Trail camera footage reveals the strange occurrences and dark secrets hiding in the woods surrounding a troubled family’s recently inherited country home.
Novelette | 9,250 words
You don’t believe me. Not yet. But maybe I will. Once you tell me everything. Let’s get this over with. How about we start with the trail cams. You have a rather elaborate surveillance system in your woods, Mr. Jacobsen. I guess. We’re working our way through the cloud data. It’s taking some time. There are hundreds of hours of archived video. Yeah. Can you tell me more about that? Mr. Jacobsen? Stop calling me that. Mr. Jacobsen? What’s wrong with— I don’t like the way you say it. How do I say it? Like you’re talking to a child. Like you’re telling me I’m a big boy. I only— For fuck’s sake, I didn’t do nothing! There’s no reason to yell. No? Isn’t there? I’d say there’s a pretty good reason! I shouldn’t be here. Neither should you. We should be out there! Searching! We’ve searched. And we’ll continue to search. Now can you sit down? And stop yelling? Can we talk calmly? Fine. Yeah. Okay. I want to believe you. So let’s figure this out together. Just call me Shane, okay? No more of this Mr. fucking Jacobsen. Okay. Shane. Do you need anything else before we go on? Besides the water? No. Because you keep looking around. Like you need something. I don’t need nothing. Then let’s start over. You have ten acres. On those ten acres we located twenty trail cams. So? So I did the math. That’s a thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. Which seems a steep price for someone who doesn’t have much money rattling around in his savings account. Desperate times, as they say. Over the past two weeks, you took more than a few trips to Fleet Farm. Picked up some rope. A machete. A bale of barbed wire. Ammunition. And more. Much more. But we’ll get to that later. For now, tell me more about the trail cameras. You seem to know everything. Why bother asking? Tell me more about the trail cameras, Shane. I don’t know what you want. What do you want? They got a camo design. You mount them on a tree—few feet off the ground. They got a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth setup. They got night vision. You can record continuously. Or they’re motion-activated, so an alert pops up on your phone when something shows up. That cover it? Very helpful. But I’m more curious about the why. Why did you set them up? I got a bait station. Fill it with corn. Toss down a few sweet potatoes. Spread a little bit of molasses in the logs nearby. Deer love that. This is in a clearing near the old oak where I keep my tree stand. The trail cam is there, because I want to know what’s showing up to eat. I want to know what I’m going to hunt. Yes. But there are nineteen other cameras spread far and wide. Nowhere near your bait station and tree stand. ... Mr. Jacobsen? ... Shane? Like I said, I want to know what’s in my woods.
The video has a grainy green haze to it. There is no sound. The clearing is carpeted with leaves and ringed by trees. Beyond their trunks the shadows coalesce into a velvet black. The bait station is barely visible—a tall wooden box with a hinged lid on top and a slit on the bottom from which corn spills.
Three does wander out of the dark. Their eyes glow. Their noses glisten. Their hooves step delicately as if onto ice. They lower their muzzles to lick the molasses off a log, to graze on the spilled corn.
Something approaches. At first it appears like a branched tree that unrooted and came to life. But it is the antlered head of a buck. His haunches surge with muscle when he joins the herd to feed.
How many deer can you harvest in a season?
Depends on the area, but with my license, I can get four antlered and five antlerless.
You picky about what you kill?
Little bit.
Tell me more.
I only got so much room in my freezer. Not eager to shoot the does. Not unless it’s nearing the end of the season and I’ve had no luck otherwise.
What about a buck, like the one in the video? Would that be worth the bullet?
Eight point. You bet.
Would you get it mounted? Hang the antlers on the wall?
Maybe, sure.
You like to remember the kill—is that it?
That’s a funny way of putting it.
How would you put it?
I’m getting the sense you don’t hunt.
No, I don’t hunt.
Seems funny.
How so?
You’re a cop, right? Fancy kind of cop anyway. Kind of cop who wears suits. Detective Will Marston. You sounded so proud when you introduced yourself. So you got a gun. You got a job that’s all about tracking things down. Seems like maybe hunting would be the perfect fit.
Could be, except for one thing.
Yeah?
My job isn’t fun. You can talk all you want about harvesting your own meat, but venison tastes like dirt. You have to grind it up and mix it into a sausage that’s sixty percent pork to even be able to stomach it. And you can go on all you want about how reducing the deer population keeps drivers safe. But that’s not why you’re out there. You’re out there, year after year, in the dark, in the cold, because it’s clearly fun for you. It’s fun to kill. That’s really why you do it. And I’ve never understood the pleasure in killing things.
The buck nibbles at a moldering sweet potato. The does scuff their hooves against the leaves and butt their heads softly against the bait station, searching for more corn. Their tails swish. Their ears turn one way, then another, the big cups of them taking in the sounds of the night forest.
Then, all at once, they swivel their heads in the same direction. Their bodies tense.
The buck lowers his antlers and stamps a hoof. He snorts and a cloud of steam escapes his snout.
Then he seems to reconsider—startling, scrambling backward, and bounding out of the clearing. The does follow, springing upward as if on wires, disappearing into the narrow slots between the trees.
The clearing is empty. A few fallen leaves ripple and spin with the breeze. The shadows pulse.
So you inherited this property?
Yeah.
From your father.
Yeah. Bit of a surprise.
Why’s that?
Cause the last time I spoke to him, I was ten.
Your mother raised you.
Did her best. We moved around a lot. Went where the work was. Iowa. Wisconsin. Here in Minnesota. Some housekeeping. Mostly waitress jobs.
Can I ask why you and your father were estranged?
You can ask. Not getting into that shit.
Before you and Martha moved to the property...your previous residence was the Viking Terrace trailer park. That’s quite an upgrade.
You say it like it’s a good thing. I didn’t want to move. We were fine.
Why didn’t you want to move? Into your old childhood home?
Should have just sold the fucking place outright, but Martha, she had the idea of us fixing it up first. Flipping it, she said. She watches a lot of those shows on the HGTV. Anyhow, my old man wasn’t the best at maintenance. Bit of a hoarder too. So the property’s a mess. I’ve been patching things up and clearing things out. She’s been pulling down wallpaper and freshening everything up with paint. But I should’ve just sold the place. It’s bad. It’s stained. If I had just sold it, I wouldn’t be in this mess.
The property has been searched and photographed and videoed.
One of the sheds is full of traps that dangle from chains. They still have fur and dried meat in their rusted teeth. In the recording, they swing and clink as the police move through them.
In the basement a hidden room was discovered behind a shelving unit. The door was sound-proofed and locked with three deadbolts. Inside was a cell, ten feet by ten feet. There was a drain in the concrete floor and a cuffed chain bolted to the wall. The cinder blocks were crosshatched with scratch marks. Several fingernails and teeth were recovered. In the recording, a cop with a red mustache holds up an evidence bag with several molars inside. “Some of these are baby teeth,” he says.
Your son. Mick. Tell me about him.
What do you want to know?
Anything.
I don’t know how to answer half of what you ask.
Do your best.
...
Shane?
Jesus, you’re really going to make me do this right now?
Yes.
I...He’s a sweet kid. Always wanting hugs. Always saying his I-love-yous. He’s got hair like hay. Goes every direction. He wears pajama pants every day. He’s small for his age. Always has been. He’s five but he looks more like he’s three. Loves his dog. Sunny. Yellow lab. He and Sunny’ll hang out all day, playing fetch with a tennis ball or a stick. Watching TV. Snoozing. He don’t like sports, but I keep trying to make a Vikings fan out of him. His favorite show is Dinosaur Train, because it’s got dinosaurs and trains in it—obviously. Winning combo if there ever was one. His favorite stuffed animal’s a wolf. His favorite food’s what he calls a Kid’s BLT, which don’t have a single one of those letters in it. No bacon, no lettuce, no tomato—it’s just a scrambled egg on toast.
Would you say you have a loving relationship?
Yes.
No hesitation. I only say that because you’ve so far been hesitant about everything else.
Not on that. No hesitation.
Do you think you’re a good dad?
Probably not the best, but I’m sure as shit doing better than my old man. That’s part of what inspires me, guess you could say.
How do you mean?
It’s like a correction or something. You want to do better than what was done to you. I just wish I’d never moved him in to that damn house. I didn’t know—you’ve got to believe me on that. I knew he was a fucking monster—but I didn’t know how bad of a monster.
We haven’t found any bodies yet. But the photographs he left behind are...upsetting.
I don’t want to talk about that, okay? It makes me sick. It makes me want to puke.
Then let’s talk more about Mick.
Let’s.
Does he hunt?
No. Too young. Not strong enough to lift a shotgun.
We’re seeing him in some of the trail cam footage. He’s wearing what looks to be a blaze-orange cap and sweatshirt.
He comes out in the woods with me.
What does he do? While you hunt?
Well, it’s not like I’m hiking up and down mountains. This is Minnesota. You park yourself in a tree stand and you drink a few beers and you wait. So it’s kid friendly.
Do you always drink when you hunt?
I don’t know. I guess.
How much do you drink?
Not enough to do anything. Just enough to get me warm.
How much?
Six pack of Busch Light. Stuff’s like water. It’s not like I’m getting drunk.
So Mick sits there and waits.
He waits.
I have two children. They’re in college now. But they were once five-year-olds. In my experience, that age is not great at waiting patiently.
I keep him entertained. The two of us talk. In whispers. Don’t want to scare the deer off. He colors in his coloring books. He eats fruit snacks and animal crackers.
He never gets squirmy and wanders away?
That only happened the one time.
The body cam footage trembles with the movement of the officer as he breathes, as he talks, as he gestures with his hands and shifts his weight from foot to foot. He stands on the stoop of Shane Jacobsen’s home, asking questions, trying to figure out what’s going on.
The porch lights are on. The front door is closed. A fall wreath—sticks and leaves, loosely woven—hangs from it. Inside, a dog barks.
Shane has a pale, drained look on his face. He wears a camo-print jacket with a blaze-orange vest over the top. His wife, Martha, is weeping openly. Her face is red and her cheeks are wet. She has blonde hair pulled back in a long braid. She wears a sweatshirt and jeans and holds out her arms as if to catch something. “You’ve got to find him,” she keeps saying, over and over. “You’ve got to find my Mickey.”
What happened that night, Shane?
Already went over this with the cops. The real cops.
I’m not a real cop?
Sure don’t look like one.
Because I wear a suit.
That and you’re—
What?
Forget it.
Short?
You said it.
My biggest muscle is my brain, I like to say. I don’t need to chase anybody down or shove anyone against the hood of a vehicle to get what I want.
You just pester people to death.
So what happened? When Mick disappeared—for the first time?
We were up in the tree stand, and I...fell asleep.
After drinking?
No. I mean, yes. I had a few beers. But that’s not why I fell asleep. It’d been a long day. Been up since 4 a.m. Had to drive to Duluth and back, delivering a load of lumber.
You work for Menard’s?
I’m an independent contractor. Lease a Mack Anthem 64T. I truck for whoever needs a load hauled. Sometimes that’s Menard’s.
You’re on the road a lot.
So what?
You get lonely?
I guess.
I reached out to Wisconsin and Iowa, and I pulled a few files.
Jesus.
You solicited a prostitute at a truck stop in Wausau.
So what?
Was your wife aware of this? I see you got off with a fine.
What does that got to do with anything?
Maybe nothing.
You’ve also been charged twice with assault.
Bar fights in my twenties. Who cares?
About your history of violence and infidelity? Given the circumstances, I imagine a lot of people might be interested. The press. Lawyers. Jury members.
If I’m going to talk to you, I’m going to talk to you about what’s happening right now. Because I need your goddamned help with what’s happening right now—not two years ago or ten years ago.
...
Hey. Hey, what are you writing down?
You said you had a long day. You said you had a few beers. You said you fell asleep in the tree stand—and then what?
I woke up in the dark to my phone going off. It was Martha. She was wondering where the hell we were. I’d promised to be back by six for supper, and it now was half past. That’s when I realized I was alone in the tree stand. Turned on my phone flashlight. Mick’s coloring book was there, but he was gone.
So you called the cops? The real ones?
Not right away.
Why not?
Because we hoped he was close. We looked for him ourselves. To start with.
In the woods?
In the woods and in the house. Under the beds and in the closets and everywhere we could think.
How did you feel?
The worst kind of panic. Sick. Guilty.
Guilty?
Yeah, guilty.
Because...
Because it was my fault. Or that’s what it felt like. Because I hadn’t been watching him. I hadn’t kept him safe.
Give me the timeline for all of this. You woke up in the tree stand at—what did you say? Half past six? And then you did a preliminary search and...
We called the cops around eight maybe. They joined the search. So did some neighbors. We were out there in the woods for a good long while. Past midnight.
Flashlights cone the dark. Branches slap and claw at the camera. Every footstep is fumbling and uncertain, with shoes twisting over rocks and tripping over roots and sliding in loose leaves. Scrub oak gets pushed aside. Pale mushrooms spring from the top of a mossy stump.
The officer’s radio chirps—alerting all units to an accident on a nearby highway—and he turns down the volume. Because there’s something else he’s trying to hear. A voice calls up ahead, saying the same phrase over and over again, the rise and fall of it like a siren. “We got him! We got him!”
The officer hurries, circling a thorny bramble, nearly losing his balance on an incline. “Shit.”
At the bottom of the hill a group of people have gathered around a tree. Their flashlights wobble and pools of yellow light slide around the base of the trunk.
There is a hollow here—as big as a hearth—and the boy is curled up inside it. His eyes are wide open and flash red in the light’s reflection. Everyone says his name, “Mick? You okay? Mick? Mick? Mick?”
But he says nothing in return.
A spider crawls along his cheek and tests his eye with one probing leg.
What did Mick say happened?
He didn’t say nothing at first. Not for a few days.
In the report I see that physically, he was fine. No injuries.
He was borderline hypothermic from being out in the cold, but yeah. No broken bones or nothing.
Emotionally however...
Something was off. Something was real wrong. This is a kid who never stops chattering.
Mick was examined that night by an EMT. But you took him to a hospital the next day. Why?
He would barely move. Barely blink. He wouldn’t eat or drink. Me and Martha, we worried there might be a medical issue. Like a stroke or something. Can a kid have a stroke? I don’t even know. But they ran all sorts of tests, and it all came back good. Good on paper, I mean.
What was going through your head?
Mick’s scared of the dark. Always sleeps with a nightlight. Won’t go in the basement alone. So imagine how that would feel—getting lost in the woods at night. I bet it could really mess you up. Like a shock or PTSD kind of thing.
Did you consider other possibilities?
Like if somebody had done something to him? Yeah. ’Course. Crossed my mind. But like you said, he didn’t have nothing wrong with him physically. Not a bruise. Not a scratch. And we’re pretty isolated out here.
How long before he started talking again?
Three days. Long three days. Felt like three months.
What did he say?
He was standing by the window. That was the first time he’d shown any interest in anything. Or even focused on anything. Before then, he’d just stare at the wall, but it was like the wall wasn’t even there, you know? He was looking at nothing. But now, by the window, he was, like, actively looking for something.
What?
That’s what I asked him.
And what did he say?
He said...Woods Friend.
Woods Friend?
Yeah. He was looking for Woods Friend.
And who is Woods Friend?
That’s what I wanted to know...
Sorry—what were you going to say?
I already said what I was going to say.
Yes, but you opened your mouth, as though there was something else.
I don’t know. I was going to mention the dog. Mick and that dog, like I said, they’re normally inseparable. And if someone in the family’s sick, Sunny will cozy right up to them. It’s like a nursing instinct, you know. But that wasn’t the case this time. This time Sunny didn’t want nothing to do with Mick. Except for eating her food in the mud room and doing her business in the yard, she kept hidden under our bed.
The video—recorded by a phone—shows red. A hazy red. “Oh, my God,” Martha’s voice says. “What did you do?”
She pulls the phone back and it finds its focus.
The dog. Sunny. Her head is painted with blood that hasn’t yet dried.
Sunny pants heavily and her breath fogs the camera.
“She smells, Shane,” Martha says. “She smells something awful.”
Martha is in the kitchen. The floor is a peeling linoleum. The cabinets are oak. Dirty dishes are stacked up in the sink and on the counter. A pile of mail looks like it’s about to topple over.
Shane stands in the door to the garage, his keys still in his hand. His voice is sharp when he says, “Not again.”
“She really got into it this time.”
“Fuck. Seriously? This is what I come home to? If it’s not one fucking thing, it’s another. I hate this house. I really hate this house.”
“What are you talking about? This hasn’t got nothing to do with the house. I took her outside to pee and she took off.”
“Took off where?”
“I don’t know. The woods.”
The dog’s panting grows louder.
“Then she comes back looking like this. I thought she got in a fight at first. But she doesn’t have any cuts or nothing that I can see. And look.”
The camera changes its angle to take in the dog’s distended belly. “She ate herself sick.”
“Where’s Mick?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You lose the dog, now you lose the kid?”
“I don’t know at this very second because I’ve got a goddamned mess on my hands. Five minutes ago, he was in his bedroom.”
Shane curses and stomps toward the dog. He grabs her by the collar and drags her toward the garage. “Come on.”
But Sunny doesn’t want to go with him, her body bearing down, trying to stay inside. She whines.
“You’re getting the hose, you stupid fucking dog.”
You were angry.
’Course I was angry.
At Martha.
I was mad at everything. Everything was going wrong. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t feel the same.
Tell me more about her.
Martha?
Maybe you could start with what attracted you to her?
She’s got an ass on her.
Is that all?
’Course not. I mean...when she gets to laughing, you can hear it a mile away. It’s hard not to laugh too. It’s hard not to be happy when she’s happy.
What does she like to do?
She likes them British shows. The ones with the kissing and the corsets and the moors and the estates and such. She likes dancing. She likes lots of sugar and creamer in her coffee. She likes the color yellow. That’s why she got a yellow lab. That’s what she painted the kitchen and the bathrooms. She likes pineapple on pizza, which is wrong and disgusting. She likes spending money, that’s for sure.
Would you say she’s a good mother?
Fair enough.
That’s not a glowing endorsement.
She loves Mick. But she kind of got the blues after he was born. Never really shook them off.
Her prescriptions include treatments for anxiety and depression.
They do indeed.
How would the depression manifest itself?
Usually around this time of year it hits. When there’s less light. She won’t get out of bed for days. Won’t take a shower or eat or nothing.
How does that make you feel?
Just like you can’t help but be happy when she’s happy—the misery kind of rubs off on you. And I was already kind of miserable. Moving back in to that house—that fucking house—it wasn’t easy for me.
Bad memories.
Bad memories. The worst memories. She said we were going to turn them into good memories, but she was wrong.
Did she know about your father?
No. Not the details. She just knew I hated his guts.
You never told her.
Case you can’t tell—I’m not much for fucking conversation.
I can see you’re getting upset again, so let’s put a pin on that. Let’s come back to that in a little bit. I want to know what happened with the dog.
Took Sunny outside. Cleaned her off best I could. Hose water. Dawn soap. It wasn’t just blood foaming off her. It was chunks of meat. Rotten meat. Maggots too. I gagged twice.
In the video you said, Not again. Was this something Sunny did often?
I don’t know what kind of hard-wiring a dog’s got that makes them want to roll on something disgusting or eat something disgusting, but she’s got it bad. When Mick was little, we had one of those diaper bins, you know? And Sunny, she got into it. Knocked it over and got the lid off and went to town. Her whole face was slathered in baby shit. And she’s got a taste for blood too. One time I saw something white sticking out of her butt. A white string. I pulled on it and a used tampon popped out. One of Martha’s. Stupid dog dug it out of the trash.
So you cleaned off the dog and—?
Left her in the garage to dry. She was panting like it was a hundred-degree day and she’d gone for a long run. She could barely move, she was so full. She was so full she looked pregnant three times over. I laid down some towels and she curled up on them. Panting, panting, panting.
Then what?
I set out to see what she’d gotten into. This was mid-afternoon. Getting close to dark. The wind was coming from the southwest, so that’s the way I headed, figuring Sunny had bolted because she got a nice whiff of something. Took me about five minutes to find what I was looking for.
And?
It was the buck. That eight-pointer you saw in the video. Not just killed, but torn to pieces. I’d seen coyotes do a number on a doe, but a buck this size? Never. It was chewed down to bone and guts. We’d had a few warmer days in a row—that’s how November can be, it’s a yo-yo of a month—and the flies had hatched for the feast. I waved them away. The ground was muddy with the blood. Muddy. Like, my boots were sinking into it. Took me a moment to realize something was off.
What was off?
It’s always surprising how much blood’s inside an animal. Sometimes, if it’s late in the day when I harvest a deer, I hang it from the rafters, bleed it out overnight in my garage. Keeps the critters away. I’ll set down a big stainless steel bowl, and I’ll fill and empty that sucker several times over. But right then—out in the woods—there was more blood than there should have been. It was a marsh of blood spread out over a big patch of dirt. I was walking around, searching for tracks, when I felt a splat on my shoulder. That’s when I looked up and saw the rest.
The rest?
The rest of the herd. The does. Whatever had gotten the buck had gotten them too. The pieces of them were dangling from the trees.
The footage from Martha’s phone camera continued an hour after Shane dragged the dog into the garage.
“Oh, my God,” Martha says. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
Sunny retches, her whole body heaving. A thick red river of vomit escapes her, splattering the garage floor. She makes a sound like a choking howl.
There is more—and then more still—gallons and gallons of blood. The puddle spreads outward, and Martha has to take several steps back or her shoes will be dirtied.
The camera shakes, and the dog shivers. Her tail is tucked. She heaves until her throat goes raw.
“There’s something in it,” Martha says at a whisper. “In the throw-up…there’s something alive.”
She lowers the camera and in the wash of blood there appear to be worms twisting and curling, searching for a soft spot to burrow into.
Night had come by the time I got back. Back from the woods. Dog was dead.
I’m sorry about that, Shane. I really am.
Me too.
I love dogs.
Yeah.
I have a dachshund, and it’s very much a member of the family.
Yeah.
So...where was Mick during all of this?
In the living room. Standing by the window. Looking out at the dark. At the woods.
At Woods Friend.
Yeah. Yeah, at Woods Friend. I asked him—I said, Mick...why do you call him your friend? And he said, Because that’s what he says he is. He says he’s my friend. And I said, what does Woods Friend look like? And he said, I don’t know. And I said, Well, he must look like something. Everything looks like something. What’s the closest thing he looks like? And he said, He looks different every time you look at him. And I said, That don’t make any sense. And he said, Yes, it does. You told me the same thing once. You told me that’s what you like about the woods. They look different every time you look at them. And I said, Are you afraid of Woods Friend? And he said, I don’t know. And I said, Well, what does Woods Friend want from you? And he said, Woods Friend wants to come inside.
The surveillance camera is anchored high on the wall, so it captures a wide view of the store. This is the hunting section of Fleet Farm. There are decoy ducks and geese sitting on a shelf. A camo blind is set up as an aisle cap. Boning knives and buck knives gleam in a revolving case. Rifles and bows line the wall. Pistols and revolvers fill a glass cabinet that glows with light. Behind the display stands a clerk—a thin man in a flannel shirt with a horseshoe of silver hair.
A customer approaches—a big man with a brown beard and linebacker shoulders. Shane pushes a cart. In it are several trail cams—along with a coil of rope, a shovel, and a machete. He paces back and forth, studying the gun cabinet, finally pointing a finger.
The clerk nods his head and says a few words before selecting a key from his belt loop. He opens the cabinet door and pulls out a long-nosed revolver.
Why did you buy a shovel, Shane?
Because the handle of the other one broke when I was digging a hole.
Why were you digging a hole?
Can’t a man dig a hole?
Of course a man can dig a hole. But usually there’s a reason for it.
It’s always the husband—is that it?
It’s usually the husband. Not always.
Jesus. Jesus H. Christ.
If you were truly worried about Martha, I think you’d appreciate us leaving no stone unturned.
You should be looking for her. I should be looking for her. But instead you want to talk.
You said you would talk to me. You agreed to this. As long as I did as you asked.
I’m holding you to it.
Then talk.
Okay, you want to know why I was digging a hole. I was digging a hole because I was trying to build a trap.
A pit trap, you mean.
Brush on top. Spikes anchored on the bottom. That’s why I got the machete. To help sharpen the sticks.
And the rope?
Hanging meat. Hanging meat over the pit.
The revolver?
What else? Protection. Martha never wanted handguns around before. She said kids got into things.
But she was okay with it now?
She didn’t really have a say.
You already had a .30.06, a .22, and two 10-gauge shotguns.
Those aren’t exactly much for home defense.
What made you think you were in this much danger?
Have you seen the first video?
The tree trunks are wrinkled with bark. A bush looks like a dried wig. Leaves swirl, taking on the shape of the wind. The gusts rise and fall, as if the forest is breathing.
In the shadows beyond the clearing something appears. Or maybe it was there all along. Its shape announces itself, slowly becoming evident, like a developing photograph. Maybe twenty feet away—a blackness that is blacker than the night.
And then the eyes open with a flare of green light. They are too big for any head and too tall for any body.
Was driving back from Chippewa Falls when I got the alert on my phone. Through the camera app. Movement detected. That’s what it said. Movement detected. This was around supper. I remember because I had stopped at Kwik Trip for a hot dog and a coffee. In the parking lot, I thumbed open the alert. And that’s when I called Martha.
What did you tell her?
Told her to lock the doors and windows. Even on the second floor.
And what did she say to that?
She wanted to know why, and I said to do it. Just do it. Do what I say. And we go back and forth like that for a while.
Arguing?
I don’t know if arguing’s the right word.
Were you yelling?
Yeah, sure. But that’s because we were both scared. You’re scaring me, she said. But she was doing what I said. I could hear the locks twisting. I could hear her footsteps as she stomped around the house. She was in our bedroom, locking the window, when she screamed.
Martha records herself with her phone. Maybe because she needs to prove to others what’s happening. Maybe because she isn’t sure she’ll be around to tell them. Her eyes are wet and wide. Mascara trails run down her cheeks. She speaks at a whisper. “I’m really, really, really scared.” She’s under the table in the kitchen. She has a butcher knife in her hand. The boy is with her. She has an arm around his waist. He makes a mewling sound as he tries to escape her, but she holds him tight and keeps saying, “Shh. Quiet. Quiet, Mick. Please. Be quiet for Mommy.”
And then it is evident what she’s listening for. The doom of something heavy hitting the house. Her head tilts up, even though there is nothing to see but the table’s underside. “It’s on the roof,” she says.
Another doom, doom, doom sounds. What could be the footsteps of something heavy.
A long silence follows, during which time her breathing is the only noise—every exhale a big gust that shreds the microphone.
Then, from nearer by, comes a thudding slam.
She lets out a scream and the camera shakes and wheels.
When it stabilizes again, it is directed at the door to the mud room. Shane stands there with his pistol in his hand. He shows his teeth in a snarl. “I’m home,” he says and then the recording goes dark.
The next morning the windows were covered in flies.
I see.
Do you? I don’t think you do. The windows were covered in flies. So black we could hardly see out of them. You could feel the whole house vibrating and humming. That’s not normal. There was something very not normal going on.
So...you and Martha were married on May fifth?
There you go. Just driving right past what I’m saying.
May fifth?
Yeah. May fucking fifth.
I noticed that Mick was born in late July of the same year.
Yeah. So?
How long had you been dating? Before she got pregnant?
What does it matter?
Just trying to understand your relationship better. As an outsider.
Few months.
So you didn’t know each other that well.
Good enough to think it was the right thing to do.
Do you still feel that way?
...
Shane?
I think it was the right thing to do. That’s what you’re supposed to do for a kid, right? Make sacrifices. Do whatever it takes.
That’s not a particularly warm and fuzzy response.
What do you want from me? A declaration of my undying love? We had some good times and some bad times. We weren’t doing so hot lately. That doesn’t mean I killed her. I don’t want her to be dead. Why would I want that?
In one trail cam recording, Shane’s face appears as it would through a peephole, warped and rounded. He is so close he occupies the entire field of vision. He bites his lip and narrows his eyes—in the process of mounting the unit in place and activating the connection.
The feed shudders as he fiddles with the placement and controls. He backs away from it, holding out his hands as if ready to catch it.
Satisfied, he now stands in the middle of a game trail and turns in a slow circle. Sunlight filters through the branches in splashes of gold. A cardinal flashes by, a streak of red. On the ground is a backpack full of supplies. He hefts it up and moves on.
In another trail cam recording, Shane strings some barbed wire between trees, knee-high, tying off trip wires.
In another trail cam recording, Shane digs a hole big enough to drive a car into. His arms are muddied and his chest heaves from the effort.
In every one of the videos, he seems to have more than one shadow following him.
What do you attribute to your marital troubles?
Listen to the way you talk. You must have gotten your ass handed to you at recess every day, talking like that. Just say words like they’re words. What do you attribute to your marital troubles? Are you kidding me?
Tell me what I should say.
How about, What’s wrong with your marriage?
What’s wrong with your marriage, Shane?
I don’t know.
...
Everything.
Name one thing. One thing that’s part of the everything.
The house. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want his inheritance. She wanted us to move in. And I fought it, but she got her way. God, I hated being back. I’m sure I was in a rotten fucking mood a lot of the time.
That’s understandable, given what I now know about your father.
Money too. Money always makes things tricky. Money’s what usually set off an argument between us. We suddenly had property taxes and estate taxes. Energy bills like we never had before. I was trying to sell off all the shit my dad kept. Lawnmowers. A Model T. Transistor and tube radios. Taxidermy. Old coins. Guy was a fucking pack rat. But whatever money came in we put right back in to changing out the light switches or replacing the carpet. There was never enough. For clothes. For food. A new couch. Whatever.
Martha stayed home with Mick.
Used to have a job as a dental hygienist. But the cost of day care would be more than her salary. And we don’t have parents nearby. Not ones that we can rely on anyhow.
She had a life insurance policy through Thrivent.
So? What are you writing down?
Notes.
Fuck your notes.
The trail cam shows the nighttime forest. The bones of the deer carcass glow a pale green in the night vision, and the exposed ribs look like a smile torn into the meat of the torso. Shane walks into view. He is naked except for his white cotton briefs. His feet are muddy. His face is slack and his eyes blink green, green, green. He moves too slowly, his motions thick with sleep. He pauses next to the deer for a long time before wandering off to some other part of the forest.
I can’t explain that. Except that none of us were getting any sleep at this point. So we’re all going kind of crazy. I wish I knew what I was doing there. Scares me to think about, honestly.
When you do sleep, Shane, what happens?
Dream bad dreams.
Dreams of what?
The woods.
What about the woods?
Don’t always make sense.
Try me.
Branches like fingers. Splinters like teeth. I’m getting clawed, I’m getting bitten. Eyes peering out of tree knots and stumps. A deer heart slipping into a muddy mouth. Skins.
Skins?
Skins nailed to tree trunks. Skins hanging from branches like wet laundry. Skins half-buried in the dirt.
Are there occasions you can think of? When you seemed to sleepwalk? When you woke up some place strange perhaps?
Happened to Martha, too.
Oh?
She was in the basement one time. She said she dreamed she heard crying down there. The crying of a child.
How much sleep would you say you two were getting?
Few naps during the day, but nights were impossible. We kept Mick between us. In our bed. He wouldn’t lie still. He wanted to get up and go to the window. Go to sleep, we’d say, and he’d say, I can’t sleep, because Woods Friend keeps making too much noise.
When he said that—about the noise—could you hear something?
I could, yeah.
And what would you say it sounded like?
Not human. But almost.
That’s not much of a description.
You know how when coyotes howl, they sound like witches?
Not really.
Well, listen to them sometime. They sound like witches. Witches cackling. Not human. But almost. The sound in the woods—it was like that, but different.
Among the recordings on Martha’s phone, there is one of her bedroom at night.
Moonlight pours through the window and brightens the shadowed space. She is in bed. Something has awoken her, and she holds out her camera like a gun or a shield that might protect her.
Across the room, on a rocking chair, there is a heap of unfolded clothes. Beside it is a dresser with a deodorant stick and a collection of framed baby photos on top. A deer mount hangs from the wall and several caps dangle from its antlers.
But the shaky focus of her recording is the boy. Mick stands in front of the window. He wears flannel pajama pants and no shirt, his skin blued by the moonlight.
“What is that?” Martha’s voice says. “What in the hell is that?”
The boy lifts the window, and a sound filters through the crack. A sound that is not human but almost.
One night, we couldn’t take it no more and decided to spend the night at her ma’s.
This is...Teri Wilson?
She lives in town. In a condo. Only one bedroom. But I gave Martha and Mick the couch and I slept on the living room floor beside them.
You said before that you didn’t have anyone nearby you could rely on.
Her ma likes to pour her first vodka with orange juice at breakfast.
Understood. How did she respond to you coming to stay with her that night?
After about 4 p.m., she doesn’t know what the hell’s going on. We told her we had a gas leak. I brought her over a bottle of Popov. She was fine with it.
What happened then?
We didn’t exactly fall right to sleep. We were all wound up.
You didn’t hear anything though?
No. Nothing. Except Teri snoring off her drunk in the next room.
Did Mick ever manage to fall asleep?
Seemed to. We sang him lullabies and rubbed his back. Some time after midnight, his breathing settled. Martha and I eventually drifted off. But that didn’t last long.
Why?
I woke up to her screaming.
Why?
Because Mick was gone. Teri’s got a first-level unit, and the sliding glass door was open, and he was out there somewhere. Somewhere in the dark.
The video is sourced from the doorbell camera of Teri Wilson. It shows a concrete stoop with a dying pot of mums on it. Beyond that reaches a short patch of leaf-littered lawn. In the driveway a truck is parked, a Silverado belonging to Shane.
Martha is the first one out of the condo. The porch light blinks on and the door swings open and she races into the night so quickly she misjudges the height of the stoop, stumbling, nearly falling into the yard. She is screaming, and though the video includes no audio, the word finds its shape in the shadow of her mouth. “Mick,” she cries. “Mick!” Every other step she wobbles and rights herself.
Shane comes next. He too has a drunken looseness to his body. His foot catches against the pot of mums and knocks it over. Dirt lips the concrete. He goes to pick up the flowers, but then changes his mind and abandons them. He staggers about, calling for his son.
They disappear for a time. Then return to the front yard. They are arguing, screaming at each other so intensely that their bodies quiver and jerk with every word. They make chopping motions with their hands. Martha shoves Shane and Shane shoves her back and she falls to the ground and lies there sobbing for some time.
You didn’t call the police?
No.
Why?
Your child goes missing twice, the police don’t usually take kindly to it. Especially if you’re drunk.
I have to say—given everything that was happening—it seems like a really reckless time for you to be drinking.
We couldn’t sleep, like I mentioned. And we needed to sleep. Your mind does funny things otherwise. Your body too. We took a few pulls from Teri’s stash and that knocked us out.
More than a few pulls, from the look of it.
We killed a bottle off. Listen, I know that don’t look good. Me pushing her like that. I’m not a perfect husband.
You drank a half bottle of vodka. You got in a screaming match with your wife. You shoved her. You drove off together. And that was the last time anybody saw her.
I know how it looks.
It doesn’t look good, Shane.
I said I know.
What happened?
The trail cam makes the woods look a wicked witch shade of green. The wind is strong enough that the trees sway. A branch falls and spears the ground. The underbrush trembles. Eyes flare. Shapes seem to dance in the outer dark. Something blurs by, but the frame rate isn’t swift enough to capture it.
We were going after Mick.
Shane.
What?
He could have been a hundred yards away, hiding behind a bush.
No. We knew where he was going.
How?
We knew.
Where’s Martha?
I don’t know.
Where did you hide her body?
I didn’t kill her. I’d never kill her. Why would I kill her? That’s my boy’s mother.
Then what happened?
We went home and we searched for Mick and...
And?
Goddamnit, you read the report.
I read it. You claim you don’t remember. But how is anyone supposed to believe that? How is anyone supposed to believe any of what you’re saying?
All twenty trail cameras capture the night forest. Until they don’t. Their green grainy vision pixelates and reforms, warps and reforms—then blinks off, all at the very same time signature. The same night that Martha disappeared.
Don’t you think I’d lie? If it weren’t the truth? I’d lie. I’d say I was doing this or that or the other. But no. I’m giving you the stupid truth. I don’t remember. We went home. We searched for Mick and...I woke up in my bed with the cops banging at my front door.
You searched in the house? You searched in the woods? You searched how long? You searched with Martha the entire time? You searched separately? Give me more details, Shane.
I don’t...I don’t remember.
What’s the last thing you do remember?
The house. Driving up to the house. All the lights were on. Like it was waiting for me to come back.
And then?
And then...the cops are banging at the front door. They said they had my boy. At least there’s that. At least they found Mick.
They said you were filthy. Your fingernails were bloody and dirty. As if you’d been digging.
It’s because of that goddamn place. Ugly things happen there. Some places are like that. They’re ugly. They’re evil.
It’s people who are evil, Shane.
I never should have gone back. I never should have taken my family there. I don’t know why he left it to me in the will. I didn’t want it.
All of the trail cameras stopped recording that night. All twenty.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I shut them off because I didn’t want anybody knowing where I buried Martha. And you’re thinking about my dad too. About what I inherited from him. Not just the house. You’re thinking abuse, it’s generational or whatever textbook shit you’ve studied.
You said it. Not me.
That’s not me. I’m not him. I wouldn’t hurt my family.
Mmm-hmm.
God, I would love to...
What, Shane? What would you love to do? Hit me?
You said it. Not me. You twat.
You’re not in handcuffs. Yet. You could do it—you could hit me—if you like. You could flip over that table. You’re a lot bigger. If I wasn’t fast enough with my gun, you could probably kill me before anyone came in the room.
That’s bait. You’re baiting your own little tree stand. No thanks. I’ll pass. Because I want to see my son. And because you said—if I sat down with you, of my own free will, no lawyer, answered all your questions—you’d help me. You’d do what I asked you to do. So let’s fucking go.
The patrol car rolls along a highway walled in by trees. The dash cam captures the black asphalt unscrolling below and the river of stars pouring by above. The radio chirps and dispatch requests two units to respond to a robbery at the liquor store.
Two eyes glow in the ditch. A pale face stares back. And then it is gone.
“Did you see that?” the officer says. “The hell was that?”
The car brakes and executes a quick three-point turn and rumbles slowly back the way it came.
“I swear I saw…”
And then Mick is captured in the wash of headlights. He is wearing pajama pants filthy with dirt and burs. His feet are bare and bleeding from all the distance he’s run. He stands up and sprints away—and the officer yanks the gearshift into park and opens the door and gives chase. “Hey, kid! Get back here, kid!”
It’s over four miles from Teri’s condo to where the officer caught Mick on the side of the highway. That’s a remarkable distance to travel barefoot. On a cold night like that. For anyone, but especially for a five-year-old.
I’m not religious, but thank God you found him. Thank fucking God.
Another mile and he would have been home.
Exactly.
You think something bad would have happened to him there? Like what happened to Martha?
Let me ask you something. You got a perfect marriage?
This isn’t about me, Shane.
You got a perfect marriage or not?
I am...no longer married.
Yeah? Why? You kill her?
Come on.
Just saying. That’s what your questions feel like.
Let’s get back to you. You’re the reason we’re here.
Fuck you and fuck your notes and fuck your suit and fuck your smug little face. I’m not saying another word unless you tell me why you’re divorced.
...
Come on now, Detective. Give me your hot seat confession.
Marriage goes through different stages. When you have children, you’re working hard to give them the best life you can. You’re a team, even if you disagree. You have a common goal, even if you differ on how to accomplish it. When those children leave, and you and your wife only have each other, you sometimes reassess why you’re together.
Well, Martha and I, we might not always get along—we might even be a complete fucking mess—but we got that common goal, just like you said. Keep our kid happy. Keep our kid safe. That’s all that matters to me. Do you believe me?
I want to.
Can I see him now? Is your goon done asking him questions?
She’s a forensic interviewer. And her name is Melissa. She’s very good at her job. She has no motive beyond Mick’s safety.
Can I see him now? I want to see him. Now.
You’re not going to see him. Not tonight.
But I need to. He’s my son. You can’t keep a son from his father.
You said his safety is your priority. It’s ours too.
The Child Advocacy Center’s family room looks like a kindergarten classroom. There are picture books and coloring books. There are blocks and plush toys. There are short tables and short chairs. There are colorful mats and posters on the walls of ostriches and owls and dolphins. There is a fridge full of apple juice and milk cartons.
The forensic interviewer sometimes spends hours with a child, letting them play while asking questions, offering snacks.
Everything is recorded by overhead cameras. This one shows Melissa lying on the floor with a pair of scissors jammed in her eye.
Her notebook lies beside her. There is one phrase written on it: He wants to come inside?
The door is locked. The boy scratches at it and yanks at the knob and makes a high, keening sound. He wants to get out.
Your property was searched, Shane.
It was searched during the day.
There was nothing. No Martha. No Woods Friend.
I need you to come again. And it has to be at night. Night is when things happen there.
You realize how that sounds?
I don’t care how it sounds. You come to my house at night. You come to my woods at night. And then you tell me I’m crazy.
All right. I’m a man of my word. But I’ll need you to be handcuffed.
The two-story house squats in the woods. All of the lights are on. All of the doors and windows are open.
Detective Marston is driving. He wears a body cam that reveals the scene.
Martha stands in the driveway, illuminated by the anemic glow of the headlights. Her hair is clotted with pine needles. Where her skin isn’t dirty, it’s covered in scratches and bruises. She has a revolver dangling from her hand.
“You see? I told you!” Shane is handcuffed in the rear seat, but his voice can be heard yelling, “Martha!” The car shakes, maybe from him slamming a shoulder against the door. “Let me out goddamnit. Martha!”
“Let’s hold on a second,” Detective Marston says.
“Martha!” Shane says at a scream.
Something drops out of the dark, slamming the top of the car hard enough to dent the roof and spider-web the windshield with cracks.
Curses can be heard. Claws screech on metal. Then the car lurches when the thing leaps off the roof and onto the trunk before disappearing into the dark.
Martha is walking toward the car. Into the yellow haze of the headlights. She raises the pistol. A hole punches the glass.
“Let me out!” Shane says again and again, but Detective Marston is yanking the gearshift into reverse.
The rear backup camera clicks on, and what they see in the screen finally makes Detective Marston believe.
“Trail Cam” copyright © 2026 by Benjamin Percy
Art copyright © 2026 by Anna Dietzel
Buy the Book
Trail Cam
I love the atmosphere of this and the way it’s told.
Wow!
Oooooo! Good spooky story!
DAMN this is terrifying. So cinematic, would make a killer horror movie.