January 06, 2016

PodCastle 397: In the Woods Behind My House

* Author : Nicolette Barischoff

* Narrator : Steve Anderson

* Host : Rachael K. Jones

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

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PodCastle 397: In the Woods Behind My House is a PodCastle original.

Strong language

Rated PG-13

In the Woods Behind My House

by Nicolette Barischoff

They were just some seventh grade kids who hung around the handball court and pretended to be playing all the time so no one else could use it. Nate had no idea why he’d told them about his griffin.

He just said it, out of nowhere, like it was something he had just remembered. “So, in the woods, behind my house? There’s a griffin.”

That was how these guys talked, Eric and Dash, and Jackson and all of them. They just started right in with anything that happened to them like it was something they’d just now found in their pocket: “I smoked the fattest fucking blunt yesterday… you guys should see the lazer tag arena I built in back of my dad’s house… you know I already got my pilot’s license? I don’t even need to learn to drive.” And then they’d smash a cigarette under the toe of their shoe, waiting to be challenged.

He had never talked about the griffin out loud before. He didn’t even think he’d had words to talk about her. She had always been something he’d go into the woods to watch, this silent, padding thing that sometimes stopped to cock her head at him, if he stood still enough, or took something he fed her into her curved black beak.

He had only touched her a handful of times, on the smooth, downy part at the top of her head, and she had watched him every time with hunting gold eyes, her lion’s tail lashing patiently. He’d never even tried to bring home any of her old scattered feathers or broken-off claws. He hadn’t even known, until he talked about her, if he thought she was real.

But he’d been hanging out at the handball court for two weeks, and Eric had started making jokes about how creepy it was that Nate just stood around laughing like an idiot and never saying anything. And Nate just didn’t have a story about how he had set fire to a car, or put out a car that someone else had set fire to, or made his parents buy him a glock… he’d never been that interesting.

So it was desperation that made him do it, mostly. Well, desperation and panic, because Princess Zelda had been walking toward them.

Zelda was a thin pale girl, with thin pale hair, and thin pale eyelashes, and no eyebrows, and fingernails she chewed down to the bloody quick. She smelled like Carmex, and like the Ricola throat drops she ate like candy. She had a spooky way of going too many seconds without blinking. And sometimes, when people called her Princess Zelda instead of just Zelda, she made a weird little sweeping bow.

Nate had never really minded her that much before. But one day, she lent him three dollars when he lost his lunch ticket, and Nate made the mistake of saying he’d buy her a Haagen-Dazs bar as soon as he found another one in the cafeteria freezer. She had shrugged, unblinking. “Whatever,” she said, and walked away.

But Jackson and Dash both decided this meant Nate wanted to stick it to her. And so now, whenever she walked by, they all did long, loud impressions of what Nate supposed it must sound like to stick it to someone, and Eric patted him hard on the back like he’d just put out a flaming car. Princess Zelda always turned her head to look, locking spooky eyes with Nate and smirking like she was in on the joke and the joke w...

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