I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House

Dave and his four-year-old, Jacob, find a circus tent in the woods behind their house. A strange voice invites them through the dark doorway.

When they refuse, the tent swallows them.

What follows is a nightmare fleeing through a maze of circus tents. Strange performers lurk inside. They want Dave and his little boy to put on a show. The audience: a shifting figure on a platform high above the trapeze wires.

With Jacob perched in the crook of his arm, Dave determines to outsmart the boss of this dark circus, and escape this horrifying tent.

I took my son on a walk in the woods behind our house.
It’s weird how isolated that little patch of forest can make you feel, even though at any point where you stand inside it, you’re never more than two hundred yards away from a manicured lawn and a three-bedroom, two-bath.
Because that forest is floodplain.
When Merve Builders bought the 121 acres from the old farmer, only 97 acres of it was buildable. Those last 24 acres were a strip of woods that follow a creek—and upstream is a little pond with a dam.
When it rains more than an inch or two in a day, water pours over that old stone dam and that little creek rises until bushes and tree roots are submerged. When it storms really bad, these woods get filled with ten or twelve feet of water.
But that also means that the undergrowth stays reasonable the rest of the time, so it’s a nice place for a walk.
Or, it always was before the day that my four-year-old Jacob asked to go play monsters in the woods.
He wanted me to do a big silly growl and chase him around the oaks and poplars, past the tangles of greenbriers and honeysuckle, and straight through squelching mud that never quite dried, and that always released a scent of rot when you freed your shoes, exposing dirt to the air that hadn’t tasted freshness for weeks or months or—who knows—maybe years.
My wife was out with our daughter Christy, who at age eight wanted to get her nails done. Girl’s day out.
Before kids, my wife and I would spend two Saturdays per month volunteering. One swinging a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. Another helping refugees practice English. But kids need time, attention, and supplies, so now our Saturdays usually consisted of running errands or a family activity.
Often, like that day, we split up to give Jacob and Christy some one-on-one time.
That morning, while the girls went out, Jacob and I were left with our testosterone and at least three hours.
It was an autumn day. The leaves had moved passed the “oh how beautiful” stage of bright yellows and oranges, and now were in that interstitial moment between their last gasp of brightness and their plummeting, fluttering deaths. They were dark browns and decaying burgundies.
I zipped Jacob up into his Ghostbusters sweatshirt, complete with screen-printed proton pack on the back.
“I wanna wear my rain boots,” he declared.
“Good idea.” I placed a baseball cap with a dinosaur on the front onto his head. It wasn’t cold enough for a ski cap, but I’d feel better if he had something on his head.
He wasn’t thinking about the cold. “We can splash, right Daddy?”
“In the puddles? Sure can. Although it might be more mud than water.”
I put on my own jacket and boots while following him out the back door.
Jacob shouted into the air, “We’re gonna play monsters!”
Our backyard slopes down to the creek that cost Merve Builders 24 acres of buildable lots. I keep the grass between the house and the creek decently green, and I keep the footbridge across the creek maintained well enough.
But across the creek, I let that be woods.
I had to jog to keep up with Jacob. I used to worry when he’d run with abandon down our hill of a backyard. I pictured him losing his balance at the end and splashing into the creek.
But he’s a coordinated kid. Or maybe he’s just fallen ten times more than the average four-year-old, so he’s had ten times more lessons on how to avoid tumbling head over heels.
His rubber rain boots clunked onto the wooden bridge. “Come be a monster!”
He shrieked in feigned terror. “Wait, it’s a skinny bridge!” He climbed up onto the two-by-four railing. He stuck his arms out to either side for balance.
My stomach flipped, but I bit my tongue. A three-foot fall onto the bridge wouldn’t hurt much. A five-foot fall into the creek would only mean a trip back inside to change clothes.
I had to let him be a little boy.
I stomped onto the bridge. I roared, adding a silly trill to my voice as to not sound too scary.
Jacob carefully walked across the railing. At the end, he screamed playfully for help, then lowered himself to his belly to drop down onto the bridge.
He took off running over dead leaves. They were too wet and soft to crunch underfoot.
I chased him in irregular paths, around trees and through muddy spots.
I saw the circus tent before Jacob did.
He was too focused on the fun he was having. But as Jacob ran around a particularly large tangle of dying honeysuckle that climbed a tall pine tree, I chased him around it and suddenly saw a different part of the woods.
I saw a circus tent.
It was vertically striped bright red and yellow, a stark contrast to the browns, ambers, grays, and scant greens of the autumn forest.
I realized I was staring without moving while Jacob continued his play. His squeals now felt like they were piercing a purposeful quiet. We were mice still having avoided the searching gaze of the barn owl, but my boy’s carefree laughter would soon give us away.
The tent was round with at least a seventy-foot diameter. Its pointed top rose three-quarters of the height of the tallest trees.
The entrance at the front was pulled inside and open. I could see only darkness inside.
Finally, Jacob noticed the circus tent.
“Daddy, look. What’s that?” His posture grew stiff. He walked to my side without taking his eyes off the tent.
Even though we stood two hundred feet away, and trees obscured part of the view, I still felt uncomfortable about it.
It was technically on our property. Near the back, so likely overlapping with the neighbor on the far side of the wooded floodplain.
Who, speaking of, should likely have the same questions that I did.
Namely, what the hell was a circus tent doing in the woods behind my house?
Unless they were the ones who’d set it up. Some kind of party.
That was a hell of a gamble, as there was a rain in the forecast, and it wouldn’t take but half an inch of rain to turn these woods into a mud-pie. Another couple inches to flood them to the point you’d be wading through knee-high water to pass through that tent entranceway.
Jacob interrupted my thoughts. “There’s clowns in there.”
My gut twisted just a little. I placed my hand on the back of his neck. “Can you see someone inside there?”
“No, but clowns live in red tents.”
He was at the age where he constantly asked about how the world worked. “At the doctor they give you shots?” “Saws are for cutting boards, but hammers are for nails?” “When I’m five, I will be as tall as you?”
His declaration about clowns living in red tents must be a law of the universe that he’d extrapolated from a picture book or Disney Plus cartoon.
Still, I didn’t like the idea of someone watching us from within the darkness of the tent, clowns or no. It sent a chill down my spine and made me want to scoop up Jacob, take him inside, and lock the doors.
I rebelled against that fear. This was my lot, worthless floodplain though it may have been. And if the neighbor was having some poorly planned shindig out here, it’d be my insurance getting sued if someone got hurt.
“Let’s go see what they’re doing,” I said to Jacob.