The fog has settled in across the street. The neighbor keeps the front quarter of the lot mowed, an ordinary patch of lawn with a mature apple tree tucked into the far corner. Beyond that, it’s pussy willows and maples and whatever else nature has willed to grow in what used to be family farmland.
All summer, the neighbor dumped his grass clippings beneath the apple tree. They’ve formed a brown hump around the trunk, like a long-haired cat lounging nose to tail.
In the fog, the lawn is gone. The red apples and the mound beneath them are all that float above it.
With most of the work done for the year, there’s nothing left to do but roam the property. I like to stare out into the tree line. Most of the birds have gone quiet now. The cardinals and blue jays have sung their summer songs and begun molting and fattening up for winter. The orioles, house wrens and scarlet tanagers have fled what’s coming. Now the insects are louder: cicadas, katydids and crickets, buzzing, chirping, the harsh and rhythmic KATY-DID, KATY-DIDN’T coming from every patch.
My mom mentions hearing something crashing through the woods out back, maybe a dead tree giving way or a deer barreling through the brush. She says it makes the hair rise on the back of her neck. I’ve never heard it. Still, I don’t go too far out back after dark.
The grass has slowed its growth. In the summer, it can take two full days to mow the property. With little to do now, my uncle Dale paces from window to window, staring outside. Somehow, the hump of grass around the apple tree still seems to be growing.
I want to keep my body moving as late into the season as possible. Last year, I learned how the winter can lull me into laziness. Exercise is dull. My best bet is to keep working as long as possible. I decide to head back toward the tree line to cut down some dead Norway spruces.
Two years ago, to save fifty bucks, I bought an electric chainsaw instead of gas. I’ve regretted it fifty times since. To reach the back edge of the property, I have to gather three long extension cords from different corners of the garage, connect them to the outlet on the post near the old water fountain and drag the nest of wiring back to the tree line. It takes me the better part of an hour just to set up. It’s still early afternoon when I’m ready to start, but the clouds have thickened and the woods are darker than they were an hour ago.
I squeeze the safety switch and the trigger, and the saw screams to life. I eye a tree I girdled last year by stripping a ring of bark around the trunk, letting nature get to work before I did. In the time since, the tree has gone pale, dropped its needles, shed bark and become riddled with insect holes and woodpecker damage. It rots standing, though the heartwood is still solid. I cut about two-thirds through, then start a second cut a few inches above, angled downward toward the first to make a crude triangle. The wedge falls from the tree. Ants and some other insects I can’t identify tumble with it.
I turn to the other side of the trunk. This time, I start a horizontal cut, a little above the bottom of the wedge. The blade hums but meets more resistance than I expect. This tree does not want to fall. The chain slips off. I remove my gloves and sit on the cold ground to put the chain back on, nicking my index and ring fingers in the process. I start again and the power cord comes loose.
As I trudge to the fountain, I glance at the house. Dale is staring out the window, past me, at the tree line.
After another half hour, I’ve cut far enough into the trunk that I think I can drop the tree. I set the chainsaw down out of the way. I pick up a steel felling wedge and set it in the cut. A few ants emerge around the cold metal. I lift the sledgehammer and take aim at the wedge. With each hit, a sharp sound rings out over the fields and into the tree line. The tree shudders. I hit again. Still, it holds.
It’s another half hour before the trunk gives way and begins to fall. I step out of the way. The thud when it hits the ground is satisfying. I can feel it through my boots. I begin cutting it into chunks and hauling them by wheelbarrow to old pallets on the other side of the lawn. My muscles throb. Despite the cold, I sweat. The cord tangles; the chain slips off again. I wanted to cut down two trees today. I’m not yet finished with the first, and I’m losing daylight. I haven’t adjusted to how early it gets dark now.
Finally, I make the last cut and release the trigger.
The woods are silent.
I listen.
Nothing.
No cicadas. No crickets. No KATY-DID, KATY-DIDN’T.
I’ve been working for hours. It’s colder now. Of course the insects have stopped. I check my watch. 43 degrees. That must be it.
My legs suddenly feel heavy. The work has caught up with me. Good. This is why I’m out here in the first place.
I coil the extension cords. The three goddamn extension cords. I lug the cords, chainsaw, wedge and sledgehammer into the wheelbarrow and push it to the garage. I don’t bother unloading it. I lower the garage door and head toward the house.
On my way, I glance across the street. The fog has thickened. I can’t see the lawn, the grass mound or the apple tree. I look up at the windows. Dale is nowhere to be seen.
In the days when ours was almost the only house on the street, my grandpa and I explored the woods around it. We found all manner of things: discarded household items and toys, scat from all kinds of animals, boulders, ferngullies, tiger lilies, a flooded hollow left behind when a freak windstorm ripped a tree and its roots from the ground.
To little legs, the woods seemed to stretch forever.
In reality, they’re less than a quarter mile deep, bordered by fields and orchards.
In my family, everyone seems to have a story about the woods.
My dad grew up a few miles closer to the escarpment, along the northern bank of the Erie Canal. He always maintained that he once peered out a high window in his childhood home and saw the face of a bigfoot staring back. He blinked and it was gone.
My grandparents used to have friends over to play cards, smoke cigars and drink whiskey sours. One night, my mom was upstairs in her room when she saw someone walking through the yard. She strained to see which of their guests it was. The man looked up at her. She didn’t recognize him. He stared for a few moments, then kept walking across the lawn.
She also says she saw lights over the woods as a child. They came from a spinning disk in the sky. She remembers the adults grabbing coats and guns and walking into the woods in a line. When they came back, nobody said anything, and none of them ever mentioned it again.
My stories were more ordinary. We plucked cicada shells from trunks at the tree line. We chased raccoons after they stole from the garden. Once, in the early autumn, my brother and I piled out of the car and saw something out back that made us shriek. My grandpa had cut the tallest cornstalks at the base and tied their tops together into a teepee. We played in it for weeks, until the fallen maple leaves turned from orange to red to brown, then crunched under our feet and blew away.
When I was older, my grandparents pulled an enormous tent from the attic and put it up in a far corner of the lawn. It smelled of vinyl and mildew. My brother and I played in it until the shadows grew long. After dark, neither of us could bear to look out its rear window into the woods.
Not that we were scared of anything back there. It just seemed like we should leave it alone.
The leaves on my apple trees in the side yard stay green late into the fall. I’m admiring them when I notice something: the branches growing over and through their wire fences are untouched. Last year, the deer ravaged anything they could reach. Young apple leaves are tender, nutritious and, I thought, irresistible.
I mention it to my mom. Have you seen any deer lately?
She hadn’t thought about it.
Huh. No.
Later, she sends a text. Dale thought he saw a small herd standing by the tree line as he was leaving early for work.
The next weekend, I cross the street to inspect the apple tree in the neighbor’s field. The ring of grass has begun to break down and now slumps low beneath the tree. The ground is littered with apples — some still crimson, others in stages of decay. I pluck one from the tree and take a bite. The flesh is soft and honey-sweet.
Since I’ve been growing my own trees, one thing about the tree across the street has perplexed me. Before this fall, the deer couldn’t seem to get enough of my young apple leaves. But I’ve never seen them touch the fruit across the street. Not on the tree. Not on the ground.
I don’t know much about this tree. It seemed to just be there one day. As a kid, the wild part of the field came much closer to the road. It was full of milkweed, butterflies and foxes. The killdeer that lived along its edges chased me, then I chased them. On summer nights, it was dotted with fireflies. Once, my grandma and I found a dead rabbit. We buried it in the field near where the tree now stands.
As a teenager, I wasn’t around as much, and in my 20s, I moved away. By the time I came back in my late 30s, the tree was fully grown. I can’t find a graft union at its base, so I suspect it grew from seed. I pulled out my apple identification book anyway, looking for something its fruit resembled. I came up short.
The next day is Monday. I wake up drenched in sweat. My head is pounding and my nose is clogged. The thermometer display turns red almost immediately after I put it in my mouth. 102.1. Ugh, probably something my kid brought home from school. I text my boss, pop a Sudafed and slump back into bed with the X-Files to keep me company.
A few moments later, my phone lights up with a text from my mom. Something happened, she says. To your apple trees. Can you come take a look?
I fumble to get dressed and meet my wife at the door on her way back from dropping our son off at school. I tell her about the trees and assure her I’m fine to drive. She looks unconvinced.
Monday rush hour traffic is as agonizing as ever, and I fight to keep my focus on the road through the fever. At the end of Millersport Highway, I cross Tonawanda Creek into Niagara County. Fog hangs low, obscuring the shops on both sides of Transit. The road ahead looks like a tunnel.
As I reach Lockport, I decide I need to stop at a drive-through for coffee. In the fog, I pass the Tim Hortons once, then again after I double back. On my third attempt, I find the driveway and order: Medium. Black. I pull up to the window and hand my credit card to an older employee who’s dressed like a witch. Nice costume, I mumble. She chuckles and hands me my drink.
The fog seems to thicken as I take 31 through downtown Lockport. I drive well under the speed limit, past the shops and down the escarpment toward Gasport, then across the Erie Canal to my mom’s house.
As I pull into the crescent driveway, I can make out part of the scene through the fog. The fences surrounding my apple trees are mangled. One is completely torn from the posts, lying flat on the ground. Another stands twisted and bent. A third seems to be balled up, as if it were paper instead of heavy-gauge steel. Last year, a deer got stuck in the flimsy mesh netting I had up around the trees, ripping it from the posts and forcing me to rethink my strategy. This is a whole other level.
I step out of the car and onto the lawn. The trees themselves look untouched. The grass is torn up in spots, dirt and sod scattered around.
What happened here? Deer could have done this, I suppose. But why? They haven’t touched the trees all year.
My mom meets me on the lawn. Weird, huh? Dale discovered the scene as he was leaving for work this morning. He was pulling out of the driveway when he spotted the mess. He came in and told me, then set his keys down, went up the stairs and back to bed.
I need to fix the fences right away. Half of my trees are in their second season, with some branches above deer height, but a buck rubbing against the trunks could still strip enough bark to kill thm. The first-season trees are completely exposed. I salvage what I can of the existing mesh and pull some spare materials from the garage to patch the rest. The work takes most of the morning, the fog still lingering heavy and low.
Shortly after 1 p.m., I finish wrapping the last tree. My shirt is drenched in sweat. The day is still dark, but the fog is finally starting to thin. I look over the yard one more time.
Across the street, the fog still hangs heavy enough to block my view of the apple tree.
But I can see the field behind it.
The apple tree is gone.
I cross the road.
The ring of grass is still there, collapsed nearly flat now. Inside it, the ground is dark and uneven.
But there’s no tree.
There are no apples, either.
I walk around the ring. No stump. I nudge aside the grass with my boot, looking for fresh sawdust or the pale face of a cut trunk. Nothing.
Someone must have taken it down.
I ate from this tree the day before. Is the fever confusing me? Could I be standing in the wrong spot? I look back at the driveway, then at the telephone pole along the road. No, this is the right spot.
I make my way back across the road to the house. My mom is sipping a coffee at the kitchen table. Huh, she says when I tell her. That’s really weird. Dad used to —
She stops.
Are you sure you were looking in the right spot? The fog is pretty heavy still.
Dale is awake and standing in the kitchen doorway. Did you see anybody across the street this morning? I ask him.
Not across the street, he says. Then he turns and goes back up the stairs.
My fever breaks midweek and, by the weekend, it feels like summer again. We spend the morning soaking up our good fortune at the farmer’s market, where dozens of very in-season apples sit in crates alongside carrots, Brussels sprouts and cabbage. When our kid asks for a popsicle, my wife and I chuckle, try not to think about climate change and happily oblige. For the price of a taste, of course.
All the while, I’m itching to get back to my mom’s house to see if my work on the cages has held up and whether anything else has happened. Part of me expects the tree across the street to be back. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.
In Gasport, the warm weather has the insects riled back up, and the house finches and sparrows are chirping along. Nothing else seems out of place. My apple trees are fine. The one across the street is still gone.
I put away the tools I’ve left out all year — the shovels and rakes and the tamper — and drain and store the hoses. I consider cutting back some of the crispy flowers in the beds, but decide against it. The seeds will feed the birds, and the leaves below will shelter insects and other creatures over the winter.
Dusk catches me earlier than expected again, and I start to look around for more to do. The wood from the dead Norway spruce I cut down is plenty dry, and there’s much more of it than I expected. Maybe I should get rid of some. I’m a sucker for a bonfire, especially this late in the year. I run it by my wife, who says it sounds good as long as I run out to get some s’mores ingredients. Our kid agrees.
An hour later, my wife, son, mom and I are sitting around a roaring fire. I’ve got a cooler filled with Molson. When my uncle meanders out to join us, I offer him a can.
Nice night, he says. Good to be outside.
Two hours later, my wife suggests we head home soon. She’ll drive. I’ve had a few too many. So has Dale, by the looks of it. He’s staring into the fire. My wife takes our kid inside to gather his things. My mom follows.
Hey, I say. What did you mean before, about not seeing a man across the street?
He looks at me, then back at the fire. He takes a sip from his can.
Oh, it was — the woods. The other day.
What?
The old guy — moves stuff around.
What old guy?
Old feller, my uncle says.
The dog movie? I ask.
No. The old feller. Moves stuff around. Kinda stares. Weird guy.
Why do you call him that? I ask.
Dad, he says.
Dale rarely talks about his parents.
Papa Larson called him that?
Yeah.
He saw him?
Yup.
Where?
Around.
Around where?
Dale gestures with his beer toward the tree line.
Out there.
I sit quietly for a moment.
Nice night, he says. Good to be outside. Then he gets up and goes to bed.
I can’t sleep Saturday night, but manage to wait until a respectable time before I text my mom.
Hey. Dale mentioned something about an old feller last night. Do you know what that is?
She reads the message but doesn’t answer. A few hours later, after my brother revives the family group chat, she finally responds.
I’m going to call, she says, honoring my millennial fear that an unprompted phone call means someone has died.
She tells me she’s been thinking about this since the deer and tree thing. She doesn’t know much. She was little, and people got hush-hush when she was around. But she has heard of the old feller. She remembers overhearing her dad and some of the neighbors talking about a man and things going missing. Tools, mostly. A pesticide sprayer. A shovel disappeared from somebody’s barn and turned up propped against a tree.
They said this old feller was taking them?
I think so.
Kind of a big deal for an old man to be lurking around, stealing shit. I can’t believe you haven’t told me this before.
Ren, I was little.
Sometimes the missing things turned up again, she says. Way out back.
What do you mean, way out back?
In the woods.
So they had some creeper wandering around the property, moving things.
She doesn’t think they saw him that way. I ask what they thought he was. She doesn’t know.
Why call him the old feller?
That’s what they called him.
I ask what he looked like. She remembers him being tall. Or remembers hearing that he was tall. She isn’t sure anymore. Work clothes, she thinks. Nothing unusual, except she remembers her dad saying something once about him standing by the woods in the cold without a coat. She doesn’t think he was a neighbor or farm worker.
Well, where did he live?
She goes quiet.
Mom?
Not in houses.
I — what does that mean?
I don’t know. That’s just what I remember.
She doesn’t remember ever seeing him herself. Dale, though, was always wandering into the woods.
Once, Dale didn’t come home.
Not missing missing, she insists. It was Gasport in the ’70s. Kids disappeared all day and came home for dinner. But Dale didn’t. Papa Larson eventually found him way out back. She doesn’t know where exactly or what he was doing. He’d been gone an hour, maybe a few. She can’t remember.
Papa Larson was furious. My mom remembers him yelling at Dale that he’d told him not to follow the old feller.
Was Dale scared?
I don’t remember.
Was Papa Larson?
I think so.
I ask what else she remembers. The field across the street, she says, wasn’t really a field back then. The tree line came almost to the road. One weekend, a bunch of guys, including Papa Larson, cleared most of it.
How old was Dale?
Eight? Nine?
Wait.
What?
How old was Dale when he disappeared?
She doesn’t answer.
Mom?
I’m thinking.
About the same age.
Was that before or after they cleared the woods?
After.
How long after?
I don’t know.
Days? Months?
Not long.
Neither of us says anything for a moment.
Did Papa Larson ever clear anything else around the property?
Not really.
Never?
Not that I remember.
Actually, no.
No?
He just stopped.
The following Saturday, I’m back at the tree line.
There are four more Norway spruces to take down. Ever since I read that they’re invasive, I’ve wanted them gone. I drag the extension cords from the garage, connect the first to the second, the second to the third, and walk the plug toward the woods.
I stop.
My sledgehammer is leaning against an ash sapling just beyond the tree line.
I look back toward the garage. I could have sworn I left it there.
I stand there looking at it.
I unplug the extension cord.
The trees can wait until spring.
There’s plenty of work closer to the house.
The beer
This story is a pastiche of English and American folklore and the stories families sometimes mention, but rarely in detail and never without pressing, with heavy dollops of inspiration from Andrew Michael Hurley’s “Devil’s Day” and Ted the Caver, the OG creepypasta. The beer that shares its name is an ode to autumn. It’s inspired by October after dark: damp leaves, cold earth, wood, a little smoke and the dark beyond the fire’s light. Maltier and darker than Tinear’s spring and summer ales, but still dry and drinkable.
Ingredients
- 66.6% USDA organic pilsner malt from Niagara Malt (Lockport)
- 14% Munich malt from New York Craft Malt (Batavia)
- 7% rye malt from New York Craft Malt (Batavia)
- 5% spelt malt from Hudson Valley Malt (Germantown)
- 5% chocolate malt from New York Craft Malt (Batavia)
- 2.5% plum-smoked malt from New York Craft Malt (Batavia)
- Brewer’s Gold hops from Cobblestone Hop Yard (Ontario, New York): 36 IBUs total across 60-minute, 10-minute and whirlpool hop additions
- Niagara County water
- Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes yeast
Details
- Harvest-style ale
- Estimated 5.5% ABV
- 36 IBUs
- 17.6 SRM
- Expected to be ready deeper into autumn
Drink it close to the house.