I went to Sedona in late, October to hike West Fork Oak
Creek after the crowds thinned out.
I parked at the call of the canyon day, use area off as 89A
paid at the kiosk and crossed the little Footbridge over Oak
Creek. A cashier at a small market up.
The road had warned me that morning not to be in the canyon
after Dark. Things, call your name there.
I smiled and said I'd be back. Well Before Sunset I'd heard the
word Skinwalker before. But only in stories, people tell
to fill silence. My plan was simple, walk a few
miles in on trail. Number 108, shoot some long
exposure photos of leaves in the water and head out by 4:30.
I left my headlamp in the glove box because I didn't think I
needed cell service dropped to nothing at the trailhead.
The first mile went the way everyone says.
It does flat well Worn Path. Shallow Crossing's, cold, water.
That stung my ankles. I passed the old stone remnants
of the Mayhew Lodge and kept going as the trail narrowed and
the canyon walls boxed in the light.
I counted Crossings out of habit.
It keeps my Pace in check and gives me a turnaround Point by
the sixth crossing, the shade had a weight to it, but that's
normal there on The Sandbar. I saw fresh boot prints from
earlier. Hikers, traced beside a line of
elk tracks. The odd part was how the elk
Prince, pivoted mid-step, not like a stumble, they kinked then
pointed back the way they'd come clean and sharp as if the animal
had changed Direction without lifting its Hooves, I told
myself, The Creeks had undercut, The Edge and distorted the line
I kept moving when it happened the first time I was standing
Knee. Deep angle stepping across a man
said my name from a cross. The water in the exact tone my
brother uses not just the sound his rhythm, the way he lands on
the last syllable like he's trying to make me laugh.
There was no one on the gravel tongue on that side.
The sound carried. Well, in there, I told myself it
was a weirdo and that the canyon was bouncing a voice from
farther down Trail. I still put my phone in my
chest, pocket, force of habit, when something makes me uneasy
and I started watching my turnaround time more closely.
I hadn't told anyone I was here. My brother was at work, two
states away. I decided to push another 15
minutes. Then head back.
To test myself. I scraped a straight line and
damp sand beside a cottonwood root with my trekking pole, just
a marker for my own nerves. If it looked the same on the way
out, I'd feel foolish for worrying.
If it didn't, I still have a reason to move faster without
inventing monsters. I hit Crossing 8 out and turned
around at a slow pool. That mirrored a red wall.
On my way back. The air felt cooler.
My fingers were stiff from the water.
I could hear hikers talking far behind me at first, then
nothing. At the 11th Crossing, I saw it.
Not a shadow or a shape in the corner of my eye.
In the center of my own boot prints, right?
Where the toes pointed back down Canyon, someone had set a tiny
stack of three smooth Creek stones, still wet balanced on a
red leaf. I had walked through there one
minute earlier. There were no other prints near
it. I scan the undercuts and the
brush and crouched to look under the big log that bridge the
creek, That's where I saw the forearms bear long, with the
hands flat on the wet sand. The fingers were spread wide
pressing down. Like they were testing the
ground. The head in the shadow.
Didn't move it, let out a soft sound.
A wet whistle, not words, but the shape of it could have been
come back. If you were already spooked I
stood and walked backward into the water without turning my
back, then eased myself to the opposite Bank.
I started counting Crossings in Reverse out loud to keep my head
straight 11:10 9. The same voice called my name
again, but it was half a beat off.
Like someone repeating a phrase, they'd practiced a few times but
hadn't heard often. I told myself to keep the same
Pace. No running, I focused on my
footing. At Crossing 8, I checked my
pole, Mark the straight line I drawn had two finger wide
trenches dragged across it in a wide Arc pointing toward me.
They were fresh. I looked around and felt that
tight hot feeling at the base of my neck that I can't explain
except to say, I knew someone had been close enough to touch
the sand. I had touched I heard coyotes up
on the rim. Start their chorus and then stop
not fade. Stop after a single hard crack
echoed Off the Wall. I couldn't place the sound.
I kept moving. At one of the shallow bends I
glanced down and saw a second Stone stack pressed onto my own
heel print Leaf folded underneath the smallest rock.
It wasn't there on my way in, I understood then that it was
tracking me using the same thing.
I was using Prince and crossings I stepped off the sand and into
the middle of the creek and stayed there.
The water pushed at my knees and soaked my socks, it was freezing
and I knew it was a good way to catch a cramp, but it would wash
away anything. That marked my line, I broke a
thin, Cottonwood twig, and tucked it behind my ears.
So I know how long I had been in the channel once it and fell.
The next voice wasn't my brother's It was my mother's
horse, like, she'd been shouting at a game, but softer waited
with that worried tone. She uses when she is trying not
to scare me. It called my name from behind
me, and from ahead of me close together, like the sound was
pinned at both ends, then help me.
She doesn't say sweetie. The way I heard it said next.
It was a detail that shouldn't have bothered me as much as it
did, but it broke through the part of my brain that wanted to
answer without thinking. I kept walking down the creek
and started talking to myself to stay anchored.
Footbridge. Paved path, gate highway.
I said the names of the places between me and my car around a
broad Bend. There was a stretch of open
gravel and shallow water, I saw it then, well, upriver not
hiding it moved on elbows, and knees across the stones, without
splashing, the shoulders and hips, Rose and dropped, and
turns, instead of together, the head turned too far as it tried
to keep me in view chin, angled over a shoulder in a way that
made my stomach pitch. It never spoke while I was
looking straight at it. The sound only came when I lost
sight of it behind a boulder or The Cut Bank, I realized that
and kept my eyes down on the water in my feet, The Twig fell
for my ear. I didn't stop to pick it up,
light drains, fast in their near, the end of the day.
I won't dress that up. Shadows were longer and darker
and the temperature dropped. The creek deep into mid thigh
for a short span and I pushed through his fast as I could, my
teeth clicked from the cold. A Ben gave me a thin band of
brighter Sky ahead, where westfork meets Oak Creek.
I knew the Footbridge wasn't far past that.
I told myself I'd run from there.
On the gravel tongue at the Confluence.
A shape, angled out ahead of me on all fours and then Rose a
little and then lowered again. It didn't make sound.
It turned its head toward me in that same too far away.
And I understood, I didn't need to see its face to know, I
shouldn't be there. I ran my boots slapped, the wood
of the Footbridge, I cut onto the paved path, past the day you
signs and the restroom through the small gate.
I could see the road through the cottonwoods that Grace strip
that meant other people and cars in a different set of rules.
I Came Out Swinging my arms and waving a silver SUV was passing
Northbound in the driver, breaked hard.
When he saw me, I was already pulling at the back door handle.
I didn't have a story ready. I said please and someone's
following me and pointed down the path.
The woman in the passenger seat looked past me.
And then grabbed her husband's arm, We all watched the end of
the path together. At the edge of the headlight
cone just outside the bright something stood, where the
gravel meets the shoulder, it didn't step forward it shifted
weight and then stilled, you can tell when a person doesn't want
their face in light, that's the closest I can get to explaining
it without adding, what wasn't there.
They told me to get in and they pulled out fast.
I turned in the seat to watch the mouth of the path.
Nothing followed us up. 89A. I didn't see anything move along
the shoulder. My hands shook so badly.
I dropped my phone into the footwell twice.
When I could talk without my voice breaking, I asked them to
take me back to the trailhead parking lot.
They said they would wait with me until the sheriff arrived.
I called 911 and gave my location and a short version of
what I had seen. I kept it to fax.
I was followed by a person in the canyon Stone piles appeared
on my prints. Someone called my name and
voices, I recognized. I didn't try to convince the
dispatcher of anything. I didn't try to name it.
A deputy from the kokino county sheriff's office.
Met me in the lot. Took a statement and told me to
come back the next day and daylight to walk him to my car
and check for damage. He offered to drive the loop
with his lights on before I left.
I said, yes, I didn't sleep well.
The next afternoon, I met the same Deputy off 89A, and we
walked to my car together in the day use lot.
Shined his light along the doors and bumpers out of habit.
On the rear quarter panel, he found what he called smears.
I recognized them as handprints made, in wet, red sediment, and
then dragged, They were lower than they should have been for
an adult standing upright. He rubbed at one with his thumb
and it stained the skin. He took photos for the report he
didn't say much else. Only later, did I check my
phone? The voice memo app had recorded
five minutes by accident. I must have bumped it when I
shoved the phone into my chest pocket, It's mostly running
water in the sound. My jacket makes when I'm
breathing hard. And twice in that mess.
Someone calls my mother's name in a hoarse voice.
Not mine hers. I texted her from my motel and
asked where she'd been that after noon, she was at home in
another state. I didn't send her the audio.
I emailed myself the file and printed the 911 log.
When I got home, I posted a screenshot of the waveform in
the incident. Number with this account, I
don't post the sound The ranger who returned, my call logged it
as harassment suspicious person. That's fair.
I don't have faces or names, A co-worker of mine who is Navajo
listened to me, once didn't interrupt, and then said one
word and left it at that. I didn't ask for stories, that
aren't mine. I stopped telling the funny
version at parties where people wait for a punchline.
There isn't one. Here's what I changed.
I refused to hike, West Fork near dusk.
If I go back, I go at noon with someone else in a light in my
pocket. I keep a headlamp in my glove
box now and an extra layer because the temperature drops
fast and that Canyon no matter what the hourly forecast says,
For a month. After I got home, I slept with
the porch light on, I answered calls from my family on speaker
and tried not to jump at my phone when it rang nothing else
called my name from the yard, no Stone's appeared on my steps. if
you're looking for the part where it comes to my house, that
chapter isn't here, If you want proof, you'll get what I have
the call log. The incident number photos of
the exact Crossing, where I found the stacks during the day,
when its just a pretty place. The rest is the part, I'm asking
you to believe or not. You go turn around early than
you think. Counter Crossing.
Stay out of the sand. If something starts marking your
prints and if the canyon gets personal, if someone you love
starts calling you from two directions at once.
Don't answer walk the creek until you see the Footbridge.
Keep your eyes on the water and the way out I did and nothing
followed me onto the highway. That's the only reason I'm the
one riding this. I went up to Max Patch for one
easy night and A Sky, Full of Stars.
Nothing complicated. I topped off the tank and Hot
Springs, North Carolina, grabbed a bottle of water and some
chips. And told the cashier where I was
headed He said don't stay on the ball after midnight.
I heard the word Skinwalker before and filed it with tall
tales and campfire talk. The plan was simple.
Hike, the loop sleep, High leave early.
I took I-40 to the Harmon Den exit and crawled.
The gravel of Max Patch Road until the woods opened and the
parking lot appeared. The air was cool. the sky was
clear enough to trace planes sliding East and a Rising Moon
that would make a headlamp optional once it climbed I
signed the trail register at the board, cinched my pack, and
stepped out onto the mode, path. That Rings.
The bald open grounded in every direction.
No cover. No tricks.
Golden hour makes that Hill. Look.
Soft. It isn't.
But the grass takes the light in a way that makes you
underestimate how exposed you are. the Appalachian Trail cuts
north-south across the crown with a short blue blaze spur
dropping to the lot I picked a spot just off the Loop 20 Paces
from the at sign and set the tent low because of the wind.
My friend and I ate fast and kept our trash tight, a pair of
headlamps bobbed on the south side where another group had
settled voices, carried cleanly. Somewhere toward Brown Gap,
coyotes called back and forth. The sound was harmless from that
distance, it just confirmed. We warned alone on the mountain
in the strict sense. Nothing strange yet.
Just the mild tension of being on a wide open Hilltop with
everything visible and no good place to disappear.
If you want to, I saw the figure when I stood to stretch, it was
at the far edge of the field, a dark cutout against the sky,
where the grass gives way to slope.
I thought it was a post until it shifted.
One shoulder. It didn't Sway in the wind the
way a person unconsciously. Does it held?
So still I felt it before I understood it.
I lifted my headlamp and gave a quick blink.
Not to Blind anyone just to find out if they'd wave back or call
out the beam touched a pale over where a face would be the figure
dropped to all fours in one smooth motion and slipped over
the crest. Know, stumble know scramble just
to control vanish. We looked at each other and ran
through the normal options prank animal hiker messing around but
none of those fit how it moved. We told ourselves it was a
person, keeping low out of the wind that explanation didn't
make sense, but it was easier than the alternatives.
Knight arrived clean and quick. The moon Rose to a point where
the whole bald turned silver and shadows went sharp.
My friend, walked up The Path about 50 yards to get a clearer,
look at the Milky Way. I stayed by the tenth,
tightening a strap thinking about the long drive home in the
morning. when I swept my headlamp across the slope out of
habit, something Rose from the grass where the hill breaks it
stood two tall by a little and bent at the knee's in a way.
I still can't die a gram with normal Anatomy.
The arms were long, the shoulders were narrow, the face
looked thin and pulled tight over hard angles.
The eyes, reflected flat white, in the light, no hint of color,
no blink. It was 10 feet away, inside the
cone of my land close enough to show details.
I wish I hadn't seen it spoke in my friends.
Voice your fine, keep watching. I turned toward the path.
My friend was still behind me. Hands in his pockets saying what
He'd heard it too, same words, same Cadence, the sound didn't
come from him. I shut off the lamp in the
Moonlight. It was still there a clear
silhouette that didn't melt into the background.
Once the beam was gone, it tilted its head past what a neck
should allow and held it there as if measuring an angle.
We called out the standard question.
Are you okay? It didn't answer, it took one
step forward and then stopped in a stance.
I now think of as a test It wanted to see if we would break
first. every time I glanced down to adjust a strap, I heard
grass, compress, and then saw it at a body length closer when I
looked up, It never crossed a line while we watched it
directly, it waited for small windows and took them.
We packed up the way you do when you can't afford to be
meticulous. Sleeping bags, shoved poles,
half folded tent, bundled in a lumpy role and lashed out the
pack. A hands shook in a way I usually
hide, but there wasn't time for Pride.
While we worked it, kept a 30 foot Gap, pacing left, when we
shifted, right matching our speed in a way that felt like a
habit. There was no brush up there to
blame for losing sight lines. If we saw it, it saw us.
If we moved it, adjusted, it didn't lunge.
It didn't grow, didn't do any of the dramatic things?
You might expect. It acted as if closing the
distance, wasn't the point. staying even with us, was We
began the push to the tree line that marks the spur to the lot.
Walking backward on a ball is miserable, but we did it in
short, bursts switching off who faced down hill.
So, one of us always had eyes forward and one had eyes on the
crest. The thing.
Never shifted to the side to Circle or flank.
It kept that set distance. As if a tape measure connected
us, when we stopped it stopped, when we picked up speed, it
slipped into a low Gallup. That looked practice, controlled
and wrong. The worst part wasn't the shape
or the motion. It was the silents.
You could hear our boot scuff in the stove, clatter against my
pack. You could hear the wind in the
grass and an occasional shout from the other campers far off.
From it, nothing. Not breathe, not impact.
Just the fact of its body moving where we could see it.
The first glow from the parking area came into view a wash from
a single car, dome light and the pale beam of someone, unlocking
a door, the edge of that light painted a boundary across the
grass. The thing stopped at that line
like a driver breaking before a curb, it wasn't fear.
It didn't Flinch. It just chose not to cross.
I took two steps down, turned and saw it.
Still there. Upright.
Again, head turned to fraction too far to the side.
My friends said, don't run. We didn't. we walked in stiff
measured Paces until our boots hit gravel and the lot opened
around us with the shapes of cars, the trailhead sign and the
relief that comes with objects, you can name and touch Two night
hikers had just pulled in a man and a woman in trail Runners
with a grocery bag of snacks and water.
Their doors were open. The interior chime sounding They
started to say hello. Then followed our eyes back up
to the bald. We all saw it at once.
No trees to confuse the view, no brush to hide in just a tall
thin shape. Standing in the open field,
angled wrong at the knees arms loose at his side's head cocked
farther than his useful. The Moon made the outline neat.
There was no argument about whether it was there or not.
The woman said, what is it doing?
The man said something else that I don't remember.
We didn't move, we didn't try to be brave.
We just stood together in the lot with the car light behind
us, and watched it pivoted without hurry, dropped to all
fours and ran back across the ball, toward the crown.
The stride was long and efficient, it covered ground
faster than I expected. And then it was a moving dot
against the highest point and then it slipped Over The Far
Side toward where the at runs north.
The lot felt smaller after that as if the only safe space was
the rectangle of gravel under our feet the woman had been
leaving a voice message through the cars hands-free system as
they pulled in she hit stopped and looked down at the screen.
Like a person facing bad news. She replied the last second with
the car speakers turned low. You could hear our boots Crunch
and the door chime and then my voice saying I'm fine.
I hadn't said those words we compared what each of us heard
in the moment and how it didn't line up with, what the recording
captured, that was the detail. None of us like talking about
later. We called the non-emergency line
for the Madison County Sheriff's Office from the lot.
A deputy met us at the trailhead sign.
He was tired in the way that comes from long nights and short
patience for stories that end with maybe it was a person.
He took our names wrote up an incident number on a card and
told us to Camp lower. If we plan to stay out late, he
didn't laugh and he didn't roll his eyes.
He just kept his pain moving. We gave him the time window and
the rough positions on the loop, where we set up where it stood,
where it stopped, when the car light touched the grass.
He asked if we had pictures, we didn't.
He asked if anyone had been drinking, We hadn't.
He told the new arrivals, they might want to come back in the
morning. If they were not set on a night
hike, I drove home with my friend in silence until the
interstate We didn't play music, the radio, chatter felt like it
would break, whatever thin layer was keeping the night separate
from the car. Back in town, I wrote the
account with, only the parts, I could defend the arrival, the
figure on the skyline, the movement on all fours, the 30
foot pacing, the hard stop at the light from the lot.
I posted the incident number and a simple diagram of the bald
with an ex where we stood and another X, where it stood.
I didn't add theories, I didn't call it anything.
I used the word Skinwalker once because the cashier had, and
because it helped set the frame for what we ignored until we
couldn't. A day later, the hikers emailed,
the audio clip from their cars system.
The timestamp lined up with the moment, it spoke in my friend's
voice on the hill. You can hear me, Breathe hard,
and the chime ping, and then the sentence.
I don't remember saying, we kept that file between the four of us
and the deputy we didn't post it.
We didn't try to clean it up. We didn't ask strangers on the
internet to analyze it. It serves one purpose for me, it
confirmed that the line between what you hear and what is
actually said can be crossed by something that chooses to cross
it. Here's the part that matters if
you hike there. Max Patch is beautiful in the
day. Go early.
Bring a jacket, take the loop, enjoy The View, But when the sun
drops and the grass turns, the color of Steel and the lot like
starts to wash a weak, boundary across the first rows of blades.
You should be off the crown and headed down.
I still visit. I eat a sandwich on the summit,
count the ranges, and let the wind clear my head.
I leave before dark. I don't test the edge where the
open field meets the first glow of parked cars.
I don't give anything up there. A chance to measure the distance
between us again. If you ignore that and decide to
spend a night on the bald, don't say nobody warned you.
I can tell you what we saw, where we stood, the angle of its
head, the distance it kept, and the exact place where it stopped
as if the light from a single car.
Drew a line at wooden cross. I can hand you the incident
number. I can point at the trail
register and the spur and the sign.
You can go prove me wrong in person or you can keep it
simple. Watch.
The stars from lower ground and let the top of Max Patch belong
to whatever holds it after midnight.
The hill won't argue. It doesn't need to the open
field says enough without a sound.
I picked a quiet weekday in October because I figured the
Hall of mosses would be slow and I can get in and out before
dinner in Forks. It was mid-50s and damp with low
cloud in The Visitor Center. Arranger answered a couple of my
questions about elk and then joked on the way out, if
something copies your voice, don't answer.
I smiled because it sounded like Park humor meant to stick in
your head while you're out there.
I'd only ever heard that word Skinwalker tied to places.
I don't live near Temperate rainforest wasn't what I
pictured when I read about that stuff online, I wanted a short
walk on a famous Loop, that was it.
The boardwalk was wet, but grippy.
The trail climbs, a little then levels and the sound of the hoe
River becomes more of a hush than a roar.
You can hear steady drips coming off the Moss without needing to
pretend the forest is doing anything special.
I let a pair of hikers, pass stepped back onto the planks and
kept a comfortable pace. The loop had people behind me
but I didn't see anyone ahead. It felt calm in the way a
weekday. After noon, often does out
there, which is what I wanted. I noticed the handprints about
10 minutes in, there's a thin green film on the rail where
people don't touch as much. And in that film were clean,
ovals were a hand had pressed down and slid.
A little Four long finger marks a narrow Palm.
Then a gap of a few feet in the same thing again.
I put my hand next to one for a point of reference, my palm
looked blunt by comparison, whoever made those prints had
long, narrow fingers, and put weight straight down into the
rail at a corner where the boardwalk turns, the prince
stopped. And there was a faint scuff on
the outside edge of the rail as if a foot had stepped onto the
top and of a round. I told myself someone tried to
do a stupid balance trick in bailed.
It's a national park people do dumb things.
I took a few more steps and from up the trail.
Not far around a Bend, I heard my name and my brother's voice.
His normal tone, the one he uses to get my attention without
making a scene. There were no other words.
It wasn't loud. It sounded like he was standing.
Just out of sight. My brother wasn't there.
He lives. Two states away and had no idea.
I was in Washington. The sound made me stop because
there's no mistaking that tone if you've heard it a thousand
times. I looked at the empty been
thought about the Rangers joke and decided, right?
Then I wasn't answering anything.
I wasn't stepping off the boards.
I wasn't speeding up to chase, whatever.
That was, I took another breath and kept moving.
The big log came into view after a gentle curve.
It's one of those huge Fallen trees with younger hemlocks, and
little ferns growing along the top.
Perched on the Moss was a shape that read as a person only for
the first half second and then it didn't.
It was too lean through the Torso, elbows pulled back in a
way. I can only describe as hell for
control and the feet were flexed.
In a way, I couldn't match in my head, the ankles didn't line up
with the angle of The Shins. Its chin lifted slightly the
mouth opened farther than I expected.
I didn't see teeth. Clearly just dark gums and a wet
interior that seemed too wide for the face.
It didn't blink. I didn't see it, breathe.
It watched me as if waiting for me to be the one to break.
I didn't run. I counted in my head, to five it
stayed still, I shifted my weight back and slid, my shoe on
the board, so it wouldn't squeak or jump.
When I put a little distance between us, it dropped off the
log in a vertical motion that didn't match the way.
Most people climbed down from anyting.
I didn't hear it land over the drips, it wasn't trying to hide.
It was just there and then down and the shape of it on the
ground looked tall and flat in a way that made it harder to track
in my side vision. I adjusted my plan to something
simple. Do not leave the boardwalk.
Keep it in front of me, or off to the side where I could see it
and back out in a straight line. If I had to, I started a slow
Retreat. When I sped up, It, sped up.
When I slowed down, it slowed down.
It never crossed the planks it moved through the understory and
a line that kept it. Parallel to me with the ferns
between us. When I looked to the right, it
was already looking back. It didn't duck or pretend to be
anything else and it didn't posture or show teeth.
It just matched me without a sound.
I could catch and that made me feel worse than anything.
Aggressive would have done. I forced myself to say normal
things out loud bored. Slick here, watch your step,
meaningless stuff, because the Rangers joke, lived rent-free in
my head, and I wanted my own voice to be the only one, I
answered two hikers. Appeared ahead of me a woman in
a blue rain jacket. And a guy with a small day pack
I didn't try to act casual because I didn't have the energy
for that. I said, can you walk with me,
please? And they saw my face and didn't
argue, I pointed to the right, not sure what they'd see
through, all that green in the low light Under The Canopy.
All three of us, watch the figure step behind a trunk and
then lean out. In that lean for a split second
the profile lined up with the woman's face in a way that made
her gasp and clamp her hand over her mouth.
The guy said Jesus. And that was it.
No one tried to talk to it. No one challenged it.
We stood there breathing for a long three seconds.
And then the three of us moved together at a steady Pace toward
the trailhead. We kept a formation without
planning it. I took the middle the woman took
the front because she wanted to know what was coming and the guy
took the back because he didn't want it behind him.
We talked on purpose about basic things where we parked, whether
the rain would start how far it was to the lot.
Because the normal Cadence kept us moving The thing never rushed
us. It never fell behind it.
Never tried to flank. It just stayed even with us the
same speed, the same distance stepping to the next tangle of
stems as we reach the next stretch of boards.
Every time I let my eyes drift off the planks and into the
ferns, it was already framed by a gap shoulders.
Angled head turned as if we were the only objects of interest in
a room the more I stared the more wrong, the feet looked The
angles didn't match ground contact.
That should have made noise and I hated that my brain kept
trying to solve mechanics instead of telling me to run.
We passed another run of rail with green film, and found a
fresh line of long handprints again spaced out.
Like someone had crawled along while we were up ahead.
The guy muttered that kids do weird stuff for videos which I
wanted to believe. But the prints were too fresh
and too clean, and too far apart for someone fooling around and
hopping off every two seconds. We didn't stop to examine them.
We just noted it and kept going. And every time I checked, right,
the shape was there the same distance.
The same angle, never Crossing onto the boards.
The last stretch opens a little and you can see the kiosk
through the trees. A car turned into the lot while
we were still under the canopy and the headlights swept across
the first line of trunks beyond the road.
In that washed the figure was fully upright invisible in a way
it hadn't been before, tall thin arms at its side facing us.
It wasn't crouched or bent it stood there, like a person
stands when they decide to be seen when the beam moved off.
Its stepped backward without turning around and was gone into
the shade. Not running.
Just a smooth step back into everything that blocks your
view. And keeps you honest about your
depth perception. In a rainforest, we walk
straight into the visitor center.
I didn't try to sanitize it. I said there was a suspicious
person pacing us off Trail and that they had matched our speed
for several minutes. I said they were thin moved
quietly and seemed interested in us and in the couple that joined
me, I said we never left the boardwalk.
The couple backed me up without embellishing.
The ranger listened took notes wrote the time in the weather
and marked the spots we described on a simple map of the
loop. Another staffer grabbed a flash
light and the two of them walked the first stretch, while we
stood by the kiosk and tried to slow our breathing.
When they came back, they asked for our names and numbers.
The line item they put into their system.
I later learned when I called was suspicious person possible,
Wildlife harassment, safety, patrol requested.
It felt good to have it on paper, not because I wanted
attention but because it meant I hadn't imagined a basic sequence
of events. I drove back toward forks and
realized how fast the forest turns dark under that canopy in
October, you don't feel the Sun Drop, It just gets dim, then it
gets very dim and then you're in your car with the heater.
On looking at a line of Evergreens across a river flat.
That doesn't show you anything. Past the first row when I called
the next afternoon, for a status check.
Because I couldn't stop replaying the handprints and the
way it stepped off the log. The person on the phone said a
law enforcement Ranger had walked a sweep before closed.
They didn't find anyone but they observed algae smears on the
rail near where I described in a boot scuff on the outside edge
of a corner rail which is consistent with someone stepping
onto the top, they added my note to the incident and said they
track patterns. I appreciated that answer more
than I expected to I went back months later but only in
daylight and not alone. Two friends were visiting and
wanted to see the big trees in the famous Moss.
We ran the loop clockwise at noon under bright cloud cover
and it was what most people get to experience out there.
families, a couple of elk out in the flats kids, counting banana
slugs, I showed them the nurse log where I had stopped and
counted to five without fog and with more light, it was a log
with tiny trees in a lot of green.
No mystery, no prints on the rails.
The place looked exactly like every postcard and every video
online. We kept moving took a few breaks
on the benches and finished, without any stories to tell
except that one person in our group had, a reason to keep his
voice steady. Back at The Visitor Center, I
wrote a short statement and attached it to the incident
number. So, whoever reads reports later
has the boring details. Which way I walked, what I saw
where I turned, I didn't ask for anything to be changed in the
way they talked to visitors but if someone were taking bets, I'd
put real money on the fact that the joke about copied voices
didn't come out of thin air. It's a line that sticks because
it needs to if you go out there, remember the simplest rule, stay
on the boards. Don't let anything Coke you off
them. If you hear your name and a
voice that shouldn't be in that Forest on a weekday after noon,
keep walking find other people and use your own words to fill
the air report. What you saw let the Rangers do
their job. I still hike the hoe.
I go in with company and in the middle of the day and I leave
before the light drops. I don't need proof to make that
choice. I just need the feeling in my
chest, when the headlights hit the trees and that tall thin
shape Stood Still and then stepped backward into the shade.
To the thing that matched, my Pace under the hemlocks and wore
a face. That wasn't its own.
Let's not meet again. I plan to Quick overnight on the
shell, tawi Trace with my cousin Mark.
At the end of September, the kind of easy trip.
You squeeze in before cold rain, turns the hills, slick and the
leaves start to drop for real. We parked near Hemlock.
Lodge at Natural Bridge State, Resort Park cut through to the
turtle, blazes north of the arch and aimed for a short out and
back toward KY 11 Slade. At the gear shop in town, the
clerks lit, a paper map across the counter and said don't camp
in the Rock shelters. I asked why.
He gave a non-answer some folks talk about a skinwalker that
stays to the hollows and won't step into firelight.
He said it Without A Smile Like a rule, people follow, even if
they don't say, the reason out loud.
Mark rolled his eyes in the car. I said I'd rather sleep under
Open Sky. Anyway we both know how trips go
When Storms change plans, the day state gray and humid, our
shirts stuck to our backs by the second Ridge.
We followed the shelter. We signs in the Little Turtle,
markers through, Sandstone, cuts, and Slick roots.
By late afternoon, the wind shifted in the rain came fast.
It wasn't a gentle start, more like a curtain.
Rip. The creek beside the trail
thickened in minutes in the path.
Turned to a Sheen, we were near a shallow, Sandstone, overhang
with a dry shelf in old, black Scorch on the floor.
A sign back at the junction had said not to set up in rock
shelters, the rain made the choice.
We tucked under the lip, kept our cook fire, small and
centered, and ran the tarp back into deeper Shades.
So spray wouldn't soak our bags. Heat Rose off, our jackets,
socks sagged, from a cord and dripped.
I checked the map, the plan changed too weighted out eat
ride the storm and leave. Before first light, we were not
doing anything. Special, just two people,
simmering noodles and watching steam lift off pots.
When the steps came not a run, not a snap of Twigs.
A steady tread on wet leaves, working around our light.
Like someone checking angles, they stopped.
Right? Where the growth in the edge.
Silence followed, not an empty, kind more like someone holding
still on purpose. A woman's voice came from just
past the circle. Clear, and normal.
Do you have any water? I slid a bottle to the rim of
light, partially to be decent partially to see a hand reach
in. I heard plastic scrape wet, grit
and sat down no hand, no shape. After a long minute, I pulled
the bottle back, the cap was still tight, the scuff, I put
their last summer in the same place Mark met my eyes.
We didn't say anything. We didn't need to we let the
fire sink to Kohl's and climbed into our bags with our boots
still on. The rain softened to a steady
hiss against the lip of stone. I lay awake.
Counting breaths, waiting for the normal sounds.
You hear when a person leaves brush?
Wait some human cladder. The woods gave none of that.
When I could not stand it, I fed small sticks into the coals
until the flame Edge. The clearing again, Mark leaned
close and said, almost without moving his mouth that he'd seen
the face for a second between trunks, when the fire flared, He
said it looked like Kayla from town.
Same eyes just stretched thin at the jaw.
I told him I thought he was mixing faces and shadows.
He said he wasn't the voice. Came back a few feet closer.
Same tone like a neighbor talking from the porch rail.
It said City Boys. Always bring too much gear.
That is what Mark had said to me in the car.
Almost word for word. Same Pace.
Same bite. He sat up.
Who's there? He called.
Leaves shifted then stopped. The Voice listed what we had
with us but not in the way a thief would said you brought the
old buck with the missing brass pin.
You brought the Nalgene with the melted, Nick on the rim.
It named my grandfather's knife, as if it had held it, it knew
the exact dent on the canteen from a stove, Flair years back.
I have never posted those details.
I don't talk about the knife outside family.
Hearing them out there flat and Casual did something to my
stomach. I don't have a clean word for a
man answered from the dark after that, my father's Cadence the
way. He steps on the last syllable of
my name, when he's being strict. Check the weather.
Twice it said, another voice wrote in after my aunts laughed
tucked into the middle of a sentence telling Mark to save
his batteries. Back and forth, friendly
familiar close, we push damp sticks onto the coals to push
the light out, farther, in one brief Flair, I caught the edge
of something low to the ground just beyond the last bright
ring. It moved away fast without the
sound of a body brushing brush. It felt like it had practiced
moving where people couldn't see well and learned how far light
falls on wet leaves. We packed with without
announcing. We were packing.
Stove, cool map folded one bag for both of us.
So neither of us would be free-handed if we had to move.
We left the tent up to buy time if something came in close.
We agreed without saying it. Keep the fire between us and
whatever was out there. The shape, slid through the dim
again, and stopped in profile. Long enough for me to see Hands
On The Ground, elbows high knees out, it held the position, two
steady, like a person, imitating an animal and it didn't Flinch
when an ember snapped near its knuckles.
It turned its head and a mouth opened too wide, not in a yawn
but in a grin that put a lot of teeth on view.
Which bag has the fuel. It asked in Mark's tone then in
my mother's voice, did you pack the orange rainfly?
Then in mine. Exactly.
Don't move. We moved, slow sideways, keeping
the brighter headlamp low, to paint a line of light on the
ground. It stayed just outside the
bright ring learning where the edge was sliding whenever we
slid stepping. When we stepped, It did not
rush. It didn't need to.
Pressure can make people do dumb things.
We kept the fire on our right shoulder and back toward the
shelter. We Trace When we reach the
trail, we picked the path that points up toward the original
Trail and the stone steps under the arch.
That way, meant railing cut stairs and eventually the glow
from the lodge area. I don't love walking at night
but I love it more than staying put with a thing that talks like
family and won't show its face. The Climb hurt.
What stone, under our boots Leaf, slick on the edges.
The kind of steps you have to take with the ball of your foot
because the rise is odd. The shape followed at an even
walk. Now tall when it stood dropping
low sometimes and covering ground on hands and feet, Every
time our lights tilts away, it claimed half a stride.
When we stopped to check the junction, sign it tilted its
head as if measuring how close it could come without stepping
into the brighter beam, you forgot your spoon.
It said in my voice, when Mark dropped, the cheap Camp spoon at
a Switchback. He left it on the tread.
We didn't pick it up. At the next turn, it said, both
of our mothers names at once. Not in a back and forth, but
together from the same mouth, same beat, two tones crowding,
one set of teeth, it made no sense to my ears.
I didn't freeze because of fear I froze because my brain threw
up a wall. At the sound, Mark, grabbed my
sleeve and yanked, and we kept moving the parks first
streetlight showed at the end of the long set of steps like a
dull ring on the path. we walked toward it and the thing tested
it One Barefoot pushed to the edge toes long and splayed and
pressed into the glow. The toes flexed and pulled back.
It set the foot down where the light stopped.
It paced their Heel To Toe inward at the front, like a
runner who has warned his shoes wrong for years.
We crossed under the light and I made myself not run.
Running invites trips. The walkway wide, as we got
closer to the lodge complex. The one porch light that always
buzzes was on. The shape stayed at the dark
edge of the lot, like a person without permission to enter a
lit room. Rolling its weight from foot to
foot. The chorus of voices, cut off,
not like a fade, but like a switch.
We stepped into the pool under the porch light and stood there
breathing, like, we'd been sprinting.
Even though we hadn't a campground host on rounds, came
through the lot. He looked past us toward the
trees when he heard the last Russell and saw nothing.
He didn't make a joke, he walked us inside and called a ranger we
went back at first light with him because he asked and because
not going felled worse. The shelter floors showed, drag
marks and damp sand, not like a deer bed or a dog more like
elbows and knees. Pulled through grit with weight
behind them. In the leaves outside, the lip,
the prints were clear bear. Toes long and spread with dirt
packed under the nails. Each print longer than my boot
pointed inward at the front like someone who turns in at the
knees and still moves fast. The stride length said, Runner
the direction didn't make sense to the eye, the ranger measured
with a tape, took a couple of phone photos and didn't push
into the trees. He said to avoid shelter
camping. He didn't add a lesson.
He didn't tell a story. He let the fact sit where we
could see them and left it at that.
We checked out before breakfast service started.
The woman at the desk, asked if we wanted coffee for the road,
we said no, the drive home was quiet at the house.
I cleaned gear like it was a job that saved lives.
I wiped the canteen and the old buck and the pot and stowed them
in the same place as Then I took the knife, my grandfather gave
me and put it in a display case and set the Case High.
I stopped carrying it on trips. I went through my old Trip Post
on line and pulled details. I had thrown in to make the
writing feel real. Exact camps.
Exact trees, private jokes, that had no business in public.
You don't need to help a thing, make notes about you, mark, sold
his busy and kept a bigger two-person tent that sets up
fast and tight spots. He still hikes but he won't
start after sunset. If he's moving in the sun drops,
he stops short and camps. Hide or he turns back I still
backpack, but I pick open ground with clean lines of sight and a
quick exit. I keep a small headlamp in my
pocket, even when I'm in town, I don't sleep under Rock lips
anymore. Stone sheds water and that's
nice until you think about angles you can't see into and
how easy it is for something to sit where a fire won't reach and
wait you out If you go to Natural Bridge and you plan to
use the shell to, we north of the arch, respect the signs, if
a storm pushes you toward an overhang, remember that rain
passes and there are places you can ride it out without putting
your back against a stone ceiling.
If you hear a woman, ask for water from the edge of the light
and you don't see a shadow Cross into the glow, don't hand
anything over. If a voice near your Camp knows
things, it shouldn't Family jokes on your gear pack tight
and walk toward electric light. Fire Light slows somethings
streetlights stop them. That is the only part of this
where I feel certain people ask me what it was and I never
answer with a label. The word the shop clerk used
sits there. If you need one, the prints were
real, the cap on the bottle was tight the way too voices.
Came out of one. Mouth is not a thing.
I could have imagined to scare myself, Believe what you want.
Do what you want in those woods. My advice is simple and it isn't
a dare open. Ground is safer.
Don't camp in the Rock shelters. If you hear your own voice
behind your back, don't turn walk to the light and keep
walking then go home, clean your gear and change the parts of
your routine that leave more of you out there than you meant to
I'm riding this because I don't want anybody stumbling into the
same spot thinking it's just another easy afternoon in Cades
Cove. I'm not chasing attention, and I
don't need anyone to believe me. I just want the warning out
there and one place with the details straight.
This happened on the Abrams Falls Trail in Great, Smoky
Mountains, National Park, Tennessee.
Early. December on a weekday low 40s,
gray light. My cousin and I were in the park
to walk. Something simple before dark.
Nothing crazy. Just a familiar.
Five Mile round trip. You can do in a few hours if you
keep a steady pace. At The Visitor Center of
volunteer reminded us to be back before dusk because Wildlife
gets bold near the switchbacks. We heard that and thought black
bear, maybe a pushy buck in the Rut.
We signed the register at the kiosk shoulder day packs and
started at 2:10, p.m. the plan was out an hour turn.
If it felt late back to the car before the loop road traffic,
picked up again. The first part was normal Leaf,
slick dirt Roots across the tread Abrams Creek pushing along
to the right. We passed two couples heading
out in a Solo. Hiker with trekking poles.
The trail Narrows and wide ends in stretches.
But it's well, cut into the hillside with Laurel and Rodeo
dendron along the slope. After 35, maybe 40 minutes, we
came to a bench where the trail is a little wider than usual.
There's a view through the brush to the creek, if you stop, but
you can't see much water from the tread.
That's where I saw the buck. It was uphill from us by 15
yards quartering toward the trail.
It wasn't feeding. It wasn't moving.
It wasn't doing anything except standing with its head, a little
high. The rack looked wrong at a
glance tall uneven points that didn't match from side to side
with strips of Grey velvet hanging from one beam, even
though it was December. I talked to, at the way you talk
to any wild animal, you want to keep calm Easy big guy, no stomp
know blow no head. Shake the eyes didn't flick from
us to the brush and back they just held.
I felt my shoulders tightened because there's a line between
cautious and off and it was over that line.
I told my cousin we're going to back down, keep a trunk between
you and it. We didn't turn our backs and we
didn't rush. We eased our steps and slid to
the downhill side of the tread the Bucks still didn't move.
Then it did something that took all the air out of me at once.
It Rose, not a bound, not a rear with the front of striking.
Its hind leg straightened in a smooth lift until it's chest was
too high over the slope. The spine, didn't dip the way a
deer's usually does when its balancing.
The head state level like it was used to it.
The angle of the hind joints was wrong.
If you've ever watched a person, stand up from a low seat hips,
extend, knees lock, that was the motion.
Only the body was all wrong for it.
We backed down to the last Bend without taking our eyes off it.
I noticed, two Thin parallel drag marks across the leaf
litter near our boots that I couldn't place.
Close together and about shin height.
If they had been made by something brushing across but
nothing about that. Slope made sense of them.
I didn't want to crouch and investigate we kept moving.
On the next straight, it committed to the trail.
I know that's a loaded sentence. So I'm going to be precise
stepped onto the actual tread and took three upright Paces,
downhill across the bench. Cut the four limbs hung longer
than they should have hung on a deer.
There were joints near where elbows would be.
If it were a person, the ends weren't hooves.
They were pale and segmented and they flexed at contact the
antlers, scraped a low Branch when it tilted its head.
I heard Drive Vines slide along bone, a raspy sound, that didn't
match, any other noise in the woods at that moment.
My cousin said, clear and calm. Back down.
The head tilt, shifted and locked onto us in a way that
made me feel like it understood spacing if nothing else.
Not words just that we were giving ground and it was
watching what we did with that space.
We didn't run, I can't stress this enough.
If you've ever slid on leaves toward a bad angle, you know why
the downhill side drops off and a fall?
There is a broken knee or a long slide to the creek.
We traded places. So the steady or person took the
outer edge on the Slicker Corners.
We said normal things to each other to keep our voices steady
and our steps practical. Route.
Their step left. Hold that trunk.
I marked a few features because I knew I'd need to explain them
later an old drill hole in a boulder, a broken trekking pole.
Segment off the tread a cluster of Laurel that forced the trail
closer to the drop. It matched our Pace without
closing. Every time we rounded a
Switchback, it came into view along the high cut.
Same distance. Same slow pressure.
It didn't lunge or startled? It didn't make a sound Beyond
brush contact and leaf noise. Every time I thought about
breaking into a jog, it would move.
One pace forward on the upper edge of the bench and force me
to picture my feet slipping out. We didn't test it.
We walked the Creak noise States steady off to our right.
The light wasn't good, but it wasn't gone.
Either just flat that late afternoon.
Grave where Shadows stop helping with depth.
Two birds came up toward us around a corner.
Tan, hats, binoculars. They looked at our faces, then
passed us and froze. I told them, there's a buck
acting off. We're heading to the lot.
I didn't say anything else because there wasn't anything
useful to add the four of us moved together on the next
straight. It stepped onto the high side
where the cut is cleanest planted and held there for
several seconds. Every part of it was visible.
The back was too flat for that grade.
The shoulders rolled forward under thin hide the spine,
barely moved the front joints flexed and unflexed like elbows
the ends braced and released without any hoof clack.
It was all wrong without any dramatic, flourish to it, just
wrong. One of the birds said, I see
hands. His voice didn't Shake, he
sounded like a man describing a hawk's wing pattern.
Maybe that's what you do when you spent years putting names to
shape and then a shape doesn't fit We kept walking it, kept
with us, there was never a rush. There was never a charge.
The pressure didn't let up until the last 100 yards to the kiosk
at the trailhead. We heard car door is in a kid
laughing. A family had their many van open
and snacks on a blanket. The father looked past us to the
far embankment and went still. His teenage son leaned forward
and braced, his hands on his knees.
It stood on the top of the cut where the brush is thin head and
rack above the lot. This is the part.
I've replayed in my head, the most and it's the part with the
cleanest edges. It dropped to all fours in a
single smooth fold and moved along the embankment into
Rhododendron with an easy efficient lobe.
Know stumble, no thrash, no Panic.
The dad checked his phone and said the time out loud.
I turned and looked at the visitor board clock by the
kiosk. 4:52 PM, the light said the same.
We flagged a ranger in a white pickup that rolled through the
lot of few minutes later. I gave him exactly what I've
ridden here, cut down to the facts.
My cousin did the same. The birders and the father, and
his son gave their virgins. The ranger didn't smear.
He didn't tell a camp story. He split us up and took short
statements. Then asked if we'd walk him back
to the last Bend We went 20 yards up the trail and showed
him three things that mattered. First a sapling on the high
side, with fresh scuffs at shoulder and antler height.
The bark was pale where it had been scraped dark.
Coarse hairs were caught in a torn strip. second those same
two parallel, drag marks across the leaf litter at Shin height,
Third, a shallow slip in the duff.
Where something had braced and pushed off.
He took a couple of photos on his work phone and wrote down
the markers. I'd noticed the boulder with the
drill hole, the broken pole segment.
So Wildlife staff could find the spot in the morning.
When he finished, he handed me a small card with the incident
number. He said he was logging it as
aggressive, servant Behavior unusual, gait and that someone
would walk it. At first light, he asked, if
anyone had been injured, nobody had.
He had advised people to give the trail some time before
heading back in. That was it professional boring
even. I was grateful for boring that
night. I wrote everything down with
times and distances while it was fresh exactly the way I've laid
it out here. No flourishes, no theories.
The next day, my cousin called The Back Country office to ask,
if anyone else had reported issues on Abrams Falls?
Nothing official yet I posted the incident number on a
regional hiking Forum with one line of advice.
If your hiking Abrams Falls in Winter plan to turn around early
than you think, and don't Linger on the switchbacks near dusk.
People messaged me with their own ideas, a few used a word
locals, sometimes used for things.
They don't want to say out loud, I won't argue with them, I'll
just repeat what I saw a deer shaped animal that could rise
and walk the tread on hind legs with front ends that were not
Hooves. Antlers scraping Vine.
No rush, constant pressure, third-party Witnesses, physical
sign on a sapling that didn't come from a fallen Branch or a
stray pack strap. If you need a final note,
nothing followed us home. No, scratches on the car.
No, footsteps, outside the house, no calls at odd hours.
We still hike, the Smokies. Were careful with time now,
especially on that trail. If someone asks, whether Abrams
Falls is a good. Late-day choice in Winter.
I tell them to pick a different one or get off at by three.
I keep the Rangers card with the incident number, in my glove
box, as a reminder to respect the parts of the park that feel
wrong, even when they look ordinary, I know how this reads.
I know how it sounds to anyone. Who hasn't watched an animal,
hold a trail the way a person holds it.
I'm not here to sell you a story.
I'm here to put a warning in front of you that I wish
somebody had put in front of me on Abrams Falls.
Those last switchbacks before dark are not a place to Stubborn
your way through. You don't need to test, whatever
that was. Give it the time and space at
once. Get back to the lot, while the
light is Still Honest, that's the whole lesson.
That's all I've got. I'm writing this two days after
getting discharged from Flagstaff, Medical Center
triage. Recorded my core temperature at
9 4. 7 8 9. I was doing a cold weather
Shakedown before committing to longer winter weekends.
I signed the kiosk at Lockett Meadow around 2:10 p.m.
Solo. One night.
Inner Basin 2 to 3 miles and wrote my contact number.
Forecast from the National Weather Service called for a
hard freeze. Clear.
Sky light evening Breeze gear for the Skeptics 20 degree down
bag closed cell, foam pad under an insulated inflatable combined
R-value around 4. MSR Pocket Rocket 2 on an 8 oz
isopro. Canister toque 750 ml pot bear,
spray in the side pocket. Black Diamond, headlamp rated
350 lumens. And a tiny 0.7 Oz plastic mirror
in my repair kit. No music, no fire, no substances
just a yellow two-person tent in a notebook with time's the inner
Basin Trail starts off mellow and climbs into white Trunks and
Deadfall. Late October meant the Aspen
leaves were mostly down the ground, a mix of slick, gold,
mats and patches of thin old snow tucked in shade sound
travels far up there. When the trees are bare, you
hear boot scuffs from farther away than makes sense.
I parked at the campground Loop, used the pit toilet stretched
and started up with maybe 24 pounds.
I passed old initials carved into smooth bark.
A trickle crossing. The tread that asked for a quick
Rock hop and a line of fresh elk.
Droppings the size of big olives.
Around 4:05 p.m. two day. Hikers came down toward me
puffy, jackets, trekking. Poles, one in a bright neon
beanie. We stopped long enough to be
polite. They talked.
Fast, mentioned. Lots of elk, sign up, high and
the beanie one said, Safe in a bright upbeat tone that stuck in
my head. I didn't give my name, we
weren't out there to make friends.
I set up about 60 yards off the main tread behind a low rise and
a cluster of Fallen logs. Screened, from casual eyes.
Open enough to move around, no fire.
Just the stove. Dinner was Ramen with a foil
pack of tuna and A Fistful of salt.
I hung my food on a high Branch away from the sleeping area and
checked my system for the night bag, fluffed, pad valves tight.
Headlamp on low knife in the side, pocket of the tent bear
spray Within Reach. Sunset eased out around 5:30
p.m. the temperature. Already trying to bite fingers
when I tightened guy lines I did the boring routine count layers,
shake the canister to hear the fuel slosh log, the time in my
notebook, It was quiet. The way.
High basins. Often are on cold evenings, no
traffic noise, no voices breath fog, and the faint, pop of
cooling metal. From my pot.
Write, it dusk a clean Branch snap came from uphill, where the
trail bends, not a rustle, a single snap, I clicked my
headlamp to low and watched for a beam Through the Trees from
another camper. Nothing.
The air felt steady. No, gusts no Sway in the trunks.
I told myself elk move like trucks when they want to and
went back to sorting my sleeping gear.
A few minutes later. I caught a footfall pattern.
That wasn't for leg light. It was two steps a pause then a
careful Scuf. It circled wider than my little
Camp shape and didn't bother with a greeting.
No Light. No hay.
The crunch of old leaves would build and fade.
Like someone walking in uneven oval placing each foot with
care. I called out normal voice, not
trying to sound tough, not trying to sound scared.
Hey, there sites taken, I've got spray you good.
From uphill. A voice said, my first name not
close, maybe 40 or 50 yards, but right on Pitch.
It was the same bright tone as the beanie hike or earlier the
same light bounce at the end, I froze because I had not told
anyone my name I answered with who is that?
The reply came back. Fast be safe.
Same two words, same tone. But the Rhythm sagged, like
someone playing a song on beat one, second, and off the next I
told myself I was hearing a trick of distance.
I told myself people play jokes. I told myself a lot of things
while my thumb found the safety tab on the spray.
The steps Drew closer, they stopped just past the edge of my
fly, the kind of distance where two people might talk if they
weren't strangers in the dark. Something touched a guy line,
twice, light Taps. That hummed the cord.
I clicked the headlamp off sat still and let my eyes get used
to the dark. In the cold smells sit low and a
thick, warm musk slid under the nylon and into the tent.
It carried a copper note like coins rubbed on damp gloves.
I reached into the repair pouch, found the tiny mirror, cracked
the door, two fingers and angled the plastic to pull a thin slice
of the scene outside into view. In the washed out.
Spill from my dimmed lamp, something tall crouched by The
Deadfall. Elbows are knees at angles.
That did not look comfortable. The head tilted farther than a
neck should tilt and stayed there without twitching, No
Hands On The Ground. No, shifting weight.
Like a person catching their balance, just a held wrong pose.
That lasted one beat too long. I closed the Zipper by feel and
tried to breathe slow. Then I heard a zipper that
wasn't mine, 10 feet away a crisp slide stop it sounded like
fabric teeth separating on a jacket or pouch, not on my
shelter. I ran my fingers over every pull
on my tent to make sure they were all shut while the smell
got thicker, I whispered to myself more than to anything
else that I was leaving. That I had spray that I didn't
want trouble. From behind the tent in my own
voice. I heard, don't leave me same
tone. I've used joking with friends
when they start the truck, before I am in same breath
pattern. It was my voice without coming
out of my mouth. I didn't think I moved headlamp
in the right hand knife and spray in the left.
I drove a shoulder through the door, caught a guy line with my
knee and went down. Hard in the leaves.
The line snapped her tore, I didn't check, I got up fast and
ran the way you run. When you don't care, how you
look, picking the widest gap between Trunks and trusting that
the main tread would feel smoother under boots than the
duff. I kept the headlamp on low to
avoid blinding myself. My left, boot caught a root, I
slid bent the wrist, under me, felt the hot sting of something
pulling and forced myself up before the hurt could bloom into
a reason to stop. From above and behind my voice
called help. I fell.
It landed with exactness. That made my stomach flip, it
sounded like panic but didn't carry any breath strain at the
end of the phrase. The way my voice does.
When I'm running, I nearly turned around instead, I said
out loud because hearing something steady helped.
Nope, keep going downhill Meadow.
Saying the landmarks out loud organized, my head the trail
under me smooth, the are opened a little cold in the grass
ahead, sharper than in the trees at the gate by the campground
Loop a pickup, idled with the lights off.
Two campers in hoodies were sitting in the cab with the
windows cracked, I must have looked like a mess because they
opened the door before I asked and shoved.
A wool blanket at me. they said they'd come down from a site
higher up because something heavy had been walking circles
around them and talking Not yelling Talking Words too clean.
For how far away it? Sounded one of them.
Flicked. The headlights on and pointed
the truck at the spot. I just stumbled out of for a
second. I shine came back from between
the trunks 2.7 higher than I'd expect for Elk.
Steady, not that quick. Lo Green you sometimes get off a
coyote know Bobby. No Jitter.
Just there. And then not.
Like a step backwards. Swallowed it We call it from the
turnout, a deputy met us at the bottom of the access road, took
Basics, checked that I could hold a sentence without slurring
and sent me with the ambulance, when the Shivering wouldn't
stop. At the hospital, they warmed me
up. Taped the wrist and kept me
overnight mostly to be sure. I wasn't hiding something worse.
The next day search and rescue. Took me back up.
In daylight, all the angles looked ordinary again, which did
not help. They found my yellow tents
slumped Against The Deadfall. Where I had blasted out Two
Poles were bent into shapes that looked more Twisted than stepped
on the Fly. Had a six inch tear with no
clean blade line, or obvious claw scoring.
There wasn't much to photograph for tracks, the crusted snow
patches had thawed and refrozen. And the leaf litter was kicked
to Hell by my exit. They handed me a damp stuff sack
with my stove Fuel and pot because I shoved them all into a
corner before I ran. Back at the road, I gave a
formal statement that the deputy later labeled unknown human
activity. He said, Prowlers come up to the
meadow sometimes. I nodded because arguing on the
roadside wouldn't change the outcome.
A day later I saw a comment on the all Trails page for the
route from a hiker in a neon beanie, they wrote that they'd
passed a solo camper setting up behind some logs around four and
were back in town by early evening.
They used the same phrasing, I remembered, and it lined up with
my time notes. I didn't reach out.
I didn't need to. It confirmed, only the part that
matters. Whoever said my name after dark
wasn't them. I'm not going to tell you.
I know what I saw. What I know is how a thing moved
when it shifted and how a voice landed.
When it used words, it shouldn't have had.
I know the weight of steps around a tent and what it feels
like when a smell collects under nylon.
I know my wrist still aches. When I twist a jar lid and that
the polls in my closet are warped, where they shouldn't be.
I know, two strangers in a truck saw eyes shine at a height that
didn't fit what lives up there most of the time and I know I
changed how I camp because of one night above Lockett, Meadow
for the rest of that season. I stuck to drive up spots where
other people were in view. I finished my cold weather
testing with a hundred feet away and a locked vehicle next to me.
I still hike the base in because it's beautiful in a
straightforward way but I don't sleep up there alone.
If you head in late in the year and set your tent off, the trail
behind a set of white trunks, sign the register, tell someone
your plan and don't ignore the simple details, your body logs
even when your brain wants a tidy explanation, That's the
best closure I've got. I got out, people can verify
enough of it, to make it stick to the real world, and I won't
be in a yellow tent of Lockett Meadow by myself again.
I'm typing this fast because if I slowed down, I think about the
parts. I can't explain and then I
stopped. We were on Hawley Lake on White
Mountain. Apache land.
Early November Two Brothers doing a one-night fishing trip.
Like we've done a dozen times since we were kids.
We bought the day, fishing permits in the camping.
Permit at an authorized place in town.
Read the posted rules at the kiosk when we turned off as 260
and kept it simple. No noise.
No trash. No fire outside the ring.
No wandering off the established paths.
I'm saying that first out of respect because this isn't some
brag, it's a record of how a string of small stupid choices
can pile up until you're trying to outro a shoreline in the dark
and telling yourself. The cold is the only reason your
hands won't stop shaking. I'm not giving a site number and
I won't swear to distances because the light was flat and
the cloud sat low and the water eats range at night.
I will say the campground felt close to empty two other
vehicles somewhere deeper in the loops and the grass around the
lake was that flat and yellow you get right before real
winter. Then plates of ice had started
to form along the edges. Clicking against the John Boat
like coins when we nudged off. We made Camp the way you do when
you've done it enough times to cut corners.
Truck backed in food tote under the tailgate, Lantern topped,
and pumped and hung from a low Branch to keep fumes.
Out of the cab. The boat is a beat-up 12 foot
jon with a trolling motor and one battery.
That's usually enough, if you don't drag it around at full
power, we had the two oars in pfds and a small first aid kit
and a cheap cooler. In an emergency bag with the
boring stuff thermal blanket tape.
A couple packets of iodine, a whistle, I've never used.
We plan to fish. Last Light, Eat and crash early.
while I was at the self-pay Box, my brother said he heard a woman
calling a few names from the tree line passed the empty
campsite Not singing. Not yelling, just saying names
in a straight tone, like you take role.
We both looked that way and saw trees and the slope.
No one walked out. No light moved nothing.
We told each other, it was probably another small group
settling in and we didn't overthink it and that's mistake
one right there because that should have put us on a tighter
plan. We pushed off close to Sunset
when the surface turned that dull pewter and the Cove we
liked was still enough to print our wakes I did something.
I never do because I was fidgeting.
I left the truck keys in my jacket pocket and hung the
jacket on the branch to air out the gas smell from refilling.
The lantern I even told myself I was being organized.
We slid the hole down the path, broke the thin Edge Ice with the
bow and putter toward the snag that leans, over the cove.
The motor hummed and that was the only mechanical sound for a
long minute just us and a few Birds ticking around in the
brush upslope. My brother said his Rod I
steered and we settled into that quiet where you don't talk,
because you don't need to the air, had that cut in it, that
tells you you're going to see your breath in a few minutes.
Then a dog Yelp carried across the lake, not a drawn out Bark,
just that sharp High warning note, We both turned our heads,
the way you do when you're trying to judge range off a
single sound. 10 seconds later. Less than that.
Honestly, the exact same Yelp came again from our left at a
distance that didn't match the time Gap.
I said two dogs and then we heard it again from behind us.
Same tone, same link. Same spacing like it had been
recorded and played back. It wasn't wind or the bowl of
the lake doing tricks. It was the same sound from
different spots too, close together.
I felt that little Pinch at the base of my neck that I always
pretend is just the cold, On the far Bank on a small rise.
A figure stood against the stripe, where the trees met the
sky, no headlamp no Phone Glow, no light at all.
It was tall enough that my brain tried to explain it as two
people standing tight or someone on a rock.
But it wasn't that we watched it for a few breaths.
It didn't shift weight or do that little ankle dance, you do
when you're cold. It didn't do anything. my
brother said my name not to me to it without meaning to because
the second it said his name, he said, mine back, the voice came
straight across the water, plain, and flat, not a shout,
just a person's Voice using our family way of saying his name,
emphasis and all I asked who it was louder than I needed to it.
Didn't answer, it didn't even tip its head.
Like it was trying to catch our words, it just stood.
Then there was a small Splash near the snack, on our side of
the lake. The kind you get when something
breaks the surface and slides under I looked at that out of
reflex and when we turned back to the rise, the figure wasn't
there anymore. We both know the word Skinwalker
we've heard the stories since we were kids because Arizona has
stories and if you spend any time Outdoors you hear things
you don't repeat across certain boundaries, we didn't say the
word out loud. We reeled in, I told myself we
were cold and the bite was off and it was smarter to eat now
than sit with wet hands in the dark, that's how you lie to
yourself and still move fast. The motor felt weak for a second
like the battery connection wasn't tight.
Then it picked up and we eased back toward the small Landing
below our site. The lantern was a little Halo
through the trees that looked more like help than it.
Turned out to be on the path of the water between the gravel and
our fire ring were footprints on The Damp ground.
Bare wide longer than mine, the heel and toe marks didn't match
where they should have for a smooth turn.
Two prints angled one way at the heel while another set angled
the other at the toes like someone changed Direction with
the pivot that leaves a smear. The skin texture pattern that
wet feet sometimes leave wasn't there, just shape and death.
My brother said he'd seen kids run Barefoot in the cold for a
dare. I said nothing because the
prints came in at a line that didn't match the use path and
stopped in a place where you'd have to walk through a tangle to
make them. 30 yards out between two trunks, the tall shaped
stood again. closer now, Still no light just mass and height
and that same Stillness, that doesn't read like a person
conserving Heat. I felt my tongue.
Go dry. We did the smart thing a
half-step too late. We got in the truck, locked the
doors and that's when the world went thin because the keys were
in my jacket on the branch beside the lantern.
I slapped my pockets like that would change the truth.
My brother looked at me without moving his head.
I turned the dome light off and we sat and listened for human
noise, zipper cough on gravel and got nothing.
He said he'd go. I told him to keep me in his
sight. The whole time, he popped the
door and sprinted and I kept the lanterns Beam on him and on the
branch, and on the space, to his, right?
Because something was moving parallel to him in a way that
matched, his Cadence and stopped when he did.
He grabbed the jacket and yanked, the branch whipped back.
The shape at the trunk stopped, right at the edge of the lantern
light. Like there was a tape line on
the ground. Then it used our mom's voice and
called us both home by our full names.
The exact way she does when she doesn't want to be angry anymore
and just wants you to come inside and stop being idiots.
My brother froze because you can't not.
Not the first time I yelled his name hard enough to make my
throat sting and he ran and we slammed into the truck and
locked it. and I don't know why I expected it to Rattle the
door, or grab the handle, like a normal creep because it didn't
It knocked on the rear quarter panel with a sound that didn't
have the right pitch. That's the best I can do.
Describing it wrong pitch. Staying in the truck.
Wasn't an answer. If the keys weren't in hand, we
either waited in a cold box while something pasted around
us, or we put a barrier between us and it that we could
maintain. Water is a barrier.
You can hold if you can keep a gap.
I said it out loud and hated myself because it felt like
grabbing the dumbest option on the table.
But it was the only one that led us set a distance line.
We slid the John Boat back into the lake, the thin ice at the
edge broke and pushed away from the bow.
I set the Lantern on the stern and turned it low.
So we could see without blinding ourselves and we started to row,
we didn't use the motor, I didn't trust the connections and
I didn't want the noise to mess with hearing the bank.
If you think that sounds Brave don't, we were afraid of being
pinned to a sound, we couldn't place.
As we eased away, I raise the lantern just enough to clear the
gunnel and I made eye level with a pale shape in the low branches
of the path. I'm not going to describe it
like a mask. It wasn't a face in the way you
think of eyes and a mouth. It was a pale oval where a face
goes too high above the ground for a person kneeling on a limb
and it stayed still while we moved.
And that was enough to make my hands, lose the Rhythm on the
oar. We got about 50 yards out, call
it a half football field, if you want to pick a picture and held
that line along the middle of the cove.
The sound on Shore matched us. When we pulled brush moved when
we paused it paused, then the dog Yelp again, precisely the
same from two points, that would have needed a Sprint between
them. And then, our mom's voice
telling us the house was warm and asking what we wanted for
dinner in that tired. Way that used to make us come
in, even when we were trying to squeeze the last daylight out of
a game. We didn't answer because we
couldn't figure out where to aim the words and also because
neither of us wanted our voices on that water anymore.
The motor coughed once and died when I tried it out of panic.
I'm not proud of that move. Maybe moisture on the contacts.
Maybe the cold, the oars were enough.
We kept the bow toward the center.
So both Banks were in View and took short, steady pulls.
Our breath turned to small clouds and blew away on a thin
wind. That slid along the surface.
I watched Frost lift off the grass along the far Bank in a
line As the Wind passed and it looked like a pale ribbon moving
around the cove. When it reached the path where
the prints were the lantern Flames, sagged for a second and
then came back up. We didn't talk, we didn't lay
out plans or Theory. We watched the shore and counted
heartbeat long gaps and corrected our drift.
The night wasn't endless. It just felt stretched. at the
first thin gray, that makes the trees grow depth again a truck
idled near the ramp The engine sound was normal and boring, and
the most welcome thing I've ever heard.
A tribal officer stood by the bumper and called to us in a
clipped regular voice to row in slow and keep the light on, so
he could see our line. He didn't step down until our
bows scraped the gravel. He looked at us looked past us
at the water and then walked up the path with us without asking
a pile of questions. He saw the footprints that were
left and the scuffs where our boots had run over them, and the
branch bowed from where the jacket had been yang.
He didn't ask for a story, he asked if we had permits, we
showed them. He told us to pack up and go
home today. He said not to Camp here.
Again without a group, he didn't smile and he didn't make it
sound like a suggestion. He didn't write a ticket, he
made a short note in a small book and then sat in his truck
while we broke down camps. So, we didn't have to keep one
eye on the tree line and one on the cooler Back in the branch.
The jacket hung twisted, like, someone had rung, water out of
it and then changed their mind. The keys were still in the
pocket. The cooler lid was open, but
nothing was inside that we hadn't put there, no trash on
the ground. No theft, just small changes
that add up to a message. Leave.
We loaded the boat strapped it too tight on the first try,
loosened it strapped it again. I could have cried out of simple
relief when the ignition turned. We drove out past the kiosk and
the rules sheet and neither of us spoke until we hit town.
We didn't make a formal complaint beyond the officers
incident note, because I didn't want to sit in a room and say
the same thing to a second person who would look for
Corners in my story. We told our family, what
happened in the same plane voice on using here.
And then we stopped telling it because we started sleeping
badly near any kind of water. Even the kind that sits calm in
a park with a walking path around it.
That's the end we left and we listened and we didn't go back
there alone. If you need a label to make
sense of it, we have one, but we didn't say it out loud up there
and I'm not saying it again. Now, you know it already.
A, we weren't out there. Chasing anything strange.
We drove to fish Lake for the color for the kind of gold.
You can't get in town. My partner likes studying tree
bark, and leaf patterns and sketching ideas in a little
notebook. I run trails to keep my head
from buzzing late September, almost October the air up there,
sits around 58 degrees, Fahrenheit by mid-afternoon and
smells like dry leaves and cold water.
We parked at Dr. Creek day use off Utah, State Route, 25 looked
at the paper map on the signboard and set a simple plan.
Take the lake shore. National Recreation Trail toward
Bowery Haven, then cut, back near the road before it got
late. We told each other, we turn
around by 4:30 no matter what. We weren't showing off.
We had the basics 1.5 liters each snacks, a small first aid
kit. That happened to have a coil of
bright paracord, an air horn, bear spray and headlamps.
At noon, the trail had people on it by three.
It didn't, the first miles were nothing but easy, the water was
in and out of sight on our right?
A dad, and his kid were flinging stones at the flat part of the
lake near Bowery Creek. A couple with trekking, poles
asked us where the big Aspen stand the one everyone calls
Pando actually starts. We told them what the ranger
station had told us. You're already inside parts of
it. It's not a single patch, like a
Park. Lawn Then it was just our
footfalls. The paper dry flutter of leaves,
dropping and two elk calls from up the ridge, Far enough away
that sound came thin and plain. If we turned back at Bowery
Haven, this wouldn't be a story. We kept going because the stand
passed a shallow Creek Crossing looked older whiter trunks, lots
of healed scars on the bark. The ground.
There was a matted gold, everything looked like the main
path because the leaf fall filled in the Side Tracks.
It didn't feel Enchanted or special, it felt like we'd
picked a good day and beat the weather.
The first odd thing was in the mud.
My shoes, have a specific tread blocks on the edges and a broken
Ladder Up The Middle. We crossed that little iron
smelling seep and my partner pointed at my heel prints inside
my heel cup dead center. There was a second heel strike
deeper with a longer stride than mine.
Like someone heavy had stepped exactly into my tracks and
stretched the step. It wasn't beside my prints, it
was nested in them. I thought it had to be an
eyesight trick light and Shadow playing on soft mud.
We walked another 50 yards and found the same thing in a darker
patch. My partner crouched and said
it's stepping right in yours. I made some joke about whoever
it was saving effort, the joke didn't land.
Five minutes later, a coyote crossed the trail.
It gave us a plane two second. Look ears up, tail, low and
trotted off to the right through the leaf fall.
We both watched it go because we don't see coyotes that clothes
very often when we're on foot another five minutes and the
same coyote crossed at the same place with the same torn left
ear, and the same glance and the same step pattern.
I know what Deja Vu feels like. This didn't feel like that.
This felt like a clip run twice. We stopped with without planning
to my partner said, is it the same one?
I said it has the same year. We both turned around to see if
maybe we'd looped. We hadn't the Crooked snag on
the left, had a sunlight side. It didn't have five minutes
before the last voices. We heard faded for good around
3:15. Wind on the shoreline came and
went, but in the trees, it was quiet in the normal way, a leaf
blanket eats sound, we talked about turning back and then
decided to walk just one more shallow, draw and aim back to
the road from there. We could smell the lake
stronger. When the land sloped, the ground
felt soft under the leaves. Not tricky, just full of hidden
sticks. That wanted to roll our ankles
We were standing close like you do when you don't have to raise
your voice. Then I heard my voice up ahead.
Call my partner's name in the exact casual way, I say it.
When I want them to pause, not loud, not hissed, just a normal
flat. Hey, hold up in my tone.
I didn't say it. I was looking right at them,
when it came my partner looked at me fast enough to flare their
nostrils. I said I didn't say anything.
I was weirdly embarrassed like I had been caught doing a bad
impression of myself. We both stood and listened a few
seconds later behind us. And to the left, I heard my
partners voice say this way, with their clipped Cadence, the
way they talk when they're focused.
We turned at the same time and saw nothing.
I don't mean nothing unusual. I mean, there was nothing except
white Trunks and gold ground and our two sets of prints.
We stopped moving. We stood facing each other and I
pulled the Paracord coil from the first aid kit.
We tied it around our waists with maybe 10 feet between
knots. We could drop in a second.
We agreed to count steps in a steady voice and stopped every
50 to check that the lake stayed on our right.
If we hit impassable brush, we'd adjust and keep the same general
angle until we saw open ground One of us would hold the bear
spray, the other would hold the air horn and a headlamp even if
it felt silly and daylight, we set it Like rules out loud.
So we'd follow them. On the first count at 32 the
cord, snapped tight across my hips, as if someone had stepped
on it. I turned ready to free it from a
dead branch. My partner wasn't snagged, they
were not moving. They were looking past my
shoulder with both pupils huge. Do you see that?
They said I did an answer for a second because my brain tried to
call what I saw a stump. It wasn't there was a shape at
the edge of a narrow cluster of the whitest trunks.
Tall longer than a person. Buy a head thin.
No visible gear or bright color? No face detail.
Nothing dramatic. Just a vertical body that had no
business fitting behind a trunk that narrow.
It didn't sway with anything because the air in the stand was
still it stood the way a person stands when they don't care if
you see them or not, we did basic Backcountry training you
square up. You don't run.
You make yourself obvious. I didn't feel Brave.
I felt like my stomach dropped. Three inches inside me the way
it does. When a ladder shifts.
I pulled the safety off, the bear spray, my partner, lifted
the headlamp and rested a thumb on the air horn button.
I said on three and counted it they hit the horn and pulse the
lamp at the same time. The sound wasn't even that loud
out there. The light wasn't even that
strong under day Sky, the shape moved left and forward in the
same instant. I don't have a better term for
it than a bad cut. In a video, it broke line of
sight behind a trunk that shouldn't have covered.
A thing that size, it didn't run, it didn't crowd, it changed
positions. In a way, my eyes didn't track.
We didn't wait for more. We started the step count again.
I said the numbers out loud, my partner said them with me.
We kept the chord taught and moved the angle.
Until we saw water through gaps. Every 50 we stopped and traded
the spray. So one of us could keep their
hands free without losing that tight feeling in the gut that
says, don't be stupid. Once behind us.
Something stepped in a shallow puddle and lifted out with no
time Gap, like the sound had no distance, not a trickle, a step
and an immediate lift the land opened.
Before the light did shoulder High Grass, a line of dark
Kabul. Then a cut where the trunks
broke and Fish Lake showed itself, blue gray and ruffled
The temperature shift, hit my face, you know that clean flat
cold. You get by open water near
evening that I could taste it. We walked straight for the road
shoulder, without looking back because looking back is how you
fall. We didn't run, but my thighs
were shaking. Like, I'd been on a descent for
too long. When we reached the asphalt
Edge, I finally turned the Gap in the trees was exactly that a
gap. No one stood there.
We didn't do anything. Dramatic at the car, we unlocked
it with hands. That didn't want to work God in
and shut the doors. I kept seeing the nested heal
prints in my head, the way they fit inside mine.
Like, they'd been measured. I drove us back along sr-25 and
didn't say, much, my partner stared at their knees.
We slept at a motel that smelled like laundry and Lake mud.
And we both woke up at three something in the morning without
alarms. I don't know why.
No sounds, No dreams. I can remember.
We just woke up at exactly the same time and didn't want to
talk. The next morning, we went to the
Fish Lake office and told a ranger everything we cut out the
part where we heard our own voices because I didn't feel
like being treated like I needed a brochure about getting turned
around. I still told him about the
nested tracks, the shape behind the narrow trunks, the cord and
the step count. He said, we could walk back in
for a look, while the light was good.
He didn't make it a big deal. He didn't make it a joke,
either, I liked him for that. I know those stands can mess
with your sense of direction. Every trunk, looks like every
other trunk, the leaf carpet hides, the small cues your feet
are used to in daylight, the place felt smaller, and that
made me nervous in a different way.
We found our route easily. You could see where we tramped
leaves sideways in a straight Lane.
At the edge of the damp places. There were heel cups that were
definitely mine. Nested inside a few were deeper
Impressions bare. Not toes like you'd expect from
a person without boots more. Like the front had wiped smooth
when it stepped in and out and the heel had sunk.
I don't know how else to say it. The ranger crouched and looked
without telling us what to think.
We didn't find a camp know rappers.
No fire ring nothing that says anyone had been staying in that
draw only traffic in and out and in and out might be too generous
because the clearest marks were the ones that went where we'd
already walked? when we got to the narrow
cluster where we'd seen the shape, we found the trunk, I'd
mentally measured against It was Slimmer than I remembered.
The bark had those black freckles that Aspen get when
they're older. if someone my height had tried to vanish
behind it, half of them would still be showing I stepped
behind it on purpose and told my partner to stand where they'd
stood. They shook their head, we didn't
do that part. We followed the draw to where
the grass started, and the lake smells sharpened and the
temperature felt the way it had the evening before.
On the road shoulder, the ranger said people sometimes report
getting stacked out here, his word, not mine, meaning tracks.
That seem like they're on top of each other.
When animals follow hikers, he didn't call what we saw a prank.
He didn't call it a myth. He told us to keep each other in
sight in those Groves when the light goes flat.
And to remember that open water is a good handrail when your
spooked We drove home the long way down through the valley
where the trees thin out in the sky looks big.
Again, my partner didn't open their notebook.
I didn't put my shoes on a second time.
For a cool down run. We didn't talk until we were
across the county line and when we did it was about boring
things on purpose. That night, my partner said they
were going to hold off on any solo, scouting for a while.
I joined a running group for the rest of the fall and stayed on
the busier side of town Trails. Where you always hear someone
chatting or a stroller wheel squeaking up ahead.
I know what the internet does with a story like this.
People are going to type out that word Skinwalker, like it
ends the conversation. I don't know what we saw.
I don't know who or what stepped in my tracks with a longer
stride and how a body moved, two ways in one beat without
running. I do know, the stand felt wrong,
not because it was cursed and not because we were hearing
things but because it was copying us Our steps inside our
steps, our voices that weren't ours coming from the wrong
places. If you want to file it under
animals, tracking, hikers, or under a bad trick of nerves, I
won't argue. I'm the one who still ties a 10
foot length of paracord in my pack and says, the step count
out loud when the trunks get close together and the ground
turns to gold. That's the part.
I can report without trying to convince anyone, we kept our
rules. We stayed together and we made
it to the road before dark. That's the only ending I wanted.
Read this before you decide on one more quick Loop of Jackson,
Gulch when the clouds sit low and the park gate is almost due
to close. I'm not posting for drama.
I'm posting because I still ride Mancos State Park all the time,
and I don't want anyone. Making the same mistake.
We did. Mid-october shoulder season.
First dusting of snow on the ground Campground.
Half-empty wind pushing a cold front across the water.
My cousin and I drove up from Durango to run laps while the
High Country froze. We were on good trail bikes with
big 29 inch wheels and wide. Knobby tires.
No inner tubes Since it was cold, I kept the tire.
Pressure low about 23 PSI in the front and 26 in the back for
better grip. I had a bright headlamp that
could hit 400 lumens. My cousin only had a smaller
handlebar light and swore it was enough.
We wrote the Jackson Gulch Reservoir Loop.
The usual way counterclockwise. So you get a short climb and
then a smooth downhill, straight back to camp.
We finished a late pass on the shoreline and were back at the
truck, eating jerky, when a small, ATV rolled by camp, host
older guy calm voice friendly without being nosy.
He pointed at the posted hours and said Gates locked at 10:00
cats are active at dusk YouTube, be back before then.
He asked about our lights nodded when I told him the Lumen number
and idled away, we looked at the sky looked at each other and
said, the line that comes before, most bad ideas, 10
minutes. Instead of the easy, Shoreline,
my cousin said we should climb the spur, that pulls away from
the reservoir toward the Mancos spur Junction.
Dropped the switchbacks and be at camp in 5.
He said, It sounded right. The first snow sat in the shade
of the Evergreens, like flour dust.
We climbed steady spinning quiet.
Each breath, visible. I marked a glove print in the
thin snow at a junction so we'd know the spot on the way down.
Everything felt normal until we heard the dog.
It wasn't bark or growl, it was a thin strained.
Wine from up Trail, the kind that gets you to say, hey buddy,
without thinking we stopped called out.
No answer, no human voice. We rolled forward anyway, just a
few yards. The line we took was a side cut.
We don't usually ride narrow between Spruce enough snow to
see tracks. There were our tires, our boots
And then nothing else. No pads, no claws.
No prints from a dog of any size.
The wine came again, this time, it came from behind us.
We turned lamps, searching my cousins, light drew, a week oval
mine, punched a hard Circle down Trail in that Circle, stood, a
tall figure behind a screen of spruce.
Not walking toward us, not turned away, either.
The body was angled a little like, someone trying to aim an
ear at a sound, the height made my brain, put it in the adult
human category, the posture made my stomach do something, I won't
bother to describe him. I said you okay, the figure
didn't answer from that Direction with the same breathy
tone as before came the dog sound my cousin muttered, it
like he had to get it out once to make it smaller.
Skinwalker. The word didn't help either of
us. I swept my lamp along the
ground. If a dog had been moving with
that, sound the first dusting would have taken an imprint
somewhere instead. We saw long.
Lazy scuffs. That could have been healed,
drags or a stick pulled through. I said we're dropping, he nodded
right away. Fastest way home is gravity.
Switchbacks to the reservoir, reservoir to Campground road to
gate truck done. We counted the hairpins out loud
two to the first tight. One four to the lake.
Maybe six minutes to the campground.
If we didn't get dumb, we clicked in.
I kicked the spot to full and rolled the dirt under the snow
was slick in a way only October can manage the first two
switchbacks forced me to stay loose or go over the bars.
My cousin rode the brakes and skidded.
The only sounds I had were chained breath tires on wet
clay. The trees to my rights, stayed
dark and closed. I didn't see another headlamp.
I didn't hear normal Trail noise from anything else.
But something kept level with me through the timber.
If you ride enough, you know the sound of weight moving fast this
wasn't that this was the absence of the usual mess of footfalls
where footfalls should have been At a left-hand hairpin.
My cousin, slid out, the bike, went sideways, and his shoulder
hit dirt with the kind of thump, that puts you on one knee
without asking I threw my bike down, grabbed his bar and forced
it back straight. The rotor had a small wobble, he
had blood on his lip. I was saying the usual
checklist. You good elbow, good wiggle,
fingers. When a voice behind us said,
need a hand. It was the camp hosts tone.
Not a match in Pitch but the same calm as if he were right
there with the ATV idling. We spun our lights, nothing on
the bench above, no ATV, no radio.
My lamp caught fresh marks in the snow on the slope.
A shallow dragline that stopped at a tree well, and didn't come
back out the way it went in. My cousin swore.
I said, we're walking the next two turns.
We did on the straights. We got back on the pedals.
The dog sound came again, not long this time just too short
yipes placed like points on a map. when the shoreline came
into view both of us found another 10%, we didn't know we
had We cut one last Switchback and went straight down a slope.
Both bikes rattling in a way that would make any mechanics
sigh. I didn't care.
Gravel hit my calves. We hit the Reservoir Trail and
ran it toward Camp lamps, hot in the world.
Squeezed down to two moving cones.
We hit the campground Road in sprinted.
My cousin kept saying almost there, like that would change
anything. The wind pushed at us in gusts,
you could lean into the entrance appeared ahead.
The gate was a black crossbar chain in place locked for the
night. Our trucks at 20 or 30 yards,
Beyond a good stupid, reminder. We coasted to the bar and stood
there with our mouths open. Like we had forgotten the hosts
warning from 15 minutes early the road shoulder on our side.
Sloped down to a drainage that was when I remembered the
Culvert big corrugated metal tube under the entrance Road, We
dropped the bikes and slid down the bank on our sides.
I went first, the corrugations pulled on my sleeves and
forearms, the smell was wet dirt and Old Iron.
We belly crawled helmet. Scraping lamps blasting.
The circle ahead. Above the Culvert, something
crossed the road. Steps soft and slow.
No rush a flat Palm. Hit the metal overhead.
One time a full hand, the Culvert turned it into a single
huge. Boom that traveled the length of
the pipe. My cousin's teeth clicked
together. He put his hand over his own
mouth without me telling him to We waited.
Another step, no breath sounds, No shift of gravel.
Just the knowledge that on the other side of the few inches of
Steel was a lot of masks that didn't line up with the amount
of noises it made. An engine approached not a car,
the smaller putter of the ATV, the host killed it before the
Culvert and called out. Stay put not a question, not a
suggestion. The steps above us moved off
over gravel toward trees. I leaned to the side and could
see through the circle of light to the far mouth.
Something passed through the edge of the lamp range.
The way it moved is what I remember all the speed.
You'd expect. None of the ground noise.
You'd expect with it. The host boots appeared at the
mouth. he crouched and asked, if we were hurt, I said, heard the
gate early. We were dumb.
He nodded once like he'd heard that sentence 100 times.
We backed out of the pipe stood and shook like Dogs coming out
of a lake. He unhooked the chain rolled the
gate and told us to load the bikes into his small utility
bed. He radioed while we stood there,
trying to decide whether to laugh or throw up, he didn't
describe it as anything, dramatic, he said, possible
human Prowler. I'm with them.
He drove us to a site near his trailer and told us we were
staying there for the night, he had us run through what we'd
seen, like he was taking notes in his head.
He didn't call us crazy. He didn't try to explain it.
He just listened and kept one ear on the road.
A Montezuma County. Deputy rolled in later.
Young guy squared away. He didn't joke.
He didn't treat it like a Campfire story.
He asked to see where we came out.
We walked the shoulder lamps on low now.
And he crouched at the Culvert mouth, like the host, had he put
his hand by the mud and said, you see this, it looked like a
Barefoot impression, not a perfect, one with toes and
arches, but the length, and the heel were there.
It sat exactly over a boot print mine.
Heel To Toe, same angle. Same stride like someone had
stepped inside my step and kept going.
The deputy didn't try to make it anything else.
He took a photo with his work. Phone told us to stick close to
the host for the night and said he drive the Park Road once
before heading out. He did.
We watched his tail lights, go to the gate and vanish, we
didn't sleep much, the host made the kind of small talk that
keeps you from replaying too much.
How long he's been posted there? How often the wind cuts down off
the Mesa? Which cites flood in spring when
he excused himself to walk his Flashlight by the bathhouse.
I noticed his hands, big with a small scar, cross the pond, The
Voice. We heard on the hill, had tried
to put on his call, it didn't get the weight of it.
Morning, made everything small again.
We rolled to Cortez, got my cousin stitches for his lip and
drove home. A week later, we mailed the host
a thank you card with a small gift card tucked inside.
He had saved us from having to climb that gate with something
waiting. If you need a label, go ahead
and use one. I don't care what you call it,
what matters is how it acted and how we acted back.
It used a dog sound to pull us off the line.
We ride every time it used a familiar voice in a place where
that voice shouldn't have been. It moved with speed and mass but
left out parts of the normal noise.
It tried to match our steps. Here's what I'll tell you if you
ride there and shoulders season and someone in your group, says
10 minutes at dusk. Don't chase a sound that doesn't
leave tracks in New snow. Don't trust a known voice unless
the person's body is attached to it.
Count your minutes against the gate posted hours, like it's not
a suggestion. Know where the Culvert is before
you need it. Keep your lamp bright and your
plans. Simple, we still ride mangoes.
We still do laps around Jackson, we just don't start a loop.
When the light is going. We don't step off our script for
a sound that can't prove itself and when the wind comes down,
the reservoir and moves the grass in the same steady line at
always does. We leave it at that and go home
before the lock slides into place.
I'm not new to the Horton Creek Trail.
It's a clean path with real traffic families.
Dogs people in trail Runners, who say hi and move on.
That's why my best friend, and I picked it for a late October out
and back. Bright Days.
Cold nights. Maples gone.
Read along the water travertine shelves.
Stepping The Creeks up toward the spring.
We planned it like adults. We parked at the lot by Kohls,
Ranch off, State Route. 260 read the rules at the kiosk, signed
the voluntary sheet, with our first names in plate, and I even
had a photocopied map from the ranger station.
The plan was simple, hike Upstream turn before dark cook
early and camp at a legal dispersed spot.
Well, back from the creek using an old fire ring We did
everything by the book. It still went sideways.
The trail runs close to the water for long stretches.
You hear the steady flow Over The Ledges and sea spray hanging
near the drop offs. The air gets colder as you gain.
We kept a steady pace and talked about food and home stuff.
A man passed us on his way down sometime after lunch.
He looks 60 or so wearing a bright orange hat and a canvas
jacket with a stick in his hand. He said he was heading back to
his truck before it got cold, the way he said it was nothing
special, normal Trail, small talk and we stepped aside to let
him buy. That detail matters later.
We turned short of Horton spring to make sure we could cook with
light our camp. Followed the posted rules more
than 200 feet from the creek old rock ring, shovel and water
handy. No trash on the ground.
Dinner was basic Ramen. Tuna tea, I had a can of bear
spray clip on my belt because habits and we kept the fire low.
Leaves at piled up on the duff around us and the ground was
damp from missed drifting off the water.
It feel the temperature drop with the Sun.
It wasn't dramatic. It was falling.
What fall does. Dark came fast.
We sat by the coals talking about whether to go look at
stars from the main trail, when footsteps came up from the
direction of the water and stopped at the edge of the
firelight. A man's voice.
Said, mind if I warm my hands. My brain said it was the orange
hat guy from earlier. The problem was the details.
The cap. Brim looked stiff, the kind of
knew that still has a Sheen. His boots didn't have the wet.
Look, everyone got near the creek that day.
No, damn shine, no silt know, stuck Leaf?
He stayed right outside the clear circle of light.
Where faces go, flat? No normal.
Move closer to the heat. No Shuffle.
No, rubbing hands together. Yes, sure, I said standing more
out of manners than anything were about to douse it.
He didn't move, he said the exact same sentence.
Again, same Cadence like a recording.
Mind, if I warm my hands. That's where the feeling turned.
It wasn't a jump scare. It was a simple fact not lining
up with a simple situation. My friend stood too.
He gave me a look like let's not make this a thing, but let's not
be dumb either. We went into task mode packed
the stove, the pot coiled the Food, Lion.
I kept the spray can in my hand with the safety still on.
My friend, angled his headlamp toward the ground.
So we didn't blind ourselves. Up close the ring told its own
story. Our tracks from the afternoon
were clear in the leaf dust and damp soil.
There should have been fresh scuffs where he was standing.
I didn't see any. We're going to grab more water
to drown. This I said pointing at the pot
as if that explained everything he didn't answer, he just stood
there at the same distance like the light from the coals was a
line. He wouldn't cross.
That's when he said my first name, then my friend's first
name. He said them like he was reading
them off a wristband. We hadn't offered names at the
lot. We had an introduced ourselves
on trail. The only place we wrote them was
the sign in sheet and that was at the kiosk.
Buy the cars. Not out here in the dark.
We killed the fire. The way the sign said to drown
stir drown until it was mud, steam Rose for a second and
Faded. The night didn't change the
sound of the creek, stayed the same as it had been all day.
Nothing dramatic happened. We picked up our packs and I
said, well, get more water like we weren't already done.
We backed toward the creek, with our headlamps down.
He held his ground just outside the circle.
We chose a shallow Crossing with wide flat Stones.
We'd scouted earlier, algae, made them slick.
So we moved slow. The water was cold and clear
around our ankles. It had the usual sound.
You get at that depth steady low halfway across.
I looked back something stepped off the bank, where our ring had
been and moved into the water behind us know, splash.
The surface changed around it, but the normal sound you expect
from a foot and water didn't happen.
It was like the creek adjusted but the noise didn't catch up.
People say not to say this word here.
My friend said low and even eyes on the far bank.
They say a skinwalker can show up like a copy, we reach the
other side, climb the Slick, dirt and cut Upstream fast with
the water between us and the camp.
The creek Narrows before a small fall and the banks squeeze you
into a Ledge. it's the kind of spot hikers remember, because
it's pretty and because you have to pay attention to your feet,
that squeezed turned into a funnel.
We ended up on a wet shelf with the fall in front of us and a
short wall to our backs. We could move along it but it
forced Us close to the water. Our headlamps hit a hat brim in
the Stream, the shape under, it didn't match how a person moves
in ankle deep water. It didn't Wade in a steady line,
it closed the Gap in two or three hard clipped jumps like it
was yanked closer between still shots.
I snapped the safety off the bear spray and fanned a wide Arc
low across the water line and up at chest height.
The Mist hung in front of us and drifted. there was a harsh
intake, the kind of sound you hear when someone inhales the
wrong stuff, followed by a cough, Then a laugh that matched
a joke. I told earlier by the coals,
same Rhythm, same length, same little breath at the end but off
by a beat like someone who had heard it once and was playing it
back from memory. That was the break we needed.
We didn't argue with it. We didn't test it.
We moved hands and knees along the ledge up the crumbly dirt to
the trail and then we ran We didn't say a word.
We hit the log, you have to step over, then the small Footbridge
and then the gravel path, that means the lot is closed.
The lights by the kiosk showed through the trees. a couple was
loading a black pickup, They saw two people come out of the dark
hard and straight and kept their hands visible.
The guy asked you good. We said, please call Gila
County, and gave our location in a short description, adult, male
voice, orange hat, wrong details.
They stayed with us. No questions.
No speeches. Just a truck and two people who
knew when not to make it complicated.
A deputy rolled up a few minutes later.
He took our statement, the way someone takes a statement, a lot
names plates, what we saw, what we did.
He looked at the spray can like he'd seen it before asked, if
we'd been drinking. No, and shined a light down the
road, toward the trail for a minute before telling us to go
into town. He said he'd patrolled the area.
We checked into a motel with bad carpet and slept like people
who'd been running. In the morning, my phone rang.
It was the deputy he said a solo hike or matching the orange hat,
to description had signed out at a different Trailhead near
Christopher Creek around 5, in the afternoon, he had a Time.
Stamped grocery receipt in Payson, not long after that,
that man, the one we said hello to on the way up had been in
town by dark. He wasn't standing at our ring
asking the same sentence twice. He couldn't have been, we went
back to the lot in full daylight to pull our plates, off the
voluntary sheet, and make sure we hadn't left.
Anything dumb at the ring. The old rocks, were still there
wet and dark from where we drowned stirred drown.
There were our scuffs and heel marks.
There were the slide downs from where we left in a hurry.
There, weren't fresh prince in the place where he stood.
I mounted the empty spray can in a little shadow box by my front
door. It isn't a trophy, it's a
reminder. We still hike Horton Creek, but
only in crowds in daylight with snacks at the car and no fire.
If someone stands at the edge of your light and uses the exact
same sentence with the exact same tone, don't invite it.
Closer don't try to fix the parts that don't add up, make
the water, your barrier, Keep your eyes open for the spots
where the trail pinches, you know, where the Falls are.
Know where the bridges are. If you feel like you're being
tested on Simple Things distance names, the look of a hat.
Assumed the test is real. People will tell you the word
for it. I'm telling you the procedure,
read the rules use old Rings, Drown, Your coals until they
turn to mud. Keep your spray where you can
reach it. If your brain says a detail is
wrong. Listen to it.
Leave Clean, leave, fast. Leave your pride behind.
Horton Creek is pretty and the trail is kind.
That doesn't matter. The night doesn't owe you
anything. And not every voice asking for
your fire is attached to a person who walked there, the
usual way. We parked for the night at a
small turnout off State Route, 89A between Sedona and
Cottonwood. It was mid October.
We had spent the afternoon at Crescent Moon, picnic site, and
left. After a short sprinkle that made
the air smell like creosote and wet dust.
The spot was flat close to a dry wash with low brush.
I had two bars of service enough to stream a little music.
While we cooked about 200 feet away, there was an older blue
Sprinter. The man inside looked to be in
his 60s, he didn't wave, he didn't bother us.
We ate put everything away and set up the bed.
Our golden retriever should have passed out after hiking.
Instead, she lay with her chin on her paws, staring at the
wash, like she was waiting on a cue.
I couldn't hear our van is a simple.
Build bet across the back drawers, under it, a battery
monitor that glows soft blue by the kitchen.
We keep Shoes by the sliding door and a headlamp in the map
pocket. I cracked the passenger window
of fingers width for air and clipped the Privacy cover over
it. You can still see lines of
condensation form around the edge.
When the inside is warmer than the outside.
We tried to watch a show but the signal buffered, so we shut it
down and talked instead every few minutes, a pair of
headlights would sweep along 89A and fade.
When I stepped outside to brush my teeth, the wash carried, no
sound back, no insect drone know Russell, unless I made it the
dog stood on the threshold and would not leave the step.
The sprinter's cabin light clicked on for a moment.
Then off, I took it as a sign, the older guy was all so
settling down. We turned in around 10, I lay on
my side and watch the battery monitor.
The dog stayed at the foot of the bed pointed at the wash, I
told myself she was keyed up from the drive, my partner said
the same the van, ticked, as it cool.
A little after 11:00, I felt the kind of Stillness that makes you
hold your breath. Not a dramatic thing.
Just the part of night where everything drops.
I was on the edge of sleep. When the dog, let out a low
sound from deep in her chest. She didn't bark.
She didn't even lift her head. She slid off the bed pushed with
her shoulders and crawled into the dark space under the
platform. I called her name.
She didn't come back out. I ease the edge of the window
cover up and fogged the glass with two slow breaths.
Out past the brush line, I saw movement in the wash, it looked
like a person at first because it was upright, but the gate was
wrong. There was no bounce.
It cut left then, right. And it did that faster than it
should have. The elbows hung low when it
leaned forward. Each shift of Direction looked
like a pivot, not a step. I close the cover and told
myself not to dramatize it. I have seen people run weird,
when they're tired. I have seen Shadows play tricks.
I put my hand on the bed frame and felt the dog's fur with my
fingers. She was trembling.
The sprinter's cabin light flashed once not long just a
single beat then Darkness again like the man saw it too and
decided to go quiet. I listened for footsteps for
gravel crunch, from someone walking up our way.
What? I heard made less sense.
It came one step at a time, slow in a circle, but each step
sounded soft like weight pressed into thick padding.
It went around the van, then stopped by the passenger side.
I slid my eyes to the edge of the window.
Cover, condensation had gathered there, a handprint formed high
on the glass. Five long fingers, the Palm was
narrow. The prince slit.
A hair like, whoever owned it shifted to set weight.
I touched the faint smear with my fingertip, it left to smell
on my skin like coins and hot metal.
Something tugged. The rear doors, not a pole and
rattle. It was a steady inward pressure,
like a test, the thin, inner skin of the door.
Flexed barely enough to see. But enough to feel through the
bed frame, I pushed my heels into the mattress.
Like that would help somehow my partner whispered that the keys
were in the cup holder and the shoes were by the door.
We kept our voices low, plain the way you speak when there is
no time for anything else. I slid forward felt for the keys
and put them in the ignition. The starter turned over once and
ground, like the battery was tired.
My teeth went tight. Then the engine caught.
The van shook to life. And the headlights punched out
onto brush and red dirt. At the edge of the light cone,
the shape straightened in one fast line, from the waist up.
I froze foot on the brake and felt the bed frame, tap my
calves, as the dogs scooted. Farther under the shape leaned,
again, slow like it was studying how we would react I put the van
and drive and eased forward careful not to spin the tires in
dust. I did not yank the wheel.
I didn't want to cut too sharp and get stuck at a bad angle to
the highway. The wash ran along our passenger
side as I moved the shape moved too always, just outside of full
light, keeping Pace along the brush.
Like, it had walked that ground a lot.
The sprinter's headlights came on behind us like someone threw
a switch with Force. The older man pulled up close
enough that his beams through our shadow ahead.
Then he slid left accelerated and took the lead.
He didn't honk or shout. He drove he kept his brights on
an angled democracy. The wash as he passed like, he
was sweeping it for a second, the beam caught a section of
shoulder and a hand braced High against a branch at a height
that made no sense. Then the wash went black again.
I stayed on his bumper and let him choose the line back to 89 a
my partner had one hand on the dog.
She said the dog's heart was racing.
Mine was too. As I climbed the shallow lip of
the turnout to the shoulder, the van gave a small twitch like the
back. End reacted to weight on the
rear doors, it wasn't a hit, it felt like that.
Same steady, pressure, but lighter now, Then nothing.
The wash dropped away and the highway surface took us.
I eased into the Gap. The Sprinter made for us and we
picked up speed toward Cottonwood.
I checked the mirrors. It felt wrong to look into that
much dark, but I did it anyway. There was only brush and night
and our own light flare behind us.
We didn't speak for a few minutes.
The speed limit signs came and went the red rock walls fell
back the older man never wavered.
He kept in front held a safe pace and took the exact path of
person would take if the only goal was getting two vehicles
out fast without drawing attention, I feel myself.
Breathe all the way down in my ribs for the first time.
When the white and blue canopy of a Chevron came into view.
He pulled in, we pulled in, he parked at an outside pump and
stepped down. He wore a denim, jacket and work
boots. His hands were rough.
He looked at our dog who had her head out now, and gave her a
nod. Like he understood something
about her that I didn't. He didn't ask if we were okay,
he didn't ask for details. He said you saw it too.
I said yes. He walked to the back of his
Sprint her and pointed. At his rear door, there was a
long oily smear there at shoulder height five faint
tracks within it. He didn't make a speech.
He didn't try to scare us. He said, I have seen it out by
Lloyd Butte. It's a skinwalker, don't camp in
the washes. He looked at me to make sure I
heard the last part they used the cover.
I told him about our dog going under the bed.
I told him about the smell on the glass.
He nodded like those were pieces.
He recognized. He said good dog.
And that was the only prays he gave.
We thanked him. He didn't ask for our names or
offer. His, he climbed back in and
drove off without fueling. The lot went flat and quiet.
We didn't get back on 898. The way we had planned.
We went to Dead Horse, Ranch State Park and found a site with
a pay box and posted rules and the kind of bathroom light that
throws a circle on the road. I backed in as straight as I
could and shut the engine off, the dog jumped onto the bed, and
fell asleep. So hard, her paws twitched I lay
there for a long time with my hand, on her back, counting her
breaths. I felt the van, cool.
I felt the beat in my fingers ease.
In the morning after coffee and some normal.
Are I cleaned the passenger window?
The hand print was faint but there the glass cleaner cut
through most of it in a few passes.
The smell stayed longer a metal taste in the air that hung
around the seat and the door pocket even after I wiped them
both. I scrubbed once more and left
the doors open for a few minutes.
The breeze from the river helped.
By the time we rolled out to find breakfast, the smell had
thin to almost nothing. We didn't roadside camp near
Sedona again, not near any wash. When we tell the story, we keep
it short. The details are real enough
without extra Shine. The place exists.
The turnout is there? The wash is there the dog?
Hid the door? Flexed, the older man helped
with without fanfare? That is what happened.
If someone doesn't believe it, I don't try to push them.
I will say this. And I mean it, if your dog won't
settle and a wash sits beside your rig like a ready path move,
if the Knight goes quiet and stays that way move.
And if you see a handprint high on your window with that coin,
hot smell do not. Wait to see anything else.
Get back to the road. I took the graveyard shift at
the speedway on us 64 in Shiprock, because rent, doesn't
wait. It was late November the kind of
wind that pushes dust across the lot and rattles the thin metal
around the car wash bay. Nights.
There are simple. If you can stand being alone,
keep the coffee, hot rotate. The hot case face, the shells
due to Safe drops and mop before 4.
My manager slept at home unless something broke my only company
that night was a high school, kid named Evan who mopped,
floors for extra cash and a black and tan stray that lived
off. What it could pull from our
dumpster Corral We didn't feed it but we didn't run it off.
Either if you've worked nights, you know how the place settles
into a routine. Burnt coffee, smell the hum from
the beer cooler and long stretches, where the highway
might as well be a dead River. By 2 a.m. the pumps were empty
and the road was dark. I was counting bills for a safe
drop when the door chime dinged. It's a pressure pad in the
hinge. No way for that sound to play,
unless weight hits the door. I looked up expecting a wind
blown tourist or someone out for cigarettes.
No one stood in the entry, both doors were closed, the air
didn't move. I came around the counter to
check the aisles anyway because you do that even when you feel
stupid for doing it, The mop bucket near the bathrooms.
Had a tight ring of ripples moving out from Center.
That's not a draft. That's something passing close
enough, to shake the water. I stared at it until the ring
faded out. I walked back to the front
windows to see if someone had pulled in without me hearing
over the cooler fans. The Stray was out by the
dumpster Corral at first doing it slow Loop like usual.
Then it stiffened and paced a straight line to the front
glass. Its hair stood up, it took short
backwards. Steps locking eyes on the door,
like it couldn't decide whether to run or hold, then it backed
away on those same stiff. Little steps.
I've seen that posture on dogs before.
That's not, I smell food. That's the hardwired program
that says something is wrong and I don't want my eyes on it.
At 2414. I saw a tall shape cross Under
The Canopy and stop at pump 8. It set.
Wait like a person, fueling a car.
Only there wasn't a car. When pushed dust through the
bright rectangle of light, and around the island.
The figure just stood at the far, pumping the height off
somehow. The width too narrow for the
height. Like someone standing with
shoulders tucked up. I took one step toward the door
and stopped. The glass gave me a clean angle.
No headlights on the highway. No engine sounds just that shape
holding a spot where people usually stand with a nozzle in
hand. Want me to lock it.
Evan asked from near the bathrooms, he meant the interior
deadbolt on the right hand door. We sometimes set when someone
camped outside for too long, not yet.
I said finish them up in front so we're not slipping if we have
to move. The shape wasn't at the pump
when I looked again. It was at the ice freezer, along
the front wall, no transition just there.
The lid of the chest shifted an inch on its hinges and a thin
fog, bled out like freezer are does when you open it too fast?
The lid came back down with a soft contact.
Not the Clack. It makes when someone lets it
drop. I told myself to breathe steady,
I reminded myself that night, missed things and glass
Reflections play tricks. I move two steps left to kill
the glare from the hot case and looked again the freezer was
closed, the spot by pump 8 was empty.
What got me next wasn't an object moving.
It was the way the window changed.
We have a long run of glass broken into panes by metal
mullions. At 2:29 a chunk of that glass
went dark at the top third, the way it does.
When someone stands inches from it on the other side and blocks
the lights. There was no face.
Just a vertical section of Darker night at the wrong height
held in place, like, someone was trying to line up with the
register. I took two steps back until the
candy rack covered me to the waist when you've been robbed
once. And I have you remember
distances, The front to the counter is about 15 feet.
The counter to the bathroom Hall is 10 the office doors behind
the counter and unlocked until 3 lock it.
I said I heard the little click as Evan slid, the interior
deadbolt on the right door. The handle jiggled half an inch
like someone outside. Testing it. then the door
pressed in against the latch, not a slam, not a kick, just
steady weight. The kind you feel with your palm
on the glass? If you try to hold it shut while
a strong person leans. The rubber around the frame made
a long dragon sound. The metal handle gave a dry
squeak. I put my hand flat on the glass.
You can feel loaded through that the door eased back in the
pushed again. Testing whether pressure would
grow into movement We have an intercom button at the register
to talk to people at the pumps. I hit it without thinking the
way you do when you've told a dozen, drunks to put the nozzle
back. Static came through the little
speaker by my left ear, then a single breath.
Not a word. One drawn breath.
Then it cut out. I let go of the button.
I didn't press it again. I didn't want to be caught
between the front and the back, so I told Evan to bring the mop
bucket behind the counter. While I checked the back door.
He rolled the bucket toward me and it clacked over the floor
drain. Sloshing once I took the heavy
steel bar, we used to brace, the back door for deliveries and set
it within reach on the floor by my feet.
I didn't want to be the guy who left the brace behind because it
seemed crazy to carry it. Inside, the scraping started,
under the delivery dock at 2:48, if you've worked a dock you know
pallet noises, you know, hand trucks squeaks, you know the
slap of shrink wrap in Wind This was metal against galvanized
steel, slow and regular like a thin hook working, its way along
the underside of the roll-up door.
Then came a hand over hand pattern up the corrugations.
You can hear wait settle on each rib.
If someone climbs a door. The dock light above the door.
Dropped to half brightness when whatever was climbing reached
that height. Then the light returned as the
weight moved. The little photo cell clicked.
It did it again as the weight slid down, Up down.
Not fast, like it had time. I slid the steel bar into the
brackets on the back door and pushed until it bit the frame.
We weren't going out there. The plan was to hold the front,
keep sight lines and make noise. If it tried the glass, I killed
half the interior lights to cut the reflections, leaving the hot
case in the counter lights. So we could see our hands and
the register. When I came back to the front,
there was a smear on the outside of the beer cave door.
It was high higher than I could touch with a stool and it looked
like someone had dragged and oily Palm across it.
The streak thinned out toward the end.
That's not a kid's hand. Print, that's something long
late down with pressure and then lifted away.
Do we call the police? Evan asked?
He put the mop handle down so he could keep both hands on the
counter. If I call and say someone is
outside and I can't describe a face or a car.
They'll tell us to lock up and wait.
I said if it tries to come in I call Okay.
We stood like that for maybe a minute.
The windows were clean enough to see the entire lot.
The tall shape took each pain in order, it would hold at one
window until the dark strip matched.
The mullions then slide to the next.
There was nothing theatrical about it.
No banging no breathing on the glass, just a body blocking
light where a body shouldn't be the Stray solved.
A piece of the puzzle for me. I saw a flicker of movement in
the car. Wash bay to the right the dog
had shoved itself into the inside corner of the Bay by the
cinder block knows jammed into the seam where Walnut wall body
locked tight. I called out softly, the dog
didn't respond. It didn't swivel an ear.
It held the corner. Like the corner was the only
shape left in the world that made sense.
That is how animals act when the math of the space doesn't favor
them. At 3:30.
The figure stood in the mouth of the car wash bay.
It filled the opening like a person would fill a door if a
person were too tall for the frame.
Then it bent not a tilt of the head, not a slouch.
It folded from the middle until whatever counted as its head
lined up with my eye level at the register.
There was a long stretch of glass and concrete between us
but it had done the geometry, right?
I could feel that much it held their bent for a time span that
made my forearms. Tingle Evans said, not to move.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't say anything else.
I picked up the steel bar and brought it down hard on the
drain grates along the tile seam in front of the counter.
The sound was as loud as you'd expect metal on cast iron.
A ring that carries into every aisle.
I did it again and again the shape didn't startle, it didn't
twitch. It just straightened in a single
long step, not an increments and it was farther from the bay than
a single step should carry a person.
Another held beat, then nothing at the bay mouth.
We watched the windows and saw nothing for a long time.
We didn't chase we stayed where we could lock the office door.
If the glass gave way and get to the back hall of the front got
blocked. Every few minutes, the right
hand door, took a small poll as if hands outside were finding
the same deadbolt and testing for play the handle squeaked.
The seal on the frame made that long dragging sound again.
It's stopped. When the polls came back, they
were the same steady patient. Not a show of force testing not
trying at around 6. The sky, lifted a shade at the
far end of the highway and a diesel rattled onto the lot.
A guy in an old pickup, climbed out with a thermos.
I watched something I didn't expect to watch how the lot
wrapped around a normal person. When someone moves like a person
should move the angles return to the shapes, you know?
He paid for coffee. Told me.
The wind had chewed his eyes up and left.
The dog was no longer in the car wash bay I stepped to wear, I
could see the corner nothing. I tried to soft call again, no
movement, my manager, pulled in a little after 7:00.
He looked tired, he always looks tired by the end of the month.
I told him the timeline while he walked the lot.
He crouched at the back door and put a finger along too long
scratches cut into the paint, under the latch, The lines were
parallel and clean like someone had drawn them with a slow firm
hand. He stood and looked higher up at
the medal. about a foot above where I could reach, even if I
stretched a greasy smear had dried, It wasn't a print.
You could read not like a crime show.
It was a stretched handshape. From someone taller than we get
in there after midnight. He didn't crack a joke.
He's not really a joke guy anyway.
Next time, call Navajo, PD. He said tell them you think it's
a skinwalker, they'll know what to do.
He didn't make a speech or call anyone else.
He just said it, like, we were talking about a natural gas leak
or a stray cow on the highway. He told me I could have day
shifts if I wanted them. I said yes.
Before he finished the sentence. I called the dog twice that
afternoon when I came back from my next shift even though I knew
better than to expect it. I left an old hot dog, on the
step near the back door and checked it at close.
It had shriveled in the dry air. No one ate it.
There are parts of that night, I replay while I am counting
change in daylight. The door pushing back with the
kind of pressure. You use to move furniture, the
climb on the corrugated metal at the dock.
Wait, settling on each rib. Like someone doing a slow set of
Pull-Ups. The way the light over the
docked at a fixed height and came back when the weight
dropped. But the thing I think about most
is the bend in the car wash bay. I work around bodies every day.
I know how they hinge. Whatever that was made its body.
Meet my eyeline like it was matching numbers on a tape.
Measure it did it without hurry. I didn't tell my family.
I didn't tell my friends. I don't like the look.
People give you after stories like this.
I wrote this down to clear the line in my head between what I
imagined and what happened. The line is simple.
When pushed dust across the lot. The door chime dinged with no
one in the doorway, the mop bucket rippled like something
brushed past. The Stray Dog.
Did what animals do when the room stops making sense?
Something tall. Stood were only cars should be
and tested the door like a person who Hardware I made noise
with the only heavy thing I had and it was enough to get me to
Sunrise. That's all I have.
That and a pair of long scratches under a latch and a
smear higher than I can reach. I took the day shift.
The dog didn't come back. That's the whole story.
I'm not posting this for Thrills, I'm posting it because
I learned a rule, the hard way, and I don't want you learning it
the same way. If you take the unpaved road out
along the rim at Angel Peak Scenic area off us, 550 near
Bloomfield, New Mexico and you plan to stay past dark.
Bring another vehicle and park nose out.
My spouse and I didn't break any laws or mess with anything.
We picked a bluff top pull out in late October because the air
was cool and the sky out there looks clean enough to drink.
I mess with landscape shots on weekends.
But this wasn't a big trip cheap Lantern and animal pot
paperbacks Our old Four Runner knows that road.
It's got a ladder rack on the back that rattles.
When you climb it, two sights over a family in a red pickup,
built a quick Camp, no music, no noise, no, generators up and
down the rim, just the wind coming in off the Badlands and
the smell of sage we set up Before Sunset.
The shelters out, there are simple roofs with a table under
them open to the view Angels sat across amazed of white and gray
ridges like a flat topped Island.
The light went orange then purple.
I was stirring Ramen, when movement on the rim path, caught
my eye. At first I thought jogger which
didn't make sense out there but people trained on weird surfaces
all the time. Only this wasn't a normal run.
The figure moved low torso level arms, quiet against the sides
gliding more than stepping no headlamp or reflective anything.
Trace the edge of the bluff in a lazy Arc and stayed there just
far enough that I couldn't make out details.
Just a shape that was always in motion.
I kept glancing up and losing it, and then catching it again,
Farther Along The Rim, the ground out, there breaks into
dips and small shells, and the shape never changed pace for any
of it. It went up a small role in the
ground without any check in Rhythm and slid down the far
side, like it was on Rails. My spouse joked that maybe the
person was training for altitude races and I Shrugged, but I kept
watching. The Family, Two sights over got
quiet. their dad stood by the truck bed hands resting on the
side facing away from The View and toward the same line of Rim,
where I had last seen the shape Dark took over between one
breath. And the next, we turn the
lantern down to stretch. The fuel stars, came on hard.
I didn't want to fixate on the ridge path so I did Camp.
Chores stowed, the bowls shook out the tarp tied, a loose line
the wind moved in uneven pushes behind me, small Pebbles, ticked
down the slope. I turned with the Lantern and
the sound cut off. I set the lantern down and it
started again from farther left. After a minute, it came from the
right then behind the shelter post.
It wasn't constant just a quiet space-out pattern that Drew a
circle around us. Small rocks, don't roll up hill
and the slope didn't run all one way.
I told myself it was animals there are plenty out there but
it felt patterned like something testing, how close it could get
without being seen. I went around to the back of the
Forerunner, to put the pot away, the dust on the bumper near the
ladder. Rack showed a Mark, I hadn't
seen earlier. You know, how you can press your
hand into dust and it leaves the shape for a while.
It looked like that but wrong. The Palm was long and narrow
Twisted, a little like, it had jammed down to get grip.
What got me were the knuckle spots.
More than there, should have been spaced in a way.
My brain tried to turn into normal and couldn't I touched it
with one fingertip and a little drift of powder fell off the
bumper. Hey my spouse said low from the
shelter. I think they're packing, the
family two sites over had moved fast without making a show of
it. The cooler was already in the
bed of the truck. The Dome Tent that had been up
not long before was gone, rolled and strapped, the dad stepped
out into the common view line like he was just stretching his
legs. He looked right at me across the
space between our sights and shape two words with his mouth
without sound car. Now, I didn't make a speech.
I just said, we're going to head out and we started moving like
we trained for it, Lantern down to a low setting, chairs folded
sleeping bags, thrown into the back.
With no folding stove, tossed into the bin without Parts
sorted. I kept the light pointed low,
not scanning for anything, just keeping the ground on us.
Down the slope. A dry scrape moved to cross
Stone and stopped the latter rack.
Let out a thin metallic note, as the wind hit it from a different
angle. When we shut the rear hatch, the
family's truck was already idling, no headlights.
Yet they were turned toward the road and waiting.
We pulled out first because we were closer to the track, I
kept, the beams on their lowest setting until the road dropped
away from the rim. The surface was the kind that
turns into washboard if you drive it when it's damp and then
it dries with ridges baked in the steering wheel hummed in my
hands harmless. A quarter mile in the road dips
through a shallow saddle before climbing toward the entrance.
As the four runner knows over that.
Dip the back. End sagged hard.
Like two people had stepped onto the rear ladder at once the
steering went light. The front tires, chattered on
gravel in a way? I know.
Well from loading too much weight in the back.
The metal in the rack gave off a grown.
I hadn't heard from it before. What was that?
My spouse said not loud. Just enough to confirm.
It wasn't my imagination. I didn't want to stab the brakes
and Pitch the weight forward. I feather them.
Whatever was on the rack shifted.
You can feel that through the whole vehicle.
When you've done enough dumb camping Lowe's, you get the
slide, the frame Flex, the slight yaw.
Been a heavy drop, hit the gravel behind us.
It wasn't a rock rocks, bounce and Scatter.
This was a one-piece Landing, followed by a second lighter
thump, I looked in the mirror and saw dust hanging low in the
beams. Something long dragged along the
passenger side rear, quarter panel as it regained balance.
The sound was clean and thin like a screwdriver line across
paint. The family's truck behind us.
Tapped its brakes twice and gave us a little more space enough
that if we needed to stop suddenly we wouldn't get pushed.
I kept the Speedy in the wheel straight.
The shock passed the rack rattled more than before we came
to the entrance sign. In the fork toward us. 550, I
took it without looking anywhere, but the road, we hit
the highway in a pair hazards on for the first few minutes.
The adrenaline ebbed and steps first.
When we saw another set of headlights coming from the south
then more when the first town lights showed up ahead.
We pulled into the big bright lot by the gas station near us
550 and US 604 in Bloomfield. The place was loud with regular
life. Teens, laughing by a car.
The chime from the convenience door.
The smell of fryer oil floating across the pumps.
That didn't make me feel safer. Exactly.
But it put distance between us and the rim.
The dad from the other side, walked to the back of his truck
and angled the taillight under the overheads.
The red plastic had four gouges carved into it deep enough that
you could wedge a coin. The spacing was wrong for human
fingers. They curved inward not down He
didn't make a scene. He looked at me like this was
business and said, the only sentence I have repeated word
for word since that night. Folks call it a skinwalker.
Don't Camp up their solo after Halloween.
We checked our own rig, the scratch started under the lower.
Rung of the ladder rack tracked, forward across the quarter panel
and ended at the fuel door. It wasn't Jagged like a branch.
It looked planned a single movement straight and confident,
not the flailing of something slipping.
The paint had a pale curl at the edge where whatever made the
line had lifted tiny shavings as it went.
I set my fingernail in it and felt it catch.
We didn't fill up. We didn't talk with the family
about back roads or Trails, or who was from where they got in
and pulled out tail, lights, still bright.
But scored, we booked a cheap room in Farmington with a bed
that felt like a board and a TV that buzzed.
I kept thinking about the weight on the rack and the way the
suspension had said the truth of it.
The honest sag that happens when something climbs where you
didn't invite it. I didn't suggest going back in
daylight to look for tracks. I didn't trace the scratch for
an hour like a weirdo. We slept badly and left early.
Back home. I bought a small bottle of
compound in a pad and worked the quarter panel in the shade of
the carport. Most of it Blended.
One Thin marks stayed. Under certain angles you can't
see it under others. It shows as a hairline under the
clear coat like a faint healed cut.
We kept the four runner. We kept camping, we didn't go
back to that rim. Two weeks later, I pulled the
rear hatch, trim to quiet a new rattle in the rack.
The tops were shiny, like they'd been rubbed with fine grit, but
only on the faces that would get contact.
If something slid forward and then off, That wasn't for many
gear. We carry, we strapped cans and
boxes tight. You can say it was old damage
that I never noticed. You weren't the one who cleaned
those bolts last spring and locked them down with blue
thread compound. if you need a lesson out of this take mine
that Rim feels safe because it's close to a highway and because
the sights look like regular picnic spots They are not a
regular place after the last of October.
If you go anyway, don't stay alone and don't get cute with
your lights or your bravado Park.
So your nose points out pack before the sky goes black.
If you start hearing small rocks, role in separate places
around you and it sounds like nothing.
When you look stop, treating it like a joke.
The family who warned us didn't owe us anything.
They still hung back and watched us out to the sign.
People will tell you the story is missing proof.
That's fine. Proof isn't what made me change
my habits. The scratch on the quarter
panel. Taught me more than 100 pictures
could The way the back end dropped taught me enough for
three trips. The gouges in that tail, light
were wrong in a way that doesn't leave your head once you've seen
it. Maybe it was a person.
Trying hard to look like something else.
Maybe it was a trick of angles and wind and nerves.
Believe, whatever. Lets you sleep.
Just don't stay up there alone after Halloween.
Here's the context. So you know, I'm not trying to
tell a campfire Tale. I went to Northern Arizona
University and used Walnut Canyon like a gym with scenery,
it's close to campus. It's well marked.
And if you're from around Flagstaff, you learn to carry a
light in a layer because temperature drops fast in the
evenings. Late September a couple years
ago, four of us tried to squeeze in the island Trail after class
and still make it back before the visitor center closed.
I'd done it plenty. I thought I knew which little
Side Tracks were just social paths that led back to the paved
section. I was wrong enough that I don't
cut unofficial Trails anymore. It was me Mya, been and Ty.
I'm the one who actually reads the maps.
Maya carries a first aid kit and knows how to use it.
Bends a strong guy but not great.
On uneven Rock. Thai jokes his way through every
height and wore sneakers because it's only stairs.
We dropped down the island Trail looked at the cliff dwellings
from a respectful distance and started back up with that the
park closes soon. Push, you feel when the Shadows
get long? At the top of the stairs, the
official route bends, right? And curls back toward the
visitor center. To the left, there's a thin
obvious footpath that skims the rim through short brush and rock
shelves. It looked fresh like a dozen
people had used it that day already.
I said it would cut five minutes off and spit us back on the main
path, near the parking lot. No one argued.
The sun was gone from our side of the canyon are had gone from
warm to jacket weather in about two minutes.
It didn't feel sketchy for the first couple hundred yards.
We could still hear the distant home of I-40 and the rim up.
There is mostly open rock with clumps of juniper and low Oaks
starting to turn. Then we walked past something
that shut tie up, mid-sentence. And said it down to drive.
The spine was intact. The hide was folded back in a
neat line, like a jacket. Someone had just taken off there
were no tracks or scuffs around it that showed how it got there.
There was weirdly a fist-sized rock balanced on one of the
exposed ribs as if someone said it down like a paperweight, I
know enough to look for Prince I did.
A couple feet away on a patch of powdery dust.
There were Impressions that started out human-shaped.
Barefoot width clear heel then ball.
They let away from the carcass and only away.
After a few steps the angle shifted like the feet were
turning in, then both feet pointed inward.
Then for six or seven steps the toe arcs faced the wrong way.
Like, whoever made them kept walking forward with feet
rotated, so the prince looked like they were headed back.
I've seen people mess around and walked backward for fun.
These were not that the stride length didn't change.
The weight transfer looked normal.
The toast blade was the same. It felt like a bad magic trick
someone did without leaving the setup.
Been said, this is a ranger thing clean up.
He wanted it to be normal and I didn't blame him.
I looked for tire tracks or boots scuffs.
I didn't see any Maya said, very evenly we should keep moving and
get back on the real Trail. No one disagreed with that
either. We didn't touch the rock on the
rib cage. We didn't touch anything.
We just moved on a little faster than before and closer together.
About then I started noticing something else.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't dramatic.
It was just that when we stepped something stepped through brush
off to our left at the exact same Pace like a metronome, you
never turned off. When we paused it paused, when
we angled around a rock, whatever it was adjusted in the
same beat. I tried to get a clean look and
only got a partial every time. An outline between trunks a
shoulder behind a boulder, a vertical shape that never quite
entered. The security light area that was
beginning to glow from the maintenance side of the property
up ahead. We were in that annoying.
Last night where your eyes are, still trying to squeeze detail
out of everything and it wasn't giving us detail to squeeze.
I decided to test it because I needed something that wasn't
guessing. I picked up a rock about the
size of a softball and whipped it into the scrub where the
movement had just stopped it landed with a muffled thump.
A heartbeat later. No more than that a second Rock
clicked back from what sounded like the exact same spot.
Not a big throw, just a quick sharp.
Here's yours back. There wasn't enough time for a
person to pick up the rock. I threw set and throw it back.
The sound profile was the same weight landing on the same kind
of surface. I don't mean that in a fancy
way. I mean it sounded exactly like
the rock. I threw thrown back from the
same patch of ground immediately.
Ty said, nope. Twice.
And then stopped talking again. Maya said eyes forward.
We did eyes forward and that worked until been stepped on a
slanted. Basalt piece hidden under grass
and twisted his ankle good. He went down, hard the sound.
He made wasn't dramatic either. It was an ugly honest pain.
Sound Maya was on him fast. She unrolled her Ace Wrap
checked his foot for blood flow laced.
The wrap tight gave him ibuprofen and told him not to
test it yet. We did the quick math of Group
movement, I'd take point and set Pace.
Ty would Trail Me by 10 steps as the relay Maya would support
Ben's bad side and keep him from doing more damage.
We agreed to know running no splitting up and no stopping
except to listen and move together.
The thing in the brush like the pace change and adjusted to it,
like it had been doing drills with us all week.
If we pause silence, if we took three steps, three steps out
there. Once when I spun around fast
enough, I caught a shape that could have been a tall person
standing, very still between two junipers arms, hanging low, head
tilted in a way that didn't match the posture of anyone, I
know it didn't duck. It just held still until my eyes
lost the outline. We crossed another dust patch
and there were two prints waiting side by side, with the
toe arcs, facing back the way we'd come.
No approach marks. No exit.
We stepped around them because none of us could handle the idea
of stepping in them. There's a chain link fence
around the maintenance yard and the staff building's.
The security lights popped on as we got closer and I thought that
stupid Rush of relief that you get.
When you can see something human made and locked, we reached the
nearest gate and it was, of course, locked with a fat
padlock. There was a gap under the fence
that a, coyote would use I rattled the chain one time and
stopped because the sound was too loud for my nerves.
Inside the fence, I could see stacks of lumber and a pale
block building and one of those green carts Stagg Drive on the
Service Roads. Outside the fence in the
Treeline that the lights didn't quite reach, something, stood
and matched our position step for step.
If I took two steps to the right, the silhouette did too.
at first glance, at red as human, then the longer I looked
the more wrong the proportions felt The arms hung lower than I
expected. The way the head turned was off
like the next started higher on the back, then it should some
mercy showed up in the shape of a utility cartwheel.
A staff guy in his 40s. Rounded the far end of the fence
onto the service road, he took in the situation, four hikers at
a locked gate, one injured, something lingering outside the
light and didn't waste time. He waved at us, hard to move
down the fence to a service gate around the corner.
He didn't shout anything dumb like what's going on.
He just pointed to where he was headed and kept moving.
We started hobbling, that's what it was hobbling.
Benz, adrenaline, had worn off and now the ankle was a
throbbing problem. As we moved the silhouette
outside the fence, switched posture, like someone changing
from standing still to ready to run.
Then it broke into a smooth Sprint.
Parallel to us, keeping a strict distance from the light line,
like there was tape on the ground.
It wooden cross. It didn't pump its arms, right?
It just ate the ground in this easy.
Wrong way that made my stomach drop because it looks strong
without looking like it had to try it peeled into brush at the
corner where the fence turned and disappeared.
Right. Then been lost it for a second,
not screaming. Panic breathing in a kind of
sway. I didn't like he went to a knee
and put a hand on the ground. I went to grab his other arm and
felt something else. Get their first from the fence
line Shadow, it wasn't to yank. It was a strong steady push at
his upper arm like a careful lift.
You get from someone. Who's steadying you?
Except the pressure points didn't line up with a normal
hand. The grip had too much spread
between the fingers. The skin contact was cold from
shade and the grip was strong enough to leave a pattern before
I even processed that. It wasn't mine.
Benched up like someone had halted him by a handle.
He looked at me with this busted expression and I shook my head
because I didn't have an explanation he could use The
maintenance worker met us at the service gate with keys already
out. He opened waved us, through
closed, it behind us, and didn't look back more than once.
He kept his voice steady and low, the way people who actually
deal with things, keep their voice, when they know how fast a
situation. Can go sideways.
He didn't tell a story, he didn't lecture he checked.
Ben's. Wrap said, good job on that and
told us to get in the cart. The only extra thing he did was
point to the dust outside the fence as he swung the gate shut.
There were two clean Impressions there towards wrong again.
Pointing back the way we had come while the heels faced us.
He said don't cut the trail there, people have been warned
some things track you when you break rules.
That was it not a smile, not a spooky tone.
He drove us the back way to the lot he parked by the visitor
center and watched while we got in the car, he kept watching
until our headlights were on Walnut Canyon Road.
He didn't wave or try to tell us more.
I respect him for that at home, been showered and sent a photo
of his arm even though we hadn't asked for one.
He had a bruise forming that night in the shape of a
handprint. Except the fingers were long
bars of pressure that didn't match anyone.
In our group, Maya, measured it against her own hand because she
is like that. The finger spans were wrong.
That bruise took nearly three weeks to fade from the way.
The blood had Pulled Under the Skin, the ankle healed faster
than that, he still has a slight thickening at the ligament, if
you press the wrong place, We went back the next day to ask
about hours and closures in a normal way, the front desk told
us, the posted times asked us to stay on the trail and said staff
to occasional patrols, but can't be everywhere.
We didn't mention the carcass, I don't know why.
I think it felt like saying it out.
Loud would make it sound like a story.
We were telling for attention and none of us wanted that we
hiked the official route and didn't take any little side
path. Even the ones that clearly just
rejoined. The main trail 20 yards later.
We didn't see anything weird. The Wind made normal dry, grass
sounds and our shoes. Scuffed Rock like normal.
And the only other people around were a couple from out of state
who asked where the bathrooms were.
It was just a park again Ben's Brews faded, he kept the Ace
Wrap in his truck after that. Thigh bought boots Maya started
carrying two headlamps so she could give one away if someone
asked. I stopped cutting Trails
anywhere even when I am dead, sure at just rejoins the main
one around a tree. I know the erosion argument and
I believed it before, but now I follow the rules because the
rules seemed to keep something else from noticing me.
I don't care if that sounds dramatic, its simplest
management, I've thrown rocks in the woods.
A lot of times I've never thrown one and had the exact same
weight. Answer me from the same patch of
ground in the same second. I've never seen Footprints with
toes facing backward that didn't require someone to walk backward
to make them. I've helped friends up off the
ground I have never felt a stranger's handheld before mine
reached their arm, I don't use the word Skinwalker lightly and
I don't pretend. I understand what that means to
people whose Traditions aren't mine.
I'll say the behavior fit the way students around here, use
the word pacing, mirroring matching steps and staying, just
out of clean view until it was conveniently inhuman.
You can call it a trespasser, messing with us some tall Trail
Runner or a trick of distance and stress.
Pick what helps you sleep. I'm not here to argue.
I'm just telling you what happened and what I learned,
which is that a five-minute shortcut near, closing isn't a
shortcut, if it puts you on ground where someone has to
come, get you through a service gate.
If you hike near Walnut Canyon and you see a narrow track along
the top that looks like it'll save you time.
Use the official one and be bored for an extra five minutes.
Bring a light even if you don't think you'll need it where shoes
that won't fold your ankle. and if you are the tall outline
pacing us that night or you're anything like it, let's not meet
I'm not trying to convince anyone just putting down what
happened so I can stop replaying it.
Last November, my little brother and I were doing a budget Loop
through the Southwest in a compact.
Rental cheap room to cheap room, cooler in the backseat miles
between us and our inboxes. We had come down from Moab and
hit us 163 right. As the sun started falling
behind the butts near the Utah, Arizona line.
We pulled into that famous pull-out around mile marker, 13
and stood there longer than we meant to jackets, zipped hands
and Pockets watching the red turned to rust.
And then to a flat kind of Grey, A trio of tourists wished us.
A good night and drove off. We were stubborn and stayed to
see the first Stars. by the time, we climbed back in the
car, it was fully dark I eased forward to merge back onto the
highway and bumped over something.
I never saw a thin Shard may be. The right rear tire.
Thumped twice. Then went soft.
We rolled back into the pull-out because there was no.
Where else to go? We've both changed Flats before
it wasn't a big thing at first just annoying.
The trunk had the usual kit scissor jack lug wrench compact,
spare, a reflective triangle and a wax wrapped road flare.
We set the hazard lights and I slid.
The Jack under the pinch weld feeling around with my fingers
until the saddle lined up. My brother loosened the lugs a
quarter turn each in a star pattern while I grabbed a rock
to chalk a front tire there wasn't much traffic and
occasional set of headlights way down, the straight away.
Then long stretches of nothing, the air had that clean desert
cold and then a smell drifted in between Gus that didn't fit the
temperature at all. It was metallic like hot coins
mixed with the kind of damp hair smell.
You get when someone pulls off a beanie after a long run, I told
myself it was a semis breaks somewhere far off or maybe
something on the car warming up and kept cranking across the
road. A livestock fence ran parallel
to the highway. Beyond it was scrub and open.
Space in the silhouette of formations that are on every
postcard Rack in that part of the country.
The cars headlights through a low beam out and to the right.
It wasn't enough to make the world bright, just enough to
outline the fence posts, and cut a soft Edge onto the brush.
While I pumped the Jack handle my brother stopped talking about
the plan for the next day and started looking past me.
The way a person does when they're distracted by motion,
they can't quite pin down. He didn't say anything for a
minute, then said. Something's pacing, man.
He had one hand on the wrench, one boot against the tire.
I swear, it's keeping even with the Jack handle.
I kept cranking telling myself it was just my body making the
car shift, but when I paused to reposition the sound of
footfalls like cliques of gravel carried over the road all.
So pause I started again the clicks started again, the
pattern held up, down up, down a measured Rhythm and across the
dark strip of asphalt something matched.
Its step for step my brother muttered.
Staying in the edge of the lights.
It doesn't want the full beam. He said it like an observation,
not like a guest. We got the wheel off and I
slided Under The Rocker as a safety.
The smell got stronger. I felled it in the back of my
throat. My brother held the spare
upright ready to go on, but he kept cutting his eyes toward the
fence line. I wanted him focused on the
lugs. I wanted me focused on the jack.
Routine is a good anchor when you don't know what else to do.
I took the rotor in both hands lined it up with the Hub to make
sure nothing was binding and that's when the car gave a small
off timed Rock from the front, not the lifted side, not from us
it wasn't big more like someone had leaned their hip into the
bumper, the Jack didn't slip, but I put a hand on the quarter
panel without thinking and said Hey.
It came out sharper than I meant something long, slid under the
front, bumper from the darkness. And for a second, I thought it
was a branch or a blown off trash bag because it was so flat
to the ground. Then it lifted just enough to
graze metal. I heard it more than I saw.
It a slow drag across the oil pan.
A faint scraped that ended with a ping near the cross member
like a fingernail, flicking a spoon My brother's face went
tight. Get away from under there.
I said, but I wasn't sure which one of us, I meant.
He kept the spare in his hands. The smell rose again with it.
Warmer and sharper. The car shifted that small
amount, a second time. The lug wrench slipped in my
brother's grip and He barked a curse Knuckles leaving skin on
the asphalt. shook his hand and laughed once, because that's a
thing you do when it hurts and you don't want to say you're
scared, There were headlights way down the street one set.
Maybe a mile out, not rushing just coming.
Whatever was under the front pulled back, not far.
Just enough that I couldn't see any part of it in the narrow
stripe of light. My brother said it's moving
toward the passenger side where they won't catch it when they
pass, He said, it like he was narrating a chest problem out
loud, unhelpful, and exactly, right.
I wanted to shout to the oncoming driver to wave my arms,
but it would have done nothing. they were far and we were two
guys buy a compact car with hazards on Nothing about that.
Looks like an emergency from a distance and I didn't want to be
the reason anyone breaked heart on an empty Highway at night.
I tried to tell myself, we were worked up over a coyote or a
stray dog. That had learned to eat what
people dropped but coyotes, don't smell like hot pennies.
I told myself it might be a person who wanted to Spook us,
but there hadn't been another car pulled over after the
tourist left. I told myself, we were tired,
the steps on the far side of the road kept their rhythm with the
Jack handle and when I stopped they stopped The only new sound
was a light ticking on metal somewhere low like nails testing
for edges. Under the front fascia, my
brother swallowed and said, I'm not throwing this at it.
He had the reflective triangle in one hand and the unopened
Flair in the other. He tore the rapper with his
teeth because his knuckles were bleeding and the paper stuck to
them. I said, don't throw it at the
car either. My mouth felt dry.
The headlights were closer. Now, a minute out and whatever
was hugging the passenger side seemed to know it.
It stayed tucked into the blind wedge where the beam wouldn't
pick it up clean when the other driver passed and all I could
see was the hint of a shoulder that didn't line up with the
length of the leg that followed it.
My brother jammed the Flair through the bottom crossbar of
the triangles. So it sat inside the frame.
I'm going past it, he said, and before I could argue, he struck
the flare and got the angry hiss and bright light, you expect
from those things. He sprinted, a few steps, and
put his shoulder behind the throw.
He didn't aim at the shape, he sent the triangle passed it into
the scrub, so the light landed Beyond where it had been hiding,
and the red wash came back at us.
For a blink, the brush was lit from behind the fence posts,
were black lines and whatever had been tracking the car showed
more of itself than it had all night.
Too long through the Torso. Knees that worked, then didn't
and then worked again arms with too much reach.
It flinched the way, any living thing flinches, when a blast of
heat and light hits at the wrong angle, not theatrical just fast.
It didn't stand up or do a show of itself.
It peeled away from the triangle in a low lunge that covered more
ground than seemed possible. Sank behind a hump of brush and
kept going. The smell thin with it.
The oncoming car slid by us without tapping the brakes.
We didn't talk. He rolled the spare onto the
studs and I guided it with both hands.
He ran the lugs down finger tight then hit them in a star
pattern with quick polls. I kept a boot under the Jack
handle and took the car down, just enough to keep the wheel
seeded while he finished. He gave the wrench two more
short turns. We dropped the Jack, fully toss
the flat and tools into the trunk without caring about
neatness and climbed in. The engine started right away.
I put the car in gear and we pulled out steady not tearing
the donut apart with a panic launch.
The triangle burned red, in my rear view.
As we came around it, the light hit the front of our car from
below. And I saw a row of straight
fresh grooves under the plate bracket that hadn't been there
when we picked it up. We drove to Kayenta without the
radio. The heater was on high.
The highway was the highway black and painted and that was a
comfort. When the first gas station
showed up, I kept going because I didn't want to stop until we
were in a hotel. Parking lot with floodlights and
other cars. We checked into a chain place in
parked onto the brightest lamp, we could find.
The clerk didn't ask, why two guys were shaky voice at the
counter late on a weeknight. He slid us, our keys and told us
where the ice machine was In the room, we sat on the beds in our
jackets, until the heat, acclimated our bodies back to
normal. I washed the grid out of my,
brother's knuckles in the sink and tape them with Band-Aids
from our kids. He said he felt stupid for the
throw until he didn't, and then he said he felt stupid that it
worked. I told him he had aimed the
light where it counted. I'm not going to lie and say I
slept I went down stairs around two in the morning and watched
the car from the lobby window. Nothing moved, except the
occasional truck on the highway. The parking lot, felt normal
concrete painted lines. A soda, can a few spaces over at
8? We walked out with coffee and by
the front bumper, the gouges, were there, five or six of them.
In a neat row, beneath the plate evenly spaced deep enough to
catch a fingernail. The oil pan had a shallow scrape
line that didn't line up with any road debris I've ever seen.
The spare held pressure. We ate breakfast at the hotel
and a local man. Who'd been pouring his coffee.
At the same time ended up near us.
We didn't tell the story with drama.
Just the sequence. Flat tire at mile marker, 13.
Something pacing, the fence line in time with the Jack the scrape
under the front, the flare in the Triangle.
He listened and nodded, and finally said, quiet, and matter
of fact, don't stop on that road.
After dark. People around here would call
that a skinwalker keep moving. He wasn't trying to scare us.
He wasn't trying to sell anything.
He just said it. Like, he had heard it as whole
life. We took us 160 West through Tuba
City and onto Flagstaff. We returned the car and didn't
bring up anything except the flat.
The agent crouched to look at the bumper and made the same
face. Anyone makes when they see
damage, they didn't expect He pointed at the gouges and said,
they'd have to add front fascia to the bill.
We signed the paperwork and swallowed the extra charge.
It came out to more than I wanted to spend but less than I
would have paid to erase the previous night.
We left with that slip of paper and the kind of relief that
doesn't feel good. Just empty.
If you want to pick it apart, there are places to do it.
Maybe a person was messing with us.
Maybe we both misread natural movement in low light.
Maybe the smell was something leaking.
I can say the steps match, the Jack handle in a way that felt
like someone timing us. And the way it stayed just at
the threshold of the headlights looked intentional.
I can say the flare in the Triangle trick, put the light
where the blind spotted bin and the reaction made sense of the
plan was to avoid being seen. I can say those grooves under
the plate or real and I don't know what tool makes them that
clean from underneath on a pulled off compact in the dark.
That man at breakfast, didn't try to persuade us?
He gave the only advice that matters on a road like that,
don't stop after dark unless you have no choice.
And if you have to stop push the light past what scaring you, not
at it. We added one rule to our trips
after that night, if the sun's down and the road is that empty,
we keep rolling, unless something forces us off.
If we do get forced off, we set the flare where it lights, the
place a threat once to use, not where it can stay in the cut
between what we see and what someone else might see coming
the other way. It isn't a brave rule, just
practical. I can't prove anything beyond a
charge on a credit card, a set of grooves on a rental.
We don't have any more and the way my throat still tightens.
When I smell hot metal on a cold night, but I'll tell you the
same thing. The man told us in Kayenta
because I think it's the right way to say it.
Keep moving. I grew up hiking.
The smokies with my older brother not experts but not
Clueless. We both know how fast light
drops under a hardwood canopy in late, October, and how sound
carries along water. We've done.
Kate's Cove enough times to predict where traffic bunches
and where the deer cross We were staying outside Townsend for a
long weekend, trying to unplug after a rough year and we
decided to do Abrams Falls because it felt familiar and
safe. Safe is a tricky word.
We left our phones behind mine on the nightstand at the cabin,
his in the glove box because we wanted to stop checking messages
every five minutes. We had two headlamps a small
first aid kit water and one can of bear spray clip to my belt.
It was laid after noon, when we pulled into the parking area
off. Kate's Cove, Loop, Road, A
volunteer at the signboard smiled.
Like she'd said, this 100 times and told us Bears had been
active near the creek and that we should turn around.
If we were still on the trail at dusk, she tapped the drowning
hazard sign with the tip of her pain.
Told us the rocks by the falls gets slick and then asked to
sign in. We did.
She asked us to sign back out. We said we would the trail in
was the Smokies. I know packed leaves over hard
dirt, Roots like ribs, Under Foot, Hemlock and Laurel
crowding. The blind Corners Abrams Creek
to our rights sounding bigger than it looks.
The air had that cool sweetness. You only get when the maples
exploded into red and the Oaks are still holding on to the last
of the orange. We passed the usual little foot
logs, over side streams, stepped around a few muddy spots and
fell into that. Autopilot Pace Brothers, get
after years of moving in sync, we didn't stop much.
We reached the falls in a little under an hour and they were
moving strong. Spray hung over the pool.
We ate a bar each and drank some water.
There was a sour smell Downstream.
Not Rod. Exactly more.
Like fish left in the Sun for a couple hours.
I walked 30 feet and found the source a trout.
Split clean on one side and untouched on the other set on a
Flat Rock. Like someone had a range it the
way you'd lay out a tool before you use it.
I said it was probably a bear. My brother said, the same.
We didn't talk about how The Rock was dry except for the
little damp circle around the fish.
We didn't take pictures, we didn't have phones, we packed
our wrappers and started back light goes from gold to gray to
go on Fast there. On the way out the creek is on
your left and the great feels a touch more uphill than you.
Remember. Coming in the air cooled enough
that I zipped my shell. Somewhere above the switchbacks.
I noticed the leaves had stopped crunching as much under our
boots. The ground was only damp in
spots on the way in, but now it felt like everything had picked
up a film. We were still making decent
time. When the smell came back.
Sour and animal. I was about to say something,
when a uniform stepped out from the Rhododendron, just ahead, he
looked like a ranger at first glance jacket, brimmed hat duty
belt with a radio. The whole thing he had the kind
of face, you don't register, neither friendly nor unfriendly
just neutral. He said, the Loop Road would be
closing soon in the gate crew didn't like it when cars sat
after dark He offered us a shortcut he said parallel the
creek and shaved 20 minutes. He pointed to a faint path
angling off from the main track. His badge was caked in dried
mud. His boots were bone, dry the
trail under our feet. Wasn't, I wanted to ask a few
questions like where the shortcut rejoined, but he was
already stepping on to it and saying we should walk single
file for safety, that sounded routine enough that my brain.
Let it happen. My brother glanced at me and
Shrugged the way he does when he is pretending, this is still our
decision. We fell in behind him.
The Narrow Path, the creek sound to our left at first and I tried
to convince myself, The Damp boots thing was nothing.
The man walked with his hands close to his sides.
He didn't swing his arms much. He moved quiet for his size and
I don't mean stealthy. I mean light like he didn't
weigh what he should have. branches, that scraped, my
jacket sleeve didn't seem to touch his When my brother made a
joke about getting a ticket for hiking after dark.
The guy repeated the punchline in the same tone a second later
like he was practicing it. I have seen enough uniforms to
pick up on Little Tales. He never asked where we were
parked, never checked our names against the sheet, never
reminded us of any of the specific safety rules.
I've heard a dozen times. The radio on his belt, never
made a sound, not even static. He called the volunteer, the
woman at the board, like, he'd seen her without knowing her.
And the biggest thing, he kept getting ahead of us without
passing. We'd round a bend and he'd be 10
yards farther than he should have been like the trail
stretched between us without warning.
I told myself it was darker than I realized, I told myself, I was
tired. The shortcuts started to pull
away from the sound of the creek.
If you know that trail, you know, the water is your best
landmark. Lose that and you're moving
blind through knots of Laurel and Deadfall that all look the
same. I mentioned it casual and he
said the path would cut back. Same deadpan delivery as before.
He didn't turn his head much, when he talked.
His lower body did more of the steering than his shoulders.
His hips Twisted, a little too far, his knees, bent a little
too much. At a spot where the path split
into two Thin ruts and rejoined. 20 feet ahead.
I saw something I still don't like riding down.
As he stepped into the split, his outline seemed to widen,
then double for half a breath. Like two bodies overlap in the
sealed back into one. You can explain a lot in low
light. Your eyes hunt for contrast and
invent edges. I didn't say anything.
Then my brother swore under his breath and squeezed my arm from
behind. He had seen it too.
We didn't have a plan. We didn't need one.
Spelled out. We fell into the kind of
agreement Brothers can do without words.
First familiar Landmark. First point we can aim for with
the census, we break off and run.
I unhook the bear spray and slid.
The safety cap off with my thumb.
I watched for any opening back toward the creek.
The smell was strong again. Not garbage.
Not rot. A wet animal smell.
You get in Fish Camps when somebody cleans a catch and
leaves the pile under a board, the path narrowed so much we had
to turn sideways. He halted and pointed through a
black gap between two hemlocks said that cut went straight up
to the Loop Road shoulder. From where he pointed.
I heard water off to the left. Not ahead.
It didn't line up. My brother, must have heard it
too, because he moved at the same time I did.
We didn't announce anything. We just went hard left toward
the sound of the creek brush clawed.
At our pants. The ground tip down fast.
It wasn't graceful. We slid corrected slit.
Again, and burst into a little Open Bench of the bank.
I could hear him. Moving behind us, not a full
Sprint. More like steady, fast steps
with branches parting. He didn't shout for us to stop.
He didn't say anything. we hit the water without counting to
three because if you give yourself time, you'll delay, It
took my breath right away. Cold, climbed from ankles, to
shins to knees. The Rock shifted under the
Leafs, lime, I put one hand on my brother's pact to keep us
tied together. Something stayed on our side of
the bank, pacing a step for step.
I know what an animal sounds like in Brush either it crashes
because it's heavy or it stops when you face it or It Bolts if
it's not a predator, this sound matched, our Rhythm, when we
slipped it paused when we stepped it stepped.
The water pressed at my knees hard enough.
That my calves shook. Halfway across my brother,
stumbled and went down on one knee.
As I yanked him up a hand touched his shoulder from
behind. Skin.
That felt like Riverstone and shade fingers too long, cold
enough to burn. He jerked forward and we both
scrambled the last few steps until the gravel shelf Rose
under our boots. And we were on the far side, I
turned because I couldn't stop myself.
The figure crouched on the bank, we just left not pretending to
be a ranger anymore. The Hat was gone or maybe it had
never been real. And the jacket hung role, like,
it was a size off in three directions.
It leaned forward too far past the point, most people could
hold without compensating. It didn't step into the water.
It tilted its head, as if measuring distance, and then
lowered itself back into a squat.
A beam of light cut through the trees that are backs and found
our faces. Hey, a woman's voice said.
Not a whisper, not a stage call, just a clear voice with the edge
people get when they're worried, it was the volunteer from the
signboard. She was breathing hard and
holding a flash light in a way that said she'd been walking for
a while, not jogging. She asked if we were the two
brothers from the Abrams sign in.
We said yes. She asked where we came from
because the main trail was 20 yards to our right.
Not where we just busted out. I said we'd followed a ranger on
a shortcut. She didn't look toward the other
bank. She kept the light on us and
told us to move toward her path. She didn't turn her back on the
creek until we were on the trail.
We walked out together with the beams staying low in steady
lighting roots and rocks. She didn't ask a lot of
questions on the move. Just kept our Pace brisk and
checked our footing at the footlongs.
At the lot, a real Ranger was waiting by his truck.
He had a reflective vest and an actual radio that chirped with a
live Channel. He took one look at us and said
we could sit on the bumper. He got our names and asked us to
run through everything once. We told him about the volunteer
at the start, the fish on the Rock, the muddy badge, the dry
Boots, the single file instruction, the path that
pulled away from the creek. The moment when the shape
doubles the crossing and the hand I expected a raise eyebrow
or a smile meant to call. He didn't do anything like that.
He just nodded wrote and then looked at the volunteer and
thanked her, for coming up the trail when we didn't sign out.
He said no one on duty matched. The description we gave, he said
there had been odd reports over the years around that stretch,
mostly chalked up to folks getting turned around at dusk.
He didn't feed us a story, he didn't try to fill the silence.
He asked us to come back at 9:00 the next morning.
So he could show us something. We checked the sheet and saw our
name, still underlined in the in column.
I signed us out with a shaky hand, we slept badly at the
cabin, every Sound Outside. Read like movement in the
leaves. That's self-inflicted fear.
I'm not proud of it but it's the truth.
We went back to the trailhead has asked the ranger met us by
the lot and walked us a short way down to a muddy stretch
where the main trail Narrows and a seep crosses it.
He crouched and pointed at a set of prints.
The first few looked like boot Souls, but you could see where
the tread lacked detail as if someone had pressed a smooth
template into the mud. Then the shapes widened and lost
the Heel To Toe profile. A dozen steps later.
The Impressions were bare long. No art Toes.
That didn't look right. They Trail toward the creek and
stopped at the water line. He didn't say much about it.
He didn't have to we filed the incident report inside the truck
and thanked both of them. The volunteer told us, she went
out because she got an off feeling when she tallied the
sheet after dust. She said, people forget to sign
out all the time and it's usually nothing but our car was
still there. And she knew the light drops
fast in that Hollow. We asked about the gates.
She said the gate guard had radioed around midnight that
something walked the road shoulder on and off for hours.
Never stepping into the open Meadows, just keeping to the
edge. The guard couldn't get a plate
or a figure just movement. They chalked it up to a stray
black bear or a person without sense.
We cut the trip, short by a day and drove home quiet.
On the way out of Townsend. My brother said the word first
skinwalker. He said it like a test to see if
I'd argue I didn't. I know that word means a lot of
different things depending on who you ask and where you heard
it. I only know what we saw and what
we felt a uniform that was a costume footwork that didn't
match bone intended, a voice that ran a half second behind
Dry boots on a damp Trail. A hand that didn't feel human.
Tracks. That started like boots and
ended as something bear before Vanishing at water.
I don't care if this reads like Superstition to you.
It's not a campfire bit. I'm riding it down because I
needed out of my head in the exact order at happened and
because someone else will start that hike late in October and
tell themselves, they can beat the dark.
We don't hike after three in the Smokies.
Now, we both carry headlamps with fresh batteries and our own
can of spray. We sign in and out like it
matters because it does. when people ask what happened, we
say, we had a scare and leave it at that, unless they press If
they press, I tell them a man who wasn't a ranger tried to
walk us off the trail. If they still push for a name, I
say the word. We both agreed on in the car and
watch their face. Most people laugh or change the
subject that's fine with me. We're home.
We're alive. The rest can stay where it
belongs on the far Bank crouched at the line where the water
starts I'm not a first-time hiker and I don't scare easily.
I'm careful. I bring a paper map headlamp and
a real first aid kit. I know how fast I move over.
Rock that morning. We picked Old Rag and Shenandoah
because the ridge views are famous.
And if you start at Sunrise, you can beat the crowd and still get
home before dark early, November leaves mostly down forecasts
said sunny but cold, it felt simple.
There were four of us me my friend Jared who always carries
the kit. His girl friend Tessa, who sets
a steady pace, and our buddy, Luke whose had a bad ankle since
the soccer injury. The plan was the usual Loop,
Ridge Trail up the rock, scramble tag the summit.
Come down, saddle Trail and out weekly Halo Fire Road to the lot
on Nethers Road. 9 or 10 miles, we strapped micro spikes to our
packs just in case the Shaded slabs had ice Jared had a can of
bear spray. We told ourselves it was
Overkill. We hit the trail at first light
blue blazes on Greystone. A thin frost on leaves, our
breath drifting when we stopped talking.
We were moving. Well, when I noticed a guy ahead
of us a gray hoodie under a brimmed hat.
He never looked back. He climbed with his hands in his
front pocket, like he didn't need them for balance.
We made the usual friendly call about slick Rock.
Just a heads up, he didn't acknowledge it, we Shrugged some
people want quiet. Here's the first thing that
didn't make sense. We stopped for a minute at a
Viewpoint. Let two college kids pass and
fell back in. No one came up behind us that we
rounded a Switchback and the gray.
Hoodie was ahead again, same distance, I scan the slope.
No spur. No shortcut after Leaf, Drop.
You can see a long way through the trees.
If he'd passed, we would have seen him, we kept finding him
like that. Always ahead never passing.
We'd call out when we hit a slick patch just being decent.
He didn't turn his head. The hood sat too high on his
neck. Like the fabric couldn't lie
flat. I told myself it was a bulky hat
under there or a weird haircut. We kept moving on the upper
scramble. I heard Luke suck in a breath,
he'd planted on a damp shelf and rolled his ankle, no pop, no
collapse, just pain. We got him seated and wrapped it
with an elastic bandage. He stood tested it and said he
could go on. If we dialed our pace we
switched him to Two Poles Tessa and I carried a little extra
from his pack so he could keep weight off it.
We made the summit quickly, cold and bright ice, and Shady
cracks. The wind cut through layers in a
way the forecast hadn't warned about the sun.
Felt like it wasn't doing much. We didn't linger.
To protect Luke's ankle. We chose the gentler descend
down the saddle Trail and out on Weakley Hollow Fire Road.
Its wide gravel after the single track in the great is friendly
earlier. We'd still have daylight but not
much. On the way down, we passed a
sign for one of the birds nest shelters.
The post had long even scratches in it.
Not random not a tangle Spaced in a way that caught my eye.
I didn't like how high they started.
We kept moving because none of us wanted to stand still in that
wind. 100 yards. Later, we came to a stretch
where course whitetail deer hair lay in a line across the trail.
Not clumped like a kill sight, not in a scatter, a line.
We looked for tracks. Nothing that told a normal
story, we stepped over it. Quiet, 10 minutes after that we
came around a curve and saw a brimmed hat.
Hanging from a branch at shoulder height, wide Crown brim
a little warped, the crown looked altered, Seems cut and
reset. Reached out and tugged, the brim
just enough to see the stitching then let it go.
None of us had seen anyone behind us.
No one had passed. The single track ended and we
spilled onto the Fire Road. It felt good at first room to
walk side by side gravel under our boots.
Ditches and culverts doing their job.
Every few hundred feet. We got into a rhythm Luke set
the speed, I kept my eyes down the road and on the ditches at
one of the culverts, I saw movement low to the ground.
Not a fox, not a person walking. It moved on elbows and knees and
then pushed up into a stand in one smooth motion.
That didn't look like a normal stand.
It stepped back into shadow. I couldn't see a face, I did see
the outline of a hood Tessa said very low.
That there's a word in Appalachian stories for things
that move wrong and copy people. I didn't want to talk about
that. I wanted to get to the lot.
We kept to the center of the road.
Luke stayed between me and Jared.
Tesla, walked the right side but still inside the two tire
tracks. We agreed not to step to the
edges. The air off, the culverts was
colder than the road and that felt like a detail worth
respecting. We didn't hear footsteps but at
the next been the gray. Hoodie was behind us, 20 feet
back like he'd been walking our Pace the whole time without
sound hat back on. He held his head at a slight
tilt that made the brim look uneven.
We try to normal tone you good back there, he didn't answer, he
closed to 10 feet, I can carry him.
He said, Nottingham, Luke, the sentence had the words you would
expect, but it didn't land like a person offering help.
It sounded like he'd practiced the line and didn't know where
to put the feeling Jared said we're okay.
Thank you. Calm, he stepped left.
So the four of us, formed a wedge with Luke inside, I
matched him on the right. Pulls out we didn't break stride
permit, the man said and lifted a laminated card.
I've had passes on my dashboard for trailheads.
This wasn't that it looked like a clear sheet with dirt, rubbed
into it. No print he held it at a weird
height. So the hood bunched and the neck
looked wrong underneath like something was taking up space
under the fabric in a way that didn't match a normal skull.
We kept our formation. We didn't run.
We didn't stop. The man drifted toward the ditch
that was gone from our direct line of sight.
Then came back into view at the next Culvert Crossing like he
traveled inside the drainage Each time the road crossed
water. He was there again aligned with
the mouth of the pipe. Not breathing hard, not sweating
in that cold. I tried to reason it out.
Maybe he was cutting through the brush and we just couldn't see
the foot paths. Maybe he was messing with us to
get a reaction. either way, the safest place was the center of
the gravel where you can see everything, we agreed on a plan
without much talking. If he pushed in on us, we'd put
Jared's bear spray out as a wide fan across his path, except the
blowback and cut cross slope through the brush to regain the
road Beyond, whatever obstacle Force, the choke point.
Better burning eyes than getting stuck next to a culvert mouth
with a stranger to close to us. A quarter mile later, we rounded
a bend and hit a problem, a mess of fresh stormfall crossed, the
road, not a single tree, more like a tangle slid down, from
upslope, and stopped right where the road narrowed between Banks.
Bark, shards and fresh cambium showed pale where the branches
had scraped Rock. Beyond that tangle on the open
road, stood, the man in the gray hoodie and brimmed hat.
He didn't move the hoodie hung weird across his shoulders, like
there was more frame under there than the fabric was cut for.
We checked the wind. It wasn't in our favor.
It's swirled in the corridor and would push the spray back at us.
We accepted it counting down, helped me commit to the move. 3
Jared said, two, I said, one Tessa said Jared the can and
laid a broad orange fog across the Gap.
We went left into the brush as a tight cluster.
I took the front through waist high branches, the Thorns didn't
need Dramatics. They just scraped Luke leaned on
both of us and kept his feet. Moving the spray blue back into
our faces. It burned Eyes, Nose Throat, I
couldn't see, well we didn't stop.
We aimed for a shallow angle to meet the road.
Again, 50 yards, beyond the tangle.
I kept my left shoulder to the sound of the little stream that
cut under the road because I didn't want us wandering into
the drainage and giving up our angle.
I heard coughing behind me and realized it was all of us.
We hit the gravel like a team breaking through a line and
didn't look back. We held a pace where we could
still give quick cues Rock puddle ditch but no one wanted
to talk about anything else. The lot came into view, through
leafless trunks, it felt like a real thing.
We could reach. I saw the metal kiosk in a white
truck near it. The truck door opened.
As we came out of the trees, a park ranger stepped down.
He didn't do the TV show thing where he cracks a joke or
lectures you. He asked if anyone was hurt.
Then asked what happened in short questions where when what
exactly did the person say, what did the card look like, which
culverts we kept it to facts. We didn't add anything to make
it sound bigger. We gave him the times as best,
we could the Hat on the branch, the hairline across the trail,
the block on the road, the spray, our route through the
brush, he wrote it down and nodded he said, we weren't the
first to talk about a copycat hiker out there after the leaves
drop. He didn't use any spooky words.
He said, he'd hiked that section in daylight the next day and
check for downed trees and signed damage.
He gave us an incident number and told us to watch Luke's
ankle, we got in the car. My eyes still burned from the
spray. We didn't pass many words on the
drive. We went home.
Iced, Luke's, ankle, and counted the small wins.
No one fell. We stayed together.
We didn't let a stranger split our formation.
The next day, the ranger sent a message through the Park's kiosk
system. I read it twice.
They found deep scratch marks on a saddle, Trail sign about eight
feet up too high for the usual wildlife in that Park.
And a brimmed hat in the brush with seams cut and sewn again to
make the crown wider. They cleared the Log Jam.
He thanked us for reporting and closed with the case number.
Luke's ankle blew up that night, but settled in a week and a
half. He jokes now that he's retired
from Rock scrambles. We still hike because that's who
we are, but we changed a few things.
No shoulder season endings. We plan for the sun dropping
behind ridges faster than the clock says.
We don't step near culverts if someone is shadowing us and we
won't go back to Old Rag, not because the mountain is cursed
or anything because something out there wanted to be close to
us and we didn't give it that chance.
If you hike there in November and a man in a grey, hoodie with
a brimmed hat shows up ahead of you without ever passing by,
don't be polite about space. Keep your people in the middle
of the road. Keep moving.
And to the copycat hiker from Old Rag who offered to carry my
friend on Weakley Hollow Fire Road, let's not meet.
I guide a few trips every summer in The Boundary Waters and I've
done enough cold shoulder runs in October to know where the
light runs out first. This wasn't a rookie thing, my
buddy, Matt, and I planned a tidy loop with one long last
push across Knife Lake, two short carries then out at the
public landing at the end of the Gunflint Trail.
We left our phones locked in the truck on purpose.
We kept it simple paper map compass.
Two headlamps, one ultra light pack and a Kevlar canoe with
everything strapped down. Knights had already dipped below
freezing that week. By mid-afternoon the water was
flat and dark. The kind of flat that makes you
think you've been giving a free Mi if you paddle here in late
October, remember this part Free miles.
Always collect interest. We cut along knife from west to
east bow, pointed toward the South Arm.
I kept my Cadence steady in low to save the shoulders.
I've had good water. Turn on me fast.
We passed thunder point with the usual stop.
We told ourselves we were skipping the overlooked because
of time, but the truth is we both wanted the landing more
than the view. The air had that clean dry bite,
that makes you swallow more often.
You keep an eye on your feet in that kind of cold, wet socks can
end today. About two hours from the carry.
We coasted past a campsite that didn't fit 10 feet up a birch,
someone had lashed a straight Pole to the trunk.
Hung from it were scraps of fur, a length of cord and a row of
bottle caps. Punched through and wired, like,
crude Bells, the Caps were matte.
So, not new, the fur wasn't deer hair.
It looked like something from a trap line, but too neat, too
high. And too far from any obvious
Trail. I marked the spot with a pencil
Dash on the map border. Nobody said, much the day was
quiet enough that every paddle Lyft came with the small drip of
water back in to the lake. And we didn't want to add more
noise than we needed. We hit the first Carry with time
to spare. Locals call it.
A lift, over more than a Portage.
Matt took the canoe, I took the pack, it's a narrow ribbon of
dirt and roots. We made maybe 20 steps when we
heard movement that matched us on both sides of the path.
Two lines, like something pacing in parallel through brush.
Not crashing place. When we stopped it stopped.
When we started it, waited a beat and then continued like it
was checking our Rhythm before agreeing to it.
That pattern tells you more than tracks ever.
Do at a bend, a birch had a wide strip of bark peeled back, fresh
enough to show pale flesh underneath.
Four deep divots pressed into it as if someone had driven
fingertips straight through the first layer.
The spacing was off for a hand. I'd call normal.
I pressed one finger in next to a divot.
It was narrower and went deeper than mine by a lot and I'm not
small. We didn't trade theories there
on the trail. We finished the carry without
speaking and slid into otter track.
Clean something moved with us on that Lake.
It stayed near the shoreline and kept pace without splashing.
You can hear Splash from a long way out when it's that still
There was none. At every point of land, we
rounded we saw it again ahead as if it had cut across a path, we
couldn't see. You tell yourself it's a runner
on a game Trail or a wolf skirting you for curiosity and
not a threat. But a runner doesn't show up
ahead. When the point you just rounded
his Solid Rock and Deadfall and a wolf's gate has a look to it
that you can name right away. If you've spent time out here,
This wasn't that we aimed for the second, carry, the monument
Portage, Big Stone markers, stand up there in summer and you
can always count on boot prints in October.
It feels like a hallway, nobody's using We pushed up the
Steep pull from the otter track side.
My breath getting hard and white.
The pace on both sides kept with us again.
Left and right quiet. But heavy enough to move Berry
canes not small animals. At the top, there was a drop
toward the swamp side and that's when a voice called out from the
last campsite, the one closest to The Landing.
Hey, you two headed across? I could use a ride before dark.
That sentence by itself is ordinary.
It's exactly what people asked here.
All summer. We urge the canoe toward the
landing because habit is strong. The figure stood back from the
water about 10 paces. When my headlamp line brushed
the face, the features looked arranged more than grown the
eyes. Sat a little too far apart, like
a Taxidermy job done from memory.
The teeth were square. And even almost, like, uniform
pieces and not in a cosmetic way, more like blocks, the smile
was there and that it wasn't no fade, just gone.
As if removed the cheeks didn't move with it.
When it was there, that's what made my throat close.
Matt didn't raise his voice. He just said one word under his
breath a word. I don't use for stories because
I spend nights out here and I don't bring that thing into my
tent with my mouth. He said it anyway.
Skinwalker. The change in the figure was,
instant, the still posture changed to alert without any
Motion in between. You know, how a person shifts
weight before they move. This had no precursor.
It was facing us. Then the head tilted in a way
that looked like a question on paper, but felt like a test.
I back paddled once twice, we turned the bow without taking
our eyes off it and set a diagonal that would put us on
the Open Water of swamp with the narrow run, toward the public
landing Beyond Open water is the only place you can build a gap
on something that knows every route and rock that was the
whole plan. If you stay tucked along Shore,
you're giving up the only thing a canoe has on a runner it.
Our line right away. On the ridge that runs along the
north Bank, it moved fast enough to gain on us.
It had a human outline on the Sprint, but when it dropped to
all fours, the gate changed to longer cleaner arcs, too smooth
for a person on hands and feet. I kept the Cadence steady. a
small North Wind came on nothing major, but enough to throw a
short chop across the surface In a canoe, that's a nuisance.
But on a shoreline Ridge that chop means slick Rock and slower
footing. I focused on the angle of our
bow, to the channel, Matt, watched The Ridge, we had one
thing to throw. The Food Bag hung from a
carabiner in the pack so we could pull it fast at camp.
I unhooked it and tossed. It high towards Shore to make
noise and smell It arced out and thumped into brush.
The runner stopped. So sharply at looked yanked, it
bent forward at the waist and held there too long, like a
henge. It lifted its head and went
through the motion of smelling the air.
But in that cold, you can see breath from anything that pulls
a lungful in there was nothing. No, Frost Cloud, no chest rise.
just the still shape of a head raised to test a scented, didn't
take in We kept moving, I counted Strokes in my head and
filed that detail in a private place.
I didn't want to open again. The Landing came on as a dark
patch of gravel, backed by timber, in an old stump.
A battered aluminum skiff, sat there, chained up with a link of
rusted link. We rode the last little break
and ground the bow up. Just enough to get mad out
first. We both dragged the canoe past
the first of Shore, and then a light swung across us and held
steady, not blinding, just firm. You boys.
Okay, the voice came from an older man, in a canvas coat
standing on the slope of One hand holding a flashlight near
his shoulder. The way people hold a phone.
I didn't answer the question. The only thing that came out
was, can you give us a ride up the road?
He studied our faces and didn't push, he hooked the canoe to a
light trailer with the kind of practice hand that tells you
he's done this 100 times. You can warm up at my place, he
said, it's closed from The Landing.
The little road snakes back toward the end of the Gunflint,
his lodge sat behind a line of scrub and rock, it had one of
those office signs. That looks like it's seen every
season 10 times. He didn't ask for a car.
He didn't make small talk, he brought us inside turned on
lights and locked. The front door.
He put a kettle on and pulled down two mugs while we sat
without taking off our coats. He glanced once at the window
and then at our faces again. I'll run you into town in the
morning, he said and that was that We didn't argue, I don't
think either of us could have explained.
What happened in a way? That would make sense at night.
If you think this part is just fear in the dark, hold that
thought and hear the rest. At first light, he drove us back
to the spot where we ditched the bag and cut for the open reach.
We walked in a straight line, all three of us, quiet eyes,
where we put our feet, just be on the point where we threw the
Food Bag. We found tracks and damp Leaf
litter and shallow mud. At first, they read human in
shape. But the stride length changed
midline three long, one short, like the leg itself had shifted
during the Run 10 feet up a birch, a fresh break hung like a
bent arm. And on the pale face of the tear
were tooth marks flat. Even two regular for a deer too
high for a person without a ladder.
The old man exhaled through his nose, the kind of sound someone
makes when they see something they expected, but didn't want
to see again. He didn't say a story.
He didn't offer a name. We walked back without talking.
He drove us to our truck and we paid him in cash for the trailer
haul, even though he tried to wave at all, We left the state
the same day. I've come back since to guide in
summer because this place is part of my life.
But I won't plan another late October finish on knife.
And I won't line up a landing after Twilight.
When a thing shows, you how fast it can move across ground, you
thought you understood, you change how you move through that
place before you write this off as nerves and shadows, think
about the small stuff. Caps wired, too high.
On a birch to be a joke by kids finger, deep scores, and fresh
bark with spacing. That doesn't match a normal
hand. A voice at the last campsite
asking for a ride without stepping forward like people do
when they want help a smile, that doesn't pull the cheeks
ahead, raise to smell without the simple proof of breath in
are cold enough to make Steam from your own mouth.
None of those details. Need magic.
They just need you to accept that.
Not everything out. There is a tourist or a wolf.
Here's the part people. Remember wrong.
We didn't win because we were Brave.
We didn't win because we had a plan that would be anything.
We got out because a short win, put Chop on the water and
because Open Water let it canoe do what it's built to do.
That's it. That's the advice buried in this
If you ever find yourself on knife late in the year and
someone asks for a ride from the last campsite, Don't Drift
closed. Don't test the smile set your
angle for open water, throw what you can spare if you need to
keep your Cadence steady, get to the gravel, ask for help from
real people, with real breadth showing in the cold.
We went back with the law owner to pick up the things we
dropped. The Food Bag was gone.
The small fish carcass we'd seen earlier on a rock by the first
Carry stayed in my head more than it should have.
Its how a person sets something down when they plan to come back
for it? On the drive out, the old man.
Watched the tree line more than the road.
I don't think he was nervous. I think he was measuring
distance, the way we were between what we knew yesterday,
and what we knew now, I keep the map from that week in a drawer.
There's a dash at a campsite on knife where a pole sits too high
on a birch with fur and caps hanging off it.
If you're the type who wants to go see for yourself.
I can't stop you but know this Rules.
That sound like folklore, kept us alive.
Don't Linger on late season water, to admire a view.
Don't pause on a carry because something wants you to Don't
take a ride request at last Light from a face that looks
like it borrowed. Its pieces.
And above all don't count on Shore to save you.
Shore has Trails. You can't see the lake even cold
and black and rough gives you one thing a runner can't use.
We left Minnesota that afternoon, I still guide.
But when the calendar tips toward real cold, I write
different routes. I don't say the name out loud
anymore. When I talk about this night.
You can call it campfire drama or a warning dressed up as a
story. I don't need to convince you.
I only need you to remember one line if you ever paddle out
there late in the year. Make for the Open Water and
don't look back until your bow is grinding.
Gravel under a real light held by a real hand.
That's the only part of this that matters.
I'm a visiting climber from Ohio.
My partner that day, Tyler, grew up in Kentucky and spends most
weekends in Red River Gorge. We'd climbed all after noon at
Left Flank and Brews Brothers, burned hands on sandstone and
packed up feeling pretty good about ourselves.
It was a weekday in late October, the parking lots half
empty, the are cool enough that chalk actually did something.
Tyler suggested we chase the sunset from a small Arch he'd
seen years ago. Somewhere off Tunnel Ridge Road,
not the famous spans. Something quieter, he said a
short detour off a social Trail where you could see the Sky, Go
orange over the trees and be back to the car before headlamps
mattered. I had a half coil of rope in my
pack and a working lamp. Tyler kept a few nuts and small
cams rack to his harness out of habit, and carried a water
bottle that knocked against his thigh when he walked.
We had no map and didn't pull up any track on a phone, the plan
as he described, it was simple park off forest service.
Road 39, while a thin path toward the star Gap Country,
stay on high ground and let the ridgelines point the way I
trusted him and I trusted the terrain, I'd learned to read
that combination almost put us over a cliff We stepped off the
gravel around 5 in the evening. Daylight had that late fall
angle where every shadow looks deeper than it is.
The first stretch was straightforward Sandstone plates
Under Foot Laurel crowding. The edges a narrow spine,
dropping fast on both sides. Tyler called out little
landmarks. He remembered a shallow Rock
House on the Left. An old split railing.
Into the dirt, a loaf of stone with a notch.
You could heal hook if you were born, He'd been out here 100
times. He said, he knew the first half
by heart. And could dead reckon the rest?
I didn't argue, I should have. We found the first wrong thing,
20 minutes in. On a stump beside the path of
fresh deer. Hide was spread smooth flesh.
Side up like someone had started a tanning job and vanished.
There was no Camp, no fire ring, no carcass nearby, no tarp
nothing to say. This was someone's work in
progress. The hair still had that shine
you see before dirt dulls it down, neither of us touched it.
10 Paces. Later, we came to a wooden post
that used to hold a trail marker.
The face had been scraped flat deep into the Grain and reached
with long vertical lines, each Groove clean and straight.
No number, no Blaze. Just Tally's I felt the skin on
my arms, react, the way it does. Before the rest of me, catches
up the ridge kept rolling. Tyler, kept saying it's just
passed the next saddle and then the next saddle fed into
another. Light fell out of the hollows.
First, our eyes adjusted but distance got shorter with every
step at 6:10 with the sun, just grazing the tops.
We hit a three-way tangle of faint, paths in a stand of
Laurel. Tyler stared down each option
and pointed East at a low Dome of rock.
Like he recognized it. I told him we were burning
daylight and that we'd be smarter to turn back.
He nodded we pivoted. That's when a voice ahead, just
passed the leaves. Said this way, we both stopped.
The voice was close enough to hear the breath behind the words
and flat enough, that you couldn't guess an age, an orange
safety vest, hung between two trunks like a marker.
Above it, a brimmed hat. No tool in hand, no pack, no
radio. The vest moved a couple of yards
and then stopped again where the path narrowed.
Tyler raised his tone the way you do when you want, whoever's
listening to know your not timid Hey, what Fire Road does that
connect to there was a pause that lasted long enough to
register as a choice. The nearest, the voice said.
The vest drifted Farther Along always just out of Clear View
and each time we closed the distance.
It was waiting a few yards ahead again as if it had slipped
through the brush without catching a twig.
Dry leaves under our boots, made a steady noise.
Whatever. Wore the vest didn't make the
same sounds. I couldn't tell if I was hearing
it at all. we asked if he was with the forest service, another
beat I work out here. No name, no area closure, no,
follow-up question. The kind of answers people use
when they want you to keep moving.
We stayed on the ridge, because that's the rule that keeps you
alive in that terrain. Hi and solid trees for breaks
stone for footing. The vest kept angling us toward
a shallow Sandstone Bowl. I recognize from other parts of
the gorge one of those natural amphitheaters were Leaf.
Litter slides on hard pan, to a smooth lip and then the ground
drops away in bands of cliff It's a known trap at dusk
because it looks safe until the last stride and there's nothing
to catch you if you lose it. I leaned close to Tyler and used
a word. I grew up with an Appalachian
families when conversation quieted and someone drew a shape
in the air, like a warning. Skinwalker, he didn't look at
me. He just said louder.
Were bailing to the road and angled us left trying to take
the lead. We couldn't get in front of the
vest. Every time we tried to pass, it
was already where we meant to go standing at the next Bend or on
the far side of the slab. Vest Center frame hat, brim
hiding the face. It didn't push or wave or yell.
It led our own choices carry us right to the lip of that bowl.
The slope below was the color of rust and marbles.
The line it pointed down looked like a ramp until it wasn't at
the edge. The figure finally turned to
face us. I didn't get a clean, look at
the face, just a field of Shadow under that Brim The proportions
were wrong in a way. I can only explain by listing
them arms hanging a little too long.
In the vest holes neck, that let the head tilt far past normal
posture, that didn't shift with breath the way, a tired body
does. The right arm came up and made a
slow motion. Open hand dropping like a
traffic cop. Showing you where to go, no
words, no warning about the cliff just that motion.
Tyler moved to a car sized boulder near the rim.
And did what climbers do when there's a question He set a nut
in a constriction clip to sling and loaded it with his weight.
Small grains shut off the rock as the sling tightened.
He didn't like it, I didn't either.
He Unwound the sling and pulled the nut back.
One smooth, Yang, and coiled the sling in his hand.
We both backed from the drop the figures, head went farther to
the side until the brim touched its shoulder.
It stayed that way for a breath too long, we decided to skirt
the bowl. Staying on bare plate, where our
shoes had something to bite. And where we wouldn't leave a
clear track in the Duff. It's slow moving like that.
Stepping edge to edge testing each patch of sand for ball
bearings. We talked to each other, in
short calls, the way you do on a route, Good.
Left foot higher. Two steps more than weeds.
I could hear something down in the leaves, keeping our Pace, it
wasn't footfalls. It was a sliding joint that
never snagged, never snapped a twig.
When we paused it paused, when we hopped a clean Gap in the
stone, I expected to see it struggle with the brush line.
Instead, it was already waiting where the line we take would
spit us out. There's a narrow saddle out
there that people who know the place use as a shortcut when
they're off Trail. It leads to a short down climb
10 feet of stone, you can belly over and drop to a ledge, then a
slanted ramp that funnels into a gully trending toward the road.
Tyler found it from memory. The last 20 yards to the saddle,
where the longest of my life because I knew that once we
committed to the down climb, we were out of sight of the rim for
a few seconds. I threw the coil of rope first
to get it out of my hands. It hit the ledge in unrolled.
The orange vest step to the edge of us.
And looked down at the Rope, like it hadn't seen one used
before that. Fixed attention felled, worse
than anything. Like it was learning.
I kept my chest on the stone and slid feet first.
Shoes scraped forearms burned. Tyler moved next to me when I
got to the ledge, I looked up and the figure was their arm
reaching over the lip. The fingers unbent farther than
they should have long and straight like a strip of bark
peeled and pulled into end. It held that shape and did
nothing else. I didn't wait, I cried down the
ramp and pulled Tyler along. We both took the turn into the
Gully at a half run because there is a kind of fear you can
manage only by turning it into movement.
The Gully carried us flat Stones, slid onto our shoes and
shot ahead. I kept to rock whenever I could
and avoided the leaves, even if it made the angle worse.
The parallel sound above us faded and reappeared, like, it
was moving along the rim. A few times.
I looked up and saw the vest a ridge over holding the same
distance, but never scrambling. Never even seeming to sweat.
It didn't jump. It just made, sure it was where
it needed to be, to keep eyes on us.
When the trickle in the Gully, turned into a pronounced line of
water, the slope ease, the are changed.
You can tell when a Road is closed, even in the dark, it
breaks. The uniformity with a kind of
manufactured emptiness. We followed that, we spilled
onto gravel like two people staggering out of a river.
The last Light was thin just enough to make the crown of the
Road show, I'll own this. I threw up from the way
adrenaline dumped out. Once my feet, hit something that
didn't move. We didn't talk about going back
up, we didn't argue about protocol, we stepped to the
middle and waved arms when we saw headlights lift over a bend,
the truck was an older Chevy with a county plate.
The driver rolled down and took us in with theatrics.
He wore a fleece with a department emblem.
I recognized when he spoke. I heard the former job in his
voice. You boys.
All right. We said we were, he said he was
a retired firefighter out of Stanton and asked if we were
lost or if someone was messing with us.
We gave him what we could without trying to sound like
idiots. He had a radio mounted under the
dash keed it to a local channel and told someone he'd picked up
two hikers, near Tunnel Ridge. Who were shaking up by a man in
a vest leading them toward a bad drop.
He didn't push for details, he just turned the truck toward the
lot, near the oxygen, and double Arch Trailhead.
And let us breathe a ranger met us there.
Professional call not interested in making us feel small He
checked for injuries, made sure neither of us.
Needed medical help. And then asked for specifics,
Time we left the car landmarks. We passed, where we turned
around. What we saw, what we didn't see.
He asked if the person carried any tools.
We said no, he asked if there was any Insignia on the vest.
Know, he asked if we noticed a name tag, a radio mic, even a
painted mark on gloves. There were no gloves.
I told him about the deer, hide on the stump, and the post with
the long straight grooves. He wrote both down and didn't
make a face. He said, he'd go in daylight
document what he could and flag anything that needed removal.
We went back to our rental and I didn't sleep much.
Every time I close my eyes, I saw the way the head tilted at
the rim, with the brim touching the shoulder, as if the joint
cared more about range than use, Two days later.
The ranger sent us a report number and noted they'd found a
vandalized post with vertical grooves in the slot.
We described and disgrace stump with high remnants nearby.
He said it was logged for cleanup that was it?
No lecture no angle, just the facts.
You can put on paper. I didn't expect anything else.
What I needed was a plan so I wouldn't make the same mistakes.
We still climb at the red, the routes are worth the miles.
But we treat dusk like a hard cutoff now.
And if one of us says, turn around, we turn around Tyler,
replaced the sling, he almost left on that Boulder.
I kept the one, he yanked back Twisted from that quick poll,
looped on a peg near my gear bag where I see it every time I rack
for a trip, it's not lucky. It's a reminder that high ground
in your own judgment, are better than any guide.
You can't vet. If you're a climber or a hiker
and you end up near Tunnel Ridge, Road on a weekday evening
in late October, Pay attention to what the terrain is telling
you. If someone you can't quite, see,
keeps appearing where you're already going.
Don't let your pride or your schedule talk you into
following. There are places in that Forest
whereas a simple suggestion will carry you over the wrong Edge
and you won't even know when you commit to it we chose our own
route. That's the only reason I'm here
to type this. Listen, if you ever hiked Lost
Valley in early November remember three simple things
stay where you can see 30 yards ahead.
Make a sharp noise when you lose that sight line, and keep moving
toward people, Don't waste time asking a stranger to explain how
he got in front of you on a one-lane track.
Don't argue with timing. That's off by half a beat.
I didn't learn those rules from a video or a forum.
I learned them with my dad, on the Buffalo National river near
Ponca, Arkansas the morning. We went to see the elk and took
a short day hike. That should have been nothing.
I was home for a long weekend. I'm 24, my dad's 54 we've done
simple Trails together. Most of my life.
That morning, we watched Bulls push cows and Boxley Valley at
dawn breath, visible, calves, moving tight with their mothers
along the fence line. After the sun.
Cleared the ridge, the traffic ease.
We drove a few minutes to the Lost Valley Trailhead.
The plan was light, follow Clark Creek, in to one side Halo, Turn
Around by early afternoon, no phone on, no earbuds, no
gadgets. We had a printed map, two waters
layers, snacks, headlamps out of habit, a whistle clip to Dad's
chest strap, and my rescue inhaler tucked at the very top
of my day pack. We started about 9:30.
The fog along the pasture had thin.
The weather was cool and still The first stretch of Trail was
wide and kind Limestone underfoot Cedar and Hardwoods on
both sides Bluff lines stacking up to our right.
Clark Creek stayed to our left. Clear enough to see pale Rock on
the bottom. We swapped small, talk about a
family thing. I was dodging and kept a pace
that let us breathe through our noses.
The first wrong thing looked like, nothing.
On a damp slab beside the creek, was the clean imprint of a right
boot. the lug pattern was crisp Outer Edge heavier like the
wearer rolled the foot just a little it was the kind of print
that makes you guess size 11 maybe and what store sells those
Souls 10 yards later, same rock type.
We founded again. Same pattern, same pressure
points but this time, it was a mirror image.
Not a left boot. Not a healed drag.
Just the same right? Boot perfectly flipped like a
copy pressed into the Rock and reverse.
It sat in my head like a nail you step on and decide didn't
break the skin. We stepped into a side Halo that
caught sunlight a little higher up.
The floor was matted leaves. in the middle of the clearing,
someone had pressed a pile of wet leaves into an oval and
dragged something with two parallel lines across it,
grooves spaced, like tines, There were thin sticks laid next
to it four in a row, then the line broke off.
No art, no message. It looked like someone pressed
held took away. We were headed back to the main
track when he stepped out of a cedar Thicket on our, right?
Three body lengths off the trail.
Canvas jacket with the hood up. Cuffs damp gray, hiking pants
without dirt, on the knees, which is the kind of thing you
notice, when you're looking for anything normal to hang your
brain on, He nodded past us toward the meadows and said, you
see the herd? His teeth were clean squared and
didn't quite meet when he smiled not a gap.
Exactly. More like his jaw stopped to
touch early. Dad said yeah, early in the
voice he uses with chatty Folks at trailheads he gave a friendly
chin lift and pointed us down the main track within biting a
conversation. The man didn't push it.
He just watched us go. Then moved to shoes.
Barely loud enough against leave.
We kept Clark Creek, on our left and headed Upstream.
The trail had narrowed. To check behind me.
I had to turn my shoulders or stop.
Each time I turned he was farther back than he sounded
each time. I looked forward again and
walked his steps came in clusters and then nothing.
Not quiet wrong. Dad knelt to fix a lace the man
closed. The distance until he was where
you talk. Instead of call, he was speaking
to me, like we had been mid-conversation and he asked Do
you still keep your inhaler in the top of your pack?
I do I hadn't used it. I hadn't said anything about it.
My hand moved by reflex to the zipper.
Dad stood, fast enough to put a palm on my shoulder and push me
a half step behind him. We're turning him back.
Dad said polite final, the man tipped his head toward a faint
threat of trail. That hugged, the rock wall.
I'll show you a better Loop. He said there was one narrow
track. It was the one we were on.
We both looked toward it, no spur, no side cut.
We looked forward again and he was ahead of us by a dozen Paces
already standing at a pinch point where the bluff pressed.
The trail toward the water, there was no way past him
without brushing shoulders. I said one word to Dad Lo and
clear so there'd be no pretend I'd said something else.
Skinwalker. I saw the color drained from his
face. He didn't argue folklore or
definitions. He tapped the whistle with a
knuckle, like he was checking that it existed and then not at
once. We didn't run, we didn't play
tough. We did the only thing that felt
like ours. Pick ground with sightlines and
force, anything that wanted to get close to do it where we
could see it. The creek bed was open Stone in
Long sections, slick and spots, but honest.
We cut over to it, cold water, hit the ankles, then above the
archers. It kept us from overthinking.
Dad, lifted, his whistle and gave three sharp blasts.
Before we rounded a bend. The man flinched late, not a
startled. That lags a fraction a full
beat. After the sound died, his head
snapped and his shoulders twitched.
Like he had learned what to do and missed his Cube by a second.
He kept trying to land in front of us.
He'd cut straight through Cedar and appear already.
Facing the direction. We were moving, not the
direction. He just come from, like he'd
skipped the pivot. He crouched low at brush, he
could have stepped over and then stretched tall under branches.
That didn't require it. If you've ever watched someone
rehearse positions in a play, changing height and arm angles
to fit marks, it looked like that.
Except there were not any marks. We stuck to our three rules
sightlines first. Make sound before a blind turn.
Keep moving. We stop talking except for short
words, step left stop now. On a Midstream slab, the silk
showed two, parallel Groove and inch long space.
Like antlers might leave if you pressed and dragged and lifted,
no tracks around it. Dad glanced at me and kept
going. The shallow Cascade was where it
tightened the water dropped. In two short sheets, over pale
Rock, and the exit, pinched hard against the bank.
If you wanted to intercept someone there, you'd pick that
spot. I took the first step up in my
shoes, getit. My knee.
Hit Stone. It wasn't dramatic.
It was a dull. Stupid pain that made my eyes.
Water installed me for a second. I didn't have the man was three
long steps away on the bank hands at his side's chin.
Lifted, like he had found the right height for whatever he was
trying to be. Dad didn't yell.
He took the stainless bottle off his strap and threw it at the
Rock. Just to the man's right?
Hard the bottle hit the stone and rang the sound came back off
the bluff. In a flat metallic way.
The man's head snapped toward it after the ringing was already
gone. Hands opening with the reflex a
beet latte. Not the moment of impact the
second after it was like he had taught himself to Flinch and had
a timing yet. The Gap was enough.
Dad pulled my pack up by the strap and shoved me across the
lip. We took the exit in two ugly
steps and pushed into the open. We didn't sprinting dies in a
100 yards. We picked a steady Pace that
made my teeth. Click, every time we lost sight
for a second dad, hit three blasts.
Every time I watched for that late jerk in the man's
movements, it came over and over the same wrong beat following us
like a drumline that had learned the song off the page and not by
ear. The last Bend opened the trail
widened. The lot was visible past the
trees a rectangle of gravel with pale sedans and muddy Subarus.
A uniformed, seasonal Ranger stood.
By a green rig, with a clipboard, riding plate numbers
and making notes with a pen that left dark lines.
You could see from a few steps away.
Her head came up when she saw us.
I must have looked bad, my knee was bleeding through a thin
scrape and my throat had that cold metallic taste fairly
behind dad said Someone's following with the tone he
reserves for emergencies. Where information wins seconds
knows things, he shouldn't The ranger keyed her radio without
looking away from the trail mouth.
She gave a compact description. Male hooded, jacket grey pants,
odd behavior, approaching hikers.
She asked our names asked what he said.
We told her about the inhaler, we told her about the mirrored
Prince and the groove's pressed into the leaf pile.
Her pain, pause at that mid-stroke then kept moving
another Ranger rolled up fast from the lower lot in jogged the
trail at an even Pace hand on the strap of his own whistle.
We stood by the rig. While the first Ranger
positioned herself to see the first 50 yards of Trail without
letting us drift alone. The second Ranger was gone
longer than I liked and shorter than I feared.
He came back with nothing to show and said, breathing evenly
that he'd heard talking off trail.
That didn't sound like a conversation.
Words, spaced wrong, not argument.
Not a call short pieces. Each given a slot like someone
practicing lines spaced too far apart, we drove straight to the
sheriff substation in Ponca. The deputy at the desk had
aligned face and a steady voice. He took the report like you want
to report taken time place details.
He put a dot on a wall map by Lost Valley and asked, two more
questions. That told me he had read other
dots. He didn't try to tell us a
story. He didn't try to sell us one
either. He said during rut we get calls
where somebody hears the elk and then hears something trying to
match people too. Could be a person.
Could be more than one. could be someone not well, You did the
right things. Open ground noise.
Keep moving. That's the end of it.
No dramatic Chase. No heroic swing.
No, final photo. We change small things.
I moved my inhaler to my jacket pocket and put a spare in the
glove box. I signed up for a self-defense
class. When I got back home and kept
going until I could do the basics without thinking.
Dad added grips leaves to our bottles and a second whistle for
the car. We still hike.
We go early. We stay on marked trails and we
don't go back into that side Halo.
If you're asking yourself what it was stopped, pick safer
questions. Asked what you'll do when
someone is behind you and knows a detail, he shouldn't ask how
you'll buy a second when your knee hits Rock.
Ask how you'll move when the only track is narrow and the
person who was behind you is somehow ahead already facing the
way you're going. Out there in that season,
something's try to copy elk, do it, people do it.
And sometimes you meet something that is good at copying posture
and worse at copying time. So if you go to Lost Valley in
November and a man, with square teeth, that don't quite meet
asks, if you saw the herd and then Falls in behind you with
footsteps that come in clusters, and then go silent, don't bother
with lectures, don't trade questions, get to Stone.
You sound, keep moving until the trees thin and you see plate,
numbers and green trucks, and someone with a radio who won't
laugh at you for doing the boring.
Things that work. That's how you get back to your
car and drive to Ponca and put a dot on the map and tell it once.
So somebody else, hears it. That's how we got out.
And that's the only part that matters.
I took the seasonal maintenance job at Canyon De Chelly to make
some extra cash and get out of Phoenix for the summer, the work
wasn't glamorous clearing Trails after storms hauling debris
doing minor repairs but I like the quiet, the Canyons Beauty
hits you harder in person than in any photo towering Sandstone
walls, streaked with desert varnish cutting deep into the
Earth. It's all so isolated.
Once you drop onto the canyon floor, the road and visitors on
the rim, might as well be in another state by Late July.
I'd learned two things about summer in the canyon, the
monsoon storms come fast and they can shut a trail down in
minutes. A single cloudburst can turn the
sand to soup and send flash floods down from the rim without
warning. We were supposed to work in
pairs after heavy rain, but the staff was stretched thin that
week and the White House ruined Trail needed checking before the
morning. Tours.
My supervisor handed me a radio told me to keep an eye out for
washouts and sent me down alone, the climb down was slow.
Even in the morning, the canyon floor was still damp the mud
grabbing at my boots with every step.
I worked methodically stopping to kick loose branches off the
path. Dragging rocks away from the
switchbacks noting where runoff had eaten into the trails Edge.
The air smelled like wet sandstone and creosote, and the
sound of water dripping from the walls, bounced around in a way
that made it hard to tell. How close anything was about an
hour in the trail bent into a narrow stretch, where the walls
pressed close. Just ahead near a large Boulder.
I saw someone crouched low. From a distance it looked like a
man in a faded. Denim jacket, one arm wrapped
tight around his midsection. His head was bent chin nearly
touching his chest. I slowed down assuming it was a
hiker who had gotten caught in the storm?
Hey, I called out my voice. Bounced off the walls and came
back thin UK. No response.
I took a few steps closer. The denim was soaked dark in
places his jeans cake with reddish, clay, That's when he
stood up. It wasn't fluid.
His arms. Swung forward first almost too
far before his legs. Jerked to catch up.
The movement reminded me of someone trying to walk in deep
water, except there was nothing to push against.
He turned his head toward me slowly until I could see most of
his face and profile except his chin kept turning past where it
should have stopped his shoulder.
Barely moving with it. A deep exhale came from his
chest thick and wet like he was forcing air through fluid.
I stopped where I was, he took a step toward me.
The canyon floor was nothing but mud in that stretch and I had at
least two miles before the loop would take me back toward the
rim. my radio was in my pack, but I wasn't eager to dig for it
with him that close I started walking backward, keeping my
eyes on him, my boots slipping just enough to make me realize
how easy it would be to fall. He kept coming, not fast, but
steady. When I turned to walk faster, I
could hear his steps behind me uneven dragging but keeping up
far too easily for how bad the footing was.
I told myself it could be an injury, maybe shock, maybe
hypothermia from being soaked in the storm but the way he moved,
didn't match anything I'd ever seen, I didn't run, not yet, but
I stopped thinking about the trail work.
I just wanted as much distance as possible between me and the
thing in the denim jacket. I kept my Pace steady hoping
he'd slow down or stop. If I didn't make it obvious, I
was trying to get away. The problem was the trailer
ahead, wasn't the route I'd planned to take.
The last storm had damaged one of the small footbridges over a
side channel of chinaloa wash. And when I reached it, the
planks were half gone two hanging loose, the rest, slick
with mud and two warped to trust.
That meant my only option was to turn back toward the alternate
climb out point near Junction ruin.
I knew the distance from memory close to five miles if I cut
through every straight section and didn't stop.
Under normal conditions, it was an easy walk with the ground
like this. It was going to be a grind, I
glanced over my shoulder. He was still there.
Same jerky steps. Same forward.
Leaning posture, the sound of his breathing reached me between
the splashes of his boots in the mud thick and labored The canyon
floor funneled all the storm, runoff toward the main wash in
some stretches. The mud was ankle deep.
Each step pulling at my boots hard enough to slow me in
others. Small streams of water.
Cut across the path flowing from cracks in the canyon wall.
Every time I slowed to pick my way through, I expected to hear
his steps closing in. The radio was still in my pack,
I pulled it free. As I walked pressed the call
button, static the canyon walls were too high here.
I shoved it back and kept moving a mile in the trail narrowed
into a stretch of sheer walls on both sides.
The floor was covered with loose, Rock and slippery.
Clay, my breathing was coming fast now, partly, from exertion
partly from knowing the narrowing left me nowhere to go
if he decided to close the distance.
I risked another look back. He was closer, still not
running, just closing the Gap, a little more, each time I slowed.
The worst was a section where the runoff had carved the trail
into a shallow Trench. the mud at the bottom grabbed at my
boots so hard, I had to haul each foot free and my Pace
slowed to a crawl I could hear the splashes behind me again,
irregular but too quick for someone who should have been
struggling. I pushed through legs burning.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered the stories
from the Navajo crew. I'd worked with early in the
season. They never talked about them
directly, but one of the guys had mentioned something.
Skinwalkers shapeshifters that you weren't supposed to
acknowledge, if you thought you saw one.
At the time, it had sounded like a Campfire story.
Now it wasn't as easy to laugh off.
The climb out point was still at least a mile ahead and the
canyon funneled me straight toward it.
I kept moving, knowing that stopping here wasn't an option.
The canyon walls began to change the flat mud, giving way to
angled Sandstone, cut with grooves from the rain.
I knew from the map that this climb out wasn't meant for
tourists. It was Steep and exposed more of
an emergency route but it was the only way out.
Now I slowed just enough to check behind me.
He was still there. Maybe 40 yards back Same
strange, gate. Same Dragon steps.
His breathing was louder. Now a wet rattling sound that
didn't match his steady Pace. The start of the slope was slick
the Sandstone Polished by runoff.
I dug the toes of my boots into the groove and pulled myself
upward using my hands where I had to my legs burned
immediately. Sweat mixed with the Grid on my
face and the son pressed down through the narrow Gap.
In the walls, halfway up by risked, another glance he was at
the base, looking up at me. He tried to step onto the
incline. But slid back.
His footing giving way. He tried again with the same
result, the mud on his boots and jeans was thick, weighing him
down, I pushed harder. The slope funneled into a narrow
shelf, about eight feet wide, just enough to stand on.
From there, the Switchback Trail led to the rim.
I didn't stop. Until I was on that shelf, bent
over with my hands on my knees lungs burning.
I looked back one more time. He was still at the bottom
unmoving. Now head angled up toward me.
I didn't wait to see if he tried again.
The switchbacks were rough, sharp turns loose gravel
sections where the drop beside me when straight to the canyon
floor, but the higher I got, the more are I could pull in and the
more distance there was between us By the time I saw the rim
road ahead, my legs were shaking so badly, I thought they might
give out when I stepped onto the asphalt.
I sat down right there. Packs still on boots cake with
red clay. It was laid after noon when a
park truck pulled up, Ranger Martinez got out and asked if I
was Caleb, Ross, I nodded, he drove me back toward the station
and when I told him where I had been and what I had seen, he
went quiet for a while then he said that spot.
You're not the first to see something like that there.
We've had a few summer workers quit after it.
Some won't talk about it. Others wish they hadn't.
Two weeks later. I packed my gear and left.
I didn't give a reason on my exit paperwork.
On the drive out of Chinle the clouds were building again, over
the Sandstone Cliffs. From a pull-out.
I looked down at the canyon One Last Time.
Far below, just at the bend in the trail, where the walls
closed in. There was something small and
still watching the wash. I grew up working sheep around.
Kayenta Arizona. Right near the Utah line off US
Route. 163. Out here, you learn early that
the desert changes fast when the summer monsoons, roll in dust
one hour. A wall of rain, the next and
lightning cracking down on open ground.
In early. August after one of those
storms, I was helping my neighbor Danny with his flock.
His nephew was up near Dena hot. So hauling hay.
So it was just the two of us fixing fence and making sure
nothing got out before nightfall.
The pens sat about 15 minutes, north west of town past the
water tanks and out toward a shallow Ravine that drained
towards Canyon. I've been out there plenty of
times. I'd never seen anything like
what happened? That evening.
The ground was still soft from the downpour and the air had
that damp smell. You only get after a desert
rain. I was retiring the wire at the
South Corner when I noticed, one of the sheep standing.
Oddly still in the far pain. It wasn't grazing.
Wasn't shifting weight just locked in place.
At first, I thought it was sick but then I saw the eyes.
Sheep. Don't watch you the way people
do. They don't track you side to
side. This one did following me as I
moved along the fence line, I called out to Donnie, to check
the count and the things snapped its head toward me.
Before I could make sense of it, it broke into a run, not the
bounding uneven, gait of a sheep, but an awkward upright
Sprint. It plowed straight through the
woven wire, snapping Cedar stays like matchsticks and tearing out
the corner. Brace, my first thought was
trespasser in a Hyde, trying to scare us or steal stock We
dropped tools and jumped on the ATVs.
The ground was a mess mud. Sucking at the tires ruts deep
from the early arranged. The thing cut across open ground
it's run jerky and off balance almost like it.
Couldn't decide whether to drop to all fours it angled for the
Ravine and slipped down into the Shadows.
We stopped short slid halfway into the wash and found nothing
but wet clay and a wall of Willow root roots.
Upstream a loose Rock tumbled but no movement.
Followed back at the fence. We saw where it had gone
through. There was wool on the barbs but
it wasn't course belly wool. It was cleaner shorter, like it
had been trimmed. In the mud around, the break
were two sets of tracks hoof prints and human sized.
Barefoot Impressions, the toes played wide deep in the soft
ground. Some had a toe drag like the
person had an old injury. We told ourselves it had to be
someone messing around. Still, when we locked the gates
and headed out, I noticed the chain on the south entrance was
wet again, the kind of slick, you get from fresh sweat or
rainwater. Only problem, was it hadn't
rained since the storm passed, and neither of us had touched
it, The next morning, we were both back at the pens before.
The sun was fully up. The storm had left the Ravine,
slick, the clay still holding every print from the night
before. Danny and I patched the section
where the fence had been blown out and started following the
wash on foot. The rain had carved Ledges into
the banks and left, slick, tan shelves of packed.
Clay, not far from the break. We found wool caught on rabbit
brush. Six feet up well, above where a,
you could have rubbed against it on a flat stretch of mud, the
tracks. Reappeared coyote, paw prints
sheep, hoof, prints and the same Barefoot Impressions from last
night. They were deep space long and
set Heel To Toe like someone running at speed on one print.
The big toe blade far from the others almost sideways, as if it
had been broken long ago. We drove into Kenta later that
morning for salt blocks. at the market, we asked around without
giving details, A couple of ranchers, mentioned losing stock
early in the summer, North toward shown toe, another set up
place down near Chilton. Beto had lost Lambs with no
blood trail. Just drag marks that stopped at
the base of a rock face. Nothing about it sounded like
Coyote's. When we got back Danny's Uncle,
Joe came by to drop off some feed.
We told him about the prince. He listened then said not to
follow anything into a wash after rain and never to Trail
sign if it changed from animal to human.
In back. Again, his voice was flat, no
smile. He left without asking questions
that evening Danny and I decided to watch the pens.
We didn't use a campfire in the lights off, except for the ATVs
which we staged facing the Ravine with red filter.
Over the Lambs we counted, the flock twice, the night was
quiet, except for distant Thunder, over Monument Valley
around midnight, a single, you gave a short flat Bleeth A few
seconds later the same sound came from the Ravine but it was
slightly off. Close enough to mimic but
missing something. We turn toward the sound and I
caught movement along the fence, a shape, rose up at The Far
Side. A hand gripping, the wire tight.
It moved sideways slow, not hopping like sheep.
Do when they clear an obstacle, I started my ATV and the sound
sent it dropping to the ground then loping along the outside of
the pain toward the low spot. We gave Chase My light, caught
it cresting a berm tall, narrow shoulders.
Something draped over its back. That looked like Rawhide with
wool attacked. It stumbled dropped to all fours
for two strides. Then surged, upright, and made
for the ravine. We hit deep clay and bog the
ATVs. We followed on foot until we
reached a rock Shelf. The tracks changed two clean,
right foot, human Impressions, then a tangle of cloven marks,
and then nothing on the bare rock.
At first light, we found a lamb Downstream Tangled in wire
against a mesky. It was alive but trembling so
hard. It could barely stand.
There were no bite marks. It looked like it had been
placed there. By the third day, we'd stop
trying to convince ourselves. It was a prank.
The tracks, the lamb, the way it moved.
None of it, fits something harmless.
That morning Danny and I decided to get serious.
We ran a grid, along the Ravine tying low trip.
Wires between Mesquite, Trunks and hanging old nails from
twine, so they'd clatter, if anything brushed past We moved
panels to tighten the pens, perimeter and laid heavy cattle.
Mats over the soft spots in the ground, Danny called his Uncle,
Joe back. And I brought my brother Tom.
Both had worked stock for decades and knew how to read
sign better than most. Nobody wasted time with stories
or guesses. We just worked each man.
Taking a section to fortify by mid-afternoon Joe found
something. On a side cut where the Ravine
undercut, a Sandstone shelf. He spotted a patch of sand that
looked recently smooth over. We belly crawled onto the ledge
and found a shallow Alcove. Inside was a rolled tarp two old
jackets and army canteen. A coil of twine and a pocket
knife with fresh lanel and smeared along the edge.
In one corner was a pile of wool cut clean at the base sorted
into neat, bundles by length. At the edge of the sand was a
partial footprint heel and midfoot press deep as if someone
had crouched there for a long time.
Beside, it was a cloven print in the same wet layer.
We didn't speak. We just photographed, everything
laid a tape for scale and packed the items into feed sacks.
Danny radioed, the livestock officer out of Tuba City.
The man told us to preserve the sign, keep distance and wait
until he could get out in the morning if the roads stayed
possible. Joe took a shovel and drew a
line in The Damp dirt around the Pen's circling the flock.
He told us without raising his voice, not to let anyone
especially kids crossed that line until sunrise.
He salted the base of the fence and set two wide snares on the
outside enough to catch a leg but not break it.
That evening a small storm cell built to the west by Nightfall.
The wind was pushing hard enough to make the t-posts strain in
their set. Around 10 the nails on the twine
clattered once. a few minutes later, one of the snares went
taught jerking, the post sideways in the mud, we swung
lights toward the sound and caught movement, just beyond the
salt line. A figure standing close to the
fence tall and narrow head turned slightly down.
It stepped back slowly, keeping outside the salt, the dogs
growled low but stayed behind us a second later.
Lightning lit the ravine. in that flash, the figure pivoted
and ran the Run was smoother now, faster We chased to the lip
of the Ravine and saw nothing but shadow.
In the morning, the livestock officer, found the snare cable
kinked in tight twists, like, it had been turned by hand.
We decided that night would be the last The next morning, no
matter what happened, we'd load the flock and moved them to
Danny's cousins, land near comb Ridge.
We'd already reinforced the weakest corner with new T posts
and a railroad tie. Then stacked old metal gates
along the outside of the fence. So there were no gaps.
By Sundown everything that could be done was done.
Just after midnight the nails, strong on the tripwires rattled
in three different spots, instead of running the fence in
One Direction, whatever was out there was testing multiple
points at once. We kept the house lights off to
save our night vision. the air was damp and heavy with a faint
metallic, smell a hand curled over the top of the fence 6 feet
up Mud, streaked the skin and the fingers were long, The Joint
sharp in the ATV beam they gripped tight, then pulled back
out of sight. I could hear steady controlled
breathing somewhere, past the posts.
Joe stepped forward to the Salt line and spoke in Navajo low.
And even he wasn't yelling, he told whoever was there to leave
what wasn't theirs and to stop coming here.
For a few seconds. Nothing moved.
Then the fence bowed inward from a sudden.
Wait the railroad tie held. Danny moved toward the gap on
the low side and flipped on the floodlight we'd stage there
before dark. The wash exploded into white.
For a second. Everything was clear.
The figure at the low spot was tall and thin ribs showing under
skin shoulders drape with Rawhide stitched with patches of
wool. The face was streaked with Clay,
eyes wide and black, Under the light.
It bolted, hit the second snare and tore free with a sharp cry.
The sound was human strained. It vanished into the ravine.
We followed the trail Downstream blood.
Drops on the clay, darken, the beam until the ground turned to
Flat Rock. The drops ended there.
And boot prints began heading North toward the Utah line.
The stride was long. And even we called it At dawn
the livestock officer arrived, we gave him the wool.
Bundles, the jackets, the blade and the photos.
He said there had been other calls.
Like this, though, not all had proof.
His advice was simple. Move the flock, change the
routine and whatever it was would move on.
That morning, we loaded the sheep and left no more losses
after that. Danny sold the property at the
end of the season and moved his Pen's closer to family land
months later at the Trading Post.
I heard the previous owner had lost half his flock and one
night he told people it wasn't Coyote's.
I don't doubt it. I've worked plenty of dusk
shifts since but never alone and never near those pens whatever
we chase that week. I know this when we drew a line
it stopped Crossing it that was enough.
I don't scare easy and I grew up camping so I'm not the type to
post about shadows and swear they were demons.
I'm a dad mid-thirties, the kind of person who overpack first aid
and argues about proper food storage.
Last August, I took my family, my wife our 15 year old son and
our 9 year old daughter to Bluewater Lake State Park in
Western New Mexico. It's about 30 miles west of
Grant's not far. Off I-40, we'd been there once
before for a day trip and like the quiet.
This time we booked a site for two nights on the Northern Loop
close to the water but not right on it.
The plan was simple fish in the morning, swim in the afternoon,
cook on the fire and get my kids off screen for a weekend.
When we checked in a park employee, in a green uniform
told me our site would be really quiet.
He said it like it was either a plus or a warning.
I figured he meant we wouldn't be jammed between big RVs with
generators running all night we drove the loop passed a few
tents and found ours tucked behind a few low trees and
scrubbed a narrow path. Cut down toward the lake.
You could see both out on the water.
Small aluminum rigs, with outboard motors in a couple of
kayaks. The sky was a clear blue and it
felt like every family should have a day like that.
I'll say this up front. The place is beautiful in the
daylight. We set up without trouble.
I hammered steaks. While my wife.
Unrolled sleeping bags. Our son Miguel spent a good.
Half hour. Skipping rocks with decent form.
Our daughter, Sophia collected, chalky, son, bleached pieces
along the trail and line them up on a Flat Rock.
Like a museum display The smell out.
There is familiar Sage dry dirt, hot sun.
A raven flapped overhead once and that was the loudest thing.
We heard all after noon. There isn't much to complain
about a Blue Water Lake. When the sun is high around 6, a
breeze died off and the heat settled.
So we drove to the little store in Grants for ice and snacks.
On the way back, we took NM 60012 from the south.
The road that angles in toward the park entrance.
The kids were quiet in the back. The way kids get when they're
worn out from the air in the sun.
I remember thinking. I'd sleep like a rock, we ate
cleaned up and were in the tent by 10:30.
I set the cooler, in the shade stashed trash in the car and
latched. The windows on the SUV routine
stuff. I woke up the first time around
12:20 a.m. I know because I checked, my
watch the tent was warm and still, my wife was on her side
facing away from me. On the other side of the tent,
the kids had rolled toward each other in their bags and made a
pile of Limbs. I lay there listening to the
absolute quiet. No motor from the lake.
No wheels on gravel know people talking around a fire.
Just are and the nylon of the tent when I moved.
I fell asleep again without thinking, much about it.
The second time I woke it was because something stepped close
to the tenth not rustling. This was wait on dirt.
One Step, then nothing. I held my breath and waited for
the next one. My heart knocked around for a
few seconds and then I told myself it was a raccoon or maybe
one of the stray dogs that wandered through Park sometimes
I've had Bears push around cook boxes in Colorado and Elk walk
right through campsites in Utah. You learn when to intervene, and
when to let an animal pass. I kept still and listened.
Another step. Slow.
Like a person taking care, not to make sounds.
I sat up and unzip the sleeping bag.
My wife's hand, found my leg in the dark.
I told her quietly. It was probably nothing that I
was going to look. I didn't want the kids to wake
up to me crawling around. I grabbed the flashlight from my
shoe and angled it at the zipper.
I took a breath, lifted the flap and stepped out in my socks.
The air outside felt like it does at two in the morning in
August warmer than it should be closed a little stale.
I clicked on the light, the circle caught the nearest tree,
trunks, the picnic table and empty are of the dirt.
I traced the beam in a slow half circle, the light hits something
standing by the tree line. It looked like my son.
He was 25 feet away, just passed the edge of our site where the
ground drops toward the trail to the water.
The face the hair, the height. It was close enough that my
brain filled in the details and said that's your kid.
Except behind me inside the tent.
I could hear me Gales steady breathing.
And I could see two shapes in the nylon.
I raise the light higher on purpose, straight into the face.
Miguel has a small scar on his right eyebrow from a skateboard
fall. The thing had it too, but not
exactly. It was two centered like a copy
made from a description. The skin around.
It looks stretched and it blinked.
If you want to know what reset my thinking from sleep mode to
full danger, it was the blink. The eyelids moved up instead of
down bottom to top smooth. No eyelash flutter, no reflex
squint. The mouth was slightly open and
every few seconds, it opened wider without the jaw hinging
the way it should. The light didn't make it squint.
People Flinch when a bright light goes in their eyes at
night. This didn't Miguel I said
testing the name in a level voice, not loud, not a
challenge, just his name. Nothing I took a small step to
my right to angle the beam it rotated toward me slow, like
someone learning how to move shoulders.
The arms hung, straight two straight fingertips.
Not curling. The posture was wrong.
I picked up a rock from the ground because I needed the
world to act like the world. I loved it in to the dirt near
its feet, The Rock bounced and skittered it didn't react.
Not a Flinch that's when fear flattened everything.
I don't mean panic. I mean, Clarity with an edge.
My arms prickled. I remembered there's a knife in
the cook box. A hatchet in the SUV.
A whistle snapped to my backpack.
None of those things mattered against something.
I couldn't categorize, I said you need to leave because that's
what came out. It took a step the knee lifted
too high and then the foot came down like it was testing the
ground. Another step.
Same odd motion. That's when it moved one second.
It was slow and the next it ran into the trees in a straight
line so fast. I lost it at the edge of my
light, no buildup, no panting, just gone.
The only sound was brushed moving apart.
Then everything was still again, I stood there until my arm shook
from holding the flash light up, I turned it off to save the
battery went back inside and zip the tent.
My wife whispered what I told her I saw someone at the tree
line and that I probably scared them off and that we'd pack at
first light, I felt her hand gripped my arm.
I know what people will say. Wake the kids get in the car.
Leave immediately I thought about it.
The problem is, it takes time to get two kids into a vehicle when
they're asleep and confused, and the distance between the tent
and the car, felt like an exposed path.
If that thing was still nearby the safest place for the next
few hours was a zipped tent with the four of us together and me
awake. I sat there light in my hand and
I watched the seam of the door until the gray of mourning
showed through. I never heard another step.
We didn't talk much. While we packed.
That's not bravado. That's Focus.
My wife rolled sleeping bags while I took down poles.
I told the kids, we were leaving early to beat heat and crowds
there was no argument our son moved slower than usual.
Like, he'd been hit with a heavy workout the day.
Before he kept looking at the trees so Falla, who almost
always hums when she's happy was quiet.
I had to go back to the rock where we'd line up Sofia's
little collection because she wanted to take two of them home.
I wasn't thrilled about extending our time by even 30
seconds, but I walked over. Standing there.
I realized why the hair on my arms lifted again.
There were two sets of footprints in the powdery dirt,
at the edge of camp. Mine from the night and another
set that matched Miguel's shoe tread closely but not perfectly.
The spacing was off. The toe off marks were too
shallow for the length of stride.
It looked like someone had measured a teenage boy and a map
of his steps but didn't account for weight.
I looked at the trees and saw nothing.
We had everything in the car in less than 10 minutes.
The kids were buckled. I just turned the key.
When Miguel said dad, his voice had a flatness, I don't hear
often. He was looking toward the same
trees passed the trunks standing half and Shadow was the face
again. It was closer this time.
The jaw hung opened, wider the angle wrong, not hinged.
At the point of human jaw stops. The eyes didn't water.
Didn't react to light or the cooler air.
It didn't move, it didn't breathe visibly. that might
sound like a small detail, but when you're close to someone,
you expect to see the chest rise, the throat shift It was
like a photograph that slightly changed between glances.
Miguel's hand closed on the handle of the door.
Like he couldn't decide whether to step out or slam it.
Shut. I said his name and told him to
look at me. He did when we looked back, it
was gone. No, branches moved.
No sound carried. We pulled onto the Loop Road and
then out to NM 612, I watched the mirror for a mile.
There was nothing behind us, but a strip of gray, Asphalt in
sunlight. My wife's hands were braced on
her knees. She didn't say a word until we
hit the junction for I-40. Then she said we're not going
back there. I said no, we passed the exit
for the El Moro area and the signs for Gallup in Grant's.
The kids were both looking out opposite Windows.
Like they were expecting to see something keep Pace with us over
the scrub. We stopped for gas in Grants at
a combination gas station in small store.
I went inside for coffee and to breathe in conditioned, air for
a minute. The clerk was an older guy with
a gray, mustache. He glanced out at my SUV at the
cooler tied down in the rolled tent visible, through the glass.
Camping. He asked.
Yeah I said blue water. He nodded once and said good
fishing sometimes. Not when you leave it Dawn.
I said trying to make light of it, my voice sounded thin.
I added because I needed to say it, we were in the northern Loop
quiet spot. He looked at me for a second
like he recognized something he'd seen before that side gets
weird. He said finally You, all right.
We're fine. I said, we just I stopped
because I didn't want to say it out loud yet.
I didn't want my mouth to form the details.
He reached under the counter and pulled out a pack of coffee,
stirrers and set them down maybe just for something to do with
his hands. He said, lower Couple years
back, a fisherman packed up in the middle of the night, left
his gear. Came in here.
Swearing, he saw himself standing by the trees.
Kept saying the eyes were wrong blinked wrong.
Folks around here, talk about things, they don't want to give
power to buy naming. You might hear them.
Say Skinwalker, I can't tell you what you saw, but you did the
right thing leaving. I didn't correct him or ask for
his version. I paid and walked back to the
car. My Wife Met My Eyes in that
brief moment. Parents have when they speak
without saying words, I told the kids we'd get breakfast in an
hour and that we could pick any place they wanted.
Sophia asked if we were going to Camp somewhere else.
I said not today. We got home early in the
afternoon and unloaded fast, the tent stayed in the garage for a
week because I couldn't bring myself to set it up in the yard
and wash it down. Little things set me off those
first few days, a jacket hanging on a door.
My son taking a few seconds. Too long to answer when I called
his name from another room. My brain kept replaying the
eyelids, moving the wrong direction.
I tried to find an explanation I could live with.
A person messing with us. Drugs.
A mask But the speed from motionless to gone and the
absence of normal reflexes wreck those theories.
I've worked through the list. I'm not satisfied with any of
it. But I don't need you to be
convinced. I only need to tell it straight.
I don't want to make this into a Campfire story where I add
adjectives and sell you a haunting.
What I saw looked like my son down to the haircut, the way,
his shoulders slope, the scar on his eyebrow, but duplicated and
misapplied, it moved like somebody wearing a body.
They didn't understand it ran like nothing.
I've seen a human do across uneven ground at night, and when
it looked at me, I did not feel watched.
I felt measured. We haven't been back to Blue,
Water Lake, my wife, and I agreed on that in the car
without saying it, we still camp, but not there and not near
that kind of tree line. I don't keep this to myself in
some mystical way I tell friends to pick other sights and other
parks, and if they go there anyway, to choose a spot closer
to other families. I tell them to leave.
If anything feels off, even if it's just one wrong step in the
dirt at 2 in the morning. Every August when the knights
hold heat later than they should, and the air sits Heavy
after midnight, I remember the quiet of that.
Campsite the beam of the light The face at the tree line that
blinked from the bottom up. I don't know what to call it
beyond what locals call it. I'm not interested in chasing it
or proving anything. I wanted a simple weekend away
with my family and I got a clear line I won't cross again.
If you camp at Bluewater Lake on the Northern Loop and you wake
to heavy steps and a shape at the edge of your sight, don't
talk to it for long and don't try to take a second look.
Wake your family be calm and leave in the morning.
That's not fear talking that's respect for something that was
there before we were and doesn't care if we believe in it.
I work for US border patrol. If you've spent time around
Monument Valley, you're already side eyeing that because my
agency usually works the Southern Line.
Last July, I was in Kayenta Arizona on a short break that
turned into a training attachment with Navajo Nation
police traffic, interdiction and coordination drills.
It's normal inner agency stuff. I've driven United States Route.
163 so many times between Kayenta and Elgato Monument
Valley that I could list every pull-out and cattle guard.
I preferred daytime runs in summer because the tourist
traffic thins in the hot hours and you can move fast.
What follows is exactly how it happened without embellishment.
If you know that Highway the open straightaways with the
mittens pin to the Horizon. You know, there isn't much room
for confusion when something steps into your lane.
I topped off at the Giant Station on the North edge of
Kayenta, a little after noon. AC blasting windows cracked,
just enough to bleed off heat. I call the nnp sergeant.
I'd worked with that morning. He told me they'd have a small
sobriety checkpoint near Old Giotto later for a community
event. If you come back through swing
wide toward the cones and will wave you.
Bye. He said I tossed a not he
couldn't see enrolled out. The Highway North leaves town
with a flat ease. That always made me.
Relax a few miles up the Forrest Gump Point.
Pullout was busy rental convertible.
People kneeling in the center line to frame the postcard shot.
I went past it in into one of those empty summer stretches
where heat shimmers hover over the asphalt like low Steam.
No radio chatter, no traffic in front or behind nothing but a
long ribbon of Road. That's where I saw the coyote it
stood in the middle of my Lane Sun High.
No shade. No cover for half a mile in
either direction. It didn't Flinch at the horn.
I dropped from 60 to 15 with two quick brake Taps, unlatched, my
holster and rolled forward. If you do this job long enough
animals in the roads, stop being interesting.
You give them a path and they move.
This one didn't. 30 yards out. I saw the details that put a
hard Edge on the moment. The rib cage was too long.
The hips were rotated off true. The four legs hung a little
forward like the joints weren't lined up the way they should be.
It Rose not the way a bear does when it wants to send to win.
It straightened like a person needs tracking inward arms
hanging with elbows flared wider than any human shoulder can
manage. The muzzles stayed long, but the
eyes did something. I've never seen in an animal.
They matched my movement side to side with small Corrections, not
head bobs. I stopped the truck, Dead 5,
yard short, the AC fan clicked the engine, idled the interior
felt tight all at once. It said my first name, I don't
mean a sound. That reminded me of it.
I mean the exact name my mother uses when she wants my attention
and isn't mad yet. Same spacing between syllables.
Same drop on the last vowel. Hearing that out of anything.
In the middle of United States Route. 163 in full daylight put
a cold line up my spine. I don't care how many
explanations you can conjure, the real-time decision looks
simple, fight or go. I went.
I threw the transmission forward.
Floored it steered to split the lane at the last.
Instant it moved like it couldn't decide which foot to
put, first the bumper, hit it with a rubbery thud with the
crack of bone. the grill caught a smear of pale hair, like
undercoat I didn't look at the hood.
I looked at the line ahead and kept the speed building through
30, 40 60 in the rear view at was upright again in two
heartbeats running, the stride was wrong at first, too many
limbs trying to find a pattern, then it started to smooth out.
As if repetition was solving the angles, I let the mirror go and
drove The Monument Valley, Navajo tribal Park, and entrance
rolled up on the right. The attendant in the booth,
lifted a hand when the truck passed with a scuffed bumper and
hazard lights, flicking twice. I didn't stop.
I didn't announce anything on the radio.
I kept the wheel steady and watched The Horizon.
Hot are punched through the window.
Crack wind noise, filled the cab under it.
I picked up a new sound in short bursts when the road dipped a
hard slap of footfall that lined up with my speed too.
Often to be a trick of sound. When I backed off for a mild
curve, the sound Drew nearer when I accelerated it fell back.
No, Phantom anything just timing I couldn't explain, I kept it
simple doors locked windows up eyes forward unless the highway
straightened out enough to risk a glance.
The shoulder was a soft apron of sand and scrub.
I stayed centered on one of the small dog legs before the state
line. I feather the brakes in the rear
glass, I caught a glimpse two tall for a coyote two narrow for
a man elbows out too far hands. Not quite hands.
It moved with the power of a runner who hasn't warmed up yet
and is dialing it in with each step.
Then the curve cut the angle and I lost sight of it.
The San Juan River, Valley takes the grade down like an elevator,
if you're carrying speed. As I slid toward Mexican Hat
traffic, built just enough to matter.
Two RVs, and a pickup in a slow parade, a small bus heading
toward the tribal Park. Whatever had kept pace with me,
didn't like the stack of vehicles or it dropped back
where cover made more sense. The roadside widened signs
started breaking the monotony and the Mexican hat rock, turn
off flashed by on my right. Tourists were out at the
Overlook. I didn't pull in.
I rode the small wave of traffic to the bend in the river, where
the few buildings sit then took a deep breath.
I hadn't realized I'd been holding, I pulled past town and
found a wide shoulder with a clean line of sight.
I called the nnp sergeant, my voice came out level because
training helps. I told him exactly what it
happened, coyote in the lane stood up, wrong spoke my name in
my mother's Caden's Pursuit on foot, keeping Pace, bumper
strike with a hair smear, there was a second of the quiet you
get when a cop files, what you say against a bin of other
things he's heard. Then he told me the checkpoint
was active near Old Jato, southbound side cones visible
from a half mile, come back, he said we'll keep it orderly.
Turning around felt like saying come and get it.
But I trusted the plan more than the alternative of sitting alone
by the river. I swung North took the next safe
place to reverse then drove back South toward Old Jato at a
steady clip Two marked units and a tribal Cruiser were already
staged with cones cutting the traffic to one lane.
A DPS Trooper stood under the shade of a makeshift canopy with
two Elders in lawn chairs nearby.
The scene looked like any summer DUI.
Emphasis routine organized boring on purpose.
I pulled nose in behind a cruiser and set the break the
scuff on my bumper had a pale wiry residue.
That wasn't like fur. I'd pulled out of a grill after
hitting a deer. The DPS Trooper saw me looking
and said will photograph it. He had that face.
You get when you've decided not to be surprised the nnp sergeant
stepped over and asked. Open road or cover.
I said open road unless it was forced to Veer, he nodded like
I'd answered a question on a test.
Summer gives us calls out here. He said, worse when the Heats
have heavy? We don't let people stop.
We didn't go chase it. We set the place up to deny it.
What it seemed to prefer. Loan vehicles at partial stop in
the wide cones, drew the lane into a tight chicane that Force
slow steady motion without pauses.
Two units, idled facing north with their spots, aimed low, not
to be the valley. But to make sure we'd see
anything on the long straight. A third car, slid to a Scenic
turnout, South to watch the approach.
The elders were asked to move behind the line of vehicles for
a while, nobody called my name. Nobody called any name.
We kept our mouths shut and our eyes open.
If it came the rule was simple. No Pursuit, no heroics.
Hard barriers between it and people and a clean exit path
back to Kayenta for 10 minutes. There was nothing The heat
shredded the distance into ripples.
Tourists slowed and rolled through the cones glancing at us
like we were the attraction. Then the Shimmer on the North
straight away deep into around a shape that wasn't a car.
It held still first longer than made sense and then, stepped
forward two paces and rotated its torso in emotion, that read
like a demonstration. It didn't break the cone line,
it didn't come in close enough for faces.
From where we stood, hight landed in the wrong range,
shoulders, too narrow head shape that didn't match any person
under the sun. I tightened my jaw until my
molars hurt and kept my hands visible.
A bus came through the driver following hand signals
perfectly. And when the bus tail cleared
the far cone's, the shape moved left tracked.
Parallel to the fence toward brush, dropped to all fours, and
was gone into the low rise without a sound.
We held the formation for half an hour, nothing else showed the
traffic pattern, stayed clean and steady.
When you're trained to weigh risk, you don't break a system
that's working, just to prove a point.
We kept it boring back in, Kayenta that evening, the nnp
substation, hummed with AC and fluorescent Buzz, Shift change
float around me. I wrote the report the way you
have to write reports. If you want to keep your
integrity later. Date time, route, approximate
mile marker, contact with unknown bipedal creature
standing in Lane impact, with vehicle bumper Pursuit on foot
at sustained speed, arrival at checkpoint.
No injuries. No property damage Beyond
scuffing, no weapons, discharged, no Pursuit initiated
I attached the bumper photos. The sergeant filed.
It next to a thin stack of Summer entries from the same
Corridor, he added a line to the role called notes.
United States wrote 163 between Kayenta and old Giotto.
Avoid stopping alone in the open, straightaways during Peak
heat Route traffic through cones when possible.
DPS logged, the photographs and coated, the incident to our
training of events. So it wouldn't disappear into
Rumor Mill. A guy from the tow shop a block
over buffed the bumper while I drank water out of a paper cup
and avoided. Looking at the rag, he used.
The pale hairs came off with effort like they wanted to stay
but when he was finished, it looked like any other desert
scratch. I paid him cash thanked him and
walked back inside the next morning.
I drove a different way as 98 toward page for a handoff.
Then back via United States route 160.
No announcement, no paranoia. I changed a route because
procedures exist for reasons that don't always fit on a
slide. A week later.
The sergeant texted no incidents in cone started early in the
day, they kept the checkpoint through August weekends and then
rotated. South when the events schedule
shifted. People went to their cookouts
and back home without hearing anything except tire noise and
conversation. Whenever someone asks, what I
think it was I answer with what I know.
In full daylight on United States Route 163.
I saw an animal stand in the lane and adjust itself into a
human posture with movements that didn't match human
structure. It said my name in a voice built
from something. It shouldn't have had access to
it. Ran after me faster than any
person could run at highway speed long enough to track my
braking and acceleration. We treated the stretch like a
pattern in a story. We tightened traffic, we didn't
stop a loan out there and we went home.
Call it what you want. On that part of the rez border,
they call it a skinwalker and the rule we use now is
straightforward. Don't stop.
The last time, I drove that straight in September, the sky
was cleaner. And the heat had backed off.
The pullouts were busy again, but the cones near Old Giotto
were already staged in Stacks ready to set quickly.
A family crossed the road at a slow jog between cars, a Navajo
officer waved them through and the line kept moving without any
one vehicle stuck alone in the open.
The highway looked like a highway.
That's the ending that matters. We adjusted.
Nobody got hurt and the roads stayed the road.
I grew up in Durango Colorado where most nights end with
someone suggesting a drive to nowhere.
Mason. And I have been those guys since
high school two friends in an old Tacoma a cooler in the back
and some plan to shave 15 minutes off a trip by cutting
through a section of map. That looks empty.
We weren't Reckless, just casual about risk.
In the way you get when nothing bad has happened yet.
By last July, we'd logged, a lot of miles through the Four
Corners, we knew where the paved roads ended, which convenience
stores stayed, open late, and which county lines went quiet
after sundown. We also knew the desert near
Shiprock can turn from Scenic to hostile.
The minute, the sun drops knowing a thing and respecting,
it are not the same. That afternoon, we were
returning from Gallup. We'd stopped to see a buddy in
town and stayed longer than planned.
The route was Gallup to Shiprock to Farmington to Durango but the
highways were clogged with Summer traffic.
Campers rentals and erect somewhere that had eastbound
Lanes crawling. Mason pulled up a mental map and
said we could cut North West on back roads near Shiprock.
Then reconnect with 160 closer to the state line.
He said it like we'd done at 100 times in reality.
We never had. He swore it with save half an
hour. I checked the time.
It was already past 7. We'd be chasing the last of the
light. We topped off at a gas station,
just south of Shiprock. The wind had died, he'd still
rolled off the concrete. Inside the cooler section
hummed, we grabbed Waters and jerky the clerk, an older woman
with her hair pulled back, tight wasn't chatty.
When Mason asked, if the dirt roads were decent north of town,
she didn't answer right away. She looked at our keys then at
us, like she was weighing whether it was worth saying
anything. Finally don't go out there after
Dark. Not a lecture.
Just a fact laid on the counter. Mason smiled like he'd heard,
watch for deer and said, we'll be quick.
Be faster. She said, we told ourselves she
meant Livestock on the road flash, flooding or drunk
drivers. We told ourselves a lot of
things we paid walked out side and the sun had slid lower, a
thin line of orange, sat above ship rocks, Jagged silhouette.
We got in the Tacoma. Mason drove.
I set my phone on the Dash as a clock.
That was all the planet. We did the first miles out of
Shiprock were paved. Then patched, then fractured
that a few houses sat far apart each with a couple of vehicles
and a dog that barely glanced our way. 10 minutes in the
home's thinned. The road stretched long and flat
with shallow washboards, rattling, the cup holders The
desert up there is an empty but it can feel like it when you
don't see lights for minutes at a time.
Low Sage, a few junipers and long views toward mesa's going
dark. We kept the windows cracked to
bleed heat the air smelled like dust and creosote.
I told Mason we should turn back if we didn't hit pavement by
full dark. He said, we had at least 30
minutes of usable, light dusk was already proving him wrong.
The roads at a cattle guard with no Sign, Mason chose left.
Keeping us generally North The speedometer hovered around 40.
We hadn't seen another vehicle since leaving the last paved
spur somewhere out there. No landmarks just a stretch of
dirt the sun dropped behind Shiprock and we lost all color
headlights, cut a cone ahead of us.
The dirt glowed pale the cab cooled by degrees at 8:19, I
started counting minutes. We rounded a bend and she was
there a person in our lane, 50 yards, ahead Mason breaked, the
Tacoma dip. Gravel skidding under the tires,
we rolled to a crawl, she looked young, maybe 20 dark hair to her
shoulders Hale shirts, streaked with dust bare legs from the
knee down bare feet. One arm the other rays in a slow
unsteady wave Paul maut. Then in then out again, no car,
no driveway, no fence. Just heard Mason said you seeing
this. Yeah, we closed the distance to
20 feet. Close enough for details.
Not close enough to read a license plate.
If she'd had won her chin was low shoulders, rounded stance
uneven like her left foot didn't fully plant.
I reached for the window switch and stopped.
Something was wrong and my body decided before my brain could
name it. We'd spent years stopping for
people Flats dead batteries, hauling gas to ranchers, this
was different, my instincts wanted, no part of it.
We should pull past and call it in.
I said, sheriff for Tribal Police.
Yeah, Mason said he inched forward, she didn't move aside
didn't flag harder. Just kept that slow wave.
At 10 feet. I expected her face to change,
surprise relief anything. It didn't her lips looks split
her. Eyes stayed fixed past the
bumper. Not catching the light.
I told myself there were reasons, angled dust but the
thought didn't help Mason eased left to go around.
I watched her as we passed. She wrote it at the waist, like
a henge. Not a step tracking us without
moving. Her feet.
We rolled on Mason. Check the rear view.
I watched the side mirror. She turned farther than her
neck. Should allow the brake lights
lit. Her face red then dark again.
The expression wasn't vacant or angry just wrong, no shoulder,
no lights. I said, next intersection, we
call, he nodded, we brought the speed back up, no service on my
phone, no house within miles turning back, meant walking up
to her in the dark going forward.
Meant hoping for a good decision point.
I wanted pavement signs something fixed.
We drove in silence. My hands were damp then Motion
in the beams again, same shirt. Same shape.
This time, she was only 30 feet ahead when we saw her no paths.
No turn offs behind us, she shouldn't be there.
Mason swore slowing just enough to steer wide.
As we drew level, she turned her head toward me and one sharp
snap up close. I saw dark marks on her forearm
like bruises or finger Impressions before we were
passed. Mason accelerated hard.
She stayed in the mirror longer than she should have her arm
finally dropping as she bent forward at the waist stiff and
unnatural. The dash clock read 827.
None of the possible explanations fit.
We kept going the road narrowed in again, brushed crowded in,
then fell back. The sky ahead and slightly like
a promise of the highway. I told Mason we'd stop at the
first name track. He nodded eyes locked on the
road. We hadn't seen her for minutes
when we crested a rise. And there she was Closer now
offset toward our right headlight.
Arm still raised head tilted, so far forward her chin, nearly
touched her chest. I felt my mouth go dry, Mason, I
see her Mason didn't slow much this time.
The raised hand wasn't waving it twitched at the wrist.
When we line up her head snapped toward us again, eyes fixed on
mine, through the glass in the mirror, she pivoted faster than
before her stance wide now. She stepped toward us then again
closing faster than made sense, her right foot dragging and
snapping forward. She is moving I said I'm not
looking Mason replied, he pressed the accelerator.
The Tacoma fishtail briefly before straightening, she was
still visible in the tail lights.
Now, running full out arms swinging, loose head, angled
enough to keep us in sight. The brush closed in on both
sides, Mason took a Bend tight back tires, kicking dust before
he corrected. Where's the highway he muttered?
Up ahead movement again, coming toward us, this time limp
becoming a hop, then a faster run, no vehicle, no cover, no
way. She should be here.
First Mason swerved left flooring, it her mouth was open.
Wider now teeth visible, but not in a smile, we hit 60 the wheel,
trembling she didn't reappear for a stretch but the sense of
her stayed, then a flash along the right side.
Lower, now moving on all fours matching, our speed for seconds
before, Vanishing into the dark brush and exhale, hit the
passenger, door closed with weight to it.
I turned she was their level with my window arm reaching
before dropping back to the ground nails or something like
them too long, too dark. She surged within a foot of the
door before falling back. The next Crest, put her dead
center in the lane on all fours face tilted at us while her body
stayed squared to the road. Mason took the right Edge, hard
brush hammering. The truck as we parallel her
head snapped toward me eyes, black mouth wide teeth, too.
Even for the way she moved, we pulled ahead, another exhale,
slammed the door, vibrating the glass, then light ahead a glow
off to the left. Highway may be Mason stayed on
it. A T intersection appeared.
He turned left toward the glow in the mirror, she cut across
behind us fast a blur and was gone.
The new road was smoother. We hit 65.
The glow resolved in to headlights and tail lights.
Then one more time she was in the lane ahead.
Mason didn't break. Just took the far right Edge in
the high beams. She learned covering ground in
three bounds angling for my door.
I flinched as a hard quick of sound ran along the panel, not
brush, not rock contact, then the dirt ended pavement.
The change in sound was immediate Mason merged onto the
highway, a green sign, flashed passed, another promised to
service area in two miles, we pulled in under florescence.
The marks on the passenger door, three parallel gouges to primer
each with evenly. Spaced interruptions looked
worse under the light dust flaked at my touch my hand shook
inside the cashier Henry asked, if we'd been on the dirt, When I
told him roughly, where he said, Don't Stop on those roads.
After dark. If someone needs help you call
from town, another man overheard and told us to look at the
passenger side, we already had Henry, followed us to the door
arms crossed. If you feel like you need to
talk to somebody, tell the Navajo Nation police exactly
where you were, but don't go back, not to show anyone not at
all. We didn't argue, we got back in
the truck and left. The drive to Durango was
uneventful the farther. We got the more my mind tried to
turn it into something ordinary The scratches wouldn't let me in
daylight. The marks were sharper a faint,
Blume of rust, had risen overnight too fast for dry
weather and intact paint. I rubbed it with my thumb.
The color came away faintly like a coin later.
I told Gabe a Navajo co-worker from Farmington. he listened
then, said, You don't stop on those roads at night.
Sometimes it isn't a person or it is an only a person.
He told me to wash the truck, not show the marks off and if I
wanted to sleep better to buy something small, from a local
vendor near where we came out as a sign of respect.
We did exactly that daylight Highway, plenty of traffic.
I bought a beaded keychain Mason bought a carved, wooden Fox.
We didn't explain. We said Thank you left.
Cash didn't haggle, I felt something in my shoulders.
Let go the scratches. Never washed out but the rust
stayed thin Mason and I still take drives but never through
that stretch. If traffic is bad, it's bad, you
sit in it, you let the sun go down and Company.
The ending is simple. We made it home the marks cost,
600 to repaint. The keychains on my keys.
The fox is on Mason's Shelf. We tell the short version to
most people, the long version. This version, I tell plane like
Henry did Don't stop out there after dark call it in, keep
moving. The last time we drove through
the Four Corners late, we passed that country in daylight.
Mason turned down the radio and said, no shortcuts.
Yeah, I said no shortcuts. It's a simple rule.
It gets you home. my name's West Calder and up until about a year
ago, I spent nearly half my life leading hunting groups through
the backcountry around, Aztec, New Mexico, After a divorce that
took more out of me than I care to admit.
I traded guiding elk hunts and mule deer Expeditions for
selling Hardware to Weekend. Warriors, at the local supply
store, it wasn't exactly thrilling work but it beats
staring at walls, drinking alone and waiting for life to turn
around. That's why when Dr Eileen Graves
called from the University of Illinois asking for a guide into
the Badlands near Navajo Dam. I said yes faster than I
probably should have. It had been months since I set
foot off Trail and her offer was generous enough that turning it
down, would have felt like throwing cash into the San Juan
River. Eileen was straightforward.
She was chasing fossils exposed by seasonal runoff.
I didn't much care about bones older than dirt.
But I knew the area she had her eyes on a twisted, stretch of
sandstone ridges and washes locals called Hogback a place.
Quiet enough to let your imagination run wild if you
aren't careful. She showed up early on a Friday
morning with her research, assistant, Jonah Mathers.
Jonah had wide eyes and a nervous way of laughing at
things. That weren't really funny.
We shook hands and loaded gear into my truck, then made the
hour drive toward the BLM Access Road West of the Damned It was
Springtime which meant rain had carved new patterns into the
land leaving ribbons of exposed rock, and freshly scoured, creek
beds in its wake. Beautiful.
But brutal country. If you made a mistake out here,
nobody would find you until coyotes and vultures made sure
you were beyond recognition. We parked by the start of a half
a race Trail. I could tell no one had been out
here in a long time. The official BLM marker was
nearly hidden by Sagebrush son, bleached and unreadable.
Is this really? The trail?
Jonah asked. Looking around uneasily.
It used to be. I replied probably washed out
years ago. I felt their hesitation but
didn't give it any voice instead, we loaded our packs
with water and Essentials checked our compasses and
started walking The land rolled out before us in Erie, silents.
Scrubby junipers hunched over cracked Earth.
Rock Finns jutting from the ground like ribs of some massive
buried Beast. Every step felt alien.
By the time we found a suitable campsite under an overhanging
ledge Shadows were long enough to cloak the Hills, We Gather
dried branches and scraps of juniper bark to make a fire.
And as Jonah and Eileen took notes, I studied the ground
around us. Scattered cattle, bones bleached
white by son, Le partially buried near the edge of Camp,
picked clean, but Unbroken. There were no signs of claw
marks or tooth scrapes. It struck me as odd though.
I chose not to alarm the others. Strange things happened out here
sometimes, and there was rarely a simple explanation.
Darkness came swiftly, dropping a deep silence over us, like a
heavy blanket. The fire crackled as we talked
briefly about plans for the next day.
Eileen explained geological formations excitedly while Jonah
nodded along but my attention kept drifting toward a distant
Ridge. Twice.
I caught myself staring into Shadows.
Each time certain I'd seen a shape against the dim glow of
evening sky. something upright and still, I can convince
myself. It was my eyes playing tricks.
Sleep came hard and shallow. I lay awake staring up at the
canopy of stars visible through the branches, listening to Jonah
and Eileen's quiet breathing. Just as I began to drift off, I
heard something a soft step on dirt and Stone.
It was careful, slow rhythmic. My hand tightened around the
grip of the revolver beneath my sleeping bag.
I listened to closer. Heart thumping.
The steps circled, our camp methodically whoever or whatever
it was moved with a smoothness, that bothered me a steadiness
unnatural in this Rocky Terrain. I sat up slowly and flicked on
my headlamp the beam swept through Shadows catching only
empty desert. The sound stopped immediately.
I sat intense silence for a long moment.
Waiting listening, nothing moved nothing breathed only the faint
Whisper of wind in the junipers. Eventually exhaustion forced me
back into my sleeping bag, but my fingers remained curled
around the cold metal of My Revolver until dawn unwilling to
trust the darkness fully. When Dawn finally broke, I sat
up slowly my muscles stiff and aching from the tents Sleepless
hours across the fire pit Eileen.
Rubbed her eyes stretching silently as she took in the
first hints of daylight creeping over the ridge.
Jonah. She called softly glancing
toward his sleeping spot, my stomach knotted instantly.
Jonas sleeping bag, lay empty, it's nylon Fabric.
Rumpled in Twisted as if he'd left in a hurry, his boots
backpack and jackets still sat neatly beside it untouched.
Eileen stood stepping closer. Jonah, you out here.
Her voice had an edge, barely hidden by forced calm.
I Rose slowly scanning the surrounding area forcing myself
to stay steady. Maybe he stepped away, I offered
quietly but my gut said otherwise, I crouched by his
gear inspecting, it closer Jonah wouldn't have gone far Barefoot
in the terrain, we spread out calling his name.
Louder each time each unanswered.
Shout echoed through the Canyons bouncing back mockingly until it
died away. I carefully studied the ground
looking for tracks or scuffs. Anything that might give us a
Direction, but found only faint disturbances, too vague to
follow reliably. Finally after nearly an hour of
fruitless searching, I caught sight of something through my
binoculars. Just a smudge, at first
something upright, among the Juniper bushes down in a narrow
Ravine below. I hesitated adjusted the focus
and felt my blood, chill instantly Eileen I called voice
dry down here, she came quickly. Following my pointing hand, We
scrambled down a rocky embankment slipping on loose
gravel until we reach the bottom.
Ahead of us, stood Jonah or rather Jonah's body.
Positioned, stiffly against the Twisted trunk of a juniper tree,
his shoulders squared, awkwardly head, tilted to an unnatural
angle. The posture was impossible.
Bones, couldn't bend like that without breaking.
And yet Jonah, stood upright, Ridgid propped, like a
grotesque. Mannequin, Eileen gasped.
Sharply pressing a hand over her mouth eyes wide and fixed in
horror. I stepped closer fighting
nausea. His eyes had been removed the
sockets empty dry and clean staring blindly toward the sky.
But worse was the absolute lack of blood wounds or tracks
nothing Disturbed. The dust around him.
It was as though, he'd simply appeared here.
Oh God, I Eileen whispered voice barely audible.
What, what could have done this? I shook my head slowly unwilling
to guess allowed. I'd seen animal kills, plenty
mountain, lions bears, but nothing like this.
Nothing that placed body's like statues, stripped clean without
any trace of violence. We need to get out of here.
I said firmly pulling gently on her arm, guiding her away now.
Eileen. Stumbled numbly beside me silent
as we climbed back toward Camp, the bright daylight did little
to ease. The dread sitting in my chest
heavy and suffocating when we reached our site I immediately
started packing jamming gear hastily into bags.
I avoided looking at Jonah's untouched belongings, the empty
sleeping bag that now seemed sickeningly ominous.
Eileen stood quietly shaking staring at the ground.
As if reality was too difficult to process.
I'd nearly finished packing. When she let out a low
breathless. Gas West, look across the dry.
Wash silhouetted against the distant Sandstone Ridge.
Someone was walking toward us. Naked slowly moving step by step
through the brush. My pulse quickened the shape was
familiar too. Familiar its Jonah Eileen
murmured, barely breathing No, I said, trying to sound calm
voice. Betraying my disbelief.
It can't be. But the figure moved closer slow
and deliberate revealing a tall frame and gangly limbs matching
Jonah. Exactly.
It. Pause at the edge of visibility
the failing daylight blurring its features and then the face
tilted up slightly into view causing a surge of pure
revulsion to twist my insides. It wasn't Jonah, not truly, the
features were stretched too long, the smile Twisted into
something impossible inhuman. The eyes dark empty pits seemed
to fix directly on me. My hand moved instinctively to
the revolver on my belt. As if recognizing this action,
the figure steps silently back into the junipers disappearing
without another sound. Neither of us spoke.
There was no sleeping after that we sat by the fire Hearts.
Pounding Eyes Wide. Open waiting desperately for
Dawn. We didn't wait for full Sunrise
before breaking camp. My hands trembled as I stuffed
gear into packs, abandoning anything on necessary, Eileen,
barely moved her face, pale eyes Hollow and glassy as she
silently. Watched me work The revolver
felt reassuringly heavy on my hip, but my mind kept flashing
back to the impossible shape we'd seen in the darkness Jonah
or what ever had taken his form. It had vanished with without
sound or Trace. My grip tightened in voluntarily
on the Pax straps. Stay closed.
I told Eileen firmly. My voice.
Rough from Sleepless tension. Don't stop for anything.
She nodded once I still vacant following me numbly.
As I let us back along the faint remnants of our entry Trail.
We moved quickly the morning sun rising hot turning rock into
ovens and baking away the night's chill hours passed in an
exhausting blur but the terrain wasn't, right.
Familiar landmarks seemed distorted washes, had shifted
and ridges blurred together. Sweat.
Stung, my eyes. We had overshot our Trailhead
badly forced deeper into the Badlands by the Maze of twisting
Sandstone fins and sheer Cliffs. Eileen, stumbled behind me
slipping frequently as dehydration took its toll.
She was fading quickly and panic, started gnawing at the
edge of my resolve. Just as I prepared myself to
stop to figure out, some way to find water or shade, the distant
Rumble of an engine echoed faintly through the canyon.
We froze. Listening an old dust covered
Ranch truck. Crested a ridge.
And came bumping along an unmarked Service Road toward us.
It's faded paint and battered. Fender's, unmistakably local.
I waved frantically relief flooding through my chest as the
vehicle rolled to a stop beside us.
The driver's window lowered. Slowly revealing the weathered
face of an older dying, man. His eyes, briefly flicked toward
the revolver on my hip, then he silently gestured for us to get
in. We climbed inside Eileen
collapsing, onto the cracked, leather seat, breathing,
raggedly. He said, nothing his lined face.
Expressionless eyes. Fixed Straight Ahead as we drove
I opened my mouth several times questions bubbling in my throat,
but the set of his jaw kept me quiet.
We drove in silence miles passing beneath us and we were
far beyond the shadowed Ridges of Hogback.
Finally the old man. Cleared his throat, softly
breaking the silence. His voice was low.
Each word carefully chosen. That washed doesn't get used
anymore. Not since the last cattle were
torn up down there. He turned slightly his dark eyes
meeting mine. Briefly, that thing walks in
daylight now. I swallowed hard fighting
nausea. He continued slowly almost
reluctantly. You didn't shoot at it.
Did you know, I whispered Horsley my throat dry as sand.
Good. He nodded once eyes, back on the
road ahead. Never aim at something that
doesn't leave tracks. He didn't speak again until we
pulled into a gas station near Blanco.
The truck idled noisily. As we climbed out my legs,
unsteady beneath me, Before I could thank him.
He drove off leaving a cloud of dust swirling in his wake Eileen
left town. That night, we didn't exchange
numbers or speak again as if each blamed the other for what
we'd seen for what it happened to Jonah.
A week later, I piled every piece of gear, I owned into a
rusted, metal drum behind the hardware store and lit it all on
fire. Maps, Compass sleeping bags.
All of it burned until nothing remained, but Ash and metal
buckles glowing, dull, red and fading, Twilight.
I never guided again and I never went back to the Hogback.
When you spend enough time alone in the wilderness, you learn the
difference between ordinary silence and the kind of quiet
that warns you something's wrong.
It's a silence that settles over you slowly.
The kind you don't notice until you realize you've stopped
breathing just to hear better. My name's Jason Weller and two
years ago I resigned as a Backcountry Ranger at Zion
National Park after an accident that I still don't talk about
These days, I earn a living writing about Solitude and wild
places authentic unfiltered and completely analog.
No GPS, No cameras. No electronics.
Just Maps journals and intuition.
This time, my assignment was to tackle the Grandview Trail on
the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
It was late November well past the tourist season and the
canyon was nearly deserted. Perfect, for the kind of article
I had in mind, raw isolated real on my first day down from the
rim. I remembered why few hikers
Venture onto the Grandview Trail. it drops fast too fast
for Comfort switch, backing sharply through crumbling, Rock
and loose gravel, the wooden Trailhead sign, whether in
splintered had warned maintained path, proceed with caution I'd
been warned about worse. My boots, slid and skidded
kicking up dust and sending loose Stones, bouncing away into
nothingness. I paused briefly to look back up
at The Rim above a sheer wall Rising into the sky.
Already, I felt small. By Sunset.
I made it down to Horseshoe Mesa.
I picked a spot close to a rust colored rock, wall shelter, just
enough to block the cold wind blowing up from Below.
My Camp came together quickly tent staked out, stove, and fuel
canister. Set carefully to one side map
folded, neatly by my sleeping bag.
I ate without thinking distracted, by The Canyons
shifting Shadows, exhaustion, set in fast.
Pulling me under before I even finished my journal entry.
I woke hours later. My watch read 215 mm.
I blinked unsure at first what had startled me awake.
Then it came. Again, the sound of something
breathing, just beyond the thin nylon fabric of my tent.
Not the quick animal. Like, breathe.
I had come to recognize. Know it was slow.
Call measured Almost Human. I sat upright every muscle
tightening ears, straining against the darkness, the
breathing continued for another 20 or 30 seconds. then, as
abruptly as it had started its ceased I reached for my
headlamp, my fingers, fumbling with the zipper.
The tent flap opened revealing the Stark emptiness of the
night. I Shone my light around the
camp, sleeping bag pack stove. Everything seemed exactly as I'd
left it, except My right glove lay near the fire ring 20 feet
from where I remembered setting it down cold anxiety settled in
my stomach. But I forced logic back into my
mind. Maybe a gust of wind had moved
it or maybe I dropped it without noticing.
My brain spun excuses. As I zipped up the tent, pulling
my sleeping bag tighter around my body.
Sleep returned, uneasily. When Donna arrived, pale and
reluctant, I stepped from the tent and froze.
The camp had changed. My fuel canister had been
disconnected from the stove and now lay neatly atop a rock 3
feet away. The map I distinctly remembered
leaving folded. Inside, my tent was now tucked
under my sleeping pad edges perfectly aligned and on top of
my pack folded neatly where my extra socks side by side, I scan
the dust around my campsite desperate for tracks.
There was nothing. Clear, nothing identifiable,
just loose dirt and Scattered stones.
The canyon walls loomed silently above me indifferent and
unmoving. Heart pounding.
I grabbed my journal and wrote quickly my fingers trembling
slightly. This doesn't feel like my Camp.
The words stared back at me from the page, heavy and dark.
I underlined them twice then closed the journal with a tight
snap already. I felt the canyon changing
around me pulling at the edge of my mind, it was subtle a tug, a
whisper of uncertainty, but unmistakably present I packed up
quickly and quietly glancing around too often.
There were no signs of life. No evidence of visitors yet.
I felt eyes somewhere watching me.
It was no longer just a Wilderness trip for an article.
It had become something else entirely though.
I didn't yet understand what, and it was only the first
morning. The deeper I moved into the
canyon. The more I felt eyes on me.
It wasn't constant more like flickers at the edge of my
awareness. Brief moments that made me
glance back over my shoulder. Nothing was ever there, just
silence stretches of rock, and shadowed crevasses.
Still, I couldn't shake the feeling of being observed.
By midday, the switchbacks tightened into steep zigzags
along the Cliffside. My thighs burned, as I climbed
lungs tight from the thin dry air.
I reached an exposed ledge deciding to stop for water and
check my map again. The sun hammered down and I
shielded my eyes squinting across the vast emptiness to The
Cliff face opposite. Mine.
Then I saw it on a narrow shelf, about 400 feet away.
Stood, a figure, I squinted harder hoping.
It was just a trick of sunlight on Rock.
But as my eyes adjusted, I recognized the unmistakable
shape of a person tall and slender standing rigidly still
arms relaxed at their sides. I raise a hand, in a hesitant
wave. No response.
Unease tightened in my chest. I shifted position slightly and
in that exact moment, the figure mirrored my movement precisely
delayed by perhaps two seconds. A cold chill crept down my
spine. I tilted my head to the left
waiting. Breathlessly the figure tilted
its head too. Again delayed unnatural, my
throat went dry, Without taking my eyes off it.
I slowly stepped back until the cliff Edge obscured the figure
from View. For several long minutes, I
leaned against the stone wall. Breathing hard, fighting Panic,
eventually. I mustered the courage to look
again, the Shelf was empty, but when I reached the spot where I
thought the figure had been fresh boot prints, clearly
marked the dust large. Oddly elongated pointing toward
my trail that night, I chose my campsite carefully.
I pitched my tent in a shallow Ravine, the walls close enough
to feel somewhat secure. Anxiety made me work.
Methodically rocks, protectively around the perimeter bareback
hoisted extra high on a strong tree.
Limb. Darkness, descended fast cold,
air settling sharply, making my bones ache.
Sleep seemed impossible and I lay awake listening to the faint
of wind through Dry scrub. My body was exhausted yet.
I was alert waiting listening at exactly 12:48 a.m. footsteps
crunched through the gravel nearby.
Slow. Deliberate steps.
Human steps. I lay perfectly still gripping,
my knife so hard. My Knuckles thawed, my heart.
Pounded violently the footsteps halted, only a few yards from my
tent silence, then a voice, low, quiet, and perfectly calm, my
voice. Stay awake.
It said stay awake. A wave of nausea surged through
me, sweat pooled along my spine. I fought the urge to open the
tent. I knew somehow that seeing what
stood outside would break me completely.
Instead, I fumbled in the dark for my journal, forcing my
shaking fingers to grip a pen eyes, wide, I scribbled blindly
onto the paper repeating. The only words I could think of,
it's not me, it's not me, it's not me.
The voice didn't speak. Again, the footsteps move, no
closer Northeast. Trembling I pushed the flap open
and stepped out side knife. Still clutched in my hand, my
boots were gone vanished entirely my bear bag hung
untouched swaying gently. But beneath it in the dirt was
something new, A Perfect Circle of Ash and rocks.
Placed exactly where I left my journal back the night before.
I knelt slowly heart racing my journal in the bag.
Carefully clothed I opened it slowly my breath catching
sharply in my chest. The page at opened to was blank.
I was certain I had written last night.
Frantic desperate words But the pages showed nothing just
pristine unmarked paper. Staring back at me.
I sat Frozen breathing shallowly staring at the empty Journal
around me, the canyon walls pressed in silently offering no
explanations or Comfort. Whatever watched me wasn't done
yet, and I knew deep in my bones, that the canyon wouldn't
let me leave easily. At first light, I packed what
little courage, I had left along with my gear Without boots, I
duct taped slabs of foam for my sleeping pad to my feet.
They provided almost no protection and the rocks and
sharp gravel tore through with every step but the physical pain
was welcome. It kept me grounded.
Kept me moving. I had long abandoned the
original plan, my only goal now was simple and Urgent climb out.
The trail was relentless with each switch back, I felt weaker.
My pulse hammering relentlessly behind my eyes.
Every so often a shadow would Flicker at the edge of my
vision. Forcing my head around, each
time, there was nothing there, the canyon walls remained, blank
and unforgiving. My breathing grew ragged harsh
against the empty silence. To stay focused.
I muttered quietly to myself. Just keep moving Jason One Step.
Then another Then a voice echoed back, clearly from above a
familiar unsettling, mimicry of my own one step, then another, I
froze, a cold sweat prickled, my skin.
My stomach Twisted violently. I looked up to the ridge above
me, seeing nothing but rocks and dry scrub.
Who's there my voice broke? As I spoke sounding thin and
Afraid the reply was immediate eerily exact and chillingly.
Casual. Whose there It was my voice, but
Halo flat. There was no life in the
imitation. No human warmth.
It mocked me, stole my words and twisted them into something
sinister. My pulse surged painfully Panic,
flaring into pure Terror. I sprinted uphill, ignoring the
agony, in my feet. The duct tape tour, exposing raw
skin to Sharp Stones. Blood smeared the Rocks beneath
me as I stumbled and clawed upward.
I crested one of the final switchbacks almost Delirious
when something caught my eye, just off the trail, a small,
flash of movement turning sharply.
I glimpsed a shape crouched lobe, beside a juniper tree.
It Rose slowly emerging into clearer view.
My throat closed tightly breath catching, in my chest.
It was a person impossibly thin and draped in tattered clothing
on its feet my boots. I opened my mouth to scream but
nothing came out. The figure took a single step
forward. Leaning slightly toward me.
No words, no sounds. Just an unbearable silence as
its head tilted, slowly mimicking, the angle of my own
Instinct took over. I ran blindly staggering
forward, crawling on all fours at Times, Desperate just to
reach the rim. Gravel cut deeply into my palms
and knees. My makeshift shoes had shredded
completely leaving my feet, raw, and numb.
The final hundred yards stretched forever.
When I finally reached the trailhead parking lot, I fell to
my knees chest heaving Vision spinning violently.
Everything blurred together, the dust the sky, the trees at the
edge of the canyon. Slowly.
A shape came into focus, a green SUV, the unmistakable Insignia
of the National Park Service on its side.
A Rangers, stood leaning. Calmly against it watching me
carefully. He took slow steps toward me,
his movement steady cautious, easy.
Now he said, quietly, you're all right, I tried to speak.
Throw it painfully dry lips, cracked.
It wore my voice. I managed to whisper words.
Trembling out of me. He hesitated only briefly
recognition Crossing his eyes. Without another word he opened
the vehicles rear door and gently helped me inside.
As I sank onto the seat, shaking uncontrollably, the ranger
looked out toward the empty Canyon before turning back to
me. His voice was quiet, resigned as
he spoke, you're not the first Growing up my brother Jesse and
I spent almost every summer, camping near big lake in the
Apache. Sitgreaves National Forest.
It was dad's favorite spot somewhere.
Quiet enough to Lose Yourself, but familiar enough to feel
safe. Even now years after dad had
passed, I could still recall the faint of Pine and Trout the
feeling of Cold Lake water on sunburn skin and nights spent
counting stars but things change life has a way of twisting even
the good memories into something else.
Jessie's recent divorce had turned him bitter restless and
desperate for something familiar.
It's time. We went back.
Jesse insisted one cold November morning, clear, our heads like
the old days. I didn't want to go.
Not really but he needed this trip and deep down maybe I did
too. We loaded dad's old Tacoma, the
paint faded in chipped with camping gear and headed out,
leaving Phoenix's warmth. Behind for the high elevation,
chill near Big Lake At 9,000 feet in November everything felt
emptier quieter. It was laid.
Autumn the leaves long gone from the Aspens and frost glittered
like tiny Blades of glass in the morning sun.
The lake itself was barely recognizable.
Now mostly dry. Nothing.
But cracked mud and gray dirt spreading out like an empty
crater. Only a small stagnant pool
remained at the northern Edge. A sad reminded of what had been
Jesse parked above the lake bed on a rough dirt Trail, and we
set up camp in the cluster of tall, Aspen's that rattled dryly
in the Wind. This isn't exactly what I
remembered Jesse muttered kicking a chunk of dried mud.
Seasons change. I said, watching him carefully.
He ignored me gazing toward the ridge beyond the lake bed.
We should go up there tomorrow. Bet the view is still the same.
We build a small fire as evening approached and the sky shifted
from pale blue to Deep Purple. it was brutally cold once the
sun dropped and our breath turned to fog between us The
crackling fire did little to ease the bitter chill in my
bones. After a quiet meal, we retreated
to our tents. Sleep was slow to come but
eventually exhaustion pulled me under The next morning, I woke
to frost coating the tent flaps. Jesse was already moving around
outside, impatiently urging me to hurry up.
By mid-morning, we started toward the ridge.
He'd mentioned each step crunching through half Frozen
Earth and Scattered pine needles.
I fell behind Jesse slightly lost in thought when my foot
hits something hard, almost twisting, my ankle.
I looked down expecting to see a rock or tree root, but in Stead
saw bleached White Bones partially covered by fallen
leaves. Dear bones.
My stomach tightened as I looked closer.
They were stacked neatly deliberately arranged in a
pattern that no animal could manage.
Ribs laid out like a small cage. A skull resting neatly at its
Center Jessie. I called stepping back from the
bones come see this? He jogged back examining the
bones with an uneasy expression. Probably some Hunter with too
much time or bored kids. I nodded slowly trying to accept
the simple explanation. Yeah, probably we moved forward
again but the site lingered in the back of my mind.
A silent question nagging me. Who would take the time to
stack, bones like that miles away from anywhere back at camp
that evening. As the sky turned dark, we busy
busy at ourselves making dinner sharing strained.
Small Talk. Jesse was staring off into the
forest. When a sudden scream pierced,
the air distant yet. Undeniably human.
We both froze. Eyes locked listening, intently
It came again, clearer. This time, a woman's voice raw
and terrified. Jesse stood, grabbing his flash
light. Someone's out there.
We should go help. Wait, I said holding him back.
There's no one else up here. We haven't seen anyone, the
scream echoed, again, fading deeper into the trees, Jesse
hesitated conflicted, then shook off my hand, What if she is
hurt? We can't just sit here.
I watched helplessly as he disappeared into the woods, his
flash light, beams swallowed by Darkness.
Minutes, dragged into an hour. I pasted the perimeter of Camp
ears, straining for any sound. When Jesse finally reappeared,
he was pale and out of breath. Couldn't find anything.
He said quietly, avoiding my eyes.
Nothing at all. He dropped into his tent without
another word. I followed suit heart racing.
Unable to shake the sense that something about him had changed.
Sleep. Eluded me.
Every Russell. Every snapping twig jolted my
nerves. I knew animals knew their
sounds. Their calls whatever screamed
out. There wasn't Wildlife.
It was something else entirely. I woke early, my breath visible.
Inside the tent crystallized by the freezing air.
A creeping dread settled into my bones even before I realized
Jesse was missing. His sleeping bag, lay empty
Twisted, open the zipper wide apart, as if he'd gotten out
quickly, his boots sat on touched beside the tent flap.
And his heavy jacket was still hanging from a low Branch Frost,
clinging to the sleeves, Jessie, I called out softly at first
then louder Jess. Where are you?
The only reply was silenced absolutes, mothering silence.
Stepping outside. Barefoot, I winced at the Chill
by biting into my toes. The morning sun, barely reached
our campsite leaving a great Twilight across the frozen lake
bed. Something wasn't right.
Jesse wouldn't leave without boots or a coat not in this
weather my heart sped up. Adrenaline overcoming the cold.
I quickly dressed pulling on extra layers and started
searching around camp for Footprints.
There were none just a thin undisturbed layer of frost and
snow dusting the ground. That didn't make sense, even a
squirrel would leave tracks here.
For hours, I circled the campsite calling Jesse's name
until my throat burned. The more I searched, the more
desperate I became The Eerie quiet only heightened the
growing anxiety in my chest. By mid-afternoon, I had covered
every possible path. Twice each sweeping with no sign
of Jessie. The forest felt oppressive
around me. Looming trees, casting Dark
Shadows, that crept slowly across the ground.
Just as Panic began overwhelming, reason a faint
rustling broke through the silence.
I spun around heart hammering and there stood Jessie, hail
expressionless walking stiffly from the direction of the ridge.
He wore only his thermal pants and long sleeve undershirt.
His hands were stained dark red with dried blood Jesus.
Jesse. Where were you?
I rushed toward him stopping short at the sight of the blood.
What happened? He stared at me blankly as if I
was a stranger. He looked down at his hands.
Slowly confusion clouding, his face.
I don't know. He murmured.
Are you hurt? I reached out cautiously
grabbing his wrist to inspect him but there were no injuries.
No wounds at all. Just blood dried and flaking.
I don't know. He repeated, softly eyes,
unfocused. I woke up near the rock pile
that's all I remember the bones. My voice trembled, the deer
bones. He nodded slightly, then his
gaze sharpened focusing somewhere behind me into the
woods, maybe he whispered. Let's get you warmed up.
I said, urgently guiding him toward the fire pit.
He stumbled slightly unsteady on his feet but said nothing else.
I managed to build a fire watching, Jesse closely his
silence Disturbed me more than his disappearance.
Jesse was never quiet. He joked talked.
Endlessly tried filling any Gap with noise.
This Jesse felt wrong. I sat across from him.
The fire crackling between us. You really don't remember
anything. No.
He kept his gaze fixed on the Flames, his voice distant.
You've got blood on your hands. Jesse.
That's not nothing. You had to have done something
out there. My patience, frayed fear,
sharpening my words he looked up sharply sudden anger flaring in
his eyes. I told you Mike.
I don't know later as Darkness seeped into the sky.
Jesse retreated to the tenth collapsing into sleep, almost
instantly, I stayed awake, feeding the fire, and listening
carefully to every rustle and snap of branches around us.
Jesse began muttering in his sleep, low fragmented words.
I couldn't quite catch. Almost like another language.
Harsh syllables Twisted together.
It didn't sound like my brother. The firelight flickered and
shadows stretched to cross the ground.
My hand stayed tight around the hatchet handle all night.
I didn't dare sleep. Something had happened to Jesse
out there something he couldn't or wouldn't share the blood, the
missing hours, the unnatural quiet around Camp, it felt
connected as Dawn, approached exhaustion tugged at me, but I
jolted awake at the crunch of Frozen Earth.
Jesse was outside the tent again, standing Barefoot and
shirtless in the freezing Dawn staring silently toward the
ridge. I scrambled up heart racing,
Jesse, get back inside but he didn't move.
He just stood there. Muscles tense eyes fixed on,
something beyond the trees. I followed his gaze, my breath
hitching. When I saw a shape.
A dark hunched, figure crouched low on a distant Boulder.
Watching us. Jesse do you see that?
I hissed, urgently fear, knotting, my throat, He didn't
reply he didn't even blink. Then the figure was gone
slipping quietly into the Shadows.
Beneath the trees, anger overtook, my fear frustration,
bubbling up from somewhere deep in Desperate.
I grabbed Jesse roughly by the shoulder spinning.
Him toward me. What the hell happened to you?
He shoved me violently stumbling back, don't touch me.
He growled his voice was low and guttural unrecognizable Panic
surged through me. Instinct overpowering.
Hesitation where leaving now know, Jessie shouted, voice
cracking and panic. You can't it watches when you
speak its name. What watches?
I demanded grabbing his shoulders.
He twisted in my grip, his eyes wild and terrified.
You don't understand. He shoved me again.
Harder, I stumbled back rage overtaking.
Reason my hand found a thick Fallen Branch gripping.
It, tightly Jesse lunged toward me again.
Fury distorting his features. I swung instinctively the branch
cracked against his knee and he dropped instantly snarling in
pain. My stomach.
Churned guilt colliding with survival Instinct.
Sorry, Jesse. I'm sorry my voice broke.
He lay there, gripping his leg glaring at me with a fury that
felt foreign and chilling. I bound his legs.
Tightly with paracord, lifted him into the truck bed and threw
our gear. In haphazardly, his eyes, never
left me filled with hatred and something else.
Something darker I couldn't name, I drove fast headlights.
Cutting sharply through the trees desperate to reach
civilization. Jesse remained silent unmoving
but I knew the thing from the ridge was still with us
lingering at the edge of my vision, just beyond the tree
line. I didn't look back.
Two days later. Jesse opened his eyes in an
urgent care clinic in Springerville.
Stared at me blankly confusion, clouding, his expression.
Outside the window sunlight warmed.
The White Walls of the Small Town Clinic, creating an
unsettling contrast to the dark cold Woods.
We left behind What happened? Jesse asked, softly shifting
uncomfortably on the stiff Clinic bed?
You don't remember my voice came out?
Strained raw from exhaustion and worried.
He shook his head genuine bewilderment in his eyes.
We went camping, right? Why am I here?
I hesitated words caught in my throat.
How could I explain the missing hours?
The blood on his hands. The look in his eyes when he'd
come back from the ridge. How could I describe the Twisted
figure watching us from the trees, you disappeared?
I finally said choosing my words carefully.
I found you hours later, you were disoriented He frowned
deeply glancing down at his bandaged knee.
Then back at me. Did I fall?
I don't know. I lied.
You weren't yourself a nurse stepped in quietly interrupting
before. Jesse could question further.
She checked his vitals scribbled notes and gave me a look that
implied. I shouldn't push him too hard.
Jesse drifted back into Restless sleep, leaving me alone in the
quiet room, haunted by questions, Later, two forest,
rangers arrived to speak with me in the waiting room.
They were polite cautious but their questions probed deeply.
Can you tell us exactly where you camped?
Asked the older one, his voice steady but concerned.
Above Big Lake. I said vaguely uneasy under
their scrutiny. We grew up camping there.
Wanted to revisit old memories. The younger Rangers, studied me
carefully. His voice lowered.
Did you notice anything unusual out there?
My throat tightened, the memory of stacked deer bones Vivid in
my mind Jessie's empty stare and the distorted figure on the
ridge. I hesitated then shook my head,
no, it was quiet. The older Ranger exchange to
glance with his partner. Something unspoken passing
between them. After a few more formal
questions, they left me alone. I sat for a long time hands
shaking unsure, why? I had hidden the truth.
Perhaps I feared, what acknowledging it might mean days
later. I drove Jesse back to his
apartment in Phoenix. He didn't say much lost in
thought staring, vacantly out the passenger window.
We never returned to the topic of the woods as if an unspoken
agreement had settled between us one born of confusion and fear.
Over the next weeks, my sleep grew worse riddled with
nightmares of those woods, and that figure.
One night after waking, drenched and cold sweat.
I turned on my computer and searched the Apache sitgreaves
Forest desperate to find some rational explanation for what
we'd experienced. Hours passed my eyes aching
until I stumbled upon old Navajo and Apache folklore.
The accounts spoke clearly of being that walked in the shadows
mimicking voices hiding in the skin of others.
One word, appeared again. And again, Skinwalker my pulse
quickened, as I read further, descriptions matching Jesse's
strange Behavior, the unnatural sound, the inexplicable
disappearances A chill ran through me deeper than anything.
I'd felt in those cold Woods. Closing the laptop sharply, I
stared into the darkness of my room.
Heart racing with a terrible certainty.
Something had found us at Big Lake within days.
I burned our camping gear unable to shake the feeling that
something had followed us back. The old Tacoma the truck.
Dad loved. I sold.
Quickly practically giving it away at a scrap yard in Tucson
desperate to several connections to that trip.
Months passed and Jesse stayed clear of the Wilderness entirely
refusing to discuss our experience.
He moved to San Diego, exchanging Arizona's, deserts,
and forests for a busy City, distancing himself from
everything familiar. I relocated to Oregon seeking
cooler Greener, Landscapes, hoping to replace the shadowed
Woods of Apache. Sitgreaves with something
brighter safer. We talked occasionally, but the
conversations fellow cautious. Each of us careful not to
trigger memories of those lost hours.
But one late winter after noon, something broke the silence
between us. Jesse called sounding shaking.
Mike, it's happening again. What do you mean?
I keep waking up outside. He whispered his voice ragged
with exhaustion Barefoot. I don't remember getting there,
but I'm always facing East toward Arizona, toward the lake.
Fear tightened, my chest, memories, flooding back, Jesse
listen, don't think about it, don't talk about it.
Just try to forget. He laughed bitterly.
I can't forget. Mike, something happened to me
there. Something still inside my head.
Then come here, I urged. Stay with me.
We'll figure this out. He didn't respond right away
then softly. I'm not sure it's safe for you.
I think it follows me days later a small postcard arrived at my
new address, no return label just a single brightly colored
image of big lake in summer. My hands trembled as I flipped
it over reading, a simple message, scribbled in familiar
Jagged handwriting. Still watching still listening.
I called Jesse immediately, angry and terrified.
Why would you send this? Send what he sounded confused
anxious, Mike what postcard in that instant a cold certainty
settled in my stomach. Jesse hadn't sent it, whatever
we'd found or what ever had found us had never left.
I'd always been drawn to isolated places the more remote
the better that's probably why I chose landscape photography as a
profession. You can't find good shots by
following the crowd. So when March rolled around and
I saw a small window before comb Ridge, would be swarmed by
tourists. I jumped on it.
My goal was simple capture BlackRock Arch at Sunrise lit up
by that fleeting perfect morning glow.
To get that shot, I'd have to Camp miles from civilization.
Exactly the Solitude I was craving.
Commbridge was spectacular, a towering Ripple of Navajo
Sandstone. Slicing through Utah's
Southeastern landscape. It wasn't easy getting there but
the Bureau of Land Management had primitive sites scattered
near the ridge accessible via a rough Gravel Road.
That was perfect for me. The last campsite, the one
furthest out promised, true isolation, no neighbor's, no
traffic, nothing between me and the Stars.
I turned off US Route 163 late in the afternoon.
My truck rocking gently, as the tires rolled over washboard ruts
and loose stones. Juniper's blurred by in dark
green streets, the canyon walls painted orange by the dropping
son. 40 minutes later, I reached the campsite my headlights
cutting through the fading light.
The spot was just as I had, hoped empty, quiet and tucked in
near the mouth of a dry wash with comb Ridge.
Looming, just behind. After setting up my tent, I sat
by the small Fire Ring heating water for dinner.
The night sky deepened, a spray of stars, blooming overhead, the
world around me was silent except for the soft crackle of
firewood in somewhere far off a faint chorus of coyotes.
I felt completely alone and completely at peace around
midnight. I crawled into my sleeping bag
and Switched Off My headlamp. It took mere minutes before,
sleep pulled me under. I don't know what woke me at
first I lay perfectly still listening coyotes, maybe
something in my subconscious registering danger.
I checked my watch 2008 a.m. outside, the darkness was
absolute thick enough to swallow everything beyond my nylon tent
walls. Then I heard it again gravel
crunching faint but clear like footsteps circling the perimeter
of my campsite My pulse quickened.
Maybe it was Wildlife a deer or a straight cow wandering through
stepping cautiously on the loose ground.
That would explain the hesitation the careful steps.
but the longer I listened, the less certain I became The steps
didn't sound random, they were purposeful two steady to be an
animal two calculated. I unzip the tent flap as quietly
as I could peering out into the night.
Blinking away sleep. A light Breeze, Russell the
junipers, the world beyond my tent was still empty.
Nothing moved, no animals, no shadows.
And yet the silence felt forced somehow, as if the world was
holding, its breath, waiting for something to happen.
Hello? I called softly immediately,
feeling foolish, my voice hung in the silence unanswered.
I stepped out fully my bare feet, sinking slightly into the
cold sand. Shining my headlamp around, I
found no tracks. No sign of anything Disturbed.
The fire ring was intact, my gear undisturbed, but the
feeling of being watched pressed on me, prickling, my spine
returning to my tent. I zipped the flap tight,
reassured myself, it was nothing and settled back into my
sleeping bag. It took a long while for sleep
to come back. My ears straining to hear
another sound. Eventually exhaustion overtook
vigilance and I drifted into wrestler's dreams.
The next morning stepping outside, I froze.
The campsite wasn't as untouched as I thought.
The firewood which I had stacked neatly lace scattered about
pieces tossed. Several feet from the fire ring
My tent flap closed securely. When I went back inside was now
halfway open fluttering slightly in the morning Breeze.
Unease settled like a stone in my chest heavy and unmoving
Maybe it was wind. I rationalized again it had to
be but deep down, I knew it wasn't and I knew I wasn't
alone. I spent the day hiking capturing
the shifting light on the sandstone and scouting potential
locations around BlackRock Arch. The unsettling events of the
night before lingard though I kept telling myself it was
nothing. A combination of imagination and
isolation playing tricks on me. Still a quiet.
Unease clung to the edge of my Consciousness Whispering doubts,
no matter how I tried to push them away.
By late afternoon. I was high up on a Ledge,
overlooking, the sweeping Sandstone waves below shooting
frames and Rapid succession. Through the viewfinder, the
world narrowed down becoming manageable.
It was easier behind the camera, less real may be but as the sun
began, its descent behind comb Ridge.
I lowered the camera stretching my shoulders and reality flooded
back in. I was miles from anyone else,
utterly alone in a place older than human memory.
And it felt suddenly overwhelming.
Then a sharp crack rang out from somewhere below the ledge.
Echoing through the empty Canyon I leaned forward peering
cautiously down into the Steep Ravine beneath me.
Nothing moved. But the sound had been
unmistakable. A stone dislodged, a step taken
somewhere below. I stood perfectly still
listening. Heartbeat quickening minutes,
passed silence again. My pulse slowed reluctantly and
I began packing up quickly. The Fading sunlight urged me
back toward Camp. I didn't want to navigate these
narrow paths after Dark. As I descended The Ridge Trail,
I stopped suddenly breath catching in my throat.
Ahead of me, clearly outlined in the Sandy.
Dirt was a single boot print. I knelt down, studying it a
sickening, feeling settling deep in my stomach.
The print was unmistakably mine, the distinctive zigzag tread of
my hiking boots. But it was facing backward
heading up the trail toward me. My mind, spun desperate for an
explanation. Maybe I had turned around early,
stepped awkwardly. At no other tracks Disturbed The
Path nearby. Just the single print pointing
directly toward me. a chill, crept, down my spine, the hairs
on my neck, Rising I quickly continued toward Camp, my Pace
quicker senses on high alert. By the time I reached my
campsite Twilight had drained. The color from the landscape
leaving. Everything gray, and shadowed.
I built a small fire forcing myself to breathe steadily, the
warm glow and crackling Flames, providing some false sense of
comfort. As Darkness settled in fully, I
kept looking around the campsite eyes darting toward every small
noise, a distant Twigs. Snapping the rustle of dry
brush. My unease, deep into dread
hours, crawled by until finally exhausted.
I retreated to my tent, keeping my boots, just outside the flap.
Sleep in possible and I lay there in the dark eyes wide open
body tents. Just after 1:30 a.m.
I heard it again. The unmistakable sound of slow.
Deliberate steps crunching. The gravel outside, each
footstep approached, my tent methodically stopping directly
behind my head. Fear paralyzed me, my heart
pounded. So loudly, I worry what ever
stood outside. Might hear it.
Hey, I whispered Horsley surprised at how small my voice
sounded no response just silence and then clearly audible through
the thin nylon of my tent. Came along deep, exhale.
It sounded human butt off somehow like someone imitating
breathing rather than actually needing to it lasted too long
ending in a wet rasp that made my blood run cold.
Terrified. But needing answers I forced
myself to sit up and yank. Open the tent flap shining my
headlamp outward? Nothing was there.
Just empty Darkness. Stretching out beyond my small
circle of light. But as I scanned around my
stomach dropped again, one of my boots was missing leaving the
other sitting alone in the dirt. I stared into the silent desert
night. Breathing shallowly, feeling
trapped by the realization that whatever was out there.
Wasn't just watching me. It was slowly taking pieces of
me one at a time. Dawn brought no relief.
The sleepless night had left me drained, my nerves stretched
thin. I found myself questioning the
wisdom of staying but stubborn Pride kept me anchored.
I wasn't leaving, not yet not without getting the shot.
I had come here for all morning, the desert, oddly muted.
The Familiar rhythm of nature something.
I usually took for granted seemed off, somehow it felt as
though, the land itself had become cautious.
Wary of something I couldn't quite Define.
I trudged out toward Black Rock Arch, around noon, moving slower
than usual feeling heavy and unsettled my missing.
Boot forced me to wear a pair of Old Trail Runners.
I kept behind the seat of my truck thin Souls, that were
barely enough protection against the rough sandstone.
And prickly brush beneath The arch Rose before me, striking an
ancient its graceful Sandstone curves worn Smooth by millennia.
Normally I'd be inspired by a scene like this, but today I
couldn't shake the feeling of being observed.
I glanced over my shoulder every few minutes searching.
The canyon behind me eyes, scanning the Ridgeline but
finding nothing out of place. The Shadows lengthened faster
than I realized. By late after noon, I hurried to
finish up and started back toward camp.
The daylight faded too quickly, turning the landscape, Bleak
colorless. I walked as fast as I dared
heart. Pumping my ears straining to
catch every sound. when I finally saw my tents silhouetted
against the last dim, streaks of daylight relief flooded through
me, But as I approached the sense of unease return tenfold.
Something was wrong. My boots, both of them were
missing. Now I had left the remaining one
sitting outside my tent flap and now it was gone.
I spun around suddenly aware of movement at the edge of my
vision. My breath caught in my throat.
Someone was there emerging slowly From the Canyon Shadows.
I squinted through the Twilight blinking rapidly certain my eyes
were playing tricks. The figure stepped forward
steadily with familiar boots on its feet.
My boots, my pulse raced as it approached moving closer into
the dim evening glow. I felt Frozen unable to move
barely breathing because now I could see clearly.
It wasn't just my booths. The figure wore my pants, my
shirt, my gear, it was dressed exactly.
As I was it moved strangely though limbs swung awkwardly
gate stiff and uneven as though, each step required immense
concentration and then I recognized the face, and my
chest went tight, it was mine, or at least a close imitation
thin and stretched features. Slightly distorted cheekbones,
sharper, eyes, sunken deep reflecting, no light.
I took an involuntary. Step backward, my mind struggled
to understand what I was seeing dread clouding.
My thoughts. This imitation stopped abruptly
about 20 feet away. Swaying slightly on legs.
That look stretched too long and angular.
It didn't speak. It didn't breathe.
Just stood silently facing me. I whispered shakily.
What the hell at the sound of my voice?
The figure jerked forward a single unnatural step.
Its head tilted slightly its dark eyes studying me, observing
calculating, it was like watching my reflection, come
alive, twisted and wrong every Instinct screamed to run.
But I was frozen in place Paralyzed by a feared deeper and
more Primal than I had ever known.
Then as if it had seen enough, the imitation took another slow
step forward that movement broke my paralysis adrenaline surged.
And suddenly I was running sprinting Barefoot into the
Gathering Darkness, leaving behind my tent, my truck,
everything I didn't look back. I couldn't The thought of seeing
myself standing silently behind me, watching was more than my
sanity could handle. I ran blindly into the darkness,
my bare feet striking, the gravel sharp rocks.
Slicing into my skin with every frantic step.
Pain shot through my legs but Terror propelled me forward.
Drowning out. Everything else.
Each breath came in ragged gasps, branches tore at my skin,
Juniper Thorns catching my clothing, but I refused to slow
down. My thoughts, raced, wild and
Scattered. As I sprinted through the
blackness Images of that Twisted imitation flashed through my
mind. The vacant stare, the unnatural
movements and my own stolen boots on its feet.
What was it? A hallucination, some desert
Madness or something, worse. Something real time.
Lost all meaning, I moved instinctively toward where I
thought the washboard rode was navigating only by the dim
silhouettes of Canyon walls against the Stars.
Twice. I stumbled hitting the ground
hard and scrambling back up without pause.
I kept running until my legs trembled, and my lungs burned.
Finally, the darkness began to fade into early, great Dawn
exhausted. Trembling, I slowed, my Pace to
a staggering walk glancing over my shoulder every few steps
terrified. I'd see the thing behind me, but
the landscape was empty. Silent bathed in the cold
morning glow, Then faintly in the distance came, the low
Rumble of an engine. Hope surged painfully in my
chest, and I limped forward stumbling toward the sound.
A Dusty red. Jeep Wrangler, rounded the bend
its headlights, cutting through the Morning Mist.
I raised my arms waving wildly desperation clear on my
scratched bloodied face. The driver, an older man, with
weathered skin, slowed, immediately and stopped a few
yards from me, leaning out his window eyes wide with concern,
my godson, what happened to you. He asked urgently Please, I
gasped, staggering forward. I need help.
He jumped out. Steadying me by the shoulders
and guiding me carefully toward his Jeep.
I collapsed into the passenger seat shaking uncontrollably as
exhaustion, and relief washed over me.
I told him everything in fragmented bursts as we drove.
about the footsteps, the stolen Boots, the thing that looked
exactly like me but wasn't He listened quietly, his expression
troubled, but not disbelieving, nodding slowly as I spoke. we
drove directly to the BLM station just outside Bluff where
a ranger listened intently eyes narrowing, as I recounted what
happened at BlackRock, Despite my condition, I insisted we
returned to the campsite immediately.
I needed answers needed proof. I wasn't losing my mind.
It was mid-morning when we arrived back at my campsite.
The ranger stepped out first, his hand hovering near his belt
as he scanned. The area cautiously, I followed
my heart, pounding erratically, as I saw, what remained or
rather, what didn't The campsite was stripped bare my tent
sleeping bag camera gear. And even the fire pit were gone
as though they had never existed.
No tracks. No drag marks nothing.
Just empty ground impossibly clean and undisturbed.
Then, I saw them, my boots sitting neatly side by side.
Exactly where the fire pit had once been laces, perfectly tied,
The ranger glanced at me, uneasily, clearly unnerved by
the unnatural sight. Come on.
He finally said shaking his head slowly.
We shouldn't stay here. As we walked back to his truck,
the ranger pause. Glancing once more toward the
empty campsite his voice was low, hesitant Locals.
Don't talk much about this place, but sometimes hikers are
campers come back, shaken up, they mention things.
They can't explain figures that look human but aren't quite
right. He looked away briefly clearly
uncomfortable. Folks around here.
Call it a skinwalker old Navajo, Legend, we don't usually share
it with Outsiders. I said nothing absorbing his
words as dread tightened its grip on me.
On the drive back to Bluff. I stared silently out the
window. Knowing one thing for certain I
had never returned to comb Ridge.
And later, when I sat alone in a hotel room, I deleted every
photo I take in from the trip. Unable to bear the thought of
what might appear. The Ranger's words, stayed with
me though. Long after I had left Utah,
Whatever had stalked me out there wasn't human, wasn't an
illusion. And the image burned into my
mind. My own boots carefully arranged
in that empty desert was proof enough of the terrible truth.