I Found My Friend in the Woods

I have been lucky enough to have lived a relatively full life. I have travelled far and wide – from the rainy cobbled streets of London to the jagged peaks of northern Thailand. Along the way, I made many friends and enjoyed careless flings with temporary lovers before they all slipped back into the black pool of memory. So many cherishable moments in time trapped back in faraway lands. I settled back in the states, doing everything by the book. I found a loving girl who stuck around and we’ve built a life together that’s beautiful. It’s a life sacred enough to chisel into a rockwall so it may be immortalized.

All of these positive events which I have painstakingly orchestrated through a lifetime of intentional adventure still cannot bury the catalyst which began this chain reaction. I have been running from this my entire life. In a way, the most definable moment of my existence took place over a brief time in a lonely valley in rural West Virginia.

This happened back in the early 90s. I lived in one of the most unique places the world had to offer – the National Radio Quiet Zone. It’s a thirteen thousand square mile boundary where all radio activity is heavily limited and any usage is strictly monitored and reported. Why? It’s because in the center of the zone lies a massive observatory with these gigantic radio telescopes taller than the Statue of Liberty. Those towering satellite dishes are listening for any and all radio frequencies coming from deep space and they need total quiet – an open frequency range. If one little radio or microwave or cell phone occupied any one of those frequencies and that just so happens to be the one an extraterrestrial race was using to shoot signals out into the universe – we might never hear their calls. So the colossal dishes point to the skies, listening to eternity, listening for anything that was up there.

That’s the hokey speech observatory officials and local politicians would give to the press, though. I know now from family still in the region that the restrictions are much more relaxed these days and most of the people in the quiet zone secretly have internet and all the other modern luxuries anyone else has now. But, back when I was living there in the 90s, I can attest to the restrictions being strictly enforced by some bootlicker who worked for the observatory. We were faithfully living an off the grid lifestyle then.

It was a simple life. Of course there was no internet and no television. All we had at home was a single landline which even for the time was considered prehistoric. My parents were always dirt poor, as is the trend in West Virginia. My father pretty much lived in a coal mine which was a few hours deep into the mountains so I rarely saw him. My mom died when I was 17 and that drove my father even deeper into those mines. The house was left all to me most of the year.

The catalyst of my great escape happened when I was 19 and dumb as a box of rocks, shallow as a puddle. I worked for my neighbor, who was separated by five miles of tangled forest. He had a small farm that took a ton of work to keep afloat. He was also a neo-nazi. A lot of people in that area sympathized with those views or just looked the other way. I looked the other way.

I had one and only friend, Jerry. He worked at the mart. There was no name to the place, it was just a general store that essentially sold bare necessities for life with no bells and whistles.

Jerry and I had been friends our whole lives. We went to school together and our friendship grew even stronger when we both played on the football team in high school. Everyone’s pretty close through school when the graduating class is 44, but Jerry and I just got along with no trouble. We had other friends but, after we all graduated, most got the hell out of town and into a college or they stuck around and buried their heads into the next chapter, be it a job or a drug.

Me and Jerry would go hunting or go fishing or we’d just sit and do nothing. We’d just sit there and talk all day. It was never anything too deep or cerebral, but looking back, the act of just talking with no greater objective might’ve been one of my finest experiences. It rivals and maybe even trumps all those glamorous adventures later on in my life. We just sat and listened to each other ramble. To us, we were the funniest guys who ever existed, the most skilled hunters and fishers, and the best at living. It was simple and innocent, and I didn’t know how good I had it.

When those chilly fall evenings came around, I’d usually finish up at the farm right as the sun fell below the mountains which then turned a cold and hazy blue. Night would soon follow. Night time in the quiet zone, which was already deeply embedded in rural Appalachia, was an abyssal sort of dark. The stars were brilliant and you could even see those intergalactic clouds of the milky way. The sound of night would either be a deafening roar of insects or the purest most crystalline silence you could imagine. Silence so perfect you’d think you could hear the hum of space – your ears listening like those giant satellite dishes not far off.

It was one of those chilly fall evenings when my life changed forever. I had just finished up another tiresome day at my neighbor’s farm. I drove a clunky old 1972 Chevy Silverado that was allegedly once a deep forest green, although it had rusted into an ugly gradient of poverty. Itching at the dozens of mosquito bites I had earned, I sputtered out of my neighbor’s farmland which involved taking a bumpy twisting gravel track a quarter mile down to a road that was somewhat paved. This farm road, which was simply just called 132, took me down to our driveway.

I was driving down that pitch black road and I was probably going too fast, being a 19 year old that just got off work and all. I passed by the thick old trees on that snaking switchback, racing for my turnoff to home. My faded headlights only offered me a small oval of light directly in front of my truck, everything else was lost. In between those twisted old trees, at some point, was a figure that I screeched right by. I didn’t know what I had seen until minutes later and even then it was paranoid guesswork. A man? I thought it had been a man. A naked man. The way my weak headlights had illuminated the figure so entirely led me to believe he had nothing on. Maybe that was just a trick of my eye, though. I thought little of it once I was home, quickly relinquishing control over a crazed naked man on the side of the road. I just hoped he wouldn’t find his way to the house where I’d have to shoot him.

The next day, I was off from work. I remember heading down to the mart for a stale candy bar and to see Jerry. We had talked about hanging out a few days prior. When I went into the mart, Jerry wasn’t there. That wasn’t right. Jerry always showed up to work, he was annoying in that way. Instead, the till was manned by Pete – the dirtiest man in town.

“Where’s Jerry gone?” I asked Pete.

“Dunno – didn’t show today,” Pete muttered through labored chewing.

“Did he call in?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he sucked in a violent breath. “Why don’t you go try his folks?”

This was hopeless. I already knew Jerry’s parents had gone out of town for a sick relative in Tennessee. I quit the mart and moved onto his house regardless.

Jerry’s family lived in an old shadow of a house up the main street a few miles. I knocked on their door multiple times and looked through the windows and found no one inside.

Defeated, I went back home. At some point, I tried to call his house on our landline to see if maybe he had gone out for a little while. The damn phone wasn’t even working.

For the first time in a while, I had felt truly alone. It was high noon and there were so many more hours until night time and then a whole eternity of night until the next lonely day. I think waves of grief began to finally break through the levees I had put up for two years. I missed my mom and, hell, even missed my dad. I wanted to cry but I wouldn’t give myself the pleasure of a release. Instead, I bottled it up.

Where the hell is Jerry?

That thought would keep running through my mind. In a town as small and remote as this one was, it was rare to not know the whereabouts of your inner circle. It was driving me stir crazy by the time night rolled around.

That was a defining night as well. I had trouble sleeping from the upsetting nature of the day. I was tossing and turning while flashes of silent distant lightning filled my room. Eventually, I got up to go be miserable in another room. I opened my bedroom door which was at the end of a hallway and then that hallway led into our living room which had a big bay window revealing the dark forest beyond. Somebody was pressed up against the window and peering in.

I froze in place while my skin ignited. Whoever it was out there was just standing, hands placed on the window with their forehead stuck to the glass. I couldn’t tell if they could see me submerged in the dark of the hall.

How long had he been standing there? Who the hell was he? What’s he doing?

I thought he had to have been a burglar.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” I shouted out from the dark, expecting him to dart into the forest.

He or whoever just kept looking in. I felt he was looking right at me. His head never scanned around and not even a flinch could be perceived from my outburst. He was definitely looking right at something.

“I said get the fuck outta here, now!” I tried again. Nothing.

Can he not hear me? I thought.

I knew he could hear me. I can remember being a kid and hearing my parents fighting or calling my name for dinner through those pitiful walls while I was out in the yard.

I was shaking and I couldn’t feel my body from fright. Without warning, a flash of distant lightning filled the skies and exposed the person who I now saw was a man dressed in an all black sort of military outfit. He was wearing some kind of night vision on his head. The few milliseconds of light showed me those two things and I wish I hadn’t even been offered such information.

I could’ve vomited right then and there. He was looking directly at me the whole time with that night vision and he definitely wasn’t some strung out burglar. This man looked like a soldier.

As soon as I put all the pieces together, I ran to get a gun. Within seconds, I crashed into my room, grabbed my revolver, and pointed it to the bay window. He was gone.

I spent the rest of that night clearing the house one hour at a time – always unsure if the man was still watching from outside or had silently slipped in. It was absolutely terrifying but nothing more ever came of it. On my weaker nights, I still see him out of the corner of my eye, just peering in through the windows.

The next day I went down to the police station before work and tried to tell them of my encounter with the night vision man. I don’t think they took me all that seriously.

“So… this man was just gazing into your window? Just sorta lookin’ in and then he ran off when you threatened him?” asked Lou with a puzzled grin. Me and Jerry had often referred to Lou as deputy dumbass since he was incapable of complex thought. His father was the only reason he became an officer.

“No, not exactly. I just said he didn’t move when I yelled at him. He only ran when I went to go grab a gun,” I spit back at Lou who likely didn’t hear my reply.

“Well, okay then. Sounds peculiar, a man with night vision and military garb and all,” he twiddled his thumbs and sniffed his nose, “you sure this wasn’t just some illusion of some sort?”

“No Lou!”

“That’s officer to you, son.”

“I know damn well what I saw out there. My mind isn’t lookin’ for illusions.”

“How could you know?”

“How about you help me for once and just put some damn feelers out, could you do that?”

“I’ll get with sheriff.”

“Today? Tomorrow? Next week? I don’t wanna end up dead on account of your leisurely pace.”

“We’ll get on it. Pronto. Bye now,” Lou shuffled away in his oversized pants.

He couldn’t solve a murder if the culprit turned himself in. Infuriated, I itched my mosquito bites until they bled and set off.

I stopped by the mart again to check and see if Jerry was around. I rushed in and saw stinky Pete folding a newspaper into something juvenile.

“Jerry?” I asked.

“Do I look like him?” Pete snapped back.

I looked him up and down, the sound of buzzing flies filling the silence.

“You know where I could get some of those night vision goggles ‘round here?” I asked just to see what would happen.

“What the hell do you need that for?” Pete responded in a flat way, not even looking up from his arts and crafts project.

One suspicion down.

I went to work and it was a blur of automatic motion and hazy awful daydreams.

The night came again, and this time I felt anxious by the all encompassing purple and black shift of the sky. I got in my truck for the quick drive home and suddenly remembered the naked man.

What was that guy about, I thought. Was he the same guy as the night vision man?

I didn’t want to think about any of it for too long, it was all so unordinary. I didn’t feel safe going home but there was actually nowhere else for me to go unless I just slept in the truck.

Maybe I should sleep in the truck, I pondered. I should get on a payphone and call dad, dread filled me thinking about that. Where the hell is Jerry?

I started down the chaotic mud track, unsure if I was going home or finding a deserted parking lot for the night. I made it to 132 and paused. Through a small gap in the canopy was the familiar shine of the observatory’s red flashing lights on some low clouds. Many miles away, but still a comfort nevertheless. Something manmade and technologically advanced unlike anything else in the greater area. So advanced and important, it required the rest of us to live in the past just to operate. Maybe I could go there if I needed help, maybe they’d be nice to me and give me somewhere to stay.

They’d probably just look at me sideways. I turned left onto 132 and headed home.

My truck’s headlights shone a pathetic beacon forward as I drove like every other night. The corridor of black trees on either side closing in, trying to reclaim 132. No matter how many times I drove that road, I could never pinpoint exactly where I was. The trees always seemed to change. Who would ever know if they did and what would it mean? I passed two particularly twisted trees and there it was again. The naked man. I slammed on the brakes this time.

The truck shook violently to a stop and I looked in my rear view, trying to make the man out. He wasn’t far behind, but I couldn’t see him. It was so dark. I craned my neck to look behind me and beyond the faint glow of my brake lights was a formless void of black. I put the truck in reverse, making sure I saw no headlights approaching from behind as I rolled back up the road.

It felt like hours or like I was trapped in a loop of reversing and scanning the treeline. Then I saw a pale body amid the grainy dark standing perfectly still. I kept creeping the truck nearer and nearer until I passed the pale form. The person was standing a few yards off the left shoulder and was seemingly unaware of my presence. Still shrouded in the blackness of night, I tried to get their attention. I couldn’t make out any details despite being so close, so I kept backing up and angled my truck so that my headlights exposed the person. The dim lights finally showed me something awful.

“Jerry!” I screamed. “Jerry, oh my god!”

I got out of the truck and ran up to him. That was not Jerry.

Standing before me with perfect posture was my best friend. He was fully naked and totally catatonic. His mouth was agape and his eyes were shut. I could tell he’d been standing there for a very long time because insects had begun to use him to their advantage. A black widow spun its web in between his legs, ants crawled all across his body, and mosquitoes drank from him freely. I kept calling his name directly to his face and he didn’t do anything. He looked like a statue of himself or one of those wax sculptures. I was so petrified that I myself entered a sort of stupor of my own, just looking at him with terror. I finally let myself cry. I tried shaking him awake and I’d never felt a body so utterly stiff and unmoving. Then, one of those giant spiny house centipedes crawled out of his hair and all around his face until it sought refuge in his open mouth.

Irreparable damage. Seeing your friend in that state. He was the closest thing I ever had to a brother. If he had just died instead – a car wreck, hunting accident, or some genetic tragedy – I could eventually overcome the crashing waves of grief. But this was something else entirely. He wasn’t even dead, at least I didn’t think so. I tried to calm myself enough to detect any sign of life. I mean, he was standing up perfectly straight, he couldn’t have been dead. At one point, I could’ve sworn I heard the quietest, saddest wheezing whistling through his open mouth like it was his last breath. That centipede was still in there, who knows how deep it ventured.

I don’t know how long I sat there just panicking. I can’t faithfully convey the utter alien nature of it all. Was he alive or dead or something new? I tried to move him, I tried so hard. He wasn’t going anywhere. I was waiting for another car to pass us by so I could wave them down but no one ever came.

Whatever was going on with Jerry, I swore to him I’d stay by his side. I told him I wasn’t going to leave him and I had hoped there was a piece of him still floating around in his caged body that could hear me. I brushed all the bugs off of him, I grabbed a stick and persuaded the black widow to abandon its home, I even searched around in Jerry’s mouth for the centipede but it had fallen further into him. I tried to keep him clean and I tried to keep myself calm.

It could’ve been hours in that vacuum of agony, I’ll never know. All I know is that somewhere within that space I left my friend out there in that abyss. Cold and alone.

I shot awake in my bed, covered in even more mosquito bites and even a few ticks. Judging by the colonies of insects which occupied Jerry, I wasn’t curious where I had gotten them. I was, however, greatly concerned at what had just happened.

I had blacked out or repressed something awful – I don’t know. The sun shone through my blinds in brilliant gold. My truck was parked outside.

I raced down my driveway, my truck buckling and screeching for mercy. It was only a few minutes until I found the twisted trees where Jerry had stood. Those two trees always looked the same. I got out and examined the ground beneath me. I saw two footprints sunken deep into the ground and then in front of them must’ve been the result of my frenzy last night.

I shouted his name through the dense and uncaring forest. I cried again at the absurdity of it all – of the last few days. Where had he gone this time? Had someone taken him? Did he snap out of that trance? The only thing that motivated me was knowing he must be alive and somewhere else now.

I sped my truck into town, prepared to make a scene that would be talked about for generations. I whipped into the police station’s parking lot and stormed my way to the door. I could already see the looks from everyone in my peripheral.

I swung the door open, ready to burst out into hysterics about what I had seen. Instead, I saw Sheriff Morgan staring at me. He was a large and dominating presence. He got the first word in.

“Jerry’s been lookin’ for you everywhere!” he exclaimed.

“W-what,” I stammered. “What are you talking about? Jer-Jerry was ju-.”

“You just missed him. He seemed real upset and said he needed to get a hold of you,” Sheriff Morgan interrupted and placed a lot of emphasis on the word “needed”.

“Well, I was just at home. I just woke up,” I said, so confused.

“Maybe he’s there now. It seemed pretty urgent to me.”

“Oh-okay. I guess I’ll,” I trailed off into a trance. “I guess I’ll try and catch him.”

“Everything alright between you two? What’s goin’ on? He refused to elaborate,” Sheriff Morgan said while closing in on me.

“It’s nothin’. We’re just, well, we’re unordinary I suppose,” I was just letting my mouth decide what to say – my brain was overheating.

I stumbled back out of the police station and, after the door shut behind me, proceeded to sprint to my truck.

I made it home in record time and searched all around for Jerry. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was about to get back in the truck to maybe try and catch him back at his house but then I saw a small piece of paper under a rock by the backdoor. I went to pick it up and it read:

Meet me at the black rock as soon as you see this. Make sure you’re alone. -J

My hands shook with adrenaline, fear, and also excitement at the sight of seeing my best friend’s handwriting. Proof he was still himself enough to know me and know something was wrong. Maybe he could explain what was happening to him. I got in the truck.

The black rock was our secret fishing spot that was likely no more a secret than anywhere else, but we always had the best luck there. It was near rapids in the river that roared day and night. We’d always cast our lines and sit on this big smooth black rock. It was about a half hour out of town and a pain to get to, so I knew going in that whatever Jerry had to say was something he wanted to make sure stayed between us.

I saw the old crooked sign that advertised gas at 22 cents per gallon and pulled in behind the abandoned service station. Behind the building was a dense treeline with a tiny opening to an old trail people used to use often.

I walked down the trail as if I was hunting game. I could see through tiny holes in the dense brush the strong current of the river ahead. I recounted all the times I had drunkenly stumbled up and down this beaten path. All the good times. Now it felt final, like a funeral.

I came out the other end and followed the river’s run until I saw Jerry. He was indeed sitting on the black rock, and from behind and a distance away he looked totally normal. This could’ve been any other day where we’d be fishing and I just ran back to the car to grab something unimportant. I couldn’t contain myself as much as I wanted to – had planned to.

“Jerry!” I yelled with a childish crack in my voice.

He turned and looked at me, waving me over slowly.

“Jerry! What the hell man, I mean we’ve got some serious catching up to do,” I said as I fast approached him.

I wanted to tackle him and call him a dumbass and ask him days worth of questions but I knew I had to unravel what I had seen gently and methodically.

I walked right up to him and part of me had to make sure it was really him. He had barely addressed me beyond the slow wave.

“Hey dude, I got your note. I’ve got a lot, I mean a lot of shit to-,” I was interrupted by him.

“Sit down, man,” he said with an awfully subdued tone. He sounded ten years older.

“Sure,” I sat next to him, staring at him like he was the answer to an ancient mystery.

He itched his arm and let out a horrible sigh. The kind of sigh released before words come out that will ruin your life.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said. “I really don’t.”

“Just lay it on me, man. I got plenty to tell you too.”

“I… oh man,” he sighed again, putting his head in his hands and sniffling.

I placed a hand on his shoulder and my vision became watery. He bucked it off.

“Okay, here it goes. I… I saw – I’ve been seeing some weird shit lately, and I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe you can help me,” Jerry said.

“Of course. What have you seen?”

“A few nights ago, I shot awake.. It was late like… almost crack of dawn type late.”

Would I even need to tell him what I had seen? Or was he already aware of what was happening to him?

“I get this strange feeling,” Jerry continued. “I feel eyes on me from somewhere. So I grab the Beretta and I take a walk around the house. Now it’s real quiet out which was odd because this time of year it’s usually, you know… in your face kinda loud with all the bugs. So I’m walkin’ around and then I see something. Up on a mound with no trees or nothin’. I see a silhouette of somebody.”

I immediately wanted to interrupt Jerry and tell him I had seen the same man. The night vision man – but he was clearly upset in a way I’d never seen. I let him continue.

“He’s just standing there, looking my way. And he just kept standing there. It took a minute but I eventually started yellin’, y’know, threatening him. I told him I had a gun and all that. He didn’t seem to care. Didn’t move a muscle. I was about to fire a round off into the air to try and scare him for real but as soon as I pointed the gun to the sky he took off.”

I felt every molecule in me vibrating. It was so hard to wait to tell him my side of things. It was so hard to look him in the face now, knowing there was a centipede digesting in him. I felt like I had watched him die but somehow worse and now he was back here talking to me like normal.

“I took off work the next day, which I know isn’t like me,” Jerry admitted. “The whole situation rubbed me the wrong way and I was so damn tired. So I came here to try and take my mind off things.” Jerry wiped his eyes but more tears rushed out as soon as he took his hands away. “Then, the next night came. I was having a rough sleep and woke up around a similar time. I feel strange again. I get out of bed and I try to avoid looking out at that mound, but you know I eventually do. And when I do, I see that man again. Same place, exact same position. I watched him this time, watched for any movement or odd behavior. Nothin’. I felt like he could see me even though I was far off and hidden in the shadows, but I just kept lookin’ at him for a while.”

It was the night vision man. Everything Jerry was saying to describe this man was lining up to my experience with him. But why? Why both of us? And who the hell was he?

“Right as I was building up the courage to go try and scare him or shoot him or whatever, he took off again. And I’m still curious if it was the exact same time as the night before.”

Jerry stared out and took a break between recounting his last few nights and those pauses were agonizing. I wanted to use those perfect gaps to tell my side already, but I could tell if I interrupted he might erupt on me. Besides, I didn’t want him to lose his train of thought.

“I just came back here again and tried to amp myself up. I told myself to be a fucking man and to shoot that bastard if he came back on my property again. Just shoot him down and worry about the rest later. He was a threat,” Jerry said, nodding. “He was a threat.”

Jerry itched his arms aggressively and I could see the scabs coming off as he did.

“Last night, I decided to stay up and wait. I was gonna just camp out and watch that mound. I had my Beretta in hand and, yeah, I felt like a god damn lunatic,” Jerry said before a long pause. “Alright. Here we go. I’m sorry, man.”

“What do you have to be sorry for?” I asked.

Jerry just sighed and continued, “I nod off at some point, okay? I was sitting there since dusk so boredom must’ve gotten the best of me. I wake up and I see the guy on the mound again. I’m scared at first, but then I’m honestly just angry. Like, who the fuck gave him the right to come on our land and be a damn creep? So I storm out there and I walk up to him. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t do anything. I keep warning him ‘last chance, asshole’ and whatnot. He’s not budging. I get pretty close to him before I realize something fucked up,” Jerry sighed. “He’s naked. Dick’s out and in the wind. I point my gun at him and I nearly pull the trigger right then and there. I don’t, though. Instead I keep my gun fixed on him and walk a few more steps forward.”

Naked? The night vision man wasn’t naked for me. Suddenly, Jerry removed something from his waistband.

“Tell me why the fuck it was you, man,” Jerry growled, his Beretta now laying in his lap.

That hit me like a gunshot from his pistol. My vision warped and my body felt like it had fallen a thousand feet. I couldn’t believe this. He was mistaken. He must’ve been. I was the one who saw him, not the other way around. I watched his stiff body stand in the mud for hours the night before. I peeled the beetles from his skin and waited for help that never came. I did everything I could for him and now he’s got a gun on me. I couldn’t understand. This was all so far beyond me. We were just kids. I swear I did everything I could’ve done for him in that horrifying moment. Then I remembered my unexplained blackout. My ambiguous return home. All of these complex thoughts and emotions turned into one single tear that rolled down my cheek as I stared directly into my best friend’s eyes, who now looked at me with fury and rage.

“You,” Jerry muttered as he tightened his grip around his gun. “You fucking freak. You act all innocent now, but I saw you. I walked right up to you and you couldn’t even open your eyes to look at me. You had your mouth open and you wouldn’t move. What the hell is going on with you, man. Drugs? It better be drugs or you’re seriously fucked up in the head. Showing up to my house, stalking me… naked?”

“No,” I blurted out. “No, no, no.”

“Don’t lie to me. I’m not here to listen to bullshit,” Jerry barked back.

“This is… I… Jerry. I saw you. I’ve seen you too.”

“What do you mean you’ve seen me too? What the fuck does that even mean, man?”

“You were standing on the side of 132 last night, and I saw you the other night too, but I didn’t know it was you yet. On my way home from the farm. You were standing in the dark. Naked.”

“Get the fuck outta here. What are you even talkin’ about?”

“Y-you were standing there in the exact same way as you described me. Naked, eyes shut, mouth wide open. There were bugs all over you. You looked dead. I tried to move you, but you wouldn’t budge. You wouldn’t move. I tried so hard to get you to fucking move.”

“That’s impossible. I would remember something like that.”

“I would remember standing outside your house fucking naked too! I’d remember you threatening to shoot me – but I don’t!”

Jerry stood up, his gun still drawn. He paced back and forth.

“What the fuck,” he said to himself. He pounded his head with frustration.

“I know. Listen man, I know. I know it sounds absolutely insane. I know.”

“There’s no way that I was naked on the side of the road multiple nights. There’s just simply no fucking way that happened. I-I-I would have died, right? Like, something would’ve gotten me. A bear or something. I would’ve been arrested at some point,” Jerry tried to reason with the unreasonable.

I began to piece things together in my mind. A distorted puzzle that didn’t fit together in our way of thinking but maybe to something else. I looked out at the river rushing us by.

“At some point when I was out there with you, I blacked out completely. I thought I had just blocked it out or something because you were so messed up and it was just… it was just awful to see you like that. But now I think I blacked out and then became like you,” I said in a defeated way.

“I don’t get it. I just don’t see it, man,” Jerry refused.

“You said you nodded off at one point when you were staking out the mound. Maybe that was you entering that… state,” I suggested. “You said you sat down around dusk. Well I get off about an hour after and I’m driving home in the dark. That could be just enough time for you to arrive in your uh – your place.”

“This is so fucking stupid. You sound like a space cadet,” Jerry said, growing equally defeated. The fight in him was leaving slowly, too.

I stayed the course with my crackpot theory. It was confusing enough to slowly calm Jerry down, but I had felt so betrayed by something out there. What was happening to us? I couldn’t believe I was also being assumed every night and terrorizing people I cared about. And just the why of it all was so frustrating. A mystery I knew I’d never get to the bottom of. A mystery as enduring as the meaning of life or what came before the universe.

“There’s no understanding this, Jerry. I think we just accept it. Tonight, we’ll be out there again. Maybe we can watch over each other until it stops,” I said.

“I still don’t see how I wouldn’t remember standing out there naked.”

“Look at your arms and your legs. Shit, look everywhere. You’re covered in bites. You don’t get those at the mart. You don’t even get those out here.”

Jerry looked at his arms and poked his head under his shirt, flicking it back into place and huffing with frustration.

“I just don’t-”

“Jerry, just… let it lie. Let it sink in, man.”

We both sat there for a while, listening to the wise river crash. I heard the crunch of gravel beneath a boot and looked up to see Jerry flinging his gun into the river. It cracked the water’s surface and that was it.

“I had some nasty thoughts just now, figured I outta get rid of that,” Jerry mumbled.

I had thought some nasty thoughts too in that period of horrible reflection. I had thought maybe we could end the confusion real quick and easy at the black rock with that pistol. I had thought maybe I could take out Jerry in his next trance with that pistol and then I’d do myself. I didn’t want to know his nasty thoughts.

We continued to sit in silence. Something was forever disconnected between us. Something was forever keeping us bonded together.

Within four days, I had become a different person forever. Something in me shifted. I don’t think it was a normal shift of a young adult, like becoming jaded or losing innocence. I think it was something absolutely transformative, something that changed my DNA. I felt biologically altered from that time on. Somebody or something out there had played God, or maybe God played with us.

We entered our respective trances for three more nights before they stopped entirely, at least for us. We watched over each other in the dark, making sure no wildlife took us, and we even followed each other back home. We were hard to keep up with. We’d both take the same route to our locations each night, but it was as the crow flew.

I don’t know what would happen within us or why it happened. I don’t know why we went to where we did and why we were both relatively close to one another’s home when we entered that state.

We just did our best to support one another in this inexplicable spell. We were cautiously thrilled when everything stopped after just a week. One awful week that controls my life to this day.

The invisible hand had left its mark, though. And with that mark began a life of running. Jerry did the same. We got out of that town as quickly as two broke 19 year olds could. We went our separate ways and have never spoken since.

I’ll never forget all the fun we had before that week. Life was just easy. Jerry, I’ll always cherish our friendship, even if we were forced apart by the unknowable. Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy and far away from that place that took so much from us.

Credit: A.B. Clover

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