The Man With The Small Clipboard part:IV

The next day when I woke up, I had forgotten all about what happened the night before. It wasn’t until after lunch when I was watching t.v. in my room, that dad asked why my shoes were so muddy.

It all came flooding back instantly, The chase, the box, the tree reading, the hole, the people that came out of it, and finally the man with the small clipboard asking for my help that I had ignored.

I froze for a second not sure what to say. I didn’t want to get in trouble for following strangers into the woods, especially at night, so I had to think of a story fast. “A raccoon got into the trash last night” I tried to annoyed by it, “so I chased it off and cleaned up the mess”. “Thanks., I guess the brick fell off the lid.” he said “did you put it back on?”, “yeah” I quickly answered, praying that the brick was actually still on the lid,

As soon as he closed the door I started putting on my camo shirt and pants, grabbed my bow and some arrows, and snuck out the door. I took the exact same path as I did last night. I walked slowly with an arrow nocked, keeping an eye out for anyone that might be following or watching me from the woods.

when I got to the clearing, there was nothing but tall grass. I found the tree they dug under the night before, it was leaning and twisted in a way that made it easy to remember, but there was no sign of hole being dug recently. That’s when I started to think either it was a dream, or maybe I was going crazy.

I decided to climb the same tree as the night before. I sat there for a few hours waiting for any sign that what I had seen had actually happened. I saw a few deer, some squirrels, and a groundhog, nothing out of the ordinary though.

Eventually I started to get hungry, also I figured dad might have been wondering where I was by then, so I went home. I couldn’t think of a better explanation, so i chalked it up to a case of sleepwalking, and mostly put the whole thing out of my mind.

I went back to the clearing a lot that summer. It was a beautiful and wild place where I could clear my head, and watch nature be nature. I went there so much that by the end of summer I had a small scurry of squirrels taking peanuts right from my hands. some of them would even climb all over me searching for more food.

Football practice started at the end of summer, and then school in the fall. one day I realized I Hadn’t been out in the woods for a whole two months.

Months turned to years, and life went on. It’s been a bit over a decade since, but every now and then I still think about my sleepwalking incident, especially the end when the man asked for my help and I ran away. sometimes when I close my eyes I could still see his face and that small clipboard in his hand. It was a strange and vivid dream, but that’s all it was, a dream, at least I thought so until this past summer.

One day some friends and I were floating down the river on our kayaks. We were together in a group for most of the ride, but I broke away for a little bit when I went right and everyone else went left around one of the bigger islands.

I was enjoying the serene view of the riverside forest, and reminiscing about the summer in the clearing, when I saw him. It was unquestionably him, he even had the small clipboard in his hand. He was just standing there on the side of the river.

The man pulled a walkie-talkie from his pocket and said something into it. Just then two people in scuba gear surfaced around my boat, grabbed a hold of it, and started to pull me ashore. I tried to hit them with my paddle, but each time I swung at one, they would plunge themselves into the water and the other would continue pulling me closer to the shore. Suddenly I heard a loud THWOP!

I saw the skeleton of a lion sitting in the forest clearing from my childhood. I took a few steps backwards and broke a stick. the skull turned as if it were looking at me, and before I could move a muscle it was charging. In a little over a second the skeleton tackled me and was standing on my chest, somehow drooling on my face. Just as it was about to sink its pearly white teeth into my neck, I awoke with a startle only to find I was tied to a long wooden board in the middle of a dark forest.

I could hear someone talking behind me, but didn’t recognize the voice. After a minute the man with the small clipboard walked over and stood in front of me.

“Who are you and why are you doing this?” I asked hoarsely, but he just wrote something on his clipboard and walked behind me and began talking again.

TO BE CONTINUED