The Loop

The legendary Baker’s Hollow turned out to be innocent enough. It’s one-lane gravel road twisted around, down. Dense woods on either side, the moon causing distorted shadows. This place used to completely give him the creeps, especially when he thought of the ghost story that went along with it.

Sometime in the pioneer days, a family in a covered wagon were supposed to have been traveling this same route when one of the wheels broke. The husband left his wife and children in the wagon and set out for the town a few miles behind them to get the wheel fixed. Hours came and went, the sun set, and the man did not return. As night fell, the wind picked up, and tree limbs scraped across the top of the covered wagon. The family fell asleep waiting, but when morning came and her husband still had not come back, the lady stepped out to call for her husband. To her horror, her husband was hanging from a tree above the wagon, his feet swaying back and forth, scraping its top.

Variations of this story abounded, one for every time period that was far enough in the past to be unverifiable. He knew it was bullshit, even then. Or he told himself it was a bullshit story while he thought he saw strange beasts running alongside his car or eyes in the woods, or thought he felt his car bogging down as it tried to make its way out of the valley up the steep incline. Shit! I gotta get the fuck out of here!

One Saturday afternoon with nothing to do, he decided to go to Baker’s Hollow while the sun was still shining. Confront his fears. As he made it to the bottom of the valley, he pulled the car off the road as much as he could and shut it off. Standing beside the car, he waited for a minute to see if anything would happen. It didn’t. So he took a few steps. And a few more. Still nothing. Hmm. “Here I am!” he shouted to the would-be goblins. “Come get me!” No goblins came to get him. Well, then. Maybe because it’s daytime.

So he came back that night. 11:55. He pulled up in the same spot he had parked in earlier. “Here I am again, you fuckers. It’s midnight. I'm alone.” Silence. This time he walked off the road and into the woods. This was no small feat for him. Until this very moment, he wasn’t sure how he felt about all this otherworldly, ghost-story stuff. He hadn’t made up his mind as to the validity of all of it. In normal situations, he doubted, even scoffed at things people told him. But
when he himself was placed in a situation that might be scary, or creepy, he often did feel scared. In these moments, he didn’t doubt at all that there could be things out there that were unexplainable. But there he stood, at the epicenter of the most horrifying place in the area, unprotected, demon bait, and he remained untouched. This was his first awkward step along a path of logic, the real motherfucking straight and narrow.

Five years later, Gandy parks his car in the exact same spot. Back where he started. What the fuck? Here I go again, with a smile. So he gets out of the car and looks around for a minute. Not much had changed, not much at all. Had he? Just a little bit. Gandy walked around to the front of the car, sat down on the hood, laid back and folded his arms behind his head. “I’m back, invisible flesh-eating fuckers.”

Folklore and ghost stories, fairy tales and morality plays. Did he ever believe that shit? You bet. Jesus, it was right here that all that changed. Fuckin’ savages. Neanderthals. Disgusting, lie-perpetuating bastards...all for some power. Imaginary friends and foes that serve their purpose well. It may seem that Gandy was on a bit of an escapist trip himself. Instead, he was running as
fast as head could toward something. Running as fast as he could, for a smoker.

He opened the door on his car. “Thanks fuckers. I get it now.” Almost.