It was late summer of 2009 in a small Minnesota town north of the Twin Cities.

I was staying in my buddy John's house on 10 acres of forested land.

We were just 17 at the time.

John's dad built a million dollar home on that plot of land with more rooms and doors and windows than you could count.

He even had a gun room.

John's parents were out of town on vacation in Mexico and his sister was at a friend's house for the week.

So John came and picked me up in his maroon grand

marquee, and we went to his house. Nothing was out of the ordinary, but I remember when I got

out of the car. I smell something rank in the air. I don't really know how to describe this

smell, but it made me sick to my stomach. John said there was probably a dead

animal somewhere not to worry about it. We got inside through a couple of stakes on the grill

and enjoyed the view from his million-dollar back patio, which faced the vast wilderness

and a pond surrounded by trees. I could hear the frogs sounding out

different calls, but otherwise there was no noise but the gentle breeze and the leaves. But there

was that smell again. It was so bad that I had to go inside to find a handkerchief to put

over my face so I could breathe. It didn't work very well, but I was

thankful that it helped it a little. By the time we finished eating, there was nothing left but

bones on the plate. It was dark enough that you couldn't see an inch into the tree line at the

edge of John's thick, beautiful, golf course green lawn. We looked at the steak bones on our plate and decided

the only rational thing to do was to see who could throw them further in the woods. So we chunked

them as hard as we could, and we listened to the rustling of them falling through the trees.

We heard them hit the ground. But what we didn't expect were the noises that came after

...