I should have listened when she told me not to say the name.
It was my first time on Navajo land.
I'd taken freelance gigs before, cultural pieces, remote travel
stories, but this one was different.
A buddy of mine from Arizona tipped me off about the folklore
stories around the Four Corners, Said no one had really covered
them properly, that if I played it right I could walk away with
a photo essay that had sell to National Geographic or the
Atlantic. The plan was simple.
Fly into gallop, rent a Jeep and drive north toward Window Rock.
I booked a few nights at a modest little motel on the
outskirts. Cheap, basic, Didn't even have a
real front desk, just a buzzer. I'd already reached out to a
local fixer, someone who could help translate, drive, and
hopefully get me access to some elders willing to share their
stories. Her name was Elsie Nez.
Quiet, traditional, had this kind of presence where she
didn't need to say much to make you listen, Wore a red velvet
skirt and silver jewelry that clicked softly when she moved.
The kind of person you didn't want to disappoint.
We met for the first time at a small cafe across from the
tribal offices. I had a notepad out, camera in
my bag, trying to seem casual. After a few polite exchanges
about the land and the people, I asked the question.
So do people still talk about skinwalkers out here?
Her eyes locked on mine. The clinking of her bracelet
stopped. You shouldn't say that, She said
quietly. Not here.
I gave a little nervous laugh. Sorry, I just meant the stories.
I'm not trying to offend anyone, I just want to understand the
You said its name. She interrupted.
That's not a story, that's a thing.
And saying its name, it calls it closer.
I tried to backpedal, apologized again, told her I meant no harm.
She just looked past me, like something had already shifted,
like it was too late. That night.
The motel felt wrong. Not haunted or anything, just
unsettled. The desert outside was pitch
black, not a single star, no wind, the kind of silence that
feels like it's waiting for something.
I couldn't sleep, so I stepped outside to get some air.
The parking lot had only two cars, mine and a beat up truck.
I hadn't seen anyone drive just beyond the property line.
The land dropped into a wash of shrubs and rock, all cast in
deep shadows. I heard a dog bark in the
distance, then another, then nothing, until I heard it.
A high pitched whistle, long and slow, almost like someone trying
to mimic a bird call, but wrong. Off.
It echoed once across the rocks and then stopped.
I waited, listening, heart thudding, trying to convince
myself it was just some kid or a drunk pulling a prank.
Then came the smell, like burnt hair and metal so strong it made
my stomach clench. I rushed back into my room and
locked the door. Slept with the lights on.
The next morning I tried to rationalize everything.
Told myself I was overreacting. Maybe the altitude was messing
with me, Maybe I was just tired. I went out to my Jeep to head
into town and meet Elsie again. That's when I saw the marks. 3
long gouges down the driver's side door, Parallel, clean.
No rust, no dents. Just deep, raw gashes, like
something with claws had dragged its hand across it and scattered
near the tires. Ash.
Not dust. Not leaves, Ash.
I asked the motel owner if there were cameras in the parking lot.
He shrugged and said they hadn't worked in years.
Elsie didn't say I told you, so she didn't need to.
Instead, she asked me a question that chilled me more than the
claw marks ever could. When you heard it last night,
did it use your voice yet? I stared at her.
What? She shook her head slowly.
If it does, don't follow it, I told myself.
It was all in my head. The claw marks, the whistle, the
way the desert went dead quiet. I wanted to believe it was
nerves, paranoia, maybe too many late night Reddit threads
getting under my skin, but I couldn't shake the feeling
something was wrong. I knew it the moment I stepped
out of the cafe the next afternoon and saw Elsie already
waiting for me by her truck, arms crossed tight like she
didn't want to be there. You're still planning to go,
aren't you? She asked.
I nodded. Just for sunset shots, nothing
dangerous. I'll be back before dark.
Her eyes narrowed. That place, the Butte Yatta
haze. Watch.
It's a borderland where things crossover.
You don't want to be near it when the sun goes down.
I should have listened. God, I should have listened, but
I didn't. I thanked her for the warning,
packed my gear and told myself I'd be quick.
The drive out there felt longer than it should have been.
I'd marked the location on my GPS, but the roads were barely
there, just dusty scars across the land.
No signs, no fences, no other cars.
By the time I reached the trail, my phone had lost service and
the sun was already low on the horizon, painting the desert in
deep orange and red. Yah Tahe's watch wasn't marked
on any map. It wasn't even that tall, just a
jagged formation rising from the flat scrubland like a broken
tooth. But standing in its shadow, I
felt like a trespasser. The air was heavier still, not
even a breeze. As I climbed a nearby Ridge to
get a wide shot, I noticed something strange.
Footprints. Not mine, not boot prints
either. Barefoot, but misshapen.
The toes were too long, the heel too narrow.
Whatever made them walked upright, but not human.
The path forked near a row of boulders, stacked in unnatural
ways, balanced, twisted like figures.
Mid scream. I lifted my camera to snap a few
shots, and that's when I heard it again, whistling.
Same tone, same eerie mimic of a bird call, but this time closer.
I turned, expecting to see someone, anyone.
But there was only desert. And then I saw it.
Atop the Butte, maybe 40 feet up, a shape crouched against the
last light of day. Humanoid, thin, unnaturally
thin, its skin the color of bleached bone.
It wasn't wearing clothes, just folds of flesh pulled tight like
it had been starved for years. Its head.
It wasn't right. Deer like, at first, long snout
antlers. But then it twitched, glitched,
and the antlers twisted back into its skull.
Its jaw unhinged and it opened its mouth and my voice came out.
Help. Hey, I'm up here.
I dropped my camera. The creature smiled.
That's the only way I can describe what it did.
Its lips didn't move, but its eyes squinted just enough to
convey pure malice. Then it began crawling down the
rocks, fast, jerky, silent, like a video skipping frames.
I ran. I didn't look back.
I just ran down the Ridge, across the flats, through the
brush and stones that seem different now, like the
landscape had shifted every few steps.
I thought I saw movement behind me, a shadow to my left, a blur
to my right. At one point, I heard Elsie's
voice, clear as day. Tyler, come back.
You're going the wrong way. I stopped.
Her voice came from just past a cluster of rocks ahead, but I
knew, I knew she had no idea I was even out here.
She hadn't followed me. I turned and sprinted the other
way, but it didn't matter. The trail was gone.
The Jeep was gone. I was surrounded by unfamiliar
formations, half buried wood poles marked with symbols I
didn't recognize. I found a tree that hadn't been
there before, its bark blackened like it had been struck by
lightning, and at its base I found a dead coyote, split open,
its organs removed and arranged in a perfect circle around its
body. Something was playing with me,
leading me in circles. I could hear it moving through
the brush without making a sound, clicking like its joints
weren't made for this form. It never ran.
It didn't have to. It was always just out of view.
At one point, I ducked behind a sandstone ledge to catch my
breath. That's when I heard the mimicry
again. Tyler.
It whispered my name in my own voice, spoken just inches from
my ear. I screamed and scrambled up the
rock, cutting my hands open on the stone.
I don't even remember how long I ran after that time didn't feel
real. I just know I ended up
collapsing near the road just as the horizon started to brighten.
I must have made it through the night, barely, and through the
entire ordeal I never got a single clear photo.
My memory card corrupted, my backup blank.
Only thing I had left was a photo from earlier that day, a
self timer shot near the Butte. But when I opened it later, I
wasn't alone in the picture. In the background, blurred but
unmistakable, was a shape crouched behind a rock, watching
me. I don't remember how I made it
back to Elsie's place, just flashes, my boots caked in
blood, my voice hoarse from screaming.
Every time I blinked, I saw that thing wearing my face, grinning
with teeth too wide and too sharp, crawling low through the
desert scrub like it belonged to the ground.
When I finally stumbled into her yard, the sun was barely
cresting the hills. Her dogs were barking like mad,
foaming, snarling, backing away from me.
Elsie stepped out onto the porch, eyes wide.
You looked at it, she said. Not a question, a statement.
I collapsed right there in the dirt.
She didn't ask for details. She didn't want them.
By that afternoon, her cousin Thomas and an old medicine man
named Yazzie had arrived, carrying bundles of sage,
cornmeal, and something I didn't recognize, black shards of
Obsidian wrapped in red cloth. I could barely sit upright.
I was dehydrated, shaking. But I understood one thing.
We were running out of time. They brought me inside, pulled
the blinds, and placed me in the center of a chalky white circle
surrounded by eagle feathers and ash.
I didn't understand the words they chanted, but I understood
the urgency. Something was coming.
The air got colder, thicker, like breathing through wet wool.
Whatever you do, Yazzy said, do not look outside, no matter what
you hear. At first there was nothing, just
the low rhythm of the chanting, the crackle of burning sage.
Then the smell hit, that same burnt metal and rot stench from
the other night, but stronger now, like it was seeping in
through the walls. And then the scratching started.
Not on the door, on the roof. Heavy footsteps, something
dragging itself across the shingles.
Slow, deliberate. A wet dragging sound followed,
like raw meat on tile. The dogs outside went completely
silent. Then came the voice.
It started as a whisper. Let me in.
But it wasn't mine This time. It was Elsie's perfect.
Same cadence, same tone. I looked at her.
She was frozen, tears in her eyes.
Then another voice. Tyler, it's OK, You're safe now.
My mother's voice. She died two years ago.
My hands started to tremble. I clenched my fists, tried to
shut it out. Then the banging so loud it made
the floorboards jump. A massive weight slammed into
the front door again and again, the hinges screeching like
they'd snap any second. The chanting grew louder,
faster. The candles around the circle
flickered wildly. Then the voice came back.
But this time it was me. Please, it sobbed.
Elsie, please, it's me. I don't know what's going on,
I'm scared. Please.
It was my exact voice, but desperate, panicked, and it came
from the other side of the front door.
I looked up. I don't know what made me do it.
Curiosity, instinct, stupidity. I broke the rule.
I looked out the window. It was me, standing barefoot in
the yard, clothes torn, blood down my face, eyes wide,
pleading. I blinked, and the figure
didn't. It just smiled, and that smile
kept stretching past where lips should end, past the jawline,
until it split the face entirely.
Then it dropped to all fours and skittered toward the house like
an insect. I screamed, fell backward into
the circle. Something slammed into the side
of the house, hard enough to rattle picture frames and make
the floor creak. The temperature dropped again.
I could see my breath. Then suddenly it was gone.
Silence. Yazzy didn't stop chanting until
the sun fully broke over the horizon.
The moment the light touched the circle, the tension snapped like
a rubber band. I collapsed.
Later, after I could finally speak, I asked Yazzy what it
was. You already know, he said.
Can it come back? He looked at me for a long time.
It marked you. It didn't get in, but it got
close. Close enough to know your scent,
your name, your voice. Then what do I do?
Never speak of it again, Never whistle at night, Never go back
to that place. I left the reservation that same
day, moved back to the city, tried to go back to normal life,
and for a while I almost convinced myself it was over.
But last week I got a voicemail from a blocked number.
No message, just breathing. Ragged, wet, and in the
background, very faint, I heard someone whisper, Let me in,
Tyler, and it was my voice. I never wanted to come back to
that part of Arizona. Not because I didn't love it.
I did. The high desert air, the red
cliffs, the way the stars looked like they'd been sewn right into
the sky. But some places carry weight.
Memory, and my grandfather's land in the Navajo Nation had.
Both. Luis and Corey had been bugging
me for weeks. Bro, we need content, Luis kept
saying, shoving a camera in my face.
Canyon de Celli, slot canyons, abandoned ruins.
We'll make a killer dock. Call it Blood in the Redlands or
something. Corey was more direct.
Come on, Dan, you're Navajo. That's your turf.
Doesn't your family own land out there or whatever?
They weren't wrong. My grandparents used to live
near Chinley, tucked up near the cliffs just a few miles off
Spider Rock. After my grandfather passed, my
grandma moved in with her sister in Gallup.
The house had been sitting vacant for a while now, so yeah,
I agreed. Stupid.
We got to the reservation around sunset.
The light was sharp orange, cutting across the rocks like
fire. The last gas station before the
Canyon was run by a guy who looked like he hadn't changed
his flannel in two decades. He noticed the out of state
plates on Luis's car and asked where we were headed.
Just doing some filming near Spider Rock.
Louise said. Documentary stuff.
The guy froze. His eyes darted to me.
That your land? He asked.
Sort of, I mumbled. Don't go wandering past sundown.
He said slowly. And if you hear whistling at
night, don't answer, don't even look.
Corey laughed behind me. What happens if we whistle back?
Skinwalkers come out and do a TikTok dance?
The man didn't crack a smile. They mimic, that's how they find
you. He didn't say anything else,
just rang us up, bagged our Gatorades and watched us leave
like he was already mourning. We drove out past the pavement
and on to the old service roads. My stomach was tight the whole
time. The land looked the same but
wrong, emptier somehow. I hadn't been back in over a
decade, and all that silence pressed on me like a wait.
No birds, no insects, just wind and dust and memories.
We camped about a mile east of my grandparents house, up on a
sandstone ledge overlooking the Canyon.
The view was incredible until the sun went down.
That's when it hit me. Nothing moved.
The desert's never truly quiet. There's always something.
A beetle, an owl, the rustle of wind through sagebrush.
But that night, nothing like the land itself was holding its
breath. We built a fire and cooked some
canned chili. Corey pulled out a flask.
To forbidden ground and local legends.
He toasted. Don't joke like that, I said.
He raised an eyebrow. What, you believe that crap?
I didn't answer. Truth was, I didn't know what I
believed. My grandfather used to tell me
stories. Not bedtime stories, warnings,
he said. There were things out there that
weren't meant to be seen, that if you ever heard a voice
calling your name from the dark and it sounded like someone you
loved, you should run. I used to laugh at that.
But not that night. Around 211, AMI woke up in a
cold sweat. I didn't know why at first.
The fire had burned down to embers.
Luis and Corey were passed out in their sleeping bags, their
faces lit red from the coals. Then I heard it.
A whistle. Not a tune, just one long, slow
rising note. Like someone was testing their
breath. It came from the east, then
another answered from the West, then silence.
I didn't move, not an inch. I pulled the sleeping bag
tighter and prayed it would stop.
It didn't. After a few minutes it started
again, but this time it was closer.
The pitch was off just slightly, like someone trying to copy the
sound of a human whistle but getting the shape of the lips
wrong. I could hear it bouncing off the
cliffs, but I couldn't pin it down.
Then came the voice. Daniel.
It was barely above a whisper. Daniel, Boy, it's cold out here.
My blood turned to ice. That was my grandfather's voice,
no question. Same rhythm, same gravelly tone,
the way he used to wake me up for morning chores.
But he died in 2012. Open the tent, Sun.
I stayed frozen, breathing through my nose, trying not to
shake. The zipper didn't move, neither
did Corey or Louise. Just me, locked in place while
something outside pretended to be family.
After a minute, I found the courage to unzip the flap just
enough to peek outside. There was nothing there, just
the dying fire, just rock and dust.
I was about to lay back down when I noticed something strange
about the firelight. The shadows were moving in the
wrong direction, like something was blocking the light just out
of frame. I swung the flashlight toward
the Ridge. That's when I saw it.
A figure crouched low, like it was squatting.
Its arms hung longer than they should have, nearly to the
ground. The face.
I couldn't make it out, just the suggestion of it, but it was
watching us, watching me. I shut the tent, locked the
zipper, pressed my back against the fabric, and sat there until
morning. When the sun came up, Louise
found me still sitting like that, pale and silent.
Corey groaned and asked why I hadn't gone to sleep.
I didn't answer. Louise was reviewing some of his
night time long exposures and paused suddenly.
He turned the screen toward me. There, in the top corner of the
frame, perched on the ledge like a gargoyle, was the thing I saw.
The silhouette, still and hunched, you could almost make
out, hands pressed to its face like it was watching through
binoculars made of its fingers. I don't remember speaking, but
apparently I muttered something under my breath.
That's not a man. We didn't talk much that
morning. Louise kept zooming in on that
photo over and over again, like he could force it to make sense.
Corey said it was probably a trick of the light, or maybe
someone messing with us, but he didn't sound convinced, not
really. I told them we needed to leave.
I'm serious. I said something's wrong.
This isn't a joke. Corey rolled his eyes.
Dude, you're just freaked out because you saw a shadow.
Come on, you've been telling us spooky stories since we got
here. Now you're buying into them.
Luis didn't say anything, He just kept staring at the screen.
We moved camp anyway, packed everything in silence, drove
another few miles down into a shallow Canyon, and pitched our
tents near an old dry riverbed, out of sight from the cliffs.
I didn't tell them why I picked that spot, I just knew it was
far from where we saw that thing.
The second we got the fire going, I stepped away and
gathered some ash from the pit. I mixed it with cedar bark and a
pinch of cornmeal from a pouch I'd carried in my bag since I
was a kid. My grandmother used to do this
when I was sick or scared, marking circles around beds,
doorways, windows, a barrier, a prayer.
Corey watched me from his camping chair.
What the hell are you doing now? Don't break this.
I said, drawing the circle carefully around the tent.
I'm serious, Corey, you don't want to invite anything in.
He laughed like he always did, but it sounded forced this time.
Fine vibe, circle, whatever. We didn't hear the whistling
that night. We heard something worse.
It started with a smell. Around midnight.
The air shifted. It was cold already, but this
was something different, like opening a freezer and getting
hit in the face with spoiled meat, rotten, wet fur.
It came in waves. Then came the noise, Scratching.
It was faint, barely there, but distinct, like claws against
fabric. It moved around the tent slowly.
I held my breath. Corey was silent too.
Then it sniffed. I swear to God, it sniffed the
tent wall right next to my head. Long, heavy breaths, like it was
tasting our scent. I didn't move, neither did
Corey. A moment passed, then another.
Then I heard Luis whisper from his side of the tent.
Guys, there's someone out there. They're, they're looking at me.
He sounded choked, afraid in a way I'd never heard before.
I started to unzip the tent, just a little, just enough to
peek out, but something beat me to it.
A shadow passed across the mesh, a shape, upright but bent.
Its hands dragged across the fabric as it moved, slow and
deliberate. Its fingers were too long.
I backed away and grabbed my flashlight.
The second I turned it on, everything stopped.
No wind, no movement, no sound. Then, from the tree line just
past the fire, came a voice. Danny Boy.
I felt every hair on my body stand up.
It wasn't my grandfather this time.
It was me. My voice, but wrong, hollow,
like someone had recorded it and played it back through broken
speakers. Then it said Corey's name.
Then Louise's in every voice but our own.
Luis, come see. You're not scared, are you?
The voice laughed. I turned to Luis.
He was pale, sweating, gripping his camera like a weapon.
I saw it, he said. It was wearing my face.
What? In the trees?
Just standing there, I saw its eyes.
It smiled like me, Dan, but the mouth, it went too far.
Corey snapped. OK, enough of this.
This is ridiculous. We're sitting here scared of the
woods like kids. I'm going to take a piss and
come back and you 2 better have grown a pair.
Don't leave the circle. I said quickly.
Corey, don't break the circle. But he was already stepping
through it. He muttered something about not
being afraid of ghost stories and vanished into the dark.
I wanted to scream, I wanted to grab him and pull him back, but
I didn't. The second he stepped out the
fire flickered. Then we heard it.
Running. Not human, running animalistic,
too fast, circling. Louise gripped my arm.
Do you hear that? Corey came back into view, pale,
wide eyed, frozen. I, I think something's out
there, he said, barely above a whisper.
I felt it watching me. Then we heard a dry rattling
breath just behind him. I aimed the flashlight, and what
we saw did not belong to this world.
A figure hunched low, crawling fast on all fours, but the
joints bent the wrong way like a puppet with broken strings.
Its back arched unnaturally, spine visible through its
mottled skin, and when it stopped and stood, it unfolded
like a spider standing upright. It had a face, a stretched,
leathery face, but it was wearing it, not owning it, sewn
around its own twisted features. It smiled, and then it spoke in
Louis's voice. Come on, man, it's just a joke.
I dragged Corey back inside the circle.
We piled sleeping bags, gear, and even the cooler in front of
the tent's zipper. Then we heard a new sound.
Zip. The tent was unzipping from the
outside. I shoved my hand forward,
flashlight in one hand, knife in the other.
In the split second glimpse through the half open tent flap,
I saw fingers, long, clawed, dirty and bent backward, feeling
along the zipper like it was learning what it was.
Then Louise screamed, Not inside the tent, outside.
We burst out, but he was gone. Just gone.
No struggle, no blood, no noise. Just his camera lying on the
dirt, still recording. Corey picked it up with shaking
hands. We watched the footage right
there, using the back screen. It showed Louise sitting alone,
looking toward the trees. Then a figure stepped into frame
behind him. Not walked.
Crawled like a lizard down a tree, head first.
Its arms reached out, then folded Luis into them like he
was nothing. He didn't fight, he just
vanished into the dark. And then the camera turned on
its own and showed the face. Luis's face, grinning wrong,
stretched too wide. And then the feed cut out.
We didn't speak, we didn't cry. We just packed what we could and
started walking. We didn't know where, just away.
I never told Corey what I saw in the fire light just before we
left, just past the ashes of the broken circle, there were hoof
prints, barefoot tracks and drag Marks and written in the ash in
crooked block letters. Let us in.
We didn't stop walking until the sun came up.
No sleep, no food, no plan. Just the two of us, me and
Corey, hauling what was left of our gear through miles of empty
scrubland, hoping we'd hit a road or see headlights or
something that didn't have a face sewn from someone we used
to know. Luis was gone, and I wasn't even
sure he died. That somehow made it worse.
I tried to keep my mind moving, tried to focus on distance,
direction, anything but Corey. Corey was breaking.
He wasn't talking, not really, just muttering to himself,
replaying the footage on Luis's camera over and over, even
though the battery had died hours ago.
We came across the SUV by mid morning, but it was already too
late. All four doors were wide open.
The inside was gutted, ripped apart like a coyote had gotten
into it, except there were no paw prints, just long bare feet
in the dust. And something else.
Hooves. Small ones, the kind you'd
expect on a goat or a fawn, but spaced wrong, too far apart,
like something bipedal wearing the wrong skin.
The seats had been clawed up. My backpack was open, every item
inside arranged in a neat little pile across the windshield, like
it was studying us, like it knew what mattered.
The driver's side window had a message scratched into the glass
from the inside. We follow your voice.
I dropped the keys. They wouldn't matter anyway.
The battery was stone dead. We're being hunted, I said
flatly. It's not just trying to scare
us. It wants us lost, alone.
Corey nodded, still blank. I remembered something my
grandfather told me when I was nine, that if you're being
followed by something not of this world, you don't go home.
You don't run straight, you don't give it a trail to follow.
Instead, you head to where the old spirits sleep.
That's when I remembered the Hogan.
It was built by my grandfather's grandfather, half buried in the
Canyon near the old shepherd paths.
He used to take me there sometimes when I was a kid.
It was sacred, untouched, maybe even protected.
We headed there. The farther we got into the
Canyon, the quieter it became. No birds, no wind, not even our
footsteps made much sound anymore, like the rocks were
listening. Around noon, we started hearing
them again. Our own voices from behind the
rocks, from the ridges above us, always just far enough that we
couldn't see where they were coming from.
Corey, you left me, bro. Danny, it's Luis.
I'm OK, I just need help. But there was no echo, no weight
to the words. They floated hollow.
Corey broke first. He turned sharply and screamed
into the rocks. Shut up, you're not him, The
Canyon responded in perfect mimicry.
Shut up, you're not him. Same tone, same rage, same
pitch, but higher, like a child mocking its parent.
That's when the rocks started falling.
Not a landslide, just a warning. Something was above us.
We reached the Hogan by late afternoon.
It was half buried into the side of a slope, its doors sealed
with thick planks, the red clay walls covered in faded symbols,
Navajo protection glyphs, some scratched away, some still
strong. I pushed the door open and
nearly wept inside. It smelled like cedar and sage,
dusty but untouched. In the center there was a small
circle of black ash, intact. We dropped everything and sat
inside it. I grabbed the old satchel from
the altar shelf, my grandfather's pouch of blessed
ash and turquoise chips, and kept it clutched tight in my
hands like it was the only real thing left in the world.
Outside, the air turned thick, like we were being suffocated by
silence. Then came the knock, three
times, slow, rhythmic, like it had all the time in the world.
I held my breath. Another knock, but it came from
the opposite side of the Hogan now.
Then another, above us on the roof.
Corey whimpered. It's surrounding us.
No, I whispered. It is us.
It's inside our heads. Then the voice came right
outside the door. Luis's voice.
Dan, open up, man, I'm hurt. Silence.
Then it came again, from behind us this time.
Please, it's so dark out here. Don't leave me out here.
I stood, stepped toward the door.
Corey grabbed my arm. Don't.
I'm not, I said. I think it knows it's losing.
Outside, it growled, Not like a bear, not like a coyote.
Something deep and wet, like breath caught in a throat.
Too long. The voice changed.
Daniel. It wasn't Luis anymore.
It was my grandfather. Open the door, son.
We need to bury you. My knees buckled.
Then something slammed against the wall so hard it shook the
dirt from the ceiling. Then again, again.
The door cracked. Wood splintered.
It was coming in. I ripped open the satchel,
grabbed the ash, whispered the only prayer I could remember.
My dine was Rusty, but I spoke it anyway, with everything I
had. And when the door shattered and
the thing crawled in, I saw its real face.
It had none. Just raw sinew, holes for eyes,
a mouth that stretched and warped and split open as it
screamed. But its scream was layered,
dozens of voices all at once, like a choir of the dead.
I threw the ash in its face. It hit like acid.
It screeched, a sound so sharp it made my ears bleed and burst
into fire without flame. A white hot flash that lit the
Hogan like a furnace. It didn't run.
It crawled out backwards, screaming all the way, bones
snapping, skin tearing off as it went.
Then it was gone, and the silence returned.
The sun rose like it had no idea what had happened.
We were found by a park Ranger around 8:00 AM.
Corey was curled up in the ashes.
I was standing on the Ridge above the Hogan, staring at
nothing. They didn't ask questions, just
got us out. Luis's body was never found.
We gave them the story they expected.
We got lost. Luis wandered off.
We panicked. That was it.
They didn't push. Corey deleted the footage.
Every file, every photo. I moved back in with my
grandmother in Gallup and spent the next three weeks in
ceremony, cleansing, fasting, burning prayers into cedar wood.
She didn't ask what happened. She just looked at me one night
and said you brought something back with you.
I asked what she meant. She pointed to my shadow on the
wall. It was still even when I moved.
Some things don't just wear your skin.
They wear your voice, your memories, and if you're not
careful, they wear you. It started as one of those last
hurrah kind of trips. We were all about to drift into
different corners of adulthood. Marcos was moving to Portland
for work, Trey had just proposed to his girlfriend, and I I guess
I just didn't want to be left behind.
So when I found that old field journal in my uncle's things,
dirt stained leather cover filled with yellowed pages and
half erased warnings, I suggested a camping trip out
near the border of the Navajo Nation.
Somewhere remote, somewhere real.
I should have just thrown that journal away.
Uncle Ray was a Ranger back in the early 2000s.
He disappeared in 2003 while on a solo Backcountry patrol.
They never found him, just his truck parked near a Canyon that
no longer had a name. The journal was tucked beneath
the driver's seat in a plastic bag labeled DO NOT OPEN HERE.
Naturally, I opened it. There was a hand drawn map,
charcoal sketched arrows leading toward what he called the
hollow. Beneath one line of scribbles he
wrote they mimic, stay quiet, don't say names after dark.
I told the guys it was just some forgotten slot Canyon near
Kayenta, perfect for off grid camping.
Trey was all for it. Marcos was hesitant, but he'd
always been the voice of reason we ignored.
We loaded up the car and headed out early Friday morning.
It was hot by the time we hit Tuba City, and I remember the
air starting to feel thick. Not warm, thick.
Like trying to breathe through wet cotton.
I didn't say anything, didn't want to start the trip off
Weird. We stopped at this tiny gas
station that looked like it hadn't been updated since 1987.
I went inside to grab a few more waters and this old Dine woman
at the register watched me like I'd just dragged dirt into her
soul. She didn't speak until I handed
her a 20. You boys going into those
canyons? She asked.
I paused. Yeah, planning to camp for a
night or two. She didn't take the money.
Instead, she reached under the counter and handed me a little
pouch tied with red yarn. I opened it and caught the scent
of sage and something sweet. Juniper, maybe.
It was warm in my hand, like it had just come from the sun.
You leave this at your tent entrance, she said.
And don't say names when the moon rises.
Not even your own? I laughed a little.
What happens if we do? She didn't smile.
They'll wear your skin to find you.
I left the 20 on the counter and got the hell out.
We drove another hour down the back roads, passing nothing but
dust, rock and silence. Eventually even the GPS tapped
out, leaving us with the hand sketched directions from Ray's
journal. We followed an old service road
and found a dry riverbed, the kind you'd miss if you blinked.
That was our turn off the Canyon.
Walls opened like jaws, reddish orange stone looming on both
sides. I swear the shadows in that
place moved before the sun did. Marcos kept glancing behind us
like he expected something to crawl out of the rocks.
Trey just played music and rolled a joint.
We reached a flat clearing beside a low Cliff face.
No trees, no wind, no noise. That kind of dead silence you
only hear in the desert when every animal knows not to make a
sound. We set up camp anyway.
Trey found some old petroglyphs carved into the Canyon wall.
He snapped pictures and joked about summoning desert demons.
Marcos was quiet, nervously checking his phone even though
it had no signal. I didn't mention that the Canyon
wasn't on any recent maps, just Ray's journal.
By sundown, the stillness had become wrong, like the world was
holding its breath. We were sitting by the fire,
passing the bottle when we heard the first whistle, sharp and
short, like someone trying to get our attention from the rocks
above. We all looked up at once.
There was nothing there. A few minutes later, Marco swore
he saw a figure watching us from the Ridge, a man crouched low
but with a face that looked stretched too long and sharp,
like a snout. We laughed it off, said he was
just spooked. Then the coyote started howling,
but it didn't sound right. It wasn't in the distance like
usual. It was close, too close.
One call was behind us. The reply came from the opposite
direction, maybe 30 feet away. No movement, no glowing eyes,
just sound. Perfect mimicry.
It all went quiet by midnight. I woke up sometime later, must
have been 3:00 in the morning, to the sound of clicking light,
rhythmic, like fingernails tapping on rock.
It circled the tent once, then again.
I held my breath and listened. Trey and Marcos were out cold.
Then something pressed against the fabric of the tent right
next to me. I didn't move.
I didn't make a sound. The imprint stayed there for
five, maybe 10 seconds. Human, but too large fingers too
long. Six of them.
And then it was gone. I didn't sleep the rest of the
night. When the sun finally started to
rise, we unzipped the tent. And that's when we saw it.
A perfect ring of dead birds surrounded our camp.
Dozens of them. Sparrows, Wrens, even a hawk,
each one laid out, beak out, all facing the tent.
Their eyes were gone. We were packing up before
coffee. I went to unlock the SUV and
froze. There was a handprint on the
back window. Blood red, smudged from the
inside. We left the Canyon as soon as
the sun cleared the horizon. None of us said much.
Marcos refused to look back. Trey tried to act like he wasn't
rattled, but he kept shaking out his sleeves like something might
still be crawling under his skin.
I drove fast. The red handprint on the inside
of the rear window was still there.
Even after I wiped it three times, it wouldn't come off,
just smeared. The plan was simple, get to
higher ground, find a signal and call for help.
But about 5 miles down the trail, the SUV started
sputtering, the dashboard lights flickered, then the engine died
completely. Just shut off.
The battery was fine, fuel gauge was fine, but the key might as
well have been a rock. Trey popped the hood, but
nothing looked out of place. No signs of chewing, no leaks.
It was like something had drained the car of life without
touching a single wire. We didn't argue, we knew we
couldn't stay. We grabbed our packs and started
walking the road back the way we came, toward the last marked Rd.
we passed the day before. The temperature was rising fast,
that kind of dry heat that cooks your skin from the inside out.
The wind never came back, just the sound of our boots crunching
sand and our water sloshing in half empty bottles.
We'd been walking maybe 2 hours when Trey stopped dead in his
tracks. There's something up there, he
said. I scanned the path ahead.
Nothing, just a Ridge and a bend in the road.
But Marcos was already backing away, whispering.
It's watching us. We didn't see it at first, just
a flicker of movement near the rocks.
Then something stepped out. A man, or what looked like one
at a distance. He was tall, unnaturally tall.
His limbs were too long, his shoulders sloped at an odd
angle, like his bones didn't understand how human joints were
supposed to work. He was wearing Trey's shirt, the
one he was wearing right then. Same hole in the sleeve, same
faded red, same sweat stains. But it wasn't Trey.
The thing didn't move. It just stood there, head
tilted, arms hanging limp, like it was waiting for us to say
something. We didn't.
We turned and ran. I don't remember how long we
ran, maybe a mile, maybe more. But the desert doesn't give you
cover and we were too exposed. We only stopped when Trey
collapsed to the ground, heaving and gasping.
Marcos dropped beside him. I was about to pull out our last
water bottle when I saw it. The thing hadn't followed us on
foot. It was just there again, 20 feet
away, closer this time, still silent, still smiling with lips
that didn't look made for smiling.
Trey was the first to move. He picked up a fist sized rock
and hurled it. It missed, bouncing harmlessly
off the dirt. The thing didn't flinch.
Instead it turned around and walked slowly into the Canyon,
brush vanishing like it had never existed.
We didn't talk the rest of the hike.
We didn't run either, Just kept moving, eyes wide, jumping at
every sound. The birds never returned, The
wind stayed dead, even the sun felt colder.
Then we lost Trey. It happened fast.
He said he needed to step off the road to piss.
We told him not to go far. He waved, cracked a joke about
getting skinned by desert demons, and vanished into the
scrub brush. We waited. 5 minutes passed,
then 10. I called for him.
No answer. Marco started getting nervous.
Dylan, I don't like this. We both shouted his name.
Then from the brush, we heard Trey's voice coming.
Just a second. Relieved, we waited.
A moment later, Trey stepped out of the brush with a big grin on
his face, but he was off. His movements were too stiff,
like someone figuring out how to walk.
His smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
His voice sounded the same, but the way he said words felt
practiced, rehearsed. Marcos kept glancing at me, and
I could tell he felt it too. Something wasn't right.
Trey walked with us for another mile.
He didn't say much, just hummed A tuneless song under his
breath. He didn't drink water, didn't
ask for any, and his eyes kept flicking toward the rocks like
he was checking for something. Then, around dusk, we stopped to
rest in the shade of a rock formation.
Marcos pulled me aside. That's not Trey, he whispered.
Look at his hands. I did.
His nails were cracked, blackened like frostbite, and he
had six fingers on his left hand.
We turned to confront him, but Trey was gone again, gone like
vapor. Then, from behind the rocks, we
heard laughter. First Marcos's voice, then mine,
then Trey's, all at once, all wrong.
I don't remember drawing the flashlight from my pack.
I just know that we turned and swung it at something moving too
fast, too close. The flashlight hit hard and the
thing crumpled to the dirt. It looked like tray, but as it
twitched and hissed, its skin began to Slough off, peeling in
strips like bark. Beneath the muscle was dark and
webbed with thin white fibers like roots.
Its chest split open, not from injury, but intentionally, and
inside were rows of jagged teeth.
No throat, no bones, just endless gnashing.
And through that open mouth chest it whispered, You
shouldn't have come here. We ran.
The last thing I heard as we stumbled away through the dark
was the thing laughing. Using my voice, we made it out
of the Canyon just after dawn. Or at least it looked like dawn.
The light felt wrong, dimmer than it should have been, like
the sun was rising through a sheet of wax paper.
Everything around us was muted. Colors, sounds, even the air.
It was like stepping back into the world, but not quite all the
way. Marcos and I were both scratched
up, dehydrated and stumbling. By the time we hit the highway.
I didn't even remember seeing the pavement.
We were just suddenly on it. Miles of dead Rd. in both
directions. I was about to scream when I saw
headlights coming over the hill. A tribal patrol officer found
us. I barely remember what I said.
I think I just kept repeating Trey's name.
Marcos didn't speak at all. He just stared out into the
desert, rocking slightly like something was still whispering
in his ear. They took us to a small clinic
in Tuba City. The nurse cleaned our wounds.
No one asked too many questions. That's when the medicine man
arrived. They didn't call him.
He just showed up. Late 50s, stone, faced with
silver streaks in his braids and a necklace of carved bone.
He walked into my room like he already knew what had happened.
Not the details. What happened?
He sat across from me and didn't say anything for a long time.
Then finally, he asked. Did you say its name?
I didn't answer because I didn't know what name he meant.
He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper.
They can't take you unless you call them.
Unless you speak the name of someone it's wearing.
When you saw it, did you call it by name?
I thought back. That thing in Trey's shirt, the
way I yelled for him when he wandered off, the way I screamed
his name when we saw it grinning at us from the rocks.
Yeah, I said his name more than once.
I nodded. The medicine man looked down
then. It knows yours now.
He performed A cleansing ritual that night, burning herbs,
chanting, brushing me down with eagle feathers and ash.
It should have felt comforting, but it didn't, not really.
It felt like trying to mop up a flood with paper towels, like
whatever I'd invited in wasn't something that could be swept
away. He handed me a pouch of ash and
said, keep this with you. You may have delayed it, but if
it comes again, run. Don't speak.
Don't even think in your own voice.
That night, Marcos vanished from the motel.
No struggle, no signs of forced entry.
His shoes were by the door, untouched.
His bed was still made, just gone.
Only one thing was out of place. The bathroom mirror had
something scratched into the glass.
You said my name. I checked out that morning and
drove straight back to Phoenix. I didn't stop once.
I didn't even listen to music, just white noise on the radio.
I left the sage pouch in my lap the entire way.
For a while, things were quiet. Weeks passed.
I saw a therapist. I started writing down what
happened, Told myself it was just trauma, A hallucination,
some shared psychotic episode in the desert.
But then the handprint came back on the inside of my car window.
Same shape, same angle, same 6 fingers.
That was two nights ago. Yesterday, I got a text from
Marcos's number. No words, just a video
attachment. I shouldn't have opened it, but
of course I did. The footage was shaky, like
someone filming from chest height walking slowly into a
motel bathroom. The camera tilted up toward the
mirror. What I saw in the reflection
wasn't Marcos. It wasn't anyone.
No face, just a mess of stretched skin pulled tight over
a skull with black pits where the eyes should have been.
It turned slowly and whispered in my voice.
Dylan. The video cut off.
I haven't slept since. I keep hearing footsteps outside
my apartment window, but every time I check, nothing's there.
Just silence. The kind of silence I remember
from the Canyon. The kind that waits.
I know what you're thinking, that it's in my head that I'm
spiraling, and I wish that were true.
I really, really do. But just now, as I'm writing
this, I heard something scratch the back of my front door and a
voice whispered, Let me wear you.
If you're reading this, don't go looking for the Canyon.
Don't read from journals that weren't meant for you.
And if someone steps out of the dark wearing the face of your
friend, don't speak. Don't run, just close your eyes
and pray it hasn't learned your name yet.
I never thought I'd be the kind of person to post something like
this online, but honestly I don't know where else to go with
it. I'm not looking for cliques or
karma or sympathy. I just need someone, anyone to
hear this. And maybe believe me, because
what happened out near Dry Creek wasn't just weird, it wasn't
just a hallucination or desert fever or anything I can explain
away. It was something else.
It started two weeks ago. I driven up to Northern Arizona
to visit my mom after her stroke.
She's OK now, mild symptoms mostly affecting her balance,
but it shook me enough to finally answer my dad's
voicemails. They still live in Dry Creek, a
little out of the way junction, about 30 minutes southwest of
Sedona, close to the border of Coconino and Kaibab National
Forest. If you blink, you'll miss it.
Just a couple of feed stores, a diner, and some ranch style
houses scattered between dirt roads and dry washes.
I hadn't been back in years. There wasn't really a reason to.
I moved to Flagstaff after college and things with my
parents. Let's just say we weren't on
weekly phone call terms, but something about seeing my dad
looking older, my mom quieter, made me feel like I'd been away
too long. That second night after dinner,
we were sitting on the porch watching the sun dip behind the
ridgeline. It was one of those Sedona
sunsets that paints the red rocks gold and turns the sky
into fire. I mentioned how much the place
hadn't changed, and my dad just nodded.
You should check out Sycamore Canyon, he said, after a pause
trail got reopened. A few months back.
I remembered that trail. We used to hike it when I was a
teenager. It cuts through the northern
edge of the wilderness area and has some incredible views if you
know where to look. I told him maybe I would, and he
nodded again, more serious this time.
But don't go past the old cattle gate, he added.
Not unless you want to see something that won't leave you
alone. I laughed.
Couldn't help it. He always had a flair for weird
warnings, dry desert humor mixed with half believed folklore.
Skinwalkers, shadow things, dead coyotes that walk upright.
I grew up hearing those stories around campfires and cookouts.
I figured he was just trying to give me one last spook for the
road. The next evening I drove out to
the trailhead with a headlamp, a flashlight and a full bottle of
water. I started around 6:30 PM.
The sun was low, but there was still plenty of light and the
air was that perfect kind of cool that only happens right
before the desert drops into the cold.
Everything was familiar, the dusty trail markers, the rust
colored rocks lining the path, the whisper of pine higher up
the Ridge. About 45 minutes in I came
across it. The gate.
Just like he said, it was old, maybe 60-70 years if I had to
guess. A rusted metal thing, half
swallowed by dirt and leaning sideways like it was too tired
to keep standing. The no trespassing sign zip tied
to it had been weathered down to just a ghost of words.
The area past it looked wild, overgrown, less like a trail and
more like a place the forest had decided to reclaim.
I stood there for a second. I really did consider turning
back. The light was fading fast and my
phone didn't have a signal. But then I heard something
faint, almost imagined the sound of rushing water.
There shouldn't have been any. I stepped over the gate.
The first thing I noticed was how fast everything changed.
The dirt got softer, like it hadn't been walked on in years.
The air got colder, even though the sun hadn't fully set.
And the smell. It was faint but sharp,
metallic, like pennies left out in the rain.
I followed A narrow, downward sloping wash, ducking under low
branches and stepping carefully over rocks until I reached it.
The Creek. It wasn't very wide, maybe 15
feet across, but it was moving fast, crystal Clearwater,
cutting through stone that looked almost black in the
fading light. It felt off, not wrong exactly,
but out of place, like it didn't belong in this part of the
Canyon. And I'd hiked Sycamore Canyon a
dozen times growing up. I'd never seen water run through
this stretch, not even in spring.
I turned on my flashlight. That's when I saw the
footprints. They were on my side of the
Creek, maybe 10 feet from where I stood.
At first I thought they were human, bare feet deep
impressions in the sandy bank. But something about them made my
stomach twist. The toes were too long, almost
finger like. The arch was too high, and the
depth of the Prince made no sense unless the thing that left
them weighed 3 or 400 lbs. I crouched to get a closer look,
sweeping my light over the Prince.
The mud glistened like it was fresh, like whatever made them
had just been there. Then I heard it.
My voice over here. It came from across the water,
low, casual, almost like I was calling someone from behind a
door. I froze.
The flashlight beam jerked upward, slicing through the
darkness on the far bank. Trees, rocks, movement.
And then it stepped into the light.
My brain couldn't register it at first.
I saw a figure, humanoid, definitely, but warped.
Its arms hung too long. The knees bent forward, but too
far, like they weren't built for walking upright.
Its skin was pale and sagging, almost translucent, like it had
been soaked in water for too long.
And its head, its head looked like mine, or was trying to.
It was like a sculptor tried to make my face out of melted wax,
close enough to make my stomach flip, but wrong in all the ways
that mattered. Lips too wide, eyes too black.
A grin stretched tight across the jaw, like someone had
stapled it in place. Over here, it said again, Same
voice, my voice, but this time its mouth moved badly.
The words didn't match the motion.
They came too slow or too fast, with gaps between syllables that
didn't belong, like a recording that kept skipping.
I backed up. My heel hit a rock and I
stumbled. The flashlight dropped, rolling
out of reach. When I looked back, it was gone.
The far bank was empty, but the woods were silent now.
Not quiet, silent. Even the Creek had gone still,
and that's when I heard the branches crack behind me.
It was on my side of the water. I ran.
No hesitation, no second guesses.
I turned and ran like something primal inside me had taken over.
I couldn't hear it at first, over my own heartbeat, but a few
seconds in I realized it was behind me.
Following, stumbling, dragging. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow,
sometimes right next to me when I didn't hear it move at all.
And then it started mimicking me again.
Help me, it cried. Voice breaking.
Please. It wailed like a dying thing.
It begged. It laughed.
Every sound came in my voice. It sounded like me in pain, me
sobbing, me screaming for someone to come back.
I didn't stop. I couldn't.
I crashed through brush and nearly broke my ankle on loose
stone, but when I saw the faint reflection of my truck's tail
lights in the dark, I nearly cried.
I didn't even check behind me. I dove into the driver's seat,
slammed the door, locked it, and fumble with the keys like a man
trying to outrun death. When the headlights came on, I
looked up. It was standing in the middle of
the trail, its head tilted at that awful angle, its grin even
wider now, its body slack like a puppet held up by invisible
strings. And then it raised one hand and
waved. I didn't talk to anyone on the
drive back from Dry Creek. Not my parents, not my friends,
not even my boss who was expecting me to call in about
work that Monday. I just got in the car, white
knuckled the steering wheel, and drove N up I-17 like something
was still behind me. That night, when I got home to
Flagstaff, I left all the lights on.
I didn't sleep. I told myself I had just seen
something. A sick hiker, A deranged
squatter, my mind making patterns out of shadows.
But I knew that wasn't true because what I saw by the Creek,
it knew me. It wore my voice like a mask.
It wanted me to hear it. And the worst part?
It wanted me to believe it was me.
I didn't go to work that week. I didn't tell anyone why.
I lied about food poisoning and shut myself in.
I triple locked the doors, pulled the blinds, slept with a
baseball bat next to my bed and a flashlight under my pillow.
I tried to convince myself it had stayed in the Canyon, that
whatever I saw belonged out there in that dark pocket of
wilderness. But it didn't.
It followed me home. I woke up that first night to a
sound I couldn't immediately place.
Soft, repetitive, like someone tapping on glass.
I sat up in bed, frozen. My phone said 2:41 AM.
The tapping came again. It was coming from my bedroom
window. I live on the 2nd floor.
The air in the room shifted, went still, heavy.
My mouth was dry. I didn't want to look.
Every nerve in my body screamed don't look, but I had to.
I turned, slow as death, and looked toward the window.
Nothing. Just closed blinds.
No silhouette, no movement. No.
Then it spoke. I see you.
It was my voice, and not a recording, not a hallucination,
my voice whispering from the other side of the glass.
I didn't move for the rest of the night.
When the sun finally came up, I went outside and checked the
ground under the window. Nothing.
No footprints, no scuff marks, just clean dirt and frost
covered gravel. I told myself it was stress,
PTSD or something. I even considered going to a
doctor. But then the knocking started
again. It didn't happen every night.
Some nights were dead quiet, but those were the worst, because it
meant I didn't know when it would come back.
And when it did knock, it wasn't just one place.
Sometimes it was the window, sometimes the back door.
Sometimes, God help me, it was the garage, which I started
padlocking. Each time it knocked, it said
something different. I'm cold.
I don't know where I am. You left me there, always in my
voice. But as the days passed, the
voice changed. The tone cracked, words slurred.
Sometimes it sounded like me in pain, other times like me
whispering through gritted teeth, and sometimes it didn't
sound like me at all. It sounded like something trying
to imitate me, like a broken speaker trying to speak a
language it didn't understand. The worst was the laughter.
It came on the fourth night, around 3:10.
AMI just started to drift off when I heard it right outside
the living room window. This dry, rattling cackle that
started in my voice and twisted into something deeper, wetter,
like it was laughing with a mouthful of blood.
That night I slept in my bathroom with the door locked,
lights on, and the bat on my lap.
And then came the roof. I didn't hear it at first.
I felt it. A low thud above me.
Then another. Footsteps.
Slow, deliberate pacing from one end of the roof to the other.
Heavy enough to creak the ceiling light enough not to
breakthrough. I live alone.
No pets, no upstairs neighbors, just me and whatever the hell
was now walking around above my bedroom like it had every right
to be there. Then came the voice, muffled,
like it was speaking through the insulation.
I'm so cold, it said. Please.
I couldn't tell where it was coming from.
Above me, beside me, inside me. Then the pacing stopped right
above my bed. I didn't move.
I didn't even breathe. I see you.
I squeezed my eyes shut, clenched my hands over my ears,
and still I felt the words sink into my chest, like it was
already in the walls, like it was already inside the house and
just waiting for me to say yes. When I woke up the next morning,
there was nothing on the roof, no prints, no signs of forced
entry. But the coppery smell from the
Canyon was in the house, faint but sharp, like something left a
piece of itself behind. That was the first time I
seriously thought I might be losing it.
I started taking pictures of the windows, recording audio at
night. I even set up my phone with a
motion sensor app. But every time I looked at the
results, nothing. The app would crash.
The camera would stop recording once the video played back with
my face staring into the lens for 10 straight minutes,
completely still. I never hit record.
I deleted it. The following week, it got
worse. I came home from grabbing
groceries, maybe 20 minutes tops, and found the front door
open. Not wide open, just cracked.
Like someone wanted me to know they could get in but chose not
to. Nothing was taken, nothing
moved. Except in my bedroom, my mirror.
There was a handprint on the glass.
Not pressed, not smudged. Dragged like something slick
with mud had slid its fingers down the surface. 5 long
streaks, all pointed toward the base and just above it, drawn
into the fogged glass. I see you.
I haven't used that room since I sleep on the couch now, if you
can call it sleep. Most nights I lie awake until
the sky starts to turn blue. Baseball bat on my chest,
flashlight by my side, trying not to think about the fact that
whatever I saw in Sycamore Canyon isn't just following me,
it's learning. It knows where I live, it knows
my voice, and it knows how to sound like someone worth saving.
I don't know what I expected when I went back to Sycamore
Canyon. Closure maybe answers proof I
wasn't losing my mind, or maybe I just wanted it to end.
The sleepless nights, the laughter outside the window, the
way my own voice had started sounding wrong when I talked to
myself in the mirror. I stopped recognizing it,
stopped recognizing me. Something had to give.
So I packed what I thought I might need.
My flashlight, a backup headlamp, my old hunting knife,
and the baseball bat I've been sleeping next to for two weeks
straight. I even brought a bottle of
whiskey I'd meant to leave for my dad as a gift.
Not sure if I plan to drink it or use it as bait.
Maybe both. I didn't tell anyone where I was
going, not that anyone would have believed me.
I hit the trail just after six in the evening.
The sky was bleeding out its last bit of orange by the time I
passed the old, rusted sign at the edge of the Sycamore Canyon
Wilderness. The same route I'd taken before,
back when this all started. Only this time, something was
different. The cattle gate wasn't there.
It was gone completely. No frame, no hinges, not even
the patch of disturbed earth it used to stand on.
Just open desert and silence so thick it felt like sound had
been vacuumed out of the world. I kept walking.
The path twisted into the ravine like before, but it looked more
overgrown now. Bushes clawing at my arms, trees
leaning in like they were watching me pass.
I hadn't noticed how the trunks bent inward before, or how the
dirt under foot felt soft, almost spongy, like walking on
skin. The air turned cold again.
The metallic smell was stronger this time, copper and mold and
old rot baked into the roots of the earth, that same sick
sweetness I'd smelled by the Creek.
And then a sound, My voice, but not calling.
This time it was singing, low and slow, a song I didn't
recognize, just a string of humming syllables in my cadence.
It echoed faintly, bouncing off the Canyon walls like it had
been practicing. I should have turned back.
I wanted to turn back, but something in me kept going.
The water came into view a few minutes later.
Same shallow Creek, same black rocks lining the edge.
Only this time there were footprints in the sand already,
mine from before, perfectly preserved, like time hadn't
touched them. And across the Creek, it was
waiting. It stood ankle deep in the
current, head low, arms limp at its sides, hair matted with
filth. The water didn't move around it.
It moved with it, like it was part of the flow.
The flashlight beam caught its skin, pale, sagging, seamless in
places, like it had grown from the ground rather than been
born. And its face, it was perfect.
This time, it didn't look like a twisted version of me anymore.
It was me, down to the scar on my eyebrow, the slight asymmetry
in my jaw, the little mole behind my left ear.
I couldn't speak, couldn't breathe.
It tilted its head and smiled. I remember now, it said in my
voice. You let me out.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
My tongue felt heavy, my lungs felt, watched.
What are you? I finally managed to ask.
It took a step forward. The water didn't splash you, it
said. Before you left.
It took another step. You, it said again.
After you die. It's voice shifted, slid between
tones. At one moment I was hearing
myself, then my mother's voice, then my father's, then something
else, something I didn't recognize.
A hollow, empty vibration, like wind blowing through a skull.
I don't understand, I whispered. It smiled wider.
You brought me back. I stumbled backward.
My heel caught the edge of a root and I nearly fell.
My flashlight trembled in my hand.
It didn't come after me. It just stood there, staring,
watching. Then it began to change.
Its skin rippled like water. Bones snapped into new
positions. Limbs shortened and widened.
Its face began to split open down the middle, like rotten
fruit. Inside, something darker,
wetter, eyes too many and too deep.
It was wearing me. That's when I remembered the
whiskey. My hands were shaking, but I
fumble the bottle out of my pack and yanked the cloth from my
back pocket. I wrapped it around the neck,
soaked it, and lit it with the emergency flare I'd packed, just
in case. The fire whooshed to life,
orange and wild. I threw it as hard as I could.
It landed just in front of the creature in the dry brush by the
Creek. Flames snapped to attention,
rising fast. The thing didn't move.
It just watched the fire like it was curious.
Then it opened its mouth again. Thank you.
I turned and ran. Branches whipped at my face.
Something screeched behind me. Not a voice, but the sound of
hundreds of voices breaking at once.
I didn't look back. I didn't stop.
I didn't care that I tripped twice, or that I dropped the
headlamp, or that I couldn't feel my legs by the time I
reached the road. When I saw my car, I sobbed.
I drove until the sky turned grey behind me.
That was 12 nights ago. Since then, the house has been
quiet. No footsteps, no laughter, no
voices begging to be let in. I've started sleeping again.
I even spoke to my mom on the phone last night.
I told her I was OK. I almost believe it.
But this morning, when I went to brush my teeth, I saw something
in the mirror. A handprint.
Just one clean, centered, the same shape as mine, but longer
in the fingers. And behind me, from the hallway,
I heard my voice say, You're not done yet.