he said stopping and looking back at us with an exaggerated sadistic expression. He laughed and turned back toward the house.
Fenced-in fields of neatly rowed, dark yellow corn stalks surrounded both sides of the huge yard. The darkness between those rows of corn gave me chills as I kept imagining movement within them from the corner of my eyes. Even as dark as it was, brightly colored leaves of yellow, brown, and orange covered the ground demanding our attention as we walked toward the house.
Rick stepped onto what was left of the porch. The movement of shadows on the wall of the house gripped and squeezed my heart. The tall outline of a man with long thin arms turned out only to be the shadow of a tree. I took a deep breath and let it out quietly so the guys wouldn't think I was a pussy.
'Oh, wow. That's so fuckin' cool!' Rick said as he stepped into the partially open door. I stepped experimentally onto the porch and leaned a little to try and see what Rick thought was so great.
Stepping from one board to another like stepping on stones in a creek, I made my way up to the front door.
'Oh that
Rick held a flashlight over his head and pointed downward. The beam illuminated a large rundown piano covered in several layers of dust. He ran his other hand down the keys and various out-of-key notes played. A bunch of the keys were cracked or busted.
When I stepped into the house, I noticed a large Victorian stairway behind Rick. I pointed to it. 'What's upstairs?'
Rick laughed and said, 'Let's go see, man.'
So, we followed Rick up the stairs. About half of the steps were caved in and the other half felt like a thick cardboard. All along the walls were drawings and writing I couldn't quite make out with the little bit of bouncing light coming back from Rick's flashlight.
When we were all at the top of the stairs, we came to a huge bedroom just to the left. Inside, things were scattered everywhere. A bed lay at the end of the room, its mattress and box springs pulled from the base and sprawled out along side it. A dresser lay on its side in the middle of the room and clothes and blankets covered the entire floor.
Rick shined the flashlight on the walls. 'What's that?'
Writing like I had just seen going up the stairs covered the entire wall.
Each small section had different handwriting. Some of them were marked with dates and years.
We stood there reading writings on the wall for several minutes before we decided to move on. The rest of the upstairs didn't seem nearly as interesting to us. A collective uneasiness was coming over us by that time and it wasn't long before we were stepping right back through that front door. But Ricky wasn't ready to leave quite yet. When Jeremy and I stepped outside, the two other guys were nowhere to be seen.
We circled around looking for where they might have gone. The van looked lonely sitting in the long gravel driveway with the moon morphed into a halo of clouds hanging over it. Rick's voice called out from behind the house and echoed off a huge old barn across the street.
'Hey, guys you're missing it. This is fucking awesome.'
Jeremy and I walked toward the side of the house, following Rick's ricocheting voice. As we came around the corner, a loud yell came from the shadows. We both jumped and I let out a near scream as Darrell jumped out at us.
'You fuckin' prick, you scared the shit out of us,' Jeremy yelled.
Darrell laughed hysterically, his impish grin arching up the sides of his face.
He pulled out a cigarette and lit it as he continued to chuckle. As Jeremy and I followed suit to do the same, a loud gargled scream came from behind the house. Darrell laughed harder and Jeremy looked at me and smiled.
'You're gonna have to try a lot fucking harder than that, Ricky, you son of a bitch!'
There was no reply.
Jeremy only laughed. I kept hearing that scream repeat in my head, my brain analyzing it over and over for humor.
'Well, I'm gonna go see what he's up to,' I said.
'Okay, have fun and don't shit your pants when he grabs hold of your ankle or some shit,' Jeremy said.
I laughed nervously and then started walking toward the back of the house as Jeremy and Darrell chattered back and forth.
As I came closer and closer to the back corner of the house, a dim red glow crept through a thin veil of mist covering the back yard. I stopped and looked at the glow. My legs stiffened involuntarily. I was just about to turn back when a loud racket like the sound of things being thrown around in a small room started from behind the house. I managed to make my feet lift off the ground one after another until I came around the back corner of the house.
A small, wood-rotted outhouse stood shaking at the center of about a dozen dead trees, the red glow coming out from between the cracks of the door and in between each heavily weathered board. If Rick was playing a joke on me, he sure as hell worked hard on it. I yelled back to the guys and then in a blinding flash of that same hue of red, the glow disappeared and the outhouse settled still.
Jeremy and Darrell arrived just in time to see nothing out of the ordinary. The door opened with a loud creak and Rick wandered out with his hair disheveled and a confused look on his face.
'Guys, what the hell happened?'
Jeremy and Darrell busted out in laughter.
'Did you fall in again, Ricky?' Darrell asked.
Rick's face changed at once and he was laughing along with the other guys. I stood stone-still watching his every move, unable to shake what I had just seen from my memory.
'Darrell, you asshole, you know I'm too goddamn fat to fall into a toilet.
I must've hit my head in there though. It hurts real fucking bad.'
'Sure it does man. That's probably the beer talking. What do you say, man? You ready for destination number two?' Darrell asked and dragged on the tiny butt of his cigarette, the same grin from earlier still covering his face.
'Hell yeah, dude. Let's go.'
The guys started walking back toward the van and I was forced to make a decision right then. Either follow and keep what I saw to myself or say something and deal with the blowback. My analytical side still unable to believe it was real won over, telling me I'd only be the butt of their jokes for the rest of the night. So, I followed them back to the van and we headed out.
About 45 minutes later, heading south of Cloverdale on US 231, they still hadn't told me where we were going. Not long afterward, we came to the junction for Highway 42. Rick swerved the van to the right, causing the yellow flashers of the traffic light to stream in the corner of my eyes. Just like that, the last signs of town were replaced with wooded, leaf-covered land marked with an occasional house or cornfield.
No matter how many times I've been down that way--and it's been many--the place never fails to give me the utter willies. Especially in autumn. The tall trees huddle over the land, their branches like bony hands reaching down to pluck the occasional unsuspecting victim from the road.
The blackness between them hiding endless unimaginable terrors watching and waiting.
After traversing at least a dozen hills and curves, we arrived at the familiar entrance to the Lieber State Park camping grounds. Unsurprising to me, the gate was closed and the small ranger station stood completely unlit save for the solitary burglar light from above.
Rick smacked the top of his steering wheel. 'Ah, fuck. I should've known they'd be closed for Halloween.'
