Courdroy Jouster

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This happened over a decade ago somewhere in northern Michigan during the summer.

My friend, Cathy (18), my boyfriend's half-sister Mei (16), and I (17), drove down from our hometown to visit friends, and were on our way back home in Cathy's shitty little Geo. By shitty, I'm talking this piece of crap had engine problems, overheating problems, ignition problems, and was constantly falling apart. More than once, it had stalled or just stopped working in the middle of the street while we were trying to get somewhere, but Cathy thought we'd be fine since we hadn't had any problems with it on the way to our friends' house.

It's a little past midnight and we're roughly an hour away from home. There's nobody on the road, dense woods on every side, no streetlights, no moon. I can barely see past the windshield because I have a form of albinism, which leaves me legally blind in my left eye and with really awful vision in my right eye. My depth perception is terrible, and I can't see more than a few feet ahead of me at most, but usually I can make out lights and other cars when they pass and sometimes street signs and people when they are close enough.

We drove down this narrow, hilly road, and on the descent down a hill, the Geo makes a strange sound. Cathy starts braking, and when we get to the bottom of the hill, the car quits working. Cathy swears and turns on the hazard lights. She and I get out of the vehicle, and I help pop the hood, which causes a bunch of smoke to fly out. After the smoke mostly clears, Cathy tries to figure out what went wrong this time. We stand in the dark for at least 45 minutes (maybe longer?) before we realize she couldn't fix the car and needed a tow truck.

These were the days of mapquest printouts and brick phones, so we couldn't whip out our smartphone and look up the closest tow truck. I decided to call my boyfriend, Caleb, to come pick us up, and suggest we come with a tow to pick up the Geo when it was daylight. Mei and Cathy agree, so I take out my cruddy nokia, and called my boyfriend. It's then I realize: no service.

I ask Mei and Cathy if either of them have service; they both check and shake their heads. Mei gets a bit panicky, and we all hold our phones up, trying to get a signal to no avail. It's hot as fuck, and after failing to get any kind of service, we are all feeling a bit spooked and uncomfortable. Mei begs us to do something, because she is more afraid than Cathy and I.

Cathy attempts to calm Mei down and I wonder if the thick woods and hills are blocking out our reception. I tell Mei and Cathy to wait by the car, and walk away from them up the hill we had just come down, holding my phone out. Still no signal. I walk further and further away until I reach the top of the hill. I can't see the outline of the Geo anymore, but I can still hear Mei at a distance.

Even at the top of the hill, I don't get a signal. I know it's gotta be the trees in the way, so I get the idea of climbing up a tree and calling from there. Just to see if it works. In hindsight, this was not my brightest idea, but me being an idiot, I saunter off into the woods in search of a climbable tree. At this point, I just want to go home, and this is the only thing on my mind.

I find a nice one with low branches and lift my body upwards towards the trunk. I climb the branches higher and higher and about midway up the tree, I feel my pack of cigarettes fall out of my shorts pocket. I'm kind of annoyed, but figure I can just look for them when I climb back down.

I take my phone out and hold it up once I get near the top. I have service! Relieved, I call Caleb, but he doesn't pick up, so I call again until he does. He answers in a sleepy, but pissed voice, but I'm having none of that and simply explain our situation. He asks where we are, and I give the name of the road and my best guess as to how far along we are on it. He says he will be on his way and tells me to go back and wait with Mei and Cathy, then yells at me for being stupid and climbing a tree in the dark with my bad depth perception. I assure him that I'm fine, he's skeptical but says okay, and we hang up.

I start climbing down the tree, but my hand touches a big glob of sap, so I stop and try to wipe the sticky goop off on my shirt. I'm already sweaty and gross, so I'm not too happy about the sap. While I'm failing at getting this crud off my hands, I hear the strangest sound from somewhere below me. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh.

I completely freeze, not being able to place what the hell that sound is, but it's moving pretty fast. I stare down into the darkness below me, but can't see shit. Just hear this noise continuing. It comes closer and closer, and then I hear it right below my tree. Zwwisssh.

And then it stops. Right under my tree. I hold onto the branches as tight as I can and wait. I hear leaves shuffling and twigs snapping, and after a while that stops, and the weird noise starts again, but it's heading away from me deeper into the woods. I wait until I can no longer hear the sound, then finish climbing down and jump out of the tree. It's completely silent now besides the sounds of the woods, so I grope around on the ground for my cigarettes. I don't find them, so I make my way out of the woods and back towards the road.

I jog down the hill, and when I reach the bottom, I notice Mei and Cathy are not standing outside the car anymore and the hazard lights are off. I walk over to the car and Mei rolls down the window a little bit, and whispers in a panicked voice, "Elisabeth, where the hell were you!?"

I point back over my shoulder towards the hill and started to explain that I called her brother, but Cathy yelled, "What are you doing, get the fuck back in the car!" I give them a weird look, but Mei unlocks and opens the door and I crawl into the back seat with her, slamming it behind me. Cathy slams the locks and double checks them while Mei rolls up the window and makes sure the rest are rolled up. One of the windows has never closed all the way, but there's less than a finger space, so it's not too big a deal, but Mei is freaking out about it and Cathy has lost her cool as well. I am still confused and ask what the heck is going on.

Mei tells me that a bit after I went up the hill, some weird person came out of the woods and "ran really funny" up the hill in the direction I went. They got freaked out and turned the lights off and got in the car. They thought he had got me. I am honestly scared at this point, because if I hadn't stopped to wipe sap off my hands I most likely would have got out of the tree at the time I heard the weird noise. I just knew it was that person. I tell them my story, and everybody in the car is scared shitless, but are relieved that Caleb is on his way. We only have to play the waiting game now.

We sit on the road for what seems like forever, the dread we were feeling made time seem like it was going slower than normal. Cathy and Mei are looking out the windows, surveying the area, and I'm just sitting there hoping Caleb will hurry the fuck up and come rescue us. Suddenly, I hear Mei whine, "Oh my God...." and she starts crying. Cathy snaps her head to where Mei is looking and stifles a gasp. I look where they are facing. I see nothing but the dark.

But then I hear it through the small opening in the window. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh.

Mei ducks down, as though doing that will make her invisible and Cathy hides her head behind the steering wheel. I follow their lead and sort of hunch down in my seat, but the noise comes straight up to the window.

I can almost make out the silhouette of a tall, skinny man. And then he presses his face against Mei's window, and I finally see him. Nobody screams. You'd think we would, but it didn't happen. We all just stared at each other. He looks in at us for a while until Cathy switches her brights on hoping it would scare him off, but it did nothing. The dude just walked to the front of the car and stood in front of the headlights. Maybe he thought he could block us from leaving? I don't know.

I couldn't make out his features very well, but the guy had to have been somewhere a bit over 6 feet and no older than 30. He had the face of your average Joe. Nothing special. Nothing really sinister or particularly creepy that you'd notice about him if you ran into this dude in broad daylight. Dark shaved hair, pale skin, long face. Mei said he had light colored eyes and stubble with eyebrows that made him look like he was always concerned, but there was no way I could make that out, so I had to take her word for it.

What was really weird was it was like 80 degrees, and this dude was wearing corduroys (which is what the sound was, corduroys make that zwishy noise when you walk) and an oversize sweater with abnormally long sleeves. The sleeves went over his hands and flopped back and forth as he paced around in front of the Geo.

I'm not sure how long he was in front of the car, but it was a while. Then good ol' Corduroy starts doing something really bizarre. He bends his arms up towards his face, which I can only describe as looking like a praying mantis, because of the way his sleeves were hanging, and then he begins walking circles around the car, rhythmically taking two steps forward, one step back like goddamn Willy Wonka, but on speed or something.

This is where I noticed the Zwwisssh sound matched up exactly to the same sound I heard when I was back in the tree. He was doing the two steps forward, one step back in the fucking woods when he was going after me, as though this wasn't weird enough.

By now, Mei was sobbing and Cathy seemed like she had to vomit, so I felt like I had to be the brave one. I looked at the slight space in the open window and when he orbited his way over there, I said, "Hey, man, can you just stop? You're really freaking us out." Corduroy definitely heard me, so he Zwwished to a halt and looked back into the car through the windshield, straight at me. I asked him very firmly to leave, and he took an extended pause, smiled, then Willy Wonka'd his way out of my line of vision into the darkness.

After a while, Cathy said he disappeared into the woods, and Mei was like, "I can't believe that worked!" We awkwardly laughed about what a weirdo he was and glad he left and whatever, and we went back to waiting for Caleb, somewhat reassured, but still paranoid.

But after some time, Cathy said, "Oh, no...he's back." I couldn't see, but apparently he was doing the two steps forward, one step back parallel to us on the side of the road. And this time he had a big tree branch he was holding with his sweater-covered hands. Mei got scared again, and I held her hand so she'd feel better about it, even though I was ready to shit myself. It was awful, because I didn't know if he was coming towards us or if he was moving away or what the hell he was up to. It was kinda like when you knew there was gonna be a jump scare in a horror movie.

Then I hear Corduroy Zwwisssh back towards the Geo and on my window, he smacks it with the tree branch. Mei and I panic, and I scoot as close to her as possible. They see the dude back up into the woods, then come running back and slamming the branch back into my window, like he's jousting with no horse. Thankfully, the window didn't break, but it got terrifying hearing Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh. Zwwisssh. Clonk! after a while. And he did this repetitively!

Cathy perks up in her seat and starts pointing at the road ahead. "I see headlights!!!" She blares the horn and flashes the lights. Lo and behold, it's our savior, Caleb! He brought his older brother, Alex, and they both get out of his car and head over to us. Mei's sobs turn into joyous laughter as her brothers as they approach.

Now Caleb and Alex have always been tall guys. Walking around with them was like walking around with high elves. It felt very safe. Caleb was 6'8" and Alex is around 6'5", so I thought two dudes taller than the Corduroy Jouster would make him leave. BUT NOPE! Caleb walks towards Corduroy, trying to assess the situation, and Alex comes over to the car and taps on the window, tells Cathy to get out. She does and he walks her over to his car, then he comes back and puts the car in neutral so he can push it off to the side of the road. Mei and I slowly get out and Mei makes a bolt for her brother's car. I help Alex push the car to the side while Caleb distracts the Corduroy Jouster by holding the end of his stick and telling him to fuck the fuck off.

Corduroy yanks the branch away from Caleb and starts backing up by going two steps backward, one step forward and disappears into the darkness down the street. I can't see him, but Caleb can. The dude backs up pretty far and then comes launching at Caleb, who sprints the other way down the road, cause that stick could have really hurt him. He bumps past Alex who had already got out of the Geo and was opening his car door, leaving me behind the Geo alone. Corduroy apparently changed directions and aimed the stick at me, but I really couldn't tell. I just hear everybody shout, "Elisabeth!!!!!"

This startles me, and I jump to the side of the Geo, hearing Corduroy smash his stick into the back window with a loud thud and a Zwwisssh. I take the long way around the car and sprint off into the road and feel Caleb grab my arm and tug me over Alex's car. I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me and my legs don't seem to work, but Caleb manages to shove me in the back seat and scrambles into the passenger side. By now we are all safely in the car and Corduroy is standing like a mantis in front of the headlights again. He'd abandoned his stick and just stood there with no intention to move.

Alex puts the car into reverse and slams on the gas, making me knock my head against the door. Then makes the sloppiest U-turn ever and nearly drives us into the woods, but gets us back onto the road. Everybody was in 100% what the fuck mode as Alex tore away, far over whatever the speed limit was. Mei and Cathy swear they saw Corduroy chasing behind us after Alex made the U-turn, but there was no way he was catching up.

The next day, I went back there with Caleb, Cathy, and the dude from the tow truck place. There was no sign of Corduroy anymore, but when we approached the Geo we saw that in the space where the window didn't close all the way were my cigarettes. The box was missing, but they were all neatly jammed in a row along the window space. I have no doubt it was the work of the Corduroy Jouster.

To this day I wonder if he knew I was up the tree and took my cigarettes, or if he thought I dropped them and went further into the woods to look for me, or if he'd just found them later and decided to stick them through the window, because he was fucking weird. I also still wonder what the hell his intentions were. I still have so many unanswered questions.

Notes:

Cathy got a new car that summer after she told her dad what happened. Mei wanted to go to the police but we didn't know what the fuck we'd even tell them. Some weirdo was smacking a stick on our car at night and put cigarettes in the window? The cops probably wouldn't believe a bunch of young people; they'd most likely assume we were on drugs or something.

I was recently talking to Alex and Mei about this incident, and Alex urged me to write this out; Mei told me to shut up because she hates talking about this. Hope none of you are from northern Michigan!

#Area/Woods #Person/Stranger #LetsNotMeet