Something
The sunlight peaked through the dense branches, helping Agatha with her excavation.
Five years old, with a trowel that she took from the family shed, Agatha was hunting for buried treasure. It was hard work. The books made it sound easy. She scratched away at the thick mud; it only made sense to start after a heavy rain, and of course, under her favorite oak tree.
She wasn’t too far from home. The tree was just within earshot of her momma, calling her for dinner. But for now, she had work to do.
She swiped at her brow, sweat dripping into the six inch hole she’d dug. Nothing yet, but there was bound to be something underneath her tree.
She started to whistle, but caught herself, remembering what her momma said.
“Don’t whistle in the woods. Something might find you.”
When Agatha asked what would find her, all her momma said was, “Hush”, or “You don’t want to know.”
But that was silly. Of course she wanted to know.
She stopped digging for a moment to listen. The wind bristled the leaves and some morning birds chirped, but otherwise not a sound.
She hesitated. And then whistled soft and low, and after a moment she sounded louder, trying to sound off as loud as she could.
Soon she was standing, toes digging into the soft ground to anchor her as she whistled the loudest she could. Cheeks red and puffed out and all the air leaving her…
It certainly was the loudest she had ever gotten. Perhaps the something was there now.
She opened her eyes and looked around her tree spot. Nothing. No something anywhere to be seen. Just trees swaying in a muggy, august breeze.
Though she admitted, the breeze was nice. She’d forgotten all about buried treasure and instead stuck her feet in the hole. She sighed as the cool mud squished between her toes.
“Well hello, young lady!” a voice sounded from behind her.
She jumped out of her hole and spun around, her trowel ready to strike a something.
“Ho ho,” said a peculiar man. “Be not afraid, young lady. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He was very odd. He had no color. He looked like a black and white image from the television. Gray and flat. He didn’t seem to have any solid form at all.
He even seemed to have a tracking problem, white lines rose from his feet to his head. Static emanating from his skin, like an outline of white noise… it was all she could hear in the now silent space.
Her heart beat faster; her breath shallow and hastened.
He smiled and waved his hand, and her body steadied.
“Breath,” he said.
She found herself breathing deep and feeling a sense of peace overtook her, a calm that spread across the forest, bringing everything back to balance. She felt it. A balance that she never noticed before as if the woods fell into sync with the presence of this man.
“Who are you, mister?”
He smiled. “You have quite a loud whistle, Agatha. It is nice to hear it, but be mindful of this space.”
She felt something in the woods around her. Something dark, but natural. Something that though she was food.
She gulped instinctually.
“There’s a sort here that likes whistling. They’re drawn to it. Especially at night. Your momma told you, I reckon?”
Agatha wasn’t aloud to talk to strangers, and this one was the strangest yet. His body blipped as he moved closer. He was terrifying and yet calming, something she couldn’t really comprehend except… maybe…
“Are you Jesus, mister?”
She’d been to Sunday school enough times to know that Jesus was God back from the dead, and that he visited people sometimes.
He looked at her for a long moment. The corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly.
“Mind your momma.”
Agatha heard a low growl and the departure of leaves brushing something that wandered away. She listened to the rustling leaves grow farther away till she couldn’t hear it.
When she turned back, he was gone.