HALLOWEEN WEEK 2024 CONTEST
Honourable Mention
BY J. T. HOMESLEY
Copyright is held by the author.
I’VE SPENT many nights alone in the woods. No one to talk to, no voices but yours and the chattering of the trees. I know what the expression in the dead of the night really means. But I’m tough. No one night ever got to me too much, except for one.
I was on a long hike to New York state when, early in the trip, I camped in Lexington, Virginia. It was early October and the evening sizzled like a cooked egg slapped against the cold plate of approaching night and it was only going to get colder. I stopped early to be sure I had time to build a fire. Although I was up on ridges, it was in a surprisingly flat, patchy forest where I pitched my tent. Eerie. The campsite had not been used in a long time and grass grew in the firepit. I remember being so creeped out by the awful quietness near that mountain top that I even played music from my phone for a while—a big waste of battery. But the place was damp, and the trees were chattery. Gossiping. The whole scene dripped with foreboding. Mostly in my imagination.
Except . . .
It was getting late. For hikers, nine o’clock is midnight, so it was getting close to bedtime—that’s when I heard footsteps coming up the trail. It wasn’t the patter patter like an animal makes a clatter, but slap slap, slap slap. Only, it was softer than a slap, scuffled, like a child, a tap, tap tap, tap tap.
I stayed seated on a log by my fire. I was camping maybe ten feet beside the Appalachian Trail, but even in the pitch dark, half an hour from hiker’s midnight, it wasn’t impossible that someone might be passing by. Taking a night hike. Even though I told myself that, my butt was clenched so tight I nearly split the log I sat on.
A kid — a little boy — walked into the firelight. He wasn’t too raggedy. Not dressed like a hiker. Not dressed like a local. He looked cold so I said hello and offered him to stand by my fire, expecting twelve more Boy Scouts to come up the trail behind him, or maybe a dad with a headlamp highlighting his frustrated face.
A breeze that wasn’t there before winds its way down beneath treetops, whispering winter. The whole landscape shivers. And this kid — couldn’t be but five or six — comes up to the fire with his hands shoved inside his pockets and a wide grin on his face. There was a little satchel at his hip with some kind of crumpled paper poking out.
Even though he looked happy as hell, I was speechless. Pretty scared. “You out with your family?”
He still had his hands in his pockets but seemed to be warming up in the fire glow. There was no wind in the trees anymore. No sound in them either. I realized right then that sometimes the silence is worse than the sound. I could see him more clearly in the firelight. There were burrs and twigs up and down his pant legs while his face was covered in scratches. His cheeks were so cherry they matched the flame.
I’m looking closely at one of the crumpled edges of paper flopping from the corner of his satchel. I see letters, large letters written all on their own, unattached to words. Like he was practicing his alphabet. I can also see this kid well enough to know he cannot be older than five. “You OK? You out here with your family?” I ask again. I glanced at my phone. Shouldn’t have played music. Battery getting low.
“I’m going back home. I was out with my friends. But they’re all back in town. Where I’m headed.”
Lexington was back down the trail, but that would be maybe seven miles away. Needless to say I’m shifting on my soggy rotten log, getting a little worried I’d about to have to call search and rescue for this kid. There’s a part of me too that is looking all around as if I can see in the impossible darkness outside of the bubble of firelight. Is this some kind of trap, a distraction maybe? I was pretty exposed out there and my family can tell you I tend to overthink things. A hyperactive imagination. “Lexington is a long way off.” considering it’s eight thirty at night and it’s cold enough to see our breath and dark enough not to know it.” He says nothing. Still grinning like a bobcat does if you call him Robert.
“I can call someone for you. We’re a half-day’s hike from anyone else who could help. What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” he asked without skipping a beat.
The question pushed me back in my seat— it’s a log, so it rolls a little. I had to think about my answer; even though I’m sure I know my name, it didn’t come to me right away. “Jeremiah.,” I say, “And this shadow curled up at my feet is Dozen Eggs, a very sweet and sometimes skittish dog creature.”
No laugh. No reaction. Same smile he walked up here with. Ever get mad at a kid for grinning? Who am I kidding, everyone has. I can’t figure out why he seems so happy. On one hand it sets my nerves at ease, that maybe he’s not really lost but walking in the woods at night as he please, and on the other I’m thinking maybe he’s hypothermic, body gone numb, the sweet apathetic release of our nervous system when it knows we can never go back to where we come from. But if that were the case, how’s he standing so still, his teeth aren’t chattering, he isn’t shifting foot to foot, or fallen plop down on the ground. He’s standing on stronger legs than I have. But he’s a little kid, all alone in the woods on a cold night, not just in the woods, but up in the highlands, the mountains, the wild five thousand foot peaks and crystal clear springs of Northern Virginia. Black bears. Coyotes, surprise cliffs and sheer bluffs, two tons of boulder that would roll if only touched by a feather, and me, worse than me actually, lots of people out here who put the threat of a hungry bear to shame. I have to call somebody. There was no way this night ends with watching this kid walk off into his own eternity. I don’t care how happy he seems, I’m calling someone.
My phone is cold as a stone. It’s lifeless and dead. It was my only form of communication with the outside world, intended to save my life if the time came, but I listened to Aretha Franklin on repeat instead. I have a battery pack that can charge my phone, and as I reach for that, the kid speaks up. He says.
“It’s not in that pocket. It’s in the one on the side.” I freeze. Don’t even look up from my seat. I check for it. And he’s right. And I’m terrified. I look up at him after plugging in the phone and he has taken his hands out of his pockets and is holding them up against a great orange tongue of flame flapping like a flag in a wind of its own making. They’re so icy blue they look like they’re glowing, dim, but steady, like a hurt lightning bug, like water catching moonlight, like a predator’s eyes softly simmer, just out of sight.
“How did you know-” I start to ask, but he cuts me off.
“What are you going to do to help me, Jeremiah?” He talks. Staring into the fire instead of my face. “What do you have in that bag you carry, that helps anyone but yourself.”
Eggs raises her head with her ears stiff and her nose aimed like a rifle at the kid.
“What’s your name, kid? Tell me now.” I say this, and in doing so, I use up the very last shred of courage I had carried with me up this mountain outside of Lexington, Virginia sometime late September or maybe even early October.
“Ottie Powell. My friends call me Little Ottie. And that’s my real name.” I have an iPhone, so when it starts to resuscitate itself, that little apple with a big bite taken out of it shows up and glows at you and sort of says hey get ready, I’m almost back.
“My name is Jeremy, Ottie, nice to meet you. I’m going to get you some help tonight. OK? You can stay right where you are. Stay right by the fire and I’ll stay right over here. And I’m going to make a phone call and we are going to get you help tonight. OK?”
Right then Little Ottie looked at me, and I had not yet seen his eyes were white as the cracks in ice, he was showing his crystal blue palms, holding them up at me like I had a gun drawn, and he shuffled his feet toward me. And Eggs, my dog, who has never nipped or bitten a soul, she swears, let out the awfulest, lowest lowdown gravelly growl you ever heard and she came up off her belly, not fully up but halfway on her front paws. Her ears were sharp as shovels. His little blue lipped mouth peeled back and he said slowly, “Take them. Take them please. Take these hands off of me. I can’t go home like this. I can’t let Daddy see.”
My phone turned on and I looked to grab it for just a second and looked back up and he was gone. I ran to the edge of my firelight. I walked the short woods around my camp for an hour. When my phone came on, it had no bars, no service, and I knew none would come unless I climbed several hours and hundreds of feet higher than I already was. I did not see which way he went. And if we went the way he said, he’d reach other people before I could catch him. I felt panicked, but helpless, and I know it might not have been the best decision, but I really didn’t know what I had seen. I have been accused before of having an ‘overactive imagination’, as I’ve mentioned. I figured the best thing I could do was to call it in when I reached the top of my climb the next day. You almost always get a few bars of cell phone service once you get to the tops of mountains. So that was my plan. But I was freaked out, to say the least. Kind of feeling like I had failed this kid.
So, I start early the next morning, before the sun is really up. It’s a brutal climb. At the top where mountains start to open up, wind and lightning is pretty hard on the high up trees, I see a stone bench set in a small clearly manmade clearing. I can’t resist. I’m breathless, and sweating. I sit. Also kind of confused about why someone set a heavy seat in a place so hard to reach. And then I see it. A low cut stone squarish block in front of me, with a wide bronze blazon embedded in its craggy head grown green over time and weather. I have to lean in close, and brush away some leaves, so that I can find the tiny letters.
This is the exact spot little Ottie Cline Powell’s body was found April 5, 1891, after straying from Tower Hill School House Nov. 9, a distance of 7 miles. Age 4 years 11 months.
All the sudden Eggs let out another growl, or maybe it was a whimper, or maybe it was a burp, I don’t remember, it doesn’t matter, we lit out so quick we left dust rising from the trail behind us. I don’t know if I believe I really met Little Ottie beside the Appalachian Trail that night. But I do know I hiked the next 10 miles quicker than I had ever hiked before.
And I never, never again played music from my phone out loud in the woods at night. I know now it makes the ghosts come out and dance.
***
J. T. Homesley is a writer, actor, director, educator, and farmer currently based in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Here, together with his wife and their six-year-old son, he cares for a 150-acre tree farm, covered with a herd of dairy goats, a coop full of chickens and an impossible number of gardens. J. T. holds a Master of Arts in Writing from Lenoir-Rhyne University in Asheville, and a Master of Arts in Teaching from University of North Carolina – Charlotte. J. T. worked in public education for four years, teaching high school level British Literature, World Literature, Honors English and AP English, in addition to leading Drama Club. He currently works for the non-profit Project Local, Inc. which he founded in 2017. J. T.’s work has appeared in the Adirondack Center for Writing’s PoemVillage Installations 2022-2024, GreenPrints Magazine, Ghost City Review, the first volume of A Common Well Journal, The Bluebird Word, Bare Hill Review, Half and One, and the Wingless Dreamer poetry anthologies Dreamstones of Summer, It’s Crystal Clear and Enchanting Winter J. T. is also the Artistic Director of both Horn in the West Outdoor Drama and Liberty Mountain – The Revolutionary Drama. Follow along with his journey at www.writeractorfarmer.com.
