Chapter 4 City Girl In The Country Woods

The sound of a rooster cock-a-doodle-ing roused Olivia the next morning. Groggily she tried to remember if she had seen a chicken coop anywhere close by when she drove in. Nowhere in the listing did it say rooster for an alarm clock. She would have remembered that. Irritated, she tried to sit up but forgot she was on a blow-up mattress on the floor. After a bit of wiggling around she landed on the floor. Mumbling to herself she put on her glasses to stumble to the master bathroom. Between all the driving, lugging things yesterday, and sleeping on the air mattress had left her back aching. She stripped off her pjs to climb into the shower.

As the water warmed up, she placed a vanilla scented aromatherapy steamer in the corner. Quickly she lathered her hair with a vanilla and cinnamon scented shampoo and scrubbed the memories of her travels off her skin while the conditioner worked its magic. Once clean she stood with the hot water beating on her back. She was overjoyed to discover the water pressure was set to pummel thy enemy hard. The aroma of vanilla faded as the water started to cool off. A content smile spread across her face, she rubbed herself dry with an oversized plush towel that she had bought after the divorce. That was the best shower she had taken in recent memory. Thoughts of Sheldon floated through her mind, trying to chase away her happiness. There had been many fights over nice smelling products. Her ex had banned anything that made him smell like a girl. Plush oversized towels were nonsense as well, the cheaper small ones worked just fine according to him. If she needed the oversized towels, she clearly needed to lose weight.

With a mental bird flipping she pushed him from her thoughts as she fastened her aqua leather cuff on her left wrist. A glance in the mirror closest to her showed it was too fogged up to do her hair in. She frowned as once again there was a dark shape over her shoulder. It was hazy but appeared to be a dark human shape standing in the shower where she had just been. Quickly she whipped her around to see the shower was in fact empty. Looking back at the mirror the black shape was gone. Keeping eyes fixed on where the shadow had been in the mirror, she hastily braided her mud brown hair into a rope that hung down between her shoulder blades. Muttering about maybe being allergic to the fresh country air, she hung up the towel to walk naked into the bedroom.

Today she wanted to explore her land. Laughter bubbled out of her thinking about how she is now a landowner. Her life had changed dramatically in the past year. According to the weather app on her phone the temperature was supposed to get up to a hundred degrees. Chicago was nowhere near that hot this time of year. Fearing she would melt, Olivia opted for lightweight active wear. The no show socks with dancing avocados on them made her smile when she pulled them out of the trunk. As she dressed, the window kept drawing her attention. Something about the backyard didn’t seem right. She gave it a last inquisitive glance while tying her shoes.

After locking the backdoor, she slipped her keys and phone in the little backpack that held a couple of bottles of water. It was early, the sun wasn’t fully overhead yet, but the temperature was already in the eighties. The storm hadn’t cooled anything down, but it had raised the humidity levels. She was surprised that it wasn’t muddy. Briefly she wondered how hard the ground had to have been to not be soggy after that kind of storm. What kind of place had she moved to?

Stepping off the small, covered patio she glanced back towards the master bedroom. Odd, she thought. She was sure that when she was closing the window during the storm last night the lightning had lit up the yard to show a tree standing a few feet from the window. Now the area was clear to the tree line. She couldn’t stop the shiver that went down her spine. Deciding it must have just been a trick of the light, she pushed it from her mind to follow the path that led down an earthen set of stairs cut into the side of the drop off. The stairs ended at a nearby path that wrapped around the vine covered dirt wall. Careful not to fall down the sharp slope beside the path it wrapped around to the side yard that gently angled down to a little plateau. The trees covered the sloping ground that led to the flat clearing, giving it the feel of a raised platform. It looked like the perfect place to have a fire pit and watch the night sky. She pulled her phone from her pack to add a note to buy a fire pit plus some patio furniture. Not wanting acres of burned trees, she also added a fire extinguisher to the list.

Walking through the trees, Olivia felt eyes on her again. Coming to a complete stop she turned in a tight little circle looking into the trees. From somewhere deep in her memory came the tidbit that Bigfoot reportedly spent time in East Texas. There was no follow-up as to which part of East Texas they preferred. Fingers crossed, she hoped they liked it closer to the Louisiana line. From behind her she heard a scurrying noise that seemed to echo around the trees, making it impossible to be sure which direction it was coming from. The adrenaline flooding her system had her reaching into her bag for her taser. Silently she cursed not having bear spray. She wasn’t sure if they were in the area but figured if it could take a bear, it could take a bigfoot. The noise got closer. It was close enough now she could focus on the direction it was coming from. Suddenly an animal burst from between the two trees right in front of her.