Dinner Party in Knotted Pines

For the entirety of my childhood, the one aspect of summer vacation I looked forward to the most was visiting my grandparents’ cottage at Knotted Pines. Knotted Pines, as it was called the locals, referred a particular dirt road in Northern Michigan that stretched for miles and the dense woods surrounding it. Cottages smattered the road a distance away from one another and each one had a boardwalk traveling a quarter of a mile out of the woods and to Lake Michigan. My grandparents’ cottage was old and falling apart, but the location was picturesque. As a child, I would climb trees with my sisters and cousins, walk to the lake after storms to jump in the huge waves, and spent afternoons exploring the overgrown, winding hiking paths cutting through the quiet trees.

The part I liked most about visiting Knotted Pines was seeing Emma. Emma was my cousin who was one year older than me. Her parents, my dad’s sister and brother-in-law, owned the cottage neighboring my grandparents’. The cottages were mirror image of one another and Emma always stayed with her parents the same weeks my family stayed with my grandparents. I only got to see Emma once a year, but I looked up to her throughout my entire childhood. When I was 11 and she was 12, she was everything I aspired to be. While I was just exiting elementary school and was painfully shy, she was in middle school and had a boyfriend. She wore makeup, laid out in a bikini to get a tan, and had a cell phone. I lived vicariously through crazy stories about outings with her many friends and listed in awe as she told me about the night they got their hands on a bottle of wine and got “totally wasted” on it. She was like the popular girls in school who never wanted to hang out with me, but Emma would always take me along whatever she went. That summer I followed her around like an adoring puppy dog. She loved the attention. She braided my hair and I watched her paint her toenails and pluck her eyebrows, listening to her chatter about her fabulous life back home.

One day, near the end of our stay, when the sun was shining brightly through the trees on the deck conjoining our cottages, Emma laid draped over one of the folding chairs, hand dramatically blocking the sun from her eyes. I sat in a chair next to her as she ranted about how awful her parents were. I don’t remember what exactly she was upset about this particular day. Maybe her parents had told her she wasn’t allowed to walk up the road to find cell service and text her boyfriend, Brenden, or maybe they had banned her from reading a novel that was “too adult” for her- it was all the end of the world to Emma.

“Kelsey,” she groaned, “I am just so sick and tired of my parents! They don’t let me do anything and they treat me like a kid! Honestly, I want to just run away!”

“How would you make money to live if you ran away?” I asked, mesmerized by a vision of my cousin making it on her own and sticking it to her parents.

“I would play my flute on the street for money,” she said in a matter-of-fact way, “and I could stay with Brenden in his basement until I got enough money to go to some boarding school where I would never have to see my parents again.”

“If I ever ran away, I could sing to make money!” I replied, excitedly. I was in my church’s choir, after all!

“I could watch all the R-rated movies I wanted and I would talk to Brenden whenever I wanted and I would smoke cigarettes and take art classes,” Emma said, gazing at the back of her hand and ignoring my input.

“Wow yeah, that would be cool…” I pictured Emma wearing a beret, drinking a glass of wine, and painting on canvas.

She bent backwards over the arm of the chair so she was looking at me upside-down. “Kelsey, we should just go now! There is a highway a few miles down the beach and we can hitchhike to Brenden’s house!”

“Do you know how to hitchhike?” I asked worriedly, as if this was the largest flaw in that plan.

“You just walk along the highway and wave your thumb like this,” she demonstrated, wagging her thumb, “Only you can’t let the police see you because they arrest hitchhikers.”

“Oh ok,” I was glad I was running away with someone so knowledgeable.

With that, we put our plan into action. I took a box of cheese-itz from the kitchen cupboard, my water bottle, and the book I had been reading and put them in my pink, drawstring bag. I hurried out to the porch to meet Emma, who was waiting for me with her own backpack.

“Let’s go before anyone realizes our plan,” she advised. I followed her down the boardwalk to the beach. As we walked down the waterline, the lake was as clear as glass. To our left there was a hill with reeds growing out of the sand and, at the top of the hill, Knotted Pines forest. Occasionally, we would walk past a boardwalk leading up to one of the other cottages in Knotted Pines.

Emma was telling a story about how she recently went out to a fancy restaurant with all her friends for her birthday and her parents let her take their credit card. I was half paying attention as I scanned the beach for cool stones and sea glass. After a while, we reached what my family referred to as the “Chilly River.” It was a small stream of cold water headed to the lake from some source in the woods up the hill. It was such a simple, normal thing, but as kids we thought it was some kind of crazy phenomenon. We speculated about where it came from, but our parents warned us against investigating, worried about bugs and poison ivy.

“Now is our chance to see where the Chilly River comes from!” Emma exclaimed.

I felt a lump rise in my throat, “what about poison ivy and bugs?” I had always hated disobeying my parents.

Emma shrugged, “Leaves of three, let it be. Also, I brought some bug spray.” She took the can out of her bag, sprayed it liberally across her skin and clothes, and passed it to me. Reluctantly, I followed suit and we trekked up the hill through the reeds, following the Chilly River. When we got to the tree line, there was no trail or deer path, so we stepped carefully through the grass and plants, talking about the latest young adult novels we had read and our celebrity crushes. The sound of trickling water intensified as we walked and, eventually, we arrived at the Chilly River’s source: a pipe sticking out of the ground and spitting out water.

“That was… uneventful,” Emma said, disappointed.

I looked around and saw something strange off to the left- a stone figure that looked purposely sculpted. “Wait,” I exclaimed, grabbing Emma’s shoulder, “let’s look at this.”

She followed me, curiously, to the stone figures. We arrived at a bizarre scene. There was a large, flat, round stone, the size of a dining room table. Five round stones surrounded the table, like stools. Only two of the were empty; on the other three, three identical statues of frogs were perched in sitting position. They were about five feet tall. Their bodies were perfectly smooth and grey, with details meticulously chiseled into them. All three of the frogs had their mouths and eyes shut, but were facing the empty table. The frogs were not evenly spaced around the table. On one side, two sat closer to one another with an empty stool in between. The third frog and the second empty rock were equidistant apart on the other side.

“Oh damn…” Emma muttered, “this is so cool, it’s like a dinner party!”

“How did these get here?” I thought out loud. This was a better mystery than the Chilly River. We examined the statues closely to find any flaws or differences between the three, only to determine they were exact replicas of one another.

“Let’s sit down with them for dinner!” Emma exclaimed, “What are we gonna eat?”

I pulled the cheese-itz out of my bag and poured a little in front of every stool. Emma plopped down on the rock sandwiched between the two frogs who were closer together and I took the other seat. As I sat down and reached for my snack, I heard Emma give a terrified yelp. I looked up, and almost fell from my seat when I saw the frogs. Their eyes had open, revealing deep black pupils beneath their eyelids. Nothing else had moved and their big, black eyes stared transfixed at the stone table.

“What… what did you do?” I said, dumbly.

“Nothing, I just looked up and their eyes had open! They weren’t like that before, right?”

“No, they weren’t,” I confirmed, staring into the eyes of the statue closest to me. They projected no reflection or emotion- it was impossible to say what they were made of. An uncomfortable coldness spread through my chest and into my fingertips.

Emma started to rise from her stool, “let’s just get out of here, I don’t like this.”

As she rose, a horrible creaking noise filled the air and ricocheted off the trees. Emma and I both winced and covered our ears, then looked up in horror to see the source of the noise. All of the frogs had simultaneously opened their mouths to reveal gaping pits almost the size of their own bodies. Emma and I screamed and leapt away from the table. I turned to sprint back to the beach, but something slimy and muscular constricted tightly around my right arm. I knew before I looked at it that I was trapped by a dark pink tongue, yanking me toward the nearest frog’s open mouth. Emma screamed in horror. She was held captive on each arm by the two frogs on either side of her and they seemed engaged in a tug-of-war over who would swallow her.

As I struggled to free myself, the sound of buzzing filled my ears. I looked back and saw a cloud of black flies emerging from the frogs’ mouths. The buzzing grew overwhelming as the swam descended upon me, blocking out my own echoing screams. I felt thousands of tiny legs sprinting across my skin and scalp. They tried to push their way into my nose and mouth, running over my face for cover. A few had gotten trapped down my shirt and bit at my flesh. I flailed my arms to get them off of me, but more came from the frog’s mouth. I felt them crawling up my shorts and making themselves at home in my hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emma desperately crying as flies landed on and subsequently launched off her face and arms.

I had a sudden moment of clarity through my sheer panic. Everything was moving in slow motion. I looked at the long tongue still restraining me tightly. I contorted my head and arm, straining with effort, and bit down hard on the tongue. A warm, metallic goo filled my mouth and the frog instantly released my arm, snapping its tongue back into its mouth with a sharp gasp, as if in pain. I spat a mouthful of brown sludge onto the ground and leapt across the table to Emma, ignoring the black flies still clinging in my hair. Emma’s arms were twisted at inhuman angles as she screamed and sobbed between the statues. It looked like she had gone completely limp and given up fighting, with both frogs yanking her back and forth comically. I grabbed a heavy branch from the ground and slammed it into one of the frog’s tongue as hard as I could. Just like with my own captor, the frog’s tongue retracted into its mouth with a loud snap. I watched in terror as Emma flew toward the other frog, who had been pulling on her so hard to win the tug-of-war with its opponent that she soared easily into its mouth. The statue’s jaws closed around her with a sickening crunch and I could hear a muffled scream of pain from within it.

With the heavy stick still in hand, I did the first thing I could think of: I jammed it right into the frog’s eye. Surprisingly, it plunged in easily, like if I were stabbing a toothpick through Jell-O. The frog opened its giant mouth and let out a horrible screech, like nails being dragged across a chalkboard. At the sound of the screech, most of the flies quickly flew out of my hair and out from under my shirt. Black goo began dripping from its injured eye, leaking down its face like molasses. Emma laid crumpled inside the frog’s dark mouth. I grabbed her leg and dragged yanked her out of the dark hole. She sobbed in pain as I dragged her across the forest floor. I was able to drag her several yards away from the frogs. I looked back on them, expecting them to be perusing us, but they had all returned to the position we found them in: sitting on the rocks and staring at the table expressionless. Eyes and mouths closed. I tried to hoist Emma over my shoulders, but realized it was getting dark and I wasn’t strong enough to carry her all the way home. I sprinted faster than I had run in my life. Down the Chilly River and the hill, down the beach, and up the boardwalk to our cottage.

I found the adults worriedly talking on the deck, wondering why we hadn’t been back by dinnertime. My mom started crying when she saw me bruised and with fly bites. I started screaming. I told them Emma was hurt and back by the Chilly River. When I tried to verbalize what had happened to her, I broke down hyperventilating.

The next few hours flew by in a blur. Mine and Emma’s dads carried Emma home from the forest and we were both carted off to the ER. I escaped the whole ordeal with some nasty bruises, a host of black fly bites, and a nasty case of poison ivy. Emma wasn’t so lucky. She had a dislocated arm, some cracked ribs, and a fractured femur. She would be ok eventually, but only after she spent the remainder of that year in casts and physical therapy. I tried to explain the entire story to the nurses in the hospital, but they looked at me as if they should send me to the Psychiatric Ward. I realized as I told the story no one would believe me. The adults determined Emma must have sustained her injuries by falling from a tree. She went along with that story.

After that summer, Emma and I grew apart. We didn’t really talk anymore and we certainly never talked about that horrible day in the woods. Over the years, I went back up the Chilly River many times, seeking answers about where the frog statues came from, but no matter how many times I went back to that spot, I never found any trace of the dinner party scene again. The most logical explanation was that I somehow imagined the whole thing, but the statues’ soulless black eyes are burned into my mind and dreams forever. One thing is for sure, I never walked through Knotted Pines without looking over my shoulder again.

Submitted July 22, 2018 at 07:19AM by Braidingstories https://ift.tt/2Lp2sjv