the trunk, then they were off. Nolan drove his wife's car with a lot more care and finesse than he did the Red Rocket. Duffy manned the passenger seat with the seatbelt strapped across his chest, sitting still and letting his tongue fly with the wind out the window. The boys didn't say much in the backseat but they all were thinking about the same thing: a monster in the woods.
As they pulled into the parking lot of the sporting goods store, James was surprised at just how many people there were around. Being exiled, as Jack called it, in the country for days with hardly any human contact really allowed him to notice the subtle details of the city. It was crowded and extremely noisy.
"I'm just going run in here really quick and grab the camera, all right? You boys stay out here and manage the Duff-Meister."
James nodded as his dad hurriedly closed the car door before Duffy could wiggle out.
"So what does it look like?" Jack asked after Nolan left.
"I don't really know," James said.
"What do you mean, man? You said you saw it!" Owen's eyebrows furled.
"Calm down, I did, I did. But it was at the back of the property, like I said. It's really hard to see something that far away. But it looks gray and kind of human."
Jack sat there thinking while Owen burst open with excitement. “That's fucking awesome!” he said hopping around in his seat.
"Wait a minute,” Jack asked, "you sure you didn't just see a person? I mean, details get fuzzy and colors can become distorted over large distances especially near the horizon. Look how light scatters at the horizon during a sunset and looks red and orange."
Owen raised one eyebrow at him. "C'mon Brainiac, you really think someone's been coming around to his yard every day just to stand and stare at him?"
"Actually, most of the time it's squatting down. I only noticed it looked human-like when it got up and went back into the woods.”
"My point exactly!" Owen yelled. "Who's going to stop around every day to pop a squat in someone's backyard?”
"You do have a point there," Jack said.
Nolan came back to the car and tossed a bag into the back. "Here you go, James. Guy said it was a good one."
If there's one thing those boys loved, it was a new piece of technology. They quickly pulled it from its packaging and looked it over. It was flat, camouflage colored and only a little smaller than a school textbook. James smiled, he now had the thing that would prove there was a monster in the woods without a doubt.
Nolan pulled into a local beer and beverage drive-thru to get the wings. Inside was a tunnel of freezers and coolers full of hundreds of different types of beer, wine, soda, and juice that reminded James of the diversity and availability of city life. On the driver’s side was a break in the freezers where a wooden counter sat with a cash register on it. At the register, a boy who looked way too young to drink put down his phone and lazily walked to Nolan’s window.
"May I help you?" he asked in an uninterested tone.
"Picking up an order for Callum," Nolan replied.
"Hang on a sec," the boy said rudely, disappearing somewhere behind the counter to a hidden kitchen area.
Nolan turned around toward the backseat full of boys and smiled. "This place has the best wings around,” he said, noticing that they were checking out the camera enthusiastically "So you boys are really getting into this nature watching stuff, huh?"
They all looked at each other and smiled. Now James had his own little secret club with information his parents didn't know. He felt very disassociated with what was going on with them but having the secret about the monster in the woods unknown to them stroked James's ego enough to make him feel better. "Yeah," James said stretching out the word, "watching deer is pretty cool."
While there was a hint of sarcasm in his voice, James had honestly found joy in watching deer. He was surprised how much fun it was to just sit and soak in the beauty of the world around him. It was a different kind of fun than going to a waterpark or playing laser tag, but fun nonetheless. Jack and Owen were still country virgins, completely institutionalized by the trappings of the city, while James was beginning to break free of his shell. Like a caterpillar, his old life and persona were starting to melt, and change inside, and he was becoming a newer and more evolved version of himself.
In true preteen-fashion, Jack and Owen dozed in the back seat from the monotonous hum of the road flowing beneath them. James mirrored Duffy with his head out the window, sucking up the fresh country air as they drove on further from the city. Duffy became more excited, and yet more still as he too broke away from the confines of the city into wide open spaces he had never known. Before long, the large mass of trees that made up the woods behind Nolan’s house became visible in a tentacle arm of green that grew thicker and thicker as they drove. It stretched behind houses and farms, and James wondered if anyone else had ever seen the monster, since the woods stood like a great forest in the middle of the countryside. Surely, he couldn't be the only one. It can't be all in my head, he thought. As they pulled into the driveway, Duffy’s stillness evaporated.
"Home sweet home," Nolan said, unbuckling Duffy's seatbelt and opening the door.
James panicked, "Dad, wait! What about—
"Ah James, he'll be fine, this isn’t the city. The distances here are so great that Duff can get all the exercise he needs without the worry of running away. There is more space here than he's ever known."
James relaxed a little, watching Duffy run around like a lunatic with a jet pack through the backyard. Despite what his dad thought, he knew there was something in the woods that could jump out at any moment and go for his dog. As terrifying as the thought was, the reality was that Duffy zipped up and down the open field without incident. As everyone got out of the car and grabbed their bags, Duffy whizzed by like a fighter jet.
Owen laughed, "Man, look at him go!"
"You watch," Nolan nodded at Duffy as he circled around for another pass, "he'll be a completely different dog after he's done."
"What do you mean?" James asked.
"Well, he was always jumping all over everyone because he had all that energy with no outlet for it. You watch how calm he'll become," Nolan laughed.
Nolan took the wings inside and James led Jack and Owen toward the barn where they could see the open field behind the house, and the great wall of trees in the distance.
Jack squinted, "Oh, now I see what you mean about not being able to see detail. The distance is much greater than I thought!"
"You need four wheelers," Owen suggested.
"Boys, come get wings before they get any colder," Nolan called out. As if on cue, Duffy came ripping back through the yard and up the steps, panting like a steam engine. He bounced around excitedly as if Nolan had been talking to him, too.
Jack and Owen couldn't believe their eyes once they were inside. "Wow," Jack said, "this place is like one of those places you see on TV." Jack and Owen also lived in nice houses, but nothing had the clean sharp lines of being new. While both boys' families were middle class, most houses in Bugby were built between the ‘70s and ‘80s, and newer constructions were located along the lake. James and his friends all lived in the heart of the city.
Owen sat down at the shiny wooden table and took off his hat. "You know, I thought this place was going to be like some old farm house or something creepy like you'd find in a horror movie. Especially when you said there was a big old barn but holy sh—
"Well thanks, Owen," Nolan said cutting him off and grabbing plates from the cupboard, "see, you never know what you'll find out here!" Owen put his hat back on, embarrassed at almost swearing in front of the good doctor.
The words sent a shiver down James's back. The recognition of unlimited possibilities made James think about the monster in the woods even more. What was it? Where did it come from? How long had it been there? What was it planning to do?
As they ate, the phone rang.
"Hello?" Nolan answered. "Yes. Oh, you did? I must've forgotten
to grab it. Yes, I'll be there shortly." He hung up and sat back down at the table.
"Back to work?" James asked in a low tone.
"Yeah, apparently, they tried to page me but I forgot my pager." He made quotation marks around the word forgot. "I had a day planned and while I knew they were going to call I didn't want to be interrupted. They can handle things for a bit without me, they're going to learn to have to."
Nolan finished eating then got up to get ready. The boys cleaned up then headed out into the field toward the deer feeder.
"This place is huge," Owen said pushing ahead of the other two, "it's even bigger than it looks. You could have like a whole baseball diamond out here."
They reached the deer feeder and to James's surprise, it was completely empty.
"Whoa," he said. "I just filled this thing yesterday."
"Definitely have some visitors, which is good. That means the camera will be put to good use." Jack looked over the deer feeder carefully, "I don't see any place for the camera to hang."
"No? Well where should we put it? I was really hoping to attach it to the deer feeder."
"Let me see," Owen said, "I'm good at rigging shit." He took the mount and straps and tried to reach around the blue barrel bottom of the feeder. He stood up and handed it back to James. "Hmm, I don't know, bro. What about putting it on a tree facing this way?"
James quivered at the thought. He didn't want to go anywhere near the trees, but he also didn't want his