Back when I was a kid, there was a giant wooded area nearby that we loved to visit, especially during the summer. Sulfur Creek ran through it, with a bend where the water was deep enough to swim; there were trails up near Macelroy Drive where people rode their ATVs; and of course when hunting season came, it was the place to scout out deer. My brothers and I would go there a lot during the summer in the morning and come home for lunch, covered with dirt and sweat, only to return right afterward and stay away until it was time for dinner.
The area was vast. It started out a block away from our house in Penn Township, and it went down to Trafford, and ran all the way to Monroeville and probably farther. There were a few abandoned structures in there that had been built as part of a logging effort more than a century earlier, a railroad that had fallen into disuse, and God only knows what else.
As you may have gathered, this was back in the day when it was fairly common for parents to let their kids run around outside without immediate supervision. It was a time to build forts, to explore, and to navigate the physical and social world on our own, without the constant helicopter presence of our parents. In fact our parents had only one rule about playing outside Be back on the block by dark.
This one summer evening when I was 12, my brother Steve and I were playing in the woods with his friend Kevin, who was visiting from Forest Hills. It was after 8:30 in June, and the shadows under the trees were getting dark. As the responsible older brother, I started to remind Steve and Kevin that we had to start home soon.
"Only if you can make us!" Steve said, and he and Kevin took off, their laughter trailing after them.
This was one of the ways Steve went out of his way to annoy me. He knew I was worried about getting in trouble for breaking the curfew, and he knew that him flouting the rules was just going to make me angry. He's two years younger than me but he's always been stronger and faster, and he's always enjoyed getting the better of me physically. He loved it when people thought we were twins, and enjoyed it even more on those rare occasions when they thought he was older, like the summer he got to ride the more advanced rollercoasters and I didn't. Getting at me by running ahead was just sauce for the goose, as far as he was concerned.
So he and Kevin ran ahead, and I ran after them, getting angrier with each step because there wasn't anything I could do about it, and then they stopped so suddenly that I almost crashed right into them.
"Are you stupid?" I asked. "We have to get home or mom's going to kill us!"
"Shh," he said, and he pointed at an oak tree nearby. At first I thought there was someone up there, and I was amazed at how far up they had climbed. I usually got about 8 feet before I stopped climbing, and Steve had been known to make it 15, but this person was easily past that.
And then I realized there was no way this was anything human. It was about seven feet tall, with long and spindly arms and legs, and it was thin like something that never got enough to eat. There was a bird sitting on one of the branches, and as we stood there watching and listening, the bird opened its mouth and made its final song of the day.
The creature crawled out on the branch as quickly as if it were walking, opened its mouth and mimicked the song it had just heard. It didn't mimick it perfectly; it sounded like what you might hear from the other end of a tunnel, but it worked. The bird walked closer, and this thing snatched it and swallowed it in one smooth motion.
It was too much. Steve made some sort of scared noise, but I'm the one who said the sort of thing out loud a 12-year-old would say, and as soon as it heard that noise, the creature stopped, and looked right at me. It had no eyes and no nose, but it had something that looked like it could be a mouth. That's what twisted into something like a smile, and it started to climb down the tree headfirst toward us.
We took off running, all three of us, crashing through the ferns and other plants that grew all over the floor of the woods. The whole time, I heard this thing crashing along the ground behind us, and it was getting closer.
Now the Shades grew up around Sulfur Creek, and the result is that the ground slopes quite suddenly in a few places. It's the sort of place you need to be careful even in daylight so you don't fall, but in the dark when you're running scared? Things went the only way they could. We fell down the slope, rolling on the trails we'd thought we were so clever for sliding down earlier. Kevin landed right by the creek, Steve tore his pants on a tree root, and I landed hard on one of the rocks beside the creek bed.
And then we heard it at the top of the slope, trying to find us. I don't know if it could look for us, without eyes, but it was doing something. We got up as quickly and as quietly as we could, and moved down the stream a little. Steve and Kevin made it to the other side of one of the big trees that had fallen, and hid behind its root ball. I hid behind one of the large rocks that stuck out from the side of the slope we had just fallen down, and looked around for something, anything I could use to defend myself. There was a branch nearby that must have fallen from one of the maple trees. It didn't have any leaves on it but it wasn't rotted and frail either. I picked it up and held onto it for dear life.
I heard the rustle of the undergrowth, and then the soft pad of feet on the ground. And then, horrifyingly, I heard it speak.
"Guys?" it said. "I think we lost it. Where are you?"
It was my voice.
It took a step past the outcropped rock and I saw it up close. It looked at me. It looked *like* me, and as our eyes met, it smiled this terrible, lopsided smile that made my stomach fall away. I screamed, and hit it as hard as I could on the head, again and again, and then it started screaming too, but in a voice that was high and shrill; and then it ran away, back up the creek.
Steve and Kevin came out from behind the fallen tree where they had been hiding, and we booked it back to my parents' house as fast as we could. I held onto the branch the entire time, in case we needed it.
We got home, and my mother didn't need to ask a thing. She looked at us, and she knew. My dad hadn't held a weapon since he'd left the Army in 1968, but that night he went next door to the neighbors, and borrowed a shotgun. My mom set candles in each of the windows and left the lights on in our rooms so we could go to sleep, and all night that night and the next she and my father kept vigil to make sure it hadn't followed us home.
And from them on, we made sure we were back on the block before dark.
Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.
The area was vast. It started out a block away from our house in Penn Township, and it went down to Trafford, and ran all the way to Monroeville and probably farther. There were a few abandoned structures in there that had been built as part of a logging effort more than a century earlier, a railroad that had fallen into disuse, and God only knows what else.
As you may have gathered, this was back in the day when it was fairly common for parents to let their kids run around outside without immediate supervision. It was a time to build forts, to explore, and to navigate the physical and social world on our own, without the constant helicopter presence of our parents. In fact our parents had only one rule about playing outside Be back on the block by dark.
This one summer evening when I was 12, my brother Steve and I were playing in the woods with his friend Kevin, who was visiting from Forest Hills. It was after 8:30 in June, and the shadows under the trees were getting dark. As the responsible older brother, I started to remind Steve and Kevin that we had to start home soon.
"Only if you can make us!" Steve said, and he and Kevin took off, their laughter trailing after them.
This was one of the ways Steve went out of his way to annoy me. He knew I was worried about getting in trouble for breaking the curfew, and he knew that him flouting the rules was just going to make me angry. He's two years younger than me but he's always been stronger and faster, and he's always enjoyed getting the better of me physically. He loved it when people thought we were twins, and enjoyed it even more on those rare occasions when they thought he was older, like the summer he got to ride the more advanced rollercoasters and I didn't. Getting at me by running ahead was just sauce for the goose, as far as he was concerned.
So he and Kevin ran ahead, and I ran after them, getting angrier with each step because there wasn't anything I could do about it, and then they stopped so suddenly that I almost crashed right into them.
"Are you stupid?" I asked. "We have to get home or mom's going to kill us!"
"Shh," he said, and he pointed at an oak tree nearby. At first I thought there was someone up there, and I was amazed at how far up they had climbed. I usually got about 8 feet before I stopped climbing, and Steve had been known to make it 15, but this person was easily past that.
And then I realized there was no way this was anything human. It was about seven feet tall, with long and spindly arms and legs, and it was thin like something that never got enough to eat. There was a bird sitting on one of the branches, and as we stood there watching and listening, the bird opened its mouth and made its final song of the day.
The creature crawled out on the branch as quickly as if it were walking, opened its mouth and mimicked the song it had just heard. It didn't mimick it perfectly; it sounded like what you might hear from the other end of a tunnel, but it worked. The bird walked closer, and this thing snatched it and swallowed it in one smooth motion.
It was too much. Steve made some sort of scared noise, but I'm the one who said the sort of thing out loud a 12-year-old would say, and as soon as it heard that noise, the creature stopped, and looked right at me. It had no eyes and no nose, but it had something that looked like it could be a mouth. That's what twisted into something like a smile, and it started to climb down the tree headfirst toward us.
We took off running, all three of us, crashing through the ferns and other plants that grew all over the floor of the woods. The whole time, I heard this thing crashing along the ground behind us, and it was getting closer.
Now the Shades grew up around Sulfur Creek, and the result is that the ground slopes quite suddenly in a few places. It's the sort of place you need to be careful even in daylight so you don't fall, but in the dark when you're running scared? Things went the only way they could. We fell down the slope, rolling on the trails we'd thought we were so clever for sliding down earlier. Kevin landed right by the creek, Steve tore his pants on a tree root, and I landed hard on one of the rocks beside the creek bed.
And then we heard it at the top of the slope, trying to find us. I don't know if it could look for us, without eyes, but it was doing something. We got up as quickly and as quietly as we could, and moved down the stream a little. Steve and Kevin made it to the other side of one of the big trees that had fallen, and hid behind its root ball. I hid behind one of the large rocks that stuck out from the side of the slope we had just fallen down, and looked around for something, anything I could use to defend myself. There was a branch nearby that must have fallen from one of the maple trees. It didn't have any leaves on it but it wasn't rotted and frail either. I picked it up and held onto it for dear life.
I heard the rustle of the undergrowth, and then the soft pad of feet on the ground. And then, horrifyingly, I heard it speak.
"Guys?" it said. "I think we lost it. Where are you?"
It was my voice.
It took a step past the outcropped rock and I saw it up close. It looked at me. It looked *like* me, and as our eyes met, it smiled this terrible, lopsided smile that made my stomach fall away. I screamed, and hit it as hard as I could on the head, again and again, and then it started screaming too, but in a voice that was high and shrill; and then it ran away, back up the creek.
Steve and Kevin came out from behind the fallen tree where they had been hiding, and we booked it back to my parents' house as fast as we could. I held onto the branch the entire time, in case we needed it.
We got home, and my mother didn't need to ask a thing. She looked at us, and she knew. My dad hadn't held a weapon since he'd left the Army in 1968, but that night he went next door to the neighbors, and borrowed a shotgun. My mom set candles in each of the windows and left the lights on in our rooms so we could go to sleep, and all night that night and the next she and my father kept vigil to make sure it hadn't followed us home.
And from them on, we made sure we were back on the block before dark.
Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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