Jeff Strand - Dweller

Toby grinned. It was a great plan.

He was mostly sure he wasn’t out of earshot. You had to be really deep in the woods not to hear his mother yelling.

Toby sat on the ground, leaned against a tree, pursed his lips, and began to whistle. He was starting to get pretty good. Not quite to the point where he could whistle an actual “tune,” but he could now whistle notes that sounded different from each other. Previously, he’d been limited to squeaking and blowing soundless air. Any day now he’d be able to whistle the Lone Ranger theme.

He sat there for a while, whistling and playing with his unopened pocketknife.

He sure hoped he wasn’t lost. It was too nice of a day to be ruined with a lecture.

What if the woods were haunted? No matter how sharp or long it was, a knife blade wouldn’t save you from a ghost. Toby wasn’t exactly sure what a ghost could do to you-they couldn’t vaporize you like aliens or drink your blood like Dracula-but they had to be able to do something bad, right? Maybe they dragged you off to meet the devil.

He really should have paid attention to where he was walking. He’d do that from now on.

Some bushes shook.

That wasn’t anything unusual. The bushes in this forest were always shaking. But this sounded like it was caused by something big.

He stood up. The sound wasn’t that far away. So many ghastly things it could be…but Toby quickly decided that he wasn’t scared of any of them. Nobody was going to ever call Toby Floren a coward. He was going to march right over to those bushes, find out what was shaking them, and let that intruder know that he wasn’t going to put up with any funny business in his forest.

The bushes rustled again. Toby’s bravery faltered for a moment, then returned in full force and he walked forward, prepared to deal with the menace.

He froze. The large cluster of bushes was about ten feet away, and there was definitely something hiding in them. Not an alien or something boring like a deer, but a…person?

“Hello?” he said.

Toby screamed as it emerged from the leaves.

It wasn’t huge-maybe the size of his dad. Covered with brown hair. Sunken yellow eyes. Claws. Teeth.

Toby wasn’t sure if it reached for him, or if he just thought it did, but he turned and ran, not caring which direction. His knife slipped out of his hand but it didn’t matter, he just left it behind; it wouldn’t do any good against that beast anyway.

He fled for his life.

It didn’t sound like the monster was following him. He didn’t look back to be sure.

He didn’t stop running until his foot struck a root or a rock and he fell to the ground, throwing out his arms just in time to avoid bashing his nose against the dirt. So much pain shot through him from his palms to his shoulders that for a split second he thought his arms had snapped right off. But they hadn’t, thank goodness, and he scrambled back to his feet and continued running. He still didn’t dare to look behind him, for fear of seeing a pair of giant wet jaws coming toward his face.

After a couple of minutes, he forced himself to stop.

He finally looked back. Nothing was chasing him.

It was real. Toby was absolutely positive of that. There might not actually be ghosts, or alien spaceships headed toward earth, or vampires in coffins, but there was a monster in these woods, with long, sharp claws and scary fangs. He knew the difference between the imaginary monsters he liked and the real ones he didn’t like.

And now he was completely lost.

He didn’t care anymore about getting in trouble-he just didn’t want to die in these woods, either by wandering around until he starved to death or by getting eaten. He called out as loudly as he could: “Mom! Dad!”

Nothing.

He cried out again: “Mom! Dad! I’m lost!”

What if the monster were drawn by the sound of his voice? What if it found him first?

He had to risk it. He shouted for his parents once more, screaming so loud that it hurt his throat, crying now.

Off in the distance, his mother’s voice: “Toby?”

He ran toward her.

Now that he was home safe and facing punishment, Toby wished that he’d made more of an effort to find his way out of the forest without calling for help. He sat in the living room, across from his mother and father, staring at the floor and squirming uncomfortably.

“Didn’t we tell you to stay within sight of the house?” his father asked, in a very stern tone that Toby had heard many times before.

“Yes, sir.”

“Look at me.”

Toby looked into his eyes. Fifteen minutes ago, he wouldn’t have thought there was anything scarier than his father when he was angry. Even now, he wasn’t so sure.

“Why did you disobey us?”

Toby shrugged.

If he’d had time to think about things, he probably could have made up a story that would have gotten him in a lot less trouble. Unfortunately, he’d rushed right into his mother’s arms and sobbed about having seen a monster, which had earned him a few minutes of sympathy and comfort but was now very much working against him. Even though he knew he was telling the absolute truth, he also knew that it was a tough story to swallow, and that he’d have been much better off lying about what happened and easing his parents into the whole “monster in the woods” part.

“Where’s your pocketknife?”

“I dropped it when I was running.”

“From the deer?”

“It wasn’t a deer.”

“Well, whatever it was, you shouldn’t have been out that far to see it. And now you don’t have a pocketknife. What do you think I should do about this?”

There was only one correct answer to this question. “Make me go get your belt,” Toby said quietly.

His father nodded. “Go get it.”

Toby didn’t think that the belt had ever been used to hold up his father’s pants. It was strictly a tool of punishment, and it did that often and well. Toby had tried various tricks to get out of the spankings, including pretending that he couldn’t find the belt or that he thought his father meant a different, thinner belt. None of these had worked out in his favor.

This particular spanking wasn’t that bad-three quick smacks and it was over. His mother’s lecture on responsibility took quite a bit longer. When it was over, Toby was sentenced to a week without dessert (a fate worse than a thousand spankings with a steel electrified belt) and forbidden to go into the woods by himself, at all, until further notice.

But his dad never stayed mad for long, and before it started to get dark they hiked out into the woods together to try to find his pocketknife. Toby tried to remember where he might have dropped it, but really, he’d been fleeing in pure terror at the time and didn’t have the slightest clue how to get back there. He wasn’t scared of the monster, though, not with Dad around.

“You need to be able to recognize landmarks,” his dad said. He pointed straight ahead. “What do you see?”

“Oak trees.”

“Yes, but look exactly where I’m pointing. Even if it’s just a bunch of trees, you should be able to find things to help you find your way. What do you see?”

“Three of those trees kind of look like a W.”

“Exactly.” Toby’s father took him by the hand. “Watch for that kind of thing and you won’t get lost.”

They weren’t able to find the pocketknife. His father frowned when Toby described the monster yet again, but Toby couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t making it up and he hadn’t imagined it and now that he was already in trouble he wasn’t going to pretend he hadn’t seen it. As they looked for the knife, he watched for traces of the monster-footprints, hair, a fang, anything-with no success.