Chapter 1 – Chap 1

I grew up in a trailer park.

That doesn’t mean as much now as it did in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and it would be years later that I’d hear the term “trailer trash” but that’s what I was. That’s what we all were.

You see, when you’re a young kid at the bottom of the social ladder, it’s surprising how little you notice it, even as it deeply affects you. Everyone always talks about how cruel kids can be to each other, but that wasn’t my experience growing up as a kid from the trailer park. Rather, the experience was one of indifference. Contempt requires effort, anger requires an emotional response. Silence? That requires nothing whatsoever. The absence of caring is not hatred, it’s indifference.

This indifference affected different kids in different ways. Some turned inward, closing themselves off to other people in the world, accepting that they were simply beneath notice. Others turned angry and resentful, becoming bullies for no reason than to force others to validate their existence. A handful of us focused on proving our worth, ignoring the willful ignorance of those who judged us.

We created a world of our own, an experience unlike that anyone else could comprehend. We willed ourselves into something greater than society would tell us we had any right to be. What we didn’t know was just how deep shared belief and childlike naivete can combine to create something horrible.

The trailer park was surrounded by woods. Deep woods. Dark woods. The kind that kids in the modern world aren’t allowed to go into without supervision, if at all. The kind of woods in which lie not only the unknown but also the unknowable. These woods were our second home, our escape from a world that didn’t really care if we lived or died. These woods became our sanctuary.

During the week, we went to school like good little boys and girls. We paid attention to our teachers, turned in our homework, played at recess, the same things that every other child did. And when we got home, we’d use whatever small remaining amount of daylight we could to wander into the woods. On school days we stuck to the known trails. We followed the well-worn paths of others from the past. On weekends we’d wander aimlessly, carving our own trails, exploring depths that defied our limited comprehension of space and time. We’d head into the woods after our Saturday cartoons and emerge as the last vestiges of sunlight were crossing the horizon.

We’d hike out to the airport and lay in the field near the end of the runway, watching airplanes from all over as they breezed down just a hundred feet over our heads. We’d trek out to the “big rock” and play king of the hill, pushing and pulling and shoving each other like maniacs, yet somehow never once hurting ourselves.

You see, kids are resilient. Ask any parent and they’ll tell you astonishing stories of death-defying acts which should have left their child marked and scarred or paralyzed or dead. Kids are physically resilient, mind you — I’ve come to the conclusion that mentally, kids are vulnerable. And not just to the slings and arrows of outrageous indifference, but to other influences as well. We know that children exposed to abuse are more likely to become abusers, and that those exposed to true, deep, abiding love are more likely to hold others dear. But, in the neutral face of indifference, what happens to a child left to their own devices? Other influences seep in, unseen and unheard, and unnoticed until it’s far too late to correct the course upon which that child may head.

I’d like to say that looking back, it’s obvious to me when and how things changed, but that would be a lie. There’s not one day or one event that I can point to in the way that you see in a movie or on television. The “warning signs” that we should have seen don’t exist in the real world like they do in fiction. Life is a story, but it’s one that doesn’t lend itself to the tropes and memes of popular media. Life is complex and doesn’t always make narrative sense. Life is its own thing, and weaves its tapestry independent of the influence of an editor or a focus group. Life, like the honey badger, just doesn’t give a fuck.

I think the first time I recall there being something “different” about the woods was when I was 8 or 9 years old. It was a weekend outing, one of our deep dives into that forest. We’d been walking for what seemed like hours, though from my Casio calculator watch I could tell we’d only been wandering for about an hour. We were telling stories, singing songs, clacking picked-up branches on trees, the usual kiddy stuff. Pushing through the bushes, carving our own paths, forging ahead with that childish certainty that we’d find our way back.

It was Teddy that saw it first, and held up his hand in his faux military gesture, probably picked up from Predator or one of the other Swarzenegger films he loved so much. He immediately ducked down into the bushes and made an overly exaggerated “Shhhh!” sound. Whatever he was hiding from, he was more likely to help it than hinder it. But that was Teddy — all action, little consideration.

“What is it?” one of us asked.

“A tent!” he exclaimed, more excited than scared.

We all poked our heads up, a sight that certainly would have amused whomever could have been watching us. But there was nobody to be seen. Just a relatively small, two-man tent. Orange, a little tattered, resting beneath a tree. The flap was barely open, enough that we could see inside if we squinted. There was a sleeping bag, a pillow, and a small pack in the tent. Looking around, we could see a small circle of stones where a campfire might have been set. But most strangely, hanging from the trees, were figures made of twine and sticks.

We’d never encountered anyone else in these woods, and we instinctively felt as though these were signs of an intruder. These were our woods. This was our domain. And here was someone infringing on our freedom.

We stood there in the bushes for several minutes, all of us taking in every detail, mumbling to ourselves. It was Teddy who made the first move, pushing through the remaining twenty feet of brush to step into the makeshift campsite.

I remember the next few minutes as clearly as day.

“C’mon chickenshits! Ain’t nobody here,” Teddy said as he turned a circle in the middle of the campsite, claiming it as his own.

“Teddy! Get back here, we don’t know what this is,” scoffed Andi, the only female in our little pod of friends, and therefore the de facto voice of reason. “What if this is a poacher or something? They could shoot you!”

“Nothing here worth hunting. Besides, nobody’s heard us yet, and we haven’t exactly been sneaking in those bushes.”

“Ugh, what are you, fucking cowards?” demanded Huck as he tromped forward to join Teddy in the dirt circle. “This is the most interesting thing we’ve found out here.”

I remember looking at Andi, locking eyes with her and sharing the feeling of concern and exasperation at the idiocy we were witnessing. I waited to see what she was going to do, and when she shrugged her shoulders and pushed forth, I joined right behind her. I often wonder what would have happened if we’d made a different choice. Maybe in some other universe, we did.

With the four of us standing there, the drama of the situation seemed to evaporate. Fear diminishes in direct accord with numbers — for better or worse. Teddy wandered over to the campfire and kicked the rocks, observing in his infinite wisdom, “This fire’s been dead for hours, whoever set it is long gone.”

“But they’ll be back, they’re not just going to abandon their camp, are they?” I asked, trying to restore a little bit of that reasonable fear into the group.

The rebuttal came from Huck, though, “Who knows, maybe they’re out hiking or something. Let’s see what’s in the tent!”

He said this as he opened up the tent and peered inside, screeching like he’d put his hand on a hot skillet handle. Huck backed away, tripping over a rock and falling backward into the bushes. Andi rushed over to help him up as Teddy and I went back over to the tent.

Whoever owned this tent wasn’t coming back, because there they were inside. They were mostly still wrapped in the sleeping bag, which is why we hadn’t seen them from outside. The only thing I remember was the face — distorted or contorted into the most painful looking scream you can imagine. There were no eyes in their sockets, the holes were just empty blackness. The skin was pulled taut, as though it were a sheet of cling wrap pulled tightly from chin to forehead. Its tongue lolled out at an odd angle. I remember thinking, in that moment of sheer terror and existential fright, how odd it was that there was no smell.

My mind leaped to the time we’d had a rat die in the walls the year before. The only reason we knew it was there was because of the smell. A damp, dank, wet smell that seeped through the wall for days. Death should have a smell; death should make its presence known. But here, in the middle of these woods lie a body in a shape no human should take.

Teddy and I backed out of the tent, looking around. The figures in the trees moved in time with a breeze, but the branches surrounding them were still. In that moment, it was almost as though the forest around us was breathing heavily, in anticipation of something momentous. I suppose it was, but we wouldn’t understand this for weeks, if not years — if ever, really.

It never once occurred to us to go home, call the police, or do anything that a reasonable, responsible child of our age might. Though, even if we had, there’s no guarantee we’d have found this place again. We were deep in the woods, having carved our own path, and I now understand that the woods keep their secrets, unless they want them to be found. Had we done the smart thing, the responsible thing, and left to get help, we’d have never seen this tent again; as it was, we never did — at least that I know of.

It was Teddy’s idea to look through the pack from the tent. There was a glasses case, a couple notepads, a small book, and some minor provisions. Beef jerky, freeze-dried bananas, trail mix. All were relatively fresh — an observation Huck made while chomping a couple peanuts from the plastic baggie holding the trail mix. Andi took a quick skim through the journals, but they were written in some code or language we didn’t understand. I was the one to pick up the book first, and though I want to say that I was overcome with a feeling of dread or foreboding the moment I lifted it, that’s not true. If anything, it felt normal to be going through a dead person’s pack in the middle of the woods.

The book was hardbound, and old. There was no title on the front or spine, and there was a strong latch holding it shut, with a leather band wrapped around the entire book, recently added. I held the book for a solid minute, just staring at it, wondering what in the world it could contain. I tapped the lock, seeing if it would pop open, seeing if it had a secret lock. I picked up a rock to see if I could jostle the latch loose. I looked over to Andi for approval, and that’s when we heard it.

Breathing.

Heavy, labored breathing

Coming from the tent.

Andi and I locked eyes, then we each looked to Huck and Teddy in turn. We were frozen in fear, locked in place by incredulity. There’s no way the thing in the tent could be alive, we all thought in unison.

Then the sleeping bag moved. The tent shook. And a moan emanated from inside unlike anything I had heard before.

And that broke the spell. Teddy was first, bolting into the woods in the rough direction from which we’d come. I was second, cutting a path blindly behind Teddy with the sound of my heart thumping in my ears. Huck practically pushed Andi into the bushes, then grabbed the back of her shirt to keep her from falling face-first into them. He and Andi joined us in our mad scramble through the woods.

We ran and ran with the energy that only children possess, certain that whatever was in the tent was just behind us. But the last thing that we heard as we disappeared into the forest was a loud lamenting sigh, a painful mourning sound. It would be another 30 years or more before I heard a sound like that.

After a seeming eternity of running, we reached one of our many forts that we’d built just outside the trailer park. These were our safe spots, where we’d rally when the bullies got to us, when our parents’ issues drove us out, where we shared the secrets that friends hold for one another. As Huck tossed the trail mix he was still carrying into the underbrush, I laid the book in the center of the floor. In that moment we reached an unspoken agreement that we now had a new secret to keep together.