a few curious barks from neighboring dogs, they progressed without being detected. Earlier, in preparation for their stealthy departure, the boys hid their bicycles behind a tool shed at the far end of Casey’s property. Once aboard their bikes, they navigated a shortcut through several backyards before reaching the road leading to The Bogs.
Just as they did on previous outings, the boys abandoned their bikes near Shade Tree Pond before ascending the hill leading to Murden’s peach grove. But unlike their prior excursions, the woodland had taken on a mysterious quality under the light of a crescent moon. A humid breeze stirred the branches of some surrounding willow trees. Aside from the occasional hoot from an unseen owl or the ever-present pitch of the crickets, the woods seemed ominously quiet. Each of the boys’ footsteps, no matter how carefully measured, crackled the dry underbrush as they progressed.
Finally, with the grove now in sight, the boys shone their flashlights toward the peach trees. Though the humidity had not yet left the air on this night, both boys were shivering at the prospect of venturing any farther.
“You sure you want to go through with this, man?” Casey asked, trying to clench his chattering teeth. “We still got time to turn back.”
“We’ve come this far,” Kyle declared with all the bravery he could muster. “We might not ever get another chance to come back here.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Casey gulped. He then clutched his baseball bat tighter between his fingers and exclaimed, “If we’re really gonna do this thing, let’s get it over with. And remember our deal—ten minutes and then we’re leaving.”
“Right,” Kyle whispered. He then proceeded through the woods in line with the flashlight’s pale circle of light.
Had the boys decided to venture here on any other night of the year, they may have been challenged by the prospect of finding company in The Bogs. But by coincidence alone, a neighboring high school dismissed its graduates from a ceremony only hours ago. Almost without exception, those teenagers who attended such celebrations would surely create ways to extend their curfews. Some, with lesser libidos, ended up at diners or late-night theatres, but most preferred the cramped and sweaty confines of parked cars along desolate roads. In earlier days, Adler Lane served as a mating ground for more than its fair share of amorous adolescents, but time had a way of changing things and the road itself lost most of its romantic appeal.
A few kids from nearby towns were never entirely convinced that the past should be left alone. One of those boys was named Tommy Norris. A wannabe rock-n-roller with more than music on his mind, Tommy had managed to lure his girlfriend, Kathy Peterson, to the infamous trail leading toward Murden’s peach grove. The road was too overgrown by the adjacent woods to accommodate a passageway for his 88’ Trans-Am, but where the boy lacked in his ability to carry a tune, he more than made up for with good old-fashioned ingenuity.
Before heading out on this evening, Tommy made certain that his car and faulty air-conditioner didn’t serve as spoilers to his antics. In the car’s trunk, wedged beneath the spare tire, he stashed a twelve-pack of beer and a blanket just thick and wide enough to cushion the ground on which he planned to unfold it. With his prearranged notion of love working its spell perfectly, Kathy soon found herself willfully following him through the woods towards Murden’s peach grove. Perhaps it wasn’t Tommy’s self-proclaimed charm alone that enticed her to come this far, for she was giddy from the consumption of alcohol.
They soon settled upon the peach grove’s soil with full knowledge of what had supposedly happened here in the past. Cunning teens, like Tommy, knew that beer suppressed more than a girl’s inhibitions. It had a dangerous way of making the fearful seem less frightening. Maybe that was the lure of this encounter. Tommy may have not truly believed the rumors regarding Ben Murden, but perhaps his female companion did. Such uncertainty created an atmosphere of closeness in Tommy’s unrefined imagination.
Before long, Tommy had assessed the situation and positioned himself on top of Kathy. He kissed her with a sloppiness that made her uncomfortable, yet she remained submissive to his touch. She settled onto the blanket as his hands nestled under her backside. During these seconds, he kissed her more feverishly, while she used her own hands to explore his muscled biceps and shoulders. Despite the ardency of his touch, she could not get fully lost in the moment.
Kathy should have been enjoying this session more than she was. After all, this was not the first time they fooled around together. They had toyed with each other’s inhibitions on previous encounters, even to the point where she almost submitted entirely to his advances. But on this night, as Tommy’s fingers unhitched the button on her
blue jeans, she arched her back and attempted to squirm out from under the weight of his body.
“Quit it, Tommy,” she murmured, much to his displeasure. Tommy pretended not to hear her at first; his foreplay became more deliberate and he tried to pry her legs apart. She resisted vigorously by setting her palms squarely on his chest and shoving him off of her with authority. “I said knock it off! I’m not in the mood!” she protested.
Tommy was clearly annoyed by her sudden change of mind. He groaned as if suffering from an acute pain in his groin, before rolling to his side and plopping his head down on the blanket. Kathy already started to tuck her shirt back into her pants when he complained, “I thought you wanted to do this.”
“I did,” Kathy replied hesitantly. She then scanned the surrounding woods and uttered, “I just got a creepy feeling about this place.” Kathy then felt an icy chill course through her blood, causing goose bumps to swell out of her chest and forearms. “I don’t like it here, Tommy. I want to leave this place.”
Sensing that his girlfriend was truly terrified, Tommy placed his hand on her shoulder and brushed her chestnut-colored hair away from her cheek. He stared directly into her olive eyes before saying in his most masculine tone, “Trust me, Kathy, there ain’t nothing back here in these woods except us and a few raccoons.”
“I got a strange feeling,” she shivered. “I keep on thinking about all those stories with that weird old man.”
Tommy forced a chuckle from the back of his throat. He, like most adolescent males in the area, relied on such rumors as one may depend on an aphrodisiac to entice his prey. In his mind, the possibility of danger, coupled with the wood’s isolation, made the likelihood of intimacy more plausible. Whether he actually believed the local lore or not was a matter he never seriously contemplated before this night. Kathy, however, had already convinced herself that there was at least some merit to every myth.
“Do you really think that old man killed all those kids?” Kathy inquired, secretly hoping to be comforted by her boyfriend’s reassurance.
Tommy shrugged his shoulders and said, “Supposedly six kids got murdered up in these woods over the last thirty years or so. Legend has it that the old man burned them all to ashes right here in this grove.”
As Tommy spoke, he displayed a natural grin that belied his seriousness. In any event, Kathy had enough stimulation for one evening. She sat upright on the blanket and urged her companion to do the same. Her eyes focused on the peach trees stark branches during these seconds. By now, the goose bumps had multiplied over her entire body.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” Kathy suggested, rubbing at her forearms as if to smear the frigidness back into her bones.
Tommy laughed more freely before announcing, “Come on, babe, do you really think I’d bring you up in these woods if I thought there was some lunatic running around killing everyone? Give me a little credit, will you?”
He attempted to kiss her mouth again, but her lips were suddenly as cool as her skin. Though Tommy advised her to relax, it was evident that the spell of carnality had been spoiled. Kathy fended off his advances again, only now she drew her boyfriend’s attention to the peach trees’ unsightly appearance.
“Did you notice the trees?” she quivered. Her voice became increasingly grave when she declared, “They’re all dead—it’s like some kind of disease or something.”
“You’ve been watching too many horror movies,” Tommy quipped. When he noticed that his girlfriend was offended, he said, “I already told you that we’re not in any danger, so stop worrying about everything.”
Tommy may have sounded knowledgeable, but he couldn’t see any farther through the wood’s darkness than his girlfriend. Save for a crescent moon and a handful of faint stars in the sky, this night offered little in the way of illumination. And if Kathy’s opinion meant anything, she would’ve sworn that the atmosphere had only become gloomier since their arrival.
Neither of the two had time to ponder their worries for too long. As Kathy thwarted another one of her boyfriend’s feeble attempts to get romantic, a conspicuous noise disrupted her concentration. She heard the sound of crackling underbrush in the nearby thicket. The disturbance was loud enough to cause her body to stiffen. In order to demonstrate her disapproval of Tommy’s amorous onslaught, she sprang up on her knees and slapped his cheek with her palm, just firmly enough to attain his undivided attention.
“What the hell was that for?” Tommy grimaced, petting his skin as if to check for a wound.
“I’ve already told you that I’m not in the mood,” Kathy sighed, feeling slightly guilty that she had to resort to striking her boyfriend. She quickly drew his attention to the section of the woods where she thought the noise emanated. “It’s coming from over there,” she whispered, motioning to the area with her chin.
“It’s just a wild animal,” Tommy assured, but his plucky demeanor began to chip away from his exterior like a timeworn paint. Had it not been for the notorious reputation of the woods, his answer may have pacified Kathy’s anxiety. But simple speculation wasn’t prudent, especially when the noise seemed to intensify.
“It’s getting closer,” Kathy cautioned. She then let her imagination coax her into a frightening predicament. “Oh, God, Tommy,” she cried, “what if that old man is coming to kill us? What are we going to do?”
Tommy quickly cupped his hand over Kathy’s mouth and said, “Keep your voice down.” She felt his palm’s clamminess against her lips, hinting that he may have been as terrified as she. After he dropped his hand away from her face, she trembled slightly.
“Do you hear it?” she spoke softly, so that her voice was pitched lower than a light breeze stirring the trees’ branches.
Tommy nodded as he stood up. Whatever the source of the disturbance, it seemed to be circling the woods just beyond the peach grove. After gathering his nerve, Tommy reached up and cracked one of the dead limbs from the nearest peach tree. The limb’s bark crumbled in his grasp, but the wood seemed dense enough to inflict damage if necessary.
Kathy glanced at him and whimpered, “Where are you going?”
“Wait here,” Tommy directed, edging off the blanket with his weapon in hand. “I’m gonna check things out, okay?”
“You’re going to leave me here alone?”
“You’d rather come with me?”
Kathy’s voice was barely audible when she said, “I guess not.” She then tugged the blanket around her shoulders to ward off an unexplainable chill. “Be careful,” she admonished. “And if you’re not back in five minutes, I’m coming to look for you.”
Tommy didn’t wait around long enough to acknowledge Kathy. He was already lamenting his decision to conduct an investigation. After he reached the dense woods surrounding the peach grove, he could hardly find his way through the darkness. Still, in order to appease Kathy’s discontent (and perhaps his own), he forged into the woodland, using the stick to swat at the waist-high weeds.
Meanwhile, Kyle and Casey monitored the teenager’s approach with a similar apprehension. “Something is moving in the brush over there,” Kyle exclaimed, pointing a shivering finger to a spot in the foliage about twenty paces in front of them.
With two hands clasped on the flashlight, Kyle swept the beam in the direction where he first distinguished the disturbance. By the time the light illuminated the forest, the intruder had stumbled into view wielding a tree branch above his head.
“Watch out!” Kyle bellowed, while shoving Casey to the ground. Tommy appeared as perplexed as the younger boys while stumbling through the thicket. Once realizing that he was staring into the eyes of two petrified kids, he stopped and lowered the stick.
“What are you two doing out here?” Tommy shouted, though he still had difficulty catching his breath.
Casey took a moment to reclaim the flashlight that had slipped from Kyle’s grasp. At the same time, Kyle snatched the baseball bat from Casey and held it out in front of himself as one might
wave a sword. With the flashlight’s beam now shining on Tommy’s face, the boys plainly discerned that the intruder was much older and most likely stronger than them.
“We were just walking around,” Kyle explained, anxiously gesturing to his friend for confirmation.
“Yeah,” Casey affirmed in his deepest voice. “We don’t have any business with you.”
Tommy’s expression revealed obvious signs of relief. He wiped a thin layer of perspiration from his upper lip before saying, “This ain’t no place for kids your age to be hanging out. You practically scared my girlfriend out of her wits.”
“Sorry, man, but we weren’t exactly expecting to run into you either,” Casey replied.
Once it was evident that Tommy posed no immediate threat, Kyle lowered the bat and set it near his feet. Tommy observed the shivering boys a moment longer before concluding, “I know what you kids are up to.”
“You do?” Kyle gulped.
“You’re not the first kids to come up here looking for trouble,” Tommy smirked. He then motioned toward the baseball bat and said, “I guess you were planning to knock Ben Murden’s head off with that thing, huh?”
“Maybe,” Casey confessed more snippily than Kyle would’ve suggested. “But that still doesn’t tell us what you’re doing out here.”
Tommy dropped the stick he was holding and crossed his arms in front of his chest. He confidently motioned over his shoulder by turning his head. “You two morons are messing up my date,” he grumbled. “Why don’t you both get the heck out of here while you still can?”
“Oh, I get it,” Casey tittered and then nudged Kyle with his elbow. “He’s got a girl with him.”
“We were leaving anyway,” Kyle added. “So you can get back to whatever it is you’re doing.”
Tommy turned his back on the boys without offering any further interest in their retreat. In the distance, he heard his girlfriend’s voice calling out for him.
“Go and get her,” Casey jested to Tommy as he made his way toward his bike.
Tommy may have had an inclination to pummel the much smaller boy, but he decided that it was more prudent to ignore Casey’s taunting words for now. Besides, his girlfriend’s voice sounded increasingly agitated in his absence. If he didn’t get back to her soon, all of his lecherous plans would surely be spoiled.
Returning to her side, however, proved to be a more taxing quest than Tommy initially considered. At some point during his retreat, he must have meandered off the rudimentary trail he had earlier created. Tree branches and clusters of briar bushes scratched his arms and neck as he forged through the underbrush. He could no longer see his own hands in front of his face. In a matter of minutes, the forest’s floor seemed to darken beneath a canopy of impenetrable foliage.
“Kathy!” he called out, hoping that her response would direct him back to her side. “I can’t find you.”
“I’m over here!” Kathy shouted, but her voice ricocheted off the trees and scattered in the surrounding hills.
Tommy sensed a genuine fear escalating in his girlfriend’s tone, which prompted him to rifle through the underbrush at a heedless pace. “Kathy!” he screamed. “Where are you?” His voice, which had been audible to Kathy only seconds earlier, suddenly became increasingly distant and muted.
Why had Kathy ever agreed to accompany her boyfriend out into these woods? She knew what he must’ve expected from her, yet she did little to dissuade his advances until the moment was upon her. Up until this time, she had been indifferent to the notion that Ben Murden was a self-appointed punisher of oversexed teenagers. Suddenly, a feeling of isolation engulfed her thoughts. She sensed her heartbeat quickening. What if all those terrible stories had even a shred of validity? Could it be that the old man lied in wait for the vulnerable and buried their mangled bodies beneath the roots of his peach trees?
In anticipation of Tommy’s return, Kathy sprang to her feet and hollered without concern for anyone who might’ve been listening. “Tommy, I’m not kidding, I want to go home now.”
No answer came back to her. In fact, there wasn’t a solitary noise to disquiet the peach grove. The silence was so absolute that Kathy could not even discern the chirp of a single cricket or a woodland animal scampering through the thicket. Had she paused to consider the improbability of such a situation, she may have become more suspicious of her predicament.
As it was, Kathy spun herself in circles and waved her hands through the darkness like a sightless drunkard fumbling to find something recognizable. She finally conceded that both she and Tommy were lost and it seemed unlikely that they’d find one another before daybreak.
Just as Tommy had discovered a few minutes earlier, the forest’s darkness became too dense to freely navigate. Adding to the mysterious of the environment, a silver-colored mist began to encompass the peach grove’s environs. The fog seemed to ascend from the forest’s floor, but there was no apparent moisture or change in temperature to instigate this occurrence. Despite the mist’s unknown origin, there was no denying the fact that it smothered the peach grove’s ground rather quickly.
Even Kyle and Casey, who had by this point progressed far enough away from the peach grove to be ignorant to the teenagers’ plight, could not deny the strange clouds forming in the vicinity of Murden’s peach grove.
“Hold on a minute,” Kyle mentioned, stopping his bike to observe the mist. “Something is wrong back there.”
“What now?” Casey groaned, straining to cast a gaze in the direction of Kyle’s stare. The boys observed the forest’s foreground, concentrating on a bank of fog emerging between the trees.
“We’ve got to go back,” Kyle insisted. “There might be trouble.”
“No way,” Casey protested. “I’ve seen enough of this place to last me one night.”
“But what about that fog? Doesn’t it look strange to you?”
Casey shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and said, “What’s so strange about a little fog? Let’s just forget about it, okay?”
Although Kyle never considered himself to be intuitive when foretelling danger, he couldn’t displace the possibility that an unsettling event was occurring right before their eyes. He hadn’t yet envisioned anything of substance that might’ve persuaded Casey to double back into the mist. Besides, even if something unnatural existed within this region, how could their presence alter the outcome?
Without lending further credence to the notion, Kyle steered his bike back onto the trail and followed Robby out of the woods. Had they stayed their ground another minute, they might’ve witnessed Tommy trudging awkwardly over the unbalanced terrain. While he searched for his girlfriend, he still shouted as vociferously as his voice permitted. He could no longer blame his disorientation on the consumption of alcohol, and he soon began to panic.
“C’mon, Kathy,” he bellowed. “Where the hell are you?” Even in the midst of this crisis, the image-conscious teenager prayed that his girlfriend didn’t hear his cries for help. His cowardice would have surely served to work against his favor if it was ever known beyond these woods.
As Tommy struggled in futility to find Kathy, her own anxiousness caused her to wander away from the blanket. She sensed a fever building inside her skull. A cool sweat seeped from her pores. Although she didn’t wish to submit to any thoughts of terror, fear had already fastened itself in the crevices of her mind. When such emotions flourished within the human soul, a mode of panic dominated the course of action, and then a reckless pursuit for a deliverance of this consternation overwhelmed the body.
Kathy no longer deciphered reality from the vague images forming within her imagination. Ample moonlight suddenly pervaded the peach grove. Such an occurrence permitted the girl to recast her gaze upon the surroundings with greater clarity. Figuring that Tommy had abandoned her because of her reluctance to submit to his advances, she replenished her energy by refraining from an urge to call for his assistance again.
Using the moonlight as a resource in h
er struggles, Kathy bound forward through the grove, latching onto the peach trees’ decayed limbs in her progress. Some of these branches crumbled under the weight of her hands; the remnants dissolved into tiny particles of dust before floating to the ground.
Although Kathy did not shed a tear to this point, her unrest intensified. The orchard still revealed no definitive avenue of escape. A mist had blanketed the grove’s perimeter completely, and gradually worked its way to the center. Adding to her bewilderment, between the pallid rays of moonlight, Kathy espied a reflection of something utterly inexplicable emerging from the fog-shrouded soil. At first it appeared as a spark of jade-colored energy, not unlike a streak of electricity apart from its peculiar coloration.
This vision was unnerving enough to instigate a change in Kathy’s movement. She stumbled north, breathing heavily and with an unnatural cadence. During her flight, she barely felt the peach trees’ limbs scratching at her face and arms. At one point, blood was drawn from her neck by a particularly sharp branch. When she thought that her footsteps had carried her to safety, her progress was halted by the same surge of light—this time more exact in its presence.
Kathy retreated in the opposite direction again, heedlessly scampering between the trees. Functioning on sheer adrenaline served her well in the past, but confusion now spoiled her wit. She had nowhere to run, other than into a mist that seemed to anticipate her footsteps. With her choices now limited, Kathy stood her ground and taunted the fog as if it somehow possessed the capacity—and life—to evaluate her challenge.
“You want to mess with me?” she cried out. “C’mon and do it! I’m not afraid of you, old man!”
Clearly, Kathy had not yet relinquished her senses entirely. The gestures were suddenly directed at what she presumed awaited beyond the mist’s obscurity. Though she wasn’t certain how Murden managed to concoct a show of energy seemingly borrowed from nature’s handbook, she was convinced that he had developed this trap for her. Whatever demented scheme Murden had conceived for his next victim, she already determined that he would not succeed without a fight.
“Come and get me!” These words burst from Kathy’s throat with an immeasurable rage—it was a fierceness that few would’ve imagined to exist within the frame of a hundred and five pound girl. After searching for a weapon to enhance her chances to prevail, she took hold of the nearest tree branch. The rotted limb nearly withered in her grasp, but a good portion of the wood maintained its form.
As the mist gathered around her ankles, Kathy swung the branch out in front of herself, wildly clenching her teeth as she prepared for an impact with anything that might’ve revealed a weakness. She soon ceased from this defensive stance and hobbled deeper into the fog’s core. Strangely, a sudden chill caused the hairs on her arms and neck to stand upright. Within a matter of seconds, the air temperature plunged. She could see pockets of breath forming in front of her mouth. But adding to her bemusement, there was still nothing to indicate the presence of Ben Murden.
An eerie green light throbbed with more consistency now. The centerpiece to its origin seemed to be within a fingertips grasp from Kathy’s current position. Now was her chance, she deduced, to snuff out Murden’s treacherous deeds once and for all. She waved the branch at the column of light forming before her eyes, but the swoosh of the limb connected with nothing but frigid air.
In the ensuing seconds, the mist enveloped Kathy’s body more thoroughly. Any trace of bravery that delivered her to this confrontation quickly began to wane. She uncovered no beatable opponent, and a sense of futility diminished her desire to escape. Though her vision was blurred by changeable fog patterns, Kathy’s eyes followed the mysterious light that pulsated like a heartbeat at the core of this torment.
Kathy no longer possessed the ability to shout, for the present energy had somehow managed to deplete whatever remained of her strength. The tree limb gradually slipped from her fingers as the light illuminated her face.
“What do you want from me?” Kathy quivered.
The thump of Kathy’s heartbeat matched the rhythm of energy settling within the grove. It was impossible for her to estimate exactly what natural or supernatural presence had set upon this earth, but she realized that it surrounded her in a translucent web of light. Nothing was more unsettling to the human condition than a feeling of desperation that Kathy now endured. She sensed the light transforming itself, fading in and out of the mist, but steadily increasing its power over her mind and body.
As Kathy sunk to her knees in an agitated fury, it seemed as though some unseen adversary had shackled her ankles to the soil. She tried to swing her feet out from under herself, but this effort proved as fruitless as the trees’ barren branches. Something has snagged her by each leg, but the mist prevented her from discovering the source.
Before Kathy fully contemplated this predicament, the light flared with a definitive intensity. She directed her gaze at the energy, which now generated enough illumination for her to plainly see an image of another person beside her in the grove.
“Tommy?” she questioned fearfully. “Is that you?”
The image did not respond, and upon closer inspection Kathy presumed that whatever stood before her didn’t have the proportions of a grown man. This silhouette, she gathered, was much smaller and more feminine in structure. Perhaps someone had heard her cries for help after all. She squinted into the light in an attempt to study the presence more closely.
“I can’t move my legs,” Kathy finally called out. “Please help me.”
No reply was forwarded by the image.
“I know you can hear me,” Kathy pleaded impatiently. “I’m lost and can’t find my way out of here.”
Again, Kathy’s voice was greeted with only silence. Much to Kathy’s dread and confusion, the mist subsided and the vision of a female child no more than twelve years old appeared from behind a peach tree.
“I can see you,” Kathy said, quivering with every word. “Why won’t you help me?”
Had Kathy possessed the presence of mind to survey the child more vigilantly, she would’ve recognized that the image was traced by an aura of emerald light. The presence didn’t walk among the trees, but her entire body hovered above the ground as if suspended from an arrangement of invisible wires. But no amount of wires could’ve fostered any plausible explanation as to why or how the child was here now.
Kathy concluded that it could be nothing other than a hallucination. None of this was real. It was a nightmare, no doubt conceived out of guilt for agreeing to venture into this peach grove. Somehow she must’ve fallen asleep or knocked herself unconscious during her bid to escape. But if all of this was true, why did she still attempt to converse with the image?
Kathy’s voice ached with confusion when she cried, “Listen to me. I—I can’t move…please help me!”
The female child—if that’s what it truly was—remained strangely passive and unresponsive to any gesture of benevolence. The light encompassing the image suddenly flared brighter. Her face appeared appallingly pallid and vacant of human expression. At the core of the child’s eyes, no sense of compassion existed. She stared at Kathy as if her eyes did not have the ability to comprehend sorrow.
In the following seconds, the image’s movement brought her closer to Kathy. Unable to contain her emotions, Kathy released a scream into the fathomless woods. The child’s lips did not appear to move. Her mouth remained oddly fixated with neither a frown nor smile to indicate a discernable emotion.
As Kathy crouched before the child, almost as if engaged in a silent prayer, she distinguished a sound rising above the pitch of whirling fog and dust. Kathy lifted her head and stared at the peach trees’ jagged limbs. This sound seemed to emanate from the child. It was a whispery voice, laced with echoes and almost imperceptible to the naked ear. Kathy centered her thoughts on this reverberation, which registered like a faint melody weaving throughout the grove. At first the syllables were difficult to decipher, but after a moment
, the song became cemented in Kathy’s mind.
“Where do souls go when they no longer grow?
Do they scream in the dirt to tell of their hurt?
Do they die in the rain while they suffer in pain?
Do they cry in the night beneath the pale moonlight?
I wish I knew where my home might be,
But beneath the earth it’s hard to see…”
Before the last traces of this melody dissipated, a single scream penetrated the grove’s barrier. Kyle and Casey, who were well on their way out of the woods by now, could not deny the evidence of this cry. After hearing it, the boys stopped their bikes momentarily and looked at each other as if to test the measure of their bravery.
Casey studied the distress exuding from Kyle’s expression before warning, “Don’t even think about going back there.”
“But you heard that scream—didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what it was, and I’m not aiming to find out.”
“It was a girl’s cry,” Kyle declared assuredly. “We’ve got to go back, Casey. I think those two kids might be in danger.”
Kyle started to turn his bike in the opposite direction, but Casey grabbed him by the arm to prevent him from pedaling. His voice fluttered slightly when he said, “Don’t get all heroic on me, man. You saw the size of that boy. He can handle whatever it is better than we can.”
“But we’ve got to do something.”
“We are,” Casey said sternly. “We’re gonna get the heck out of these woods and make it a point never to come back.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police or something? We can’t just pretend that we don’t know what happened.”
“That’s the whole point, Kyle. We don’t really know and I ain’t in any hurry to make a name for myself, got it?”
Casey released Kyle’s arm and pedaled off toward the wood’s clearing. Kyle briefly debated on whether or not it was a good idea to backtrack on his own. He still possessed enough common sense to abandon the notion of navigating the forest alone. Besides, Casey’s point—although hardly courageous—made sense. What if Kyle did encounter trouble in his pursuit? How could he expect to single-handedly alter the outcome?
Kyle contemplated the situation a moment longer before yelling to his friend, “Hey, Casey, wait up. I’m coming with you. Maybe it was just the wind.”
As Kyle uttered these words, he already suspected that he was avoiding the truth, for this evening offered no audible wind to imitate a cry from the living. And before the moon faded from the sky on this night, a second scream of equal terror seemed inevitable. Tommy Norris still stumbled aimlessly through the thicket in search of his girlfriend. He soon reached the blanket where he had last left her, but she was already gone.
On this evening, the song would be heard twice, and two souls in turn would be lost forever within the tainted soil of Ben Murden’s peach grove
Chapter 12