Lost Keys and St. Anthony’s Corner by Brian Michael Barbeito

​Lost Keys and St. Anthony’s Corner
​

A woman appeared out of the thicket and startled me. She was middle aged and wore denim, a sweater, and rubber boots that said Hunter on the top in small lettering. I did a quick energetic and pragmatic survey of her aura and her apparel and decided she was not crazy or a threat. I would love to say I read her past and future, but it is not the case. It was mainly the boots, because those boots are a sign of affluence. If women can glance at a man’s shoes, then why can’t men glance at a woman’s footwear? This is not to say that a well off person can’t be nuts, especially since this is often the case, but let’s just say for our purposes here, that she didn’t seem like she had been living in the forest or in any type of real distress.

My wife and I were there with the dogs, and the woman had a dog also. She looked bothered by something and offered, ‘There is police tape in the forest, just up the way a bit, on a back trail.’ I didn’t say much, and she continued with, ‘I want to go look at the crime scene a bit more, but with you both if you don’t mind, because I am frightened, but interested.’
‘Sure, let’s go,’ my wife said, and that is what we did.

There was in fact a crime scene and the yellow tape was all around marked with the regional police designations. Someone had dug up an area and they had put plastic under the dirt that was brought up. I could see they had been sifting through the earth looking for something. The lady, or Hunter as I named her in my mind, was intrigued and perhaps had watched too much television, because I could tell she thought it was a murder scene when it could have been that someone had buried an old pet there, or something else more prosaic.

We spoke briefly about this and that, and shared stories about strange encounters in the woodlands. There were keys that were found unclaimed, odd sounds at times, even peculiar people. But those stories we agreed are nearly always open ended, sort of unclaimed like lost keys themselves.

‘I don’t know what it all is,’ I mentioned to her, ‘not wanting to obsess like it seemed she was, but rather continue with the walk,’ but the police rarely give information about things like that, and other stories about animal predation or lurking wolves human or actual are always about a friend of a friend that knew someone who was through here…’

‘Yes, but this looks serious.’

‘They found something, or someone did, and notified them. I’ll give you that.’

The three of us stood there in the early autumn with our two dogs and her one dog. The place was verdant but wet, which took away from the summer picaresque scenes. Feral flowers once proud, bloomed, were wilting, getting ready to re-enter the earth like whatever was buried that the police dug up. I looked up at the canopy that made a firmament over the forest and sighed. Glancing down I noticed that the police tape was bobbing up and down practically violently, but nobody, not even the canines, was touching it.
‘There,’ I said, motioning with my head.

Now Hunter, who was half immersed in this whole thing, was all in. I was now half in and so was my wife.

‘Look at the leaves,’ I cautioned, ‘they are completely and absolutely still. There is no wind whatsoever. What is making that tape go like that?’

And then it would stop suddenly.

And begin again.

Stop.

Go.

Stop.

Go.

The lady wanted this to be her moment, her real experience of the paranormal. Though I have spoken to spirit, and rescued spirit, and am a true believer, I was not receiving anything. But I knew this lady really had watched too many television shows, both crime programs and paranormal ones.

‘I am here,’ she yelled, ‘I am ready to hear what you have to say!’ It was then I felt embarrassed for everyone. I just wanted to go. But there was the tape, and it did keep starting and stopping. I told her to film the thing and that I was going to look at it. I did. I looked closely. There was nothing touching the tape like a branch. The trees were large, and there was no motion to them either.

After a while we did separate from her, left her there, and told her to be careful. We found a key not far away. A week later, another key, from the same type of vehicle. This could be discerned because there was a designation in the form of an auto decal design on the key. It was a Saturn, which I thought about in a willfully poetic way, and said to myself,

Saturn. The planet that the term saturnine derives from. And it is sad. Sad that something happened, to something or someone it looks like. Also sad, if you will, that nobody will find out the facts, the whats and whys and wherefores…

And Hunter. She is sadder than she knows. She is well off but a bit too bored. Maybe she killed someone. Then…No, it could not be, the forest is not the only feral thing around town, but your imagination is…wild. Yet, - stranger things have happened. Maybe those boots are just a cover. Maybe the boots belong to the victim. And two keys, from what are probably the same vehicle, both found close together on a small labyrinthine back path that hardly any soul travels. Maybe Hunter did have something to do with it. She friggin’ killed someone, is totally ‘off her nut,’ and somehow dropped these keys as she was burying the body. The rest of the song and dance is a way of getting her sick jollies. Not only that! Maybe she planned on killing when she thought it was just me she was confronting, but with the wife and dogs and all, it was just too many, too risky, too much work…

And how about the end of summer itself? A certain sadness creeps in with the autumnal wind, and with the early nights and the cold that takes away the robust August flowers of several different hues, shapes, and scents…

In the light of the morning each time, we left the keys on a sign at the beginning of the path that creates a corner along the way. It is where walkers leave  things for one another. It’s like an honor system, an open air space of lost and found of sun glasses, animal tags, clothing items, and of course keys. They should call it St. Anthony’s corner, because he is the patron saint of lost things.

It’s been weeks, and nobody has claimed the keys. One just waits there affixed to a part of metal on a wooden pole, and the other juts out from the wooden frame of a large map that the town has made. I for one, can hardly believe that one, or two persons, would not come and claim their car keys. I scoured the news but there was no mention of any type of crime.

I don’t know what became of the lady, and I am not sure what happened there. I do know that my wife, the dogs and I, got caught in the dark that night because of the delay. I heard something following me just off to the back left, flanking me as it were. My wife was ahead. I mentioned it to her. ‘Something is here following…’
‘It’s just the dogs.’

‘It’s not the dogs, because they are in front of me and besides, we are on a path made of sand now.’

Nothing else was said. The noise of the footsteps in the dark, about fifteen feet behind, became more pronounced. But we kind of scurried along faster and made it the car. The light of the road, those electric lamps, were like a haven. Driving out of there, I asked her what she thought it was.

‘I don’t know, but I heard it too.’



Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian writer, poet and photographer. Recent work appears at Fiction International from San Diego State University, CV2 The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing, and at Catch and Release-The Columbia Journal of Arts and Literature. Nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net Award, Brian is the author of Chalk Lines (Fowl Pox Press, 2013, cover art by Virgil Kay). He is currently at work on the written and visual nature narrative titled Pastoral Mosaics, Journeys through Landscapes Rural.