WHATS IN THE WOODS-
October 26, 2014
I'm a sleepwalker. I've woken up on the floor, in the hedges outside, and half-hanging out of the refrigerator with orange juice spilled down the front of my shirt - just to name a few. Most of the time it would end in uncontrollable laughter for my two roommates, and thankfully over time my embarrassment wore off.
Last fall, however, that all changed.
My roommates and I attend college in a fairly rural Midwest area, so the nightlife consists mostly of house parties and bonfires in cornfields. One Saturday night, my roommates and I were driving down a gravel road to the family farm of a friend when our high beams hit something about 200 yards down the road on our side. It looked like someone walking, so we thought maybe a fellow partygoer had some vehicular troubles (though we hadn't seen any abandoned vehicles on the way in). We turned off the high beams and as we got closer we saw that it was a red-haired girl in a white dress that almost matched the fairness of her skin. I was in the passenger seat, so I rolled down the window and stuck my head out as Thomas slowed the car.
"Hey! Do you need a ride?" I tried to call out in the friendliest voice possible to alleviate any fears that may be caused by a carful of guys approaching a girl by herself in the woods. As Thomas continued slowing the car down I could hear the gravel crunching underneath us and eventually we came to a halt. The girl stopped walking and turned toward us. She looked at me and smiled, a sweet but knowing expression that matched the mild humor I saw in her bright green eyes. She was very pretty, her hair a deep shade of shining dark red against her flawless pale skin.
"I'm fine, thank you, I just like to walk." She said, sounding distant but very sure of herself.
"Are you sure? It's pretty dark out here, no telling what's in these woods," Dave chimed in from the back seat.
Her eyes darted quickly to the source of the question, and she issued a firm "I can take care of myself." And began walking again.
"Alright," exhaled Thomas, "I guess we'll see her when she gets there." So I said a quick "See ya later," rolled the window back up and we rolled slowly past the girl and down the road.
The party was pretty fun that night, but for some reason I couldn't get that girl out of my head. I kept looking around, trying to make sure she had made it safely but I never saw her. I asked others at the party if they passed her on the way in, but no one recalled seeing any pedestrians outside of the town. There was something about her that I found intriguing - maybe even a little unsettling - but I attributed the latter to our remote location and fearing for the girls' safety. Dave suggested that maybe she lived around there and was just going for a stroll, but the only residence within 15 miles of that place was another farm that had been abandoned for over 50 years so I wasn't convinced.
Eventually, the party died down and we got ready to leave. I hadn't been in much of a drinking mood so I was sober to drive the three of us home. We piled in the car - Thomas and me in the front and Dave sprawled out in the back on the brink of unconsciousness. Several folks had left earlier to go out to a bar in town, so once again we found ourselves alone on the gravel road with a darkness so black it seemed solid surrounding anything our high beams and taillights didn't touch.
About three miles from the party and another four or five miles from the road into town that connects to the gravel road, we spotted something on the ground beside the road ahead of us. At first we thought someone had tossed a white bag of trash out of their window to avoid dumpster fees, but as we neared we saw what it actually was - the red-haired girl. Thomas let out an appropriate "What the fuck?" and I nodded in agreement. She seemed to be sitting with her knees pulled to her chest and her head tucked into her arms, which were folded on top of her legs. My stomach immediately sank when I realized it was her. I knew we should have picked her up. She's probably been sitting here the whole time, scared and alone. I figured that was why my gut was not letting me forget about this person.
