The following takes place about a year after the events in Alleys Part 1.
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I've known Zach now for almost a year, and in that time we've been very close. The only time I can remember not talking to Zach was when I had that dream in 4th grade, but we soon got over it. It was 5th grade now which meant we had new classes this year. Zach and I only hoped to have a lot of classes together. I finally had received my schedule in the mail because my mother always wanted to know what classes I had early, so she knew what to get me when it came to school supplies. I called Zach to tell him about my schedule when I find out he got his schedule early too. We compared our classes and made fun of some of the teachers we had this year. The one class that we most excited for was 'Life Science.' Only 5th graders had this class available to them and Zach and I both had it together. This meant that we were finally given the opportunity to go on the field trips into the nature park. I've never actually been there on a field trip during school hours, but my mom would sometimes take Zach and I there to "explore" the woods. Although we never found anything of significance, it was still enjoyable. The nature park was made up of long winding trails that sometimes would lead into small boardwalks that acted as bridges which would bring you across small marshes and bodies of water. The trails also met up at various shelters that kids would sometimes have their birthday parties at. Zach always would always tell me that he wanted to have his party at one particular shelter. The shelter overlooked a small river and the place was surrounded by trees and thick areas of bushes. They were so thick that it would have been impossible to even walk through. Because of the horrid appearance of the location I hated it, and I never really understood why he liked it so much. I never shared my opinion with him about it, I simply gave him a nod of approval. ( I assumed he thought I was planning him a surprise party. )

Tomorrow was the first day of school and my mom wanted me to get as much rest as possible before the first day. As a 5th grader and for the rest of my middle school years I never understood the importance of going to bed earlier before the first day of school. To me the rest of the school year felt no different than the first day. Of course with the exception of the last day, that was different for every student. The last day was different mostly because of the anticipation of having summer start the next day, but it was August and that didn't matter yet.
The next morning my mother woke me up and quickly rushed me into the shower, when I got out I was presented with a warm bowl of oatmeal. As I was eating I glanced over to see my mom had already packed up my lunch and my school supplies. "Are you almost done?" My mom asked. "We're going to be late." She hissed. I took a quick sip of milk and grabbed my things. My mom never wanted to be late not only for the shear fact of her being late for work, but she wanted to show me the importance of being on time. When I walked into class I found Zach immediately and sat down next to him.
It looked like something was bothering him, he was pale and looked sleep deprived. "Are you ok man?" I asked. "Yeah." He whispered. "I didn't get much sleep last night, I didn't get home until 1 in the morning." Once he said this I assumed that his family must have gone out of town for the weekend.
"Oh, were did you guys go?" I asked. "What do you mea--" he paused. "Oh...I..Uh..I'll tell you later." I quickly replied "Dude just tell me." Right when I said this the teacher called attention to the class and introduced herself. She then explained the rules of her class and then escorted us to the next classroom. Most of the teachers followed this same routine. Until 'Life Science' the day wasn't filled with much excitement. Life Science definitely made the day much more exciting. In fact at the time Life Science wasn't only just a fun class, it was the source of many problems.
A good month or two had passed and were finally starting our first research project for Life Science.

The project required us to study the environment and activities of birds. It didn't require a specific bird of study, making the project too broad and less exciting. In fact I didn't care too much for the project and neither did Zach. The only thing we looked forward to were the field trips we occasionally had to take into the nature park to make "observations" for the project. We were individually responsible for our own work but we were allowed to go in groups to specific areas in the woods. There was of course always a teacher or a teacher's assistant to make sure students were actively doing their work and not "goofing" off. ( Not to mention, to make sure that kids didn't run into areas of the woods that were prohibited, and were owned by the offices next to our school. ) I never understood why, but the school always warned us not to go behind the chained linked fence that was behind the river. They made this rule extremely clear by making the punishment an out of school suspension or even expulsion.

Today was Tuesday which meant we had to go the nature park for the project. It's only been a week since the project was assigned so we were still early in the research process. Our group was made up of 3 kids, Zach another kid named Brian, and me. ( Not to mention the teacher's assistant.)
The teacher had made designated areas for the groups to be assigned to and they would alternate every visit. Our group was assigned to the area next to the shelter that Zach had always talked about. Strangely enough, I now realized the fence was located across the river that the shelter overlooked.

As we were walking towards the shelter the fence slowly came into view, as it did the teacher's assistant started to lecture us about the fence and what the consequences would have been if we had even attempted to climb it. Brian had his binoculars and Zach and I had our clipboards. We started to write down simple observations; How the trees looked, how the weather was and more things similar to that.
We all soon found that we were quickly running out "observations" to write down, so Zach made the suggestion to cross the river. ( Which now that I think about it.. It was actually a stream. ) We asked the teacher's assistant if we could go across the stream, and expecting a "No" we were surprised to get an approval. She reminded us yet again to not go behind the fence.

While we were on the other side of the stream we saw how long the fence really was. It stretched on for what seemed to be a mile. We didn't go far, and we didn't find much either. As we kept walking, I remembered the first day of school, and how strange Zach acted and how he forgot to tell me were he went with his family that weekend. As this thought passed by in my head, Zach let out an "Oh my God."
"What is it?" I asked as I was trying to catch up to him. What I saw was very disturbing to a 5th grader.
It was a dead cat. The cat was in a plastic bag and was hanging off of a small branch on a tree on the other side of the fence. It's innards were strewed about the bag, and it looked like the cat's stomach was cut open from the bottom up. The blood seemed dry so the body must have been there for a couple of days. I wasn't squeamish but the smell made me sick. When Brian saw this he said that he was going to throw up, so he ran to the teacher's assistant. Brian told her about the cat and she immediately rushed over to us. "I'm taking Brian back to the school, you two need to stay here, do not touch the cat and like I said, stay put." She took a breath. "I'll be back in ten minutes." We nodded and obeyed her request. As she left we continued to study the mangled cat. Something made Zach freeze, he pointed and simply said "Dude.." I walked over to see what he was pointing at. I was stunned, I saw something that meant more than just something in a dream. ( Because now it had become a reality. )
On the other side of the fence was a tall dead tree, and carved in the middle of the tree was the same symbol from Zach's dream. ( Just below the symbol was Zach's initials. ) I swallowed and said "It had to have been a prank man, maybe someone heard us talking about it last year." He looked at me and said. "How could this be a prank?"... "No one is allowed on the side of the fence." His point was simple, and logical for a ten year old. ( Then again, what ten year old does that to a cat? ) I shrugged off my theory of it being just a prank. "Hey man look at this." Zach said. He pointed out that there was a small gap in between the fence and the tree with cat hanging off of it. "No way Zach, we're not going over there do you know how much trouble we'd get into?" There absolutely no way I was going over there and Zach knew this. "Come on man, we'll only be a minute and the teacher said she would be back in ten minutes." He paused. "We'll be back before she notices." Zach usually wasn't good at convincing me to do anything but this time was different, I was curious myself. We slipped through the fence in between the tree. I covered my nose as we went passed the decaying cat. "Why would anybody do this?" I asked, as I eyeballed the cat above me. "I don't know man, that's why we're coming over here." Zach grabbed my hand and pulled me through. I stood up and brushed off the mud and leaves that was on my shirt. "Where do we go now?" I asked. "Let's go that way, it looks like there's a shed over there."

We crept alongside a thick area of bushes, and no matter how slow we walked it seemed as if the crunching of leaves below us was getting louder. "Ow!" Zach grunted. "What happened?" I asked. "I stepped on a thorn!" He hissed in pain. I knew how painful that must have felt, but I hushed him to be quiet.
I didn't notice it at first, but I later noticed that it seemed as if the smell of the dead cat was surrounding us. This was followed by a slight weather change, the air felt hot and muggy and this made walking tedious. I didn't realize how far we actually had walked until I turned around and noticed that the fence was no longer in view. At this point, I had already forgot that we were still in school, and that if we didn't go back the assistant would be looking for us. I brought this up to Zach, and told him we should head back. He told me to be quiet and said he wanted to make it to the shed first. I was frustrated, and threatened to go back and leave him there. He sighed, and thought for a second. "Dude, let's at least take a look behind those bushes. I hesitated, but agreed. The patch of bushes that he mentioned was directly ahead of us. They were surrounded by very tall oak trees, their branches hung low and most of the moss had either fallen off or were barely touching the ground.
"Watch out for that poison ivy." Zach said as we were approaching the bushes. I kept my distance, and we began to shuffle our way through the bushes. At this moment, I heard a loud snap of a stick behind us. I jerked my head around to see our follower; Nothing. Zach must not of heard this because he was petrified by something that I will never understand. ( However nothing made sense in my childhood )
I stood next to Zach and froze. At the end of the path in front of us stood a very tall and thin man wearing a business suit. ( He stared at us for what seemed an eternity ) He had no hair and had multiple tentacle like arms that were outstretched and seemed to be welcoming us to him. I tried to identify this man, but it looked like he didn't have a face. ( Surely he had a face? He had to have a face right? ) Just as we saw this a hand grabbed my shoulder. My heart stopped, horrified as to who or what was standing behind us. I closed my eyes and turned around. When I opened my eyes a let out a sigh of relief; It was the teacher's assistant. She didn't look angry, She looked afraid. She swallowed and whispered. "We need to go, it's very dangerous out here." She turned around and began to walk towards the path that led back to the fence. Dangerous? Why did she say it was dangerous? It was a nature park and we have been out here numerous times and knew it wasn't dangerous. I turned around to face were the man had been standing blinked and rubbed my eyes. The tall man was gone.

The teachers assistant's words began to ring in my head, did she know something we didn't? ( Did the school know something we didn't? ) The sound of crunching leaves was broken when Zach let out a "Psst." "What?" I whispered. "You saw it right?.. You saw that thing?" Even though I wanted to say no I said that I did. We both saw it and, we both knew that it wasn't entirely human. Zach continued. "Dude, it was the tree.. the tree from my... I mean "our" dream." I immediately thought about what he said. It did look exactly like the figure in the dream, and this thought disturbed me.


I don't remember what I said to Zach after that. I do remember, however not being punished for our actions. I saw the teacher's assistant call my mother, making her fully aware of the situation. When I got picked up that day I remember how serious my mother looked; She never looked so worried in her life than she did that day. I remember her telling me to never get close to that side of the woods ever again.
Why was my mother so upset? I figured that she knew something that no-one else did, not even something the school would know.
I was haunted by this thought well into my middle school years.
What were they hiding from us?