Secrets of Shingle Creek

Shingle Creek Road was a place everyone knew of, very few talked about, and absolutely no one would ever admit to visiting. You'd find no gaily strung paper lanterns here, no sweet dance band music or pastel girls in taffeta dresses and silver slippers. Shingle Creek was a low place, a dark place, and its patrons had no regard for the outside world or its rules. They came in search of drugs and rotgut whiskey, cards and dice and back rooms with blacked out windows and used up women. No moonlight penetrated through the thick, low hanging trees and even the law left it alone. Any secrets Shingle Creek kept, it kept to itself.

But for the fact that our newest foster dog, a young and rambunctious Golden Retriever with an adventurous spirit had jumped the back fence and taken off like a shot after a trespassing deer, I'd never have found it at all. After a half hour of crashing and hacking my way through the dense woods, I was scratched, bleeding and bad tempered when I finally came upon the dog, hackles raised and barking non-stop at the ruined remains of what looked to be an abandoned farmhouse.

In the fading daylight, it wasn't much, just a deserted, mostly falling down wreck of a building, rotting in some places, fire damaged in others. Even so, there was something about it, some sense of foreboding. It felt vaguely threatening and I had an idea the dog sensed it as well. He kept to the edge of the clearing, defiantly growling, and when I took a tentative step forward, he snatched firmly at the hem of my blue jeans and tugged.

“Okay, already,” I told him a little impatiently, “You don't have to get rude about it.”

He let go - reluctantly - but then began anxiously pacing back and forth, his eyes darting between me and the old house, alternately whining and barking and looking more and more distressed. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly prickle and for a second or two, had the ridiculous notion that I was being watched.

“Damn fool dog,” I muttered, “Now you're giving me the creeps. C'mon, let's get out of here.”

As I reached to clip the lead to his collar, he bared his teeth and lunged past me, spinning me around with a sideswipe to the hip that unexpectedly knocked me to my knees. He let out with a long and eerily un-doglike howl and that's when I heard the voice, gravely and roughish but not menacing. At least, not much.

“This here's private property, girlie,” it said, “And trespassin's a good way to get yourself shot.”

I turned to see a man in overalls and work boots with a pistol strapped to his hip and a beer bottle in one hand, leaning casually against the door jamb. He tipped his cap and nodded and I felt a shiver - a minor one, to be sure, because the dog, now quiet, was sitting calmly at his feet - run up my spine. I sensed sterness but no menace.

“Dog ran off,” I offered truthfully, “I just followed him.”

“Figured,” he said, “But you'll be wantin' to head back now. We ain't much for company.” He shifted his weight and gestured with the beer bottle toward the remnants of a path I hadn't noticed. “Ain't much, but after awhile it passes for a road. Be some longer but easier'n through the woods. It'll take you out to the main highway.”

I managed to thank him and when I slapped my thigh, the dog trotted obediently to my side and we started for the rutted path.

“And girlie,” I heard from behind me, “I ain't expectin' to see you here again. You'll be wantin' to forget about bein' here in the altogether. Shingle Creek ain't no place for the likes of you or the dog. We clear?”

“As glass!” I called over my shoulder but the screen door had already slammed shut and the porch was empty and there was no one to hear.

The overgrown, rutted path did indeed turn into something that passed for a road but it took the better part of an hour before we reached the highway and I couldn't imagine trying to drive it after dark. On foot and whiskey'd up it seemed even less probable. It felt as if the woods might reach out and grab any unsuspecting passerby and I was foolishly glad for the company of the dog.

I took the Shingle Creek man's advice and never did tell anyone about that afternoon but I often thought about it and wondered how much of what the rumor mill ground out was fiction and how much might be reality.  A couple of winters later, I read about a couple of fishermen finding a body in Darkwater Lake, just a few miles from that lonely clearing where the dog and I had wound up.  There was a pistol strapped to his thigh, a pair of dice in a velvet pouch in his hip pocket and a moldy wad of cash tucked under his belt but no wallet or id.  He'd been badly beaten and then shot, the paper reported, and anyone with any information was asked to get in touch with the county sheriff's office.  After that, I wondered a whole lot less.