“You boys want some dessert? Aidan, does your mom let you have cheesecake?” I was about to open my mouth to say no thanks, when I caught Ricky’s eye across the table. He glanced towards the plates and nodded quickly at me. “Thank you Mrs. Doyle, I’ve eaten cheesecake with my mom lots of times. It’s really good.”
Before long we were saying our good nights, promising to brush our teeth. We stayed silent in his room after that, just waiting. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin when it got closer to eight o’clock! Occasionally we’d get a glass of water from the kitchen, or use the bathroom, which were mostly excuses for us to see what his parents were doing in the living room. We were trying to track their progress towards heading to bed for the night, and finally we heard their bedroom door close.
Both of us had agreed to wait exactly fifteen minutes after that to leave the house. With our jacket hoods pulled low over our heads we dropped out of Ricky’s window and entered into the back yard. It was chilly enough outside to where I’m thankful I brought my jacket, but not cold enough to be uncomfortable. Even if it had been really cold the excitement in my blood would have kept me super-duper warm, which was great.
“Aidan, do you have both flashlights?” Ricky asked. I shook my head in response. “No man, I thought you had yours, I just have this one.” I held it up and waved the beam around his face. He winced, putting his hands up. “Come on...It’s bad enough I don’t have a flashlight, now you want to blind me completely?”
I laughed at this, and told him we could try to share mine. I didn’t want to risk sneaking back in and out of the house again just for one flashlight. I’d just gotten old enough for mom to let me sleep over at friends’ houses that weren’t in our neighborhood. We’re just getting started with Neumack, and I couldn’t mess that up. We entered the woods, then spent a good fifteen minutes walking around. We saw a huge, black lump off to the right in the middle of the trees. My breath caught in my throat for a second, and I shined the light towards it. It was an old, broken down, and probably abandoned white car. The windows were broken out of it, so it was easy to see into. We walked to it and peered inside, making sure to keep our distance in case someone was living in there. It happens, you know.
“How the heck did this car even get out here? There are trees everywhere. Maybe it’s been here since they were babies.” Ricky said. I instantly corrected him, not missing a chance to show off. “They’re called, like, saplings or something. There’s no such thing as a baby tree.” I scoffed at him, but then I thought about everything else that he had said.
“Ya know, that is a good question. It doesn’t make sense that the car’s out here like this. Hey, when it’s daytime we should come back and check it for broken glass. If not it can be ours! We can be the only eleven year old kids at school to have a car, or maybe we can make a base out of it!” I suggest excitedly. We continued to walk on, agreeing to check on the car again tomorrow.
The trail was very difficult. Both of us keep close together to share the beam of light, but that made us bump together a lot. I felt like a pair of Siamese twins in some kind of weird, three-legged race. We were bumbling and tripping over any, and every, thing in our paths. It was a blast! We were chuckling and stomping around so hard that I could barely hear any other noises, but something weird got my attention. I shushed Ricky by putting my hand up, pointing to my ear to signal him to stop and listen. There, under the noise of the wind through the trees, I could hear something. I tried to sharpen my ears and block out any other sounds. Yes, that was it! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know whether to feel scared, excited or worried.
“Ricky, do you hear it too? The baby! C-c-can you hear the baby?” Even in the moonlight I could tell that Ricky’s face had turned a lighter color than normal. His eyes are wide, and he clenched his hands together. “Yeah umm...maybe we should go now?” He mumbled to me. I grabbed him by the arm a little more aggressively than I meant to, keeping him in place.
“Well, I’m going further. If you want to go back fine, but remember I have the flashlight. Sorry.” I say, smoothing his army jacket out like that would somehow erase the act of me grabbing him. “I just want to get a little closer to make sure we aren’t imagining it. Come on, please? We’ve come this far and can’t head back just yet.”
Against his wishes he reluctantly followed me on through the woods, both of us more scared than we are willing to admit. We seemed to be getting closer to the sound for a while, but then it just...stopped. Ricky looked satisfied, like he knew we could start heading home then. He was happy that we got our answer to the stories of Neumack Woods, but for me it wasn’t enough. It didn’t really answer anything, it just made more questions. I wanted, needed, to know where, if anywhere, it was coming from. The cry sounded very real, so I thought that maybe there actually was a baby out there. Maybe they were cold and hungry. Maybe they need
