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Good Fences: Grateful for the Search Party

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Good Fences: Grateful for the Search Party

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Liam's belongings that were found in the woods.

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I don’t know if anyone’s ever going to find this. If they do, I guess it might be on my body. But bodies go unrecovered in these woods all the time. My name is Liam. Please tell my mom and brother that I’m sorry. I thought that I was going to bring us all back together, but I was wrong.

He said he’d bring me to my dad, but all we’ve done for what feels like days is walk deeper into the forest.

There aren’t any birds or deer. There’s only Carver.

I can't remember the last time I ate, but I don’t feel hungry. Empty, but not hungry.

We’ve been walking in circles. I miss Mom. I miss my brother. I miss Tank.

I don’t like the way he looks at me. Like he knows everything about me.

Sometimes he laughs at nothing. Twice, he’s told me to keep it down, like he was listening to something I didn’t say out loud.

When I ask him about Dad, he laughs. Mostly he insists we’re making progress, but that’s insane. He’s insane.

We reached a clearing with a hollow stump in the middle, surrounded by carvings. He made a fire. I stay near it to stay warm, but I never look into the fire. I see terrible things when I look into it.

We haven’t moved from this spot in a long time. I don’t know what we’re waiting for, and he doesn’t answer my questions. Sometimes he leaves for hours at a time. I never know he’s back until I hear him breathing. Sticks don’t break where he walks.

He disappeared again. I’m going to make a run for it. I can sometimes see the north star in the sky. If I head away from it, I should be able to get back to town.

It’s so dark and so cold and I’m so tired. I don’t know how long I’ve been out here, but I can’t sleep. I’m too scared. It’s always so silent, until I try to sleep. Then the noises come. Screeching and laughing and crying and growling. Just have to keep moving.

I could swear that I’ve been going south for days without veering off course once, but I ended up back at the hollow just the same. He was waiting for me there. He looked up from the fire and laughed at me.

Tried to run again. He said stop, and I stopped. I didn’t want to, but my body just listened.

He finally told me what he wants. I guess he told me before I ever followed him into here, but I just didn’t listen. I want to throw up, but there’s nothing in my stomach.

Gotta be careful what I leave lying around. I’m using everything Dad taught me. I wish that I had my light with me, but I’m glad that I had plenty of pens in my pocket when I left. Including a special one.

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MINISODE: The Bell Witch — SuperNeutral
Further Reading: Bell Witch

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I know you’re out there. I see you in the forest all the time, and I bet that you’re watching me leave this note for you right now. Who are you?

Come on. This note’s been on the path for days, there’s no way you haven’t seen it. Answer me or I’ll call the cops and tell them there’s a weird man following me.

Answer or I’ll stop coming out into the woods.

[Unintelligible]

What does that mean?

[Unintelligible]

?????

[Unintelligible]

Okay, so that took me forever to work out, but I think I get it now. [Unintelligible]

[Unintelligible]

I think he was. Or at least, I hope so. You know, I thought you were him at first.

I’d see you in the forest, out near where it happened, and I’d think about all the stories there are about this place. There’s tons of evidence that time and space don’t work out here like they do everywhere else, even my dad would say so sometimes. Plus, I mean, if people can vanish so easily in the forest without any explanation, why shouldn't they be able to reappear too?

They almost never find bodies when people go missing, even when they search for months and months. I figured that might mean that people who die in the forest don’t really die. I guess I was wrong, though.

That’s a very interesting theory, Liam. I wouldn’t be so quick to discount it.

You know my name?

Does it frighten you that I do?

I mean, yes. But at the same time, you’ve had about a million chances to attack me or murder me or whatever since I’ve come out here alone pretty much every day for the past few years. You haven’t done any of those things, though, which makes me think you might not be out to get me. But what are you doing, then? What are you?

I’m more of an absence than a presence. [Unintelligible]

You’re not the Blair Witch?

[Unintelligible]

Sometimes I kind of go numb and then just sort of act without thinking. Other times, a thought pops into my head that feels like it’s not even mine. Is that her? It happens the most often when I’m out walking in the forest.

[Unintelligible]

[Unintelligible]

[Unintelligible]

How long have you been out here?

As you said, time works differently in the forest. [Unintelligible]

How did you get that???

[Unintelligible]

That note was written before I was born. It should be nothing but pulp by now.

As you said, time works differently in the forest.

It really does? Things that should be gone are still out there?

[Unintelligible]

You know, I heard your mother the other night. Your house is close enough to the forest’s edge for me to listen in. She sent you to your room like a child, all because you spoke your mind.

She doesn't like when I talk about him like he’s still alive. She says it’s unhealthy. She doesn’t get that the real unhealthy behavior would be to give up on him if there’s any chance he’s still out there.

Is he? Is my dad out in the woods? Please, just tell me.

[Unintelligible]

You know, he wasn’t able to finish his last words to you before he choked on his own blood, but what he wanted to say was “Thank God that you’re alright.”

How do you know that?

I’m connected to this place and everything in it, [Unintelligible]

Okay. Fine. Please help me find him. I’ll do anything.

I require no payment besides the satisfaction of reuniting a family. Whenever you’re ready.

[Unintelligible]

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It’s strange to think that this may be the last time I come this far out into the forest, after spending my entire youth running around this place with an abandon that frankly bordered on stupidity. Guess that’s what happens when there’s nobody at home who cares enough to keep tabs on you, and a tiny part of you wants to trip into the creek and hit your head on a rock just to show them that they should’ve.

Nevertheless, in a few short weeks I’m going to be a father. I’ve got my own family to think about, and being a father means developing a sense of self-preservation for your kid’s sake, if not your own.

So, this is my goodbye to a place that’s been very important to me for many years. Hopefully, once I’ve got what I have to say off my chest and leave this letter behind me, I can close out this chapter of my life for good.

Ever since I found this place as a teenager, I knew there was something special about it. Special doesn’t mean safe, of course. But it does mean fascinating, especially for a precocious and impulsive kid.

I stumbled on this strange little hollow by total chance after I’d gotten into some knock-down, drag-out fight with my mother and “run away from home” with nothing but a few quarters and an empty lighter in my pockets. The first thing that struck me when I walked in was that outside sound didn’t seem to penetrate the hollow at all. No cracking twigs or rustling leaves, only the sound of my own breath. The second thing that struck me was the thing at the center of the place. The twisted, hollow stump of a tree with bark as white as maggots. I remembered Anthony talking about the Blair Witch being tied to a twisted white tree. [Unintelligible]

I went over to get a closer look, and when I put my hand on the bark, it was colder than I expected it to be. Then, I felt a sharp pain in my palm. I’d managed to get the most wicked splinter imaginable, and ended up bleeding all over the tree as well as myself. I started to feel numb and lightheaded, and I left. I got home right before sunset. That’s one local taboo that I’ve never once broken, and that I never will break. Knowing about all the people who’d gone missing after staying out too long was enough to make me make that concession, at least.

I used to go out to the hollow a few times a week, always in the daytime. I’d write in my journal and while away the hours, which seemed to pass in a matter of minutes out there.

One time in the hollow, I wrote a note that I never intended to send to a girl who I knew was miles out of my league. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out or destroy it, but I was too mortified to keep it anywhere that another living soul might be able to find it. So I shoved it to the very back of the hollow hole of this tree. [Unintelligible]. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but I still couldn’t help but feel as though it did.

For a short time after that, this was our spot. Her house wasn’t the happiest place to be at the time, what with Jess staying over to deal with her whole ex-husband situation. I’d dare Rosemary to go and find the notes that I wrote for her, and she’d find them and leave some of her own for me. I thought that if neither of us had a place to be happy on our own, I could make a place for us to be happy together from scratch.

Maybe it was naive of me to think that there was any place for joy in the forest, after all the tragedy that’s taken place here. Rosemary certainly started to think so after a while, anyway. But even though she hasn’t come out here since high school, I’ve still visited sometimes, just to look at the remnants of our old love notes, or to occasionally squirrel away something new into the tree’s hollow.

I always liked the image of paper, the pulp of a desiccated tree, being buried within a tree that was dead itself. I like the thought of Rosemary’s and my love notes returning to the earth while our bodies are still out in the real world, alive. [Unintelligible]

But the recurring nightmare that I’ve started to have about this place lately has been enough to scare even me away. Almost every night, I dream that I’m buried underneath that stump. I try to claw my way up, but I never make it to the surface.

Ever since I’ve started having that dream, I’ve felt a stronger [Unintelligible] than ever before. [Unintelligible]

Either way, I have a strange feeling that [Unintelligible].

I’m still going to have to go into the forest sometimes, for my livelihood. After all, I’ve got a family now, and they’re going to depend on me for a long time. But I can be careful. I’ll keep leaving before sunset. I’ll never, ever bring any of this up to Rosemary. She shouldn’t have to worry about it, not when she’s going to have a new child on her hands so soon.

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The carved figure was found in Liams pencil pouch.

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"It was in the winter of 1785, back when the sleepy Maryland town of Burkittsville was still known as "Blair," when a group of local children first told their story... "

This time on SuperNeutral, Ed and James debate the believability behind the legend of the Blair Witch of Burkittsville, Maryland!

The legends date back hundreds of years...Children drowned in an inch of water, townsfolk ripped from their homes in the dead of night. Could a modern disappearance be the latest in a long line of abductions by whatever lives in the Black Hills Forest?

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"It was in the winter of 1785, back when the sleepy Maryland town of Burkittsville was still known as "Blair," when a group of local children first told their story... " This time on SuperNeutral, Ed and James debate the believability behind the legend of the Blair Witch of Burkittsville, Maryland!

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What he taught me, in case I forget:

Yesterday Ms. Tan gave me this notebook and said I should use it to write to Dad… And then she sat there with a stupid calm look on her face while I screamed at her about how dumb of an idea that was. I wish I hadn’t done that. It wasn’t right, and it wouldn’t have made him proud.

Dad, you were always so

I’m really lonely without you. And I know how hard Mom is trying, and I know she misses you too. Last night, Tristan couldn’t remember that thing you used to say to us all the time, and he started crying… I pulled him out of it, though. Helped him remember by making it a puzzle, just like how you would have.

I think Tristan was too young to hold on to all the code stuff you taught us. But I remember. Would be good for passing notes in class. If I had anyone to pass notes to.

Dad,

You used to tell the coolest stories about the woods. Mom used to make fun of you for believing in all of that stuff. I don’t know if you actually believed it, though. I think you just knew how fun it was.

Time passes more easily out here, not slow and boring and lonely like at home or in school.

Dad,

Mom just sent me to my room. How old does she think I am? She doesn’t treat Tristan like this, and he’s not even ten yet.

She said I upset Tristan. And then we all started fighting again.

I don’t know why I get like that. It's like everything annoys me. I don’t know.

Dad,

The new kid didn’t know anything about Burkittsville, so I took him by the forest and told him all about what happened. I showed him where the tree was and everything. For a second I felt like I was going to throw up or cry or something, but then I saw how freaked out he was… and it all suddenly seemed hilarious. Then I started laughing, and he ran away. So lame.

And he told on me. Exactly what I needed. Apparently he told Ms. Tan that he saw somebody watching us, too. I said I didn’t see anything.

Dad,

Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that nobody else is willing to walk in the forest with me. At least Tank keeps me company. And you, in a way.

Dad,

Got to find out more about the forest. Mom can’t know, she’ll just do that deep, guilt-inducing sigh thing and send me to my room like she always does. There’s a bunch of stuff in town that I can look into, but I think I know exactly where to start.

Dad,

I can’t believe how much stuff there is to go through down there, all crammed into those shelves you built when you renovated the place. Heading back tonight.

Dad,

Everyone leaves me alone down here. I can do whatever I want, even if I don’t want to do anything at all. Not a bad place to spend the weekend, especially if I stop two doors down to grab something to eat first, or if I can get Hank to make me a sandwich.

Dad,

Nobody else knows I come here—it’s always just business as usual upstairs. Not that they’re ever busy. I take my time walking here through the woods, and walking back.

Dad,

I’ve finally figured out how to talk to him. He’s an interesting person, if he’s even a person at all. He knows things about you that he shouldn’t have any way of knowing.

Dad,