Mad Seasons

55. Booo! (Special Halloween)

The road seemed endless, as if it had stretched to infinity with every distance covered. The image that came to mind was of the two of us, seeing ourselves as globetrotters, nomads crossing unknown distances anywhere. Stopping for the night at a rest area or on the side of the road, camping on a beach in a tent or under the stars, or in a van equipped for almost everything. It reminded me of a camping trip I'd taken one summer when I was still in high school. 

There were ten of us, including four friends and a few of my ex-boyfriend's friends. We had set up camp in the middle of this wood where the ground seemed easy enough to pitch a tent. We then built a campfire, the atmosphere of which was quite dark and mysterious. When I saw the Blair Witch project when it was released in cinemas, it reminded me of this wood. The film could have been shot there, given the gloomy atmosphere. In fact, it was well known for its walks and camping.

We'd had the bright idea of playing this game, which involves telling the beginning of a scary story, and then taking turns telling the rest. We'd only been at it for eighteen minutes, when we heard a heavy creak that seemed to come from a few yards away. We quickly stopped the game. The wind then began to whistle through the foliage of the trees, telling us that following the two-week heatwave, the weather had begun to change. I even remember that a friend of mine called Frankie slowed down, not wanting the bad weather to spoil everything. It had suddenly changed, and the high-pitched sound coming from nature had grown louder and more persistent, without coming any closer to us.

Our eyes suddenly widened, filled with a dazzling, perceptible fear, to the point of imagining a disaster scenario worthy of a horror film such as Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp. The cracking sound echoed around us as the wind picked up until we had the strength, which we found obscure, to put out the campfire. We stood up suddenly, almost all at the same time, and suddenly the panic that this time was fear had fully taken hold of everyone's eyes. 

Perhaps our brains had played tricks on us in a very fertile way. We had then made a very sensible and swift decision to leave immediately. With haste and clumsy gestures, we packed up our belongings, dismantling the three tents that could hold four or five people. In less than twenty minutes, everything had been packed away and we were off to the dark orange van, bought in the seventies and belonging to the father of my ex-boyfriend's friend. The 18-year-old had obtained his driver's license two months earlier.

We never did find out whether the whistling sound really came from the rustling leaves and seemingly peaceful nature, or whether it was caused by someone or something. When we told our story, we were told that this wood, where we had camped for not even one night, was a place where adepts of not just white magic gathered. We had also learned that a rumor had begun to circulate in the mid-1970s about Muir Woods.

These rituals, incantations that many had performed, would have opened a door, inviting wandering, malevolent spirits to enter our world. This wood had become their territory. A classmate with whom I got on well, and whose neighbor was an expert on the subject, told me that it was possible that the high-pitched sound my friends and I had heard had been caused by an energy that had nothing to do with the bad weather that had been brewing as we left the woods. Half an hour later, as we drove along the road beside it, watching the scenery from the side, some of us had the impression of having seen a large dark mass moving through the trees as the van rolled along.

Could it have been an optical illusion, imagination playing tricks yet again?

As we drove through Arizona, I told this story to Eddie, who showed a look of great astonishment. He was fairly neutral on such matters, but didn't think it was all hogwash. He was very curious about some of the mysteries that lurked in this world and, as he had said, "We're fools to be ignorant. We are fools to ignore what lies behind the naked eye." He was intrigued by the Roswell enigma and found all these theories very interesting, even fascinating, to debate. I could have imagined him embarking on a quest for the truth about this case. From there, we moved on to a more appropriate topic, that of Halloween.