Note: This was a short story I wrote several years ago. I have been considering writing such stories again, and decided to revise this one and publish it. Enjoy!

I.

I drove in the back seat of my uncle’s car down the bumpy, old, forest road. It was dusk, and the sun was setting in the west, its dying light illuminating the gaps in between the trees. I was looking forward to the weekend at my uncle’s house. He lived with his family in a quaint, old ­style farm house by a small lake in the woods on the outskirts of town. For years I constantly asked my parents if I could spend the weekend with my uncle, but it wasn’t until I was ten that they finally decided that I was old enough to spend a weekend away from home. So there we were, driving through the forest, when we came to a fork in the road.

The left road of the fork was obviously the one that led to my uncle’s, as I could see the outline of the lake behind the trees in the distance. The road to the right, however, was a mystery. It was incredibly worn down, overgrown at the sides, and there was no street sign to name it. My uncle stopped the car at the fork, and before he turned the wheel to steer the car left, he looked nervously down the old road at the right. As I looked down that forsaken road, I felt unsettled in my seat. The area the road led to looked dark and forbidding, as if an evil presence lay there. My uncle looked down the road for a few more seconds, then anxiously jerked the wheel to the left and drove to his home.

When we arrived at my uncle’s home, I received a warm greeting from my aunt and their two daughters. We spoke of simple matters: how my father was doing, how school was going, what it was like living by a lake. However, the whole time we spoke, I couldn’t stop thinking about that road, and later that night, as we were all sitting around the living room, I conjured up the nerve to ask about it.

“Don’t worry about it Jake, it’s nothing.”

“But tell me! You looked at it for so long, did something happen there?”

“Jake, please!”

Just then, his younger daughter, Claire, joined the discussion. “Daddy never talks about that road, Jake. He just says to never, ever go down it.”

I looked inquisitively at my uncle: once Clare shared this bit of information with me, I had to know what was down the road. I stared at my uncle for a long time, and then I calmly asked him again.

“Uncle Tim, please tell us: what is that road’s story.”

My uncle sat in his chair for a long time, and then stood up and looked solemnly out the window. “I have kept this secret for too long. I did so to protect my friends and family, but I believe it is time to tell all of you the truth. It all started 20 years ago…”

II.

“We had a tradition in town back then. Whenever a boy had his 18th birthday, he would be taken from his house at dusk by the other boys, blindfolded, driven somewhere in the woods, dumped on the ground, and abandoned. The boy would then spend the whole night trying to figure out where the hell he is and try to find his way home. By the time he got there, he would be such a mess from trudging through the woods that we would all get a good laugh out of just looking at him. Then we would throw him a good party as a reward. It was all fun, and every boy would always make it back home in one piece sooner or later, until Eddy Green.

“I remember it like it was yesterday, Eddy was just coming home from school the day he turned 18, and as he was walking into his driveway, we jumped out of the bushes, grabbed Eddy, and threw him into the back of my pickup truck. Eddy proclaimed for weeks how he didn’t want us to abduct him, but it was tradition, and we didn’t really care.”

Claire began to giggle, but Uncle Tim snapped at her: “This is not funny Claire!” and she quickly became quiet again.

“Now, whenever a boy was taken, he was usually dumped in the woods east of town, however, because Eddy lived close to those woods, we didn’t want to make things too easy for him, so we decided to take him to the woods to the west, just south of where we are now.”

I began to remember the old, run down road we drove by, and my heart began to pound.

“I know what you’re thinking Jake, and I’m getting to that. That road didn’t always look like it does now, and at the time, it led to a beautiful, white gazebo in the woods. We decided that we would drive down the road, and dump Eddy off deep in the woods behind the gazebo, so he would have no clue where he was. However, as we drove down the road, we were horrified by what we saw. The gazebo was burnt to the ground by a forest fire, and the area around it was scorched pitch black by the flames. Eddy must have smelled the ashes, and began to knock rapidly on the back windows of the truck from the bed, yelling at us to ask where he was. We were nervous: Eddy always had a huge fear of fire - when he was young we would make fun of him for being afraid to even roast marshmallows. So it was no surprise when we started to hear him knock rapidly on the back of the truck. I wanted to drive away, to bring Eddy back to his house, and forget all of this ever happened. But tradition is tradition, and we took Eddy out of the back of the truck, walked passed the gazebo, and carried him into the woods. Once we thought he was deep enough in the woods, and dusk had come to the sky, we left him on the ground and quickly ran back to the truck.

“Nobody spoke on the ride back to town. We were all nervous, and the sound of Eddy’s endless knocking on the back of the truck plagued our brains. I don’t think any of us slept that night, and we all wished, deep down, that Eddy would find his way back quickly. But he didn’t. It usually only took one night for a boy to get back to town, sometimes the night and the next day, but never longer than that. But after two days and two nights, there was still no sign of Eddy, and we became nervous. After three days, Eddy still didn’t come back, and I drove down the road by myself to search for him. It was dusk when I arrived at the burnt gazebo, when suddenly my engine died out, even though it was brand new. I went to open my car door and pop the hood to see what the problem was, but for some reason, the door wouldn’t open. Then, that smell of ash seemed to come out of nowhere, and even though my windows were closed and it should’ve worn off by now, it nearly suffocated me in the cab of the truck. Things got even worse. I began to hear that same, awful knocking on the back of my truck, as if Eddy was still there. I needed to run - it felt like I was going to die! I punched my car window, and I kept punching it until it shattered. My hand was bloody, but I didn’t care, and jumped out the window.”

At this moment, my uncle paused for a long time. The living room was dead silent, and just then I noticed the rampant scarring on my Uncle’s right hand. My face turned pale and white.

“I ran home, away from the truck as fast as I could, and didn’t stop until I reached town again. I told my friends what happened the second I got back, and most of them laughed and didn’t believe me. Even Michael Fitzgerald, my best friend, was skeptical, and decided to investigate what happened to Eddy himself. Michael left at dusk the next day for the woods, and again, came back on foot, his arms cut with car window glass, and his face as ashen as the burnt ground in the woods. His story was the same as mine: the car breaking down, the smell of ash, and the painful, awful knocking he heard behind him. Several other boys also went down the road, and the same thing happened to them. Even our parents were terrified once they heard what happened, and many became afraid to even speak about it around town. Eddy Green was never seen again, and a dozen cars litter the end of that old road to this day.

“The story of Eddy Green’s disappearance has been passed down for the last twenty years, and while nobody knows exactly what happened to him, a new name eventually rose among the townspeople for him: ‘The Ashen Knocker.’ Ashen, for that awful, burnt smell of the woods near the ruined gazebo, and knocker, for the chilling sound one hears. That road is considered forbidden by local teens, but occasionally a foolish boy decides to go down it, and loses his car, and a bit of his sanity, in the process, keeping the legend of The Ashen Knocker alive.”

We sat alone in the living room for a long time, staring at the floor in a mixture of terror and shock. My uncle stood up out of his great chair, walked over to the window, and stared in the direction of the blackened woods to the east. “Well, goodnight everybody.” My aunt hastily said, and we all went to bed.

III.

On Sunday afternoon, as my mother pulled into the driveway to bring me back home, I said goodbye to Uncle Tim and his family. When they responded in kind, the happiness in their voices seemed forced, obviously revealing the discomfort they all felt within. I climbed into the backseat of my mother’s car and we began to drive home.

Eventually, we reached the fork, and my mother slowed down the car and looked down the forbidden path.

“I wonder what’s down that old road?” she quietly speculated. I sat in the backseat, too petrified with fear to say anything, and my heart began to race. The road felt like it was pulling me in, as if I could almost feel the smoky air filling my lungs, as if Eddy Green was knocking on the door to my soul.

“Huh.” my mother said, and continued driving past the road, towards home. I felt my racing heart slow down, and sank into my seat in undesired, but unstoppable, thoughts about the fate of Eddy Green.

I would never visit my uncle’s again.