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Off The Map: Travels Into the Weird
By CJ Hurtt

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Portrait of the Artist as a Scared Young Man, Part One.

This month’s Off The Map kicks off a series of installments that deal with my family and how often their paths intersect with the strange. Some of these, like this one, only have the fam in the background. Others, like next month’s, will feature my kin more prominently. All of them though will show the gifts and curses of our weird family bond. Enjoy.

Like any fourteen year old, I was bored. The expats of the 1920’s who fled to the Left Bank have got nothing on a fourteen year old in the ennui department. My life was excruciatingly dull and void. I hated everything.

So, it was the summer of my fourteenth year that my parents carted me of to rural Michigan to visit my grandfather. They had had enough of my angst-ridden ways and figured Grandpa would whip me into shape by setting me about some hard labor. You see, Grandpa lived on an apple orchard.

This orchard though had been overgrown for decades. At some point some owner had stopped worrying about selling apples and just sold the land. It continued to pass through buyers’ hands sight unseen for many years until someone bought it that wanted to sell apples. By that time the place was a wreck. Acres of completely overgrown apple trees and god knows what all. They hired Grandpa to revive the orchard. Grandpa had a lot of work cut out for him.

For awhile this stemmed the tide of my boredom. I had lots of work to complain about, new animals to distrust, tornadoes to hide from, and of course fireflies to pretend I wasn’t awed by. But eventually I got fed up with it.

It was during one of the days that I was feeling lively enough to ask questions I asked Grandpa about the guest house that was on the property. Like the main house it seems to be extremely old. By way of answer he told me that the houses were built in the early 1800’s. I was left to guest that even though Michigan is well in the north, the “guest” house was originally intended for slaves. He also told me that it was falling down and that I should steer clear of it.

One day while being dark and moody and thoroughly bored, I was sitting on the porch while reading. I enjoyed reading things in which people got killed. My high school style nihilism had yet to give way to a less annoying worldview.

So, there I was with ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. A vampire book. There is a part where some character or another recalls sneaking into a reputedly haunted house where a suicide had happened. He creeps up the stairs of this house and finds the ghost of the man who hung himself. I looked up from my book and stared at the “guest” house. I had to see what was inside.

As I made my way across the half acre that separated the two houses I got more and more tense. That house LOOMED. By the time I reached it’s nearly fallen off door, the damned house seemed to have gone from a simple two floor, two bedroom affair to the Winchester mystery house. I went inside.

There was detritus all over. A dump. I slogged my way through the living room and came to the stairs. I went up a few steps. Lying on one of the steps was a paperback copy of a book called “The Hanging Man”. A little too convenient for my taste, but I headed up the stairs anyway.

When I got to the top I went into one of the bedrooms. I looked out the window. I heard a scratching behind me. I turned. On the wall, in black runny looking letters were the words “Help me”. I ran. I ran so fucking fast.

I slammed my shoulder on the door jamb of the bedroom as I shot out of there. The stairs were falling apart and threatened to collapse under me as I bounded down them. The front door was boarded up and the back door (the way I snuck in) was through the kitchen. So, there, between me and the back door was a knee deep pile of garbage and building materials. I ran through the piles of milk cartons and boards with nails through them like they were a field in spring.

I sprinted up to the main house and just shook. It was July and I was freezing.

Later I asked my grandpa again about the house. He declined to answer. After much begging he told me that there was a guy that was hired ahead of him for the orchard clean-up job. The man lived in that “guest” house. He went insane and was hauled away. Grandpa closed the topic for discussion. I steered clear of the house. I wanted nothing to do the haunted man that lived there. But, every Saturday, when I would have to mow the 3 acre front portion of the property with the tractor, I could see inside the upstairs window. And every Saturday, written in black runny letters, were the words “Help me”.