I looked back over my shoulder, and there came the thing, flapping its arms, its legs flailing like a wind-blown scarecrow.
I tripped once, rising just as the thing touched my shoulder, only for a moment. A cold went through me as it did. It was the sort of cold I imagined would be in the arctic, a sensation akin to stepping out of a warm tent, soaking wet, into an icy wind. I charged along with all my might, trying to outrun the thing I knew was right behind me. It was breathing, and its breath was as cold as its touch on the back of my neck. As it ran, the sound of its feet brought to mind the terrors I had felt earlier when I first saw it making its way through the woods—that indescribable sound that held within it all the terrors of this world, and any world imagined.
I reached the edge of the woods, and then I was into the clearing. I tried not to look back, tried not to do anything that might break my stride, but there was no stopping me. I couldn’t help myself. When I looked back, there at the line of the woods, full in the moonlight, stood the thing waving its arms about in a frustrated manner, but no longer running after me.
I thundered down a slight rise and broke into the yard where the topiary animals stood, then I clattered along the cobblestone path and into the house.
When I was in the hallway, I stopped to get my breath. I thought of the others, and though I was concerned, at that moment I was physically unable to return to those woods or even the yard to yell for the others.
Then I heard them, upstairs. I went up and saw they were all in the Evening Room. When Jane saw me, her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak. The others went about joshing me immediately, and it was just enough to keep me from blurting out what I had seen. It seemed that everyone in the game had been caught but me, and that I had been given up on, and that switching the game about so that the other side might be the pursuer had been forgotten. Hot chocolate was being served, and everything seemed astonishingly normal.
I considered explaining all that had occurred to me, but was struck with the absurdity of it. Instead, I went to the window and looked out toward the forest. There was nothing there.
Jane and I shared a room, as we were the closest of the cousins. As it came time for bed, I found myself unwilling to turn out the light. I sat by the window and looked out at the night.
Jane sat on her bed in her pajamas looking at me. She said, ”You saw it, didn’t you?”
She might as well have hit me with a brick.
“Saw what?” I said.
“It,” she said. “The shadow.”
“You’ve seen it too?”
She nodded. “I told you the woods were strange. But I had no idea until tonight how strange. After the game ended, the others thought it quite funny that you might still be hiding in the woods, not knowing we were done. I was worried, though.”
How so? I thought, but I didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.
“I actually allowed myself to be caught early,” Jane said. “I wanted out of the game, and I planned to feign some problem or another and come back to the house. It was all over pretty quick, however, and this wasn’t necessary. Everyone was tagged out. Except you. But no one wanted to stay in the woods or go back into them, so they came back to the house. I think they were frightened. I know I was. And I couldn’t put my finger on it. But being in the woods, and especially the nearer I came to that section where it thinned and the trees grew strange, I was so discomforted it was all I could do to hold back tears. Then, from the window, I saw you running. And I saw it. The shadow that was shaped like a man. It stopped just beyond the line of trees.”
I nodded. “I thought I imagined it.”
“Not unless I imagined it too.”
“But what is it?” I asked.
Jane walked to where I stood and looked out the window. The man-shaped shadow did not appear and the woods were much darker now, as the moon was beginning to drop low.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve heard that some spots on earth are the homes of evil spirits. Sections where the world opens up into a place that is not of here.”
“Not of here?”
“Some slice in our world or their world that lets one of us, or one of them, slip in.”
“Where would you hear such a thing?” I asked.
“Back home, in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. They say there was an H tree there. Like the one in these woods. I’ve seen it in the daytime and it makes me nervous. I know it’s there.”
“I hid behind it,” I said. “That’s where the shadow found me.”
“Lansdale was home to one of the three known H trees, as they were called.”
This, of course, was exactly what I had called the tree upon seeing it.
“It was said to be a portal to another world,” Jane said. ”Some said hell. Eventually, it was bulldozed down and a housing project was built over the site.”
“Did anything happen after it was torn down?” I asked.
Jane shrugged. “I can’t say. I just know the legend. But I’ve seen pictures of the tree, and it looks like the one in the woods here. I think it could be the same sort of thing.”
“Seems to me, pushing it over wouldn’t do anything.” I said.
“I don’t know. But the housing division is still there, and I’ve never heard of anything happening.”
“Maybe because it was never a portal to hell, or anywhere else,” I said. “It was just a tree.”
“Could be,” Jane said. “And that could be just an odd tree in the woods out there.” She pointed out the window. “Or, it could be what the one in Lansdale was supposed to be. A doorway.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“Neither does a shadow chasing you out of the woods.”
“There has to be a logical explanation.”
“When you figure it out,” Jane said. “Let me know.”
“We should tell the others,” I said.
“They won’t believe us,” Jane said, “but they’re scared of the woods. I can tell. They sense something is out there. That is why the game ended early. I believe our best course of action is to not suggest anything that might involve those woods, and ride out the week.”
I agreed, and that’s exactly what we did.
The week passed on, and no one went back in the woods. But I did watch for the shadow from the backyard, and at night, from the window. Jane watched with me. Sometimes we brought hot chocolate up to the window and sat there in the dark and drank it and kept what we called The Shadow Watch.
The moon wasn’t as bright the following nights, and before long if we were to see it, it would have had to stand underneath the back yard lights. It didn’t.
The week came to an end, and all of us cousins went home.
There was an invitation the next summer to go back, but I didn’t go. I had tried to dismiss the whole event as a kind of waking nightmare, but there were nights when I would awaken feeling certain that I was running too slowly and the shadow was about to overtake me.
It was on those nights that I would go to the window in my room, which looked out over a well-lit city street with no woods beyond. It made me feel less stressed and worried to see those streets and cars and people walking about well past midnight. And none of them were shadows.
Jane wrote me now and again, and she mentioned the shadow once, but the next letter did not, and pretty soon there were no letters. We kept in touch by email, and I saw her at a couple of family functions, and then three years or so passed without us being in communication at all.