#hide-behind

A Hide-Behind? Really? How do you even know a Hide-Behind is injured when you can’t see it? Literally no one has ever seen one in the flesh. All we have to go on is decades of campfire stories from lumberjacks and freaked-out hikers claiming that something was right behind them making strange noises, snapping twigs, and rustling trees. But whenever they turned around, nothing was there. As if the creature was always right behind them. Glimpsed out the corner of their eye, but never fully visible.

Regardless, when some kid called in insisting that there was an injured Hide-Behind in the woods of the small town he was staying in, I was the closest vet and the head office insisted we take it seriously.

After a bumpy drive on a badly paved road, followed by an even bumpier drive on a dirt one, I reached the location given by the caller just in time for a summer thunderstorm to start.

Lovely.

I searched through the forest for two and a half very muddy hours. Just as I was ready to call it quits, I had the feeling I was being watched. Or, rather, the sensation that something was standing just behind me, waiting.

I turned around. Nothing. But the sensation remained, and under the patter of the rain I swore I could hear something breathing.

I turned again and, once again, there was nothing. Except a message scrawled in the muddy ground that read, “hurt.”

“Does that mean you’re hurt, or that you want to hurt me?”

No response.

“Look, I don’t want to spend the rest of the day turning in circles trying to see you and help you stop hurting. And if it’s that you want to hurt me, I’d rather know now so I can start running away. Can you come where I can see you? Knock on a tree once for yes, and twice for no.”

Two knocks. I sighed.

“Are you in pain?”

One knock.

“Alright, hold on.” I dug into my daypack until I found the small hand mirror I carry per safety protocol #12.  Opening it, I positioned the mirror so I could see over my shoulder. A darkish blur, maybe fur or feathers, was all that was there.

“Can you show me the part of you that hurts by putting it in front of the mirror?”

One knock. Movement in the mirror. And then a foot. Or, I think it was a foot. Definitely a limb. With a very, very large thorny branch embedded in it. I ducked back into my bag for my multi-tool, which has pliers, while speaking to the creature.

“I need you to bring your the part that hurts as close to me as possible so I can fix it.”

I switched the mirror to my left hand, and the limb got just a hair closer. I moved the hand with the tweezers in it behind me until I could see them in the mirror as well. I managed to get a hold of the branch with them and yanked it free. A sound like tree limbs scraping against a window pane came from behind me.

“Sorry, but it’s better not to draw it out. Let me get a bandage.” I grabbed one from my first aid kit, but when I looked in the mirror again, the dark shape of the Hide-Behind was gone. So, I slogged my soaked self to the car and got back on the road. I suppose there did end up being a Hide-Behind that needed help, but I think we just got lucky on what otherwise was a prank call.

-A.L Price

P.S: That was the weirdest town I have ever driven through. Seriously.