Knife Hollow

It was 10pm, way past her bedtime. Andrea snuck out of her house, and walked down the gravel road the half mile to Jason’s. She slinked around back to where his bedroom was, and peeked in. She knew he was still awake, because she could see the light of his flashlight hovering there over his bed, underneath the sheet. He was reading something. “Probably nothing interesting” she thought. Jason had a tendency to read books past his reading level. Probably something for junior high kids, or maybe even high-schoolers she thought. She tapped their secret knock on his window. 1 loud, 2 quiet, 1 loud, 2 quick and quiet. The sheets flew off of a bespectacled, mop headed boy of eleven. He scampered over to the window.
“Andrea! What are you doing here?!?” exclaimed Jason in an exasperated whisper.
“I want to show you something” she said in a normal talking voice.
“SHHH!! My parents will hear! I don’t think they’ve gone to bed yet”.
Andrea stared at him with her “are you serious?” look.
“What do you want to show me?” he asked. “It’s late. We have church in the morning.” Knowing that Andrea’s adventures usually got the two of them in trouble, or at the very least extremely dirty, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to get involved this time. They both sang in their tiny church’s choir, and had to be there by 8:30, so he thought that might be a good deterrent. He knew deep down though it would do nothing to stop her.
“Just get some shoes on and come out here. It’s a surprise.”

He knew then he wouldn’t be able to get any sleep until he did just as she said. Last month, she’d sat outside his window all night trying to get him to come out and watch for UFO’s with her. Turned out she had had checked a book out from the library about aliens the week prior, and the book had mentioned crop circles. She was sure that they would land in her family’s corn field. He never relented, and because of that, had never gotten any sleep that night. She finally gave in as the sun was rising, which coincidently was about 5 minutes before his Mom would come in to wake him up to do chores. He found that it was much easier to just humor Andrea’s whims, and usually she’d let him go home and at least get a few hours sleep.

He quickly threw on some old sneakers from his closet, and as quietly as he could, slid the screen off his window. He shimmied and somersaulted out of his window to land on his feet. It was a move that he had perfected over the years thanks to the many evening excursions Andrea had needed an accomplice for.
“What are we doing tonight?” He sighed.
“Just come with me, you’ll see”.
She led the way back down his driveway, and out onto the gravel road. Even though there was never any traffic on it this late at night, they decided to walk in the drainage ditch off the side of the road, so if they saw headlights, they could duck into the woods quickly. If someone spotted them, they were sure to get into trouble. They walked the half mile back to her place, and then past her driveway, and stopped about 50 yards down the road.
“Where are we going?” Jason asked.
“You’ll see. It’s going to be so worth it. Hold on a sec though, I want to grab some stuff from my place.”
She ran quietly back to her driveway, and up it towards the barn, and disappeared around the back of it. Five minutes later she was back, carrying a small brown backpack.
“What’s in there?” Jason asked, knowing the chances of getting a straight answer were about the same as his parents being happy that he was sneaking around in the middle of the night.
“You’ll see. Don’t worry so much Jason, I’ve got us covered.”
“Can we try to not die tonight though? Because of you, I can’t even go on the bridge over Knife Creek without closing my eyes.” Jason was thinking back to their midnight excursion from last week. As much as he liked Andrea, he really wished that he had a friend that didn’t enjoy doing the most dangerous things she could think of.
“Don’t be silly, we haven’t died yet!” she exclaimed.
“Key word is yet.” He sighed.

She grabbed him by the wrist, and started dragging him along again. The followed the road to the end of the corn field, and cut across the tracks left by the tractors and trucks, and headed towards Pastor’s field. Pastor’s field was a small field where once a year, the Pastor from the church would preach a sermon in July. It actually belonged to the Petersen’s, and separated part of their corn fields from Andrea’s family’s, but the church had been preaching the sermon there for as far back as anyone could remember. It was only about an acre in size, and had a couple apple trees towards the middle and to the east, and a steep hill on the opposite side from which they came. The other two sides were corn fields. They came up to the edge of the field.
“Shhhh.” said Andrea.
Jason nodded, starting to wonder what they were doing. Pastor’s Field was creepy at night. The 2 gnarled apple trees in the field looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Jason didn’t believe in magic, or aliens, or anything like that, but was still leery of trees that desperately looked like they wanted to eat children. They walked out into the middle of the field, with just a sliver of the Moon and the stars providing light. They walked up the little incline towards the end of the field that looked down onto a small meadow that lay down the hill in Knife Hollow. Andrea grabbed Jason by the hand.
“Close your eyes.”
“I don’t want to” said Jason. This couldn’t be good. Nothing like this could ever be good with Andrea.
“Fine then, I’ll blindfold you.” She pulled a bandana out of her backpack and proceeded to wrap it loosely over his glasses and eyes.
“Don’t worry, I’ll hold your hand” she said.
Jason sighed as he was led towards the steep side of the field. He felt like he knew what a cow felt like now as it was led to slaughter. His heart started pounding, and he thought of a billion things that could kill him out here. He even started worrying about UFOs. But just as he was started thinking about the time he watched “Alien” with his dad, Andrea stopped and said “We’re here. Don’t take off your blindfold yet. I need to do something.”
He heard the sound of the backpack being unzipped, and Andrea rifling around in it. 30 seconds went by, and he felt her hand again grabbing for his.
“Ok she said. I’m going to sit you down, and then take the blindfold off”
Jason started pondering what she was going to make him sit on. An ant hill? A beehive? Bear trap? The side of a bridge, again? But when he sat down, he felt a slight reassurance that he was sitting on something soft. Something that felt like a quilt. Andrea reached behind him, and took the blindfold off. He looked at her.
“What are we doing out here?” he asked. “We could have sat around in my backyard.”
“Shhh.” She said. “Look down there. Down to the meadow. This is what I wanted to show you.”
Jason looked around, and noticed they were right at the edge of the hill that led down to Knife Hollow and the meadow. And then he saw what she had dragged him all the way out here for. Down below the meadow was entirely lit up by fireflies. More fireflies than he had ever seen, or could have imagined. Tiny lights blinked on and off, sometimes in unison, and illuminated every blade of grass and every flower down there. They could see everything, almost as if it were day time.
“Wow. That’s…beautiful” he exclaimed in a hushed tone.
“I know.” She said. “You’re the only one I could think to show this to. I knew you’d like it.”
Jason could think of nothing to say except “Thank you.”
Andrea smiled, and turned her head back towards the meadow.