JoCoWrites

By Val Gilliam

You check out a book from the Johnson County Library’s Central Branch and head out driving west onto I70. The prairie is beautiful until you notice black clouds coming up behind you. Your engine light comes on, so you take the next exit, a rest stop you don’t remember ever seeing before in which the sign reads, Night Forest 1 mile…

The sign on I-70 says Night Forest. I’m not sure if it’s a town, a nature preserve, or maybe a rest stop, but hopefully it will have a gas station, whatever it is. I check my Google Maps but there’s no cell signal. Not a single bar. In fact, my phone is dead, though I know it’s been charging via the plug in my radio auxiliary.

I approach the little townlet, I suppose you could say, and there is indeed a gas station. There is also a hole in wall restaurant, an antique shop and, oddly, a nail salon. I’m strongly reminded of the next book in a series I checked out at the library before I left Kansas City. Charlaine Harris’ stories of Midnight, Texas, was fantastical fiction but here I am in a town that appears to be almost completely identical to Harris’ world.

I pull into the gas station, pull out my credit card for the pump and open my car door. A burst of wind snatches it from my grasp and slams the heavy door into the pole by the pump station. Cursing, I swing out and inspect for damage. A small dent in the door and some blue paint on the pole appear to be all that was done. I can live with that, I decide. The car is old, but reliable. A few dings make it look distinguished.

There is a credit card adapter to the ancient pump and, amazingly, it works. I fill up, pop the hood to check my oil and brake fluid levels, but everything seems normal. Well, I tell myself, it is an old car. The idiot light was bound to come on for no reason eventually. It didn’t look like there was anyone inside the store, so I forewent a drink and a candy bar, got back in my car, and drove off.

Suddenly you realize you are kind of lost. It seems really dark for afternoon and you find yourself in a forest. Toto, you for sure aren’t in Kansas anymore. You are thinking of getting back in your car and ignoring the engine light when someone comes up behind you...

I’ve no sooner gotten a mile out of Night Forest, when the dark sky seems to encroach, faster and faster. The clouds don’t appear to whirl like a tornado and there is no storm front line. I see no lightning and hear no thunder. There is a flash of light in front of my car, a strobe bright enough to blind me. I swerve a bit, hand raised to shade my eyes so I can see. The light disappears and instead of the flatlands of the Great Prairie, I’m in a dense forest unlike any I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been to the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Tetons, the Ozarks and the Appalachians. I’ve been in woods and forests many times in my life. I’ve never, in all the places I’ve been, seen trees like these. The limbs are leafless and some so brittle they are already cracked and hanging like some dead thing. The foliage at their base is thick, though, wild like blackberry brambles, ominous and dangerous-looking.

I squint, trying to see the road in front of me in the intense darkness, flipping on my headlights to bright. They barely penetrate the inky atmosphere that grows heavier by the second. A bit fearful and trying to cheer myself up, I think, Toto, you aren’t in Kansas anymore.

Before I can think another thought, a loud honking horn blows behind me and a stream of what appears to be a semi-truck’s high beams light up the interior of my car. The semi comes up fast, horn still sounding like a warning. I pull to the side of the road, thinking to let the driver by, but nothing goes by and the headlights disappear. And my car is completely dead.

Just when you think things can’t get any stranger, the rain and lightning start, the sky turns greenish yellow, and you hear strange winds whistling like a train coming. You don’t panic. You try to remember what to do from scout camp, back in the day. You are deciding between hiding under an enormous pine tree or laying down in a ditch you see up ahead, which you distinctly remember is for lightning or tornadoes (and at this point you could be in danger of both). You are leaning toward […] when you notice two things: a small cave in a little green hill to your west and a hot air balloon parked on top of it with no one inside. You immediately run to...

As I look around in confusion and no small amount of terror, the storm that the darkness heralded starts in earnest. Now I see the lightning, the thunder rumbles through me like an entire orchestra of kettle drums, and the darkness has a hint of yellowish light that cannot be good. Knowing I can’t stay in the car in such dangerous conditions, I grab my purse, cell phone, and the flashlight from the glove compartment before exiting the car and running for what I hope is a ditch I can lay in.

I can barely stay upright, the wind buffeting me about like a ragdoll. The wood of the trees creak ominously. I’m afraid if the winds turn into something like a tornado, the limbs will snap and become projectiles. The powerful gusts have a whistling sound to them, like an oncoming train. I’m fairly certain that’s a harbinger of an approaching tornado.

There is no ditch. It’s flat all the way to the treeline. I’m frightened and don’t know what to do. My flashlight is like a dim candle in the pitch blackness of this middle of nowhere where there’s no moon overhead. In short, almost useless.

The lightning flashes make me look up reflexively and, to my amazement, I can see through the trees a hill. Have I gotten through the thick foliage and trees so effortlessly? Or am I so injured I don’t realize it? Or terrified? I keep going, thinking maybe to use the hill as a buffer.

As I get closer to the hill, the strobes of electricity reveal a cave at the base and, bizarrely, on top what looks distinctly like a hot air balloon. Despite the hurricane-type winds whipping about me, pushing and pulling me about, the balloon is calm and seems to not be affected at all by the massive storm around it.

I am less concerned about the balloon than I am my own safety and head for the shelter of the cave. Rain is starting to pelt and I’m certain there are hail lumps mixed with it. Either way it stings and stabs at me. I’m soaked to the bone in seconds.

Just when you think your day is turning out rather well considering everything, you realize the jig is up. They’ve found you. Should you fight back, run, or prepare a very zesty speech to get them on your side?...

The cave beckons and I make it, diving in head first as lightning bolts dog my footsteps. Without the wind dragging me around, I’m able to keep my balance but I have to crouch inside the cave. It has a very low ceiling. I shine my flashlight around and my stomach twists as it reveals the white gleam of old bones. Any thought that these might be animal bones is dispelled when a noise deeper within the cave makes me move the beam that way and a human skull gapes at me.

The book I had returned to the library before checking out Charlaine Harris was on myths and legends of Native Americans. I bought it for fun reading and enlightenment but now I wonder if it wasn’t fortuitous. The story of the little cannibals of the Great Plains are brought forcibly to mind, seeing this overabundance of human remains everywhere I shine my light.

There is a cackle to my left, but my light shows nothing. A snigger to my right reveals the same. Shuffling feet echo in my ears but I can see nothing, no matter where I aim my flashlight’s beam. My choice now is the storm raging outside or whatever is in here that consumes human beings. As I quickly weigh my options a third solution pops into my head: the balloon!

I dart out of the cave, stretching to full height as I exit and ignore the raging tempest around me. I go up and up the hill, dropping my purse in my haste but thankful I’d tucked my cellphone in my back pocket. There are outraged, tinny, distant shouts below me and I keep clambering up. The balloon is still there, a calm sentinel in the chaos.

There are ropes and stakes pounded into the ground to hold the old-style air transport in place but I make quick work of them, unwinding the ropes and climbing in the basket. Almost child-like howls of ire filter to my ears as the balloon begins to ascend and a jerk tells me I didn’t get all the ropes loose.

I run around the basket, getting rid of all the ropes, regardless if I’d undone them from the ground. Another lurch, though, means I am about to have potential fellow passengers. I’d lost my purse, which had my mace spray. A long bar of some sort was laying on the basket floor and I grabbed it up.

A little head, full of sharp teeth, popped over the edge of the basket and I bashed it hard. The being screamed and fell. Two more went the same way but that was all that appeared. The balloon was soaring off, no longer hindered. Now all I have to worry about is the storm. I have no way of controlling the balloon and can only hope for the best.

Morning finally comes. When you wake up, you find your car safely parked at the rest stop in Kansas. There aren’t many trees, if any, around. Inside your car, you find your library books and a note that reads...

I don’t know when I fell asleep or even how I could have considering the danger I was in all night. I’m in a ditch by the side of the road, near the little gas station of Night Forest, Kansas. I stagger to my feet, exhausted, bedraggled and really freaked out. There are no trees, no cave, no balloon, no storm, nothing but a little rest stop town that looks disturbingly like it was put there by a paranormal writer.

I go to my car, ignoring the odd look from the gas station attendant staring at me through his grimy window. When I look inside my car, I stop and stare. There is my purse. My cellphone is charging through the auxiliary plug and lit up with the time of 8:18 a.m. The library books I’d checked out are in my passenger seat, where I’d left them.

I open the car door and sink onto the seat, leaning back to take deep breaths and wonder if there was something in that kombucha I drank yesterday. Had I hallucinated everything? Did I step into another dimension somehow? Maybe I’d fallen asleep at the rest stop, too tired to continue on and it had been a wacky nightmare that caused me to sleep walk…

Something flutters and catches my eye. On the windshield there is a piece of folded paper tucked under my driver side wiper. I get out, snatch it up and read it:

You’ve always wanted your own adventure. Thought I would give you a bit of a scary one for a start. Look for more to come. Maybe this will inspire something that you’ll get published. Take care and I love you. -Dad

I smile, warmed despite the harrowing adventure I’d had. Dad. That man was pure mischief, even in the afterlife apparently.