CHAPTER 6

GETTING TO THE TRUTH

          To stay out of sight, the chosen path to the cabin was through some of the thickest brush on the farm. After a quick round of rock-paper-scissors, I was determined to be the leader. The dense branches of trees and bushes made a decisive path challenging. It seemed every path I selected Darby had a better suggestion. Sisters, right?

          Her criticism about the path, the branch I held, or let go of were all completely wrong in her judgment. Soon enough, she’d find that the branch I’d held back would eventually bounce back into her face at just the right time. Ultimately, she got the message. She realized a follower's job was to pay attention to the leader and the path in front of you. You'd come out with less scratches to the face if you did.

           With her cooperation, we cut through most of the thick brush quickly. Plus, without having to second guess my every move, I was able to focus on the easiest path forward. I focused on what was ahead and not behind me.     

          The cabin was built of wood and painted a dark brown likely to help it blend into the flora of the surrounding area. We made it to the back of the cabin where it had an old stone chimney with many loose rocks. On the side of the cabin, facing the road, were two windows that had been boarded up. The covers were painted in the same dark brown as the outside walls of the cabin. There was no way to look in or out of the cabin.

The roof of the cabin was high-pitched with thick wood shingles. The shingles were covered with dead leaves and sticks from all the trees. Any sunlight found it hard to penetrate the canopy so the area around the cabin was much darker than the bright light that hit the rest of the farm in the morning. The old and damp shingles were a mixture of rotting wood and decomposing leaves. The cabin roof had visible patches of green moss, weeds, and grass growing out the top.

When we reached the back of the cabin that day, my heart was beating fast and up in my throat. I knew Darby felt the same thing as she grabbed my hand. There was no denying that we were each other's sense of security. We knew we could rely on our twin whenever we needed to. This wasn't something that developed when our parents died. We had long been the other's heart. Our parent's death only made the connection between us and that sense of comfort stronger.

          We went around the backside of the cabin nearest the road and away from the house. On this side, the cabin had thick bushes growing right up next to it. It even seemed to have a tree growing right from under the bottom of the cabin on this side. The tree sprung up and hugged the outside wall and roofline.

The vegetation was so thick, we had no choice but to crawl on our hands and knees to get to the front from the backside. As we reached the front porch, we crawled to the edge of the porch on our bellies. At the edge, we peered over to the farmhouse sitting up on the slope of the farm. We didn't see anyone.

As we checked for movement at the house, Darby felt something on her hand. She jerked her hand back and screamed. I immediately jumped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a spider! A big brown spider with hair all over it. Yuck!” But before I even saw the darn thing, the spider had climbed under the wooden floorboards of the porch and was gone.

          “You scared me!” I said.

          “Well, it scared me! You know I hate spiders!”

          “You better get over it. When we get inside that cabin and see that vampire coffin, you’re going to see more than just one. There are going to be spiders - lots of them. There always is,” I explained.

“You and your imagination, there aren’t going to be any vampires inside. Vampires don’t exist.”

I quickly responded, “What do you think we will find in the cabin then? And, why then, if there are no vampires or anything of that sort in there, are you so interested in getting in there?”

She thought for a minute. “I don’t know. I just want to find out what he's hiding,” she said.

Darby always felt the adults were keeping things from her. We both hated the whispering we often heard at our aunt’s and grandparents’ houses. And Darby especially hated that Fitch wouldn’t tell her about what was in the cabin. She wanted to get inside and see for herself what the adults didn’t want her to know.

          We paused for a moment. No one seemed to have heard her scream.  It was clear for us to proceed. It was as good a time as any. On the count of three, we both jumped up and ran for the cabin door. Darby kept watch at the house, as I fumbled with the keys trying nervously to get the right one in. The keyhole was not typical. The hole was a small, thin square with a circle sitting on top of it.

          Darby whispered, “Are you sure, you got the right keys?”

      Had I picked the wrong ones? I wondered myself. I had never seen a key that would fit this, but I was certain one of those skeleton keys would do the trick.

“Try one of the funny, long ones,” Darby said in a panicked decision. “The ones that look like pirate ship keys.”

I fumbled with the ring and tried the first one and it fit the hole but didn’t turn the lock. I fumbled for the next one and tried it. It too fit but didn't do anything either.

“Hurry up!” Darby growled impatiently.

“I am! I am trying all these keys, and none are opening the door.”

          Finally, the fourth key felt like it fit tighter than the other ones. I jiggled it around and then turned it, as I did, the old key latched onto a mechanism inside the lock, and I heard it click. I turned around and looked at my sister. We were anxiously aware this was it. 

          I turned the round knob on the door, and it opened. I pushed on the heavy wood door and we both dashed inside and closed the door quickly. We leaned against the inside of the door with our hearts beating in our heads.

We were in.

The inside of the cabin was dark, and the air was dusty. With the windows boarded up, there was nearly no light. The only light came from the bottom of the door and a couple of cracks in the boards over the windows.

“Do you see a light switch?” Darby asked.

“I don’t see a thing. Reach over and feel the wall next to the door for a light switch.”

“You do it,” she said. “What if there’s a spider there?”

I laughed and moved around her. I slowly ran my hand against the dusty wall to see if there was a light switch. There was nothing there.

           I turned and slowly walked across the floor with my hands stretched out in front of me. I came to a tabletop and stopped. I reached out over it and didn’t feel a thing about it. My imagination got the better of me. I imagined I was running my hands over the top of a coffin and immediately thought of a vampire, a goblin, or a monster of some sort. I expected to find the emblem of a cross across the surface, but instead, I found a lantern.

“I found something. A light! I said.

“Well, turn it on!”

I ran my hands over the lantern to figure out how it worked. I wondered whether it had to be lit with a match or if it was battery-operated. It was heavy so I assume it carried a battery.

Sure enough, I felt a rubber nub, presses it and a fluorescent light came on and warmed up. The lantern’s greenish bulb made the inside of the cabin glow with unusual green hues. Darby moved right next to me.

We stood in the middle of the cabin, our hearts still beating faster than normal. Our eyes scanned the room for anything scary that might jump out or endanger us.

          The left side of the cabin was a wall of nothing but drawers of all sizes from floor to ceiling. Straight across from us was the stone fireplace, and next to it, an old over-stuffed chair and a small side table. On the right side of the room was a wall of bookshelves with all sorts of leather-bound notebooks and journals. The shelves went up the entire wall and even covered where the windows had been. Above us, in the rafters of the exposed ceiling, were shelves with wooden boxes. They were labeled with letters and numbers. Every shelf, box, and drawer wore numbers as if it were in a library.

“Look at all the books,” I said. It was a wonderland of books!

The two of us walked around the room. The entire room was covered with layers of dust and spider webs throughout. Yet, no spiders seemed present.

I looked at the wall of books. They were identified by the letter and number combinations on the spine, with no titles or authors.

Darby looked at the drawers on the other side of the room and ran her hand over the dusty lips of the first drawers she came to. She moved toward the fireplace and the chair that sat next to it. A stack of books sat on the floor as high as the small side table. The table held a smoking pipe and a holding tray. There on the side table was a book. The dust was so heavy on the cover that she could not make out the title. However, the book had clear fingerprints that showed that the book had been recently touched.

          She wiped the cover clean and held the book up in the lantern light to see the title. As she held it up, a handwritten note letter from inside the book slipped out and fell to the ground. She put the book on the chair and bent down to pick up the note. The paper was a tri-folded single sheet of paper. She picked it up and unfolded it. She read it in the greenish light from the lantern.

The letter was old, and the words were somewhat faded. It was handwritten. She started to read it. It said, “Dear Dad” and she froze. Was this a letter from her dad to her grandfather? She glanced up at the date and it was nearly twenty years old. She began to read it to herself.

Dear Dad,

          I hope you and Mom are doing well. I am doing fine at school. I was in class today and felt like I had to write to you instead of writing to Mom. I owe you an apology….

          “Darby! Look at this,” I interrupted from across the room. I had pulled a couple of the leather-bound journals off the shelf. “These books are written by Grandpa Jack. This one is “Ancient Cultures of the Southwest”, and this one is “Genealogy of Abnormal Primates and Humans”.” I then turned over the next book. I couldn’t believe it, “The History of Giants”.

          “Darby, this book is the history of giants, and it is written by Grandpa as well.”

          “What? Giants? There is no such thing as giants,” she said.

          I cracked the book open and noticed a notecard attached to the inside cover. The card was a list of books with classification numbers on it. It also had a list of other reference materials. The first few entries on the card were:

          349-GIA “Genealogy of Giant Species Family “A”

          351-GIA “Middle Ages & the Giant Kingdom”

          355-GIJ “Journal of Giant Encounters”

          355-GIM “Locations of Giant Encounters”

          REF-GIP   “Mold Giant Footprint”

          REF-GIS “Sample Giant Scat”

            “Darby, see if you can find these books on the shelves?” She held onto the note she found and walked over to where I was standing. I asked her to find 349-GIA. She looked at the wall of books and figured quickly that the numbers ran in sequence from smallest at the front of the cabin to largest at the back. I was standing close to the three-hundred section.

            Darby scanned the bookshelf and found 349-GIA.

            “I found it,” she said. The front of it had hand-written on it, “The Genealogy of Giant Species – Family A”. She cracked the book and flipped through the yellowed pages. “It looks like a family tree or something,” she said.

            “Of giants?” I asked.

            “Darius, there are no such things.”

            The pages were all handwritten and each page has lists and lists of names that seem to date back to the Middle Ages. As Darby looked through the journal, I looked for the next book. I looked on the shelf where Darby had found the one, she was holding. I looked for 355-GIJ and quickly found it. The cabin’s organization made it very easy.

            “Darby, look at this. 'Giant Encounters.' It's a hand-written journal. Same as the one you have.”

            I flipped through it and read it aloud:

          “These giants have a patient and peaceful culture. By living mostly in deep-forested lands, they maintain a simple lifestyle to be treasured by the earth’s other human inhabitants. These giants live among the trees. They make their homes near water supplies like rivers and streams in terrain that mere humans would find impossible to cover by vehicle or foot.

          They are incredible climbers. Larger than average feet with bones that appear to be double and triple-jointed make it easy for the giants to scale cliffs or climb even the tallest trees. Many giants rest in tall, thick trees where they can lounge and sleep unnoticed from below.

          Their skin appears leather-like from time in the sun and they have similar hair patterns to humans. Many giants leave their hair and beards untrimmed and long. Some tie branches, rocks, and plant material in their hair as camouflage for hunting forest animals. Others even allow moss to grow within their hair and beards, disguising their tall appearance as if they were trees. Most have large patches of hair that grow on their chest and back giving them an animistic look. These dwellers seem to be much more primitive than the giant civilizations of the past.

          History has taught us that giants were once proud people, civilized and peaceful. But human dominance forced them into seclusion and exile. Now they live as primitive a life as possible.  Conclaves of giants are merely small communities or co-ops that share resources for survival. They come together to share their harvests, hunts, and water supplies but remain reclusive for survival. It’s rare to see more than one giant at a time. They travel solo to prevent discovery.

          The clothing of these giants is simple, modest, and practical. It covers what it needs to cover and blends closely to the color of their skin, which can be dark in pigment like tanned browns. Many of the men remain shirtless or wear natural weave vests. Both male and female giants wear simple jewelry, which looks to include both precious metals and gems. One female, who I encountered, seemed to be of high regard. She wore many ornate soft-metal rings, necklaces, bracelets, and an out-of-place crown. A relic of past generational royalty perhaps? It appeared as if it was from European royalty.

          These giants wear no shoes as their feet are thick-skinned from the rugged terrain of the forest ground.

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