16 Jan Carson’s Folly

Youth is forever entwined with adventure. The vast horizon speeds away from a young mind into infinity. A world to be discovered. Possibilities waiting to be made certainties. Out there, beyond. Not far from where we now sit, two teenagers propelled by that hunger for adventure found more than they bargained for. It is their story I wish to tell tonight. But first, throw some more wood on the fire, for such a tale should not be so carelessly told when the darkness creeps in.

When you came to these woods, to this camping spot, you may have noticed a dirt track splitting off from the main road. Do not be alarmed if you passed it without knowing, for it is overgrown now. The entrance to it has been slowly consumed by the forest itself. If you were to hack away at the long grass and spindly branches that now cover it, you would find Carson’s Folly. At least, that is what the dirt track used to be called. Much like its history, its name has largely been forgotten.

But not so by Bert Mason. You see, Bert knew that place well. Growing up in the 1950s, it was a favorite venue for rites of passage. Teenagers would drive or hike to Carson’s Folly to show just how brave they were. To see how far up the path they could get before their nerves got the better of them. To see just how long they could last. Bert even did it himself once, but after walking along its winding track for ten minutes, he heard something rustling in the surrounding woods and lost his nerve.

The place stayed in his mind though for decades until one day he decided to tell his grandson the story behind Carson’s Folly. Why people believed it was haunted. For Bert, it was just good fun watching his 13-year-old grandson being creeped out by the account, but for his grandson, the tale ignited something within. A mystery that had to be revealed.

His name was Gareth, and he always had hair-brained ideas of adventure. The previous summer he had persuaded two of his friends that by climbing to the top of their school roof they would impress their classmates and, as he put it, ‘get all the girls’. What they got were suspensions and a difficult time from their parents.

Once Gareth had heard Bert’s story, he knew exactly what he was going to do. Within minutes he was on the phone with Johnny, his best friend. No matter what sort of adventure Gareth had in mind, Johnny was always a willing and able partner. Well, that was until the school roof stunt. Johnny had been banned from hanging around with Gareth by his parents. They did not want him getting into any more trouble, and saw Gareth as the quintessential bad influence.

At first, Johnny said ‘no’ to his friend’s idea and hung up. Then, he ignored Gareth calling back. Over the next three days at school, he tried in vain to avoid him as much as possible. But Gareth knew his friend, and knew that, eventually, he would give in. Finally, after phone calls and constant badgering, Johnny agreed to go with him. To go to Carson’s Folly. If it would shut him up and give him some peace. In reality, it gave him anything but.

The path looked much like it does now. Overgrown, hidden from passing campers and hikers by time and a thick wall of greenery. But his grandfather’s description of the track and how to get to it was ingrained in Gareth’s mind, as was the reason for its supposed unnatural properties. A reason that he had skirted over for fear that Johnny would get scared and refuse to go with him. Gareth had written his grandfather’s story down as soon as the telling had been over, and knew that after getting a bus to the outskirts of the forest, that they would only have to walk for a few miles to find the track. Deeper and deeper into the woods they went, following the only road that cut through the forest like an erstwhile sketch of civilization. No cars passed them. They were quite alone.

On the way as they followed the road, the two boys talked about the things that usually held their attention. The best looking girls in their classes. What they would do to the school bullies if they ever had the chance. Whether Johnny’s dad would ever calm down and let them hang out together at their house again. Not an unsurprising chat for two 13-year friends. At that age, the world had not revealed its thorny underbelly yet, and so for the most part life was simple for them.

Eventually, they came to a fork in the road. Following Bert’s descriptions, they went left. In hindsight, I’m sure they would have preferred the right road, or perhaps to retrace their steps and leave the woods behind entirely, but they were too young to fully appreciate that if you go looking for trouble, you often find it. Or trouble finds you.

After walking for another mile, Gareth knew they were near. He told Johnny – who was currently telling a story about his underage cousin’s failed attempts to sneak into a bar in town – to put a sock in it for a moment while he concentrated. Scanning a blind turn in the road, they both fell silent. Sure enough, alongside the thick web of leaves and branches which lined the road, they saw something half-sticking out of the forest. A signpost. It was rotten, and the plate that at one time had recorded the name of the place was now long gone. By the looks of the wood, which had splintered where an old nail hung on in vain, the sign had been torn deliberately from the post. Taken, for what purpose Gareth did not know.

But what he did know was that this was the place. The signpost was slathered in a green moss, and if he had not been looking for it then he doubtless would have passed it by unaware. Johnny helped pull back some branches as Gareth gleefully stepped forward into the woodland, his face beaming with excitement. There was no mistaking it; they were standing on a path. The ground had been consumed mostly by large ferns that stood eerily silent. But a small slither of the path remained, visible enough to be followed, like a crooked arrow pointing inward.

Gareth grew in his excitement and encouraged Johnny to come with him. But Johnny was reluctant. It was not that he believed the track was haunted – he was pretty sure it was all nonsense. But there was that what if, the same what if that made him question what was in his closet when his bedroom light was off. The same what if that made him walk that much faster when passing the local graveyard in the evening. The same what if that had planted a very real sense of dread there and then in his mind.

In response, Gareth resorted to friendly name-calling, telling Johnny to ‘stop being such a wimp’. That all they were doing was going on their rites of passage, as his grandfather had called it. They would walk to the end of the path and then home. Showing that they were braver than the generations that had come before. It would not be that difficult, just an hour there and an hour back. By the time they were out of the forest the sun would still be high in the sky, and they would make it home in time for dinner, perhaps stopping for a milkshake at the local cafe on the way.

Reluctantly, Johnny gave in just to stop Gareth from yapping. The result of name-calling either stirring action or suffocating inaction – I think it was the former in this case, but who really knows? As he stepped off the main forest road, the leaves Johnny had been holding back with his hands now returned to their previous state, once more hiding Carson’s Folly from passersby. The light dimmed slightly and, looking behind, it was difficult now to see the road given how thick the trees and bushes had become.

Noticing this, Johnny nervously asked Gareth how they would find the road again if they wandered too far into the woods. But Gareth just laughed and said, ‘We’ll follow the track back, of course.’

What was left of the slither of track, which had not been completely devoured by the forest, reached out in front of them, twisting and turning like a serpent. As they walked, the sounds of the forest were all around, a woodpecker somewhere hammering against bark. Something burrowing under a bush as they passed. The occasional trickling of water in unseen streams, from which tree roots and other things drank deep.

After about twenty minutes, Johnny began to relax. His initial fear of Carson’s Folly diminishing somewhat, replaced by the relaxation of being surrounded by the life of the woods. He relaxed so much in fact that he began to enquire about the story Gareth’s grandfather had told about the path. Why people used to believe the track was haunted.

Gareth let out a sort of half-laugh, and Johnny wondered why. He more than wondered in fact, he was put back on edge immediately. Because he knew that laugh. It was the same smirking noise Gareth made whenever he was up to mischief. The laugh he used when he persuaded Johnny to climb up onto the school roof. The laugh that other parents at the school were convinced would get their kids into trouble.

The truth was that Gareth had told a watered-down version of the history behind Carson’s Folly. He had told Johnny that no one knew why people thought it was haunted; it was just that a local kid at the time had said they saw a ghost on the track once. The story caught on, and other kids would then come to the track to see how brave they were, and to go searching for spirits that did not exist.

But when Gareth’s laugh settled into an impish grin, it was clear that he had lied.

Johnny started to feel the forest closing in on him, a kind of claustrophobia as Gareth finally relayed what his grandfather Bert had really told him.

The footpath was named after a man called Carson. Not long before Bert himself tried to walk the path, sometime in the 1930s or ‘40s, Carson had been known to the townspeople in the area. He had started off as a respectable type, a school teacher in fact. He was the epitome of the small-town dream – well-groomed, well-spoken, and well-meaning. He even taught children at Sunday School, so that they could learn everything they needed to about heaven and hell. About judging and being judged. About what was expected of those children. Religion was important to the people back then. To some, it still is.

No one knew exactly when it happened, but Carson, still a relatively young man at the time, began to act strangely. It seemed to correspond with him receiving a series of handwritten letters that were sent to him, left on the doorstep of his house. He would carry them under his arm around town and at school, pouring over them at every interval with a look of panic on his face. The content of the letters remained a secret for the most part, as did the sender, indeed there was no stamp or address upon the envelopes. It looked likely that they had been delivered by hand, and though Carson refused to speak with anyone about them, there were rumors that one day he had absentmindedly left one of the letters on his school desk. As the story goes, one of the children sneaked a peek at what was inside. Supposedly, the paper was covered in patches of darkened dampness and soil, and words of a sort were jaggedly written with what looked like charcoal. What the words were, the child never had a chance to determine. They were written in a peculiarly erratic handwriting, and just as the child was trying to read them, Carson returned to his desk to recover the letter. He was furious at the child for invading his privacy and raised his hand as if to strike him. But a calmness then took over, and he simply patted the child on his head and told him to run along.

Shortly after this incident, Carson lost his good humor, his hair began to grow out, and he refused to shave, becoming disheveled. His friends tried to talk to him, but he seemed disinterested in what they had to say. It appeared that Carson had developed not only an aversion to small-town life, but an active dislike for it. At Sunday School he would talk to the children in a feverish tone, all fire and brimstone. Eventually, he was asked to give it up because his descriptions of fiery damnation, burning flesh and all, were frightening the children.

As soon as he had saved up enough money, Carson bought a plot of land away from the town. In this forest, to be exact. People thought him mad, there was nothing out there. A clearing, perhaps, but no road that served it. He laughed at the scowling faces of the townspeople, many of whom whispered about him being erratic and untrustworthy. Some even whispered that he was a man possessed, and that it was those letters that had done it.

Once he had legally purchased the plot of land he desired, he then left his job and disappeared into the woods, leaving the town behind for good. Several years passed, and no one heard from Carson for some time. That was, until a forest ranger spotted something one day. A new path that adjoined the road – just a larger dirt track at that time. Next to the path, a signpost had been driven into the ground reading ‘Carson’s Lodge: Friends Welcome’, with an arrow pointing into the woods.

Carson had been busy. He had cut a long winding path through the forest, one that led to a large wooden cabin he had seemingly built himself. The forest ranger who first found the path investigated, and after following it found Carson sitting on the porch of a large, sturdy cabin that he had clearly put together using the materials of the forest. His beard was long and matted, and his hair shaggy, reaching below his shoulders, but there was no doubt that it was he.

When approached by the ranger, Carson smiled and seemed content enough, although a little nervous, glancing around him. The ranger told him that the locals had been worried about him for some time. Carson brushed this off. Saying that he was done with, as he put it, ‘the world of man’. All he needed was in the forest. That and that he was ‘nearly finished’, but would refuse to elaborate on what he was referring to, his cabin perhaps, but no one knows. Worried about him, the ranger offered to bring some of Carson’s old friends up from the town to see him, and that was when Carson’s smile turned. He grew angry and impatient. Thinking him mad, the ranger retreated, leaving Carson alone, and returned to the town to tell the local police officer of what he had found.

Several others tried to go out there and reach Carson, but he told them to stay away. That he just wanted to be left alone. And that was when it occurred to one of Carson’s old friends to ask him the purpose of the signpost. If he wanted to be left alone, why had he so clearly left directions for others to find?

‘Not others,’ Carson had said. ‘Just a few I’ve invited.’

‘From the town?’ his friend enquired.

‘No. Just my friends out here.’

There was something chilling about that last sentence. ‘Just my friends out here’. As far as anyone knew no one lived within miles, Carson’s was the only lodge in that part of the forest, so the idea that he had made friends out there made many back at the town uncomfortable.

For several months there were stories about Carson. The forest ranger who had encountered him before had seen him several times, standing by the signpost and looking across the road into the trees. He appeared anxious, but when the ranger asked about it, Carson grew angry again.

‘They’ll come,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here soon. We’ve been… Corresponding…’

When winter rolled in, some of Carson’s friends grew worried about him. It had been a few months since anyone had seen him, and even the forest ranger had not encountered him since the early autumn. So, a group of concerned townsfolk hiked up through the forest road to the signpost for Carson’s Lodge, and followed the footpath until they reached it. The door to the cabin lay open, and inside the stench of rotten meat filled the air. The townsfolk found a slaughtered deer in the back. It had been gutted, but had been left to fester, hanging by its haunches from the rafters. On the table was a meal half-eaten. It looked like some kind of stew, but it too had festered, and amongst what little remained of a putrid broth, dead insects floated on the surface.

One solitary chair was overturned.

It seemed clear to everyone that day that Carson had not been at his cabin for some time. More than that, he had left in a hurry, abandoning a meal and knocking over some furniture on his way. This was puzzling. Someone in the party wondered if he had finally gone insane and had run out into the forest to perish in the cold winter.

That was when they heard it. A sound from nearby. Like wood upon wood. A solitary loud thud that reverberated between the trees.

‘What was that?’ the search party asked amongst themselves.

The noise came again. This time closer. And in the dim surroundings of Carson’s cabin, rotting deer and all, they became frightened. They ran as fast as they could out of the cabin and back up through the forest path that Carson himself had made. When they made it back to the town, they were pale white, and they headed straight to the local bar for a stiff drink. The other locals asked what they had found, but the consensus was that Carson was still out there somewhere. The reason being that when the members of the search party were running from the strange thudding noise in the forest, one of them turned to look behind them, and for a moment they were sure that they saw a man walking behind them at pace. But the witness could not verify that it was Carson. That was only a guess.

When Gareth finally finished relaying what he had been told about the path they were now on, Johnny stopped in his tracks. He was scared and angry. Scared about the story, and furious at Gareth for only telling him the truth once they were well along Carson’s path.

As always, Gareth giggled in delight at his friend’s anxiety. ‘It’s only a story,’ he said.

‘But what if Carson is still out here?’ Johnny asked.

‘He’d be long dead by now, it all happened when my granddad was a kid,’ came the reply.

There was some back and forth between the two, but just as Gareth would always laugh in delight whenever Johnny got scared, he knew when to dial things back and build him up again. With some reassurance that they must have been near Carson’s cabin, Gareth promised that as soon as they reached it they would turn back. All he wanted was for them to lay eyes on it and return with tales of how brave they were.

Johnny reluctantly agreed, as he always did, but as they continued along the path, that growing sense of dread continued. Brushing past a tree on the edge of the path, for a moment he thought that someone was standing next to him, only to see a warped old tree trunk where he thought he had seen a figure. The noises of the forest heightened, and each rustle in the undergrowth, or twig snapping above in the canopy, reinforced the feeling that they were not alone, in Johnny’s mind at least.

Gareth seemed much happier. ‘We’ve walked much further than my granddad ever did,’ he said with pride in his voice.

The path then suddenly stopped. A wall of leaves from a large bush stood in their way, sprouting up six or seven feet into the air out of the forest floor. Certain that the path must have continued on the other side, Gareth clambered over and through the leaves without hesitation. Johnny waited on the other side, hoping that they had reached a dead end and that they could retrace their steps and go home. But that was not to be. His friend let out a cheer from the other side, telling Johnny to follow him.

Pushing through the leaves, a branch scraped along Johnny’s side, but the pain was quickly replaced by an overwhelming feeling of excitement and dread – a curious concoction. Gareth was pointing ahead and up a small incline. At the top, Johnny could see an old log cabin. A tree had fallen on the roof some time ago, poking a large hole inside, and moss, bushes, and climbing plants had turned the dark wood into a thick green in places. Glassless windows peered down at both boys, and before Johnny could stop him, Gareth rushed up towards the porch shouting ‘it’s Carson’s cabin! It’s real! We made it!’

‘Okay, so it’s real. Can we go now?’ Johnny asked.

But Gareth had not walked all that way to turn back so quickly, despite his earlier promises. He had to see what was inside. The door laid half-open, the top hinge hanging loose. Rummaging in his pack, he pulled out a torch and looked down with a grin at Johnny. ‘Don’t be scared, we’ll just look inside and then go.’

‘No,’ replied Johnny. ‘I want to go now. You said we just had to look at it and then we could go home.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Gareth. ‘I’m going inside. You can either come with me or wait out here… on your own.’ He knew how to get under Johnny’s skin.

Looking around at the dim path that terminated at the foot of the cabin, Johnny thought about old Bert’s story. About Carson and the people who said the path itself was haunted. Between standing on his own or going inside with company, he reluctantly chose the latter. Gareth smiled again in triumph, turning on his torch.

Inside they went.

Stepping on a sea of mulch from decades of rotting leaves, they passed through the doorway. There was an earthy smell that reminded Johnny of his Uncle’s compost patch. Gareth’s diminutive torch lit the interior, partially. Above, the large sycamore that had landed on the roof spread its branches, its wooden fingers long since bereft of life, casting stark shadows all around like spider’s legs.

With an occasional creak, the cabin made itself known to the two boys. It had seen better days, indeed, the hole in the roof left the inside exposed to the elements. A rotting table sat to the side, one of the legs broken. The remnants of an upturned chair upturned lay beside it.

‘Carson’s chair…” Gareth whispered to himself.

‘Okay, can we go now?’ Johnny asked, hoping that his friend had seen enough.

‘In a minute,’ replied Gareth. ‘Let me look around first, to see if there’s anything worth taking. Then we’ll go.’

But there was not. Carson’s cabin was being consumed by the forest piece by piece. On the farthest away wall, a jacket hung on a metal hook, but half of it had been eaten away by damp, perhaps insects too. But the very fact that, if the stories were true, they were staring at Carson’s jacket, brought delight to Gareth’s face, and dread to Johnny’s stomach.

From inside the cabin, the forest sounds had diminished. The birds could be heard singing somewhere off in the distance, but the sound was muffled. As if the cabin had not yet given up all of its protection from the wilderness. Keeping out most noises of the forest…

Most. But not all.

Johnny’s bottom lip trembled when he heard it. Somewhere outside. A deep thud. Like someone thumping a tree trunk with a thick piece of wood.

‘Did you hear that?’ Johnny’s voice had instinctively lessened to a whisper.

Gareth answered saying that Johnny was just scaring himself. But then the noise sounded once more. A thud of wood upon wood outside in the forest.

Johnny whispered that they should leave, and Gareth for once agreed with him. That frightened Johnny more than anything else, to see his friend’s usual bravado replaced by an anxious expression.

‘Let’s get back to the path,” Gareth said almost inaudibly.

As they brushed past the dead, fallen tree’s branches to get to the door. There came another noise.

Both boys stopped. Their feet standing still amongst the rotting leaves. But just behind them they heard a third pair of feet shuffling through the forest’s deposits on the floor. Johnny let out a scream as he turned to his side and saw something between the dead tree’s branches. Covered in dirt and grime. Something large. It moved.

Quickly both boys fled out of the cabin door, down the incline, and then to the thick bushes that had blocked their way to the cabin before.

‘Get through!’ Gareth shouted.

They clawed at the bush, terrified that whatever was inside the cabin, whatever was at the heart of that tree, would follow. Clambering over each other they fell out the other side of the thick dense bushes, landing on their backs against the path’s warped surface. They scrambled to their feet erratically and did not look back. As they charged along the path in the direction of the main road, which now seemed an eternity away, shadows crept around them. And it was as if for a moment that the trees on either side of them were closing in. Indeed, as they passed them in places, some of the shorter trees appeared almost like people standing. Watching. Waiting. Still, yet imbued with life.

After they had put a good distance between themselves and the cabin, both boys were out of breath. Stopping for a moment, they tried to gather their senses.

‘What was in the cabin?’ asked Johnny, panting.

‘A man,’ replied Gareth.

They debated for a moment about whether the man in the cabin was Carson himself, but Gareth quelled that idea. In his words, it was ‘probably some homeless person hiding out there’. That in itself did not ease Johnny’s fears.

A loud thud then sounded. Wood echoing between the trees. Or was it from them?

Johnny apprehensively offered that it was not coming from the cabin, but from somewhere else in the forest. It sounded again. Only this time, there was an answer of sorts. From the other side of the path. Another thud. Then a third from the direction of the cabin. And a fourth from the left. Whatever or whoever was making those sounds, there was more than one of them, and it seemed as though they were communicating with one another, like a language of violent strikes and knocks.

A thought festered in Johnny’s mind, one that he hoped beyond all hope was untrue.  ‘It’s Carson’s friends,’ he whispered under his breath.

‘Who?’ Gareth asked, the look of worry on his face more pronounced than ever.

‘Carson’s friends. The ones he said he made out here in the forest,’ continued Johnny. ‘The ones who sent the letters to him. The ones he made the sign for to show them the way to his cabin.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ said Gareth loudly, and just as he did, a loud thud came from just a few feet away.

Both boys looked up in horror. There, standing at the side of the path was a person. Or at least, the shape of a large person, partly hidden by the foliage despite their size, so indistinct, and yet, suggestive of a man. Something else then rustled from behind them, and they did not wait to find out what. They rushed off towards the main road, now just a few minutes away.

As they ran, Johnny’s mind filled with images of brooding figures in the woods. Of Carson, mad and enraged. Of him meeting with someone or something in the woods. Just what had happened to him? Footsteps followed the boys, hulking and deliberate around them. They were only young teenagers. There was no way they could outrun whatever was chasing them forever. The trees felt like people lining the path, ready to reach out a hand to grab one of them and keep them there for all time. Gareth let out a scream of pain as a low hanging branch scraped along the side of his stomach, snagging on his clothes.

‘Help, Johnny!’ he yelled, his T-shirt had caught on the branch, blood dripping from the wound.

A groan now sounded from just a few feet away. An angry, vengeful sound closing in. Johnny looked ahead and could see a wall of leaves, just a few more steps and he would be on the main forest road, away from Carson’s Folly, away from whatever was stalking them, hopefully forever.

In that moment he thought about leaving his friend, survival overwhelming him. The desire to leave that place behind. But as he turned, he saw the look on Gareth’s face. Tears began to stream from his friend’s eyes as something large reached out from between the bushes and grabbed Gareth by his shoulder. A hand covered in what looked like soil or dirt, or was it hair?

Johnny instinctively lunged towards his friend and grabbed his foot as the hand pulled on Gareth, dragging him backwards towards the bush. Letting out a horrible gasp of air, Gareth’s face went sheet white as if the realization of what was about to happen had finally dawned upon him, but Johnny would not let go. He pulled with all his might and heard another groan. But this time it did not come from the brutal figure attacking them, it came from the tree branch Gareth had been stuck on. Giving way with a sharp crunch, it snapped in two. A loud rip sounded as Gareth fell forward onto Johnny, both tumbling to the ground. They scrambled to their feet as the darkened hand held onto the now torn remains of Gareth’s T-shirt, the hand pulling back into the undergrowth.

‘Run!’ Johnny shouted, and they did, diving through a wall of leaves and branches in front of them. The world opened up slightly, the sky above now visible. Both of them had emerged onto the main forest road. But did that mean the danger was over?

They stood away from the old rotting signpost, gasping, there in the middle of the deserted road. Staring at each other in disbelief. They had made it. Made it all the way to Carson’s cabin, and all the way back. Well, almost.

As they turned to run down the road for fear of being pursued further, they heard a snap. The unmistakable sound of twigs broken by footfalls. It came from the path to the cabin, just behind the leaves. Carson’s Folly as it was named, and for good reason, the boys now both knew. For Johnny recoiled in horror at the sight of a dark figure obscured by the overgrown branches and leaves of the forest. Standing on the path that led to Carson’s Lodge. Standing there still and watchful.

‘You ain’t invited,’ a graveled voice said. A voice cracked with age and garbled as if by the rotting leaves of the forest themselves.

At this warning, Johnny and Gareth continued running, never looking back, and did not stop until they had left the forest behind. When they finally reached the town, they received some strange looks from those nearby. After all, Gareth’s T-shirt had been torn from him, and a large, fortunately superficial cut, ran along his side. They made it home and tried to tell their parents what had happened. Gareth’s chastised his granddad, Bert, for sending him off into the forest with his silly stories, and all Johnny’s parents could do was blame Gareth for putting a lot of nonsense into their son’s head.

Despite Johnny’s parents’ wishes, the two boys remained close friends until they were about 18 and headed off in different directions as people often do at that age. Occasionally they would cross paths, meet up for a beer and talk about old times. And when they did, they always came back to who or what they had encountered on Carson’s Folly, joking that they had probably just got carried away, and that it was someone camping out at the cabin who had just tried to scare them.

But those words spoken by that figure on the path still stick with Johnny to this day. ‘You ain’t invited’. He wonders about them. Perhaps Carson had made friends out there after all, and if he was not still hanging around, maybe, just maybe, his friends still were.