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There was a man here
*Please note some names have been changed.* When I was a kid, we used to go on vacation around the 4th of July to a town on the Oregon coast called Port Orford. My dad's best friend at the time owned a slice of land up in the woods, a little camping trailer and a shed basically. He'd bring his entire family, and we'd spend a week up there just kickin' it together. Port Orford is maybe the smallest town I've ever seen in the US. Though it's on the coast, the beach never has sunbathers. Port Orford's claim to fame lies on the ocean shore, a huge hunk of rock known as Battle Rock, on which a memorial for fallen soldiers, police and fire fighters stands beneath a twisted tree. There is an elementary school that serves pancake breakfasts on the 4th of July and hands out free bolo neck ties; there is the dock where they sell tacky trinkets like mermaid figurines, which I begged to have every year until we stopped going. The 4th of July festivities had small town charm: a small parade, a sandcastle building contest that we won several years in a row, and a fantastic fireworks show on the hill beside the beach. My father's friend's land was up a very high hill - more like a cliff, really. The road up to it was unpaved and windy, twisting around and ever higher through the thick woods surrounding it. The trailer stood in a huge clearing at the very top of the hill, woods on every side and a steep slope down towards the road. The view was amazing: from the trailer's back porch, you could see the ocean and the town, the green of the forest. My family has three children: my two older brothers and myself, the token girl and the little sister. My father's friend's family was built exactly the same: two older brothers and the little sister. Naturally, we got along pretty well. Our days were spent outside playing in the woods near the trailer, making up games, exploring, what-have-you. Many of these memories are good ones; I look back on this time fondly. Except there was this one day. The woods were filled with garbage and miscellaneous objects. Walking through them yielded a treasure trove of domesticity: tissue holders, chairs, all kinds of things. We used to make up stories about how they got there. "There used to be a guy," one of the older boys said, "who lived in the woods out here." The two oldest would lead us to various places: "This is where he ate his food, this is where he slept, this is where he relaxed." When we asked what happened to him, they'd say, "No one knows. He just vanished." As children, we believed this stuff. It scared me to think that someone had been living out in the woods like that. The furniture, the broken chairs and tables, the random accessories and accoutrements strewn across the dirt haunted me. He had left all his stuff, now subject to the elements. Where had he gone? Why did he leave? Or was he forced to leave? As you probably guessed, these woods were also full of very real danger in the form of ditches, low-hanging trees, and bears. Above all else, we were afraid of bears. The older boys would always go on the path in front of us and keep an eye out for tracks. Any time they saw anything suspiciously bear-like, they would turn around and force the caravan of children back to the trailer. I grew up scared and yet fascinated by bears. I longed to see one while I was there. Often, I would try to sneak into the woods to see one, but darkness and fear would always send me back to the safety of my friends and family. I would venture off by myself, as I loved the forest, fascinated by the number of trees. Growing up in a large city meant I did not often get to see nature and get all rough'n'tumble in the dirt, so I took advantage of it by exploring. Sometimes alone. In retrospect, this was a really bad idea. The kids were not allowed to go into the woods too far by themselves. One adult almost always had an eye on us, watching us from the porch or the kitchen window, and if they saw us doing something dangerous, they'd shout, "Knock it off! Stop! Put that machete down!" On this particular day, I managed to break away from the group and duck into the woods. It was dead silent except for the sounds of the leaves rustling and my own breathing. Under my feet, twigs snapped, giving my position away. I was hoping to catch a glance of a bear or a deer, some kind of animal I didn't see in the city. Deeper and deeper I went, climbing over rocks and rotting logs. I got lost in nature, humming to myself as I picked my way into the forest, further and further. It never occurred to me that I was going too far. I had made it to the woods closest to the road we drove up on. I was sitting on the dirt bank separating the woods from the road, a ledge about three feet high, admiring the woods on the opposite side of the road when I heard it. "Rachel..." The voice was drifting from behind me. I turned around, looking into the tangle of branches and twigs, but saw nothing. "Stop it, Brian," I said. The older boys liked to play tricks on us; they'd scare us and trick us, make us do "hard manual labor" for their "Camp Whoopass" venture. I wasn't scared. There was a footstep behind me. Brian must've been moving closer to me. "Come here, come back into the woods," he said, still in that quiet voice somewhere deep in the darkness where I couldn't see. "I have something to show you." Refusing to fall victim to one of his pranks, I didn't move and instead said, "No. You guys are gonna jump out at me, I know. I'm going to walk back up the road." "For real, this time, Rachel, I have something to show you." Normally my brother was not this insistent. I pulled my legs up onto the ledge, twisting my upper body to face the woods. I craned my neck, hoping to catch a glance of my brother's face but I saw nothing but darkness in the thicket. "Only if you promise me no one else is there with you," I said. "I don't want anyone scaring me." "I promise." Then, "But you have to be really quiet and you can't tell anyone I'm going to show you. Promise?" I thought it over. "Promise," I confirmed, standing and beginning to make my way through the branches. "What is it?" "You'll see," he replied. This time his voice sounded very strange, sort of scratchy and much deeper than normal. It confused me. He normally only did funny voices when he was telling jokes, and I didn't hear any jokes. "Why are you talking like that?" I asked. "Come here," he demanded in that same voice, ignoring my question. "You won't regret it. It'll be our secret." The path through the bushes and sticks was short but rough. I had to be calculating with my steps out. His voice was getting louder and it seemed to be coming from multiple directions, so I had to pick my way carefully, changing direction to follow the sound of his voice. Even though I could hear him clear as day, I couldn't see him at all. "Where are you?" I asked. "I'm right here, come on." About that time I began to sense something was wrong, but I was always a trusting child and thought, "My brother won't hurt me, there's nothing to worry about." I was getting closer and closer to the path in the woods. His voice coaxed me out. "Come on, closer, closer, just a little closer." Instead of in the path, his voice came from directly to my right. I turned my head to the direction of his voice, still crouched in the bushes. There, barely visible, was a figure, crouching next to me about a yard away. It was sitting like I had been, on its feet with its knees tucked under like someone preparing to jump up and launch themselves. Its head was down, its shoulders hunched, and in the mottled forest light I could see the sickly pallor of its skin, the prominence of its bones. Its hands rested on a branch directly in front of it, its fingers long and its nails sharp and yellowed. There was a smell like nothing I'd ever smelled before, faint but sickening, like death. It did not move, it did not make a sound, it sat there completely silent, shaded by the trees. I opened my mouth, but not a sound came out. By this point I was getting scared. I thought, *If this really is a prank, I'm never going to talk to him again.* My heart was pounding in my chest so loud I was sure it was audible. I could only breathe as quietly as I could, watching. I opened my mouth again, this time gathering enough breath to say something. It came out as a quiet whimper: "Brian?" No movement. The figure stayed totally still. Its human shape made me think it had to be someone up from the trailer; it couldn't possibly be anything else, there were no other people in the woods. *Wait. There's that man. They said there was a man. He vanished. A man used to live here.* It was like time stopped. The birds stopped chirping, the wind stopped blowing and my heart stopped beating. I held my breath, eyes wide, staying perfectly still. Maybe it didn't see me, maybe it will go away. I sat there, crouched in the dirt and leaves for what felt like forever and neither I nor the figure made a sound or moved even an inch. I decided to try again. Against my better judgment, and because I was obviously kind of a stupid kid, I inched closer to the figure and held out my hand to touch its shoulder. "Who is that?" I asked in a shaky whisper. "Is that Brian? Or is that Charlie?" My hand hadn't made it to its shoulder before it snapped its hand around my wrist like a vice. The figure moved lighting fast and its grip was strong and ice cold. It began to tug at me. "Let go!" I tried to scream but it came out as little more than a cry, like a wounded animal. It pulled me to the ground and I scrambled as much as I could in its grasp until I could see it, my back to the path, trying to pull my arm away. I looked up and all I remember seeing is its smile. Its wide, stretched, sharp smile. It smiled at me so wide, and it said, "Isn't this cool?" in that low voice, a horrifying mimic of my brother. I was so sure I was going to die. It began to drag me backwards, back into the forest. I couldn't scream, could barely move. I just kept resisting, pulling my arm back, but it was much stronger than me. It was moving me, slowly but surely. *This is it,* I thought. *I'm going to disappear too. They'll never find me.* "RACHEL!" The figure let go as quickly as it had grabbed me, and my own momentum from resisting catapulted me back. I tumbled out of the brush and right into the path on my back, dirt smudged and scratched. I looked up at whoever called my name. There stood my brother, concern and annoyance waging war on his face. "Rachel! What are you doing out here? You need to come back. Mom's going nuts." At that moment I hated him. I stood up as fast as I could. "That wasn't funny, Brian!" I screamed. Big, huge tears flooded out of my eyes; I couldn't stop sobbing. "That was mean! You didn't have to do that!!" He looked at me, confused. "What are you talking about?" Furious, I turned back to the woods I had come from and screamed, "I know it's you, Charlie! Come out! You're gonna get it from the adults, I'm gonna tell!" "Rachel," Brian said, "none of us have seen you since breakfast. We've been on the porch all day." The conviction on his face told me he wasn't playing around. If he had been, they would've already done the punchline, and Brian would jump up and down clapping his hands and laughing in faux excitement. Now he just looked confused. "I haven't been out here all day. Where'd you go?" he asked. I looked back into the woods. I couldn't see anything, no sign of the creature, or my excursion through the woods. "I went to the road," I said quickly. "And I thought you were playing a mean trick on me, that's why..." I could barely get the words out, but I composed myself as best I could. "I'm sorry," I said, "I won't go away by myself again." We walked back to the trailer to rejoin the party. The family assumed I was crying because I hurt myself, and that was true. I was covered head to toe in scratches and bruises and cuts, signs of an intrepid nature explorer's journey through the dense trees. It was only at dinner that someone noticed the mark on my wrist. "Oh my god, Rachel, what happened?" someone, I think my mom, asked. I looked down. Long fingers. Hand-shaped bruise. All curled around the cylinder of my thin little wrist. "Nothing," I said quietly. I refused to say anything more. The adults shrugged it off reluctantly, chalking it up to some bizarre game we'd been playing. Nevertheless, that night we got a lecture on not hurting each other; don't hit, don't grab, don't pinch or bite. We left the next morning. I sat in the backseat and looked out the window. I think I caught a glimpse of a wide, sharp smile, or I could have imagined it. The further we got from that one-horse town, the calmer and more relieved I felt. I hoped we never went back to that place again. I never wanted to go into any woods alone ever again in my entire life. To this day, every time I step into the woods, I think I see it: that smile, that lithe, emaciated figure, crouched in the darkness, ready to hook its hands around my ankles and finish what it started. But I figured as long as I stayed away from densely wooded areas, I would be fine. Last night, though, in the thick bushes behind my house, I heard something. It sounded like "Come on," and it was too dark to see. There is a handprint on my window, though: long-fingered, with matching scratches where the nails would fall. *edited to correct a mistake* more