Author's Note

This is my first real foray into fanfiction writing. I write as a hobby, though mostly in Google Drive, so I apologize if there are formatting errors. Please bear with me as I learn the website's functionality.

If you have critiques, comments, questions, or tips on how I can improve either my writing or formatting, I'd be more than happy to hear from you.

Edit: Hello again, everyone! And hello new readers! After a long *long* hiatus, I'm back, and I'm making a few minor changes to the story. Nothing that will change the overall tone or feel, but just clearing up some junk and trimming out unnecessary bits. If you are reading, and notice some inconsistencies, those will be fixed as I re-read and touch up on some things. But! If you notice something strange or out of place, feel free to let me know!

Trailhead

I awakened to birds announcing dawn across the Appalachians, their songs echoing off peaks still shrouded in morning mist. The dying warmth of last night's campfire seeped through my sleeping bag, making it even harder to convince my body to face the mountain's morning chill. I groaned and encouraged my muscles to wake up for my long hike through the mountain trails that stretch down the length of the eastern U.S. There was something different about the chill I felt this morning, but I shoved that feeling down when my belly reminded me I needed to eat.

I stumbled around camp in the misty morning light, shivering while I dug out my tinderbox. The leftover coals in the fire pit made starting a new flame easy enough. The fire crackled happily as I fed it bits of kindling, warming up quickly in the morning chill. I warmed myself and my breakfast of brook trout was made into a soup. I caught the fish the day before and left it to keep hot by the fire overnight in a covered cooking pot. It would serve to fuel my hike today, another 20 miles south into the Appalachian mountains of Southern Virginia.

“Man, just look at that view.” I said wistfully as I took in the landscape. The place I picked to camp for the night was a small flat near one of the many peaks of the mountain chain. The taller hilltops poked their heads just above the low lying banks of fog that flowed through the valleys like a river, making the mountain tops look a lot more like tiny islands in an archipelago of clouds. A single hawk flew in the distance eager to begin its hunt for the day, and I couldn’t help but wish I could see what it saw as it glided through the air. Mornings like this are what I live for.

After downing a cup of instant coffee and my pot of fish soup I collected my meager gear, the small cooking pot and mug, my knife and camp ax, and my sleeping bag, and set about putting out the fire and separating the coals. Once I was convinced that the threat of a forest fire was eliminated and I wouldn’t be hunted down by some bear in an olive green hat and pants, I shouldered my rucksack and began making my way down the long mountain ridge.

It was my third day on this stretch of trail, and I had quite a way left to go before I crossed state lines into North Carolina. My goal was to hike the entire mountain chain over the summer as a personal treat for a stressful, but successful semester. I pulled out my map to check my progress, looking over the camping spots I'd marked along the way. I'd started this trek near Montpelier, Vermont, not far from my hometown by Lake Champlain. I followed the trail down to where I made camp last night atop Brushy Mountain overlooking Currin Valley to the west and Rye Valley to the east.

Looking out to the east I saw the sun lifting above the peaks of another mountain top, Little Mountain, as it chased away the sea of white fog in the valley in large, curling wisps. It was a scene like that from a movie, or one of many books written by those old mountain folk and that morning as I stood alone on a lichen covered cliff and marveled; It felt like a scene made for me.

I stopped by a small spring just as my water jugs were running low, as if the trail was looking out for me. The water bubbled up through limestone cracks, so cold it made my teeth ache when I took that first drink. Even my jugs seemed to sigh with relief as I filled them. The water was crystal clear and cold as ice as it flowed through the rocks and down the mountainside into the river that flows through the valley beneath me. Large hardwood trees still grew in these woods, a reminder of what nature was like before humans had ever set foot into the region and provided plenty of food and shelter to the animals that called these forests home.

After several hours my shoulders began to ache. I adjusted my bags, and took in my surroundings before spotting a nice little sunlit clearing in the trees. “Now seems as good a time as any for a break. Gotta remember to pace myself.” I checked what time it was on my cell phone. “Yup, about twelve, and still no service. Great. Guess I’ll have to rely on that book I brought along.” I said as I made my way to the clearing.

My grandfather taught me to read these woods like a menu. Every spring, he'd quiz me: which mushrooms were poisonous, which berries were safe, which plants could heal a wound. Those lessons stayed with me, even after he was gone. Now, as I gathered morels and wild greens, I could almost hear his gravelly voice, but it was always a bit reassuring to have a way to confirm whether or not a berry or weed is going to kill me if I eat it. I grabbed the book from my rucksack and set about identifying plants and fungi that were edible and growing this time of year in late spring, gathering a veritable buffet of forage to munch on along the way.

I could feel the warm breeze of a new summer blow through the pristine mountain air and I stopped to enjoy the feeling of it caressing my skin and hair when I heard what sounded like a faint voice carried in the wind. I strained a little trying to catch what direction the voice may be coming from but it was too faint to tell clearly. Too faint to even tell what they were saying, but it was clear by the tone and cadence that it wasn't English. The breeze died down and the voice disappeared along with it.

“Huh…must be the mountains speaking to me.” Something my grandfather used to say. He would tell me stories about how the mountains would talk to you through the wind if you listened hard enough. A little bit of "Mountain Magic" as it were. I shrugged it off and took a bite of a particularly savory mushroom, throwing the rest in a plastic bag ready to continue my trek. I was ahead of schedule, but that didn't mean I could just stop and lose myself in my memories with more than half of my hike for the day still left to complete.

These blue-hazed mountains were exactly what I needed to escape my city life. Back there, I was just another face in the crowd, another stranger pushing through packed streets. Out here, the mountain sounds washed away all that stress, helping me feel like myself again. It had been nearly ten years since I moved away from my childhood home and into a burg for work and college. I could remember how excited I was when I received a letter from the University with my name on it offering me admission to their halls. It was my intent to study forestry in one of my state’s many institutions, and I picked one in the city, hoping that I’d enjoy the change of pace that came along with it. I quickly came to the realization that I hated that concrete jungle.

No stars dotted the night sky on a moonless night save for an errant satellite or plane. There was too much light pollution to see the real stars, so pretending that the blinking artificial ones were real would have to do. The city smelled awful too as what little breezes blew through it reeked of asphalt, and sometimes sour milk. Sure there were things there that I would have never been able to partake in back in my rural hometown, like all of the stores and shopping centers, food courts of any cuisine under the sun, and night life at various clubs. But I missed knowing the people who ran the little corner store back home, or my cousin who loved to stop by on the weekends to visit and share some of her newfound passion for baking breads.

The people in the city were always too preoccupied with their own lives to care even for common courtesy and barely talked to each other outside of work or their small social circles. When I first moved into my new apartment, I had made it a point to bake brownies for my neighbors as a gesture of good faith, like I remember my mother doing when we first moved into our new house outside of the town I grew up in. It was just a couple of miles away from where we lived before and we still knew everyone around us, but it was a tradition for southerners. My neighbors at the apartment? Not so much. They turned my chocolate confections down or asked me if they were spiked. It made me feel terribly lonely.

Not to mention school. I picked this college because it was highly rated amongst its peers and its graduates were some of the tops in their fields. I should have known better than to expect that the forestry department here was little more than a traditional and antiquated vestige of what it used to be before the city grew taller than the trees in the park. That single park was the last bit of woods for miles around, which made “going out for field studies” more of a disappointment than anything, especially since my class had less than ten attending members and there were rumors that we may be the last graduating class before the program is removed. I wanted real wilderness - untamed forests and wild animals - not some tiny park squeezed between skyscrapers where even the birds looked depressed.

As I moved along the mountaintop trail, an outcropping of jagged stone caught my eye and promised a vantage of the nearby valley. From up here, that valley stretched out like a green ocean. No billboards, no traffic noise, no smell of hot asphalt burning in the sun. My apartment back in the city didn't even have a window that opened, just a view of the brick wall next door. Some days I'd press my hand against that glass, feeling trapped like one of those sad fish in the dentist's office aquarium.

I sighed, taking in another breath of sweet spring air and soaking in the midday sun. Out here, there weren’t any worries. I could just build a fire and whittle or write or swim in the river or do whatever it was I wanted. No deadlines, no research papers, no strangers wanting to sell me garbage on street corners. Just peace and qui-

"..." I could hear whispering again. This time the wind was calm and I could clearly make out two voices having a conversation, but it was oddly muted. Like hearing two people having a hushed argument through the walls at my apartment but roughly thirty feet or so from where I stood, behind a particularly large oak tree.

“Hello?” I called out ahead of me, but received no response in return other than the continued sound of an strangely hushed conversation. "Maybe they're foreign travelers. I don't know what language that is though." I thought to myself as I approached the sound warily. This stretch of trail had been notorious in the past for murderers and kidnappers and that unwelcome thought crossed my mind. I didn’t like the idea of my hike being cut short by a stabbing, or worse, so I made sure to give the tree plenty of space.

The whispers suddenly vanished as I rounded the tree beside the path and I looked at the spot I could have swore they were coming from. I shook my head and owlishly stared at the ground around the tree expectantly, as if the dirt or shattered acorn shells would tell me where the people who must have been hiding there had gone. The nuts sat silent though, and the tree was no more helpful either as it stood there in resolute defiance of my confusion.

“Maybe I didn’t sleep as well as I thought I did…I guess?” That didn’t seem right to me, as I always slept best under a star filled sky but it was either that, or I was starting to go crazy. I didn’t like that latter thought much. I tried to shake the idea of early onset dementia from my head and continued my hike, but the voices I kept hearing left me a little shaken and paranoid.

There were all manner of ghost tales, kidnappings, and disappearances throughout the national forest of the United States and they all came to bear in my mind as I stumped along my path. The intrusive thoughts of falling into some forgotten cave or being whisked away by aliens, or Bigfoot...maybe even civil war soldier spirits or some weird redneck druggie sapped all the enjoyment I'd had from me and left me feeling anxious.

Several more hours passed on until the sun began to sink behind the mountains in the distance. Deciding it not to be wise to hike in the dark, especially considering the earlier events of the day, I stopped by a rocky outcropping that created partial cover off the edge of the trail and set up camp there. Soon after pulling out a flint and steel, I had a warm fire and a bag full of wild edibles to keep me company which helped me relax and feel more at ease.

I sat by the crackling fire pit, chewing away at red-bud flowers and some small morel mushrooms I had collected previously while I boiled sassafras roots for a root beer like drink and watched the sun recede from view and relinquish the day to a blanket of stars in the night sky. The crickets took to singing and chirping while they could before the cool night air settled in and chased them back into their underground homes. Once again, the world was at peace.
I placed my sleeping bag near the fire and prepared for bed, taking a moment to relieve the call of nature a little way from the camp. I was thankful for the set of warm hiking gear I had brought along as the cooler night air nipped at my skin. “Kinda glad I decided to make this a spring thing. I'd be freezing my ass off out here right now if I came during winter break.” I shivered at the thought as I cleaned up and started making my way back to my camp.

I'd almost made it back to the warm glow of my camp before I was frightened nearly out of my skin by what sounded like a shout or scream from over the edge of the nearby trail. I froze and listened, thankful that I’d just emptied my bladder, and waited to see if it happened again, noting it came from below the cliffs just past the well worn path. I stood still for what felt like at least ten minutes before deciding that whatever it was had moved on when I noticed something strange to my right.

Floating, about 3 feet above the ground and just a few yards from me, was what could only be described as a…mirage? It almost looked like rippling water, though it levitated in midair and the waves traveled vertically instead of laterally from a central point reminding me of a portal from some movie, or game I once played. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, thinking them just tired before looking again at the now normal, non-ripply air in the forest.

“C’mon, get a hold of yourself.” I said, still unsure of what I saw, and now a bit more sure that I was starting to lose my marbles. “I…think I'd better get back to camp and make sure I didn’t eat one of the bad mushrooms.” I mumbled to myself. I knew that couldn’t have been right though. I’d eaten plenty of morels before and they were not hallucinogenic or poisonous, and very easy to identify. I confirmed that my fungi weren't the kind that make one taste sounds before I slipped into my sleeping bag early to rest, hoping some sleep would chase away the weirdness that I’d been experiencing.

I settled into my cocoon, worming around a little to clear a particularly offensive pebble from under my shoulder. The campfire crackled gleefully, seemingly enjoying the show while I struggled, but it wasn't the only noise I could hear. The crickets were still serenading each other as they performed their nightly routines. The breeze picked up slightly, causing the newly grown leaves to rustle as though shivering at the air's chilly touch. Even the nighttime predators were announcing themselves, as a great horned owl hooted somewhere in the distance. The woods, even at night, were alive and carrying on as though nothing strange was happening which helped set my mind at ease. A noisy forest is a peaceful one.

I was on the edge of sleep when that peace was shattered by what sounded like a cannon and a party horn mixed together fired off right by my head. I nearly tore out of my sleeping bag, tripping over it and myself as I tried to escape whatever ghostly soldier was haunting the trail with a cannon on his birthday. My heart raced in my chest as I stared out into the woods that were only vaguely lit by the orange flicker of campfire light and the pale glow of a waning moon.

Nothing. Not so much as a hint of the ghostly apparition of the several century old poltergeist who I knew was out there, somewhere, snickering at me from behind a rock or tree. I tried desperately to calm my nerves as I shook more so from fear than the cold night breeze when I saw another ripple in the air above the camp. My body suddenly began to rumble from a deep guttural growl from the largest bear-lion-elephant hybrid I’d ever heard that came from the rippling waves overhead. My mind had had enough, and my body immediately took it upon itself to engage in a full sprint in any direction but here.

The roar erupted again as I ran and gasped for the chilled air that burned my lungs. I turned around hoping to see what was after me, but my eyes still refused to reveal whatever unknown predator was now barreling towards me. I heard, and felt, the heavy footfalls of something I couldn't see and what sounded like several sets of hooves charging in my direction, and I was sure that some ghostly revenant had unleashed a hell-beast upon me in the woods of Southern Virginia to whisk me away to a swift doom. Instead, what whisked away was the ground beneath my feet.

In my fear driven dash, I had forgotten where I was and the cliffs sought to remind me in the most unforgiving of ways. For one endless moment, I hung suspended between earth and sky, my scream caught in my throat. Gravity, in its mercy, gave me a moment to register what a grim fate the three-hundred foot fall into a rocky mountainside would provide. It was then the realization hit me, that I was falling to my death. Just as quickly as my mind raced in my head, so did the rippling ground below race to meet my body.