Tree Man

This is a story from my childhood; it has no bearing on my present condition and I have written it for the sole purpose of writing it.

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Have you ever felt like you were suddenly in the middle of a horror film? I have.

I used to go to a camp called Sky Ranch near Van, Texas. It's a Jesus camp; you live in a cabin with 12-20 other kids your age while the college-aged counselors make sure you don't kill yourself and every once in awhile you sing songs and pray. Also there's horses and sailboats.

One summer I managed to snag a pretty mischievous group of counselors. Let's call them Luke, Bill, and Evan; I don't remember their real names. I only remember the terror they made me experience. One night, while we were walking to dinner, one of the counselors (let's say it was "Luke") said, "Man, it's pretty dark, I hope Treeman doesn't come for us."

Being the sucker that my older brother has always known me to be, I took his bait: "Who's Treeman?"

Luke: "Oh, he's bad news. He's either a small tree or a large man dressed like one, we don't know which. All we know is he's been around these parts for a real long time. He comes out at night and takes people who don't respect the land, you know, people who climb trees and break the branches off or people who cut down forests for money."

Me: "You're making that up."

Luke: "Fine, don't believe me. Just be careful out in the woods during capture the flag tonight, if you break any branches you're on your own."

Me: "..."

We made it to the mess hall for dinner and I started asking more questions about Treeman. My cabinmates thought I was stupid for buying it at first, but as each of the counselors gave his own harrowing account about what Treeman had done to campers in the past our skepticism began to fade. Long story short, the only kid who didn't believe it was the "macho" kid name Jared who had to pretend not to believe it for the good of all of us. If he had bought it I'm pretty sure the rest of us would have given in to despair.

That night we played Capture the Flag. You have never seen anyone creep through the woods more carefully than I did. No way was I going to break a branch off of a tree and incur the wrath of Treeman. The game was ultimately called because it had started to rain and there was lightning coming after the rain.

The last part of the day at Sky Ranch is when we would have cabin devotionals. Now, this was probably a violation of every rule Sky Ranch had about how much counselors are allowed to change the schedule at night, but we didn't have a devotional that night. We just talked about Treeman and how terrifying he was while the storm raged on outside.

In the midst of a particularly scary story from Bill, Luke interrupted him: "Oh man, we're missing a counselor, where's Evan? He knows it's too late to go out on a night like tonight..."

THEN ALL THE LIGHTS WENT OUT.

It was chaos. All of us were in our bunks, and I am one hundred percent certain that if I had not been paralyzed by fear I would have been screaming and running for the door. The lights flickered a few times and I heard Luke say "Where's Evan?? WHERE IS EVAN??"

Then Bill pointed at the window where Evan's face was pressed up against it, his face looked full of fear and his clothes were soaking. He pounded once on the window, then A TREE BRANCH CAME FROM BEHIND HIM OUT OF NOWHERE. The tree branch seemed to grab him by the shoulder and pull him away.

None of us knew what to do; even Jared was stuck in his bunk, unable to do anything but yell "WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO? WHAT ARE WE GONNA DOOOOOOOO?"

Then the lights came on, Evan came inside and said, "So did it work?"

Jerks.

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This has been "Childhood Stories with John." Tune in next week when I tell you how Rob convinced me that bananas are actually pig feces.