Greetings from Tree Land
by Robert Kostanczuk
There’s something in those pine trees.
Kenneth’s mother always warned him about that. She told him to take another way to the park, which was a short walk from his house.
He could get there in no time at all on his bike, but most times he liked to walk along the clustered row of trees that lined Appleton Way, a narrow side street.
There was much to savor.
To the rear of townhouses lay impeccably layered blue spruces -- rich and full.
Scotch pines and Eastern white pines added diversity to the arbor realm. A limber pine shot 30 feet into crisp Minnesota air.
There was even a ragged Jack pine, which lacked fullness of limbs, but bore twisted ambience Kenneth liked.
The more contorted the tree, the better for Kenneth.
Appleton Way was a one-block stretch of pastoral splendor for the 12-year-old boy.
On this November Saturday, Kenneth was ignoring his mom’s directive to steer clear of the thick mass of conifers. A brisk wind whirred through the branches with a rich, mellow melodicism.
Kenneth would soon be playing football with friends at the park; gridiron dreams abounded. As he began walking down Appleton Way, the thought of camping out among the pine trees proved enticing.
There, he would get lost, tucked under the protective shadows of evergreens in moonlit hours.
How Mother could view the setting as something ominous was a mystery to him.
Still, she persisted.
She was very careful with her only child. They closely bonded. No one else lived with them.
Before leaving home on his latest park outing, mom had spoken up: “I’ve gotten bad feelings walking past those trees with you. I felt like eyes were on me. And it seemed like whatever was watching, was grinning -- in an evil way. Very grotesque. I can’t explain it. Just stay away from there. It could be following you.”
Mother never told her son about the time she believed she actually saw spindly fingers parting the branches of a Scotch pine, as if to accommodate a better look. She couldn’t be sure if it was merely branches bobbing in the wind, or a squirrel flitting about.
But it didn’t stop her from admonishing Kenneth multiple times: “There are things in this world that can’t be explained; whatever may be out there, you don’t want to fool with.”
The use of the word “whatever” made everything stranger to Kenneth, but it did not dampen his attraction to his favorite route to the park.
He even named mom’s dreaded lurker Mr. Happy Guy.
Kenneth thought it was funny. Mom did not.
Kenneth and his pals had been tossing the football around for about an hour on the dull, browning grass when Mother thought she heard a dull knocking on the front door as she prepared the night’s dinner back home. She stopped cooking to make sure what she was hearing was indeed knocking on the door.
Two more barely discernible raps on the door were heard.
She made her way from the kitchen to a living room window, which overlooked the front porch. Peering outside, she saw the profile of a gaunt figure standing upright and rigid, almost pressed against the door.
The descending twilight contributed to the difficulty of discerning physical features. But she could determine the visitor was frighteningly thin -- no more than a stick-like shape.
“So tall!” Mother whispered to herself in disbelief.
The bizarre thing was cloaked in a shroud -- a loose wrapping resembling a sheet that flowed slightly behind the body. The head was riddled with sparse, scraggly hair and rows of fleshy ridges.
The visitor stared straight ahead at the door, motionless, unflinching.
As the arms rested by its side, Mother noticed knotty white knuckles jutting out from a fragile hand with prominent, purplish veins.
Then, a weak smile started to slowly stretch from a corner of the visitor’s mouth.
The lips quivered as they parted slightly to expose discolored teeth. She saw the glint of moist spittle streaming down the jaw.
Mother could not believe what she was seeing.
She turned her head away from the window to refocus.
Methodically returning her gaze to the front door, Mother no longer saw anything there. Joyous relief settled in.
But there was a small white piece of paper on the doormat.
Gingerly opening the front door, Mother bent down and picked up what turned out to be a note with a printed message in thick, orange lettering.
It said: Hello From Mr. Happy Guy. I Live In Tree Land. I Will Never Go Away.
A childlike drawing below the words showed a round face with small dots for nose and eyes, with a fiercely exaggerated, upturned smile.
Mother was never the same. She would show Kenneth the note, and cry uncontrollably.
She slowly descended into a state of paranoia and madness. She no longer felt like cooking, or cleaning the house.
The deterioration of his beloved mom devastated Kenneth.
His innocent boyish ways dissolved into depression, and cynicism of the outside world.
After her total mental collapse in six months, Mother was institutionalized.
Often suicidal, she required supervised psychiatric care around the clock.
Kenneth’s uncle moved in with him.
The note’s written declaration -- I Will Never Go Away -- haunted Kenneth.
The uncle had turned over the creepy message to the small-town police department following Mother’s nervous breakdown. No fingerprints were found on the paper.
Police soon lost interest.
Several weeks after Mother stopped living at home, Kenneth was cleaning out her bedroom dresser when he came upon several crumpled balls of paper tucked in the corner of a drawer.
Kenneth grew increasingly nervous as he uncrumpled each, finding they all began with written words he knew well: Hello From Mr. Happy Guy.
A pair of thin dress gloves were also in the corner of the drawer.
As he lifted them up, an orange crayon that was under them rolled toward him.
Robert Kostanczuk is a former full-time entertainment/features reporter for the Post-Tribune daily newspaper of northwest Indiana. Robert lives in Crown Point, Indiana, and can be reached on Twitter @hoosierkos.