feeling inside his abdomen that left him feeling hollow and afraid. He watched and waited but nothing happened. There was no monster to be seen or heard. He slowly backed up, walking backwards until he reached the deer feeder and took the bag and emptied it into the plastic barrel. Today he had nothing to do but watch and wait.
He went back to the kitchen and gathered some snacks, a couple bottles of water and root beer, then put them in a cooler he found in a cupboard. His day was going to be spent in one place so he needed everything within arm’s reach. Like a great many detectives before him, James was prepared to spend the day gathering evidence of the monster on a stakeout. Forgetting that cordless phones aren't cell phones, he brought it with him not knowing the hayloft of the barn would be out of range for the phone signal to its base. He made a second trip to bring a blanket to lay on and settled in.
Luckily for him, it wasn't as hot as it had been and so being up at the top of the barn wasn't unbearable. A refreshing breeze periodically blew through the hay door, bringing with it a reassuring comfort to a very uncomfortable situation. He was impressed with his set up, and had enough jerky and root beer to last him the whole day. But he didn't like the danger of the hay door since it opened from the floor. It was more danger than he was comfortable with, so he rummaged around the barn for a hammer, nails, and some boards. Again playing carpenter, he placed two boards across the bottom of the hay door so that he couldn't accidentally roll out. He positioned the first board in line with the floor with enough space between the top of it and the bottom of the second board so he could be on his stomach and still be able to peek out with his binoculars into the field. After finishing he sat back and bared nearly every tooth in pride.
"This isn't half bad," he said to the empty barn. His new habit of speaking to himself out loud in the absence of other people was hard to break. "I'm really starting to change my mind about this country thing. You never get to see clouds like this back in the city! Everything is so gray and blah!"
He studied the tree line for a long time but couldn't find any places where it looked like something had obviously come from. Everything was quiet, and after a couple hours and too many root beers later, James was starting to realize that being on a stake-out wasn't nearly as glamorous as he had imagined. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.
"Maybe I've just been seeing things," he said mid-yawn as his head drifted down to rest on his arms, "maybe my dad was right."
James was surprised that there hadn't been a single deer in the yard all day. With no idea that they were nocturnal, he was left with nothing to look at but the empty yard and the trees. He did notice that since he could barely see over the tops of the trees, the woods stretched much further back than he thought. His dad said that the property encompassed many acres of wooded area but James didn't realize that it was more like a forest. He was unable to see an end to it and assumed it was the very same stretch of trees he saw on their way to the hardware store. His imagination started to run away with his thoughts, and soon he was thinking about the tales of giant creatures living in the vastness of the planet's oceans. Because of the amount of space under the water, their existence was—at the very least— unable to be disproven. To James, the immense expanse of greenery perfectly fit in with the seemingly infinite countryside, and behind his dad's house was a big green ocean of trees. "Who knows what could be living in there," he said.
James was nearly a teenager, and being as such, it was easy for him to fall asleep. Just sitting in the car too long and he was out in minutes, drooling with his head drooped to one side in a position that would surely be uncomfortable for anyone who was awake. The combination of an uneventful day in the field, a belly full of junk food and root beer, and the perfect mix of warm weather and cool breeze was a coma inducer. After just a few hours, James fell into a deep fatherly snore.
The nap allowed his body to make up for the lost sleep from the night before. He simply blinked out of existence without the presence of dreams or thoughts until the loud noises of metal banging below him suddenly woke him up. The world was a messy blur as his heavy lids shot open mere inches from a small puddle of drool on his blanket. Below him in the barn, sounds of the drawers in his dad's tool box being opened and closed along with the clanging of wrenches banging together filled the air. It took him a minute to really wake up and as he sat up on the blanket, the wood floor underneath him creaked. He jumped as a loud bang came from below.
"Dad?" James yelled. He stood up and rubbed his eyes. He wondered how long he had been asleep. Looking out the hay door, he saw the sun was lower in the sky toward the horizon. At noon, the sun was nearly straight above him, meaning he had been asleep for a few hours.
He slowly walked to the ladder in the middle of the hayloft and peeked down. "Hello?" he called down. There was no answer. Slowly, he started to descend the ladder and at the bottom he saw his dad's tool chest tipped over with tools lying all over the ground.
"Dad?" he called out again, running out of the barn and into the driveway. His dad's truck wasn't there. A shiver of fear rippled up his neck and he ran into the house, locking the door behind him. Terrified, he closed all the curtains and blinds, made sure the windows were locked, then huddled in his room, afraid of whatever was in the barn with him. He tried not to think about it but a gnawing suspicion had him thinking the very creature he was looking for all day snuck right under his nose.
11
James had holed himself up well in the blankets in his room. So much so that he fell asleep again. Since living out in the middle of nowhere without anyone around meant you didn't have to lock your doors or windows, Nolan was surprised when he gripped the door handle to come in and walked straight into the door face-first. He fumbled for his keys in the porch light, eventually finding the right one. It was one of a couple times he had ever actually unlocked the door. Once inside, he was bewildered by all the lights being on.
"James?" he called out. "What's with all the lights?"
James finally awoke in the muffled cave of blankets when his dad opened his bedroom door.
"Hey, what's going on? Why'd you lock the door?" he asked concerned.
James groggily unearthed himself from the blankets, relieved to see his dad was home. "Someone was here," he said.
"What? Who?"
"I was up in the hayloft all day looking for...deer. I fell asleep and woke up to someone in the barn below me."
Nolan's face turned serious. "What? What happened? Are you all right?" He grabbed James's shoulders and began looking him over.
"I'm okay. By the time I climbed down no one was there," a look of panic filled James's face. "Dad, I think it was the monster from the woods."
Nolan stopped, closed his eyes and sighed. "James, there are no such things as monsters. C'mon, let’s go check out the barn."
"No!" James screamed, "I'm not going back out there!"
"I need to see if anything is missing," Nolan said, waving his son along to come with him. "I need you to show me what happened. Did you call the police?"
James eyes darted from side to side. He looked up mid-thought, "No, I didn't think to. But, I did leave the phone up in the hayloft."
"Why did you take the phone out there?" Nolan asked.
James shrugged, "In case anyone called."
"James, it's out of range of the receiver. Even if someone did call, you wouldn't have heard it, and you wouldn't have been able to call anyone either. It's not like a cell phone. Dinosaur technology, remember?"
James felt stupid not knowing that and at the same time anxious at the fact that if the monster had decided to come up after him he wouldn't have even been able to call for help. Nolan opened the front door and grabbed James's hand. James quickly pulled it free and froze.
"C'mon James," he urged.
"I'm not going out there, there's a monster out there!"
Nolan knelt down to meet his son face to face, "Listen, there are no such things as monsters, especially not around here. I'm sorry I told yo
u that stupid story about your uncle and the Bigfoot. None of that is real. These woods around here have been surveyed and explored many times, I'm sure. We aren't really in the middle of nowhere here and there are no dangerous animals out there. At most there would be a bear, or maybe a bobcat, but I promise there are no monsters. This isn't the Amazon rain forest, it's Ohio. It's okay, I'll be with you the whole time."
Nolan had managed to reassure his son. "Okay," James agreed.
They walked outside together, the pitch-black night still and quiet beyond the protective glow of the porch light. Rod shaped insects buzzed around at inhuman speeds like little rockets as they walked from the gradually fading light of safety toward the thick blackness of the new moon night. The barn had two lights connected to the same switch on the inside of the big door. One hung above the car and the other was at the back end of the bottom floor connected with a line of metal conduit between them. James stood before the barn opening squeezing his hands into anxious fists. He looked out into the backyard and saw nothing but black emptiness. The feeling of being watched crawled up his neck and down inside is skin, finally settling into a sour ball in his stomach. He tried to look through the dark and wondered if they were alone. His fear acted like a paradoxical magnet toward the woods, creating a