Wicked Woods Read Free

the only explanation.”
    â€œYup,” the number two man wryly noted. “There’s a whole lot of bears wandering these here winter woods, aren’t there?”
    â€œWhat are you trying to say?” the camp boss asked.
    â€œWhat I’m saying is that there aren’t that many bears out there who don’t know how to sleep through the winter. I’m saying it wasn’t any bear that made off with young Ryan’s leftovers.”
    The camp boss scowled. He didn’t much like being disagreed with, especially when he was in the wrong.
    â€œPainter,” he said. “It was a painter that took him.”
    By painter, the old camp boss meant panther, of which there were quite a few in New Brunswick in those days. They were big cats, a type of cougar that lived off deer, and cattle, and whatever else they could scavenge up.
    At that moment, a terrifying screech shattered the silence of the woods around the lumberjacks. It sounded like a cross between a man, a devil, a squealing barn door, and a tomcat torn inside out.
    â€œHunh,” the camp boss said with a nasty grin. “There’s the proof of it. A painter, if I ever heard one.”
    Most of the crew agreed that the camp boss’s explanation didn’t sound all that convincing.
    â€œDoesn’t sound like any panther I’ve ever heard,” the number two said.
    â€œIt sounds more like a devil to me,” another man said. “A devil with a twisted tail.”
    They all considered this.
    â€œA screech owl, then,” the camp boss decided.
    Only it wasn’t any screech owl, no sir and no ma’am. It screeched again and as that second whoop faded away, the boss’s hair turned from its usual coal black to snowy white.
    Now these were tough, hard men, used to long winters and rough working conditions, yet the sound of the screaming whoop terrified them.
    â€œIt’s a painter and a screech owl,” the camp boss said, clearly grab–bing at any explanation his imagination could offer. He kept scram–bling around for a reasonable answer, but no one was convinced. The screech sounded a third time, and as that third whoop died, so too did the camp boss. He dropped to the ground stone cold dead. It might have been fear. It might have been guilt. Maybe he just took sick, with the same sort of sickness that Ryan had. Whatever the reason, the camp boss fell to the dirt and moved no more.
    And then the screech sounded again —like the sound of a saw blade running over the buried stubbornness of an unforgiving steel nail; like the sound of the wind blowing through a dead man’s bones; like the sound of a spirit screaming out for vengeance.
    The crew buried the camp boss at what was supposed to have been the cook’s gravesite and carved out a handmade cross. Each man said a short prayer as the Dungarvon Whooper howled again and again throughout the entire ceremony.
    â€œAll of the praying in a month of hot Sundays won’t lay this spirit to rest,” the number two decided. “He’s screaming for jus–tice, or his lost moneybelt, or maybe just for his breakfast.”
    Later that day, the crew packed up their gear and paddled down the Dungarvon to the town of Renous, deciding that it would be a fine time to take up cod fishing or horseshoeing or anything else besides lumbering. These old boys were scared into retirement and promptly gave up the trade.
    A second and third crew made the long trip to the logging camp of Whooper Spring and left before a week was up. In time, there wasn’t a lumberjack in all of New Brunswick who would care or dare to spend a night in the Dungarvon camp.
    â€œThe camp is cursed,” they said and left it at that.
    At the turn of the century, an idealistic young parish priest of Renous decided to do something about the Dungarvon Whooper. The priest’s name was Father Murdoch. He was a handsome man by all accounts, but folks say