If you’ve read the newspaper, then you’ve read the article concerning poor Richard Garrison; a friend of mine who was found by a search party eight miles into the woods behind his parent’s house about a month ago. You might have also read about his violent and somewhat unusual behavior that now seems to be his only outlet of emotion. It is true, all of it; the man has suffered the affects of being alone and lost in the wilderness for almost a month now. Why he went back in those woods is still unknown to both the police and his family. However, I myself did manage to hear a strange story from Garrison three days ago when he was still boarder-line sane at Elmer Hospital.

Being that Richard was a friend of mine for years, I felt both obliged and at the same time nervous to be meeting him under such conditions. Both he and I worked as literary professors at Gloucester University for years, and each of us admired the others work. Our families were close as well. Richard is the father of two young girls who often come over and play with my two boys and my daughter. Both our wives are close friends, too. The thought of seeing my friend lying there in a hospital bed, with all those twisting wires and tubes running in and out his body seemed almost too bizarre to accept. He had always assured me many times that under no circumstances would he end up in a hospital, no matter how bad things were. Richard, you could say, was a tough minded, stubborn individual. And despite his knowledge of literary fiction, the man had no outstanding imagination at all; nor did he endorse in the belief of the supernatural. This made what he told me even more confusing.

I arrived at the hospital that day, the summer sun high in the sky, the air thick and heavy. I walked across the parking lot and entered the main lobby where I walked up to the front desk and told the woman sitting there who I was and why I was there. She looked at the computer screen in front of her, typed a few things on the keyboard, and then smiled and told me the directions to Richard’s room.

“Take the elevator to the third floor, turn right, then walk to the end of the corridor, his room is the last one on the left.”

I did as she told me, and within a few minutes I was standing outside of his room. When I walked in, a short gasp escaped me when I beheld what was lying before me.

The police report said that Richard had lived mainly on leaves and twigs, and that he had occasionally managed to catch a few small rodents, field mice, rabbits, and such. His main source of hydration had been his own urine. By going through such torture that even the toughest men could not withstand, my poor friend’s body had been reduced to nothing more than skin and bone. His muscles had long since disintegrated into nothingness, and his eyes were still wide and wild with fear and shock. A blanket was pulled up to his waist and his head was propped up on a pillow. He turned slowly and looked at me, offering a weak, heartbreaking smile.

I said hello to Richard, keeping my voice down so I did not startle him. I said that I was hear to give him my best wishes and hoped that he would get well soon. I told him that my thoughts and prayers were with him and so were my wife’s and kid’s. Also, everyone at the university sent their best regards and were looking forward to seeing him again. I then assured him that his teaching position was not in any jeopardy and that he could resume work whenever he was able to do so. I nervously made my way over to a small chair next to the bed and sat down. Richard had not yet said anything. I remarked how awful it was to see him in such a horrible condition and that if there was anything he needed, that he should just ask me and I would be happy to help him. Upon hearing this, Richard’s eyes beamed with amazement as if he had just heard something he had wanted to hear all his life. He reached a bony hand from underneath the blanket and extended it over towards me.

“Then listen to me, okay?” He said this to me, his voice weak and soft.

I nodded and said okay. I would listen to him if that’s what he wanted.

Richard began propping his body up in the bed, taking the remote control and raising the upper portion. As his chest rose, the pillow began to slide from underneath his head. When I reached over to hold it in place, Richard pushed his bony hand at my face and shook his head. Finally, when the bed could go no higher, Richard arranged to pillow to his liking and looked at me.

“My parents are dead,” he said.

I nodded and said that I knew and was very sorry for his lose.

“A month ago, that was the funeral. It was at the cemetery just down the street from their house. After the services were over I decided to visit their house, before it was either sold or demolished. I hadn’t been there in quite sometime and I needed to revisit some old memories. I got there around one in the afternoon, and it was hot. The fact that I was wearing a black suite with black pants and shoes made it even hotter. But I walked around the place, looking up at my bedroom window and remembering a few happy things. It was good for me. I began to feel better and all. And that was when I walked around to the back of the house and looked out onto the backyard. A memory suddenly reentered my head for the first time in I don’t know how long. It slowly came back as I looked at the woods beyond the backyard. Those woods.

When I was five years old, I had always wanted to explore them. But my parents for some reason had always told me that I wasn’t allowed to. Every time I asked they said, ‘No.’ When I asked if I could go only a few steps into the woods they said, ‘No.’ When I asked why they said, ‘Because you’ll get lost.’ When I asked if maybe they could come with me, they said, ‘No, we’ll get lost.’ So for most of my youth, I had always wondered what was in those woods and why my parents didn’t want me to go back there. The only thing these questions did at the time was make me want to explore them even more. But I couldn’t disobey my parents, could not bring myself to go against what they wanted. As time went on, I guess the curiosity just wore off and I forgot all about the woods.

But at that moment, standing there with no one around, a mature adult, no longer a little boy, with both my parents dead… God, did I really think that? Anyway, I decided that maybe I should go and see what really was back there amongst all those trees; find out why my parents had always been telling me that I couldn’t go into the woods. I went. I walked to the edge of the woods and just started on in. Did I mention that it was a hot afternoon? And I was dressed in a black suite, both my parents had just died, and I was a University Professor who had a wife and kids. But none of that seemed to matter. I swear that when I took the first step into the woods, I felt like a kid again.”

Richard cleared his throat and made a very odd belching sound and for a moment I expected something to come shooting out of his mouth. But he settled back down and continued.

“At first it wasn’t all that bad. There was little foliage on the ground, no bushes or anything. I must have walked through about half a mile of nothing but pine trees. They provided me with enough shade so that I wasn’t sweating. But then the big pines stopped. Tiny cedar and stunted pines began, and the ground turned from being covered in pine needles to thick white sand. Now, without any shade, I began to feel the affects of the heat; so I took off my black suite and threw it on a small tree branch and continued on in just my white collared shirt. Looking back, I was fortunate to have left that piece of clothing hanging there on that branch. I think that if I hadn’t done that, the rescue team would never have found me.

The whole thing sounds mundane doesn’t it? I bet you’re interested in how I became the way I am more than how hot I was that day. Well, I walked for another fifteen minutes, not really seeing anything interesting and thinking that maybe there really was nothing all that exciting back here, just a plain, ordinary woods and all. So I decided to head back. Only after about twenty minutes of wondering around, searching for my black suite, did I realized that I could not find it, nor could I navigate myself back to my parent’s house. In short, I was lost.

But I didn’t start worrying then and there, no. This was not a big deal, I told myself. Eventually, if I just kept walking in a straight line I was bound to come across something, a path maybe. Although I was optimistic, the next fifteen minutes yielded no paths or structures, no roads or other sources for finding my way out of there. Now that I think about it, there was always this underlying feeling that I had while walking through the woods. Everything around me seemed to be, well, abnormal. I can’t really describe exactly how I felt. But just the way all those stunted pine and cedar trees stood erect, coming out of that white sand, and the way the wind seemed to make them sway, and the way the white clouds overhead slowly moved across the blue sky… all of it put a feeling of uncertainty and claustrophobia into me, and I was unable to rid myself of those feelings.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what Richard was getting at, but I did my best to try and listen to what he was telling me.

“Then,” he continued, “I began walking through another section of taller trees, pines mixed together with oak and cedar trees. Through them, I could see what appeared to be a clearing about three hundred yards ahead of me. And when I reached it, I beheld a large, open field that stretched for acres and acres. That’s what it was, a field out there in the middle of the woods. There were no roads or paths leading to it; I searched all around its perimeter for one.

It was then that I spotted something on the far side of the field, moving very slowly along the edge of the woods. Exactly what I saw, I cannot say, but it moved in such an odd fashion that it gave off the impression of being completely alien to any known animal that we have on this planet.

It was a dark object, and it seemed to be almost… gliding along. Every now and then it seemed to bob up and down, but mostly it just moved in a smooth, uninterrupted manner. I called out to it, yelling for whatever it was to stop. It did not. I yelled again, even louder and began running across the field. As I ran, I kept my eyes squarely on the thing. As I reached midway, it just seemed to evaporate into thin air. I stopped running and scanned the entire area, thinking that maybe it had begun moving faster. But I saw nothing. My eyes don’t play tricks on me, never have. Whatever I saw either went into the woods within less than a second or it had simply vanished into thin air. I wasn’t about to believe the latter explanation.

I continued on my way and arrived at the spot where I had last seen the strange object. I looked on the ground for any footprints or odd disturbances but found none. I looked into the woods and noticed a downed tree. At first, my mind didn’t think much of this, but then I saw another downed tree, further in the woods than the first; beyond that another one. There was no path accompanying them, but this was the only significant trail that I had come by all day. I walked back into the woods and began following the fallen timber.”

Needless to say, Richard now had me with his story. I was astonished to see him tell it with such description and clarity despite his condition. I figured that he was using every ounce of strength he had left in his frail body to tell me this.

“It was again odd, the way these trees had been cut down. I knew right off that it wasn’t the work of any type of saw; there were no clean cuts on any of them. It seemed that these trees had been ripped from there stumps, the way a person breaks a sapling or branch. And I followed those trees all the way through another long section of woods until they led me to another clearing. This one was much smaller, not a field by any means, just a small clearing. But it was within this that I saw the first man made structures all day.

They were these large cages of some kind. At first I thought that they might be some kind of animal trap, but these were much too large for any kind of animals we had around here. After examining a few of them, I determined that they had been sitting in this clearing for quite sometime, their metal already weather beaten and rusted. On a few of them were these fancy looking locks that latched onto the large doors. However, what seemed the strangest was the way these cages were arranged; in perfect symmetry with on another. There were about three rows in all, six to each row. And they just sat there as time passed, their shadows on the ground, keeping pace with the sun as it traveled across the blue sky. They stood steadfast and erect, not yielding to the soft breeze as it blew through.

I think it was at this point that I began to feel some concern creeping up to the surface. It was now starting to get late. As far as I could tell by looking at the position of the sun, it was nearing three o’clock. The thought of spending the night out here was not that appealing to me. But what could I do? I began to realize why my parents hadn’t allowed me to come back here; because I would get lost. It was as simple as that. When I was younger, I somehow had convinced myself that wasn’t the truth; that there was something back here other than just trees and bushes. Well, aside from a field, a black object that was probably nothing, and these iron cages, that’s all there was. Nothing more.”

Richard stopped dead at that moment and began looking around the room. I was about to ask him if something was wrong, but then he began again.

“That,” he sighed, “is what I thought then. I walked out of the clearing, leaving the cages behind me. As strange as it was to see them, I knew there was a rational exclamation for there presence there. I followed the fallen trees for about maybe twenty minutes, the sun getting lower in the sky as I went. It seemed that if I didn’t find a quicker way out of there, I would be spending the night.

The trees led me to what from a far distanced appeared to be a large, white structure of some kind. Needless to say, I was relieved to see some sort of building. If it wasn’t inhabited, then at least it would provide me with shelter for the night. When I approached it, I identified the structure as being a sort of barn. But at the same time, it also looked like a large shed of some kind. Not caring if it was one or the other, I walked to the nearest door and opened it.

The inside was musty, but the filter of light from the decaying roof above provided me with enough luminosity to guide my way. I found the place to be that of an old work shop of some sort, with endless rows of old machinery and tools on wooden tables and the ground. The floor was dirt covered and every now and then a rat scurried out in front of me and then disappeared amongst the debris on the floor. After some time of rummaging around, trying to find anything that would aid me in my quest to eventually find my way home, I found it impossible to find anything of us in all the junk and was about to leave when something rattled from deeper within the room. I was still for a moment and then told myself that it was just another rat. But then I heard it again and again, this time louder and closer. I worked my way over to the far wall where another large door was and tried to open it but found it locked. I strained my eyes in the direction of the noise but saw nothing.

Something fell off one of the tables, deeper in the room. The darkness prevented me from seeing what had caused it to fall. I began looking around for a weapon of some sort and found an old crow bar on the floor next to my foot. When I bent down to pick it up, I felt a light brushing sensation on my other leg. I bolted back upright and looked down. It looked like a snake of some kind, but it was too dark to tell. I realized then that whatever this was, it could not be a snake; it was simply too big. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the object came into clearer view. It seemed to get bigger and bigger as I followed its slithering figure away from the tip. Before it brushed up against me again, I took to the crowbar and slammed it down on the thing. Instantly the room was filled with a high pitched screech, louder than anything that I’ve ever heard in my life. The snakelike thing began squirming on the ground, obviously injured. It then withdrew itself amongst the darkness and was gone. The shrieking subsided soon after.

The silence following was probably the scariest moment of my life. Every now and then I heard this soft movement ahead of me in the darkness, but whatever was moving was just out of my perception. I moved slowly, trying to walk back to the door from where I came in. As I passed the other door on the far wall, I heard movement from behind it as well. What followed, I cannot, and refuse to try and explain.

Whatever was behind that door began banging on it so that the whole structure began to shake. A few pieces of old ceiling tile fell and hit me on the head. Again there came a violent smash against the door, and I could see that it was beginning to splinter in the middle. And there was movement now in the darkness again, to the left of me, that slithering thing coming towards me. I held the crowbar tight, frozen on the spot. I watched as the door was pounded on again and tried to imagine what was on the other side. What finally sent me running out of there was the sound that I heard coming from the other side. It was soft but distinguishable. A low humming sound, mixed with a rough growl of some sort. It lasted for about three seconds and then the door was pounded on again.

I ran and never looked back. I ran out the other door and back into the woods, still hearing the sounds echoing after me, the pounding, the creeping thing in the dark, and whatever was behind that large door. I ran and ran and ran.”

Richard breathed deeply now and seemed to be on the verge of tears. I sat there, my mind trying to make some sense of what he had just told me. I looked at him and was about to ask if he had told anyone else this strange story when he started talking again.

“There isn’t much more to tell you. Only one other thing, that’s it. Yes, it is true that I ate twigs, leaves, and small rodents. Yes, I did end up drinking my own urine. But that was before; before I found that dead animal carcass about a mile or so from the building where those terrible things happened. It was large in size and the vultures had not yet gotten any of it, although its mid section was partially torn open. What did this, I do not know. But it was unlike any creature I had ever seen in my life. Its size was enormous, much bigger than any bear or ape. I could make out its arms, legs, and head; but not one of these body parts resembled the anatomy of any creature known to man. But what was really unusual was the fur this being had. It was a very dark, peachy color and its texture was unlike anything I had ever felt. The fur was rough and grainy-like, a little damp and felt very stiff and rigid. At the time though, I was so hungry for a good meal that I didn’t care. I plunged my hand into the wound on the things chest and began tearing away the meat. But I found that it didn’t give me any energy, or help me in any way.”

His eyes now began to produce tears and I leaned over to comfort my poor friend. But as I did, he reached both his skeletal hands out and grabbed my collar and pulled me close to his face. He screamed something at me and then began shaking and twisting in the bed. The nurses came in and tried holding him down, calling for the doctor and telling me to leave. I did just that and walked out of the room, and a few minutes later, the hospital.

That was the end of Richard Garrison. I do not know of his current condition or if he has snapped out of his insane rants. And I don’t know whether to believe his wild story or to leave it to the psychologists to analyze. I try not to think about it all that much. But there is something that still lingers with me and I’m sure that it will be with me until the day I die. When Richard had pulled me up to his face, he had screamed something at me and it still sends a shiver down my spine every time I dare think about it. He had said that the animal he had eaten turned him into the walking skeleton that he was, and it did not turn up in any of his waste samples like the twigs, leaves, and rodents had. Whatever he had eaten, he said, was still inside of him.