Unknown, p.5
Unknown, page 5
" What are you doing here? You don't belong here!"
I turned around to see where the voice was coming from and there was the old man. I'm not old enough to remember Gabby Hayes but I've seen pictures of him and this old man looked a little like that.
Or maybe a little like the way we think of Rip Van Winkle..He had a beard that was gray and stringy, and his eyes were bright and had wrinkles all around them and his clothes were the color of the woods, gray and brown and no color in particular, and he was pointing a double-barreled rifle at the four of us.
" Holy shit!" Paul said behind me.
"What are you doing here?" the old man said again, and he panned the rifle back and forth like a movie camera. I could see his finger on the trigger.
"Hold on!" I said." We're not doing anything. We were just taking a walk."
The old man stared at me pretty skeptically for a few seconds. I was thinking fast, or trying to, and wishing Paul would say something clever. Nobody had ever pointed a gun at me before. Mostly I was thinking that if the old guy really fired it, I'd be the first to get it, which I guess is a pretty selfish thought. But before I could think of what to say, the old man lowered the rifle and pointed it at the ground. That was when my knees started feeling weak and my heart started pounding. Behind me, I heard Barbara say, "Oh, my God," and I discovered that I had put one hand behind me to sort of protect her. She grabbed it and held it tight.
"What are you doing here?" the old man asked again, but he sounded less angry this time than he had before. I could almost have thought he sounded a little relieved.
I told him again that we had only been taking a walk, yes, in winter, we didn't mind the cold, we hoped we weren't trespassing, no, we weren't carrying guns, yes, we were planning on going right back out to the road, and so on and so on, with Paul helping out now with the answers, and finally the old man began to look like nothing more than just an old man who happened to be carrying a rifle.
It was Paul who asked the question, and, when he did, I could have kicked him for it.
"What are you doing here?" he said to the old man." Do you own these woods?"
The old man looked at Paul very hard, then he looked at me, then at Barbara and Susanne, and then back at Paul again. You could almost see him making up his mind whether we were challenging him or not, or just asking, the way anybody might. I kept my eye on the rifle barrel but it stayed pointed at the ground.
The old man studied the four of us a little longer, then he said, "I own these woods as much as anybody does. Maybe more." There was a sort of stony grimness in the way he said it.
There was a kind of impasse at that point, him studying us and us Studying him right back again. Then I could see his posture lose some of its tenseness and for the first time I knew we were really out of trouble.
I think it was Barbara who said something next, asked him a question maybe, and after that it was a fairly normal conversation, considering the circumstances. It wasn't exactly a prize-winning conversation or anything like that, like you might have in a good bar late at night, but we were all chatting more or less easily with him after a minute or so.
That first meeting seems even stranger now. I really don't know what we could have been talking about, and the others don't remember either (I guess we were still nervous from the way he'd scared us), cept I know he said something about "intruders" a couple of times, meaning intruders into his woods. I do remember thinking that he sounded as if he might even get to be friendly after a while, even though we didn't learn anything about him at all. For all we found Out that time, he might have lived in the trees. As it turned out, that wouldn't have been a bad guess.
When the conversation, if you can call it that, was starting to wear down, the old man said, and I do remember this part very clearly, "You can stop by again when you're this way." Then he added, more quietly,
"I'll be here."
That's how it started.
Naturally we talked about the old man a lot that weekend and other times afterward. And of course we talked about it the next time the four of us went up there, which was a couple of weeks later.
We had only been in the hotel a little while on Friday evening.
Barbara and I were still unpacking and putting clothes away and Barbara was upset because a blouse she wanted to wear to dinner on Saturday had gotten crushed in the suitcase. And we were fooling around a little too while we unpacked. There was a knock at the door and I opened it and Susanne and Paul came in.
Paul plopped himself down on one of the chairs by the window and Susanne sat on his knee and Paul said, "Let's go see that weird old guy in the woods."
"You have got to be kidding," I said right away, but the truth is, I'd been thinking about doing that myself but not saying anything because I thought the others would think I was crazy.
Paul was serious." I am not kidding," he said." I want to go see him.
I think"-and here Paul got a really solemn and serious look on his face and the same kind of sound in his voice-"that it was nothing less than fate that brought us to him. Fate, I tell you. Kismet. We are , -ztended to know the old coot and have all sorts of wonderful adventures with him." Paul teaches English, which explains a lot.
Well, we talked about it for a while and Barbara and Susanne and I all said we didn't want any part of it and the weather was too cold to go traipsing around in the woods anyway, but it turned out that none of us really meant it, so in the end we decided we'd go back and find that trail and see if the old man would actually be there again.
And so on Saturday we drove out to that same road and found the trail and started along it. We were all pretty nervous the farther we went, and we had to go a long way this time before anything happened-so far, in fact, that we were all starting to think that maybe we had imagined the old man in the first place or maybe he had only been a local farmer or a drifter who was having some fun at our expense.
But of course just at the point when we were starting to talk about turning back toward the road, because it really was very cold that day, the old man stepped out from behind a tree-at least, that's what we thought when we talked about it later-and stood there on the path in front of us.
He didn't say anything right away this time, just looked at us. He still had the rifle but it was pointing at the ground.
I don't think any of us had actually believed that we'd see him again.
But there he was, looking just the same as before.
The old man sort of nodded his head a little bit, which I took to be a greeting. Paul had been leading the way and was closest, so he was the first to speak.
"Hello," he said." Bet you thought you'd never see us again."
Which wasn't a very brilliant thing to say, but it suddenly made me realize for the first time that we had never learned the old man's name.
"Bet you thought you'd never see me again," the old man said. He wasn't smiling.
We shuffled around a little at that, because of course it was true.
The next thing I remember is that we were talking with the old fellow again, the way we had the other time, easy and natural-talking about the woods, I guess, because I can't think what else it might have been.
It's always happened that way, then and since, and it always seems so weird later on: standing there in the woods, first in winter and later in spring and summer and so on, talking with him for a while but not remembering a word of what was said.
But I do remember clearly him saying, "Come home with me."
I know we followed him off the trail and deep into the woods and I know that we did some climbing up the hillsides (and I know that he had to lead us out to the path afterward), but I have no clear picture in my mind of how we got to his home, that first time or any of the other times. )"en I think about it now, I have to admit that I don't understand either why we actually went with him in the first place. But we did. He led the way and we followed.
The old man lives way up high on a hill, in the very darkest and thickest part of the woods, the sort of place where you can almost imagine the Big Bad Wolf jumping out and attacking Little Red Riding Hood. The sort of place you dream about when you're a child… at least that's the best recollection of it I ever have. It's never really clear afterward, no more than it was that first time. It was as if a cloud or a mist surrounded the spot, hiding its details from us, while allowing us to glimpse just enough to make us think it was not-sostrange and not-so-scary. It might have been a shed or a cabin or a huge old mansion in the woods. It might have been a cave or a wooden structure in the treetops. It might have been none of those things. We didn't know then and we don't know now. But the old man somehow always made it all right.
Inside it was the same: vague, yet clear, real and unreal, not warm and not cold, odd and not-so-strange. That first time, the old man invited us to sit-there were things to sit on but I don't know what they were-and he gave us something to drink-something neither hot nor cold-but I don't know what it was.
And he talked. He talked about the hills and about the woods and rivers and streams and the trees and the rocks and the dirt, talked about the wildness of nature and its order, its beauty, its bestiality, about the air and the weather and about storms and rains and snows and winds.
We listened-that first time, as I remember, and every time since then-in thrall.
And he talked about the city, about how the city was different from the country and about how we had to learn the ways of the hills, and somehow we knew that he was right.
And after a while he led us out of the woods and we were back on the trail and then at the road and then at the car, and the four of us were looking at each other kind of funny, a little embarrassed, and none of us wanted to be the first to say that it had really happened or that it hadn't, but of course we knew it had.
" Holy shit!" Paul said softly when we were safely in the car.
Nobody said anything else just then, but we talked plenty when we got back to the Centennial. But that doesn't mean we knew what to make of it all, especially when the four of us realized that we had no clear idea of why we had gone with the old man or of how he had led us through the woods. Or of what his house-if it was a house-had looked like. Or of what we had talked about with him. None of it was clear, none of it made any logical kind of sense.
The one thing we knew for certain was that, after the first few seconds with the old man, we hadn't been afraid.
"He's some kind of sorcerer," Paul said, but he wouldn't look any of us in the eye as he said it.
"There's no such thing," Barbara said." Don't be ridiculous." Barbara teaches physics and has no patience with stuff like that. She's a good sport, which is one of the things I like most about her, but she can be pretty sharp about things she considers dumb.
"Listen," Paul said, and he put on his most casual expression and turned to face Barbara because he knew she was the biggest skeptic among the four of us." I'm not saying I believe what I just said, but I'm not saying I don't, either."
"That's a nice clear statement," Barbara said. I could see she was getting edgy.
"Come on, listen," Paul said." Let's just examine this, okay? We meet a weird old guy in the woods. First he scares the hell out of us, sneaking up the way he did. Then he turns out to be all right. We talk with him for a while and-" -and after that we don't remember what happened," Barbara said quickly.
"I'm talking about the first time," Paul said.
" I'm talking about both times," Barbara answered.
Paul looked uncomfortable." Well, okay, but that's part of it. I mean, the fact that we don't remember clearly what happened sort of suggests.
.." Paul hesitated, then grinned, then shrugged." Maybe he put a spell on us."
"Oh God," Barbara said." I don't believe this."
"It fits."
Barbara looked away from him.
"It fits," Paul said again.
"All this fresh country air is beginning to rot your brain," Barbara said, by which I knew she was beginning to give in.
"What do you think, Greg?" Susanne asked me." You've been keeping pretty quiet."
I'd been keeping quiet because I'd been having the same sort of crazy ideas Paul was having, and I figured I'd let him be the one to put it into words." I say it's as good an explanation as any. We'll just have to be sharp next time, maybe take notes or pictures or something, and then see what's going on."
The others nodded, and then suddenly we were all staring at each other and Barbara was squeezing my hand very tight. We hadn't talked about going back, hadn't said a word about it, but I'd just said "next time," and we all knew that we would.
That was in February and it was the beginning of March, about three weeks later, before we went back to Deacons Kill and saw the old man again.
Barbara had been playing basketball with the girls in her homeroom and had sprained her ankle so that she had to have it taped up for a couple of weeks. I went to the doctor with her when the bandages were taken off. The doctor said her ankle was fine now, and as soon as we were outside in the car, Barbara said, "Well, I'm ready," and I knew what she meant. I called Paul as soon as I got home and he said he'd tell Susanne-he didn't have far to go because I could hear her saying something in the background-and they'd be ready to roll on Friday. The only other thing we talked about was whether we'd take his car or mine.
Apart from that, we didn't say a single word about the old man the whole time we were back in the city.
It all happened just the same, except for one thing. This time, afterward, we remembered what the old man had talked to us about.
At least, I did. I remembered it very clearly. The others didn't say so and I never said a word, not even to Barbara, but I could tell that they remembered too. We were all sort of avoiding each other's eyes and I could just tell.
He talked about intruders again, the way he had the first time we'd met him. He talked about how the world was filled with strange creatures, strange beings, living things that are alive in a way that's different from everything else in the world, and that therefore don't belong at all in the real world, don't fit into the human world, and how we have to get rid of them, how they pervert our minds and distort our view of reality. It made a lot of sense, the way he explained it. I can still hear his voice that time, low and soft but with a kind of hard tenseness in it. He knew what he was talking about. He said his life was devoted to ridding the world of these intruders. And he said that they were too much, too strong, for one old man alone and that he needed help to do it and that he had chosen us.
He didn't mention the Easter Bunny that time.
When he said he needed to see us again in a week, we all said together that we'd be there.
This was the time he first mentioned the Easter Bunny.
The four of us were sitting in the old man's… let's call it house, because by now we were able to see it more clearly than we had before. We were still vague about the route up the hill from the trail and the exact location of the house and what it looked like outside.
But the inside was now clear enough for us to see it. The walls were very rough-maybe stone or some strange kind of logs-and there were no windows, but there were rugs or animal skins of some sort on the floor and plenty of places to sit, chairs and benches, although most often we just sat in a circle in the middle of a very big room, all five of us, while the old man talked.
Gradually, as we were there more and more often, we began asking questions, rather than just listening to him talk. He told us one time that he was very happy at having selected us and that he was glad we were getting into the spirit of it, glad that we were showing real progress and we were beginning to understand the danger that threatened the world. That was what he called it: the danger that threatened the world.
He was very convincing when he spoke. I know he didn't pull any tricks on us, like hypnotism or something. I'm sure he did nothing of the sort. All I know is that he convinced us-and it seemed very clear, right from the start-that he had been waiting for us to come along and that that we had been looking for him.
It s all very strange. After all, the four of us are just pretty ordinary people, like anybody else. We're not weird or anything, we don't belong to any crazy religious sects, we don't give a hoot about astrology or tarot cards or stuff like that, nothing crazy or freaky at all.
We're all pretty bright, I guess, and pretty well educated, but that's certainly in our favor. At least, it makes it less likely that the old man could be playing any tricks on us, either then or now.
The simple fact was that everything he said made sense. It all made sense. And by the time he finished telling us about the Easter Bunny, we knew what he meant when he spoke about danger, danger that threatened the world.
Barbara was the one who said it first to the old man." A lot of people," she said, keeping her voice very steady, "say the Easter Bunny is just imaginary."
The old man smiled patiently at her and then at the rest of us.
"You see," he said softly." You see what I mean. That's just the sort of thing I'm talking about. That monster comes out of hi I tramps as free as you please all over the world, and yet he has people convinced that he doesn't even exist. It's amazing what these creatures can do to the human mind! Absolutely amazing! And terrifying." He leaned forward into the circle, his eyes sweeping slowly over the four of us as he spoke." You do see, don't you? I know you do. Just think about it.
If you asked anybody, anybody at all, they could tell you, I'm sure, what the Easter Bunny looks like, more or less. And of course, they all think he's very… well, they'd use words like cute and cuddly and sweet. Imagine! And yet, if you asked them whether or not he exists, they'd all say that he doesn't, that he's just a creature of myth or something. But children, small children, know perfectly well that he exists and they'll tell you so with no hesitation. Children are much closer to that sort of knowledge, they have an instinctive awareness of strange, primitive things like that. And if you stop to think about it, you know that there isn't a child in the world that would stand still and smile if he saw the Easter Bunny actually come around a corner and walk toward him. You know that child would run for its life. Well, children know these things and understand them. Oh yes, children know.
