The path through the woods wasn’t exactly what I’d call comforting. The towering evergreens blocked out the sky, and even in the mid-afternoon, when the sun shone brightest overhead, the path was lit by a dull green glow rather than any direct light. The ground itself was near barren, save some mosses and fungi sprouting out around the trunks of the trees. If there were a cabin around here, I would be certain it belonged to some serial killer. This was a park, though. Owned by the government. No one lived on the land. Plenty of joggers and bikers rolled through, especially in the hot summer days, to get out of the sun for their workouts. I was the unlucky sot who commuted through the forest.
My job was at an office building, about a klick from where I lived. Unfortunately, the only path across that klick that was under five klicks was through the woods. So, far too early every morning, I got up, grabbed my bag, and headed out to meet with the morning joggers in their warmup area outside the woods. As I finished saying hello to the joggers, they knew it was time to start their run. I casually walked behind them, giving yet another friendly hello at those that ran back past me. I finished the one point four klick commute to my building and walked into the lobby restroom. Changed into my suit, put my casuals into the bag, and entered my office.
The mornings weren’t the part of the woods that freaked me out, though. The mornings are almost relaxing, the sound of small birds and thudding feet being the only noise in the air for a solid bit of the journey. No, it was the nights. I work a ten-four schedule, so that I have my Fridays to myself. It’s wonderful in so many ways. One way it is not is that it puts me, during wintertime, walking back at night. Across a pitch-black path. No one around. Utter silence permeating the air. It was one of the most unsettling experiences of my life, and I suffered through it four days a week, for several months in the year.
Logging off my computer as my workday came to a close, I headed back down the elevator to the lobby. Beside me, one of the programmers stood in silence, as though preparing me for my walk. I was almost grateful that the company was fairly isolating. If I had to talk to someone while I was leaving, it would just make the woods feel more silent. Nodding my head to the security guard, I walked into the lobby restroom, to change back into my casual clothes. Dry-cleaning the suits was expensive enough, I didn’t want to need to do that more often by sweating in them. The same reason I kept my cubicle at eighteen centigrade. The less I sweat, the less often I have to go through the hassle of dry-cleaning. Having finished changing, I took a deep breath and walked out of the office. Down the hill to the left of the building and across the street put me at the wooded pathway’s entrance in no time. Bouncing up and down a bit to hype myself up, I entered the lightless forest.
Within the first half-klick, the soft sounds of the occasional car in town disappeared, leaving only the unbearably loud silence. The birds that provided my morning melodies were fast asleep. The feet that thrummed out dawn’s beat knew better than jog through the darkness. Even with my eyes adjusted for the night, I could barely make out the shapes of the trees lining the pathway. Seeing obstacles while you ran or biked would be hard enough to make either activity dangerous. So, it was just me, the dark, and the silence. I knew eventually I would start to hear the soft noises of civilization again, but not for a hot minute. So, I walked the path I knew by heart, ignoring the darkening silence that pervaded it.
Snap. It didn’t belong. It wasn’t from me. There was a snapping in the woods. My head instinctively whipped around to look in the direction of the noise, before I remembered my eyes would be useless. Instead I listened. There, beside the snap, was a crumpling. The mushrooms along the tree roots, when stepped on, made such a noise. Something was walking in the forest. In front of me. The noises had been drowned out by the overbearing silence, but now that I noticed them, they were even more deafening than the quiet. They approached the path ahead of me, then stopped. The thing, whatever it was, had hit the path. And it wasn’t moving off of it. I kept walking. It wasn’t like some wild creature would stand still on the path. It was either coming towards me, in which case there was no point standing still, or it was walking away, which would mean I didn’t need to worry at my slow walking pace.
Standing still, in the middle of the woods, was a man. Hunched over slightly, in raggedy clothes. I barely noticed him before he was three meters ahead of me. He was also staring directly at me. Or at least in my general direction. “Hello,” he whispered. The whisper was loud enough to be heard throughout the woods. I wondered why he even bothered to whisper at all.
I smiled and nodded. “Hey,” I said, and started to move to the side to go around him. He stepped in front of me. “What the hell, man?” I was baffled by his move.
Slowly, he whispered, “Don’t you know who I am?”
I didn’t. I’d never met him, or anyone that looked even vaguely like him in my life. “I think you’ve got me confused for someone else,” I said, stepping to the other side of the path.
“You’re all the same,” the man murmured, “All the same. All of them. Of you.” He pulled from his coat a rather large and frightening knife. It was already coated in dried blood.
I nearly jumped backwards, but my back hit one of the trees that lined the path. “What the what!? Get that –! Are you gonna…” I stammered as he approached.
He slashed at me, but I dropped to the ground and rolled away. “Where are you going, pig?” the man asked.
He was going to follow me, no matter what. I wasn’t going to put my wife at risk. “I know I promised, honey,” I whispered, half to myself, half to god, “But I can’t put you at risk.” Slowly, I stood up and turned to face the man.
He smiled. “You’re ready to die?” the man asked me.
I took a breath, in and out. “You talk too much to be scary,” I said to the man, just a hint of a smirk crossing my face, for only an instant.
The man charged at me, slashing down with his bowie knife. A simple slap deflected it away from my body, and a left hook connected with his jaw. He staggered backwards, then came at me again, this time a stab. Stepping fluidly to the side, I grabbed his wrist. With a twist and an elbow, I shattered his radius. Another twist and pull, and the ulna went with it. The man collapsed in pain. I heard the voice quietly whispering the word kill in the back of his head. Over and over, like a soundtrack to my life. “How many?” I asked, kneeling on his chest.
He tried to stab me in the side with the knife. It missed, cutting my shirt. I began to pummel him. Over and over again I struck him in the face. “How many?” I asked. He didn’t answer, and I kept on hitting. Blood began to cover my arm, my face, my pants, my shirt. The man’s blood scattered across the path, soaking into the dirt. Still, I hit him.
I could feel my smile, a dark grin, growing on my face. Hitting him felt good. I could feel the voice getting louder. “Kill him, Tom,” It whispered to me, “Kill him.” It just felt right. Pummeling him was the right thing to do. I knew that, in my head, in my gut, and in my heart. Then the chest I was kneeling on stopped moving. The man wasn’t breathing. I’d killed a man. No, I thought to myself. I didn’t kill a man. I killed a killer. That didn’t count.
Taking his raggedy shirt in my fist, I began to drag him into the woods. Even though they deserved it, legality was still iffy. Best get rid of it. Same as the last one. I thought about the park’s map. There was a lake, a quarter kilometer north of the path. Pulling the limp body north took a tad bit of time, but eventually I made it. At the side of the lake was an old boathouse. Decaying, but stocked. I walked over there, and picked up an anchor and chain, tossing them onto an old rowboat. Rowing back, I pulled the body onto the boat. “I’m kinda sorry about this,” I told the body as I rowed out to the middle of the small lake, “But I can’t risk you coming back. Some of you do, you know?”
Tying the chain around the man’s body, and wrapping it well, I pushed the body and anchor over the edge of the boat and rowed back to the boathouse. Climbing out, looked at myself. My clothes were a mess, covered in blood. Better to do dry-cleaning sooner than necessary than deal with someone seeing me looking like this. Quickly, I changed into my suit again, shoving my bloody clothes into my bag. Confident I’d done enough, I walked back to the path. There was some blood soaked into the ground, but it wasn’t like the path was ever well lit enough for people to notice that much. Hopefully. I kicked a little dirt over the darkest parts, then continued on my way. At least the silence wasn’t deafening anymore. My mind was too busy trying to prepare for the conversation I was about to have with my wife.
In no time, I’d made it back home. Kate was already eating dinner as I walked in. She took one look at me and, from some combination of the timing, the look on my face, the clothes I was in, and intuition, knew instantly. “You promised me, Thomas,” she said.
“I know,” I replied, “I know.” Walking over to the dining room table, I hung my head in shame. “He came at me with a knife and, well…” I trailed off.
“That’s what the police are for,” she scolded me.
I shook my head. “But what if,” I began.
She cut me off. “That doesn’t actually happen hardly ever.”
I served myself some food. “But I couldn’t risk it. Not with you here.”
She groaned. “I’m married to you, I can take care of myself, dear,” she said, only half joking. We had started dating while I was still wandering the world, helping out how I best knew how. She’d had to deal with killers a couple of times before, though not in a decade or so.
“I know,” I replied, “But still.”
“How were you even… You’ve been keeping up with training, haven’t you?” she posited.
I looked at her, slightly hurt. “Never. I promised you. It’s just not something you forget. And I think I need to go back to the psychiatrist.”
Kate came over and hugged my head. “She’s back? I’m sorry, honey,” she said, stroking my hair, “I know it’s hard. Remember your coping skills.”
I smiled up at my wife. “Then you won’t mind if I go to the garage?”
Kate nodded. “Not at all. Just, take the food and eat it all, okay,” she said. I picked up my plate and began to walk to the garage. She added in a shout after I was out of the room, “And if you finish anything, you’ve got to show me.”
“I know. Love you babe,” I shouted back, as I walked into the small workshop area in the back of the garage. On the table was a large mechanical shell for a mask, with puppetry wiring to allow for realistic mouth and eye movements. I began to sculpt the rubber over it. I was feeling like making a wolf mask. Nibbling my food as I began, I set to the several hour process of sculpting the mask. I’d continue into the night, work on it tomorrow night as well, and probably finish it off on Friday. It relaxed me to work with my masks. It was comforting, a reminder of a simpler time.