17th of October, 1996
I remember that Carl and me were playing in the woods on a late afternoon. We were walking along the forest path, lost in a conversation I do not remember. We had our swords, that Carl carved from sticks with his beloved knife. His grandfather had given it to him as a birthday present to the horror of his mother. First, his parents had forbidden him to have it but finally allowed him to carry it with him on our trips through the nearby forest. Carl was a strangely responsible-minded child. When games got out of hand, he simply stopped and walked away without saying a word to draw his orcs. He avoided violence and despised schoolyard fights. Naturally this made him the target of bullies and older boys but Carl refused to care and simply stayed his goofy and dreamy self. The memory that stands out to me the most is when we were on a school trip to a farm and he was holding a rabbit tenderly in his arms. It nuzzles his face and he laughs his unique explosive laugh while the other children stand around him and can’t help but laugh along with him.
Even today I can smell the autumnal forest. I see the place in my mind’s eye but not as clear as in my dreams with the crying children. The grey autumn sky shines pale through the branches that are not yet leafless. A thick root coils snake-like before us into the forest path, which is covered in yellow leaves.
We want to turn around and go home and then it happens. Suddenly it is deathly silent. No bird is chirping. No woodpecker is drumming. Absolute silence. I know immediately that something is wrong and Carl knows it too.
A nauseating feeling creeps into me. It is hard to describe. I have felt something similar watching the solar eclipse three years later. The same silence, the same feeling but a hundred times worse.
Then it happens. The thing flies towards us. It is enormous. In a stomach-turning way, it is both human and animal. It has gigantic back wings which rush over our heads – it is the same rushing noise that haunts my dreams.
Big red eyes glow down on me. It whispers to me in a language that sounds long forgotten. In a short moment, only for the fraction of a second, I know that it knows that I can see it, although I am not supposed to see it. A thought that rises to the surface like a fish snapping at an insect only to descend into the darkness below again. For a split second, the thought breaks through the surface like an image that appears in your mind’s eye the second before you fall asleep.
I start crying and it is over. The whole event takes a few seconds. It flies away above us and the obnoxious feeling disappears. Carl and me are standing on the forest path with open mouths and listen how the birds are starting to chirp in the sombre woods around us.
Without losing words, we run home as fast as we can. Drenched in sweat and with red faces we collapse in front of the door of Carl’s parents. The days after, we are busy drawing the “monster” and telling our parents and eye-rolling classmates.
Carl can’t let this thing go. He waits for our biology teacher, Mr Hofmann, after class and shows him our pictures of the thing in the woods. Mr Hofmann is someone who takes children seriously which is why we turn to him. He listens with an amused smile and takes a thick book from the shelf and shows us an illustration of a barn owl.
“Boys, I think you have startled a barn owl. Look, it has big eyes, wings and can be found in our forest. You see, sometimes when it’s dark our imagination can play us tricks. Especially when it’s a dark afternoon out in the woods”, Mr Hofmann says smilingly.
Carl and me feel reassured. The memories fade and we never lose a word about the afternoon in the woods. A silent pact is made that we agree on having seen a barn owl, although in a secret dark corner of my mind I know that what we saw was definitely not a barn owl.
When Carl dissappears months later the images return. With a paralysing dread I know that the owlman took Carl. Screaming and crying I fall into the arms of my mother and tell her that I know who took Carl away, the monster in the woods. Still today I can hear my mother console me:
“Oh Jacob, my Jacob. Don’t be afraid.“
My mother knew that I searched for a reason of the disappearance of my best friend. My childish psyche was unable to cope with the grief and pain of losing Carl, so I tried to explain what happened and eventually suppress feelings of guilt with my imagination. She told me the same thing as Mr Hofmann, if you imagine something very hard, you start to believe it although it maybe never happened.
I started to block out the event in the woods and a possible link to Carl’s disappearance.
Then the dreams came. The fire. The screams. The crying. And the man. His clean-shaven ordinary face looking at me motionlessly.
November 2015
On the 13th of November, 2015 I the recognise his face. It stares at me with an unhinged expression from a police file.
It belongs to the man that is arrested for arson and the murder of three children over the course of 20 years. One of his victims was Carl de Ruiter.
The police officer tells me that the murderer was sexually abused as a child and responsible for several acts of animal cruelty, his need to relieve his aggression and re-enactment of his own abuse lead him to set fire to a barn the night before his arrest. Animals in the fire pulsates through my head as the police officer lights his cigarette and mine. The evidence, that was found after his house has been searched, is clear.
He was found in a panic-stricken state, confessing everything and begging not to be left alone because the “thing” would take him with it to the crying children, he had murdered. He murmured absurd things about red eyes and that it would whisper to him from the woods. “Possibly a manifestation of his guilt” is what is said to me while my stomach sinks deeper and deeper.
With his arrest the dreams stop. My nights are peaceful and I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years. The dreams I now have vanish with the morning light but one dream stands out to me. I have it the night of the arrest.
I am standing in the woods again. The root coils into the path like a wooden serpent. The October sky shines gloomy through the branches. Carl’s laughter rings out behind me. I turn around and call for him. “Carl! Carl! I can’t see you!” I follow his laughter and look behind the trees.
Suddenly, for the first time, Carl is standing in front of me. He’s a child and I am an adult know and I realize how small he is. I start crying. “Carl, you are not alive. You are dead“, I sob with a tearful voice. Carl smiles sadly and reaches for my hand. As I try to take it, he turns into a barn owl. With a few flaps of his wings he rises completely silent into the air and flies away.
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