When I was maybe about three years old, my father left one day and never came back. I cried and cried and asked my mother where he had gone, but she wouldn't talk to me about it.

So, life went on for my mother and me without him. Back then, we were living in a house that was far from any other houses. It was close to the edge of a deep dark woods, but I was never allowed to go into those woods because my mother said they were haunted. I guess she believed in ghosts and such things because the only book she ever read to me was Grimms' Fairy Tales, a book that had lots of scary stories in it. She especially liked the story about a girl named Rapunzel who had golden hair so long a prince could use it to climb up into her tall house and marry her, but my favorite story was about the brave boy who had a magic sword that he used to cut off the head of an evil giant.

My father had left us some money, so my mother could stay at home with me all day. She had groceries and other things delivered to our house and never once left me alone. I didn't have any friends, but I didn't know I was supposed to. I thought I was just a normal boy living with his mother.

Actually, when I was five years old, I did get one friend. He was a squirrel.

Here's how I got my new friend. I rigged up a wooden box that could be propped up on one end with a stick. I attached a string to the stick and put an ear of sweet corn under that box. Why sweet corn? Because I had learned from careful observation that squirrels love corn-on-the cob. For some time, I'd been putting out an ear of sweet corn into the crook of the oak tree in our backyard just to watch this one particular squirrel come every day to eat the corn.

Well, no sooner did I put the corn inside my box trap when the squirrel came right down from his tree. He sniffed around a bit, and then he went under the box to eat the corn. I quickly pulled the string, and the box fell, trapping him inside. I picked up the edge of the box, just a little, so I could peek at him in there. I was so close to him, my nose was just about inside the box with him. You might think that squirrel would have bit my nose, but he didn't. He knew I wasn't going to hurt him. He knew I only wanted to make friends with him. It didn't take him very long to calm down and begin to eat his prize, a nice fresh ear of sweet corn.

After that, every day, while my mother was busy inside the house, I played outside with my new friend. I named him Charlie, and I'm pretty sure he liked his new name because he often looked at me and wiggled his ears whenever I called him Charlie. After that first time, I didn't need the box. All I had to do was put out the corn and wait for him to show up. Sometimes, he would even take it right out of my hand. We even learned to play a game that was sort of like tag, but he would always win because I couldn't climb the tree as fast as he could.

One day my mother said she had to go to town to sign some papers. She said she wouldn't be gone very long, and I should stay in the house and not go anywhere near those woods.

At first, I minded her and just stayed in the backyard playing with Charlie.

But then I heard something that sounded like a voice. It was coming out of the woods. It was a deep rumbling kind of voice, and I went to the edge of the woods to listen closer. I knew I shouldn't go inside those woods, but being a curious little boy, I did go in just a little ways. I stood very still and listened, trying to figure out what the strange voice-like rumbling was. Was it saying something to me? After listening for a while, I wondered if it might be somebody who needed help. Maybe I should go to save them. I could be like a brave boy in the Grimms' book who went into the forest to save the king's daughter who had been cast there by an evil witch.

So I cautiously went in a little farther. The scary dark woods made me feel like I was in the kind of fairly tale land my mother had been reading to me from the Grimms' book. It was just about as scary as in those stories, but I wanted to be brave, so I went on.

The forest got even darker. High above, the tall trees were so thick only thin shafts of sunlight could get through.

I went on, but when even that little bit of sunlight wasn't getting down through the trees anymore, I stopped. Maybe this was not such a good idea. I might get lost. Maybe I should go back.

But then I remembered another Grimms' story my mother had read to me. It was about a boy named Hansel who got left in the woods with his little sister Gretel. That brave boy was also worried he might get lost, so he left a trail of bread crumbs to find his way back out. In that dark forest, the two kids ran into a wicked witch who wanted to eat them. But Hansel tricked the witch, and they ran away. The problem was that the birds had come and eaten all the crumbs he'd left, so they got lost. I was determined to be even smarter, so I also left a trail, but I made my trail out of rocks so the birds wouldn't eat them.

The farther I went into the forest, the darker and colder it got. But I wasn't worried. I knew if I ran into any witches or anything else bad, I could get back home by following my trail of rocks. I would run fast like the boy in the story who could run as fast as the wind after the magic water had turned him into a roebuck. My mother said a roebuck was a fast-running animal, like a really fast deer.

After going into the darkness even farther, I did start to get a little scared because I felt like I was getting a long ways from my house. I was not hearing the voice anymore, so I began to think maybe I should turn back.

That was when I met someone. Actually, I probably shouldn't refer to him as a "someone" because he was very short and his face was so gnarled up he might have been more like some kind of weird plant than a human. He didn't even have hair on the top of his head; instead, he had something covering his whole head that looked a lot like tree bark. But he was capable of moving like a human, walking upright on two stumpy legs with feet on the ends of them. At least I thought they were probably feet, although they looked more like clumps of dirt. And he had two very short arms with something like claws on the ends of them. Like big birds claws. And he had a mouth too. Of sorts. Actually, it was more like a crack, with a lot of ragged teeth inside. He was not wearing clothes; at least I don't think his covering was clothes-like his head, his whole body was covered in something that looked like tree bark. I thought of him as a he, but now that I think about it, I'm not sure why. Whatever he, or it, was, I was thrilled: I was sure I had met my first real live gnome, just like the ones in the Grimms' book. And although his eyes were all but hidden inside the deep folds of his wooden face, I could tell he was looking at me.

I went a little closer to him and asked if he wanted to play with me.

I guess he didn't want to play, because he let out a kind of animal-like shriek and ran away into the darkness of the deeper woods.

I sat down on a fallen log to wait, hoping he would come back and play with me.

But he didn't.

Then, I had an idea. I'd made friends with Charlie the squirrel by tempting him with food. Maybe I could do the same thing with the gnome.

Following my trail of rocks back out of the forest, I ran home and got an ear of sweet corn. I came back and put it on the ground where I'd met the gnome. I hid behind a tree to wait.

But he wouldn't come out to get the corn.

I decided that maybe gnomes didn't like corn, so I ran back home and got other good things to eat. I brought him an apple, a banana, even some of my favorite honey snack cereal. Nothing worked. I was afraid I had scared him away forever.

But then I had a brilliant idea. I would introduce him to my friend Charlie the squirrel so he would know that animals liked me. It would make him realize I wasn't going to hurt him.

I ran back home and got a fresh ear of sweet corn and used it lure Charlie down from his tree. I put the corn inside the box, and Charlie went right in to get it. If he was surprised when I quickly closed the box's lid, he didn't complain. In fact, I'm sure I could hear him inside the box munching away at the corn.

I ran back into the woods, following my trail of rocks, right back to where I'd met the gnome. I put the box with Charlie inside it down on the ground and went back to hide behind the tree.

And guess what. It worked. The gnome came out to see what was in the box. Maybe he was just curious, or maybe he heard Charlie inside the box.

But then he did something I never would have expected: he pulled Charlie out of the box and ate him. He stuffed every bit of Charlie inside his wide crack of a mouth, and I could hear the crunching of Charlie's bones all the way over to where I was hiding.

Then the gnome started heading toward me.

I don't need to tell you what I did-I ran. I ran all the way home and locked myself inside my bedroom. I couldn't stop thinking about poor Charlie getting eaten, and I couldn't push away that terrible sound of poor Charlie's bones being crunched.

When my mother got home, she wanted me to come out of my bedroom. But I wouldn't. She scolded me through the door and said I had to come out because she had something very important to tell me.

I finally came out, but before I was willing to talk to her, I had to run to the back window to see of that horrible gnome was out there. Luckily, he hadn't followed me.

My mother sat me down at the kitchen table and told me the reason she had to go into town was to sign the papers to sell our house.

"We have to leave here?" I said. "It's the only place I've ever lived."

My mother reached out to hold my hand. "Listen son, I have something important to tell you. I've been trying to sell this place ever since your father disappeared, but no one was willing to buy it. Everybody in town thinks those woods behind the house are haunted, and they all think those woods had something to do with why your father disappeared. You were too young to understand it at the time, but I tried to tell the police that his disappearance might have something to do with some kind of gnome he claimed to have met in the woods. The police acted like I'd been reading too many fairy tales. They did look around in the woods for a little while, but when they didn't find anything, they said my 'old man' must have just run off and abandoned us. I've been trying to sell this place ever since. Luckily, now somebody from out of town is willing to buy it. Now do you understand why I've always told you to stay away from those woods?"

I did understand. Better even than she could imagine.

It's been a few years since all that happened, and now my mother and I are living in a big city far away from those dark woods. I sometimes lie awake at night wondering if my meeting with that strange gnome-like creature really happened. Looking back, it almost seems like some kind of weird fairy tale, my own personal fairy tale. Sometimes I even suspect that maybe I dreamed it.

But no, it really happened. I'm sure of it, because in my mind, I can still hear the sound of that bad gnome crunching up poor Charlie's bones.

By the way, my mother and I never did hear from my father, and no one else ever did either. Sometimes I imagine him going deep into those woods and meeting that bad gnome like I did. But I try not to think about that too much.