SO EP:643 The Ginseng Hunters Confession

West Virginia. I've been digging Jen Saying since I was knee high to a grasshopper, learned from my daddy, who learned from his But there's more to these mountains than Jen Saying. And that's what I need to tell you about before I take this knowledge to my grave. You grow up in these hollows, You hear things, stories that get passed down like family recipes, each generation adding their own flavor but keeping the meat of it the same.

My grandpa used to tell me stories when I was young, sitting on his porch with a jar of moonshine, watching the sun disappear behind the ridges. He'd wait until the shadows got long and the lightning bug started their dance before he'd begin. Boy, he'd say, his voice rough as bark, these mountains got secrets older than coal, things that was here before the Cherokee, before anybody with sense enough to write it down. The first story he ever told me,

I was maybe seven years old. This would have been nineteen forty nine, back when half the roads in the county were still dirt and you could walk for days without seeing another soul back. In nineteen o two, Grandpa began. My uncle Harland was running a trap line up on black Fork Ridge. He was a hard man. Harland was fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt, came back missing two fingers and afraid of nothing. But something happened up on

that ridge that changed him. He'd been checking his traps for three days, working his way deeper into the mountains. On the third night, he made camp near a grove of hemlocks, big old trees that had probably been there since before the Revolution, built himself a good fire, cooked some rabbit he'd snared, and settled in for the night. Round about midnight, something woken. Wasn't a sound exactly, more like the absence of sound. You know how the woods

are at night, always something rustling or calling. But this was dead quiet, like the whole mountain was holding its breath. Harlan sat up, reached for his rifle. That's when he saw the eyes, not reflecting the firelight like a normal animal's wood, but glowing on their own, pale green like foxfire. They were high up, maybe eight feet off the ground, just watching him from the edge of the firelight. He called out, thinking maybe it was another trapper playing games.

The eyes didn't move, just kept staring. Then another pair appeared next to the first, Then another three sets of eyes, all at the same height, all that sickly green color. Harlan fired a shot over their heads, trying to scare them off. The eyes vanished, but not like they'd run away, more like someone had blown out candles all at once. He kept that fire burning high all night, feeding at every stick he could find. Come morning, he packed up and came down off the mountain. He never ran another

trap line, took up farming in the valley. Wouldn't even hunt deer if it meant going above the first ridge. When people asked him what he'd seen, he'd just shake his head and say, some things ain't meant to be trapped. Grandpa took a long pull from his jar, let the story sink in. Even at seven, I knew better than to ask if it was true. In the mountains, truth and story blend together like morning fog, and trying to

separate them only makes you lose both. The second story came a few years later, when I was old enough to help Grandpa work his still we were up in a hidden holler, tending the mash when he told me about the widow Thompson's encounter. This was nineteen twenty three, he said, stirring the mash with a long wooden paddle. The Thompson place sat way back in Laurel Holler, about as far back as folks dared to live. She'd lost her husband and a mind collapse, but she was a

tough woman. Stayed on with her three young'uns rather than move to town. One October evening, just as the leaves were turning, her oldest boy, James, didn't come home. He was twelve, old enough to roam, but young enough to know better than to stay out past dark. The widow waited until full dark, then lit a pine not torch and went looking. She found him about a half mile from the house, standing in a clearing, still as a statue.

The boy was staring up at something in the trees, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide as dinner plates. The widow called his name, but he didn't respond. She had to grab him by the shoulders and shake him before he seemed to see her. Mama, he whispered, the tall man in the trees, he's been talking to me. The widow looked up but saw nothing except branches and shadows. She dragged James home, and he came down with a

fever that lasted three days. When it broke, he couldn't remember anything about that night, but he was never the same after. Would wake up screaming about the tall man who walked bent over, dragging something behind him. Said the tall man wanted to take him to a special place where the bones piled high. The widow moved her family to town before the first snow. The house still stands, or what's left of it. Nobody's lived there since. My Daddy had his own stories, though he was less inclined

to tell them than Grandpa. Daddy was a practical man, believed in what he could see and touch, but even he couldn't explain everything that happened in these mountains. I remember one story he told me when I was sixteen, the night before my first solo, jen saying Hunt. We were sitting at the kitchen table, him nursing a cup of coffee that it had gone cold hours ago. This was nineteen fifty four. He began his voice low so as not to wake Mama. I was working timber with

a crew up near Panther Creek. Six of us, all mountain boys who knew our way around, an axe and a crosscut saw. We'd been cutting virgin timber trees so big it took two men with arms outstretched to reach around them. We had a camp set up near the cutting site, just canvas tents and a cook shelter. One night, our cook, an old fellow named Earl, went to the

creek to fill the water buckets. Full moon that night, brightest day almost He was gone maybe ten minutes when we heard him scream, not a yell like he'd heard himself, but a real scream, like a woman or a child in mortal terror. We all grabbed lanterns and rifles and ran toward the creek. Found Earl standing knee deep in the water, the buckets floating away downstream. He was pointing at the far bank, shaking so hard he couldn't speak. We looked where he was pointing, but didn't see nothing

at first. Then one of the boys held his lantern higher and we saw the tracks. They came out of the woods to the creek edge, then followed the bank up stream. But these weren't bear tracks or human tracks. They were wrong too big for one thing, But it was the shape that bothered me, like a man's foot, but stretched out with toes that were too long, too spread apart, and every other track was dragged like whatever

made them couldn't lift its left foot proper. We got Earl back to camp, gave him some whiskey to calm his nerves. When he could talk, he said he'd seen it, said it had been crouching by the water when he came up, drinking like an animal. When it hurt him, it stood up and up and up, eight nine feet tall, covered in dark hair, with arms that hung down past its knees. But it was the face that got him. Almost human, he said, but with eyes that reflected the

moonlight like a cat's. And when it looked at him, it smiled, not a friendly smile, but the way a fox smiles at a rabbit. It walked away, he said, dragging that left leg, following the creek upstream toward the high country. We broke camp the next morning. The timber company sent another crew, but they only lasted three days before they pulled out too. Said tools went missing, said they heard things at night, said they found more tracks.

Daddy paused stared into his cold coffee. I never told your mama this part, but I went back up there alone a week later. Don't know why. Maybe I didn't believe what I'd seen. Maybe I needed to prove to myself there was an explanation. I found our old camp site, found the creek where Earl had his scare, and I

found something else. About one hundred yards upstream from where we'd seen the tracks, there was a pile of bones, deer mostly, but some bear too, all cracked open, the marrow sucked out, and in the middle of the pile a timber crew ruiser's compass. One had gone missing from our equipment the night before Earl's encounter. I got out of there fast and never went back, never told the other boys what I'd found. Some knowledge is too heavy to share. These stories were just the background music of

growing up in the mountains. Every family had them, every holler had its history. But it wasn't until I had my own encounter that I started paying real attention to the patterns. After what happened to me in nineteen eighty three, I became something of a collector of these stories. Not officially, mind you, but I'd listened closer when the old timers talked, buy a few extra drinks at the VFW to loosen tongues. What I learned painted a picture I wish i'd never seen.

Take Luther for instance. Luther was a bear hunter, one of the best in three counties, ran hounds that could track a ghost through a thunderstorm. In November of nineteen eighty one, two years before my encounter, he was running a bear that his dog's jump near Elcorn Creek. The dogs were on a hot trail, their voices echoing through

the hollows like a church choir. Luther was following on foot, his rifle ready, when the dog's voices changed, went from that eager hunting cry to something else fear, pure primal fear. Then they went silent, all six of them at once. Luther found them huddled together in a laurel thicket, shaking like leaves, their tails tucked so far under they were touching their bellies. These were dogs that would face down a five hundred pound baar without blinking, and here they

were terrified of something. He was trying to coax them out when he heard the breathing, slow, deep rhythmic coming from somewhere above him. He looked up and saw it perched in a massive oak, like some nightmare bird. It was huge, covered in dark hair, with arms wrapped around the trunk, but it was looking down at him with eyes that caught the light like copper pennies. Luther raised his rifle and fired, without thinking. Hit it square in

the left thigh. Saw the blood spray, heard it roar, not like a bear or a big cat, but something almost human. It dropped from the tree, landing hard, and took off through the laurel. But that left leg wasn't working right. It dragged behind, leaving a blood trail in those strange wrong tracks. Luther's dogs wouldn't track it, wouldn't even leave the thicket until he physically carried them out one by one. He never hunted that section again, and

his dogs were never quite the same. Would start whimpering for no reason, refused to cross certain creeks. I know I hit it good, Luther told me one night, drunk on my whiskey and his own memories. That leg was ruined. If it was a normal animal, it would have died from blood loss or infection. But maybe it wasn't normal. Maybe it was something else, something that don't die easy.

Was the thing I couldn't stop thinking about. The creature I shot in nineteen eighty three, had a bad left leg, dragged it just like the one Luther shot in nineteen eighty one, same area too, just different ridges of the same mountain system. Could it have been the same one? Living with that injury for two years, getting hungrier, more desperate. And then there were the missing kids. The first was in nineteen seventy nine, before Luther's encounter, the poly twins

Bobby and Brian, age nine. They'd gone out to pick blackberries on a July morning, just up the slope from their family's trailer. Their mama could see the berry patch from the kitchen window, but when she looked up from her dishes, the boys were gone. The whole community searched for three days. Found one bucket, still half full of berries, sitting neat as you please on a log. No sign of struggle, no blood, no tracks except the boy's own.

It was like they'd just vanished into the air. Most folks figured they'd gotten around, died of exposure somewhere, but a few of the searchers mentioned finding other tracks, big ones that the Sheriff's department dismissed his bear sign. Then, in spring of nineteen eighty two, six months after Luther shot whatever he shot, little Sarah Morrison went missing. She was seven, playing in her backyard while her daddy worked on his truck. He heard her laughing talking to someone.

When he looked up, she was walking into the woods, looking up at something tall, like she was following a grown up. He called out, but she didn't turn around. By the time he reached the woodline, she was gone. They found her shoe three miles away, up near the ridge line, just one shoe, sitting on a rock like it had been placed there, nothing else. Her daddy swore until his dying day that she'd been talking to someone. That he'd seen a shadow moving between the trees, too

tall and wrong shape to be human. But the worst came after my encounter, which makes me wonder if I only wounded it made it meaner. Stay tuned for more sasquatch ott to see We'll be right back. After these messages. In the summer of nineteen eighty four, not even a year after I'd shot it, the Stapleton Boy vanished. Tommy Stapleton, age eleven experienced in the woods. He'd gone squirrel hunting early on a Saturday morning, taking the trail up toward

Beartown Ridge. Yes, the same ridge where I'd had my encounter. His daddy found his twenty two rifle at the base of a cliff. The barrel bent nearly in half. There were tracks in the soft earth, Tommy's boots and something else. Those wrong, dragging tracks, one foot normal, one sliding through the leaves. They led up to the cliff edge and just stopped. They never found Tommy, but hikers reported finding

strange things over the years. A child's torn shirt hung high in a tree, small bones arranged in patterned toys left on stumps like offerings. Old Mary, who lived at the mouth of the holler and knew things about these mountains that nobody else remembered. She told me something that chilled me worse than any winter wind. This was in nineteen eighty five, when I finally got the courage to ask her about what I'd seen. There's always been something

up there, she said, her voice, like dry leaves. My grannies. Granny knew about it. Said the Cherokee wouldn't hunt those ridges, said something walked there. That wasn't man nor beast, but something caught between. Said it had been there since before the tribes, since the world was young and different. They live a long time, these things, maybe forever if nothing kills them. But they get hurt like anything else, and hurt makes them dangerous, makes them forget the old agreements,

the boundaries. A hurt one is a rogue one, and a rogue one needs to eat. She looked at me with eyes clouded by cataracts, but somehow still sharp. You shot it, didn't you? Up on Beartown Ridge. I can see it on you, like mud on your shoes. I couldn't answer, but she nodded like I had. It's still up there, hurt, worse now, hungrier. Those children, it's trying to heal, trying to get strong again, young blood, young bones, the old ways, the bad ways. You opened a door

that should have stayed closed. I wanted to tell her she was crazy, but the words wouldn't come, because deep down I knew she was right. The thing I'd shot wasn't dead. It was up there, dragging that ruined leg through the hollows, taking children to some hidden place where bones piled high, just like the tall man in Young James Thompson's nightmares. Let me tell you about my encounter now, the one that connects all these threads. It was September

of nineteen eighty three. I remember because Reagan was president and my youngest boy had just started high school. I was up on Beartown Ridge, way back in the hollows where even the old timers don't venture much. That was my secret spot. You understand. Five generations of my family had worked those slopes, and I'd found patches there that make your eyes water, roots thick as a man's thumb,

some older than the Civil War. I'd been up there three days, camping rough like I always did, had my tent pitched near a little spring, maybe four miles from where I'd left my truck. The weather had been perfect for digging, cool mornings, warm afternoons, the kind of September that makes you forget winters. Coming on the third evening, something changed. I can't say exactly what. At first, you spend enough time in the woods, you develop a sense

for things. The jays had gone quiet, the squirrels weren't chattering. Even the creek seemed to run softer. I was cleaning roots by my tent when I noticed it, and the hair on my neck stood up like I'd touched a live wire. I kept but my eyes were moving scanning the tree line. Nothing, just shadows getting longer as the sun dropped behind the ridge. I had my thirty thirty leaning against a log nearby, always did when I was that far back. Bears, mostly though I'd never had to

use it. That's when I saw it move, maybe seventy yards up the slope between two big oaks, just to shape at first dark against the darker woods. Too big for a bear, wrong shape for a man. It stepped out from behind one of the trees and I got my first clear look. Lord help me. I wish I hadn't. It was massive, eight feet tall, maybe more, covered in dark hair that looked almost black in the fading light. But it was the way it moved that stuck out.

It dragged its left leg, pulling it along like dead weight. Each step was deliberate, calculated, and it was watching me. Even at that distance, I could I feel its eyes on me the left thigh. Even through the hair, I could see it was wrong, twisted, scarred Luther's shot from two years before had to be. This thing had been living with that injury, and now it was here, watching me with eyes that held too much intelligence for an animal. I reached for my rifle, slow as molasses, never taking

my eyes off the thing. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely work the lever. The creature took another step down the slope, then another. That dragging leg made a sound like somebody pulling a sack of feed through dry leaves. It stopped, maybe forty yards out, partially hidden behind a maple. I could see its chest rising and falling, see the way its head tilted as it studied me. The light was almost gone, but I could make out the shape of its face, almost human, but

wrong in every way that mattered. The eyes were too deep set, the jaw too heavy, and there was something in its expression not curiosity, not fear, hunger, the kind of desperate hunger that makes animals do things they normally wouldn't. I stood up, real slow, rifle in my hands. Get on out of here, I said, Surprise, my voice worked at all. Go on now. It made a sound then, not a roar or a howl like you'd expect, more like a long, low moan. That seemed to come from

somewhere deep in its chest. The sound to hurt animal makes, but there was something else in it too, something that made me take a step back toward my tent. Pain, yes, but also rage, old rage, the kind that ferments over time. That's when I remembered the stories, the missing kids, the strange tracks, Luther's shot. This wasn't just some animal protecting

its territory. This was something that had been hurt, had been hungry for two years, had maybe taken children to sustain itself, and now it was looking at me like I was the next meal. It shifted its weight and I saw its hands clearly for the first time too long, the fingers like pale spiders against its dark fur. One hand gripped the maple trunk, and I watched the bark crumble under its grasp. The other hand hung at its side, clenching and unclenching. I know what you are, I heard

myself say, I know what you've done. Something changed in its face. Then the lips pulled back, showing teeth that were almost human but too large, too sharp. Not a smile, not a snarl, but something between an acknowledgment, maybe like it understood me, and wanted me to know it understood. It came at me, not charging wild like a bear, but purposeful, deliberate. Even with that ruined leg, it moved

with terrible grace. It used the trees, swinging from trunk to trunk with its long arms, the bad leg dragging, but not slow it as much as I'd hoped. I fired when it was thirty yards out. The rifle kicked against my shoulder, the shot echoing off the ridges. I saw the impact, saw it stagger, but it kept coming. I worked the lever, fired again. This time it roared a sound that was almost words, almost human, screaming twenty yards. I could see its eyes clearly now that copper reflection,

the intelligence and hunger and pain all mixed together. I fired a third time, backing up my foot, catching on a root. I went down hard, the rifle flying from my hands. When I looked up, it was right there, ten feet away, reaching for me with those spider fingers. Blood was running from its shoulder, where one of my shots had hit, more blood from its side. The wounds would have dropped a bear, but this thing was still coming.

I scrambled backward, my hand finding a broken branch, not much of a weapon, but I held it out anyway. The creature stopped, tilted its head like a dog, hearing a strange sound. Then it made that moaning sound again, lower this time, and I realized it was trying to speak, trying to form words with a throat and mouth not quite made for human speech. Hurt, it said, or something like it hurt long time. My hand found the rifle I'd landed almost on top of it. As I brought

it up, the creature lunged. I fired point blank, saw the impact knock it backward. It fell hard, that broken leg twisting under it at an angle that made me sick to see. But it wasn't done. It tried to rise, pushing itself up with those long arms. Blood was pooling beneath it, more running from its mouth. It looked at me, and for just a moment, I saw something in its eyes that wasn't hunger or rage, understanding maybe, or just the recognition that one of us was about to die.

I fired one more time. The sound echoed forever, bouncing from ridge to ridge until it faded into the coming darkness. The creature fell back and was still. I waited rifle ready. When it didn't move, I grabbed my pack, left everything else and ran. I ran through the dark woods like hell itself was chasing me. Branches tore at my clothes, roots tried to trip me, but I kept running behind me. I thought I heard sounds, not footsteps, but voices calling,

like the woods themselves were mourning. I made it to my truck just as the moon was rising, started it on the third try, and drove out of there without looking back. When I got home, my wife took one look at me and knew something had happened, but she never asked, and I never told. But that wasn't the end of it. Three days later I drove back to the trailhead. Don't ask me why. Maybe I needed to know if it was real. Maybe I needed to know if it was dead. I didn't go up to my campsite,

just walked a little way up the trail, listening. The woods were normal, birds singing, squirrels chattering. But there was something else too, A smell on the wind, like copper and old leaves, and tracks in the mud, not the dragging tracks I'd learned to fear, but others, similar but different, smaller, some of them like juveniles, larger others, massive prints that

sank deep in the soft earth. They'd come for their dead, or they're wounded, because when I asked around, casual like, nobody had found any strange bodies up on Beartown Ridge. No bones, no blood except what the rain hadn't washed away. Whatever I'd shot, Others of its kind had taken it away. That's when I understood what Old Mary had meant about opening doors. I'd hurt one of them, maybe killed it, and they knew. They all knew. The disappearances can tinued,

but different now. Not just children, hikers who ventured too far from the trails, hunters who stayed out past dark, a whole family, the Washburns, who went camping up near the ridge in nineteen eighty seven and never came back, found their tent shredded, their car still parked at the trailhead. But no bodies, no blood, just those tracks everywhere, like a gathering, like a council of war. My cousin Derek

had his own encounter in nineteen ninety one. He was deer hunting, had a stand up in a white oak about two miles from where I'd shot the creature, just as the light was fading, he heard something big moving through the laurel below his stand. Figured it was the ten point buck he'd been after. But what emerged from the laurel wasn't a deer. It was one of them, a female, he thought, smaller than what I'd described, but still massive. She was carrying something, cradling it like a baby.

As she passed under his tree. She looked up right at him, like she'd known he was there all along. Her eyes, Derek told me later, whiskey, brave but still shaking. They were almost human, sad like she was grieving. And what she was carrying christ Clyde. It was wrapped in what looked like a burial shroud, but I could see a hand sticking out, a hand with those long, wrong fingers, but smaller like a child. She didn't threaten him, just looked at him for a long moment before continuing up

the ridge. Derek waited until full dark before climbing down and getting out of there. He never hunted that area again, never told anyone but me what he'd seen. You started something, he said, when you shot that one. They're different now, bolder, angrier. It's like you broke a treaty nobody knew existed. He was right. The patterns changed after nineteen eighty three. Before encounters were rare, separated by years or decades. After, they

became almost common. Not that anyone talked about them openly, but if you knew how to listen, the stories were there, Like the group of college kids who went camping in nineteen ninety four came back missing one of their friends and refusing to say what happened. Or the Forest service crew that quit en Mass in nineteen ninety seven, leaving

thousands of dollars of equipment behind. Or the developer who tried to build vacation homes up there in two thousand and one found his bulldozers flipped over and his survey stakes arranged in patterns that hurt to look at. My own son, though he don't know, I know, had a run in in two thousand and five. He'd taken his boy, my grandson, fishing up at beaver Dam Creek. They were packing up to leave when my grandson pointed at the woods and said, Papa, why is that tall man watching us?

My son looked and saw nothing, but he knew the stories had grown up, hearing whispers of them. He grabbed the boy and their gear and left quick. On the drive out, my grandson kept looking back, waving at something only he could see. And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after these messages. The tall man is sad. The boy said he walks funny because his leg hurts. He wanted to show me where the special bones are hidden, but I told him

we had to go home. My son never took him fishing there again. The boy, he's grown now, doesn't remember any of it. But sometimes I catch him staring at the tree line, head tilted, like he's listening to something the rest of us can't hear. I think about that creature I shot, more than I should. Dream about it. Sometimes in my dreams, it's still alive, still up there, dragging that ruined leg through the hollows, still hungry, still hunting.

And sometimes in those dreams it speaks clear, tells me about the pain that never stops, about the hunger that can't be filled, about the children it took trying to heal itself. You did this, it says in my dreams, You and the other one, the hunter broke the old ways, made us desperate made us dangerous. The children we needed, the children, young blood for old wounds, young bones for ancient hunger. I wake from those dreams, gasping, reaching for

a rifle. I don't keep by the bed anymore. My wife, God rest her soul. She knew something was wrong all those years, but never pushed. Maybe she had her own suspicions. Mountain women know to leave some questions unasked. But now she's gone, and I'm dying, and I can't take this to my grave alone. Someone needs to know. Someone needs to understand that there are boundaries in this world, lines that shouldn't be crossed, treaties written in shadow and silence

that we break at our peril. I killed something on Beartown Ridge in September of nineteen eighty three, or maybe I only wounded it worse. Either way, I change things. The old balance was broken. The things that walk those high ridges, that have walked them since before memory, they're different, now, hungrier, bolder, less willing to keep to their ancient places. If you're ever in the deep mountains past, where the cell phones work and the trails peter out, be careful. Watch for

tracks that drag. Listen for voices that almost form words. And if you see eyes watching from the trees, eyes too high and too intelligent to be animal, don't shoot, don't break the treaties you don't understand, because they remember every wound, every broken promise, every bullet fired in fear.

They remember, and they hunger and they wait, And sometimes, when the moon is dark and the mist rises from the hollows, they come down from the high places, looking for what was taken from them, looking for healing, looking for revenge. The children who vanish, the hikers who don't come home, the hunters who leave their rifles and swear off the woods forever. They're all part of a price being paid for wounds that won't heal, for a balance

that can't be restored. I'm the one who pulled the trigger, who drew blood on Beartown Ridge, But Luther started it with his shot in nineteen eighty one, turned a creature that might have been content to remain hidden into something desperate and dangerous. And I finished it, or tried to. Sometimes I think I can feel it still, not just in dreams but in waking moments, a presence at the edge of consciousness, a weight on my chest that isn't just the cancer. It's waiting for me, maybe waiting on

the other side of whatever comes next. The tall man with the ruined leg, still hungry, still hunting. My grandson, the one who saw it that day, fishing. He's got children of his own now. Sometimes I want to warn him, tell him to keep them away from the deep woods, away from the ridges where the mist hangs too long. But what would I say? How do you explain a treaty written in fear and blood? How do you describe

the hunger of something ancient and wounded? You can't. All you can do is hope the boundaries hold, Hope the old agreements still means something. Hope that what Luther and I broke can somehow be mended by time and distance and silence. But I don't think it can. The disappearances continue, not often, not enough to make the news, but enough. A child here, a hiker there, always near the old places, always leaving those dragging tracks that the Sheriff's department won't acknowledge.

Last month, my nephew called, said he'd been squirrel hunting up near Panther Creek, same area where Daddy saw the tracks back in fifty four said he'd found something I should know about. He'd followed what he thought was a game trail, ended up in a hollow he'd never seen before. There was a cave there, behind a fall of rocks, the entrance almost invisible unless you knew where to look.

The smell coming from it was wrong, he said, like copper and old death and something else, something alive but ancient. He didn't go in. Something about the darkness beyond that entrance, the way it seemed to swallow light made him back away. But as he left he saw them tracks in the soft earth near the entrance, dozens of them, all different sizes, some dragged, some didn't, like a family group like a clan, and arranged on a flat rock near the cave, like

an offering or a warning. Were three things, a child's shoe, faded and weather worn, a hunter's compass, the brass green with age, and a piece of cloth that might have been from a burial shroud stained with something dark. He left them there, left the whole hollow, and hasn't been back. But he told me because he knew I'd understand, knew

I'd recognize the message in those objects. The shoe from one of the taking children, the compass, maybe from Daddy's crew or some other vanished hunter, the burial cloth from whatever ceremony they'd held for the one I shot. They're still there, still waiting, still remembering. That's all I wanted to say. You can believe it or not, doesn't matter

to me anymore. But if you ever find yourself in the deep hollows of the Appalachians, past where the trails end and the old folks won't go, you be careful. There are things in those mountains that don't belong in this world, and they're hungry, hungry and hurt, and holding grudges that span generations. I wouldn't go up there if I was you. Some places are better left alone. The cancer will take me soon, three months, the doctors say,

maybe less. Sometimes I think that's mercy. I won't have to dream about those copper eyes anymore, won't have to wonder if the next missing child is somehow my fault, won't have to feel the weight of that creature's dying gaze, the almost human recognition in its face as my bullet found its mark. But sometimes on nights, when the moon is dark and the wind moves through the trees outside my window. I think I can hear them calling to each other across the ridges, and voices that almost make

words mourning. They're dead, planning their revenge, waiting for the right moment to come down from the high places and collect what's owed. I pray I'm gone before that happens. Pray my children and grandchildren have sense enough to stay away from the deep woods. Pray the old boundaries hold a little longer. But I don't think they will. I think Luther and I broke something that can't be fixed, opened a door that can't be closed, change the rules

of a game we didn't even know we were playing. God, forgive me, And if you're smart, you'll delete this email and forget you ever read it. Some knowledge is too heavy to carry. Some truths are better left in the shape where they belong. But I had to tell someone, had to pass this burden on before it drags me down into whatever darkness waits beyond. Maybe that makes me selfish, Maybe that makes me weak, But I'm old and dying

and tired of carrying this alone. Be careful out there, watch the tree line, Listen to the silence, and whatever you do, whatever you see, don't shoot. The mountains have a long memory, and they're still counting the cost of what we've done. PS. If you do go up there, despite everything I've said, leave an offering at the cave, food maybe, or something shiny. They like shiny things always have. Maybe it'll buy you safe passage. Maybe it'll just make

you easier to track. I don't know anymore. I don't know anything except that I should have listened to the old stories, should have respected the boundaries, should have left that wounded thing alone to heal or die in peace. But I didn't. And now the debt keeps growing, paint in blood and sorrow, and children who never come home.