The People In The Woods Read online

  the people in the woods

  By Robert Brown

  © Robert Brown 2019 All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction, any names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are purely from the imagination of the author or used for fictitious and entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance to real people living or dead and actual events is purely coincidental.

  No parts of this book may be reproduced. Reviewers may quote small passages in the book for reviewing purposes.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  About The Author

  Free Bonus Chapter of deadly illusions by Robert Brown

  More Books by Robert Brown

  CHAPTER ONE

  Professor Nick Upton stepped out of the front door of the anthropology department at Republic University and started to run. This time he’d go farther than he ever had. This time he was finally going to push it.

  It was late morning on a Saturday and the quad was quiet. Just a few flirting undergraduates sitting on the steps of Old Main or sprawled out on the grass, while a couple of Nick’s colleagues headed for their own departments housed in the turn-of-the-century red brick buildings around the quad. Avoiding their wives, probably. Nick knew all about that.

  The sun was shining and the air carried the first sharpness of approaching autumn. He jogged under spreading oak and ash trees whose leaves were just beginning to turn. Soon the upper Midwest would be ablaze with color—a perfect contrast to the colorless town of Republic from which the university took its name.

  Nick left the quad, getting into a rhythm, pacing himself for the long run to come. Six miles. He’d do six miles today. Maybe more. If he got tired, he could always call a cab to get back to the university. Cheryl would never know, and he could brag about his jog later. Twenty years of marriage and he still wanted to impress her, not that he ever did much of that these days.

  He huffed out past the last red brick buildings of the old university and through the more modern concrete boxes built in the Seventies. The names of the departments stood above their entrances in letters of weathered steel. Chemistry. Geology. Biosciences. That last building had just gotten a big glass and steel extension that looked more like a corporate building in a major city than a university department in a private liberal arts institution. The state was big on farming, and one of the big agrochemical companies had thrown a lot of money at the university to get its name on the building. Nick curled his lip in disgust.

  Another two minutes and he was off campus, nodding at a security guard as he left the leafy path for the more utilitarian sidewalk of the main road. Nick jogged in place, waiting for the light to change as cars and pickups shot past him. Someone in a Hummer shouted through an open window.

  “Faggot!”

  “Just because I know how to read doesn’t mean I’m gay, redneck,” Nick grumbled.

  Republic was a city in name only. At Nick’s moderate pace, it took him a grand total of five minutes to pass the strip mall, the McDonalds, the Waffle House, and the Guns & Ammo Center to reach a broad open path cutting between the beginnings of a forest.

  This had been a railroad once, but it had since been converted into a public footpath as part of the national Rails to Trails Campaign. Back in the day, the railroad had run through this town, though ultimately it had been replaced by the eighteen-wheelers on the highway, supplying the chain stores and the giant Walmart while taking away the few products Republic still created—including the feed mill, the agrochemical plant, and the America First Security Lock Company. Nick wished one of those trucks would take him away.

  He was already sweating, and his Fitbit told him he had run only one mile. Two more to go before he reached the end of the trail and then three miles back to the department. Next would be a quick clean-up in the bathroom, and a hamburger and a couple of beers in Student Town, the two city blocks of decent shops that catered to the university and the only place in this damn town where someone with a PhD was welcome.

  The trail was broad, even, and shaded the entire way. It was the perfect place for a middle-aged and only moderately fit man to jog. More importantly, it was quiet. The last few houses flanking the trail were soon behind Nick, and he huffed alone down the trail toward its end. The train tracks continued beyond that, of course, but the state had stopped clearing them away and widening the path. The original plan had been to link the trail to other projects across the state and the country, to create an entire network of hiking, running, and biking paths on the afterimage of the old rail network. But this hayseed state and its inbred neighbors hadn’t seen the value in that.

  Despite the cool air, Nick’s shirt clung to his body with sweat. He kept running. He had a beer belly to get rid of, and getting rid of the beer was not an option. Besides, his hairline was racing toward the back of his neck at a rate of an inch a year. He couldn’t be both pot-bellied and bald. That would be just too pathetic.

  A man ran toward him, heading back to town. He was dressed almost identically to Nick—shorts, loose old t-shirt covering an out-of-shape frame, moderately expensive running shoes. Nick vaguely recognized him from an all-faculty meeting. He couldn’t place the man’s department, but it was a no-brainer that he was from the university. The locals’ idea of getting fit was guzzling cheap beer while shooting raccoons. No townies came on this path, and neither did Republic University’s few minority faculty members. They didn’t stray beyond Student Town.

  The jogger gave Nick a courteous, half-recognizing nod and continued on his way.

  Nick glanced at his Fitbit. Two miles. Good. He was getting better. He used to quit and walk back at this point.

  He continued, running into the silence of the path’s last mile. The path delved deeper into the forest and began to narrow. Nick supposed that, at this point, the money had run out for the project. The trees began to press close, their spreading branches creating a darkening tunnel.

  The path made a gentle curve to the left and suddenly ended. The transition was startling. From a path that could have been in any city on the East Coast, from where Nick had come and where he desperately wanted to return, the scene became the epitome of the Rust Belt.

  Thick underbrush and close-set trees shrouded rusted rails running off and out of sight. A small, new sign pointed right, where Nick knew that a narrow trail ran for half a mile to the highway access road. A housing development stood over there—townies only. There was also a payphone, as quaint a relic of a former age as the tracks themselves. Briefly, Nick was tempted to take a shortcut and call a cab, cut a six-mile run down to three-and-a-half.

  Don’t wimp out, he chided himself. You always wimp out.

  Running in place, he glanced back the way he had come. Another three miles of the same thing. Or he could continue. The space between the tracks made a relatively smooth path, the ties all but buried by the earth that was relentlessly swallowing this relic of an older time. He’d never been this far before.
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  Yeah, but I could trip on something, and there are probably ticks or wasps’ nests.

  Nick rolled his eyes. Where was the young anthropologist who had drank ayahuasca with Amazonian shamans? The guy who had studied Voudon in the most remote parts of the Louisiana bayou?

  He’d become a boring, middle-aged, middle-class professor who hadn’t published a paper in years.

  Nick gritted his teeth and plunged into the woods.

  He slowed a bit, keeping an eye out for where he was going. The tracks made a good path, just as he had suspected, the earth and carpet of leaves and moss creating an even running surface. Only a few times did he have to adjust his step to avoid obstacles—a couple of warped ties that stuck out of the ground, a rusty old bucket, a pile of corroded beer cans, a few scattered shotgun shells. The hicks must have come out there to party.

  But not recently. All the stuff looked old, the plastic of the shotgun shells cracked and brittle, the labels on the beer cans faded. Nick was alone.

  The tracks continued straight through the woods. It was even darker here, the canopy of trees almost a roof overhead. Silent, too. No wind and, he realized after a moment, no birdsong, not even any insects.

  Nick slowed to a walk, looking around. His Fitbit told him he had run for another mile. Why so quiet? Back on the main trail, his run had always been accompanied by the chirp of birds and the scrabble of squirrels along bark. The silence felt oppressive, unsettling.

  Had he spooked the wildlife? Nick smiled. Silence in the woods usually meant that a predator was nearby, but the rednecks had killed the last bear in the state twenty years earlier, and wolves had disappeared long before that. Nothing out there was more dangerous than a few wasps.

  He resumed his regular jogging pace, continuing through the forest.

  Nick got only another half mile before he saw the first of the stick figures.

  It hung from a low branch at the end of a piece of rough twine. It was made of twigs lashed together with twine to create the image of a four-legged animal. A wolf, perhaps. Canine anyway. Nick stopped and studied it for a moment, curious. When he looked farther down the track, he noticed another figure not ten yards away. He walked over to it and saw a stick man. Just beyond that was another four-legged creature.

  Intrigued, Nick walked on. Twenty yards or so farther, another of the figures dangled from a branch. This one was a triangle pointing downwards with two short twigs tied to the top side. Nick got the impression of a Devil’s head.

  His skin prickled. What were these figures doing out here?

  Looking along the track for more figures, he spotted the dark bulk of an old building up ahead. He approached, ears perked for any sound in the still, silent forest.

  It was an old railroad station, its tin roof patterned with leaves and fallen branches, the wooden walls warped and splintered. Only the concrete platform, covered with graffiti, still stood in good order. Nick felt a chill when he saw several of the figures dangling in the trees that grew close around the station—stick men and four-legged beasts, Devil’s heads and pentagrams.

  Nick’s heart pounded, and not just from the run, and yet an overwhelming curiosity drew him forward. He ascended the three concrete steps to the platform and stopped, peering inside the station’s open doorway.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloomy interior. The door lay on the floor just before the doorway, blown down by some storm or removed by human hands. Nick was surprised to not see the usual detritus of an abandoned building. No beer cans, no cigarette butts, no used condoms. Even the graffiti on the interior walls looked old and faded. It was like no one came there anymore, except for whoever had put up those weird stick figures. Flies buzzed around the entrance and Nick smelled something foul, like overripe garbage.

  He stood on the threshold where the concrete platform ended and the wooden floor of the stationhouse began. Not trusting the floor to hold him, he stuck his head in and peered around.

  Just to the left of the entrance, not three inches from his nose, a squirrel hung from the roof on the end of a piece of twine. The string was wrapped around the squirrel’s neck, and its belly had been cut open. Flies blackened its entrails as well as the stubs of all four of its legs. Its feet had been cut off.

  Nick cried out and drew back. An instant later, he heard a rustling behind him. In the underbrush on the opposite side of the tracks, he caught a glimpse of a dark figure disappearing behind a thick oak.

  The sight jolted him into action. Nick leaped off the platform and sprinted down the tracks, fleeing for the safety of the main path.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nick was not followed. He had glanced over his shoulder several times during his mad rush out of the woods, and he didn’t see any signs of pursuit. That hadn’t slowed him down, though, and he made it to the main path in record time. For a second, he was tempted to take the shortcut to the housing project only half a mile away but the narrowness of the path and the thick underbrush on either side made him shudder. Instead, he took the broad, clear, straight path back to town. He almost sobbed with relief when, after a mile, he spotted a jogger in the distance, an older guy whose black dress socks were ill-matched to his cheap running shoes. A professor for sure. The man was just turning around to head back to town.

  Nick paced him about fifty yards behind, glad for the company.

  What the hell had been going on back there? Some hick’s idea of fun? It had a religious air to it, the stick figures both marking a territory and acting as symbols.

  Symbols of what? The Devil’s head was pretty clear and was certainly a form of rebellion in this Bible Belt state. Same with the pentagram. The four-legged beast was less clear, as were the human figures. The stick men had looked familiar. Nick had seen something like that before, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. They had been made by two twigs tied into a cross and then another pair formed into an X below, making a triangular body.

  Perhaps he had seen them in some prehistoric cave art or African fetish. They certainly looked primitive in style. Nick had been studying esoteric religions for so long, he’d seen just about everything. It was hard to remember it all.

  He was surprised he’d gotten so startled but the suddenness of realizing he wasn’t alone, right after seeing that mutilated squirrel, had made instinct take over.

  And, really, he shouldn’t be ashamed of himself, he thought as he looked over his shoulder for the hundredth time. There had been town-and-gown tensions for as long as he could remember. Students and faculty didn’t stray far beyond Student Town because they weren’t welcome in the bars and streets where the locals hung out. Hell, Nick had even gotten nasty looks in the Walmart. If that wasn’t neutral territory for all Americans, what was?

  Nick wiped his brow. He was soaked in sweat and had a cramp in his side. He didn’t dare let that other professor get too far ahead, though, so he kept jogging. At least the guy went slower than Nick’s usual pace. He didn’t want to become the latest casualty of the tensions between the locals and the newcomers.

  Like last year’s incident, when a black student went to a country-and-western bar just off the interstate. After being called a nigger half a dozen times and having a drink poured on him, he fled. Black Lives Matter stepped in and made a big fuss, trying to get the bar shut down and demanding action from the municipality. Their position was that an African-American should be able to go to any public place without fear of persecution.

  Well, yeah, but get real. What had the student expected? The bar owner spouted some line about the kid causing trouble. The municipality shrugged and said the situation was “unclear.” Twitter screamed for a while and then moved on to the next Rage of the Week. Nothing changed.

  Just one incident out of many, and one of the least violent. Several students had been beaten up for showing up at the wrong bar.

  Nick glanced over his shoulder again. The path remained reassuringly empty. Whoever had been lurking around the old train s
tation hadn’t followed him. In fact, he or she had probably run off and hid.

  She? Probably not. Nick’s fleeting glimpse had given him the impression of a man, and a hefty one at that.

  Whoever it had been, they were nowhere in sight.

  Better safe than sorry. Nick ignored the cramp in his side and kept jogging back to town.

  By the time he made it to the trailhead, he was panting with exhaustion. The man he had been pacing made the light at the crosswalk and headed onto campus.

  Nick didn’t make it and leaned against a telephone pole, waiting impatiently for the light to change. On the opposite corner, curving around the well-manicured university grass, was a low stone wall engraved with the words “Republic University.” Some dipshit had spray painted an “-an” after “Republic.” Local humor. Happened at least three or four times a semester. The custodial staff would rub it off and a townie would add it right back again. The stone between the two words was actually abraded down a quarter of an inch from all the cleanings—the price of being a pinpoint of blue in a red state.

  The light changed and, with a profound sense of relief, Nick returned to campus.

  He no longer ran but trudged back to his department. Well, at least it had been a hell of a workout. He checked his Fitbit. Nine miles. Not bad. A new personal record, or at least a personal record for this phase of his life. Once, long ago, he’d been a lean, hardy youth, canoeing down remote rivers and climbing mountain trails in search of the secrets of other cultures. That youth was long gone, and even the stories of his adventures had begun losing their glamor, though they still wowed a new crop of freshmen every year.

  Back to the quad and its peaceful scene of Victorian buildings and flirting students. Why couldn’t the town be like this? Nick should have stayed back East, back in civilization, where he fit in. Except Cheryl had gotten a plum job and he had stupidly agreed to apply to the anthropology department here. They had thought they were so lucky when he landed one. Academic couples hardly ever managed to get jobs at the same university. Yeah, some luck.