Some of you you may remember this from the old site. Although I was never happy with the ending. So it here it is once more, with a new ending, some tweeks here and there, plus some additions.

Nulhegan – A tale of … what? spooky? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s about something else altogether.

 If you want to get to Nulhegan, you have to know where you’re going.

You turn just outside of Island Pond—that’s on the map—and head toward New Hampshire, but no sign points you onto the dirt road north. You have to watch close; the track is easy to miss and the woods grow thick in that corner of Vermont. Aside from twisty old Route 101e, there’s only one other road on the maps, leastwise the big ones, and that’s 114, which runs up to Canada. Between 114 and New Hampshire is a big chunk of deep forest and a few mountains that rise up above 2000 feet. Logging roads and trails meander around, but nobody uses them much anymore. Anyone who does is liable to get lost, or worse.

Now my uncle wouldn’t say that he had lived around Nulhegan all of his life. If anyone asked him that, his retort would be quick and sharp: “Not yet.”

But as things turned out, he did.

“Tell me a story,” I’d said. It was more than ten years ago, and we were lounging on the front porch. It was hot, the air heavy and still, like a soaked shower curtain. “Some close,” was how my uncle described it.

“Tell you a story?” By his tone, I might have asked him to play hopscotch. “What are ya, a goddamn kid?”

Uncle Josh wasn’t my uncle, not proper. He was my grandfather’s brother—on my mother’s side—so really he was my granduncle, but few people go around saying “granduncle.” To add confusion, Josh wasn’t his real name. It was Yehoshua, a biblical name, I believe.

“Well,” I said. “We’re just sittin’ here. Might as well do something, and you know how I like the old stories.”

Uncle Josh looked at me sideways for a moment, silent. “What kind-a story?” he asked.

“I don’t know. They ever tell about the woods up north? You know, say around Gore Mountain? Lincoln Gap? I heard there was a town up there.”

He squinted at me in a peculiar way, as if measuring me up. I could tell what he was thinking; he was wondering if I had something in particular in mind.

“Why sure there was a town,” he said at last, “on the Lincoln Gap side o’ Gore Mountain. My dad used to take us up there to buy hay and cedar posts. Gone now though, I s’pose. No one’s lived up in them mountains for 60 years or more. Even then, the town was small, smaller even than Nulhegan.”

It was my second year of college and I was off for the summer. My mother had said that Uncle Josh was having trouble with his back again, so I took the long ride north to see if I could help him out.

Nulhegan isn’t much of a town, just a small patch of tarred road with a few houses and a sparkling white church. The Nulhegan River runs from the northwest to the southeast, down to the wide-flowing Connecticut. But the town isn’t set upon the Nulhegan River. It’s not even very close.

My uncle fell silent, looking out over the front lawn that I’d just finished mowing. He didn’t have a power mower. I had propelled his rusty mowing machine for hours, the kind with blades that rotate as you push it. After I had raked the lawn and chucked the clippings on top of the mulch pile next to a faded gray barn, I poured us a pitcher of cold and tart sweet cider. Insects put up a discordant whine and although the shadows from the gnarled and knotted apple trees were lengthening, it hadn’t grown any cooler.

I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping at my uncle’s. He didn’t have air conditioning and it was humid, like breathing soup. Nulhegan had no hotel, not even a bed and breakfast. Anyway, to stay elsewhere would have been insulting.

“There was a town up there?” I prompted.

“Yup,” My uncle replied, drawing the word out New England style. He took a sip of cider and sucked his teeth. With another odd look he said, “Corinth. That’s what they called it.”

“You’d go up there to buy hay? I guess they had farms.”

“A couple, though the land up there is pretty up and down, and rocky, hard to farm, may be the reason they all left. Mostly what they got up there were good crops of rocks. They had more walls than anything else. I suppose it’s all grown over b’ now. Last I took a ride up, there was logs in the road and we couldn’t get through, me and your Aunt ’Lizbeth, that is.”

My Aunt ’Lizbeth had been gone almost twelve years by then. I hadn’t known her as an adult, but I remembered her fairly well. She’d been a strong woman, quick to laugh and quick to give you the switch if you got too far out of line.

Now, if my uncle said they couldn’t “get through,” well, then the road must have been blocked indeed. My uncle wouldn’t have thought much about spending an hour, or even two, if that’s what it took to clear an obstruction. First, the little roads in that part of Vermont don’t see much traffic. If you run into a snag and can’t get by, it’s unlikely anyone else is going to come along and clear it out of the way for you. Second, in the days when my granduncle was young, folks were fiercely self-reliant. Even now, most rural folks remain so. If you ran into a tree blocking the road, you got out and cut it into pieces, and pushed to the side. If you didn’t, you were just leaving it for someone else to do.

“I ran into a bunch of foundations while I was hunting last fall,” I said, keeping the conversation going. “Down near Stratford. I always wonder what happened to the people when I see those old places. I was walking along on a deer run, and I came to big stand of ancient apple trees. I could see, farther up the side of the mountain a big stand of sugar maples, a sugar bush, had to have been cultivated. There was a cemetery too, miles and miles from the nearest road. Some of the graves went back to the 1700s. One was for a woman who died in 1680.”

Uncle Josh shot me a serious look, as if I’d said something important instead of just making conversation.

“Don’t wonder too much,” he said. “Some things’re better left alone.”

I didn’t reply. It wasn’t appropriate to question him or to laugh it off, but my expression must have conveyed surprise and curiosity because after a moment, he continued.

“The land has a long memory in these parts, and often, it doesn’t pay to be overly curious. When it comes to those old settlements, it’s best to steer clear. Understand?

“Some places just dried up,” he continued, “for whatever reason, and people moved on, but there’re other places where people didn’t move on—when maybe they should’ve. You can’t tell one from another these days and few remember the legends. So, I’ll tell you like my Nexkam-ehts, told me: you run into one of them lonely places, you clear out, understand? Don’t camp there. Don’t even stop to eat your lunch. And no matter what you do, don’t mess with them forsaken graves. You understand me, boy?”

“Yes sir,” I replied, properly.

“Mind me now,” he said. “I know what I’m talkin’ about.”

I nodded and took a sip of cider. It wasn’t cold anymore, but it was still tangy.

Nexkam-ehts. I’d heard the word before. It was Uncle Josh’s name for his grandfather, who’d been full-blooded Abenaki, one of the Sokoki tribe, as I remember it. I don’t know exactly how you go about spelling the Algonquian words. Even if I tried to look them up, it would probably be better just to write them down the way Uncle Josh pronounced them, although, now that I think about it, I can’t exactly vouch for his pronunciation either. He didn’t speak a whole lot of Native American anyway, just a few words here and there, at least as far as I knew.

Uncle Josh was my granduncle, as I said, and his grandfather was my great, great grandfather. Once, I had heard that he fought in the Civil War, but Uncle Josh put me right on that score.

“Granma Stark said your grandpa fought in the Civil War,” I’d said. I couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve at the time.

“That’s a load o’ hooey,” Uncle Josh had replied. “My grandfather was alive then, sure, but he didn’t go off to fight in any Anglo’s war. What was it to him? The Ind’ans in these parts fought first the Mohawks, then the Iroquois, then the British, then fightin’ every disease they could bring from Europe. When the War ’tween the States came around, well, most Abenaki were about fought out. They left the fighting to the Apaches and the Sioux out west.”

And that had put an end to stories about the Civil War, at least as far as I was concerned. Still, I had been at an age when discretion was just a word in the dictionary, and I’d always been over-curious. I had asked a hundred questions about my granduncle’s grandfather. I knew he’d called him Nexkam-ehts, as I mentioned, but my uncle had once told me that wasn’t his name.

“I think it means grandfather,” Uncle Josh recounted, his eyes looking back across the years. “I know they called him Keteet-she sometimes—when he went to town—but I think they meant it as some sort of jibe ’cause I remember them snickering when they said it.”

I’d been just a kid, but the speech was a memorable one; my uncle wasn’t one for talking much, at least not without prompting.

“Once, I went with my grandfather to some kind-a meeting,” he’d said. “A whole bunch of Abenaki were around—I remember it as if it were yesterday, though I was just a boy. They’d called him Ehleeyo-ho-ilee-seht, or something like that. Maybe that was his name, but they said it as though it was some sort of title.” He’d given me an odd look then, but being so young, I hadn’t given it a lot of thought.

“What other Indian words do you know?” I’d asked.

“I don’t know any Ind’an words, boy. Them’s all Algonquin, and don’t you forget it, you hear?” He had scowled, I remember, and I felt pretty bad for making a mistake. I guess it showed because his expression softened a bit.

“He always called me Mee-yo-kee,” he continued. “I suppose that means grandson, or maybe it means child. Either way, he never called anybody else that. ’Course I favored him in looks closer than everybody else in the family—kind of the same as you, boy—I suppose that’s why he liked me best.”

And maybe that was why I liked my Uncle Josh so much. We did resemble one another: dark complexions and black, shiny-straight hair. The majority of the family is fairer, with blue eyes and sometimes-reddish curls telling of a mostly Irish and Scottish heritage.

I guess all that’s beside the point, but I remember thinking about it as we sat on the porch that hot, drippy afternoon, sipping cider. What Uncle Josh was thinking right then, I couldn’t say for sure, his hair more gray than black by then, but he broke the mood at last. “Who’s cookin’ and who’s cleanin’?” he’d asked, sporting a smirk.

“Why, you have to rest your bad back,” I replied. “So I guess I’m doing both.”

The sun was “westering,” drawing the shadows out long and tortured. The lawn stretched for quite a ways. To one side was a line of huge and aging blue spruces. Running alongside the tree line was the driveway: two dirt tracks with grass growing down the middle. Between the house and the shed was a big patch of hard-packed dirt where my Jeep stood next to Uncle Josh’s AMC Rambler. The shed offered two good-sized bays for cars in the winter. One had a pit where you could climb down and work on a vehicle’s underbelly. Farther on, but attached to the shed, was the weathered barn. Once, cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens had sheltered there, but no longer. Since I was a boy, I had loved the smell in that barn: moldering hay, timeworn wood and paper, and in the background, animals, and vaguely the smell of milk. Somehow, it had made me think secret treasures lay hidden there. All I had to do was look for them.

The house was older still: authentic Colonial, two floors with low ceilings, just six and a half feet or so and lower still upstairs. The windows were few, small thick-paned things. The house itself leaned in, around a huge brick chimney. Inside, a set of stairs spiraled up to the right, creaky-narrow, covered thick with coat after coat of off-white paint.

In every room on the ground floor was a fireplace, all sharing the central chimney. The same was true for each of the three, small bedrooms on the second floor. In the sitting room, the fireplace was closed off, with a wood stove brooding in front. Solid and near airtight, it had a porthole so you could see the light of the fire within. One of my cousins had carted it from down Randolph-way somewhere. The stove couldn’t heat the entire house, but it kept its side toasty warm.

Summer was waning. The sun would ride lower and lower upon the horizon; the clouds would get thin, and gray, and the geese would be coming, just passing through, dotting the ponds and little lakes thereabouts, filling the air with their calls; the leaves would turn brilliant orange, and yellow, and many shades of red from crimson to maroon, to cherry, and after they’d fallen you would walk on them; they’d send up a smell like no other, a smell that meant pumpkin pie, and roast turkey or goose, and wood smoke curling amongst the barren trees and evergreens, now come into their own.

But it would be weeks yet before the evening chill forced my uncle to fire up the stove. The fireplaces themselves were next to useless. They were more for show and coziness in any event; the bigger the fire you set, the more it would draw frigid air in through every crack and crevice. As long as I could remember, my uncle’s primary heat had been the forced hot-air kerosene furnace in the uneven, stone walled cellar. Outside hulked a three-hundred-gallon tank with copper pipes running to the furnace. The tank was about the only thing spoiling the exterior appearance, that and the bendy-twisty television antenna on the roof. Otherwise, I imagine the place would have looked pretty much the same back in the early 1800s, when it was built.

My uncle shambled into the living room. I heard the TV pop on. It was an antiquated console job, probably no bigger than a nineteen-inch screen, although it dominated one entire wall. My uncle had no satellite dish and no cable followed the phone lines into the wilderness. He got just a few channels: two from Burlington, a couple of French channels from Canada, and one from Maine. Man! I remember that channel from when I was a kid: “WMTW … Presque Isle, Maine.” The memories took me for an instant, my childhood summers visiting my uncle and my aunt had been like time spent in another era, another life. I shook my head, tried to dispel the odd, bittersweet mood, then focused on the routine of fixing dinner.

We dined in the sitting room with our plates on thin-metal folding tables my uncle called “TV trays.” After I’d cleared away all the dishes, we went outside to watch the evening turn to night. My uncle brought a jar of tobacco. We smoked pipefuls and drank black coffee.

“Might storm tonight,” he said after a while.

To the south, stars winked hazily. Westward was pitch, moonless. Aside from the insect hum and the wind playing through the trees, the quiet was deep. Every once in a while came the sound of the wee frogs we call “peepers,” although the pond was a ways off. No jets flew overhead. No cars or trucks rattled by on the dirt road. From nowhere came music, or talking, or laughing, or crying; no sirens or gunshots clove the dark, no shouts, just the night and the forest, and the sound of those animals fortunate enough to call it home.

“I remember my Nexkam-ehts tellin’ me about the lonely places,” he began, his words trailing a wisp of smoke.

Benighted, the only light came from the curtained windows and the dwindling stars to the south. I could see my uncle’s silhouette, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. I could hear his breath as he raised his pipe for another puff. I didn’t say a word.

“The Natives remember back a long, long ways,” he said. “They tell about coming to these lands from the snow and ice, and they tell of them’s that were here already. I suppose most would say just legends—nothing but myth and stories told by the dumb old Ind’ans—but some know better, and some found out the hard way.”

He paused as he spoke, the embers from his pipe flared. I knew enough to keep quiet while he chose his words.

“There were people here before us,” he said. “Come and gone. They were the ones that set up the big rocks, together, in circles. You know what I mean? You don’t see ’em much, out in the woods, both because there weren’t many to begin with and second, because the woods have grown up thick in most of the old places, places where those others lived.”

I knew what my uncle meant. I knew of places where big stones had seemingly been set up, and I knew about the place some people called “America’s Stonehenge” down in New Hampshire somewhere.

Another long pause. My uncle’s pipe had burnt out. He leaned forward and struck it against the painted handrail guarding the front porch. He blew through it wetly, smacked it again, then leaned back with a sigh. He stayed so for a moment, then went on.

“They’re gone; them’s that stood those stones up, and arranged ’em, at least that’s what most people would say, but some others say that some of the old ones remain. We had a name for them; the Gao Madz-agik. The Natives never saw them Madz-agik, or if any of them did, no one ever told me. They respected them, I suppose, or feared them, either way, they learned to avoid ’em. See, them Madz-agik, the old ones, they don’t go wanderin’ about during the day, or the night. They have their places, their deserted lonely places, around the old stones, and I suppose the old ones see to it that their places stay lonely. I don’t know anything more about the old ones. I never heard what they look like or anything like that.”

I looked out at the starlit lawn. All the colors were drained from the world. Normal, everyday things seemed blurred. It seemed we sat quiet for a long while, although it was probably just a few minutes.

It occurred to me that my uncle might be having me on.

“You’re makin’ it all up,” I said at last.

My uncle gave a snort, then a little chuckle. “You can think so, if it makes you feel better,” he said. “But them are the stories I heard when I was a young ’un. You asked me for a story, boy, and I told you one. Now, whether you believe me or not is up to you, but I’d advise you to indulge your old uncle and stay away from any of those lonely places, especially the places where people met a bad end. Some of those forgotten settlements from the early days just dried up, Maybe there was a bout of smallpox or something—wiped them all out—but maybe, just maybe, something else happened to ’em. Either way, steer clear of them foundations you run across, and if you happen onto an old abandoned cemetery, you make your way out. You understand? Won’t hurt to heed what I’m tellin’ you.”

“You think there’re some of those places up north, lonely places, around that town maybe? What’d you call it? Corinth?”

He went silent in the gloom, but I could feel his eyes on me.

“Maybe not right where Corinth was,” he ventured. “But there’s a hollow between Gore and Sable Mountain where I know there’s one of them lonely places. My grandfather took me up when I was a boy, to show me, so I’d know the feeling. There was a settlement up there: foundations like what you were talking about, and probably one of the oldest cemeteries in northern Vermont. The land is fertile and the hunting’s good. But the town dried up, and eventually the village was just empty. Taborville Common they called it, I believe. When I went up with my grandfather, the only thing still standing was the church, which was all stone. They say everything them people owned is still there: plows and ax heads, bottles and coins, anything made of metal, ceramic, or stone.”

“You’re kidding,” I said, but it was rhetorical and my uncle knew it.

A few moments passed in silence.

“Well!” he exclaimed at last. “Night’s closing in tight. I think we might just get some rain. We should close up the shed and the house. What say we have a nip of that hard cider I got in the cellar and call it a night?”

“Uncle,” I said, standing and stretching. “I promise not to hang around neglected cemeteries and such I happen across, but if it is as you say, it’s hard to believe these lonely places exist only up here, in the middle of nowhere. I mean, why weren’t there some around, say Manhattan, or Boston? And if so, how come the old ones—or whatever it was you called them—didn’t run the settlers off?”

“That’s the thing right there.” He took me by one arm and stood close. “Most of the big cities are near where the Natives lived to begin with. As to the smaller towns that have sprung up since, well, my grandfather said that the old ones were retreating, taking all their wizardry with ’em, to return some other day. But don’t let that fool you. There’re plenty—all too many—of them lonely places left in the world, places where the old ones can be, places where magic still lives, if that’s the right word.”

I closed all the doors and windows in the shed, then I went around and did likewise on the first floor of the house. We stayed in the sitting room for a spell, sipping cider so hard it made my head spin. Then we said good night and took ourselves upstairs.

On the second floor, the windows were those that tilt up and out to open—the kind that look as though they’ve been turned sideways—up underneath the eaves. It would take a strong storm to blow any rain into those windows, so we left them all ajar. In the bedroom I was using, there was a small electric fan. I wedged it into the window as best I could and left the door open. I hoped it would create a breeze. The air was so heavy and hot, I thought that perhaps a shovel would work better than the fan.

The sheets were clean, I knew—my uncle was a fastidious man—but they clung to my skin like damp dishrags. I rolled and turned, then got up and adjusted the fan. I tried every conceivable angle until I wound up with it whooshing and ticking on a chest, about six inches from the foot of the bed. Even with it blowing right on me, the air in the bedroom seemed to push me down, feverish, into the clinging sheets.

I drifted in and out for I don’t know how long, then I sank into a strange dream.

I was in a thicket and night was coming. The chatter of squirrel and jay was replaced by the chirping of crickets and night birds. Surrounding me were the slate and granite headstones of a settlers’ cemetery. At first, I felt calm then I noticed the hush. Even the rustling of the leaves had quit.

In my dream I felt edgy. I gazed about, this way and that. Somehow, I knew that danger was near. By a large, black oak tree I saw a hooded figure, dressed in white from head to foot. He had a thick, tall staff, headed with a crook, or hook. As he moved, the light caught the hook and I could see that it was metal—a blade.

We stood amidst a graveyard, the headstones old, granite or slate, leaning this way or that, grass and weeds and saplings had grown up all around.

The hooded figure started forward, raising his sickle, or scythe, or whatever it was. He was speaking, but it was a language I did not understand.

As I listened, I found that I could catch first one word, and then another, then it seemed that I knew exactly what the man was saying: He was calling on the dead in the cemetery, each by name, calling upon them to gather around us.

He did not cease his conjuration. He kept on in a ghoulish monotone, but he turned—as if shifted by some external force—to face me.

I felt panic that seemed to originate in the bottom of my soul. All around me the cemetery swam. My dream had become a nightmare but worse; in my dream, I seemed to be having a nightmare. I felt riven, my mind assaulted, as if being challenged with the impossible, like seeing that endless colonnade when you hold one mirror in front of another. The terror was a world that had become that endless passage. The nightmare was the reality of the sensation, or vision, or experience, whatever you might call it.

Then a presence invaded my mind. It was not a voice, more like a thought. A thought accompanied by an ancient thing, for thing it was, neither living nor dead, but powerful and old it was, older than the earth itself. The thing was potent. It exuded an emotion, an emotion so palpable as to command my every perception on an elemental level: I felt inside me a raw, uncomplicated hatred—complete and whole, entire enough to exist all on its own—a hatred for all living things. Images swirled around the hate, conscious smoldering eyes charred with madness and murder, symbols spiraling into and out of existence.

The experience threatened to drive me insane.

I remember the dream, and the nightmare within the dream, because up to that point it was the most terrifying experience of my life.

Something inside my mind snapped and I knew that I was dreaming. I fought to come awake and when I did, I realized that a furious storm was erupting. Flashes of lightning lit up my room and the house shook with the crack and roll of heaven’s drum. The sheets were tangled around my body. I had to struggle to extricate myself. Rain was blowing up and in through the window and it had grown cold. I straightened out the sheets then found a blanket in the chest at the foot of the bed. I lay there for a spell, no longer sweating and sticking, but huddling and shivering, whether from the chill or from the remembered horror, I couldn’t tell. After a while, I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew the sun was rising and the birds were merrily claiming their territories.

I stayed in bed for a few moments, thinking about my dream, or nightmare or whatever the hell it was.

Must’ve been the peppers and garlic, I thought. I asked for a story and Uncle Josh— thinking I was too damned big to be listening to such—thought to tell me one that’d keep me from ever asking for another. I shook my head and smiled to myself. Serves me right, I thought. Teach me to drink that hard cider too. My head ached a little and my stomach felt just a tad out of sorts.

Besides, I thought, dreams are just dreams, and you can’t induce someone to dream something.

I fought my way out of the sheets and rested a while on the edge of the bed, then I went downstairs to find my uncle at the kitchen table, eating over-easy eggs with a folded piece of yolk-soaked toast.

“Want some breakfast?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m starved.”

 

***

 

Around back were stacked four cords or so of trailer-length wood. I spent the rest of the week sawing it to length then splitting it into manageable chunks. I was happy for the hard work; there’s nothing quite like cutting, splitting, and stacking wood for the coming winter. One pile dwindles noticeably, by the hour, while the other pile grows; it is most satisfying. My uncle puttered about in the shed and in the barn. He struck a homey image in his overalls that were too big in the seat and leg, his gait more a shuffle than a stride. As I labored away on the woodpile, he’d bring out cold glasses of water or cider and stand there, appraising my progress as I drank it.

I had realized it before, but I knew again just how much I loved the old man, him with his blue-striped engineer’s hat and his damn spooky stories.

I was twenty. I remember feeling foolish for letting a story scare me, and I wondered—sometimes aloud—that I should’ve been so affected. And I wondered, but not aloud, if there truly were a Taborville Common, and what the people’s lives had been like back then.

I’d been thinking about the coming fall and where I’d go hunting. I ran the chainsaw and swung the splitting maul, and again and again, I thought about the land between Gore and Sable Mountains.

By the end of the week, I had two cords neat in the cellar and two more stacked where it would be handy in the shed. It would be more than enough to get my granduncle through the coming winter.

That Sunday, they held a funeral. We both dressed up—my uncle and I—and drove “down street” to the hamlet of Nulhegan and the glistening white church. The minister was Methodist. We listened attentively, then gathered—along with all the other folk from around the village—in the rectory for a pot-luck supper of baked beans, roasted chicken, among other things, as well as both apple and raspberry pies. Despite the occasion, my uncle had a grand time; he knew everybody for miles around and several were close to his age. For my own part, I stood to one side and watched. At one point, my uncle was joined by a very large man, in a very spiffy-looking gray suit. They talked for a while, laughed, then I saw my uncle pointing in my direction. The big man saw me looking, and right after that, he left.

I can’t say as I thought too much about it at the time, but I remembered it later.

We enjoyed ourselves and it was nigh-on dark when we arrived back at my uncle’s.

“Leaving in the morning are ya?” he asked, cup of hard cider in hand.

“Aye-yeah,” I replied, quite naturally. We were sitting in the living room, the TV was on by then, but the sound was turned down low so it didn’t bother our chat. Above the cast iron stove was mounted a gun rack decorated with a couple of rifles. One was a .30-06—“thirty aught six”—and the other was a newer .22 rifle. Without touching, I examined them.

“Goin’ huntin’ this year?” he asked, only slightly interested.

“Was thinking about it,” I replied. “I’m not going back to Stratford though, it’s all hunted out down there.”

“Good hunting over Montgomery way, North Troy side of Jay. Pretty up and down over there, not many roads or trails—keeps the flatlanders out.”

“Yup,” I acknowledged, New England style; neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

The next day I wandered around the homestead, making sure there was nothing I’d left, then I said my goodbyes and rolled off with promises to come back around Christmas. At the bottom of the driveway, I turned right, onto the small dirt road leading to the highway, but when I came to the big dirt road, I went left, up toward the deep woods around Gore Mountain.

Just do a little scouting I told myself. See if there are any good deer trails close to the logging roads.

Now I knew that area fairly well, but not as well as the lands closer to home. Truth be told, I’d never been far off the dirt roads in that country—but the ones I knew, I knew pretty well. I bumped along for ten miles or so and found the disused old dirt track I was looking for. It ran north by east, climbing steadily. I followed this for another few miles, maybe five or six, then, as I had guessed, I found traces of a logging trail heading more northward still.

My Jeep was in good shape. I had a strong winch on the front with a stout coil of cable. In the back, I had a little chainsaw with a pint or so of lubricating oil. Stuffed in there was a tent as well, along with a couple of rough, but thick wool blankets. Although I was still in college, I liked to be in the country as much as I could. Maybe it was my great, great-grandfather’s blood telling, I don’t know, but something about the forest was always calling to me, then same as now, I suppose. As far as food and water were concerned, well, I could find both of those in just about any stretch of backcountry Vermont, or in most of northern New England for that matter. But I did have a provision box with several energy bars, a couple of packages of peanut butter and cheese crackers, as well as some beef jerky that I thought was still edible; my concessions to modern times, I suppose.

The logging roads in Vermont vary by location. Some are like wide, cleared trails, grown over with saplings and such, others are little more than deer runs; trails running cock-eyed through the trees no wider than two people walking shoulder to shoulder.

I slowed and dropped the Jeep to its lowest four-wheel gear. Crawling along, the logging road narrowed and became increasing overgrown until I couldn’t be sure if I was following a human or deer trail anymore. I jolted and bumped for the better part of an hour, dodging snag after snag. Then, as I hoped, I spotted another path heading almost due north.

I stopped the Jeep and broke out a snack. I glanced at my map and tried to figure out exactly where I was. If I took the new trail, I’d be heading up, probably toward Gore Mountain. The woods were lush, too lush to see very far. I needed to get close enough to see the mountain, then I could track east.

I told myself that I wasn’t looking for abandoned Taborville Common; I was scouting for hunting season. Still, in the back of my mind, I was picturing the hollows between Gore and Sable Mountains. My uncle’s stories had been just to teach me a lesson, I thought, which probably meant there wasn’t any Taborville, common or otherwise.

But, I’d always been over-curious.

And my uncle knew it.

I munched away, smelling the forest, hearing the creaking of the trees, the raspy whisper of the leaves. Inquisitive squirrels gathered their courage after a while and started cursing at me. I fired up the Jeep again and crept up the smaller trail, hopefully toward Gore Mountain.

I had stopped in Island Pond on my way to my granduncle’s so I had almost a full tank of gas. I’d also freshened the five-gallon tank I had strapped to the back, so I didn’t worry about getting there and back. Besides, I thought, gonna have to walk in from the west anyways. Can’t be any of the trails or roads will still be identifiable—not now.

I ambled along on the new trail for quite a while. I ran into a few snags I couldn’t get around, and I had to get my chainsaw out to cut a way through. After I got the bigger pieces loose, I winched them aside.

After a while, I came to a relatively level and clear spot, I shut the Jeep down and got out to look around.

The land rose steeply to my left. A tumbled stone wall partitioned the incline. The trees were mostly deciduous, but I could see there were conifers farther up: It was Gore Mountain, had to be.

The sun was slinking away; it would go behind the mountain in another hour or two. I figured that it was as good a spot as any, so I made camp. A quick surveillance didn’t reveal any forlorn foundations or gravestones, but I wasn’t searching for any on purpose. After all, my uncle’s stories were just that, stories. Still, no sense in taking chances. It didn’t matter whether I believed him or not, I’d made him a promise.

I didn’t bother to set up my little pup tent. With my reclining “Trailmax” seats, I figured I’d just sleep in the Jeep. I scouted around for firewood and a cool, clear stream and it wasn’t long before I found both. I filled my canteen and lugged back an armful of dry branches. By the time dark settled in, I had a cozy campfire in a flat spot surrounded by scrounged-together stones. I hunkered on a maple log and relaxed. After a passable supper of odds and ends, I turned in early.

It rained during the night, soft and fresh like the sigh of a choir. I’m not sure I came awake fully but I remember the patter on the canvas roof and the trees sighing in the breeze. It was peaceful and I felt a part of things, not like some interloper.

I awoke at first light and prepared to trek west on foot.

The patch between Gore and Sable Mountains, although wild, is not more than twelve or fourteen miles as the crow flies. I wasn’t going the entire way, so I was confident I could get in and out before suppertime, even if the land were rough.

Now anyone that’s wandered off-trail in the wilds of northern New England knows that the going can be tangled and thick. Even an experienced woodsman might stray, and I guess that was what happened to me. I hiked through a seemingly endless stand of thick pine, spruce, and hemlock that blocked out the sun. I couldn’t tell for sure how long I slogged—although I’d always prided myself on being prepared, I never wore a watch.

I’d been skirting what I thought was a particularly dense patch on my left. Deep down, I knew I was making a big circle, but I couldn’t be sure just how far I’d come around. I stopped and thought for a while, trying to see a pattern in the trunk-moss so I might tell north. It seemed I was heading south, but I couldn’t say how long I’d been going that way.

Damn! Can’t spend more’n a day or two lost up in here.

I had rolled up my tent and my blankets and had stocked my daypack with munchables and my canteen, but I wasn’t looking forward to eating roasted squirrels and finger-length trout bouillabaisse, if that’s what it came to.

I concluded that I’d been circling the thick patch for at least an hour and the best thing I could do at that point was march straight back through it, despite getting scratched up by the low hanging branches.

Almost as soon as I entered the briers, I got an odd feeling, as if I were going somewhere I didn’t belong. The trees seemed to band together close to block my path. The branches tugged at my pants and shirtsleeves, or clawed my neck and cheeks. I labored on, believing that if I went straight through, eventually I’d come to a clear spot where I’d get a chance to see the sun.

But I didn’t. It kept getting thicker, impossibly so. Soon, the ground seemed to be rising steadily to my left. Without intention, I bore rightward, downhill, away from the rise.

Suddenly, a loud crack, as if a large branch had snapped. It came from my left, and by then, definitely uphill. I hadn’t noticed, but to that side and slightly ahead, it had cleared a little. A small bluff lay there, and amid the pines and spruces was a cave the like of which I’d never seen before.

The ground had grown rocky, strewn with pine needles, small branches, gnarled holly, and “tangleberry”—some say black huckleberry. The cave itself was rock all around, but it didn’t look natural, neither did it look manmade. The sides were rough, as they should be, but something about it didn’t feel right. I stood and stared, trying to figure out what was wrong, but it was nothing I could readily discern. Definitely though, something was off, out of place. On the left side of the opening stood a great granite block, covered with moss and lichen. It seemed that there were markings there, but I couldn’t tell for sure if they were natural or if they had been carved by someone. I went a bit closer, trying to get a better look. What I saw could have been anything: a few horizontal lines, maybe, with diagonal lines here and there, and a few curly ones. Much later, I took a class in ancient European history. With a chill I was reminded of those markings when I saw the ancient Germanic runes, although how such things could have come to be there, in the backcountry of northern Vermont, remains a mystery.

But at the time, I had yet to see any of the old writings. I decided that the markings were natural.

I turned to get going again. After just a few steps, I noticed that there was yet another rift to my right; this one didn’t sit in a hillock though, it kind-of yawned like an opening in the Earth but tilted up a little. It had the same feeling as the other and the hairs on the back of my neck and arms stood straight on end, as if a low-voltage charge was running through my body.

Whether there were marking on or around that opening, I couldn’t tell you. Right then came a call, not like an owl and not like a turkey vulture, but birdlike and ethereal. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, but it wasn’t loud, almost heard from within. I have to admit it, I spooked. Without thinking, I took off at my best pace through the wilderness, and I didn’t look back.

That was how I found Taborville Common.

I must’ve galloped for the better part of fifteen minutes. I hadn’t noticed, but the trees had thinned out. The only thing that stopped me was my state of breathlessness. I bent over, hands on my knees, heaving and coughing, trying to catch the breath I’d left about a half a mile behind.

When my wheezing calmed to huffing and puffing, I peered around. The ground was still littered with pine needles and tiny branches but here and there lay maple, oak, and ash leaves as well. The canopy overhead had thinned considerably and I could see the sun was riding low, just above the treetops. It had to be close to three or four o’clock in the afternoon.

I felt panic again. It was impossible. I wouldn’t have believed it could be any later than noon, but I couldn’t deny the evidence of my eyes.

Incredulously, I considered my surroundings. Not fifty paces in front of me was a defunct and grown-over stone church. It had tumbled a little on one side and nothing remained of the roof. To my right and to my left were the granite foundations of houses, probably dating back to the late 1600s or early 1700s. Here and there, the shape of stonework walls endured.

It had to be—could be none other than—Taborville Common. I walked toward the ruined church and sure enough, around in back leaned slate, granite, and marble grave markers. When I saw them, quavers ran through my bones and I felt helpless horror. I almost took off running again, but a spark of so-called common sense survived.

“It’s that damn story,” I said, happy to hear my own voice. “I’ve run across shit like this before. Nothing ever hurt me. There ain’t nothing here but the past, and maybe, just maybe, a few precious antiques, if I can keep my wits long enough to poke around for ’em.”

Now folks know that I’m not greedy. I wasn’t looking for treasure so I might sell it and become some kind of millionaire. It wasn’t that at all. No, it was finding bits of the past, relics if you will. I’ve always been attracted to that kind of thing.

I suppose it doesn’t matter why I gathered myself at the thought of finding a few treasures. The point is, when the thought entered my mind, I was able to gather myself. I thought, Okay, if I want to keep my promise, I can’t get caught here at sundown, but it’ll be another two or three hours before evening sets in. That leaves at least an hour to look around and a couple of hours to get back toward the Jeep.

With my newfound calm, I surveyed the area, trying to spot the most likely places to dig. The colonials didn’t have town dumps, usually they had an outhouse or latrine within a few dozen paces of the house and into that went everything deemed useless. I didn’t intend an excavation, but attached to my daypack was a folding shovel like the kind you might see in a World War II movie. As I said, I didn’t expect to dig any holes I could take pride in, but the shovel would be handy for scratching around.

I selected what appeared to be the biggest, best foundation then paced around in back, searching for any depression in the leaf-strewn floor. About thirty paces back was a low spot. I knelt, got my shovel out, and foraged.

Within a few minutes I uncovered a couple of bottles, one was a shade of blue so pure and beautiful that I thought, even if I didn’t find anything else, the trip had been worthwhile. After poking around some more and finding little, I searched for another dump.

Behind another one of the foundations I found a gold chain and locket. I don’t suppose it ever held a picture, the camera not being in general use circa 1700. Only God knows what it had held, but it was gold, thick and heavy, and wonderful.

I kept digging.

More bottles, a few iron tools, then, not too far from another foundation, I came across a human skull.

That brought me up short. I didn’t touch it, didn’t dare to. What was a skull doing lying under fifteen or twenty inches of rotting leaves and topsoil? I took in the assembling shadows and realized I’d lost track of time. The sun was already below the treetops and probably not far from setting all together. It was quiet—too quiet—and I realized with no small sense of panic that I had to get out of there, right then.

I clambered about, collecting my loot. I left a good bit of it behind; clear bottles and such that I thought curious, but probably not too valuable, then I began jogging west, toward the distant Jeep, and safety.

Have you ever gone wandering in the bush at twilight? Branches and logs, high and low points in the land, everything conspires to trip you up. Long ago, when I had been just a kid, Uncle Josh had taught me to jog through the woods without breaking my neck. You crouch just a little and lift your legs straight up, high, almost as though you were doing ab-crunches. You never look at your feet, but instead keep your eyes slightly unfocused but aimed straight ahead. I loped along thus, but it felt as though I was wallowing. The shadows deepened and the sound of my footsteps thumped, not falling dead like you’d expect in a carpet of rotting leaves, more like echoing as though I were running on pavement in dress shoes.

It was eerie, not quite real.

A branch snapped to my left and slightly above me. I stopped lest something come down on my head. Then again, just to my left, another snap. I turned and peered. I didn’t see anything moving, but what I saw stalled the blood in my veins: it was a looming silhouette, the stone church of Taborville Common.

“That’s impossible,” I said aloud. “Freakin’-A!”

Now I’m not one much to swear, but I swore that night and right proper too.

Again I bolted. Ahead I saw a particularly wide tree trunk and cleverly, or so I thought, I dodged around it and stopped, heaving for wind again. As quietly as I could, I peeked around from behind the tree. Sure as shit, there was the sorrowful shape of the Taborville Common church, and oozing-pulsing from around in back were shapes, four-limbed and upright, but that was where the human resemblance ended.

“Jesus Christ!” I whimpered, not cursing, but calling for aid. “What is that?”

It was just like my nightmare at my uncle’s. The shapes moved outward, upward, forward, toward me. They shambled and lumbered, sometimes falling down. They seemed to grow and expand impossibly, only to shrink back once more. I got the impression I was seeing things from every angle at once, as if I were seeing height, depth, width, and time.

I was utterly terrified. No doubt I was not seeing correctly.

The shapes sloughed and ambled toward me, and behind them, I saw the hooded man.

I heard him then, chanting in that unknown language, and as it was in my nightmare. I could catch a word or two here and there, mostly, it seemed, proper names, but old sounding names, like Ezekiel Crackston, Jedediah Leister, Eleanor Alden, Constance Allerton, and Damaris Britteridge, all old settler-type names, it seemed to me.

I felt an odd sensation, as if my sanity were under attack. The land around me swam and convulsed, moved impossibly and my mind was filled with a thought, an emotion, an ageless interminable hatred.

I bolted. My breath came in tatters, I remember distinctly. I also remember hearing my own voice, but what it was shouting I couldn’t say. Suddenly, I was lying on my back, gaping at the sky, catching glimpses of swimming stars. I have no idea how far I had run, but that voice, the voice of the hooded man, still filled my ears, or rather, filled my mind, because by then, the voice seemed to be inside me.

I remember: I wasn’t afraid of dying. In fact, I was more afraid I wouldn’t die. In that thought, that emotion, were swirling inhuman and arcane symbols, I could tell, I could see, the hooded man had encompassed, somehow engorged, the spirits of the dead he called. Those spirits had become famished ghosts, set aside from reality—the normal world of deeds in daylight—dead, yet still alive in the hooded one’s boundless hatred. I knew, they existed and were ever consumed with fear, rage, and jealousy of the living, the thinking, the quickened. And at that moment, that meant me.

I was sinking, losing myself. Falling up, and down, toward the… voraciousness, the sorcery. I felt like a single, weak flame beset in a hurricane.

Such was my terror. Looking back, it seems clear to me that in that instant, I had utterly lost my mind. I was adrift in a separate reality, one where an evil druid, one of my uncle’s “old ones” had command. The laughing, dancing, chanting hooded man, he was near me then, as I lay upon the ground, helpless in a state of horrified paralysis.

My mind—my consciousness—was becoming a separate thing. Enisled, I no longer viewed the stars or the trees, or even desolate Taborville Common. I saw the spark of my waking mind changing, merging with the claymation-madness. The panic at such an image became everything. It was not like drifting off to sleep. It was not like slipping away. It was like having my mind cleft and skewered, to be left alive, but with no control and no concept—of anything real.

Then I heard something else, far away. First, it was but a rattling sound, an odd staccato. Then underneath, below the clatter, I heard a human voice although I did not understand the words.

That sound was like a buoy in a foam-tossed sea. I clung to it with all my might. It grew louder and, after a fashion, I awoke.

It was as if I were floating above the treetops, but part of me knew I was still lying on the ground. A distant, dim blue light flickered. It approached with remarkable speed and as it did so, the voice took on essence.

The world stopped swirling and the lunatic procession of thought, emotion and the hooded man’s chanting seemed to focus away from me, aiming instead at the coming light and voice.

I saw them then, two figures, one a tall, striding Indian Man. He held a stick, perhaps three feet long. At its top was the skull of some great cat, with canines incredibly long. From that stick came the blue light and the rattling sound.

The sprits of the dead, and the hooded man himself, converged on the tall Indian. I can imagine what the assault was like, but he never faltered, not even for an instant. The rattling continued apace, as did his voice.

“Boy!” my granduncle called. “Take a-hold of yourself! We’ve only got a few seconds.”

I couldn’t understand how I was hearing Uncle Josh.

I remember it well. I thought, This is a dream. It’s that same nightmare I had back in Nulhegan. I gazed about. The ground seemed solid, the trunks and branches, leaves and needles of pine, all seemed real, substantial. I felt a will, an effort, and literally tried to pull myself together. I struggled, but it was like solving trigonometry problems in the midst of the hangover, the one that should’ve killed you.

“Boy!” It was Uncle Josh, had to be. I saw his face above me, but only for an instant. It felt as though I passed out, but the voice kept on.

“Are you all right?”

I opened my eyes once more to see a stranger’s face peering at me. Whoever he was, he seemed quite concerned.

I remember it as if it were yesterday and not more than ten years ago.

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

“Yeah,” I responded. “What happened?”

“I think you must’ve fallen. Is anything broken? Do you hurt anywhere?”

I took a mental inventory. I didn’t feel pain in any particular place, Instead, I seemed to feel rather numb almost everywhere.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Just groggy. What happened? Who are you?”

He was the big man I had seen my uncle talking to after the funeral, surely he was.

“My name’s Roger Gillette. I’m the game warden hereabouts. What are you doing wandering around in these woods at night? It ain’t huntin’ season. You could’ve gotten yourself hurt.”

I lay there in silence for a moment. I felt as though I’d run a marathon, only to find out that the whole damn thing had been a dream.

“I’m ashamed to admit it,” I said, sitting up, “but I must’ve got lost.”

“Well, let’s get you back to your jeep and on down to your uncle’s house at Nulhegan.”

“How could you know about my jeep, and my uncle?”

“Never mind, it’s my job to know what goes on in these woods; I’m the game warden. You’re lucky I was trailin’ you, I’ll say that much. I heard your jeep making a hell of a racket, rumbling about on the lee side of the mountain. You should’ve stayed right there, with your vehicle. It’s dangerous out here at night. Folks’ve been reporting an ugly bear in these parts, stalking and sniffing around their campsites.”

“I was back in Taborville Common,” I stammered. “There was this man, a hooded man. My uncle said there were the ‘old ones’ up in here. He said to stay away, but I didn’t listen. I think there’re ghosts up in here.”

“Ghosts? Sure, there’re ghosts, but they won’t hurt you, more like, they’ll make you hurt yourself, if you act stupid. Either way, there’s no Taborville Common around here, just woods for miles and miles around. Let’s get going. Can you stand? I know the way back to your jeep. Hell, I know this piece of forest like the back of my hand, day or night. And you don’t need to worry about the ghosts or any hooded fellow; around here, I’m in charge, and everything and everybody knows it.”

We hobbled along in the dark, and in less than a hour, we were back at my jeep. I must’ve spent the entire time running around in one big circle. Warden Gillette asked me if I knew my way back out.

“Sure,” I said.

He gave me the hardest look, up and down. “Fine,” he said. “Look, you come up in here deer hunting, that’s one thing. You come hunting for things buried in the ground, and more’n likely, that’s what you’re going to find, you understand me? It’ll be light in a few hours, until then—if you’re sure that you feel all right—I suggest that you get some sleep.”

“You’re welcome to the passenger’s seat, if you like,” I said, my voice awkward in my own ears.

“Thanks, but I’m up here on business. You wait until daylight to leave, understand? I can’t be coming back here to find you lost again.”

As embarrassed as I could be, I wished him a good night and settled into the driver’s seat. I didn’t expect to fall asleep, but I did.

Early morning light awoke me, and the sound of a hundred birds, all chirping at once.

I stretched, brought the seatback up, and looked around. My cloths were not rent or torn, no burdocks stuck to my pants, nor leaves or twigs. It was a marvel that got me wondering. I reached around behind the driver seat to find my daypack, empty, no treasures and none of the provisions I remembered packing the previous morning. For a long moment, I just stared out the windshield, hands resting on the steering wheel.

I turned my jeep around and got it rolling back down the mountain. I felt exhausted, and in a mental shambles. I headed back to my uncle’s.

He didn’t seem a bit surprised to see me, although he said, “Now what’re you doing back here? You just left yesterday. Where’ve you been, anyway? He poured me a cup of coffee, fixed me a snack. I told my uncle what had happened, how I’d driven up into the mountains, and had had a most horrific nightmare.

You can guess what his reply had been, “Told ya, didn’t I boy! Told to stay clear of them old places.” He didn’t say anything more on the subject, just made sure that I took it easy that day, and went to bed early.

The next day, I woke up at my uncle’s, the bedclothes knotted around my arms and legs. The birds were singing outside and rising, happy sunlight streamed in through the window, which was swung up and out to catch the new morning breeze. I fought my way out of the sheets and rested a while on the edge of the bed then I went downstairs to find my uncle at the kitchen table, eating over-easy eggs with a folded piece of yolk-soaked toast.

“Want some breakfast?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m starved.”

I left that day, headed home.

For years, I managed to put the entire experience out of my mind. But returning to Nulhegan for my granduncle’s funeral has made me remember it all over again, relive a terrifying night of unreal hell on earth.

The service for my uncle was attended well. Dozens of people came from all over, and quite a few of them were Abenaki. There was a huge man there, unusually tall, and built like an oak. He came up to me at the service, gave me a nod, and said, “You don’t know me, I suppose, but I’m Warden Roger Gillette. Your uncle was a very dear old friend. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I think that we met once before.”

“Is that right?” he said, his eyes twinkling. “Well, I suppose that could be; these days, I spend a good deal of my time hereabouts.”