The Watcher in the Woods

I was never much of a joiner in high school, but one of the first (and best) things I did when I started college was sign up for the Geology Club. Being the science of slackers and stoners, geology didn't lend itself to too much scholarly drudgery. The Geology Club people were awesome--laid back, friendly, always ready to include people. Some of my fondest memories of college are memories of hanging out with geology people--it was a small community in the midst of the larger campus, and when I was there, I belonged.

Once each semester, the Geology Club organized a weekend camping trip, and they were legendary. We'd pack up a few fifteen passenger vans we borrowed from the university, head out on Friday after classes, and drive to someplace with cool geology. Over the years, there were trips to plenty of cool places, including Red River Gorge in Kentucky, Elephant Rocks State Park in Missouri, and Beall Woods State Park in Illinois.

I don't remember where we were when this story took place, but I remember that it was ass-cold. It was so cold that we went to bed in a campground half-full of hunters and ATV-ers and fishermen and woke up to a nearly-empty park. Everyone else who was in tents had gone into town to stay in a motel because it was so cold. Heh. Anyhow, as always, we were all in a cluster of campsites off to ourselves, hoping the late night drunken carousing wouldn't keep the rest of the camp from getting a good night's sleep.

MB and I--we weren't married yet at the time--had gone to the outhouse for one last pit stop before we called it a night. I used the facilities first, and had MB hold our flashlight in the crack of the door, so that I could make sure there weren't any spiders on the seat or anything. Then I returned the favor and held the light in the crack of the door for him. The outhouse was maybe 50 yards away from our campsite, a pretty easy walk down the road, and it was near the ruins of an old stone foundation. During the day, I thought the old foundation was pretty rad, but at night it sort of started to feel a little creepy. While MB was doing his thing, I was trying really hard not to think about that foundation, right there about 20 feet behind us. I love the woods and I love camping, but I can also creep the everloving shit out of myself without trying very hard. The curse of the overactive imagination.

All the light from the flashlight was being cast inside the outhouse stall, so I was pretty much on my own in the near-total darkness, trying not to be a wimp. I was having one of those really hilarious inner dialogues you tend to have when you logically know you're being a big baby but your ancient hindbrain is gibbering and scrabbling around and yelping things like Dark! and Run away! Run away! Then, I heard it. Barely, but I heard it. Footsteps, in the leaves several yards behind me. Instinctively, I whipped my head around to look, but of course I couldn't see anything. Ha! Nice one, hindbrain. Way to freak me out with the overreacting to the little breeze in the trees! Ha! Except I heard it again. Two very soft, tentative steps...the kind you make when you're trying to walk very silently through leaf litter. As soon as I turned my head, it stopped.

I knew it wasn't anything cute and fuzzy, like a deer or a chipmunk, because your average non-toothy vegetarian woodland creature makes about the same amount of noise as a Sasquatch. I swear to God...you see deer during the day, and they're all floaty and ethereal and silent graceful frolicking. At night, they put on snowshoes and steel-toed boots and go around kicking trees. Don't believe me? Try sleeping out under the stars in the woods sometime. Once I swore the deer were actually rolling down the hillside behind me, because that's the only possible explanation for the racket they were making.

So, I knew it wasn't anything small and fuzzy and mostly harmless. Which leaves, what? Large and furtive and possibly carnivorous? At this point, all the little hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up, and my hindbrain was yelling Arrgh! Sabertooth tiger! We're all going to die! and my logical brain, instead of helping, was saying, Not a sabertooth, but maybe a serial killer? Stalking you in the dark? Thanks for a whole lot of nothing, logical brain.

I probably hissed something at MB to imply that he might want to hurry it up. My hand to heaven, it has NEVER taken him as long to pee as it seemed like it took him that night. I didn't have my rock hammer, I maybe had a weensy little pocket knife somewhere about my person, and there at my back, in the goddamn dark, I heard another few quiet steps. I mustered up the firmest voice I could and said, "Hello?" I guess I figured if the serial killer knew that I knew he was there, maybe he'd get spooked and run off. By now, it was all I could do not to run off. No one answered, which I'm not sure was helpful. But they took another couple of steps as soon as my back was turned. I did the only logical thing I could do--I jumped into the outhouse stall with MB. Luckily it was big enough for two.

I said, "There is someone out there, sneaking up on me. I am not going back out there by myself." As you can imagine, I was utterly and fully creeped out at this point. If I could've teleported us back to our tent from the outhouse I would've, just so we didn't have to open the door and face whatever / whoever was out there.

Alas, we couldn't teleport, so we had to face the dark. I'm not sure if I properly conveyed the level of creeped-out that I'd achieved to MB, but in any case we couldn't just hide in the outhouse all night. As we stepped out, I swung the flashlight around in a wide arc, tensed to run like hell if the beam landed on any raving unsavory lunatics.

The light landed on my stalker, and I think it surprised him more than he'd surprised me, if that was possible. Because my drooling knife-wielding possibly-saber-toothed psycho killer? He was a horse.


A freakin' trail horse, shuffling his hooves idly as he munched oats from a nosebag and shifted along his tether line. A nosebag. Good Lord.