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re WhheTunnel Walk
A white bird followed our car the entire drive to the trail. I wondered if it was an angel. When we arrived, the bird landed on the sign at the trailhead that read “Tunnel Walk.” I made eye contact with it. It blinked. Then it took wing, and in a lackadaisical drift, shrank against the gray sky and eventually disappeared beyond the crest of the mountain. I don’t think I ever saw it again. I’ve seen plenty of birds like it, but I didn’t recognize them. I know I would recognize it.
“You coming, Chrissy?” Alex barked.
I turned around and saw him standing with a hand on the trunk door. He was already in full gear.
I laced my boots and stepped out.
“Here, carry these,” Alex said, and tossed me the keys without waiting for a response. They fell on the ground. He scoffed, and I scooped them up.
We were the only car in the tiny parking lot, if you could even call it that. Really, it was a couple of painted lines on the asphalt of a dead end road, terminated by a towering signed fence reading “State Property: No Trespassing.” Beyond it, I could hear the faint rushing of water.
It was chilly that morning and overcast. I pulled my windbreaker on.
We brought two packs, one for snacks (light) and one for safety (heavy). I carried the snacks.
It wasn’t until we were standing straight in front of the sign that Alex remembered he could read.
“Tunnel Walk?” Alex said. He looked down at his phone. “What the fuck is Tunnel Walk? Great, no reception.”
I said nothing. We were supposed to be going somewhere else. I had noticed we were headed the wrong way when Alex took a strange exit forty five minutes ago, but I was distracted by the bird. Honestly, I didn’t really care where we were going. I just didn’t want to piss Alex off.
“You researched the trails around here, didn't you?” he demanded.
I nodded.
“And yet you just let me go the wrong fucking direction for an hour straight?” he yelled. It echoed against the rocks.
“No,” I muttered. I shrugged the pack higher on my shoulders and kept my eyes down. “I didn’t know. I don’t know this place.” And that was true. I had never heard of Tunnel Walk.
“Fantastic,” he laughed. He clapped his hands. “That’s fan-fucking-tastic!”
We just stood there for several excruciating moments. Everything hung in that balance. He would either explode or he’d defuse, making goofy jokes and sneaking kisses on my cheek to make up for the brooding he’d been doing all morning. I didn’t know which one was worse.
I thought about the stranger I’d kissed in a bar two days before. He wore a cowboy hat and a mustache that tickled my nose, and he tasted like Marlboros. I took his number. It was folded and hidden in the ancient pack of Extra at the bottom of my purse. I didn’t think Alex would find it. He didn’t seem to worry about me much.
“Well,” he sighed. “We’re here. You cool to try this trail, babe?”
Defused.
I forced a smile and shrugged. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
“That’s what’s up. Courageous Chrissy, let’s fucking go!” Alex jumped up and down clapping. He was thirty years old. “Alright, let’s check this map real quick.”
Beside the trailhead sign was a small map of the trail bolted onto a wooden post. It was pockmarked with bbs and graffitied.
The main trail took a meandering semi-circle along the ridge of the mountain, running alongside the river. I could see the bend from the trailhead. It looked pretty flat. There was no loop on the map, so it looked like an out-and-back, meaning you walked back the same way you walked in.
I wasn’t thrilled about that. Out-and-back’s make for a boring return trip. Even worse, they always portend awkward passes with other hikers, especially on a short trail like this, which was bound to be a honey pot for local amateurs and families. That means people playing music on their phone speakers, children climbing past warning signs, and elderly couples dying to chat about the weather, their family, anything.
“Seems easy,” Alex grunted as he cinched his pack higher up his back. “For me, at least.” He elbowed me and chuckled. I almost reminded him that I’d been hiking since I was 14 and that he’d been hiking for six months (the exact length of our relationship), but I held my tongue.
I noticed something else on the map. I ignored Alex and stepped closer, running my finger along a track where the paint had seemingly been scraped away. Strange. It looked like an alternate trail that branched off to the right just a little ways in. Instead of winding around the mountain ridge, it delved straight north into a saddle between the summit and a minor peak, connecting back to the main trail’s terminus like the string of a bow.
Alex stepped up behind me.
“Looks like a shortcut. Dope,” he said.
“Maybe. It could climb straight up and down, though.”
“Or down and up.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
It’s very common for certain trails to be blocked off temporarily for a number of reasons: protecting natural formations/wildlife, rockfalls, wildfires, etc. Normally, State authorities would simply place a barrier over the closed trail and maybe a sign. What I hadn’t seen before, however, was a trail being etched off of the map entirely. I wondered if it even was the State who did that. Perhaps it was a local.
“Let’s just stick to the main trail this time, babe,” I suggested. “I don’t feel like going crazy.”
“Boo. Cowardly Chrissy has entered the chat.”
I stared at him with blank-faced scorn.
“Fine,” he relented. “Main trail it is.”
Tunnel Walk was really quite pleasant. It was paved with white gravel and it was well-maintained. There was one steep portion at the very beginning to get us up into the mountain that had both of us sweating, but after that, it was smooth sailing.
We rounded a bend and discovered the trail’s namesake: a massive stone tunnel that was carved into the side of the mountain.
“Holy shit,” Alex exclaimed. “Wait, this is actually fucking awesome.”
It was pretty awesome.
As we approached the mouth of the tunnel, there came a gusty, cold wind. Alex and I both pulled our windbreakers over our faces.
Despite the light ahead of and behind us, it was dark in the middle of the tunnel. The icy wind forced tears into the corner of my eyes. I could barely see the tunnel walls at all. They appeared to be jagged, unfinished, likely made by granite blasting a long time ago. I guessed that the tunnel’s original purpose was for an irrigation canal or pipeline that eventually became obsolete.
As I squinted at the rock walls and pondered their purpose, I thought I saw a figure move in the darkness. The wind was rushing past my ears, but I could vaguely hear the skittering of gravel.
I stopped moving.
“What?” Alex asked. “Babe, we’re almost at the end. I’m freezing my nuts off here. Let’s *go*.”
“Hold on,” I insisted. I was still inspecting the walls. I walked closer.
There was a little hole in the east wall of the tunnel. I almost didn’t notice it, but there it was. It was covered by a large rock. The hole looked just big enough for a person to fit through.
I slid the rock aside and shined my phone’s flashlight in. I couldn’t really see anything. The hole took an immediate hard left. The sides looked eerily smooth.
There was a weird smell coming out of the hole. It wasn’t a bad smell; it was like a mixture between pine tar and ash.
Perhaps there used to be some sort of pipeline fixture here, or it was a drainage channel in case of leakage. Either that, or it was the den of a mountain animal, though I found it–
“Sasquatch Den!” Alex gasped behind me. I jumped a foot into the air.
He doubled over laughing. “Easy there, princess!”
I kicked him in the shin. His laughing halted and he started hobbling on one foot.
“That’s *not* funny, Alex,” I hissed. “Now come on.”
The ashen pine tar smell seemed to fill the entire tunnel. It stayed with us all the way to the exit.
Alex gradually regained his composure, and by the time we reached the end of the tunnel, he was walking normally again, though his mood had seemingly suffered for it. I found myself starting to feel a little bad. It was an innocent joke, after all, but something about that hole didn’t seem like a laughing matter.
We stepped out into the open air to a beautiful view.
The river was just there down a steep escarpment on the west side of the trail, snaking through the valley. The sky was starting to clear. Patches of vivid blue bloomed above the mountaintops, and a chorus of birds sang like a tuning orchestra somewhere to the east between Tunnel Walk and our mountain’s summit.
The trail kept going north. The east side was lined with thick patches of brush along the ground and towering faces of sheer rock, easily over 15 feet high, which only occasionally fanned open to reveal a view of the summit.
“Wow,” I gasped.
“No shit,” Alex concurred. We both stood in captivated silence for a long while.
“I should get your picture in the tunnel,” I offered.
Alex brightened at that.
I fished for my phone as Alex stood in the mouth of the tunnel and posed. He unzipped his windbreaker and pointed at his shirt that read “Take a Hike!”. I got him that shirt for his birthday.
I snapped several pictures and gave him the thumbs up. He came jogging back.
“Let me see, let me see,” he demanded, grabbing the phone from my hand. “Oh sick, that’s a good one!”
While Alex stared at himself, I noticed the entrance to the alternate path just after the tunnel mouth. It was obfuscated by a thick patch of overgrown shrubs. I could just make out the yellow chain barricading the entrance.
I walked closer. It ran north-east on a decline down a very narrow path in the rock. No sun fell onto that route. It didn’t look like anyone had been down there for a very long time.
Alex hadn’t seemed to notice. I decided not to mention it. I didn’t want to risk him bulldozing me into taking it, as he was wont to do. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many trails I had been forced to bushwhack because Alex thought he found a more interesting way, only to end up lost and covered in ticks and poison ivy.
Someone was coming through the tunnel towards us. I could see their silhouette as they approached. They were on a bike.
I grabbed Alex’s arm and pulled him aside to make way for the biker. As they got near, I waved. They didn’t wave back.
The biker emerged from the darkness and skidded to a halt beside us. It was an older man, probably in his sixties, with a long white beard.
“Did you move the rock?” he panted. He was wearing athletic gear and a helmet. Sweat rolled down his face and formed dark patches on his clothes.
Neither of us answered.
“Did you move the rock?” he asked again, his patience fleeting. What was his problem?
“Listen, sir, I understand the principles of Leave No Trace, I assure you,” I began. “I thought I saw something move in the tunnel and I was investigating, for our safety. That’s all.”
“Yeah man,” Alex chimed in. “Take it easy. We’ll put it back on the way out.”
The old man scoffed. “You two aren’t from around here, are you?”
We both shook our heads.
“It’s time for us to go home. All of us. Come with me.” The man turned his bike around and looked over his shoulder at us expectantly.
“Why would we leave with you, dude?” Alex inquired. He stepped in front of me and crossed his arms.
“Don’t you smell it?” he begged. “That’s your warning. The smell, the rock: that’s your warning. Don’t be stupid and come with me. It’s coming down the trail any minute.” His voice was so insistent that, though I had no idea what he was talking about, I was inclined to believe him.
“Let’s go, Alex,” I said, trying to push past him and follow. His arms stopped me.
“No, Chrissy. Fuck no,” he whispered. “Never follow a man to a secondary location.”
Before I could insult him for his misunderstanding of that principle, he raised his voice and shouted at the old man.
“You go on ahead and leave, buddy. We’re gonna be just fine. Thanks though!”
The old man shook his head. It seemed like he was fixing his mouth to continue arguing, but he looked past us down the trail and closed it.
“It’s your life,” he muttered. And then he took off. Alex and I watched him pedal back through the tunnel, faster than he came.
“We should follow him,” I said.
Alex turned and looked at me. His eyebrows were furrowed.
“You let us drive the wrong way. You assault me. And now you’re demanding we end the one date we’ve had in three weeks early because a senile old man smells pine trees. You are something else entirely, Chrissy.”
Alex turned away and marched up the trail.
I followed after him.
“Alex, it’s not like that,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry about your shin, but with the hole and the old guy, I’m getting a bad vibe. We don’t know anything about this trail.”
“It’s a two mile kiddy trek, Chrissy. My fucking grandma could hike this. We’re already halfway there. When we’re done, we can go home and go back to not talking to each other for the rest of the day. Would that make you happy?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I muttered. He was walking quickly and I was struggling to keep up.
Alex spun around on me. His face was wild.
“Why do we even fucking bother, Chrissy? Clearly you’re not happy. I go out of my way to be involved in this hobby that you love just to spend time with you, and yet every single time we go out on a trail, you’re a fucking ghost. It’s been a month since we fucked. A month. Is it fair that you can make me wait that long? What kind of girlfriend would even do that to a guy?”
His rant hung in the air for several agonizing moments.
“Is everything okay?”
The voice came from up the trail. Alex turned and we both searched for the source.
Standing on the trail about 15 feet ahead was the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
He was massive and shirtless. Even from a distance it was clear that he towered over both of us, and his muscle tone was outrageous. Beads of sweat dripped down his heaving pecs.
I was speechless.
He was listening to a Walkman which was tucked in his shorts. He lowered his headphones around his neck and slicked his shoulder-length blonde hair behind his ears.
Alex looked over at me. I could feel him watching my eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
I realized they were both waiting on me to answer.
“Uh, yeah- Yeah, we’re fine, sir. No problem here,” I stuttered. “Nice day huh?”
“You sure?” the man asked again. He was walking closer, slowly, and I noticed his piercing blue eyes watching me. Not in a predatory way; with concern. I also noticed a slight accent. European, or something close to that. Maybe Russian, or Mongolian.
“She just told you, pal,” Alex barked. He stepped forward and crossed his arms. His signature move.
“Alright, kemosabe. Just checking.” The man flashed a white smile. He had perfect teeth, of course. That accent again. Portuguese? I couldn’t pinpoint it.
“We didn’t see any other cars in the parking lot,” Alex observed. “Where’d you come from?”
“I’m not keen on driving. I prefer to run.” He had very nice running shoes on. They looked brand new.
“What are you listening to?” I asked, trying to keep casual. Alex shot me a glance.
“*Born in the U.S.A.*, answered proudly, “my favorite album.”
“Good choice,” I said. I hoped I wasn’t blushing.
“No offense, but you don’t sound like you were born in the U.Sare you from?” Alex sneered.
The man laughed. “I’m from here.”
“No, I mean, originally.”
“Oh, I see,” the man said. “Well, first, a long long time ago, I was star dust, and then, skipping ahead, I was born here.” He pointed at the gravel under his feet. “Right. Here.” Some of the good humor was gone from his face.
Maybe the accent was Native American? He didn’t look Native. He looked Aryan, or maybe like a cowboy without his hat, or a soldier without his uniform.
I glanced at Alex. He was wearing his discomfort on his face.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, man,” Alex managed.
“Don’t worry about it. Hey listen,” the man said, “do you guys happen to have any snacks you could spare? I’m starving.”
“Well, we really only packed enough for two, but–”
“Sure!” I blurted. I slung the backpack off my shoulders and zipped it open.
“Oh, you’re an angel,” the man cooed. We walked towards each other. I saw Alex pouting in the corner of my eye.
As he was rooting through the bag, I couldn’t help but inspect him. He smelled good, like sweat with a faint undercurrent of trees. He was so vascular. I tried to keep my eyes on the river over his shoulder, but they kept falling down to his hands in the backpack (and occasionally the toned V just above the band of his shorts).
The Walkman in his waistband looked old. Extremely old. I was shocked it still worked.
“You have great taste in snacks,” he whispered in that elusive accent. “So hard to choose.” He winked.
“Thanks,” I replied, tucking my hair behind my ear.
“What’s your name?”
“Christine. Yours?”
“Ah, you’d never be able to pronounce it. Most people just call me John.” I don’t know why, but he winked again. “Nice to meet you, Christine.”
“And you… John,” I laughed. He laughed too. I could feel Alex’s gaze burning into us.
Just behind the Walkman, I noticed something else sticking out of his waistband: a smooth wooden handle. I could see the outline of it running down his shorts. It looked like a hatchet.
My involuntary smile faltered.
It had the pattern of woodgrain, but there were other strange colors in it–amber, pink, orange–like a mineral. Petrified wood, perhaps? Could you even make a hatchet out of that?
The man finally settled on a granola bar and I withdrew the backpack.
He peeled it open and took a massive bite, disappearing half of it at once.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he moaned with his mouth full. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” I muttered. He was handsome and kind, but a strange man with a weapon should make any woman nervous.
“And thank you too,” he waved to Alex. Alex offered a curt nod and nothing more.
“Enjoy your hike,” the man said with a smile. “Stay safe.”
He pulled his headphones back around his ears and began jogging again. I waved. He waved back. I watched him leave until he rounded the bend, then I turned back to Alex.
He was staring daggers at me.
“I think that guy had a hatchet,” I whispered.
“A hatchet?” he repeated quizzically, his anger melting into nerves. “I didn’t see a hatchet.”
“Yes. A hatchet. It was on his waistband, hidden beside the walkman.”
“His waistband, huh. You sure are perceptive when you like what you’re looking at,” he muttered.
I laughed, assuming he was joking.
“Oh whatever. If some blonde babe with huge tits came around the corner, you’d be looking, too.”
“Except I wouldn’t. Because I respect you. See, this is your problem. You seem to be under the impression that I’m as uninterested in this relationship as you are.”
I cocked my head at him.
“Why are you so convinced that I’m checked out? Because I’m not sucking your dick every night? Alex, if you want to get laid, you should date a hooker, because I’m no–”
“Who’s Micah, Chrissy?” he interrupted.
I fell silent.
“You got a text from him last night at 1 AM that said *wyd* with a winky face. I looked through your messages. Sorry, but I did. And it seems like you have no problem putting out for him.”
I didn’t have anything to say. Clearly it was over. Deep down I knew this is what I wanted, but I had always imagined I would build up the courage to do it the right way. It seemed like my cowardice had caught up to me.
“You know, if you run fast enough, you might catch up to Fabio, and you can get his number too!” Alex’s face was hot. “I can’t fucking believe you embarrassed me like this, Christine. I can’t fucking believe it.”
Alex turned away and kept going up the trail.
“Alex, wait–”
“Don’t follow me. I need a minute.”
I followed him anyway. “I know you’re upset but you can’t leave me here alone right now, Alex!”
He wheeled around and smacked me in the face.
I staggered back in shock. I held my hand over my cheek.
Alex’s expression fell. “I’m sorry, Chrissy. I told you–I’m sorry.”
Then, he turned away again and ran up the trail, leaving me alone.
I decided to stay put and wait until Alex got back. If I went back to the car to wait (I did have the keys, after all), I would be forced to walk back through the tunnel alone. Plus, I risked running into the handsome armed man again, or some other stranger, and it would be well over an hour until Alex returned.
So, I checked the brush along the trail for snakes and leaned against the sheer rock wall, waiting.
I opened a bag of trail mix and ate.
Some time passed. I watched the river rapids thunder past. I watched the clouds overhead morph and glide. I watched a bighorn sheep ambling on the far mountain ridge.
My cheek stung.
I felt hopeful that things between Alex and I could be salvaged. I cheated. He slapped me. In some ways, that made us even. Of course it didn’t really, but I thought Alex could be convinced.
Why in the hell did I even want to be with him? Because it was easier to have someone, or because I was a coward? It was probably both.
I thought I heard something moving in the mountain above me. The sound was coming from down the trail, and it was coming my way.
I couldn’t see anything over the rock face, of course, so I walked up the trail until I saw a gap. The whole time I could hear it, getting closer and closer, barrelling through the brush up the mountain ridge above me.
I arrived at the gap just in time to see it running past.
It was John.
He was sprinting down the alternate trail.
He was beet red, his veins swollen like drowned worms under his skin. He passed across the ridge with an astounding speed, arms pumping, hair flying back in the wind. His expression was completely still. He didn’t watch his feet; he looked straight ahead.
He held the hatchet in his hand.
I started running.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I shouted to myself, my heart pumping hard in my chest.
John was on the faster path. I had no chance of catching up to Alex unless he was already on the way back. I prayed that he was.
The river rushed beside me as though we were carried by the same spirit. I could hear only the beating of my boots, the heartbeat in my ears, and the gasping of breath.
As I ran, I came upon a wooden bridge across a gap in the mountain ridge where water flowed into the river below. There were wide spaces between the slats. I peered through them as I flew across. I saw broken trees and crumbled rock. Then I saw bones. Blackened bones. The dark shards–antlers, skulls, and femurs among them–were tangled in a rainbow of clothing. It was as though the mountain had swallowed them all deep into its stomach, gnashed them up and stripped their flesh, and finally puked them out like an owl pellet.
The cloying smell of pine tar and ash came wafting up between the boards. No rot, no smell of meat, but I gagged nevertheless in fear.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that I would round the corner to find Alex dead on the gravel. I could see him, his blood pouring from the split in his skull and filtering down into the dirt where it would eventually spill into the mountain’s hungry gullet.
But when I did finally round the corner, it wasn’t Alex waiting for me. It was John.
He leaned against the rock face, shaking a Marlboro from the pack.
He was wearing Alex’s shirt. He stole it from him, like he stole everything else–the shorts, the running shoes, the Walkman.
There was a splatter of blood across his face.
I stopped running.
I didn’t see Alex, but I knew he was dead.
My breath was caught in a loop between my lungs and my lips, spinning in shallow cycles. My hands were swollen from the running and the altitude. My feet tingled in my boots.
John fished a lighter from his pocket and side-eyed me.
Things were quiet around us. No one was coming for me; no boat down the river, no hiker up the trail, no bolt of light from God above.
“Thank you,” John muttered. He lit his cigarette and took a deep drag. “I was starving.”
“Where’s Alex?” I wheezed.
“Gone.”
“No, fuck you, where is he?” I screamed. “Where the fuck is he?!”
John gestured to an opening in the rock face just ahead with a yellow chain hung across it. “He took the other trail home, Chrissy,” he said. He almost sounded sorry.
I sprinted away down the main trail.
The sun beat down on my head and neck, my entire body hot. I didn’t hear John behind me.
Suddenly, I heard a roaring ahead of me, coming up the trail. It sounded like a building being demolished, cascading louder and louder toward me in a slow wall of sound. My running faltered, chest heaving.
Then I saw it.
The rock faces were collapsing across the trail.
The path directly in front of me was swallowed in a rock fall. The air was clouded with granite dust that glowed in the sunlight.
I turned left and saw the rock beside me trembling. Pebbles began to rain at my feet.
I skittered back. My feet turned so quickly that my hips couldn’t keep up, my body awkwardly folding over itself until my balance was gone and I had to catch myself with my hands. I kicked into the gravel hard and drove myself away, but it was too late.
A massive stone landed on my legs.
I screamed in pain. My body tumbled down the escarpment, as willing as any other boulder in the rockfall that was spilling into the river.
I do not know how I didn’t die.
When I woke up, I was being carried.
I blinked awake through eyelids that were crusted together with dried blood. The clouds rolled by overhead. I couldn’t feel my body beyond a general vibration in my nerves.
I turned my head to see John’s face.
He was expressionless. His eyes were dark as though he were sleepwalking.
His headphones were on again. He was humming the melody of “Dancing in the Dark.”
My body screamed to move. I flung my fist at John’s bloody face, but my hand merely twitched at the end of my dangling arm. I couldn’t command a single muscle to move.
I looked around. Down the mountain, I could see the main trail. It was covered in rock like it never existed.
The path we were on, the other trail, was more like a game trail. We were descending.
John started to softly sing.
“*Stay on the streets of this town,*
*And they’ll be carving you up, all right,*
*They say you gotta stay hungry*
*Hey baby, I’m just about starving tonight*”
I noticed it was getting darker. Then the sky overhead disappeared, replaced with earth. We had entered some sort of cave, or perhaps another tunnel.
“*I’m dying for some action*
*I’m sick of sitting around here, trying to write this book,”*
Then he looked down at me and smiled. His teeth were laced with pieces of red meat.
“*I need a love reaction*
*Come on, baby, give me just one look*.”
He was dancing, shaking his hips. I jostled in his arms.
“*You can’t start a fire*
*Sitting around crying over a broken heart*,”
He kissed me on the forehead. His breath smelled like iron.
“*This gun’s for hire*
*Even if we’re just dancing in the dark,*”
I closed my eyes. I felt myself drifting away again. The swaying of his body pulled me under like the tide. All the while, we descended lower and lower into the earth.
“*You can’t start a fire*
*Worrying about your little world falling apart*
*This gun’s for hire*
*Even if we’re just dancing in the dark*
*Even if we’re just dancing in the dark*
*Even if…”*
I had a dream. I imagined I was swimming in the river. Alex was on shore, reading. The sun was growing low against the mountains. The water was ice cold. I felt smooth stones under my feet, some of them slightly slimy with moss. I paddled deeper towards the center of the river, turning my head to breathe. That’s when I saw something coming towards me upstream. It was the churning body of a massive serpent. A spiny fin rose from the waters and unfurled like a sail. I looked to shore to find Alex was gone. My paddling turned into a sprint. I cautioned a glance behind me to see the serpent gaining. Its jaw unhinged to reveal a black cavern of needle teeth, water pooling in its mouth like a lagoon and draining down its open gullet. I looked ahead and saw the river was flowing toward a great, black tunnel.
When I woke up again, I was warm. I heard the crackling of a fire. My body was wrapped in an ancient weave. It was dim in the fire light, but the pattern looked like a Navajo chief’s blanket.
I smelled burning flesh.
John was hauling something up to the fire. He was wearing a coon skin cap like old French fur traders used to wear.
As he got closer, it gained form. It was the lower half of a leg. Tendons and veins hung from the calf like a half-eaten turkey leg.
John tore one more mouthful of flesh from the bone with a wet pop and tossed the rest into the fire.
Sparks kicked up into the air. My eyes followed them.
High, high above was a light at the end of a tall spire. The smoke flowed up it like a chimney flue.
We must have been far underground.
On either side of me were two things:
The first was the bloody hatchet. Except, it didn’t really look like a hatchet. The blade was crude and hooked in toward the handle. It was wrapped in black braids of human hair. The minerals in the handle glinted in the firelight.
The other was a bird’s nest. It was made of twigs, shoelaces, corn stalks, hair, and strips of dry meat. Nestled among the menagerie was a single white feather.
“Go back to sleep, Chrissy. I’ll take you home once I’m done.”
I looked up at John. He was walking towards me.
“What is this?” I choked.
“Dinner,” John replied.
It’s funny what your brain does when the world you understand suddenly becomes strange again. Every day is like that when you’re young, and then you form some logical framework that serves as your safety blanket, and that keeps you going. Well, mine had been ripped away, and I was like a child again, trying to make puzzle pieces fit.
“You’re a Native mountain spirit, aren’t you?” I asserted.
John laughed.
“Sure. As you like it.” He squatted in front of me, considering my face with boredom.
“Aren’t you?” I didn’t understand. The axe, the blanket, the dream of the great serpent, it all felt cohesive. But there were other things, things that didn’t fit: John, mostly. His golden hair, his Aryan face, his accent, his Walkman.
John’s face darkened.
“I owe you nothing, but I’ve been told to speak,” he said bitterly. “I presented myself to be worshipped, and I was rejected. So I took. First the Natives, yes, but when the others came, I took from them too. And I’ll keep taking, until I’m claimed.”
His smooth skin glowed and sparkled in the light. The dark stain of blood circled his mouth. He reached out and took my hands.
I recoiled at first. He held his palms out, asking. I offered my hands to him.
He held them up and inspected them. They were not broken.
“Are they okay?” he asked.
“Y-yes,” I said. “I think so.”
“Good,” he said, and dropped them. “Go to sleep.”
John stood and walked away, returning to the pile of body parts.
“Wait,” I yelped. He stopped.
“Why am I alive?” The answer to this question eluded me. He’d eaten Alex and countless others, but he’d spared me. He could have let me leave, but he trapped me. Why?
John sighed. He seemed to grow tired of questions.
“Because you’ll write my book,” he said with his back still turned.
“How do you know?” I demanded. My sense was slowly returning. I tried to stand, but my muscles screamed in protest. “You can’t control me. When you release me, I’m free. I’m free forever.”
John turned around smiling. He sauntered back over to me.
“So American,” John chuckled.
Then he raised his hand. I only managed to widen my eyes before my head rocked back and struck the stone floor.
I saw the pinpoint of light overhead blink, and then everything was dark again.
When I regained consciousness, I was in the Tunnel Walk tunnel. The wind whooshed past my ears. The smell of pine tar and ash was gone. I thought I heard the skittering of gravel.
The stone was back in front of the hole.
Then I was being carried again, but not by John. Paramedics.
When we emerged from the tunnel, I looked down towards the parking lot. Our car was lost in an ocean of red and blue lights.
Alex’s body was never found. I told them where to find it, past the rockfalls and deep in the heart of the mountain, or tangled in the outflow of bone and cloth under the bridge. They had no idea what I was talking about.
Search and rescue teams scoured the mountain, but found no cave entrance, and no chute spitting out smoke. The alternate trail led exactly where the map indicated, and while it was overgrown, it contained nothing of note. I called dozens of times over the years, but I never learned why they closed it. I had a good guess.
There were no rockfalls, either. The trails were completely clear.
And, of course, there was no river of corpses.
I told them about John. I described him–his eyes, his voice, the hatchet–in perfect detail. I told them he killed Alex and so many others. They didn’t believe me.
I know he was there. I know it. I can still see him now in my head.
Investigators concluded that we had ventured off-trail and gotten stuck on the mountain, Alex eventually succumbing to dehydration and I to delirium. It wasn’t the truth, but it fit their framework.
I haven’t dated since Alex. It’s been six years. I’ve been laid a few times, sure, but no boyfriends. I don’t mind. I don’t think I’m built to be in a relationship. I like my freedom.
So American of me, I know.
I haven’t hiked since then either.
I have these dreams where I’m walking alone down a trail surrounded by beautiful green trees. I’m watching my feet as they crunch through the fallen pine needles and navigate the twisted roots jutting into the path. Then I hear a scream. I look up, and there’s a figure standing ahead on the path, looking straight at me, beckoning. His face is black. I come to him. I kiss him hard. When I pull away, a tendon stretches from his teeth to mine. Somewhere in the woods, rocks fall.
That’s enough, I think. There’s a bird at my window.
#entertainment .Ae. ”
source
A white bird followed our car the entire drive to the trail. I wondered if it was an angel. When we arrived, the bird landed on the sign at the trailhead that read “Tunnel Walk.” I made eye contact with it. It blinked. Then it took wing, and in a lackadaisical drift, shrank against the gray sky and eventually disappeared beyond the crest of the mountain. I don’t think I ever saw it again. I’ve seen plenty of birds like it, but I didn’t recognize them. I know I would recognize it.
“You coming, Chrissy?” Alex barked.
I turned around and saw him standing with a hand on the trunk door. He was already in full gear.
I laced my boots and stepped out.
“Here, carry these,” Alex said, and tossed me the keys without waiting for a response. They fell on the ground. He scoffed, and I scooped them up.
We were the only car in the tiny parking lot, if you could even call it that. Really, it was a couple of painted lines on the asphalt of a dead end road, terminated by a towering signed fence reading “State Property: No Trespassing.” Beyond it, I could hear the faint rushing of water.
It was chilly that morning and overcast. I pulled my windbreaker on.
We brought two packs, one for snacks (light) and one for safety (heavy). I carried the snacks.
It wasn’t until we were standing straight in front of the sign that Alex remembered he could read.
“Tunnel Walk?” Alex said. He looked down at his phone. “What the fuck is Tunnel Walk? Great, no reception.”
I said nothing. We were supposed to be going somewhere else. I had noticed we were headed the wrong way when Alex took a strange exit forty five minutes ago, but I was distracted by the bird. Honestly, I didn’t really care where we were going. I just didn’t want to piss Alex off.
“You researched the trails around here, didn't you?” he demanded.
I nodded.
“And yet you just let me go the wrong fucking direction for an hour straight?” he yelled. It echoed against the rocks.
“No,” I muttered. I shrugged the pack higher on my shoulders and kept my eyes down. “I didn’t know. I don’t know this place.” And that was true. I had never heard of Tunnel Walk.
“Fantastic,” he laughed. He clapped his hands. “That’s fan-fucking-tastic!”
We just stood there for several excruciating moments. Everything hung in that balance. He would either explode or he’d defuse, making goofy jokes and sneaking kisses on my cheek to make up for the brooding he’d been doing all morning. I didn’t know which one was worse.
I thought about the stranger I’d kissed in a bar two days before. He wore a cowboy hat and a mustache that tickled my nose, and he tasted like Marlboros. I took his number. It was folded and hidden in the ancient pack of Extra at the bottom of my purse. I didn’t think Alex would find it. He didn’t seem to worry about me much.
“Well,” he sighed. “We’re here. You cool to try this trail, babe?”
Defused.
I forced a smile and shrugged. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
“That’s what’s up. Courageous Chrissy, let’s fucking go!” Alex jumped up and down clapping. He was thirty years old. “Alright, let’s check this map real quick.”
Beside the trailhead sign was a small map of the trail bolted onto a wooden post. It was pockmarked with bbs and graffitied.
The main trail took a meandering semi-circle along the ridge of the mountain, running alongside the river. I could see the bend from the trailhead. It looked pretty flat. There was no loop on the map, so it looked like an out-and-back, meaning you walked back the same way you walked in.
I wasn’t thrilled about that. Out-and-back’s make for a boring return trip. Even worse, they always portend awkward passes with other hikers, especially on a short trail like this, which was bound to be a honey pot for local amateurs and families. That means people playing music on their phone speakers, children climbing past warning signs, and elderly couples dying to chat about the weather, their family, anything.
“Seems easy,” Alex grunted as he cinched his pack higher up his back. “For me, at least.” He elbowed me and chuckled. I almost reminded him that I’d been hiking since I was 14 and that he’d been hiking for six months (the exact length of our relationship), but I held my tongue.
I noticed something else on the map. I ignored Alex and stepped closer, running my finger along a track where the paint had seemingly been scraped away. Strange. It looked like an alternate trail that branched off to the right just a little ways in. Instead of winding around the mountain ridge, it delved straight north into a saddle between the summit and a minor peak, connecting back to the main trail’s terminus like the string of a bow.
Alex stepped up behind me.
“Looks like a shortcut. Dope,” he said.
“Maybe. It could climb straight up and down, though.”
“Or down and up.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
It’s very common for certain trails to be blocked off temporarily for a number of reasons: protecting natural formations/wildlife, rockfalls, wildfires, etc. Normally, State authorities would simply place a barrier over the closed trail and maybe a sign. What I hadn’t seen before, however, was a trail being etched off of the map entirely. I wondered if it even was the State who did that. Perhaps it was a local.
“Let’s just stick to the main trail this time, babe,” I suggested. “I don’t feel like going crazy.”
“Boo. Cowardly Chrissy has entered the chat.”
I stared at him with blank-faced scorn.
“Fine,” he relented. “Main trail it is.”
Tunnel Walk was really quite pleasant. It was paved with white gravel and it was well-maintained. There was one steep portion at the very beginning to get us up into the mountain that had both of us sweating, but after that, it was smooth sailing.
We rounded a bend and discovered the trail’s namesake: a massive stone tunnel that was carved into the side of the mountain.
“Holy shit,” Alex exclaimed. “Wait, this is actually fucking awesome.”
It was pretty awesome.
As we approached the mouth of the tunnel, there came a gusty, cold wind. Alex and I both pulled our windbreakers over our faces.
Despite the light ahead of and behind us, it was dark in the middle of the tunnel. The icy wind forced tears into the corner of my eyes. I could barely see the tunnel walls at all. They appeared to be jagged, unfinished, likely made by granite blasting a long time ago. I guessed that the tunnel’s original purpose was for an irrigation canal or pipeline that eventually became obsolete.
As I squinted at the rock walls and pondered their purpose, I thought I saw a figure move in the darkness. The wind was rushing past my ears, but I could vaguely hear the skittering of gravel.
I stopped moving.
“What?” Alex asked. “Babe, we’re almost at the end. I’m freezing my nuts off here. Let’s *go*.”
“Hold on,” I insisted. I was still inspecting the walls. I walked closer.
There was a little hole in the east wall of the tunnel. I almost didn’t notice it, but there it was. It was covered by a large rock. The hole looked just big enough for a person to fit through.
I slid the rock aside and shined my phone’s flashlight in. I couldn’t really see anything. The hole took an immediate hard left. The sides looked eerily smooth.
There was a weird smell coming out of the hole. It wasn’t a bad smell; it was like a mixture between pine tar and ash.
Perhaps there used to be some sort of pipeline fixture here, or it was a drainage channel in case of leakage. Either that, or it was the den of a mountain animal, though I found it–
“Sasquatch Den!” Alex gasped behind me. I jumped a foot into the air.
He doubled over laughing. “Easy there, princess!”
I kicked him in the shin. His laughing halted and he started hobbling on one foot.
“That’s *not* funny, Alex,” I hissed. “Now come on.”
The ashen pine tar smell seemed to fill the entire tunnel. It stayed with us all the way to the exit.
Alex gradually regained his composure, and by the time we reached the end of the tunnel, he was walking normally again, though his mood had seemingly suffered for it. I found myself starting to feel a little bad. It was an innocent joke, after all, but something about that hole didn’t seem like a laughing matter.
We stepped out into the open air to a beautiful view.
The river was just there down a steep escarpment on the west side of the trail, snaking through the valley. The sky was starting to clear. Patches of vivid blue bloomed above the mountaintops, and a chorus of birds sang like a tuning orchestra somewhere to the east between Tunnel Walk and our mountain’s summit.
The trail kept going north. The east side was lined with thick patches of brush along the ground and towering faces of sheer rock, easily over 15 feet high, which only occasionally fanned open to reveal a view of the summit.
“Wow,” I gasped.
“No shit,” Alex concurred. We both stood in captivated silence for a long while.
“I should get your picture in the tunnel,” I offered.
Alex brightened at that.
I fished for my phone as Alex stood in the mouth of the tunnel and posed. He unzipped his windbreaker and pointed at his shirt that read “Take a Hike!”. I got him that shirt for his birthday.
I snapped several pictures and gave him the thumbs up. He came jogging back.
“Let me see, let me see,” he demanded, grabbing the phone from my hand. “Oh sick, that’s a good one!”
While Alex stared at himself, I noticed the entrance to the alternate path just after the tunnel mouth. It was obfuscated by a thick patch of overgrown shrubs. I could just make out the yellow chain barricading the entrance.
I walked closer. It ran north-east on a decline down a very narrow path in the rock. No sun fell onto that route. It didn’t look like anyone had been down there for a very long time.
Alex hadn’t seemed to notice. I decided not to mention it. I didn’t want to risk him bulldozing me into taking it, as he was wont to do. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many trails I had been forced to bushwhack because Alex thought he found a more interesting way, only to end up lost and covered in ticks and poison ivy.
Someone was coming through the tunnel towards us. I could see their silhouette as they approached. They were on a bike.
I grabbed Alex’s arm and pulled him aside to make way for the biker. As they got near, I waved. They didn’t wave back.
The biker emerged from the darkness and skidded to a halt beside us. It was an older man, probably in his sixties, with a long white beard.
“Did you move the rock?” he panted. He was wearing athletic gear and a helmet. Sweat rolled down his face and formed dark patches on his clothes.
Neither of us answered.
“Did you move the rock?” he asked again, his patience fleeting. What was his problem?
“Listen, sir, I understand the principles of Leave No Trace, I assure you,” I began. “I thought I saw something move in the tunnel and I was investigating, for our safety. That’s all.”
“Yeah man,” Alex chimed in. “Take it easy. We’ll put it back on the way out.”
The old man scoffed. “You two aren’t from around here, are you?”
We both shook our heads.
“It’s time for us to go home. All of us. Come with me.” The man turned his bike around and looked over his shoulder at us expectantly.
“Why would we leave with you, dude?” Alex inquired. He stepped in front of me and crossed his arms.
“Don’t you smell it?” he begged. “That’s your warning. The smell, the rock: that’s your warning. Don’t be stupid and come with me. It’s coming down the trail any minute.” His voice was so insistent that, though I had no idea what he was talking about, I was inclined to believe him.
“Let’s go, Alex,” I said, trying to push past him and follow. His arms stopped me.
“No, Chrissy. Fuck no,” he whispered. “Never follow a man to a secondary location.”
Before I could insult him for his misunderstanding of that principle, he raised his voice and shouted at the old man.
“You go on ahead and leave, buddy. We’re gonna be just fine. Thanks though!”
The old man shook his head. It seemed like he was fixing his mouth to continue arguing, but he looked past us down the trail and closed it.
“It’s your life,” he muttered. And then he took off. Alex and I watched him pedal back through the tunnel, faster than he came.
“We should follow him,” I said.
Alex turned and looked at me. His eyebrows were furrowed.
“You let us drive the wrong way. You assault me. And now you’re demanding we end the one date we’ve had in three weeks early because a senile old man smells pine trees. You are something else entirely, Chrissy.”
Alex turned away and marched up the trail.
I followed after him.
“Alex, it’s not like that,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry about your shin, but with the hole and the old guy, I’m getting a bad vibe. We don’t know anything about this trail.”
“It’s a two mile kiddy trek, Chrissy. My fucking grandma could hike this. We’re already halfway there. When we’re done, we can go home and go back to not talking to each other for the rest of the day. Would that make you happy?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I muttered. He was walking quickly and I was struggling to keep up.
Alex spun around on me. His face was wild.
“Why do we even fucking bother, Chrissy? Clearly you’re not happy. I go out of my way to be involved in this hobby that you love just to spend time with you, and yet every single time we go out on a trail, you’re a fucking ghost. It’s been a month since we fucked. A month. Is it fair that you can make me wait that long? What kind of girlfriend would even do that to a guy?”
His rant hung in the air for several agonizing moments.
“Is everything okay?”
The voice came from up the trail. Alex turned and we both searched for the source.
Standing on the trail about 15 feet ahead was the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
He was massive and shirtless. Even from a distance it was clear that he towered over both of us, and his muscle tone was outrageous. Beads of sweat dripped down his heaving pecs.
I was speechless.
He was listening to a Walkman which was tucked in his shorts. He lowered his headphones around his neck and slicked his shoulder-length blonde hair behind his ears.
Alex looked over at me. I could feel him watching my eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
I realized they were both waiting on me to answer.
“Uh, yeah- Yeah, we’re fine, sir. No problem here,” I stuttered. “Nice day huh?”
“You sure?” the man asked again. He was walking closer, slowly, and I noticed his piercing blue eyes watching me. Not in a predatory way; with concern. I also noticed a slight accent. European, or something close to that. Maybe Russian, or Mongolian.
“She just told you, pal,” Alex barked. He stepped forward and crossed his arms. His signature move.
“Alright, kemosabe. Just checking.” The man flashed a white smile. He had perfect teeth, of course. That accent again. Portuguese? I couldn’t pinpoint it.
“We didn’t see any other cars in the parking lot,” Alex observed. “Where’d you come from?”
“I’m not keen on driving. I prefer to run.” He had very nice running shoes on. They looked brand new.
“What are you listening to?” I asked, trying to keep casual. Alex shot me a glance.
“*Born in the U.S.A.*, answered proudly, “my favorite album.”
“Good choice,” I said. I hoped I wasn’t blushing.
“No offense, but you don’t sound like you were born in the U.Sare you from?” Alex sneered.
The man laughed. “I’m from here.”
“No, I mean, originally.”
“Oh, I see,” the man said. “Well, first, a long long time ago, I was star dust, and then, skipping ahead, I was born here.” He pointed at the gravel under his feet. “Right. Here.” Some of the good humor was gone from his face.
Maybe the accent was Native American? He didn’t look Native. He looked Aryan, or maybe like a cowboy without his hat, or a soldier without his uniform.
I glanced at Alex. He was wearing his discomfort on his face.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, man,” Alex managed.
“Don’t worry about it. Hey listen,” the man said, “do you guys happen to have any snacks you could spare? I’m starving.”
“Well, we really only packed enough for two, but–”
“Sure!” I blurted. I slung the backpack off my shoulders and zipped it open.
“Oh, you’re an angel,” the man cooed. We walked towards each other. I saw Alex pouting in the corner of my eye.
As he was rooting through the bag, I couldn’t help but inspect him. He smelled good, like sweat with a faint undercurrent of trees. He was so vascular. I tried to keep my eyes on the river over his shoulder, but they kept falling down to his hands in the backpack (and occasionally the toned V just above the band of his shorts).
The Walkman in his waistband looked old. Extremely old. I was shocked it still worked.
“You have great taste in snacks,” he whispered in that elusive accent. “So hard to choose.” He winked.
“Thanks,” I replied, tucking my hair behind my ear.
“What’s your name?”
“Christine. Yours?”
“Ah, you’d never be able to pronounce it. Most people just call me John.” I don’t know why, but he winked again. “Nice to meet you, Christine.”
“And you… John,” I laughed. He laughed too. I could feel Alex’s gaze burning into us.
Just behind the Walkman, I noticed something else sticking out of his waistband: a smooth wooden handle. I could see the outline of it running down his shorts. It looked like a hatchet.
My involuntary smile faltered.
It had the pattern of woodgrain, but there were other strange colors in it–amber, pink, orange–like a mineral. Petrified wood, perhaps? Could you even make a hatchet out of that?
The man finally settled on a granola bar and I withdrew the backpack.
He peeled it open and took a massive bite, disappearing half of it at once.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he moaned with his mouth full. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” I muttered. He was handsome and kind, but a strange man with a weapon should make any woman nervous.
“And thank you too,” he waved to Alex. Alex offered a curt nod and nothing more.
“Enjoy your hike,” the man said with a smile. “Stay safe.”
He pulled his headphones back around his ears and began jogging again. I waved. He waved back. I watched him leave until he rounded the bend, then I turned back to Alex.
He was staring daggers at me.
“I think that guy had a hatchet,” I whispered.
“A hatchet?” he repeated quizzically, his anger melting into nerves. “I didn’t see a hatchet.”
“Yes. A hatchet. It was on his waistband, hidden beside the walkman.”
“His waistband, huh. You sure are perceptive when you like what you’re looking at,” he muttered.
I laughed, assuming he was joking.
“Oh whatever. If some blonde babe with huge tits came around the corner, you’d be looking, too.”
“Except I wouldn’t. Because I respect you. See, this is your problem. You seem to be under the impression that I’m as uninterested in this relationship as you are.”
I cocked my head at him.
“Why are you so convinced that I’m checked out? Because I’m not sucking your dick every night? Alex, if you want to get laid, you should date a hooker, because I’m no–”
“Who’s Micah, Chrissy?” he interrupted.
I fell silent.
“You got a text from him last night at 1 AM that said *wyd* with a winky face. I looked through your messages. Sorry, but I did. And it seems like you have no problem putting out for him.”
I didn’t have anything to say. Clearly it was over. Deep down I knew this is what I wanted, but I had always imagined I would build up the courage to do it the right way. It seemed like my cowardice had caught up to me.
“You know, if you run fast enough, you might catch up to Fabio, and you can get his number too!” Alex’s face was hot. “I can’t fucking believe you embarrassed me like this, Christine. I can’t fucking believe it.”
Alex turned away and kept going up the trail.
“Alex, wait–”
“Don’t follow me. I need a minute.”
I followed him anyway. “I know you’re upset but you can’t leave me here alone right now, Alex!”
He wheeled around and smacked me in the face.
I staggered back in shock. I held my hand over my cheek.
Alex’s expression fell. “I’m sorry, Chrissy. I told you–I’m sorry.”
Then, he turned away again and ran up the trail, leaving me alone.
I decided to stay put and wait until Alex got back. If I went back to the car to wait (I did have the keys, after all), I would be forced to walk back through the tunnel alone. Plus, I risked running into the handsome armed man again, or some other stranger, and it would be well over an hour until Alex returned.
So, I checked the brush along the trail for snakes and leaned against the sheer rock wall, waiting.
I opened a bag of trail mix and ate.
Some time passed. I watched the river rapids thunder past. I watched the clouds overhead morph and glide. I watched a bighorn sheep ambling on the far mountain ridge.
My cheek stung.
I felt hopeful that things between Alex and I could be salvaged. I cheated. He slapped me. In some ways, that made us even. Of course it didn’t really, but I thought Alex could be convinced.
Why in the hell did I even want to be with him? Because it was easier to have someone, or because I was a coward? It was probably both.
I thought I heard something moving in the mountain above me. The sound was coming from down the trail, and it was coming my way.
I couldn’t see anything over the rock face, of course, so I walked up the trail until I saw a gap. The whole time I could hear it, getting closer and closer, barrelling through the brush up the mountain ridge above me.
I arrived at the gap just in time to see it running past.
It was John.
He was sprinting down the alternate trail.
He was beet red, his veins swollen like drowned worms under his skin. He passed across the ridge with an astounding speed, arms pumping, hair flying back in the wind. His expression was completely still. He didn’t watch his feet; he looked straight ahead.
He held the hatchet in his hand.
I started running.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I shouted to myself, my heart pumping hard in my chest.
John was on the faster path. I had no chance of catching up to Alex unless he was already on the way back. I prayed that he was.
The river rushed beside me as though we were carried by the same spirit. I could hear only the beating of my boots, the heartbeat in my ears, and the gasping of breath.
As I ran, I came upon a wooden bridge across a gap in the mountain ridge where water flowed into the river below. There were wide spaces between the slats. I peered through them as I flew across. I saw broken trees and crumbled rock. Then I saw bones. Blackened bones. The dark shards–antlers, skulls, and femurs among them–were tangled in a rainbow of clothing. It was as though the mountain had swallowed them all deep into its stomach, gnashed them up and stripped their flesh, and finally puked them out like an owl pellet.
The cloying smell of pine tar and ash came wafting up between the boards. No rot, no smell of meat, but I gagged nevertheless in fear.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that I would round the corner to find Alex dead on the gravel. I could see him, his blood pouring from the split in his skull and filtering down into the dirt where it would eventually spill into the mountain’s hungry gullet.
But when I did finally round the corner, it wasn’t Alex waiting for me. It was John.
He leaned against the rock face, shaking a Marlboro from the pack.
He was wearing Alex’s shirt. He stole it from him, like he stole everything else–the shorts, the running shoes, the Walkman.
There was a splatter of blood across his face.
I stopped running.
I didn’t see Alex, but I knew he was dead.
My breath was caught in a loop between my lungs and my lips, spinning in shallow cycles. My hands were swollen from the running and the altitude. My feet tingled in my boots.
John fished a lighter from his pocket and side-eyed me.
Things were quiet around us. No one was coming for me; no boat down the river, no hiker up the trail, no bolt of light from God above.
“Thank you,” John muttered. He lit his cigarette and took a deep drag. “I was starving.”
“Where’s Alex?” I wheezed.
“Gone.”
“No, fuck you, where is he?” I screamed. “Where the fuck is he?!”
John gestured to an opening in the rock face just ahead with a yellow chain hung across it. “He took the other trail home, Chrissy,” he said. He almost sounded sorry.
I sprinted away down the main trail.
The sun beat down on my head and neck, my entire body hot. I didn’t hear John behind me.
Suddenly, I heard a roaring ahead of me, coming up the trail. It sounded like a building being demolished, cascading louder and louder toward me in a slow wall of sound. My running faltered, chest heaving.
Then I saw it.
The rock faces were collapsing across the trail.
The path directly in front of me was swallowed in a rock fall. The air was clouded with granite dust that glowed in the sunlight.
I turned left and saw the rock beside me trembling. Pebbles began to rain at my feet.
I skittered back. My feet turned so quickly that my hips couldn’t keep up, my body awkwardly folding over itself until my balance was gone and I had to catch myself with my hands. I kicked into the gravel hard and drove myself away, but it was too late.
A massive stone landed on my legs.
I screamed in pain. My body tumbled down the escarpment, as willing as any other boulder in the rockfall that was spilling into the river.
I do not know how I didn’t die.
When I woke up, I was being carried.
I blinked awake through eyelids that were crusted together with dried blood. The clouds rolled by overhead. I couldn’t feel my body beyond a general vibration in my nerves.
I turned my head to see John’s face.
He was expressionless. His eyes were dark as though he were sleepwalking.
His headphones were on again. He was humming the melody of “Dancing in the Dark.”
My body screamed to move. I flung my fist at John’s bloody face, but my hand merely twitched at the end of my dangling arm. I couldn’t command a single muscle to move.
I looked around. Down the mountain, I could see the main trail. It was covered in rock like it never existed.
The path we were on, the other trail, was more like a game trail. We were descending.
John started to softly sing.
“*Stay on the streets of this town,*
*And they’ll be carving you up, all right,*
*They say you gotta stay hungry*
*Hey baby, I’m just about starving tonight*”
I noticed it was getting darker. Then the sky overhead disappeared, replaced with earth. We had entered some sort of cave, or perhaps another tunnel.
“*I’m dying for some action*
*I’m sick of sitting around here, trying to write this book,”*
Then he looked down at me and smiled. His teeth were laced with pieces of red meat.
“*I need a love reaction*
*Come on, baby, give me just one look*.”
He was dancing, shaking his hips. I jostled in his arms.
“*You can’t start a fire*
*Sitting around crying over a broken heart*,”
He kissed me on the forehead. His breath smelled like iron.
“*This gun’s for hire*
*Even if we’re just dancing in the dark,*”
I closed my eyes. I felt myself drifting away again. The swaying of his body pulled me under like the tide. All the while, we descended lower and lower into the earth.
“*You can’t start a fire*
*Worrying about your little world falling apart*
*This gun’s for hire*
*Even if we’re just dancing in the dark*
*Even if we’re just dancing in the dark*
*Even if…”*
I had a dream. I imagined I was swimming in the river. Alex was on shore, reading. The sun was growing low against the mountains. The water was ice cold. I felt smooth stones under my feet, some of them slightly slimy with moss. I paddled deeper towards the center of the river, turning my head to breathe. That’s when I saw something coming towards me upstream. It was the churning body of a massive serpent. A spiny fin rose from the waters and unfurled like a sail. I looked to shore to find Alex was gone. My paddling turned into a sprint. I cautioned a glance behind me to see the serpent gaining. Its jaw unhinged to reveal a black cavern of needle teeth, water pooling in its mouth like a lagoon and draining down its open gullet. I looked ahead and saw the river was flowing toward a great, black tunnel.
When I woke up again, I was warm. I heard the crackling of a fire. My body was wrapped in an ancient weave. It was dim in the fire light, but the pattern looked like a Navajo chief’s blanket.
I smelled burning flesh.
John was hauling something up to the fire. He was wearing a coon skin cap like old French fur traders used to wear.
As he got closer, it gained form. It was the lower half of a leg. Tendons and veins hung from the calf like a half-eaten turkey leg.
John tore one more mouthful of flesh from the bone with a wet pop and tossed the rest into the fire.
Sparks kicked up into the air. My eyes followed them.
High, high above was a light at the end of a tall spire. The smoke flowed up it like a chimney flue.
We must have been far underground.
On either side of me were two things:
The first was the bloody hatchet. Except, it didn’t really look like a hatchet. The blade was crude and hooked in toward the handle. It was wrapped in black braids of human hair. The minerals in the handle glinted in the firelight.
The other was a bird’s nest. It was made of twigs, shoelaces, corn stalks, hair, and strips of dry meat. Nestled among the menagerie was a single white feather.
“Go back to sleep, Chrissy. I’ll take you home once I’m done.”
I looked up at John. He was walking towards me.
“What is this?” I choked.
“Dinner,” John replied.
It’s funny what your brain does when the world you understand suddenly becomes strange again. Every day is like that when you’re young, and then you form some logical framework that serves as your safety blanket, and that keeps you going. Well, mine had been ripped away, and I was like a child again, trying to make puzzle pieces fit.
“You’re a Native mountain spirit, aren’t you?” I asserted.
John laughed.
“Sure. As you like it.” He squatted in front of me, considering my face with boredom.
“Aren’t you?” I didn’t understand. The axe, the blanket, the dream of the great serpent, it all felt cohesive. But there were other things, things that didn’t fit: John, mostly. His golden hair, his Aryan face, his accent, his Walkman.
John’s face darkened.
“I owe you nothing, but I’ve been told to speak,” he said bitterly. “I presented myself to be worshipped, and I was rejected. So I took. First the Natives, yes, but when the others came, I took from them too. And I’ll keep taking, until I’m claimed.”
His smooth skin glowed and sparkled in the light. The dark stain of blood circled his mouth. He reached out and took my hands.
I recoiled at first. He held his palms out, asking. I offered my hands to him.
He held them up and inspected them. They were not broken.
“Are they okay?” he asked.
“Y-yes,” I said. “I think so.”
“Good,” he said, and dropped them. “Go to sleep.”
John stood and walked away, returning to the pile of body parts.
“Wait,” I yelped. He stopped.
“Why am I alive?” The answer to this question eluded me. He’d eaten Alex and countless others, but he’d spared me. He could have let me leave, but he trapped me. Why?
John sighed. He seemed to grow tired of questions.
“Because you’ll write my book,” he said with his back still turned.
“How do you know?” I demanded. My sense was slowly returning. I tried to stand, but my muscles screamed in protest. “You can’t control me. When you release me, I’m free. I’m free forever.”
John turned around smiling. He sauntered back over to me.
“So American,” John chuckled.
Then he raised his hand. I only managed to widen my eyes before my head rocked back and struck the stone floor.
I saw the pinpoint of light overhead blink, and then everything was dark again.
When I regained consciousness, I was in the Tunnel Walk tunnel. The wind whooshed past my ears. The smell of pine tar and ash was gone. I thought I heard the skittering of gravel.
The stone was back in front of the hole.
Then I was being carried again, but not by John. Paramedics.
When we emerged from the tunnel, I looked down towards the parking lot. Our car was lost in an ocean of red and blue lights.
Alex’s body was never found. I told them where to find it, past the rockfalls and deep in the heart of the mountain, or tangled in the outflow of bone and cloth under the bridge. They had no idea what I was talking about.
Search and rescue teams scoured the mountain, but found no cave entrance, and no chute spitting out smoke. The alternate trail led exactly where the map indicated, and while it was overgrown, it contained nothing of note. I called dozens of times over the years, but I never learned why they closed it. I had a good guess.
There were no rockfalls, either. The trails were completely clear.
And, of course, there was no river of corpses.
I told them about John. I described him–his eyes, his voice, the hatchet–in perfect detail. I told them he killed Alex and so many others. They didn’t believe me.
I know he was there. I know it. I can still see him now in my head.
Investigators concluded that we had ventured off-trail and gotten stuck on the mountain, Alex eventually succumbing to dehydration and I to delirium. It wasn’t the truth, but it fit their framework.
I haven’t dated since Alex. It’s been six years. I’ve been laid a few times, sure, but no boyfriends. I don’t mind. I don’t think I’m built to be in a relationship. I like my freedom.
So American of me, I know.
I haven’t hiked since then either.
I have these dreams where I’m walking alone down a trail surrounded by beautiful green trees. I’m watching my feet as they crunch through the fallen pine needles and navigate the twisted roots jutting into the path. Then I hear a scream. I look up, and there’s a figure standing ahead on the path, looking straight at me, beckoning. His face is black. I come to him. I kiss him hard. When I pull away, a tendon stretches from his teeth to mine. Somewhere in the woods, rocks fall.
That’s enough, I think. There’s a bird at my window.
#entertainment .Ae. ”
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