Howdy. Would you like to hear of another tale from the wicked land of Valmar, Delaware? Well then, here you are. Stay aware, and stay safe.

SEPTEMBER 10th, 1970

          Middle age injected a yearning for the hunting life into me, and so, on the advice of a friend, I purchased a small house in the piney doldrums of Valmar. It’s a droll little piece of Americana situated in Kent County, in one of those weird divisions called  ‘hundreds’ only Delawareans and dead imperial Brits appreciate. 

          It was one of those bungalow projects so popular in the Forties, a squat box with pretty trim and a nice dab of sea green paint. I helped build a ton of them in California right after old WWII. The house gave me thoughts of those heady days after the fighting. Rebuilding. Having purpose. The wife and kids. Then I drift into what came before, Operation Husky. Sicily to the San Lorenzo freight yard and all the levels of Hell in between. I had had it, I suppose. The house would represent a fresh start from the divorce, putting old memories in check. Making newer, simpler ones for my early retirement.

          Valmar was perfect for it. Isolated, old fashioned. Neat streets in an old English style. You drive down Main Street under that banner with the old Germanic text about Gothic Heart of Delaware or whatever and you think for a moment that the revolutionary War never happened and the locals are all Loyalists. Sounds good for a boring day.

          But I came for the deer. Antlers hanging the walls. Heads, too, if I could stomach it. Looked so good in my war buddy’s trophy room in Omaha. He had buffalo, a rhino, deer by the herd, even a few lion skins. Guy was an icon of a bygone age.

          The house would serve me with its patented Forties decor, a block glass partition marking dining room from kitchen, a simple front door over two steps. One bedroom, a single bathroom. Tranquility.

          The realtor laughed when I spoke of hunting. “Oh, the older ones here take to it, especially those from the original thirteen families. See them about the right woods to shoot in, hmm? But for me, I think you’re wasting your time on guns and such.”

          “Why’s that?” I asked.

          “Well with the thicket in your backyard they’ll be seeing you. Our last renter said the deer came up to him and his wife practically every night.”

          “That so?”

          “Yes, so you might be able to massage one to sleep and then get its horns.”

          I dodged correcting her and went on laughing. Deer come up to say hi and pretty much leave welcome baskets. Even better for me. Knees aren’t that great and I left my endurance back in the war.

          So I moved in, parked the Studebaker in a dirt driveway next to a dilapidated bed of strawberries as the leaves deadened to autumn colors and Summer’s heat took a KO from Fall’s punch. Everything was coming up me for a change. 

          I took up a no muss, no fuss lifestyle. Stocked the house with enough groceries for three seasons. Canned goods. Toilet paper and towels. American Club tobacco for the pipe. A large freezer in anticipation of the kills. Steaks, ground beef, beans. The only modern thing I adopted was the powdery science of Tang, which I optioned might be good in a pinch should a snowstorm roll in.

          All set to go, I took up the previous owners’ hotspot on my third night once things were squared away. The back porch was open, just a flat of concrete laid down under a half roof and four supports. Lots of random items were left behind. Two old wooden chairs, that heavy, slots-fit-into-position kind they don’t really make anymore. Some old cans of lard, a spittoon for crying out loud. 

          I brought out a folding card table for the ashtray and tobacco bag, kicked back in the chair to take in the view. Behind the house was the most exotic, perfect blind of incomprehensible woodland I ever saw. Nothing came out of it for hours. No bird sounds. Owl hoots. Not a flutter or crawl. I was used to bats whizzing by the outside lights back in the Golden State. Here, not a thing stirred. If it wasn;t for the comfort of pipe smoke and its friendly aroma, I might have gotten nervous.

          No deer welcomed me to town that night. The stillness put me to sleep. But as I decided to call it a night, I stopped. The same silence reminded me of a guy, a brother back in the war. Joe Giffith was his name. We were laid over near Messina before he got it bad. He talked about the town he was from, this one. “Old Valmar from the 1600s!” he used to say. Said the place was full of ghosts. That they lived in the quiet.

          I moved here on his advice. “Stay for a short time and enjoy, but don’t get caught up in the politics, Bobby. Those doors sure are dark.”

          I’m not sure why it was relevant that night as I retired from the back porch.

SEPTEMBER 15th, 1970

          The fifth morning I was up and fresh. The knees were good. I asked some local guys at a chicken shack that served coffee where to hunt. Cool men in flannel shirts under puffy vests. Country boots on. Faces that stare but never emote.

          “Where you live?”

          “Light green house on Norwood.”

          “The one by the field ‘fore you get to the intersection with route One.”

          “Ah, yeah.”

          “Mister you got them whole woods in yer backyard to blow up deer all damn day.”

          “Really? Thought it was just a scrub patch between farms.”

          “No sir! You kin go all the way back a mile ‘fore you reach the stench o’ Rickles’ chicken houses an’ them ol’ burnt up homes. Woods run all the way out t’Tilton.”

          I thanked them and, embarrassed, drove back to the quiet bungalow. I took a Thermos of coffee, the Remington, some wool gloves and a scarf over the pea coat and ventured out into those silent pines.

          At times the particles of sand made walking a chore, but on a positive note it allowed me to appreciate the magnificent, spidery ferns the wood had in abundance. Great explosions of green tendrils sprouted up from the ground, dancing in the chill wind. Rifle under my arm, pipe on the lip, I hiked a reasonable half mile, far enough in to no longer hear the engines zooming down Highway 1. The sky bore a healthy shade of gray. Peace and solitude, what more could a man want?

          I found a nice old mammoth of a log to rest behind and settled in. Nothing but sips of Joe and a good puff for a solid two hours. Then, a fateful twig snap in crushed leaves brought me to life. 

          The doe was beautiful, not what I hoped for, but she taught me how to move without detection, to raise the Remington slow while she sniffed the air. I waited.

          Her presence inspired a young buck to come forward. I reckoned he had a good two years of age on him. Remington already on the doe, I angled his way. Held my breath. Fired my shot. The doe took a half second to glare and then took off as the buck leapt for freedom, only to collapse in a huff against the greenery of an Eastern red cedar. He eyed me as I approached. That gaze. The heaving chest gushing blood heavy, dying down, slowing. I watched it expire.

          In the wood by the cedar, I saw the buck, the blood gone cold, the scent of earth and pine, and felt the absolute silence bugging my ears.

          Took me an hour to get it up and back to the house. Strung it up and did my best to skin the old boy, a skill I got from a book. Anyway, it was done. Long hard work. Buried the innards. I was whooped for sure. And winded. 

          By nightfall I hadn’t been so fatigued since the marriage fallout. One of the locals said they could stuff the head for me. Froze it until the next day for a drive into town. I felt good and pained, thought maybe I should give it up and just live a lazy life.

          But as I sat on the back porch again, covered in pipe essence, I took in the quiet. Perhaps the success of the day made me numb to the reality of what went on, so much so I fell asleep in the chair.

          That’s when it woke me up in a vicious start. At first, fuzzy-eyed, I didn’t know what it was. I got out of the chair expecting a thief or raccoon. Maybe an opossum. I turned on the backlight to illuminate a third of the yard. Nothing. Just grass and the impermeable wood. What had me so jumpy?

          Couldn’t shake the feeling in my bones it was the stillness. So loud, it disturbed my being.

SEPTEMBER 20th, 1970

          Haven’t slept since the first good hunt. House is so still. I lie in bed every night, staring at a plain white ceiling and wondering what happened. At first it wasn’t a huge deal. Over the course of my life I slept like a baby, even in the war. For the most part. 

          And it isn’t that I don’t sleep. Mainly I get an hour per night. Other times I’m awake the entire time. On those nights I wandered the house. Sat in the dining room. Kitchen with a cup of coffee. Back porch, staring into the Great Nothing as I started calling it. 

          It got hard to think. Deer hunting was postponed. I went out every third day only to get antsy in the wood. Its silence put me on edge. Hyper-awareness is a damnable survival trait, the firing on all senses while absolutely not-a-damn-thing is happening. Kept feeling like I was being watched. Looking over my shoulder.

          Drives into Valmar to talk to the chicken shack guys yielded a ton of laughs. They commented on the bags under my eyes and my poor adaptation to country living. I laughed them off. Made small talk about how many deer they were catching. If the birds had all left the county. That one got them ‘bagging up,’ a Delaware term for laughing hard, I think.

          “Birds all over. Seen some big owls at night by my house.”

          “Really?”

          “Mm-hmm. Blue jays gettin’ in m’feed.”

          I nodded like a dope, waved goodbye, and went to pick up the head. By this time I had the head, and a lovely set of horns from my second kill. My guy, Barry, gave me a good price. I put my trophies in the Studebaker, drove to the bungalow, and placed them up on the wall over an old table supporting a portable Emerson TV-phonoradio. I turned on the TV, got a frizzy image of Marcus Welby, MD, and tried to watch it.

          Frustrated by a quick, fitful nap and the static on the Nightly News, I abandoned the bungalow for the backyard. As usual, dead quiet. Hell, I don’t know what motivated me but staring at the wood as some stranger. I had inhabited the thing during the day. What made it so lively, so lush, but also comatose?

          Fine, I lit the pipe and chanced on a night stroll through the wood, taking a different path than I did on my hunts. I headed more or less southwest, dry land making the walk easier.

          I suppose over an hour went by when I came to a clearing near a stream I never noticed until one shoe went in and my foot froze. Cattails were in abundance along its curvature, along with the expansive ferns, the stench of skunk cabbages. Funny, I don’t recall a splash sound when my foot got wet. 

          And there it was. The burned out house, looked like a ramshackle thing even in its prime, a one-story job built probably by a guy who never heard of architecture. Black circles blotted what would have been the front yard, blotches where no grass grew. I assumed it was due to years of motor oil, imagining a time when a vehicle once drove back this way, leaking fluid. The front of the house lay exposed, but I couldn’t see a thing inside. In between the black blotches I came across a small, curved block of stone and, kneeling down, saw it was a headstone. It was leaning back, chiseled words faded by weather. I lit a match and tried to read it, making out something workable:

                                                  WRIGHT, BERENICE

                                                                   -1721

                                                             OT          FELGE

                                                  BY THE             SHE

                                                  SOU                  

          I’m not one for history, but the grave moved me. Valmar had history, lore. I wondered for a minute what the other words meant. But then the wail shook me.

          It came from inside the ruins of the house, a guttural, inhuman reverberation. I ran in a crouch and squatted behind the cattails, scared out of my damn mind. I was assured Delaware didn’t have bears anymore. What was this?

          It was the only sound in this godforsaken wood. As my heart hurt, I noticed the lightly blowing cattails rubbing gave off no squeak. The stream might as well be dead. Only the wail, now devolving into a bestial gurgle, resounded, as if it owned all, an infernal Overlord of all sound.

          As it lowered, it added new effects while I watched in the cattails, eyeing the ruin. The gurgle came with a step-slide-stomp, similar to someone walking, but one shoe shuffled along the floor, pushing sand grains Even from the distance it filled my ears, hurting them. I felt a migraine coming on.

          And there he was. An old man appeared at the front of the exposure of ashen wood, walking with a gnarled cane. He was short, the legs spindly under a bulky upper form, He was bald but lush in a gray beard knotted in ashes and weeds. He wore ragged clothing, covered in patchwork.

          He stared directly in my direction. Unblinking beady eyes.

          “Ye th’one what hunts deer?’

          I hesitated. Small town gossip moved on mercurial wings. Easy for this man to know I lived nearby and hunted. Surely he heard the shots.

          “Forsooth come out.”

          I chanced showing myself. “Evening.” I was frightened. I don’t know why. He was an old man. My eyes went to the gravestone.

          “That one quit,” he stated, and then I realized I had never before heard a voice so deep. 

          “You, live out here?”

          “Ye in th’bunglow?”

          “I’m sorry,” I lied, “Didn’t realize this was your land.”

          “Not. Mine air though.”

          My mouth made a pained, confused smirk. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

          Just then a huge owl swooped past in front of my face. I fell backward into the stream, soaking wet and cold. Again there wasn’t a single blessed sound, not from the owl or the water! I shivered and crawled out of the stream, shaking, bewildered, utterly losing my cool.

          I rushed to my feet, boots squishy, and stumbled about. The old man picked ashes from his beard. But now he had company of a sickening variety.

          He was flanked on either side by a doe. Each one had a sickness, black pustules covering half their bodies, smothering out an eye.

          I had heard of the condition. Fibromatosis. But this plague on them was almost complete, covering them almost head to hoof. They didn’t cry out for help. The old man stroked one of them like a pet. I was too cold, too out of my senses, brain pounding, to consider what was going on. I think at one point I screamed.

          “What happened to the sound!”

          But the wailing returned as that old man backed into the senseless darkness and I cupped my ears and ran. I didn’t know what else to do but run, wet socks, loose boots, dripping through the wood without noise save for that ritual wail sounding out some sacrament I wanted no part in. 

          I fell three times and each time I looked back, the tainted does were there, mocking me, their walking outpacing my best run on bad, chilled knees.

         “Get away from me!”

          I gasped, because then, right then in the sand as the does observed me from sightless, obscured eyes, I realized my voice gave no sound to my words. Damn it all, had I gone deaf? Mute? Was this the effects of age all along? 

          The wail had died down, but now roared to horrible life once more, and I got back on my feet.

          I stormed into the backyard, shoved the door to the bungalow open. The interior was still. But as I entered the living room, something was amiss.

          My trophies. They weren’t on the wall over the TV-phonoradio, but instead they were in the hands of the old man, sitting in my chair. Up close, those beady eyes were black as a moonless eve.

          “Mine.”

          “Take it! Take it then1” But again the words had no vibration. He read my lips. I’m sure of it.

          “Forgotten Felge,” he said, “There be emptyness in the fruitage.”

          I didn’t know what he meant. My skull felt like it would crack. The house was spinning. I was being eaten alive from within and cornered. Instinct kicked in. I snatched the car keys from the glass bowl by the front door, stormed out, got into the Studebaker, and fled from Valmar.

           A year and a half has passed. Doctors have determined my hearing is fine, and I can speak. But I choose not to. I can’t rightly explain to others why. In private I think about Valmar and the Felge, as I call the old man when I dare recall him and his soulless countenance. He steals the waves right out of the air, for what purpose I can’t say. But they become his, and only allows his wail, his hellish, vindictive mysterious wail to occupy the wood behind the bungalow outside Valmar by Highway 1.

          I’m a changed man because of that fateful vacation. I stay inside. I keep old friends away. The outdoors frightens me now.

          Especially any copse of trees, no matter how fresh or lively they might appear by day. In the dark, all woods are sanctuaries for greater dreads.

Such fruitage, is empty inside.