Stay Out the Woods by Linda Niehoff

Author:Linda Niehoff [Niehoff, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The dogs hadn’t been right since Granddad. They weren’t right now. But was that just because they were still missing him? Or because there was something else that wasn’t right out here.

Jax didn’t know.

They’d made it to the main fork. Left would turn them east toward the creek. Right was back to the trailer. The dogs had already started left. He could just make out the vague outline of them, but he could more tell from their sharp breath moving away from him. And that whiny sound they kept making.

It wouldn’t hurt to go toward the creek, though he pulled the headlamp out of his pocket, ready to aim it for their feet. He was reluctant to turn it on. In case there was someone—something—out here, he didn’t want to walk in a spotlight. So he left it off. But kept it ready just in case.

There were two plastic chairs along the edge of the bank at the end of the path. Granddad had set them up years ago and they’d mostly stayed unused. Jax felt bad whenever he came out here, saw them.

Those empty chairs were all the things they’d wanted to do together.

Like just sitting on a fall afternoon and looking down at the slow moving water and the yellow and orange leaves fluttering down.

Hadn’t happened.

Those chairs were two ghosts.

No people to sit in them now. He could invite Bryce over. They could bring out a cooler when it got to be a spring evening and listen to the toads trilling from the dark and dank places. Their eternal hum that heralded warm weather.

Had there been a girl, he could bring her out here. Weren’t many girls at the grain elevator and the kind that went to the bar weren’t really the kind he’d bring out here to listen to the crawly things that moved through the woods anyway.

Those chairs just made him feel lonely. He could feel the pang of them without ever seeing them. Like the trail was marked with something. A heaviness he’d just walked through.

Jax stopped. Listened for Granddad. His voice, that was always with him, was strangely silent now. Maybe that was why Granddad always talked about his mom and dad like they were still there. Said us and meant more than just the two of them though he said that, too. Maybe more to convince Jax that he wasn’t going crazy, wasn’t really talking to people that were no longer there.

Had Granddad been losing it?

Was Jax?

Up ahead the dogs were whining again. A frantic sound. A squeaky door being opened and closed. They didn’t open up all the way and let out a howl. They didn’t start barking wildly either.

But they were distressed.

There was something out here.

Something that didn’t belong.

Jax’s fingers ghosted over the switch on the headlamp. Feigned opening it. But wouldn’t. Same way the dogs wouldn’t let their whines turn into something bigger. Something that would tell exactly where they were.

Jax still didn’t move.

He could hear the dogs, their paws crunching against the leaves.

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