SLEEPING CLUB- THE DEMON WOODS

The back seat of the car was covered in an assortment of old tools, which the toothless young man, whose name was Raymond, shoved roughly onto the passenger side before motioning me to get in. His wife, whose name I had learned was Nina, limped off the porch and slid in behind the steering wheel. Raymond sat next to her on the passenger seat. Inside the close confines of the car I could smell them. Their atrocious body odor mixed with the more honest smell of grease and sawdust which hung to some of the tools crowding the back seat.

Nina turned the key in the ignition, and with a lurch the car pulled out of the dooryard and nosed its way down a dusty dirt road toward the distant woods. The dirt, dry as baby powder, spewed out from under the car’s speeding tires leaving a long widening cloud behind us as we drove.

Fields stretched away on either side like a beige carpet as we drove in silence. Whatever had been planted in them looked pretty well scorched and withered under the oppressive sun.

Breaking the silence, I asked, “Are the woods really full of demons?”

Raymond looked over his shoulders and flashed me a toothless grin. “That’s what they say.”

They drove a little further in silence before Raymond offered more, “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen them myself, but my brother, Bill, swears that one day he was working a tractor close to the woods and he looked over and saw two little girls watching him from inside the woods. They was dressed all in white. Their skin was white as paper. Even their hair was white, but their eyes were black as a pit, and they were watching him. It wasn’t natural. No matter where he went they moved with him, staying inside the woods, and all the time just watching him. He just left the tractor and ran off. Old Top Manley had to go out and bring the tractor in.”

“Tell him about what Scott saw,” Nina suggested.

Oh yeah,” continued Raymond, “maybe two years ago, Scott Peters, he lives a little ways down from us, was out working the fields near the woods when he saw a whole forest full of animals come running out of the woods- bears, deer, turkeys, foxes, boars, you name it- they was all just running around at the edge of the trees, and even though he was rumbling past on his tractor they wouldn’t run back into the woods. The only thing he could figure was that something real nasty had scared them all out of the woods.”

“Everyone knows the woods the woods are full of demons,” said Nina.

‘That’s why they call it ‘Demon Woods,” agreed Raymond, “Just look it up on a map. You don’t get a name like that for nothing.”