The Corduroy Jouster

This happened over a decade ago somewhere in northern Michigan during the summer.

My friend, Cathy (18), my boyfriend's half-sister Mei (16), and I (17), drove down from our hometown to visit friends, and were on our way back home in Cathy's shitty little Geo. By shitty, I'm talking this piece of crap had engine problems, overheating problems, ignition problems, and was constantly falling apart. More than once, it had stalled or just stopped working in the middle of the street while we were trying to get somewhere, but Cathy thought we'd be fine since we hadn't had any problems with it on the way to our friends' house.

It's a little past midnight and we're roughly an hour away from home. There's nobody on the road, dense woods on every side, no streetlights, no moon. I can barely see past the windshield because I have a form of albinism, which leaves me legally blind in my left eye and with really awful vision in my right eye. My depth perception is terrible, and I can't see more than a few feet ahead of me at most, but usually I can make out lights and other cars when they pass and sometimes street signs and people when they are close enough.

We drove down this narrow, hilly road, and on the descent down a hill, the Geo makes a strange sound. Cathy starts braking, and when we get to the bottom of the hill, the car quits working. Cathy swears and turns on the hazard lights. She and I get out of the vehicle, and I help pop the hood, which causes a bunch of smoke to fly out. After the smoke mostly clears, Cathy tries to figure out what went wrong this time. We stand in the dark for at least 45 minutes (maybe longer?) before we realize she couldn't fix the car and needed a tow truck.

These were the days of mapquest printouts and brick phones, so we couldn't whip out our smartphone and look up the closest tow truck. I decided to call my boyfriend, Caleb, to come pick us up, and suggest we come with a tow to pick up the Geo when it was daylight. Mei and Cathy agree, so I take out my cruddy nokia, and called my boyfriend. It's then I realize: no service.

I ask Mei and Cathy if either of them have service; they both check and shake their heads. Mei gets a bit panicky, and we all hold our phones up, trying to get a signal to no avail. It's hot as fuck, and after failing to get any kind of service, we are all feeling a bit spooked and uncomfortable. Mei begs us to do something, because she is more afraid than Cathy and I.

Cathy attempts to calm Mei down and I wonder if the thick woods and hills are blocking out our reception. I tell Mei and Cathy to wait by the car, and walk away from them up the hill we had just come down, holding my phone out. Still no signal. I walk further and further away until I reach the top of the hill. I can't see the outline of the Geo anymore, but I can still hear Mei at a distance.

Even at the top of the hill, I don't get a signal. I know it's gotta be the trees in the way, so I get the idea of climbing up a tree and calling from there. Just to see if it works. In hindsight, this was not my brightest idea, but me being an idiot, I saunter off into the woods in search of a climbable tree. At this point, I just want to go home, and this is the only thing on my mind.

I find a nice one with low branches and lift my body upwards towards the trunk. I climb the branches higher and higher and about midway up the tree, I feel my pack of cigarettes fall out of my shorts pocket. I'm kind of annoyed, but figure I can just look for them when I climb back down.

I take my phone out and hold it up once I get near the top. I have service! Relieved, I call Caleb, but he doesn't pick up, so I call again until he does. He answers in a sleepy, but pissed voice, but I'm having none of that and simply explain our situation. He asks where we are, and I give the name of the road and my best guess as to how far along we are on it. He says he will be on his way and tells me to go back and wait with Mei and Cathy, then yells at me for being stupid and climbing a tree in the dark with my bad depth perception. I assure him that I'm fine, he's skeptical but says okay, and we hang up.

I start climbing down the tree, but my hand touches a big glob of sap, so I stop and try to wipe the sticky goop off on my shirt. I'm already sweaty and gross, so I'm not too happy about the sap. While I'm failing at getting this crud off my hands, I hear the strangest sound from somewhere below me. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh.

I completely freeze, not being able to place what the hell that sound is, but it's moving pretty fast. I stare down into the darkness below me, but can't see shit. Just hear this noise continuing. It comes closer and closer, and then I hear it right below my tree. Zwwisssh.

And then it stops. Right under my tree. I hold onto the branches as tight as I can and wait. I hear leaves shuffling and twigs snapping, and after a while that stops, and the weird noise starts again, but it's heading away from me deeper into the woods. I wait until I can no longer hear the sound, then finish climbing down and jump out of the tree. It's completely silent now besides the sounds of the woods, so I grope around on the ground for my cigarettes. I don't find them, so I make my way out of the woods and back towards the road.

I jog down the hill, and when I reach the bottom, I notice Mei and Cathy are not standing outside the car anymore and the hazard lights are off. I walk over to the car and Mei rolls down the window a little bit, and whispers in a panicked voice, "Elisabeth, where the hell were you!?"

I point back over my shoulder towards the hill and started to explain that I called her brother, but Cathy yelled, "What are you doing, get the fuck back in the car!" I give them a weird look, but Mei unlocks and opens the door and I crawl into the back seat with her, slamming it behind me. Cathy slams the locks and double checks them while Mei rolls up the window and makes sure the rest are rolled up. One of the windows has never closed all the way, but there's less than a finger space, so it's not too big a deal, but Mei is freaking out about it and Cathy has lost her cool as well. I am still confused and ask what the heck is going on.

Mei tells me that a bit after I went up the hill, some weird person came out of the woods and "ran really funny" up the hill in the direction I went. They got freaked out and turned the lights off and got in the car. They thought he had got me. I am honestly scared at this point, because if I hadn't stopped to wipe sap off my hands I most likely would have got out of the tree at the time I heard the weird noise. I just knew it was that person. I tell them my story, and everybody in the car is scared shitless, but are relieved that Caleb is on his way. We only have to play the waiting game now.

We sit on the road for what seems like forever, the dread we were feeling made time seem like it was going slower than normal. Cathy and Mei are looking out the windows, surveying the area, and I'm just sitting there hoping Caleb will hurry the fuck up and come rescue us. Suddenly, I hear Mei whine, "Oh my God...." and she starts crying. Cathy snaps her head to where Mei is looking and stifles a gasp. I look where they are facing. I see nothing but the dark.

But then I hear it through the small opening in the window. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh.

Mei ducks down, as though doing that will make her invisible and Cathy hides her head behind the steering wheel. I follow their lead and sort of hunch down in my seat, but the noise comes straight up to the window.