I thought this sort of thing only happened in the movies.

Hurricane Earl is a category 4 storm with winds in excess of 135 mph, currently located several hundred miles north of Hispaniola and moving northwest…directly towards the Carolina beaches.

The good news is that Earl is expected to turn northeast before reaching shore. Almost every major model, and every ensemble member of the usually reliable GFS model, turns him to the east before landfall. But he’s going to be much too close to the Carolinas for comfort. The models have slowly but steadily moved him further west over time. And even if he does miss the Carolinas, he’s going to be close enough for some pretty serious issues. So while a direct hit appears unlikely, an indirect hit is likely. Serious storm surge is likely, and could be enough to cause some inland flooding. Wind could also be an issue; Earl knocked out power to 200,000 homes when he passed within 100 miles of Puerto Rico, and he was not as strong then as he is now.

Beyond the Carolinas, much of the East Coast is in the National Hurricane Center’s “cone of uncertainty.”

A little more good news is that the models suggest Earl has reached or will soon reach his peak intensity and will be already weakening by the time he reaches his closest point to the Carolinas. Better news still is that Earl should be out of the way along the Carolina beaches by the time holiday weekend visitors arrive at the end of the week. But will the beaches be visitable? Not if Earl gets too close, and not if he gets close enough for evacuations to be warranted.

Eventually, Earl is likely to make a direct strike on Nova Scotia, similar to Hurricane Juan in 2003. Models take him ashore in Canada as a cat1 hurricane around luncht

ime Saturday.

TROPICAL STORM FIONA

Earl is eating Fiona for lunch. The weaker storm is having a very difficult time surviving against her big brother to her west and may soon lose her tropical storm status.

INVEST 98L

The next storm system in the Atlantic is still given just a 10% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone over the next 48 hours. The models are currently in much disagreement about where this storm will wind up, but the Caribbean looks like a pretty decent bet right now.

COOLDOWN

After last weekend’s model-projected cooldown didn’t pan out, one must wonder how much stock to put in the models this week. Because they’re doing it again…on an even more impressive scale.

The GFS’s model output statistics are printing some impressively cool numbers for the northern Plateau: 54 for a low Saturday morning, a high of 76 Saturday afternoon, a low of 48 Sunday morning, a high of 78 Sunday afternoon and a low of 49 Monday morning. Some raw numbers from the GFS are even more impressive, but there’s no point in even mentioning them because they’re unrealistic.

The GFS does have more support from other members of the global model community this time around, which is worth noting. But the National Weather Service isn’t yet biting, forecasting a low of 63 Saturday morning, a high of 83 Saturday afternoon, a low of 58 Sunday morning, a high of 85 Sunday afternoon and a low of 60 Monday morning.

By Sunday morning, our average low is 61 and our average high is 82. September as a whole looks like it will be warmer than average for our part of the world.

Football fans have been waiting for this week since the BCS National Championship Game ended last Jan. 8. Some have been waiting since the regular season ended last November.

National Signing Day and spring games were enough to tide us over for a while, but sometime along about May, realization of a football-free summer set in. Since then, anticipation for the fall has been building.

And now it’s here. Game week. Fall camp is officially over for football teams throughout the Southeast and across the country. Game week preparations are in full swing. In just over 48 hours, Wake Forest will kick off against Presbyterian (6:30 p.m. Tuesday). An hour after that, real football begins when South Carolina hosts Southern Miss on ESPN.

Tennessee will begin its 2010 season at 6 p.m. Saturday, when UT-Martin visits Neyland Stadium.

My expectations for 2010 were tempered somewhat when defensive end Ben Martin and defensive tackle Marlon Walls were lost for the season before it even began, with achilles injuries. That put a hurting on a defensive unit that was already expected to suffer from the loss of all-world safety Eric Berry and other key contributors in 2009.

Most professional prognosticators don’t expect Tennessee to fare well this year. The media has picked the Vols to finish fifth in the SEC East…ahead of only Kentucky. Sports Illustrated’s Stuart Mandel says the Vols will finish no better than 4-8.

The reality is that the demise of Tennessee’s program has been over-exaggerated by many in the media and by many UT fans. Tennessee has quite a bit of young talent. They just don’t have a lot of it. Coach Derek Dooley joked earlier in the fall that Tennessee has a first string and a third string. In other words, there is no depth. At no position is that magnified more than defensive tackle, where Dooley and defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox are shuffling players around to form a makeshift interior to the Vols’ defensive line.

And it’s troubling to hear predictions of 5-7 coming from guys like VolQuest.com founder Brent Hubbs. Hubbs is no pessimist; he makes money when UT fans are excited and buying subscriptions to his website, and he’s also employed by the Vol Network. But as a realist, Hubbs is spot-on. Last year, he didn’t buy into the thinking of the naysayers who said Lane Kiffin would not take the Vols to a bowl game. He predicted 8-5, which was as close to being on the money as anyone (the Vols finished 7-6). Unlike the Mandels and Gregg Doyels of the sports media world, Hubbs sees the Tennessee team on a daily basis.

Of course, Derek Dooley has restricted the media much more than Kiffin did a year ago. None of the Tennessee beat writers, including Hubbs, have actually seen the Vols scrimmage this fall. Access at practices is limited as well. I’ll use that as my excuse to ignore what Hubbs says, and predict that Tennessee will make a bowl game this fall.

Even if they don’t, you can forget Mandel’s prediction that the Vols go 4-8. That isn’t going to happen unless Tennessee suffers a slew of injuries. The Vols start the season with a UT-Martin squad that is a middle-of-the-pack Football Championship Subdivision team. UAB isn’t the same UAB that almost beat Tennessee in 2005. And while Memphis returns 18 starters from last year, the Tigers didn’t exactly light up the world a year ago. There’s three wins without even speculating about how conference play turns out. With a dramatically weakened Ole Miss team and a Kentucky team that hasn’t beaten Tennessee since 1984 both coming to Neyland Stadium, and Vanderbilt sporting the honors of being the only college football team to be screwed by its departing coach worse than Tennessee, you have to figure that the odds are pretty good the Vols take at least two of those games, which exceeds the four-win milestone even if Tennessee is unable to upset anyone on its schedule.

And this season, upset opportunities should abound.

1. UT-Martin. It’s bad enough when your season-opening opponent is an FCS team that is picked to finish in the bottom half of the Ohio Valley Conference, beneath such heavy-hitters as Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee State. It’s worse still when that team is from a sister campus. You almost feel dirty for beating them. It’s almost like when you stomped your little brother’s butt into a mudhole during games of backyard football as a kid: you won the game but it wasn’t anything to write home about. But this is the opening game and Tennessee is in the midst of one of the worst eras in the history of its football program. Tennessee-Martin, Tennessee School for the Deaf or the High School Male Cheerleaders Union of the Southeast, you take your wins where you can get ‘em. The Vols will win this one by as much as they want to.

2. Oregon. The No. 7 team in the country—and the favorites in the Pac-10—visit Neyland Stadium next weekend. Call me crazy, but I’m putting this one in my “maybe upset” column for several reasons: unlike last season, when Tennessee’s defense was great most of the season but struggled mightily against spread teams because Monte Kiffin was an NFL guy who wasn’t accustomed to scheming against the spread, Justin Wilcox is used to seeing it. And he knows how to defend Oregon. Remember last year, when the Broncos shut down the Ducks in the season opener? Oregon may not be ready to leave the comfortable climes of the Pacific Northwest to visit steamy Knoxville in early September.

3. Florida. Loss.

4. UAB. If you don’t win this one, someone will snatch up all the variations of the firederekdooley.com domain names in a hurry.

5. LSU. This one is in Baton Rouge, which is tough. Tennessee traditionally does not play well down there. Yet, this one goes onto the long list of games that Tennessee should lose but will have a chance in.

6. Georgia. See above. Georgia is expected to be pretty good; more than one sports writer thinks the Dawgs will win the SEC East. But Tennessee just does well against Georgia for some reason.

There’s a reason Tennessee fans have taken to referring to the turf ‘Tween the Hedges as “Neyland Stadium South.”

7. Alabama. Loss. If the elephants don’t repeat as national champs, it’ll be because they lose to Florida in the SEC Championship Game.

8. South Carolina. USC-East features a tough defense and a quarterback who has been around the block a time or two. This one goes on the list with Georgia and LSU, although Spurrier’s club might be slightly worse than either of those teams.

9. Memphis. See No. 4. Win.

10. Ole Miss. Most people would put this one on the same list as LSU, Georgia, et al. But the Rebs are not the same team they were a year ago. In fact, as I’m writing this, news is coming across the wires that quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, who transferred to Ole Miss after being ousted at Oregon, has been denied eligibility by the NCAA. The Rebs will appeal that, but if it sticks, their stock drops dramatically.

11. Vanderbilt. Brandon thinks Vandy will beat Tennessee this year. I don’t. I wasn’t inclined to agree with him before Bobby Johnson left the Commodores high and dry just days before the start of fall camp. I’m certainly not going to agree with him now. Win.

12. Kentucky. All streaks have to end sometime. Sure, it’s in Neyland Stadium. And Kentucky has a new coach. But Tennessee also has a new coach, and Neyland Stadium was the location of Kentucky’s last win against Tennessee, back when Ronald Reagan was still in his first term. I’m going to say this one is a toss-up.

So. Four almost-certain wins (UT-Martin, UAB, Memphis and Vanderbilt). Two toss-ups (Kentucky and Ole Miss). A couple that the Vols cannot win (Florida and Alabama). And four upset potentials (Oregon, LSU, Georgia and South Carolina).

A 4-8 record is a worst-case scenario. A 10-2 record is a best-case scenario. Anything in between is possible. Yes, anything. Remember, the Vols were 7-5 in the regular season last year and would have been 9-3 if not for Lane Kiffin freezing up at inopportune times (UCLA and at Alabama). Granted, this team isn’t as talented as last year’s team. Not by quite a bit, in fact. But Matt Simms had a good summer. The offensive line is maturing quicker than anyone had dared hope. The freshman receivers are going to be good. There’s potential for Tennessee’s offense to actually be better than it was a year ago. The part that makes UT fans cringe is the defense. With the weakness at defensive tackle, the Vols may not be able to stop a nursing home intramural team from pounding the rock.

Even if Tennessee slumbers to a 2-6 start, taking the two certain wins, losing the two certain losses, and losing both the upset potentials through October, the offense could be gelling by the time November rolls around and be ready for a pleasing stretch run. Four consecutive wins to end the season (Memphis, Ole Miss, Vandy and Kentucky) isn’t at all out of the question.

Which is why I think Tennessee will finish at least 6-6. And because I’m an eternal optimist when it comes to my football team (and because I’m more confident than many UT fans that Mike Hamilton made the right hire in Derek Dooley), I’m going to say Tennessee takes advantage of one of the upset candidates and finishes 7-5. And I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a final record of 8-4. (By the same token, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a final record of 6-6.)

One thing we can probably all agree on: Fan apathy and a stagnant economy have created the perfect storm for thrifty football fans. If you want to see a Tennessee game cheap, this is your year. Never before, and perhaps never again, will you see season tickets on Craigslist at face value. Lots of ‘em. Good seats, too. And on a year when Florida and Alabama—traditionally the two toughest tickets to score in Knoxville—are coming to town, along with Top Ten Oregon.

UT-Florida tickets are selling for $100 and less per seat, which means there will be almost as many annoying reptiles in Neyland Stadium on Sept. 18 as there will be friendly Vols (same when ‘Bama comes to town). And when the Vols open against UT-Martin on Saturday, there will be more empty seats inside Neyland Stadium than there has ever been for a season opener.

Last year’s attendance was bad, despite all the excitement created by Lane Kiffin’s Loud Mouth. If the Vols don’t pick up a surprise win or two early this year, you will be able to name your price at the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Phillip Fulmer Way.

It wouldn’t surprise me if actual attendance at the season opener fails to top 80,000. It seriously wouldn’t.

Another short story…no supernatural this time.

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I’ll bet the cafeteria is serving creamed wheat and toast for dinner.

Yeah. Creamed wheat and toast. Welcome to my world.

It’s supposed to be easy on the gums and the colons. Half of these old geezers in here have no teeth and all of us have digestive problems of some sort, so we eat things like creamed wheat and toast.

But you aren

’t reading this to learn what I’m having for supper, are you? If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering what happened in the West Woods that summer so long ago, when I was thirteen years old.

Let me start at the beginning. My childhood was spent in an unimportant little town. The name of the place doesn’t matter. It was just the quintessential American small town. You know the sort: more churches than dining establishments and they roll in the sidewalks when the sun sets.

I was idealistic back then. (Weren’t we all?) Is there such a thing as too much idealism? Too much of a good thing is a good thing, baby. Those are the lyrics of a country song, though I’ll be doggone if I can remember which one. They say memory is the first to go so I guess I’m living on borrowed time.

Anyway, I was idealistic. That’s my point. That was back when Hector was a pup. Bet you haven’t heard that one in a long time. Actually, I think the exact saying is since Hector was a pup. But I’m rambling.

Not that it makes any difference. What else do I have to do with my time? The rec room closed at two o’clock and dinner isn’t served until five. This is “quiet time.”

Isn’t it something? We live, we work, we contribute to society. We pay our dues. And at the end, when we’ve reached the twilight of our life, we wind up right back where we were in the beginning: living in a controlled environment, with our daily routines structured for us.

And they call these the “golden years.” Heh.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh, yes. The idealism of my youth.

That idealism was eventually replaced by realism, which turned optimism into pessimism. Which is about three isms too many, but you catch my drift.

When I was thirteen years old, I discovered an old record player in the basement of an abandoned house down the road. One of those old phonographs. You know the kind I’m talking about. I was enamored with it. I had a box full of records . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I know you’ll be wanting to know how it was that I came to find the old record player. Or maybe you won’t. But if I’m not thorough with my story, I’ll finish it before the dinner announcement and Mrs. Shirley Dempesne will be wanting to show me how to cross-stitch again, God love her.

Mrs. Shirley has late-stage Alzheimer’s and no surviving family members. Life’s a bitch. There’s another old saying for your files.

The old house — the one where I found the phonograph — had set there for a good long while. It was beginning to fall in. The city had condemned it and scheduled it to be demolished. A few folks had wandered through the house to make sure there wasn’t anything of value left inside.

Despite making countless promises to my father over the years that I would never set foot inside the Daugherty place — “liable to be snakes or rats or sex perverts or all three hiding in there,” he always said — I decided to make my own trek through the home.

Most of the stuff was invaluable, which is why it was still there in the first place. There were books with tattered covers and chairs with broken legs, but not much else. Until I stumbled into a hidden compartment inside a stairwell leading to the cellar and discovered the mother lode: old baseball cards, magazines that were all about instructing common folks how to decorate and entertain so we can present the façade of living a little higher on the hog than we actually do, some duck calls, and a can that had two dollars and fifty cents in it.

And the phonograph, of course. Had I known then what I know now, I would’ve left the miserable old thing down there in the mildew and let the city knock the house down around it.

But hindsight is 20/20 and foresight is legally blind. I didn’t have a clue how things would turn out, of course. So when Johnny Pete stopped y the house the following afternoon, I coerced him into going over to the old Daugherty place with me. Dragged him by the shirt collar is more like it. Johnny Pete didn’t want to be in there any more than my pap wanted me to be in there. But he reluctantly agreed after I told him about the baseball cards. Johnny Pete loved baseball cards.

The old floors were so rotten that they actually felt soft as we walked across them. The house creaked and moaned with every breath of breeze outside. Johnny Pete threatened to leave and go home. “Fine. Okay,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll just add the baseball cards to my collection.”

“You don’t have a baseball card collection,” he said. And he was right. But he sounded doubtful.

He didn’t go home. I led him down the dark steps into the dank cellar and in so doing condemned him to the same wretched twist of fate that I was ordaining for myself.

By the time we crawled inside the space beneath the stairs, Johnny Pete’s fear was long gone. He was in awe of the cards, picking them up one by one and dusting them with the sleeve of his shirt as he breathlessly read the names of the players.

We set the magazines aside and Johnny Pete put the cards in his cap, which he placed back on his head. As for me, it was the phonograph I wanted. And the box of records that rested on top of it.

By the time the sun had set we had pulled the record player back home in my old wagon. We carried it to the barn and cleaned it up. I didn’t dare take it inside. Pap would have tanned my hide good if he had discovered I had been rummaging around the old Daugherty place.

We listened to those old records all evening, Johnny Pete and I. The sound quality was poor but we were mesmerized. It wasn’t the hip hop woopety woop stuff these kids today are listening to. This was classic stuff: vaudeville and barbershop quartets. How many people are still around who’ve heard a good vaudeville act or the pure harmony of a barbershop quartet? Not many, I’m afraid.

And we have the nerve to call ourselves a progressive society. Heh. We’ve forgotten the golden age of American song-writing. Nobody remembers the Great American Songbook. And Ma Raimey? Mamie Smith?

Anyway, I’m rambling again.

Momma had to call me to dinner three times that evening before I finally heard her. That’s how enraptured we were by the music.

Fortunately, I heard her before she came to fetch me. If she had found us lying there in the hay, our chins in our hands as we listened to the old records, she would’ve started asking questions. In my home, Momma and Pap’s question-asking sessions usually ended in a bad way for me. And for the hickory tree out back, which would lose another limb. I received more than a few doses of “hickory tea,” as Pap called it.

Johnny Pete was shuffling through his new baseball cards as he disappeared around the bend in the road that evening, absently walking along the edge of the road as he admired each card.

I waited for Pap to leave for work the next morning before heading to the barn. I couldn’t wait to put the next record on the phonograph. If it hadn’t been summer, I swanny I would’ve probably played hooky from school.

It didn’t seem like more than an hour had passed before Momma was calling me to dinner. I was surprised to look outside and see that the sun was setting over the ridge top. I had listened to the records straight through lunch and throughout the afternoon!

Doggone if I remember the names of the bands or even the songs. The mind is the first to go, which I may have told you already.

But I do remember one song in particular. It was Semper Fidelis, played by the U.S. Marine Corps band. I listened over and over, awestruck.

By the time I went to dinner that evening, I judged that I had listened to half the records in the box. I wanted to steal back out to the barn after polishing off my meatloaf and mashed potatoes, but I knew better.

Momma was surprised that I cleaned off my plate, asked for seconds and finished them, too. That reminded her that I hadn’t shown up at the house for lunch, which got her started asking questions. I think I already told you that questions usually led to the truth and truth often didn’t bode well for me in those days. I was no troublemaker; no more so than any other boy my age, anyway. But I was thirteen. Thirteen and good behavior are often mutually exclusive terms.

I told Momma that Johnny Pete and I had stolen some apples from Ol’ Man Christley’s tree and that seemed to satisfy her. Pap looked at me over the top of his glasses — it was a look that I knew all too well — but he didn’t say anything. I figured I had managed to escape without being found out and made a mental note to show up for lunch — and early — the following day.

But of course I didn’t.

The third day found me listening to more of the vaudeville and barbershop quartet records. Until I reached the bottom of the box. I pulled out the last record, which didn’t have a label affixed to it, and dusted it off.

When I placed the record on the phonograph, I heard only the considerable white noise that was associated with those early record players. I was just about to take it off when I heard a sound that made my hair stand up on my arms. Besides a screech owl’s call coming through my window on a late summer night, not much made the hair stand up on my arms in those days. Nor now, for that matter.

The words flowed out in a gravely, half-whispered voice. They seemed to come from everywhere, yet they seemed to come from nowhere. A single phrase, spoken over and over, with each repitition nearly running into the other: “Sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol…”

The strange voice was joined by other voices, each spoken as hauntingly as the others, as the chant continued. For the first time in my young life, I was seriously afraid. Not by the words; I had no idea what they meant. It was the delivery that had me spooked.

I was just about to turn off the phonograph when the voices changed, becoming louder and breaking out of the chant: “Release is freedom. Freedom is release. Release is freedom. Freedom is release.”

There was a short pause before the quiet, otherworldly chanting resumed: Sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol…”

Suddenly, the sides of the barn seemed to be closing in on me. The darkness seemed overwhelming. I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and immediately realized my throat felt constricted and unable to pull in another breath.

Movement in the corner of the room caught my eye. I strained to see through the murky darkness. It was hard to make out, but it appeared to be a man dressed in the blue coat of a Hessian soldier, which I recognized from pictures in our school history textbook. He had a hat perched on his head and a sword strapped to his side.

I tried to yell but couldn’t muster the breath. Instead, I scrambled to my feet and stumbled from the barn and into the bright sunlight outside.

I almost immediately felt better. I took in a lungful of air, released it, and then another, shaking my head of the cobwebs that seemed to have taken up residence there.

Nobody followed me out of the barn. In the absence of the darkness and shadows that swallowed up the interior of the barn, it seemed crazy to think that anyone else had been inside the building.

I considered going back inside, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I wasn’t losing my mind. Then I decided against it. Better to wait for Johnny Pete. Judging by the sun’s position in the western sky, it was almost supper time, anyway.

I walked into the house and sat quietly at the table. Momma was humming a hymn — Rock of Ages, I think — as she worked over the stove. She heard my chair legs scrape against the floor and turned to me, a mixing spoon in her hand.

“Will, you coming down with something?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Your face is white. You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

I tried to hold an unchanged expression. I failed. But Momma had already turned her attention back to the pan of frying eggs she was tending to.

“Tomorrow I think you better rest instead of roaming around outside,” she said. “You still look pale by Thursday, you’ll go see Dr. Frencesco.”

But by the time dinner was finished, the color had returned to my cheeks. The odd experience inside the barn seemed a distant memory.

“I swanny,” Momma said, “look at the difference a decent meal makes a body. You start coming home for lunch instead of traipsing around with that Peters boy looking to steal fruit from the orchard of some hard-working neighbor and you won’t walk around looking like you’re knocking on death’s door.”

Pap nodded his agreement. “Do as you mother says,” he said absently, flipping to page 2A of his newspaper.

That night I dreamed of a Hessian soldier floating through my window, his hat perched crookedly on his head, sporting a small mustache and wearing a sword at his side. “Release is freedom. Freedom is release,” he said in a half-whispered, gravely voice as he hovered over my bed. And then he was gone.

But dreams are just dreams, aren’t they?

Of course they are.

Of course.

***

I had every intention of staying out of the barn — and away from the phonograph records — the following day. There were chores to be done, anyway. The garden needed hoeing and Pap left me with strict orders to repair a section of the fence that held Rutherford, our old draft horse.

The chores required the entire morning. Momma brought my lunch to me at noon: a glass of milk and a leftover biscuit filled with fried potatoes. I took my lunch on the porch but I kept staring at the barn as I ate.

I really did intend to stay away. But hadn’t the barn been drawing me all morning? I had thrown several glances at it as I weeded the beans and corn, fighting an urge to lay down the hoe and slip away to the old phonograph.

Intentions aren’t worth spit in the wind if they aren’t accompanied by effort. That was Pap’s saying. I remembered it as I slipped through the barn door after finishing my lunch.

The record from the previous evening was still on the phonograph, where I had left it. My first instinct was to fling it as far into the woods behind the barn as I could fling it. Instead, I put it back in the box. I wanted Johnny Pete to hear it.

It was then that I realized I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Johnny Pete in three days. That was unusual, since he lived only a hop, skip and a jump from our place and was usually around every day during the summer.

But Johnny Pete — born John Vance Peters and called Johnny Pete so much that it stuck — was forgotten as I placed the U.S. Marines Band record on the phonograph. The sounds of Semper Fidelis filled the room. I leaned back against a wall post, my hands behind my head and a smile on my face. This, I decided, was what a record player was meant for: the sounds of band.

The recording was halfway through its second playing when white noise began to overtake the sounds of the Marine band. I sat upright with a frown. Surely the record wasn’t tearing up…

And then it started.

“Sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol sheh ol…”

It wasn’t possible. But there it was. The same gravely, half-whispered voices.

Resisting an urge to run, I looked quickly around the barn. No Hessian soldier this time. That much was a relief, at least.

The voices continued: “Release is freedom. Freedom is release. Sheh ol sheh ol. La roca es la clave.”

And then he — it — appeared. In the same corner as the previous evening. Seemingly there, but at the same time, seemingly not. As if it were a mirage. And I knew that’s what it was…what it had to be. But that didn’t stop me from running from the barn once more.

I leaned against the oak tree outside the barn and lost my lunch: the potato biscuit and the milk. I lost my breakfast, too. Or what was left of it.

Finally, it felt safe to sit down. I leaned against the tree, my face covered in sweat. My stomach continued to church but I almost immediately began to feel better.

It was fear that caused me to barf all over the side of the tree, I decided. A wiser person would have probably put as much distance between himself and the barn as possible — once he stopped upchucking, that is — but as had been the case the previous evening, what I had just heard — and seen — seemed ridiculous and impossible once I was under the bright rays of the summer sun.

I saw a familiar figure running up the road. Johnny Pete. And he was scared shitless.

You’ll forgive the expression, but that’s exactly what we would have said in those days. In fact, that’s probably exactly what I said when Johnny Pete came panting into the yard, stopping and leaning over as he attempted to catch his breath.

“Where you been?” I asked. “I could’ve used some help here this morning, ya know.”

It was an unspoken agreement: Johnny Pete helped me with my chores and I helped him with his. It helped us free up the rest of our days to spend laying out on the creek bank. At least that’s what we did most summers, before that summer changed everything…that summer when normalcy lost its meaning. I had been infatuated with my phonograph and Johnny with his baseball cards. The phonograph and baseball cards from the Daugherty house. A house I would come to wish had fallen in years ago, before I was ever born.

***

“Here,” Johnny panted, handing me a bag. “Lookit.”

I looked. It was a bag full of the baseball cards he had carried out of the Daugherty house three days earlier.

“What about them?”

“Take ‘em out and look,” Johnny said, starting to breathe easier.

I pulled one of the cards from the bag. It was a player I had never heard of, but then I wasn’t a baseball fan. I wasn’t then and I’m not now.

“What of it?” I asked.

“Turn it over.”

I did. And felt my stomach sinking to my knees.

Sheol.

The single word had been scribbled repeatedly on the back of Johnny Pete’s card.

“Why did you write on your card?” I asked. I knew better, but that was my last-gasp effort to hold onto some sense of normalcy.

Johnny shook his head violently. “Are you nuts? That card is worth nothin’ if it’s been written on. They were still in mint condition once the dust was cleaned off of them.” He gestured at the bag. “Look at another.”

I did. It was defaced just as the first one had been.

“I thought it was two words…sheh ol,” I said softly.

“What?”

“Sheol…sheh ol,” I said. “It’s gotta be the same thing as what I heard.”

Johnny Pete’s brow furrowed as he looked at me sharply. “You’ve seen this, too?”

I shook my head. “Not seen. Heard. But oh yeah. You better believe it.”

For a second, my pal looked like he was going to grab my neck. Maybe even break it.

“Did you do this as some sort of a prank?” he demanded.

I shook my head again. “No way. Even I know that baseball cards can be valuable some day.”

As the exertion-induced redness faded from Johnny’s face, he looked as pale as I had looked the previous evening.

“Last night, the cards were in perfect shape. This morning, this.” He waved his hands at the cards, which I had spread out on the ground. “Do you know that these cards are already worth five times what they would have cost at the store when they were new? And several of ‘em are rare cards that I didn’t have in my collection.”

I nodded. I didn’t know that, of course, but I could imagine his anger and his pain. It was probably something similar to the frustration I felt at my possessed phonograph player. Just thinking about it made my feel stupid and childish, but it was true, I realized. And that reminded me…

“Pick up those cards and come in here,” I said.

“Why?”

“Just do it,” I said, standing up and going to the barn. I started to slip inside, then decided against it. I wouldn’t have admitted in ten years that I was scared, but I was waiting on Johnny Pete before I re-entered the darkness of the barn.

After he had placed the cards back into the bag, he joined me at the door.

“You aren’t gonna believe this,” I said, pushing through the door opening.

The Semper Fidelis record was still on the player. I thought of replacing it with the record from the bottom of the box, then decided it probably wouldn’t matter. I had a feeling that, like Johnny Pete’s cards, every one of my records were going to contain the same message.

After the phonograph was wound, the pleasing big band sounds began to flow from the horn.

“This is an okay song, but my galldarned cards…”

“Sssshhh,” I said. He hushed.

It didn’t take long before the quality of the recording began to fade.

Johnny Pete’s mouth fell open as the haunting sounds began to flow from the phonograph.

“Sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol…”

As before, the changes almost blended together as one word. The other voices slowly but surely merged in. Then, what I had come to think of as the message: Release is freedom. Freedom is release. Release is freedom. Sheol sheol sheol. La roca es la clave.”

I pulled the record from the machine and grabbed another from the box. It was one of the nameless barbershop quartet recordings. I hadn’t experimented with it but suspected that it didn’t matter.

The sounds of perfect harmony streamed from the phonograph for several moments before the telltale static began. The transforming.

“Sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol. La roca es la clave.”

“Holy shit,” Johnny Pete whispered.

I nodded. “Tell me about it.”

“Is this on every record?”

I nodded again. “Seems to be.”

“That’s some scary stuff.”

“Tell me about it.” It dawned on me that I sounded like a broken record and I had to laugh at the pun, in spite of the queasy fear that had settled back into my gut.

“I don’t think it’s too funny,” Johnny said.

I sobered up, shaking my head. “Nope. Let’s get out of here.”

It wasn’t until we were outside in the sun that I realized the Hessian hadn’t made an appearance.

“Johnny Pete…”

He looked at me expectantly. “Yeah?”

“Did you, ah, see anything in there?”

He frowned. “Like what?”

I shook my head. “Never mind.” Then: “I think I might be losing my mind.”

“Well if you are, we’re both going off the deep end.”

I laughed, but it was a forced laugh. As Johnny Pete had said, it wasn’t funny.

***

I returned to the barn after dinner that evening, swallowing my fear long enough to accomplish what I needed to do. I had a scrap of paper and pencil. I waited until The Message began and jotted down the phrases we didn’t understand.

Did the Hessian soldier appear? Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. I didn’t see him because I didn’t look. I focused my attention on the paper long enough to scribble the words that were spoken, then rushed from the barn and into the twilight, not stopping until I had reached our front door.

The following morning, Johnny Pete and I called on George Anders, the history teacher at the local high school. Though we were still in grade school, we were familiar with Mr. Anders.

“Johnny, Will,” Mr. Anders said when he answered the door. “What brings you boys out this way this morning?”

I looked at Johnny Pete and cleared my throat. We had drawn straws to see who would be the designated speaker. I lost.

“We, um, want to ask you about some things.”

“Certainly,” he said, stepping aside. “Come on in and have a glass of lemonade.”

Mr. Anders left the room and returned moments later with three drinking glasses on a tray. He set them on the table and returned the tray to the kitchen before taking a seat.

“So what can I do for you boys?”

I had pulled the scrap of paper from my pocket and laid it on the table. It contained my barely legible writing:

Sheol

La roca es la clave

Mr. Anders pulled his glasses, held around his neck by a chain, to his face. He studied the paper for a minute before dropping the glasses back to his chest.

“Two questions,” he said. “First, whaere in the world did you boys happen across these words and why are you so curious as to come walking out here on a summer morning when you could be fishing or picking blackberries? And, second, what makes you think I have the answers you seek?”

I looked at Johnny. We hadn’t thought to discuss how much we would reveal about how we had “happened across” the words I had scribbled on the paper.

“We, um, we just found them written on some papers we were reading,” I said. “You know, for school. We want to be prepared when vacation is over. And we came to you because we thought they might be historical.”

Mr. Anders laughed. “No offense, boys, but I highly doubt your story. Kids your age studying on summer break?” He shook his head, continuing to chuckle. “Nevertheless, you are at least partially correct. Sheol does have some historical connotations. Plenty, in fact. The trouble is that it is outside of my league. I suggest you talk to Rev. McGhee. As for the second line of scribbling, William, we’re going to have to work on your handwriting. I think it’s Spanish. But I’m not sure. I don’t speak Spanish. However, I have a friend who does. If you don’t mind me hanging onto the paper, I’ll run it by him.”

We nodded and stood to leave. Johnny pulled one of his cards from his pocket.

“Mr. Anders? Would you take a look at my card?”

The instructor took the card and lifted his glasses back to his eyes.

“Very nice, Johnny,” he said. “I don’t do much collecting anymore, but this is a good one. Quite rare, I believe.”

Johnny Pete nodded. “Yessir, it is. Could you take a look at the back of it?”

Mr. Anders flipped the card over. “What am I looking for?”

“Don’t you see it?”

He frowned and shook his head. “I see the back of a card. A very fine card. But nothing more.”

“Oh.” Johnny Pete glanced at me as he took the card back and slipped it into his pocket. “Thanks anyway,” he said.

Just before the card disappeared into his pocket, I saw enough of it to see the word Sheol scrawled across it.

“One last thing,” I said. “Were there any Hessian soldiers who fought in these parts?”

I saw Johnny Pete look at me in surprise but I ignored him.

Mr. Anders chuckled. “Not likely. This area was the frontier when the Revolutionary War was fought. There may have been a few minor skirmishes here, but that would have been the extent of it. We’ll get more into detail when you’re in my class in a couple of years, but the British did bring lots of Hessian soldiers to fight the colonists during the war.

“Hessians were Germans — Russians, too, but mostly Germans — who were hired by the British to aid in the fight,” he continued. “History didn’t write as much about these regiments as they did the Redcoats, but we do know that the Hessians were some of the fiercest fighters in the war. And the colonists resented them. Even moreso than the British, maybe.”

I nodded. “Thanks,” I said as we started to turn for the door.

“You know, Will,” Mr. Anders called after me, “there was a Hessian who settled down here after the war.”

I stopped in my tracks. “There was?”

“There sure was. The colonies offered land grants — as much as fifty acres — to any Hessian who would desert from the regiments. And some of them took the offer. Most of them returned home to Germany when the war was over, but there were plenty who stayed behind. About four thousand were spread out across the states and Canada.

“One of them was Jon Moerke, who settled down right here. As a matter of fact, I believe you live near his old homestead.”

If my stomach had dropped to my knees when Johnny Pete showed me his baseball cards the day before, it was at my feet as Mr. Anders spoke.

“Not the old Daugherty house?” I said.

Mr. Anders nodded. “Yes, that’s the one. It was named for Robert Daugherty, who built it. The Daugherties moved out of these parts less than a year after the house was built. It was a grand house for its time, but it’s falling down now, I understand.”

I tried to swallow, without much success. “So what happened to him?” I asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“Moerke? Well, as I said, there was a lot of resentment from the colonists when the Hessians aided the British. Some simply resented the British using foreign forces to fight their battles. But the fierce fighting and ruthless tactics the Hessians were known for certainly didn’t earn them any favors.

“Anyway,” he continued, “the Hessians who remained behind were okay, for the most part. Many of them went on to success in the new nation. But this was a frontier, remember, and folks here were more suspicious than folks in many other areas. You might say that they were a little more ruthless in their own way.”

He paused, collecting his thoughts.

“There was a murder in 1785. A crime of unspeakable nature. A child was found stabbed to death. She disappeared and her parents searched for her for three days before a dog, a stray mongrel, dug into a shallow grave behind what was at the time the town’s livery.”

“Moerke did it?”

Mr. Anders shrugged. “Nobody knows. Plenty of people had their doubts that the Hessian was involved. It seems that a vagrant moved into town a couple of weeks before the girl disappeared and was last seen at about the same time she was last seen alive. But lots of folks just didn’t trust Jon Moerke. It may be that some of them were even looking for an excuse to shed themselves and the town of him. In any event, it took less than twelve hours after the discovery of the poor girl’s body for a group of vigilantes to get together and drag Moerke from his home. He put up a valiant fight, maiming one and killing one with his sword before they managed to overpower him. They hanged him from an oak tree in the middle of town, then took him back to his plot and buried him. Legend has it that they beheaded him before they buried him, just to make good and sure that he was dead.”

I was speechless. It seemed to happen a lot that summer, that last summer of normalcy. The speechlessness, that is.

***

If Rev. McGhee was disappointed at having his sermon preparation interrupted, he didn’t show it. Instead, he ushered us in.

“What can I do for you, young William?” he asked.

“We just came from Mr. Anders — George Anders — and he said we should see you,” I said.

“Ah, yes, I know George well. If it is a matter of faith, he was right to send you fellas to me. But if it is a matter of the three Rs, I’m afraid I can’t help you much.”

I grinned, even though I was still feeling slightly squeamish from Mr. Anders’ history lesson about the Hessian, Jon Moerke. “We don’t really know what it’s about. But we’re trying to determine what a word means. He knew but seemed to think you might have a better idea.”

“Ah, so you boys are doing a little sleuthing, are you? Well, that’s good for you, keep the mind sharp over the summer break. Maybe I can help you. What is it?”

“Sheol.”

The reverend smiled. “Ah, yes. Every boy — and girl — reaches a point when they start to wonder about the hereafter and the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. Although…” he paused with a frown. “I don’t remember the last time a young man referred to it as Sheol.”

I glanced at Johnny. His stoic expression did not reveal whatever he was thinking.

“So Sheol means hell?” I asked.

Rev. McGhee nodded. “More or less. It actually means different things to different religions, but it almost always comes back to hell or a purgatory in some way.”

“I see.”

Rev. McGhee looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. “Where did you boys hear this term, anyway?”

It seemed to be the million dollar question. I glanced at Johnny again. He shrugged.

“We, um, picked it up from some reading we were doing,” I said.

It was harder to lie to a minister than to a school teacher. I tried to tell myself it was only a white lie. Hadn’t we, after all, read the backs of Johnny Pete’s baseball cards? All lies are equal in the eyes of the Lord. The thought brushed through my mind. I wasn’t sure where I had picked it up, but I suspected it was a saying of one of my grade school teachers. White lies, like requesting a bathroom break so one could slip by Sally Parker’s class for a quick glance at the envy of every fourth grade boy, for example, simply weren’t permitted at the Hillsdale School.

“I see,” Rev. McGhee said. “Well, would you like the abridged version or the dollar and a quarter version?”

I shrugged. “We don’t want to take up your time.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “If a pastor can’t instruct a parishioner on God’s word, he needs to give up the ministry and become a lumberjack or something. Wouldn’t you say?”

I would say. Maybe. Actually, I wasn’t altogether sure. So I did the safe thing: I shrugged again.

“Exactly!” Rev. McGhee said. “Besides, this will give me a rare occasion to put my days in New York City’s finest theology school to work. So let’s go with the full version. And you’ll even get to keep your dollar and quarter. Maybe you’ll see fit to tithe it on Sunday,” he added with a laugh.

“Now then,” he said. “Where do we start? Sheol is an old Hebrew word. Its literal meaning is a grave. Or pit.”

I already didn’t like where the explanation was headed.

“Now, the Jews believe that when a person dies, his soul winds up in Sheol. Think of it as a kind of purgatory. There, the soul will be purified if the person was good, or punished if he was bad. After twelve months, the souls of the saints move on to the Jewish version of heaven, while the souls of the wicked are destroyed.”

He looked at me. I nodded because I figured it was expected.

“Us Christians, of course, believe that the souls of the good and the damned — the saved and the unsaved, in our theology — are immediately separated upon death. But, in Old Testament times, there was the belief that the dead were all assembled in an underworld very similar to the Jewish version of Sheol. There they awaited eternal damnation or a heavenly rescue.” He laughed as if he had just made a joke. “You ever hear the expression, ‘the bosom of Abraham?’”

I nodded. Truthfully, I hadn’t. I figured I had probably been daydreaming of slipping off to the creek with my fishing pole whenever that particular sermon was preached. I made a mental note to pay better attention at future services.

“In the New Testament,” Rev. McGhee continued, “Sheol was translated as Hades. Which is basically another word for hell.”

He removed his glasses and spread his hands as if to signify that he was finished. “So, I suppose that as far as we’re concerned, Sheol is more or less hell.”

“But that’s not a literal interpretation?”

He shrugged. “I guess not. It could mean anything from a simple grave to an underworld where the dead gather to await hell. It all depends on what culture you’re from and what religion you subscribe to. In fact, the ancient Hebrews believed that when a body died the soul moved on, but they did not believe in eternal punishment, eternal reward or posthumous judgment.”

He chuckled again as if he had made a joke. I supposed it was his usage of the word posthumous but I wasn’t sure, so I decided it would be wise to not laugh along with him.

“So, if you were an ancient Hebrew,” he continued, “you might believe that the soul forever lived in a nothingness that is Sheol. Which, if you ask me, would be quite boring. What’s the point of eternal life if there’s nothing to look forward to and nothing to fear?”

“I guess not,” I said. What I was really thinking was that I’d like to be stretched out on the hay in the barn, listening to the phonographic records. The urge had been growing stronger since we had stepped into the reverend’s office. In fact, it was becoming downright overpowering.

***

Johnny Pete and I didn’t speak after leaving Rev. McGhee’s office. We went our separate ways without another word. I suddenly couldn’t wait to get back to my records. I made it as far as the end of the church yard before breaking into a run. I didn’t take time to look back, but knowing what I know now, I would’ve probably seen Johnny Pete running the opposite direction, towards his own home…towards his baseball cards.

Somewhere in my mind, I was truly afraid of what I knew would happen when the record player started. And yet I couldn’t resist. It was at that moment that I understood how a hopelessly addicted drunkard must feel.

***

The Hessian was back.

I broke into a cold sweat when he appeared in the corner. As before, he seemed to magically fade in from the darkness. I intended to sit still this time. He slowly approached, reaching out his hands in front of him. Reaching for me. I tried to cry out but couldn’t. Just before he reached me, I jumped to my feet and broke for the door.

I dreamed again that night. Of the God-awful Hessian, of course. Of Jon Moerke, who had long since been hanged and should have been in hell where he belonged.

Even though I couldn’t be sure it was Moerke, I was confident that the Hessian haunting our barn and my dreams was the soldier that Mr. Anders had spoken of. I couldn’t have been blamed if I had doubted that my Hessian was Jon Moerke. Hadn’t Mr. Anders said he had been beheaded? The Hessian in our barn had his head very much intact. But it was Moerke. I was sure of it. Call it intuition.

Something had awoken him. Something had pulled him from his eternal sleep in Sheol.

And didn’t I know, even without thinking about it? Of course I did. It was that damned phonograph.

***

The next three days were the same. I swore that I wouldn’t return to the barn, only to have something beyond my control pull me into the dark shadows where the inviting record player waited to be played. I would play the records until the message from beyond the grave began to pour out of them. And I would stumble outside, sometimes scared so badly that I tossed my cookies, just as I had that first time.

The Hessian found a place in my dreams every night, each time coming closer to the bed where I lay sleeping. Can you see yourself in your dreams? Some say no, but the answer is yes. In my dreams, I saw myself as the Hessian saw me, each night closer than the night before.

On the third night, I dreamed that the Hessian stood at the edge of my bed, leaning over until his face was only inches from mine. I felt his breath on my cheek and smelled rot and decay. He reached a hand out to touch my face, to pull my eyelid up. It was as if he wanted to force me to see. His touch was cold and terrible. I wanted to cry out but didn’t dare.

“Release is freedom,” he whispered. And then he was gone.

I awoke at daybreak. My bed sheets were soaked, as they sometimes were when I was sick and my fever broke in the night. It had been the worst of the dreams, by far. And they were dreams, I told myself. Because you couldn’t feel the touch of a ghost. You couldn’t smell it. And you darned sure couldn’t sense its breath on your face.

I swung my feet out of bed and then felt my bowels turn to water. Because I saw something I wanted to ignore; something I wanted to ignore as much as I had wanted to ignore the scar around the Hessian’s neck when he had leaned over me in my dream.

Across the floor, leading from the door to the edge of my bed, were muddy boot prints.

***

Momma had left a note in the kitchen saying she was walking to the store. Which meant I had the place to myself. Good. Because I had business to take care of. Business that didn’t need to be interrupted. I was going to destroy the record player.

I would have carried it back to the Daugherty root cellar, but I had visions of Jon Moerke hiding in the shadows, waiting to grab me and carry me off to his version of Sheol — whichever version that happened to be.

Except I didn’t really think the Hessian hung out — if I’m going to author my own story I think I should be allowed a pun now and again — in the old Daugherty house whenever he wasn’t being summoned above ground by the phonograph. Nope. I thought he was hanging out somewhere else entirely. Like wherever the vigilantes had buried him in the latter part of the 18^th Century.

***

When Momma returned home from the store, she had a message from Mr. Anders. I hadn’t destroyed the record player, but it wasn’t from a lack of trying. I had marched to the barn, fully intent on smashing the old thing into a thousand or more pieces. But the second I walked through the door and into the darkness, my throat began to tighten and I felt vomit rising from my stomach.

So there it was: the phonograph wouldn’t allow itself to be destroyed. I should have expected as much.

“Hey sleepyhead,” Momma said when she walked in the front door carrying a sack of groceries.

I didn’t answer. I was afraid she would realize how pale I was and remind herself that I needed to see the doctor.

“I saw Mr. Anders down at the store,” she said. I still didn’t reply, but she had my undivided attention.

“He said to tell you that your message means, ‘The rock holds the key.’ It didn’t make any sense to me, but I didn’t pry. I figured it was none of my business.”

So that was it. La roca es la clave. The rock holds the key.”

But what did it mean?

And then I knew.

I ran out the door and didn’t stop until I reached Mr. Anders’ home. I banged at the door until he answered it. His smile turned to a frown when he realized that I was out of breath and gasping for air.

“Settle down, son,” he said. “C’mon over here and rest.” He led me to a swing at the edge of the porch. I eventually got my breathing under control. When my heart no longer felt that it was going to pound through my ribcage and out onto the floor, I spoke.

“The Hessian. Jon Moerke.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know where he was buried?”

“I do. He was buried about four hundred yards from his home, according to records. Near Beaver Branch. It was part of the land that was deed to him after the war. The same property the Daugherty house sits on.”

“Was he buried beneath a rock?”

A small smile played at the corners of Mr. Anders’ lips. “It sounds like you already have the answers and don’t need me.”

“Is it true?”

He nodded. “It is. I told you that the vigilantes removed his head to make sure he was dead. They also rolled a large stone over his grave to make sure he couldn’t crawl out. That’s how frightened they were. Some of their antics are reminiscent of the tactics used to dispose of the condemned’s bodies at the Salem Witch Trials.”

“Why were they so afraid he would get out?”

Mr. Anders shrugged. “Who knows. There was a certain aura associated with the Hessians in the Revolution. Mostly it was an irrational fear on the part of the colonists. There was a letter that Lawson Handley — one of the settlers involved in Jon Moerke’s execution — wrote to Wallace Henson, another of the vigilantes, just before his death. I found the letter in the town library some years back. Handley wrote to remind Henson that it was imperative that they not publicly discuss Moerke’s death. Hand he also mentioned that they should’ve buried Moerke’s head separately from the rest of his body, as extra insurance to make sure he could never again walk among the living.”

And I knew what I had to do.

***

Johnny Pete was sitting on the steps when I walked up to his house. I wasn’t surprised to see his baseball cards spread out in front of him.

He didn’t turn to look at me. Instead he spoke with a calmness that sent chills up my spine, and still does to this very day.

“I saw him.”

“Saw who?” I asked. But of course I already knew.

“Your Hessian soldier.”

“Where?”

He continued to flip through the cards, as if he were entranced.

I grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. “Johnny Pete!”

“What?” He glanced up at me, a look of confusion in his eyes. Then he shook his head and the confusion was gone. “I forgot,” he said. “What were we talking about?”

“The Hessian…Jon Moerke.”

“Oh, yeah.” There was more excitement in Johnny’s voice this time. “I was looking at my cards last night. I had carried them down there to that tree near the bottom of the yard. It was almost dark. I looked up and saw him standing in the forest, watching me.”

“And?”

“And what do you think? I grabbed my cards and ran like my tail was on fire and my ass was catching.”

“Johnny, you have to burn the cards.”

A defensive look immediately came over Johnny’s face. “No way,” he said.

“You have to.” It wasn’t a convincing argument but it wa all I could think of at the moment.

“If you came down here just to try to get me to destroy my cards, you can go ahead and leave,” he said, anger flashing in his eyes.

“Johnny, listen. The Hessian soldier has been awoken. He was awoken because we found the secret hiding place in the old Daugherty house.”

“But why would a phonograph and some old cards wake him up? Those things weren’t even invented in the 1780s when he was killed.”

“How should I know? But I think it’s the phonograph that summons him from the grave…from wherever he calls Sheol. I think that’s why I have seen him many more times than you. And the more he comes out, the more powerful he gets. Last night he touched my face while I slept. He’s venturing further from the grave, don’t you see?”

The sun was starting to set and shadows were lengthening across the yard. I knew I should be headed home, but I hadn’t yet convinced Johnny of my plan.

“We woke him up, so it’s up to us to put him back to sleep,” I said.

“How do you propose we do that?”

I shook my head. “I tried to destroy the phonograph today. But I couldn’t even get to the barn without getting sick. It was as if that old record player could read my—”

“Will, look!” Johnny Pete’s voice had fallen to a whisper. His eyes were wide with fright as he looked over my shoulder. I didn’t want to look. I knew even without turning around what he was looking at. But I looked anyway. And wished I hadn’t. It was even worse than I had expected.

The Hessian stood at the edge of the woods. He had something slung over his shoulder. At first I couldn’t make it out. And then I saw. Realization struck me at the same time as it struck Johnny. A sob of fear caught in his throat.

“Oh my God oh my God,” he said. “Is that what I…” His voice trailed off but I knew what he was thinking.

I nodded but didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. We both knew who the child was who was slung over the Hessian’s shoulder. Or rather, who the child had been in 1785.

As he slowly walked out of the woods, he was close enough for us to see a roach crawl out of the sleeve of the girl’s petticoat and scurry down her arm and onto the Hessian’s neck.

I realized Johnny was screaming before I realized that I was screaming, too. And then we were both running. We ran until we were inside the house. Johnny slammed the door and peaked through a crack.

“He’s gone,” he said. And only then did we both breathe a sigh of relief.

Johnny looked at me with tears in his eyes and I knew I had tears in my own. And we both knew: the vigilantes of historic Hillsdale hadn’t had the blood of an innocent man on their hands, after all. The vagrant who had suddenly shown up in town and disappeared just as quickly wasn’t a murderer, after all. And, sometimes, fear isn’t as irrational as it seems.

Johnny Pete and I knew the truth because we had stumbled into the root cellar of a house we’d had no business going into to start with. We knew the truth, but I would trade my knowledge for ignorance in a heartbeat if we could return the phonograph and the cards and pretend that we had never seen them.

But what’s done can’t be undone. That was one of Rev. McGhee’s sayings. We both realized that we had set something in motion. Something bigger than either of us. Something that had to be stopped. And it would be up to us to do it.

I told Johnny to stop by my house the next day. We had to talk. We had to plan.

And then I was out the door and facing a walk home — though it would be more of a flat-out run than a walk this particular night — in the dark with nothing more than my fears to accompany me.

***

If I hadn’t been running for what I thought might very well be my life, it would’ve dawned on me that the Hessian had never made an appearance when he wasn’t summoned by the phonograph. And since I had been at Johnny Pete’s house, I obviously hadn’t played the phonograph to summon him.

Would I have figured out before reaching home that Pap had finally stumbled into the barn and discovered the record player? Probably, because I must have known all along that it was only a matter of time.

Pap and Momma were both waiting on me when I burst through the door. Missing dinner and worrying them both that I might be lying in the woods somewhere with a broken leg would earn me a sure switching.

Pap folded his arms and looked at me with an accusatory frown on his face when I walked through the door. I stopped, frozen in my steps. But it wasn’t Pap’s expression that did it. I was looking beyond him, to the small table at the bottom of the staircase. The phonograph was sitting on it.

It was Momma who finally broke the silence. “Where have you been, young man? And do you realize that you’ve caused your father and I to be nearly sick with worry?”

Pap raised his hand. “We’ll address that in due time,” he said. “You’ll go to bed without supper tonight and we’ll take up the matter of your punishment tomorrow.”

I nodded, knowing I would get off light if we weren’t going to talk punishment until the following day.

“Right now,” Pap continued, “I want to know about this contraption I found in our barn.”

I was quiet for a moment. Pap looked at me and raised his brow in question. “Well?”

“It’s, um, a phonograph,” I said. “You know, like in the catalogs.”

“Yes, I’m well aware of what it is. And it works, too.” A small smile appeared on Pap’s face. “I played one of the records on it before I carried it in from the barn. The moisture will ruin it, you know. What I want to know is where you got it?”

I was in enough trouble as it was. Telling Pap the truth — that I had disobeyed his orders by going into the Daugherty house and taking something that didn’t belong to me — would only make matters worse. So I lied.

“I borrowed it from Johnny Pete,” I said.

“That so?” Pap frowned. “I certainly didn’t know that Mr. Peters was making enough money to afford one of these.”

I shrugged. “I dunno where he got it. But I asked Johnny to let me borrow it for a few days and he said I could.”

Lying to my folks made me uncomfortable. If I had known it would be the last time I would speak to Pap, I would have risked a hundred licks with a hickory switch to tell the truth.

“Well, off to bed with you, then,” Pap said.

I trudged over to the steps and began making my way towards the upstairs bedroom. Pap was rummaging through the box of records.

“Pap?” I said.

He stopped and looked up at me.

“Please don’t play that thing tonight.”

He looked at me for a moment, then smiled. “Don’t be silly. It isn’t every day that we have a Gramaphone in our home. I can’t think of a single reason not to play it.”

Short of spilling out the truth, which not only would have been disbelieved but which would have probably resulted in me being grounded until school resumed and going to bed without dinner for many nights on end, I knew I was fighting a losing battle. So I trudged off to bed. But I didn’t sleep. I kept waiting for the haunting sounds of the phonograph to waft up the stairs. And for the arrival of a long dead German soldier. Neither happened. But even after my parents had long since retired for the evening, I avoided sleep. Every time I began to nod off, I remembered the muddy footprints and was jerked back awake.

So I spent the last night I would ever spend in my bedroom sitting against the wall and making plans. Plans for a trip.

Destination? Sheol.

***

Even though I had steeled my resolve that sleepless night, I probably would have still backed out at the last moment if it hadn’t been for the dead cows.

Sheriff Castleton stopped by our house as I was finishing my boiled eggs the following morning.

“Ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat at my mother when she opened the door.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Won’t you have a cup of coffee?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, pushing into the kitchen. “But I might sit down for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

He pulled out a chair far enough to fit his not inconsiderable belly behind the table. The chair creaked in protest as he sat down.

“Hey there, boy,” he said, as if he had noticed me for the first time.

I nodded at him. The egg was sticking to my throat. I was suddenly convinced that he was going to ask about a shadowy figure stealing through the night with a dead child slung over his shoulder.

“You folks had any issue with livestock going missing?” he asked.

Momma shook her head. “We only have a couple of chickens and Rutherford, our work horse.”

Sheriff Castleton nodded.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

He looked at me, then turned back to my mother. “Ol’ man Critchley, down on the creek, had four cows turn up dead last night. He thought it was maybe a panther come down out of the mountains, but these weren’t animal wounds. It looked like big stab wounds. And there were footprints all around the body. Human footprints, I mean.

“Come to find out,” he continued, “Warren Rawlins had two horses killed the night before.”

Momma shook her head. “That’s terrible. Who would do such a thing?”

The sheriff shook his head, picking up a biscuit left over from supper the previous evening and tearing it into two pieces. “No idea,” he said after he had taken a bite. “Ol’ man Critchley says he saw a soldier sneaking around his place after dark last night.”

Momma gasped. “A soldier?”

Castleton nodded. “But I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that. Critchley always was reckless with the truth. I mean, honestly, a soldier? Where the hell — ‘scuse me, ma’am — where in the world would a soldier have come from?”

I could’ve told him. Where the hell, indeed. But I was suddenly sick. I looked at the final egg on my plate and wished I hadn’t eaten the first two. They felt as if they were battling to see which would win the right to come back up first.

But it was Castleton’s final revelation that sent me running to the back porch to lose my breakfast.

“I hope you catch whoever is responsible, Sheriff,” Momma had said.

Castleton had nodded and sighed around the last of his biscuit. “I hope so, too, ma’am. We’re just glad that it’s only animals. For now. Mrs. Richardson up on Gobbler’s Knob says her husband hasn’t shown up in two days. Course, ol’ Charlie likes to lay out in the woods and get a good drunk on now and again, so we’re thinking he’s probably just sleeping off his whiskey and will turn up in the next day or so like the no-account drunkard he is.”

That was when I had bolted for the door. I was sick a lot in those days, it seemed.

***

By the time Johnny Pete showed up at the house an hour after the sheriff had left, I was beginning to feel a little less green around the gills.

Johnny listened with growing amazement as I told him everything the sheriff had said.

“Oh my God,” he finally said, looking as though he could be sick himself. “What have we done?”

“We’ve awoken something that should have never been awoken,” I said. “And we have to stop it.”

“What are we gonna do?”

I shook my head. “Not we. Me. The way I see it, I was the one who found the cellar in the Daugherty house. I was the one who talked you into going inside with me. I was the one who played the phonograph and woke up the Hessian. If he really is a murderer, this could be dangerous. This is my fault, so I’m not letting you go with me.”

“But—”

“No buts,” I said. “Besides, someone has to stay here and make sure nobody plays that doggone phonograph and wakes him up while I’m in there.”

“Are you sure he only wakes up when the recordings are played?”

I nodded. “During the daytime, anyway. At night, I’m not so sure. I’m almost positive he was in my bedroom two nights ago and nobody played the phonograph then. I’m thinking now that he’s awake maybe he is strong enough to come out at night even if he isn’t summoned. So I have to be in there and out before night falls.”

“Okay,” Johnny said. “But I don’t like it. What happens if you run into him?”

I shrugged. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”

“So where is he?”

I pointed towards the thick forest that stretched out beyond the Daugherty house. “He was buried in there somewhere. Beneath a large rock.”

“What happens when you find his grave?”

“Maybe I’m crazy, but I have a hunch that if his head is removed from his body, that’ll be the last we hear from him. Like maybe even spirits need their eyes to guide them or something.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’m not. But Mr. Anders found a letter written by one of the men who helped hang him and he wrote in the letter that he wished they had buried Moerke without his head, since they had beheaded him anyway. I don’t know what it was, but those people knew something. That’s why they took the extra precaution of decapitating him and placing a large rock on his grave. I have a feeling they knew much more than history recorded.”

Johnny Pete nodded. “So when do you go?”

“Right now,” I said. I pulled out a large knife that I had taken from my father’s bedroom after the sheriff had left. I stuck the knife in my belt. “You stand watch. I’ll be back in a few hours at the most.”

I stood to leave.

“Will?”

I turned back.

“Be careful.”

I wasn’t sure why I did it, but I stuck out my hand. Johnny ignored it and embraced me in an awkward hug. It was only then that I realized how scared he was. How scared we both were.

***

The forest was even thicker and darker than I had imagined it would be. Within two hundred yards of the Daugherty house, the undergrowth choked off the outside world and the thick canopy overhead sealed off the sky.

I realized I had never stepped foot into these woods before. Which was strange, but I had never had cause to enter them. I shrugged off the sense of foreboding that was creeping around the edges of my mind. I didn’t need any more distractions, that was for sure.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, only that Beaver Branch would be at the lowest point, so it made sense to walk downhill. And, of course, a large rock would mark the spot.

The forest continued to grow thicker and thicker as I progressed further down the hill. It wasn’t until I heard the trickle of water, a trickle that I was sure must be coming from Beaver Branch, that I realized the only sound I had been hearing was that of my footsteps. And the sound of my heart beating in my chest, of course. There were no birds. No insects. None of the typical forest sounds.

That seemed a little odd to me, but I didn’t have time to stop and ponder why the forest was apparently deserted.

I pressed on, and finally found the source of the water. It was indeed Beaver Branch, though I figured it a safe assumption that there would be no beavers in these deserted woods.

Rhododendron practically swallowed the branch and made walking along its banks nearly impossible. I resorted to walking down the center of the branch, water seeping into my shoes and soaking my socks.

I found myself wishing I could see the sun, so I could judge just how much time I had left until dusk. But it was impossible with the thick canopy crowding out the sky. At one point I heard several rumbles of thunder and the woods temporarily darkened even more, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. But the darkness passed just as quickly as it had set in.

I hadn’t gone much further when I began to smell a sickening odor. It was an odor of decay, so thick it seemed to cling to my nostrils. It was a smell I recognized: it was the smell of the Hessian soldier the night he had leaned over my bed.

Close. The grave had to be close by. I pushed through the undergrowth, limbs brushing against my face and crowding around my ankles as if they were green hands attempting to grab my legs and prevent me from going further.

And then I saw it. On the lip of a small hill above the stream, a large rock rose above the surrounding landscape.

When I reached the grave, I realized the rock wasn’t a rock at all, but a boulder. And there was no way I would be able to move it by myself. I wondered how many people it had taken to move the rock onto the grave.

I cursed silently. Could Johnny Pete and I move the rock together? That seemed to be the only option. Which meant leaving the forest and coming back another day.

The last thing I wanted to do was to leave the woods with my business here unfinished. I looked around for a stick to use as a pry bar, hoping to get some leverage under the rock. I soon figured out that my efforts were futile. But not soon enough. I had been concentrating so hard on trying to budge the rock that I didn’t realize the woods darkening around me.

My attention was jerked away from the rock when the chanting began. It was chanting that seemed to come from everywhere, and yet seemed to come from nowhere. A host of half-whispered, gravely voices. “Sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol freedom is release release is freedom sheol sheol sheol sheol sheol.”

Dropping the limb I held in my hand, I began running through the forest, hardly noticing the limbs that slapped my face and tore at my shirt.

I couldn’t remember exactly where I had come over the hill, but picked a spot that seemed to be a little clearer than the surrounding forest and bolted up the slope. I had made it almost to the top when I stumbled over an object beneath my feet and hit the ground with a grunt.

I looked down and discovered that I had tripped over a boot. The boot was attached to a pant leg.

The last thing I wanted to do was travel my gaze from the jean-clad leg to the head. But I knew who it was even without looking. Charlie Richardson had drank his last bottle of whiskey, after all.

I stifled an urge to yell and scrambled to my feet, running up the hill and towards the edge of the forest, which I knew had to appear before me sooner or later.

The chanting grew fainter and the sky overhead grew lighter as I neared the edge of the rest, finally pushing through the last of the grabbing, scratching tree limbs to see the old Daugherty house.

Except the old Daugherty house wasn’t there. Instead, the field where it had set was empty.

“What the heck?” I said to myself. Then, realizing darkness was nearly upon me, I began to run again. I knew Johnny Pete would be waiting on me from a vantage point down the road from my house, where he could see our place without stepping foot on the property.

I hit the road, listening to the sound of my footfall as I ran for what we had referred to as children as “The Lookout.” Once or twice I imagined that I could hear footsteps behind me, but chalked it up to imagination.

Then I rounded a turn in the road and crashed into a man.

***

“Whoa, kid,” the man said as I picked myself up from the ground, wincing at the spots where the rock had cut into my skin when I fell. “Where ya headed in such a hurr—”

His voice cut off sharply as I stood up. I was still brushing myself off and not paying particularly close attention to him. I had realized almost immediately that it wasn’t a Hessian soldier I had crashed into. The Hessian wouldn’t be holding hands with a woman.

“Holy shit!” the man said. “Stay away f rom us! I mean it, Will, don’t come any closer!”

The man was backing up, pulling the woman with him. I stopped brushing off my shirt and looked at him, wondering how he knew my name and why I seemed to give him the willies.

He was still backing away, a look of fear on his face. The woman — only she wasn’t really a woman; she looked to be about eighteen, about the same age as her boyfriend — was looking at him as if he had lost his mind, then looking back at me with a puzzled look on her face.

I realized the man looked vaguely familiar. I squinted my eyes for a better look in the dying daylight.

And then I realized who I was looking at.

No, no, no, no. It couldn’t be. But it was.

“Johnny Pete?”

“Stay away from me, damn you!” he said, his voice quivering.

I stepped towards him, feeling in a daze. What was happening?

The man who looked like Johnny pulled a knife from his back pocket, waving it in my direction. “I mean it, Will, not another step.” I saw a tear slip down his face. I realized that I was starting to cry, too, and I had no idea why. I only realized that something was wrong…something was bad wrong, and I had no idea how or why.

“Stay away from me,” Johnny was saying. “Go back to the grave where you came from.”

“Johnny, it’s me,” I said. “Look…” I kicked my foot into the ground, sending pebbles flying. “Could I do that if I was back from the dead?” I slapped myself in the face, the crack of my hand seemingly as loud as a gunshot in the gathering twilight. “Could I slap myself if I were dead?”

Johnny didn’t put the knife away, but he did lower it to his side. The girl at his arm looked at him with a confused expression plastered across her face.

“John? What in the world is going on here?”

“Shelly…” Johnny paused for a moment, then swallowed. “You remember me talking about my friend Will who died in the woods? This is Will.”

“Oh my God,” she said, quietly. The tone of her voice suggested that she didn’t quite believe Johnny Pete but didn’t quite disbelieve him, either.

“Will, I’m taking Shelly home,” Johnny said. “I’m not turning my back on you. If you try to follow me, I’ll kill you. Again. If it’s really you, be here tomorrow after sunrise, so I can see you in the daylight.”

I nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Pulling Shelly with him, Johnny slowly backed down the road.

“Will?” he called.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t go home tonight. Your mother’s heart is not well. Spare her the shock.”

And then they were swallowed up by darkness. Confused, scared, and feeling more alone than I had ever felt before, I crept back down the road to my house. Sneaking into the barn, I curled up in the hay and slept. The Hessian did not visit my dreams.

***

A rooster’s crow woke me up. I jumped to my feet quick enough to make him fly from his roost in the rafters over my head.

The sun was already coming up. I exited the barn through its rear door and headed to The Lookout.

Johnny Pete — or the man who looked like Johnny — was already there.

He stood up quickly when he saw me coming. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was sickly pale.

“Oh my God,” he said. “It really is you.”

“Johnny?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“What in the heck is going on here?”

“You’re back from the dead, Willie,” he said, still looking at me cautiously.

“Why do you keep saying that?” I yelled. “I went into the woods yesterday to look for the Hessian’s grave. I came back last night and you’ve changed and you’re going on about me being dead. What in the hell is going on here!?”

Johnny looked at me for a moment without saying anything. Then he slowly shook his head.

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” I cried.

“Will…you went into the woods to look for the Hessian’s grave five years ago.”

I shook my head. “That’s crazy. I went into the woods yesterday and it was getting dark so I came back out for help.”

He shook his head again. “You never came back. When you hadn’t shown up by dark, we got up a search party. But we were never able to make it further than a couple hundred yards into the woods. Folks started passing out. Throwing up, having seizures, the whole works. We tried again for several days, but it was the same every time. One by one, the volunteers started leaving. Until it was just the sheriff and your father.”

Johnny paused for a moment. “It was as if the woods didn’t want to let us in,” he said. “Everyone decided the woods were possessed.”

He laughed. “Heck, we could’ve told ‘em that, couldn’t we, Willie?” Then he sobered up. “Cripes, I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking to a dead boy. If I hadn’t seen the Hessian all those times, I would think I was crazy right now. Heck, maybe I am.”

“Damnit Johnny!” I screamed. It dawned on me that I had never used that word before in my life. “Stopped talking about me like I died!”

Johnny stood up. “Look at yourself, Will!” he yelled back. “What do you want me to think? You disappear for five years and then suddenly show back up and you expect me to believe you’re still alive?”

I was crying. “It was one day.”

Johnny shook his head. Then, calming down, he resumed his story as if he hadn’t stopped. “Your father continued to go back every single day for three months. That’s what you gotta remember, Will. He never gave up until the end. He was convinced that he could find a way in. Find a way in and give you a decent burial, if nothing else.”

I looked at Johnny cautiously. “What do you mean, ‘the end?’”

“You don’t know?” Johnny shook his head. “Cripes, I guess you wouldn’t.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Will. Your dad died. The shock was more than he could bear.”

“No. No. No way. That can’t be. I saw him just yesterday.”

Johnny shook his head sadly. “I don’t know if I’m looking at a ghost or what, Will. I don’t know what happened in those woods. But your yesterday was five years ago.”

“That’s impossible,” I said. But already resignation was beginning to escape from my mind, where it had taken up residence, and creeping into my voice.

Johnny sighed. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”

“I followed the woods to the branch, followed the branch to the Hessian’s grave. I looked for something to pry the boulder off and kept trying until it started to get dark. The chanting started and I made a run for it. I found Charlie Richardson’s body, Johnny. He’s dead.”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah. They assumed as much when he never came back.”

“I stumbled over the body and hit the ground. Then I got up and made it to the edge of the woods.”

We were both silent for a moment.

“Oh dear God,” I groaned. “Has it really been five years?”

Johnny nodded. “Look at me, Will. Do I look thirteen to you?”

And that was when the realization finally took hold. Johnny was telling the truth. It was impossible, but he was telling the truth.

I cried. I sobbed until I was cried out. At some point, Johnny moved over nad put his arm around me to comfort me.

We sat there beneath the old white pine in silence for a while.

“Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought when I tripped over Charlie’s body,” I said. “I’ve heard of folks getting dementia as a result of an injury. Maybe I hit my head hard enough to forget who I was and wandered around in the woods for five years.”

Johnny shook his head sadly. “Afraid not, Will. Look at yourself.”

I had no way of looking at myself, but I knew what he was saying. I was thirteen. Of course I was. I had gone into the woods only a day earlier. But in that same time, Johnny had aged five years. We were once the same age, but in the span of a few hours, he had become an adult while I had remained a kid.

We were silent for a while longer.

“There’s only one explantion,” Johnny said. “Time moves much faster in there.”

I scoffed. “That’s impossible.”

“Is it? As impossible as a dead Hessian soldier walking around the neighborhood?”

I was silent. There are some things that can’t be argued.

“There’s something wrong with those woods,” I said. “I should’ve realized it when I went in. There are no animals or bugs of any kind. No sign of life at all except the trees and the plants.”

“Eighteen people have died,” Johnny said quietly.

“Eighteen?”

“Well, nineteen counting you, since they think you’re dead. The sheriff is beside himself. They think they have a madman on the loose. The big city papers are beginning to sniff around, looking for stories about serial killers. Folks have been afraid to go out after dark for five years now. And just about everyone has lost some livestock. Horses, cows, sheep. It doesn’t matter. They just turn up dead.”

He paused and shook his head. “I tried to convince the sheriff at one time that what is killing folks isn’t a madman at all but something that isn’t of this world. He didn’t believe me. They all know now that you were on a mission to stop a spirit when you disappeared but they’re convinced it was a crazy kids’ game.”

“So nobody else has seen the Hessian?”

He shook his head. “Just me. I still see him from time to time. A few other people have claimed to have seen a soldier, but they usually die within a few days. Natural causes.”

“So me and you and the terminally ill can see him. But no one else?”

He nodded. “That seems to be the size of it. I built a large fire and threw the baseball cards and phonograph into it, so there’s no hope of anyone else getting their hands on them. You should’ve seen the hellacious storm that blew up after that. It stormed for three straight days. They called it one of the biggest floods this area has ever experienced.”

I remembered hearing the thunder as I pushed through the undergrowth.

“Okay,” I said, quietly. “It’s time to end it.”

Johnny nodded.

I stood up. Johnny stood, too. He embraced me in an awkward hug. Just as he had the day before…the day that was the equivalent of five years.

I told him to be safe and walked off into the woods without looking back. I stopped at Pap’s barn for a large crowbar and then headed into the woods again.

***

Down the hill. Along the branch. The thickening woods. The smell. The boulder. It was much easier to find the grave the second time around.

Guess it only took two years this time, I thought and felt an insane urge to laugh.

I stuck the crowbar beneath the boulder and pushed. It budged, but just barely. Still, it was enough to renew my hope.

I spent the next several hours trying to move the builder before finally giving up and leaning against the rock. The tears started again and I was disgusted at myself for crying.

I hardly noticed when the chanting started; a haunted chant that seemed to pour out of every rock and tree around me. It was time to leave the woods.

Forget it, I thought. I deserved whatever fate had in store for me.

The Hessian emerged as darkness set in. He appeared from behind the rock. As he passed me at a half-run, he looked at me long enough to grin. “Release is freedom,” he said in a gravelly half-whisper. And then he was gone.

There were others as well. Things that aren’t of this world. I slept fitfully that night, my back leaned against the boulder that served as the Hessian’s tombstone. It seemed that every time I awoke I saw something that should’ve put fear in any grown man’s heart. Some walked on two legs. Some on four. Some crawled. Some slithered. Some seemed to glide without touching the ground at all. The woods were silent except for an occasional scream or squeal that was otherworldly. Strangely, I was unafraid.

I awoke with the rising sun the following morning. The Hessian had doubtfully returned before the dawn broke. He had returned as I lay sleeping by his place of eternal sleep. Why hadn’t he killed me? Maybe Johnny had been right; maybe I was already dead. Or maybe he couldn’t hurt me as long as I was on his turf. I hoped the same wasn’t true for him, because I intended to re-kill the bastard.

The thought was enough to entice me to pick up my crowbar and tackle the boulder with renewed effort.

It was no use. The day was nearly spent when I finally gave up, leaning wearily against the rock.

La roca es la clave, I thought. “The rock is the key.”

I crawled around the boulder and began digging through the leaves and dirt at its base on the downhill side. My finger soon brushed against a hard surface. I pulled away more dirt and exposed the top of a rock.

It took another couple of hours before the rock was completely unearthed. It was wedged against the bottom of the boulder.

“Of course,” I said to myself. “The rock is the key. They scotched it.”

A little more effort and I had pulled the half-buried rock from the ground. Grabbing my crowbar, I pulled myself back around to the rock’s high side. Getting a good bite on the crowbar, I put all of my weight into the handle. The boulder moved, first one inch, then two, then three. Then it broke free. And I was staring face-to-face at a Hessian soldier.

He was different in this state, of course. In his grave, he was nothing. Nothing but bones in his blue coat. The skull was separated from the body. It was true: he had been beheaded.

And then I realized that the chanting was filtering out of the rocks and trees around me.

“Oh, no!” I thought. How long had it been going on? Two minutes? Five? Ten? Either way, I was out of time. The skeleton began to move. A mostly-transparent layer of skin began to appear.

“Dear God,” I whispered, though I suspected God had nothing to do with what was happening in the forest. I grabbed the skull and pulled it from the hole, throwing it as far as I could throw it and listening as it cracked on a rock in Beaver Branch.

“Let’s see you get out of there now, you SOB,” I said.

For good measure, I took each femur from the grave and threw the in opposite directions.

I worked like a madman for the next five minutes, grabbing bones from the grave and slinging them in every direction. If the creatures from some distant underworld were stirring this night, I didn’t see them. I wasn’t paying attention. I was making sure that the Hessian soldier could never again get up and walk the earth.

When my work was finished, I slept.

***

I stumbled from the woods the next morning, realizing that I had spent a full forty-eight hours inside and not wanting to think about what that meant in real-world time.

The first order of business was to stop by the home of my childhood. The old home was still there, but in a sorry state. Paint peeled from the siding and weeds surrounded the home.

Though I had slept there just three nights before, I was over any pretense that it truly had been only three nights.

I was surprised to see Momma propped up in her bed. She looked very old and very feeble.

I entered the bedroom quietly and took her hand. She opened her sunken eyes and looked up at me. A smile spread across her face.

“Will,” she said, quietly and with obvious effort. “I always knew you’d come back to me.”

I leaned over to give her a kiss in the center of her wrinkled forehead. Then, pulling a chair from the corner, I sat by her bedside. She didn’t say anything. But she would occasionally open her eyes and look into mine, smiling. I cried. I cried for lost time.

***

Momma died three days later. A hospice nurse was at the house most of the day. I slipped into the closet and hid when I heard her car pulling up outside each afternoon.

When the undertaker arrived, I heard the nurse tell him that she had never seen Momma look as happy and at peace as she had those last three days.

“She must’ve realized the end was at hand,” the nurse said. The undertaker nodded. “Cancer is relentless,” he said.

“Do you know that she told me yesterday that her son had been by to see her?”

The undertaker nodded again. “It’s not uncommon for the terminally ill to see visions and have flashbacks in the final hours of their life.”

They stood by the bedside and looked at Momma as I hid behind the closet door. I sensed that each had known her for some time.

“Hard to believe it’s been forty years since her husband and son died,” the undertaker said.

After the shock of learning that the world had advanced five years without me that first day I was in the woods, I was prepared to discover I had lost another ten years or so since returning to the woods, but nothing could have prepared me for the shock of learning that another thirty-five years had been lost.

I remained hidden until the undertaker and nurse were gone, knowing they would have a hard time understanding a thirteen-year-old boy who has been dead for forty years showing up in front of them. Johnny Pete had seen the dead walk the earth. These people would likely not be as understanding as he had been.

“Stop thinking about it as if you’re dead,” I said to myself. Might as well be, Self answered.

I walked to town, keeping to the tree line alongside the road so I would be out of sight to prying eyes. I was amazed at how much Hillsdale had grown. It was surreal. My internal clock told me that I had walked this same road just a week earlier. It was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that the world had indeed progressed forty years in such a short period of time.

At some point I realized that I was changing. I was no longer thinking the thoughts of a thirteen year old. There could be only one explanation: my body was playing catch-up. I was trapped in a thirteen-year-old body but I was actually fifty-three.

***

I never saw Johnny Pete again. He had been drafted and died in combat. I mourned his memory and remembered the days we had spent roaming the local woods — the non-haunted woods — and creek banks; the days when fishing or stealing apples was our greatest worry. And I realized that those memories were fading. It no longer seemed like a couple of weeks since we had pulled the old phonograph and the baseball cards from the Daugherty house. That was to be expected, I supposed. I was aging at an accelerated pace.

Nearly a year after I emerged form the woods that final time, I happened in front of a mirror and was shocked to discover that I no longer looked thirteen but about the age Johnny Pete had been that night I bumped into him on the main road into town.

I never married. I dated a girl once, but she couldn’t handle the fact that I seemed to age before her very eyes. Imagine that, if you can. I tried to explain things to her, but it was a half-hearted effort. She would never believe. How could she?

And so it continued, until I wound up here, in the Hillsdale Manor Assisted Living Complex. Which is just a fancy way of saying nursing home, of course.

I’m an old man now. Not as old as I should be — not yet, anyway. But I’m catching up.

You’re wondering how old I really am. Well, you won’t believe it. But I suppose if you’re still reading after all that I’ve written so far, you might be able to believe anything I could tell you.

I mentioned that Johnny Pete died at war. That’s true. He died in France in World War I. Nineteen and seventeen. He was twenty years old, God rest his soul.

I was thirteen when I headed into the woods that day. I think I told you the popular music of that time. That should’ve given it away. It was nineteen and ten. Johnny Pete and I were born in eighteen and ninety-seven.

That’s right. I’m one hundred and thirteen years old. Of course, I’ve only lived seventy-three of those years. Biologically I am probably about ninety or so. I’m catching up quickly. My biological clock ticks at a faster pace than others, of course. It’s still making up for lost time; making up for the forty years I spent in the woods in three days.

There will be a day long before I’ve actually lived one hundred and thirteen years — and I suspect it won’t be long — when my body will wear itself out. And that’s completely okay by me. In many ways, I stopped living that night in the woods. I suppose that in some ways, I’ve spent many years wandering in my own Sheol, just as the Hessian did.

I haven’t told these things to many people. In fact, until the orderlies find my handwritten papers under my pillow after I’ve died — hopefully in my sleep and peacefully — and share my story with the world, only Mrs. Shirley Dempesne has been told these things. I told her because I knew she wouldn’t laugh at me the way others would. I think I told you the poor thing has Alzheimer’s. I counted on her having one of her spells soon after I told her and forgetting all about it. And of course she did. That’s why she tries to teach me to cross-stitch every day, even though she’s already taught me twenty-seven times. Give or take.

When I told her mystory, she leaned over and patted my hand and smiled. “I believe you, William,” she said. And I know she did. For a few hours, anyway.

And do you know what else she said when she heard that I was one hundred and thirteen years old? She shrugged and said, “Sometimes things aren’t as they seem.”

I like that, don’t you? It has a certain ring to it. She said that should be the title to my memoirs. And maybe it will be. Or maybe I’ll call it Phonographs and Baseball Cards. Or maybe I’ll just leave it untitled and you can decide for yourself what you want to call it.  You know the old saying: “Call me whatever you want, just don’t call me late to dinner.”

Speaking of which, there’s the dinner bell now. Talk about good timing. Maybe Mrs. Shirley will let me walk her to the cafeteria.

— 06/10-08/10