who were they?

I fought, with my sister as a tiny bemused and often befogged sidekick, an anxious and desperate cultural war against them among the dark trees in a gothic place.

There were hairy demons in the woodpiles and corpses in the barn. The lake was bottomless and its surface would break with waving wooden hands. The sap from the maples, sprinkled with black flies, clutched at my clothes to drag me into lightning-split trees. The goat had one twisted horn and waited for my return from school in a ring of rocks. The dog was half blind, slavered and each day avoided a gunshot. There was a dead copse filled with broken pickle bottles and scattered corn relish.

They waited behind every tree with knife and rope.