Out of Sight, Part 1

My therapist told me that writing about things could help. She kind of looked away when she said it, so I’m not sure she believes that. If I’m honest, I think she just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. It doesn’t matter though. I’m gonna write about it anyway. I’m gonna write about it because it DID happen, and it doesn’t matter what she thinks. At least if I post it here, someone might actually read it. If I post it here, maybe it can help.

I should probably start with the move.

My dad had taken a job outside of Cleveland. It was a spur of the moment thing. He didn’t really have a choice, given the circumstances. He accepted his first job offer, looked at one house, and drove a U-HAUL straight to Peninsula.

My dad is a suburban nature-lover. He’s the kind of guy who hikes trails on the weekend in clean boots and cargo shorts. To be fair, his cargo shorts are kind of legendary though. Some of his pockets literally have smaller pockets inside. At the time I thought he just needed a place to put all the crap he bought. I figured that he collected gear, which collected dust, and that was just the capitalist lifecycle.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, it wasn’t entirely a coincidence we ended up living in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The hiring manager at Whalen and Erie Railroad had given us a generous relocation stipend. So when someone tipped off my dad to a “gem of a property in the park,” he jumped on it.

The gem, as it turned out, was overhyped. Aside from the incredible great room, which kind of looked like a glass cathedral standing over the valley, the house was a dump. The septic tank was a rust-caked hole, and the well water looked like it was pumped from a muddy tire-track.

Ironically, the dilapidated state of the house probably sealed the deal. The owner was an old widow with no family. When she showed us the house, she turned the knob on the kitchen faucet, and it sputtered brown bubbles. She let out this pathetic, nervous laugh and said something like “Robert always did all that stuff,” then stifled a sob and apologized. I think my dad was about ready to cry too, and he made a cash offer the same day.

We quickly settled into our new home. Living in the heart of the park, it felt silly to drive to the trailhead when I could just step out of my house directly into the woods. So I started blazing my own trails. It was that time of year when you can lose yourself in the rhythmic shuffling of leaves underfoot. It’s an amazing time to visit Northeastern Ohio, if you stick to the trails.

I would spend hours everyday wandering the woods. I didn’t want to go to school, and my dad didn’t have the heart to make me. So we reached an agreement: I could pursue a GED from home as long as I remained open and honest about how I was feeling. I would never hurt myself, but given our family history, I didn’t blame him for worrying.

So while he was at work, I walked. The main valley is majestic, but I’m fond of the untouched places. There are lots of little feeder valleys, these soil-rich places where the roots haven’t stopped the erosion. I bought a guidebook on the park, and I used it to pick out different kinds of trees while I walked through the valleys: American Beech, Sugar Maple, Norway Maple, Red Maple, Red Oak, Pin Oak, White Oak. I got pretty good at identifying them. My favorite was Musclewood, which kind of looks like a wizard turned a jacked horse into a tree.

If you take the time to look at the trees in a forest, one thing you’ll notice is that they carve out little fiefdoms. If you see an oak, it’s probably surrounded by oaks. Sometimes, like with Quaking Aspen, it’s because a single tree sprouts so many trunks that the whole freaking forest is just one tree, but usually it’s just good old competition. Black Walnut, for example, likes to poison the soil around it with juglone.

I was walking along the valley floor when I noticed them. At the head of this small valley were six beech trees. Each of them was nearly identical in height and circumference. As I got closer, it was clear that they were spread out to form a perfect hexagon. I stopped dead in my tracks. Surrounded by perfect wilderness, these six gray trees stood in their nice configuration like concrete monuments.

Someone had planted them. For a second, I wondered if maybe, just over the ridge, there was a park bench with a little plaque commemorating a loved one. Far from comforting me, the thought triggered a fear that I was not alone. Was someone else standing out of sight? Lurking? Watching me? I turned a slow circle, looking in every direction.

There was no one. Of course there was no one. The nearest trail was at least a half-mile away. Uneasiness slowly overtook me with that realization. If no one comes out here, then who planted the trees? I turned back to face them. Inspecting them a second time, I could see there was something carved into the trunks.

It wasn’t any language I could read, at least not at that distance. The symbols ran in thin interweaving bands that wrapped each trunk at the same height. I wanted a better look, and my curiosity compelled me. I started to walk toward the closest tree, but the sound of my first step startled me.

The forest was perfectly silent.

I don’t mean quiet. It didn’t get quiet. It was *silent*. No squirrels. No birds. No wind. It was silent.

Tinnitus rang like an alarm in my ear. The word “PREDATOR” pressed at the back of my mind like a hot iron, and I froze. Every muscle tensed with the effort of not moving. Not an inch. Not a millimeter. Motion was sound, and sound was death.

With shallow breaths, I slowly craned my head five degrees to the left, then five degrees to the right. I strained my eyes to the edge of their sockets trying to see as much as I could. No signs of movement. I looked a second time, turning my head a little more. Nothing. On my third scan, I saw it. There, in the middle of the hexagon, was a seventh tree.

I was confused at first. It seemed to blip into my peripheral vision as I turned my head away. I turned back, and it was gone. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. Surely it was a trick of the light. But again, when I turned my head slowly, the tree appeared at the very edge of my vision.

The seventh tree stood perfectly centered between the others. I held it there, at the corner of my eye. I willed my vision to clarify, to show me something of the tree. It did not. I couldn’t make out any details, but I could tell from the dark colors that, unlike the other trees, this one was scarred top to bottom with illegible symbols.

As I stood there frozen, half-seeing a tree that doesn’t exist, the symbols started to glow. In an instant, I felt an intense heat on the side of my face. My breaths were no longer shallow by choice; they were squeezed from me by an electric tension in my chest. Just before full panic set in, a twig snapped.

The forest erupted with the sound of my flight. My shoes kicked leaves, gouged soil, and sent rocks tumbling into the creek as I screamed each breath. This was life or death—a frantic, mindless sprint. As I tore around a bend in the valley floor, I dared to look over my shoulder. I needed to know.

I should have been looking ahead.

The back of my skull slammed into the ground. As I lay there, head swimming, a shadowy figure stepped into my blurred vision: “Womp womp womp?”

It was talking, but I couldn’t understand anything over the “shhhhhh” of blood shooting through my veins. I felt the figure brush against my left leg as it moved to stand over me, and I sprang into action. Operating entirely on instinct, I shifted my weight, hooked my right leg behind its knee, and kicked its legs out from under it.

I didn’t bother to gauge my success. I scrambled to my feet, my head starting to clear, and ran home screaming through the woods—battered, but alive.

My dad was standing on a ladder installing new gutters on the front of the house. As my dogged running slowed to a stop, I heard him shout: “Jesus Christ, Nathan. Are you okay?”

I was no longer screaming by this point. I had long since lost the energy. Instead of answering him, I steadied myself on the porch railing. I sank to a crouch, and vomited.

“Holy shit. Nathan!?”

My dad jumped from one of the lower rungs on the ladder and rushed to my side. He touched the back of my head, and I could see from his hand that I was bleeding. I swallowed, and said, “I hit my head.” I gasped a few breaths. “I fell.”

The knock came a few hours later. My dad was grabbing a new ice pack from the kitchen. On his way to answer the door, he stopped at the couch where I was laying.

“How are you feeling buddy?”

“Like shit.”

“Attaboy.”

My dad smiled and continued to the entryway. He opened the front door, and I could hear the conversation as it leaked into the living room:

“Good evening!”

“Hello.”

There was an awkward silence.

“My name’s Nevin.”

“Hello, Nevin.”

There was another silence, and Nevin cleared his throat.

“Uh. Well, I’m not sure I’m in the right place, but a young man ran into me this morning, and it looked like he might’ve gotten hurt. I asked around, and it sounds like he might be your son?”

“So that’s what happened.” I could hear my dad shuffle his feet, and I imagined he was looking over his shoulder in my general direction. “Well, I appreciate you checking in on him. He got a solid knock on the head, probably a little concussion, but I think he’ll be alright.”

The visitor drew in a hissing breath at the mention of my injury, but was audibly relieved to hear I was okay: “Oh, thank God. I was horrified when I saw blood on the ground. It looks like he hit his head on a rock.”

“Yeah, that’ll do it,” my dad sighed, “but I promise he’s doing good.” He paused. “Are you okay? He must’ve hit you pretty hard to go sprawling like that.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m totally fine.” The visitor’s tone was almost self-deprecating before he exclaimed “Ah!” and I heard what sounded like the rustling of a plastic grocery bag. “His phone. I think it fell out of his pocket when he ran into me.”

My dad chuckled. “Nathan would’ve missed this, that’s for sure. Thank you, Nevin. It’s nice to know that there are still some good Samaritans out there.”

“Gosh, I can’t imagine not checking in. I’m sure you would’ve done the same.”

A satisfied silence indicated that the expected niceties had been exchanged before my dad bade Nevin a goodnight.

“Welp, Nevin, I’m Jonathan Brooks.” I could hear the commotion of a handshake. “Thanks again for stopping by and bringing the phone back. If you ever need anything, you know where to find us.”

“Of course, Jonathan. Tell Nathan I wish him a speedy recovery. Goodnight.”

My dad closed the door and walked back into the living room, smiling and waving my phone back and forth in his hand. He tossed it onto my stomach. “So are you ready to tell me what the heck happened?”

I let out a groan. “To be honest, I’m not totally sure what happened, and now I kind of feel like a jackass.”

My dad sat down at the end of the couch and put his hand on my knee. “Honestly, I’m just glad you’re okay. You must’ve been scared out of your mind to run into somebody that hard.”

I let out a terse laugh. “Yeah. I was pretty freaked out. I was heading up toward the Brecksville reservation—you know where I mean? Well, I was just walking, and I thought I saw something weird out of the corner of my eye. LIke there was this tree, and—” I stopped. “Well, it sounds ridiculous now, but it really freaked me out, man. Anyway, I was on the verge of a panic attack when I heard something, and I just booked it.”

The smile faded from my dad’s face, and I knew I had inadvertently ruined the evening.

“Nathan—”

“Dad, it’s okay,” I interjected. “It wasn’t anything like that. It wasn’t a hallucination or anything. I just got a little spooked out there by myself, and I acted like an idiot. It’s fine.” Without meaning to, the volume of my voice had gotten louder with each word.

He took in a deep breath and let it out as he patted my knee. “Okay, buddy. Okay. It’s okay.” He leaned over and gave me a light hug before standing up. “Just remember our promise. If you’re feeling weird or sad or anything’s wrong, you gotta—”

“I have to tell you,” I blurted out. Correcting my tone from irritation to understanding, I said “I know.”

“Good.” He stretched his hands overhead and yawned. “It’s been a wild day, bud. Get some sleep.”

As he creaked his way upstairs to bed, I picked up my phone to check for notifications. It was dead. I leaned over the armrest and grabbed my charger. As I was plugging it in, I noticed a slip of paper tucked into the phone cover. Absent-mindedly, I pulled it out and unfolded it.

Written with childlike penmanship were five words:

DID YOU SEE THE TREE

My hand shook, and the slip of paper fell from my grip. I slowly got off the couch and opened the front door. I stuck my head outside. The city maintenance depot stood across the street. Its steel fence looked yellow under the light of the fluorescent lamp post, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. The street was empty; there was no traffic. The only sound was the chirping of a billion bugs. It was a normal fall night.

Relieved, I pulled my head back inside. As I turned to shut the door, out of the corner of my eye… a man appeared beneath the lamp post.

I slammed the door and let out a shocked breath.

“Nathan! Are you okay?”

My dad thundered to the top of the stairs. I gathered myself.

“Sorry, dad. Yeah, I’m fine. I slipped when I was closing the door.”

“Jesus, what are you doing? You’re hurt buddy. Go lay down and get some sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry. I was just getting some fresh air.”

“Gah, jeez. Give me a heart attack,” he mumbled. “Well, cut that out now. It’s time for bed.”

We said goodnight, but I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, at the edge of my vision, the symbols glowed like neon signs.