NOTE: This story is a piece of flash fiction, written in a limited time with a limited wordcount.
This piece is closer to an exercise than my usual, but I felt perhaps it might be fun to read! I hope you enjoy!
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My name? Oh, sure, name’s Hank. Full name Henry Earnest Hollister. You’ll remember, because my initials sound like a laugh. Y’know: HEH.
Well now, I’m having a damn fine day, ain’t you sweet for asking. You know what’s funny, I remember when the land this fancy bank sits on was all woods. Guessing that was long before you were born, though I hate to presume a lady’s age.
Kids used to ride ponies though here from farm to farm, if you can believe that, just trails and thick brush and deer watching from the trees. Funny how things change. Time passes you by if you ain’t careful. But I can’t complain. I’ve had plenty of good times.
Still, I hate to see the pretty things pass in the name of progress.
But that’s an old man talking. Wasn’t always that way. When I was young, I thought it was like magic, watching dark pathless woods bein’ turned into neighborhoods right before your eyes. Like a magic trick. One minute it’s empty wilderness, next minute it’s houses and shopping malls.
I spent the summer after high school working forestry out past Aberdeen, back when forestry wasn’t so much about preserving the woods as it was about finding ways to tame ‘em. There was a certain development company back then, can’t quite remember the name…it was buying up big patches of pristine old-growth forests in prime spots, leveling the trees and putting up houses and shops and such. Someone had their fingers in someone else’s pockets, you know how it is. And I was all of eighteen, so what did I know? I thought it was a sign that things were good. Progress, like I said.
But there was this one patch on my usual route through the woods…I had grown pretty attached to it. Had a big beautiful pond, beavers living at one end, herons and ospreys and bright shining trout and small-mouth bass. Frogs galore, and big blue dragonflies that would zip around your head and land on your shoulder, sunning their wings. I would spend my free time there whenever I could, eating my lunches or even camping out in the evenings, bone-tired from hard work and letting the night noises wash over me.
And then, one day, the machines rumbled on through and parked on the edge of my pond, and some fella in a hard hat started marking the biggest trees with criss-crossing lines of red spray paint.
Well, I don’t mind telling you, I mourned. For the first time, it wasn’t just a piece of land, not to me. It was a place I truly loved. But I was just a kid, no one was gonna listen to me. The papers had been signed, the place was doomed.
So, the night before the demolition was set, I decided to camp out there one last time, soak up the beauty, maybe even pay my respects in whatever way an eighteen year old kid could figure to do so. I wasn’t raised with religion.
And while I was lying there in the dark of my tent, the big machines empty and waiting only a few yards away, like an army waiting for the order, I heard something.
It was a knocking, heavy and hollow, as if someone was hitting a tree trunk with a big stick. It was resonant, echoed out across the pond up to the stars, and even the frogs and night noises seemed to pause to listen to it.
Three big knocks, and then it went quiet.
I lay there in my tent in the dark, trying to figure out what it could be. There was no wind, certainly nothing strong enough could make the trees knock together like that.
Could someone else be out there in the woods with me? I trembled to think so; no one would wander out there by accident. It wasn’t that kind of place.
But it struck me, then: what if it was a hiker or camper, lost? What if they were knocking for help, and I was the only one out there who could lead them back to safety?
Kids are brave and stupid, so I got up, and took my flashlight, and headed toward the direction of the knocking. I called out a few times, hoping to hear someone call back.
But nothing.
I called and called, getting further from camp than I liked to, but still…nothing. I was about to give up and head back to my tent when I heard it again, and closer: three heavy, hollow knocks.
I made a quick beeline for the source of the sound, flashlight whipping back and forth, calling out. “Anybody there?” that kind of thing.
I was going deeper and deeper, into parts of the forest that humans probably hadn’t seen, before, and I was aware of the feeling of being…watched. Witnessed.
The deeper into those woods I went, the more the sorrow of it fell on me…the realization that all of this was going to disappear under the treads of the machines waiting back there, at the edge of my pond. The plants and animals and birds were all going to vanish, and nothing would be able to bring them back.
When I pushed through the firs into a clearing, stars reeling above me, I don’t mind telling you that I fell to my knees. I could see it: machines tearing up the earth and razing the trees to the ground, animals displaced, escaping in terror, falling to fate. And I’m not much of a crier, but I had a tender heart back then, and I shed a tear or two right there in those woods.
And you know? I think that’s what must have happened. Only way to explain it. My heart opened up to something, I think. I must have invited something in.
Knocking, knocking, and a high mournful cry over the treetops—was it me, crying? Or was it something else?
Because next thing I knew, it was morning, and I was back in my tent, waking up to the cold dawn, shivering.
It was real early, but I remember climbing out of my tent to see that the pond was alive with its normal morning activity, birds skimming across the surface, beavers sliding through the water, slapping the surface with their broad tails when they saw me.
And the machines? There they stood…but something had happened.
In the night, someone—or something—had done a number on ‘em. Great gashes in the steel, cords sliced, wheels slashed, treads torn up, windows shattered, instrument panels wrecked, oil and fuel lines punctured and leaking out into the makeshift gravel road. Like someone had taken a pickaxe to them…or a set of powerful claws.
I panicked, packed up and got out of there quick before the workmen could come out and find me, ask me any questions.
Here’s my thinking. I hear people talk about Sasquatch all the time, out here. Live long enough in the wilder parts of this state and everyone’s got a Bigfoot story. And I’ve heard ‘em all, and I just don’t know about it. Big lost ape, or a wild man, or an interdimensional demon—yeah, that’s a theory I hear kicking around. Knocking in the trees, bellowing cries on the wind.
But I think all the theories get it wrong. it might be something else, something a little less easy to pin down. Something looking to protect these wild Northwest woods at any cost, looking for willing hands to inhabit.
Might sound crazy, but…I dunno. I just can’t explain it any other way.
I’ll tell you this much: when I got back to town and finally calmed myself down, I realized that I had engine oil under my fingernails, and cuts all over arms that I couldn’t explain. Like from shattered glass.
That development company went out of business before they ever got around to razing that patch of woods I loved so much. So maybe…just maybe…my prayers were answered by something that loved the woods as much as I did. And maybe I did them a favor, just by being…available. Open. Someone knocked, and I answered.
Oh, uh…I’m sorry, what was that?
Hell. Yes, yes, I’d like to make a deposit, please.
Dammit, I’m awful sorry, sweetheart. You should never get an old man talkin’...once that train is rolling it’s real difficult to hit the brakes.
END
I wouldn't mind meeting Hank again. :)
Loved this so much! The protective claim on Mother Nature ! Beautiful 🤩