I'm writing this because I don't want anyone telling me I imagined it.

I know what I saw, and I know what it tried to do.

This happened in late October on a stretch of Forest Rd.

along a high Ridge I've walked a dozen times.

It's an old logging Rd.

that drops into dark Pines, then crosses a Creek and climbs to a broken fire lookout base.

I go there to tire out my dog Rook, who's a 60 LB shepherd mix with a good nose and a calm head.

He's scared of fireworks but not much else.

That afternoon the sky was flat and Gray with a weak sun pushing through.

It felt like the woods were waiting for snow even though it was still fall.

I figured two hours out and back home by dinner.

I parked at a wide pull out with a gate across the road.

There were no other cars.

Rook did his usual happy circles at the tailgate while I clipped his harness and the 20 foot line I use when we hike.

I had a small pack with water, a first aid kit, a headlamp, bear spray and a cheap folding knife.

Nothing heroic, just the normal stuff.

It was quiet in a way that makes your ears ring.

Even the usual chickadee chatter wasn't there.

I noticed it, then told myself the cold front had pushed the birds down.

We started walking.

For a while it was just boots on gravel and the sound of Rook breathing.

The road bed cut between tall straight Pines with long lines of shadow in every direction.

10 minutes in.

Rook lifted his head and tasted the air.

His tail went low.

He didn't bark, he rarely does, but the leash got tight as he leaned to the right toward the thicker stuff.

I stopped and listened.

All I heard was wind moving high in the trees and one tree creaking.

I waited until Rook quit staring and we kept on.

The first weird thing was hanging over the road at shoulder height, a string tied between two saplings with a white shape dangling in the middle.

I thought it was a piece of trash until I got close.

It was a deer scapula, drilled or punched through and threaded on the line like A tag.

There were three small bird bones tied beside it.

I'm not a superstitious person, but that felt wrong.

I didn't touch it.

I LED Rook around it off the side of the road and kept moving, telling myself some hunter did it and forgot it or a kid playing a joke.

Rook kept looking back over his shoulder.

In that way dogs have when they want to make sure you see what they see.

Past the Creek crossing, the road narrowed and started to climb.

Here the trees grow tighter and the ground is a patchwork of Duff, exposed roots and black volcanic rock.

The air had that cold metal smell you get before a storm.

This was where I heard the first voice.

It came from the slope below us, not far, like someone standing in the trees just off the road.

It said hey in a flat, calm tone.

Just that one word.

I stopped so fast Rook bumped my leg.

Hello.

I called back.

No answer.

I stood there another 10 seconds, listening hard.

Nothing moved.

Rook turned his head left and.

Right, and then looked up at me for instruction.

I didn't want to look rattled, so I said let's go, and we kept climbing.

A couple of minutes later the same voice said hey again, this time from above us, like whoever it was had moved ahead.

The hair went up on the back of my neck.

Rook gave a low sound, not a growl, more like air forcing through his nose.

I could feel him tremble through the leash.

I called out again, louder.

You need help?

I've got a dog with me.

Nothing.

I scanned the slope with my eyes.

It's hard to explain, but it felt as if the trees were posed, like they were hiding someone on purpose.

I told myself it was just the wind and the lack of birds making me anxious.

We kept going until the old turn out opened on our left, a bald spot of dirt where trucks must have turned around back when the lookout still stood, ringed by stumps.

A good place to throw a ball for your dog.

I always stopped there to let Rook run.

He wouldn't go.

He planted his feet and leaned against the leash so hard the harness creaked.

His ears were back and his lips were tight.

I squatted and scratched under his collar and felt his heart hammering.

I was about to stand when something snapped twice in the brush at the edge of the turn out, then went dead quiet again.

Not the tiny snap of a squirrel.

Something heavier.

I pulled the bear spray from my belt and popped the safety and the tiny sound that made felt too loud out in the open air.

OK, we're going.

I said out loud, mostly to hear a human voice, and we moved up the road again.

The idea of turning back felt worse than continuing.

I wanted the lookout base in front of me, the road under my feet, and daylight left to get back.

The third time the voice spoke, it knew my dog's name.

We were on the last climb when it came from the trees to our right, closer than before, Almost conversational.

It said Rook.

Not yelled, not calling, just a simple statement like someone reading his tag.

That's the moment my mind changed channels.

Fear went from a background hum to a hard, hot thing that fills your chest.

No one else was up there.

No one had walked past us to read his name and the way it said it, clean with the R, rolled just a little.

The way I sometimes say it when I'm trying to get his attention, turned my stomach.

Rook backed into my legs and tried to sit behind me, all 60 lbs of him trying to become small.

I didn't run.

Running downhill on that stuff is asking to break an ankle and I knew if I panicked I'd get hurt.

I said loud and steady.

We're leaving like I was talking to a stranger.

I kept Rook close and started down the woods, absorbed my voice.

I hadn't gone 20 steps when I heard it again from behind us now, but not far up the road where we just been.

Rook, the same voice said, and then a second later, much closer to my left.

Too close, hey?

I edged to the center of the road and looked left without turning my head.

The trees were a mess of shadow and branches.

Something moved there, not a person stepping out, more like a body sliding between trunks without the sounds a body should make.

Rook didn't bark.

He pressed against my knee and started a high whine.

He uses at the vet the sound he makes when they bring out the Clippers.

He hates that sound.

I hate it too.

We reached the bald turn out again.

And the deer bones on the string we're now hanging across the open ground between two stumps.

They had not been there a minute ago.

The line was lower this time.

Shin height, like a trip line.

I didn't think.

I put Rook on the inside, stepped over the string and kept moving as my boot cleared it.

Something tugged from the shadows and the line snapped up and flicked my heel.

It wasn't enough to trip me, but it packed a message.

I can reach you, I can touch you.

I spun with the bear spray up and thumb on the trigger.

A pale shape eased back into the trees.

At first I thought it was 1/2 rotted stump with lichen on it.

Then it moved again on its own.

It was on all fours too long in the forelimbs, and when it rose to 1/2 stand, its head cleared the brush and I saw a face I don't like thinking about.

It wasn't a skull and it wasn't an animal.

It looked like a person wearing a dead person's face that didn't fit right, like it had been pulled on over something bigger.

The mouth was wrong.

The eyes were black and polished like wet stones.

It leaned its head to the side like it was studying us.

Then it said in a string of wrong, broken sounds that still sounded exactly like words.

Come here, boy.

With the exact rhythm I use when I call Rook to the car, I don't remember making a decision.

I sprayed a hard orange cloud straight into that spot and pulled Rook with me down the road at a trot.

Pepper spray makes a sound like a shaken soda can, and that sound lit the woods up.

Something thrashed and coughed in the brush.

The voice tried to talk through the cough, and it came out like a recording played backward.

I didn't look back.

I just kept my eyes on the middle of the road and watched for lines on the ground and felt.

Rook hit the end of the leash as he found a gear I didn't know he had.

The descent felt twice as long as the climb had, like the road had stretched at the Creek.

Rook balked at the culvert.

He didn't want to go into the dark Oval under the road where the water ran.

I hauled him and he scrabbled and we splashed through ankle deep water.

The cold bit my bones on the other side.

He shook once and kept pulling downhill behind us from the far bank, the voice called my name, my real name this time, in a high excited tone.

The way people say your name when they spot you across a room.

I have never been so sure of anything as I was in that second.

It wasn't calling to warn me.

It wasn't asking for help.

It was happy it had found the right bait.

Past the culvert, the forest opens a bit and the road runs straight for 100 yards.

That's where it finally stepped into the open, far behind us in the Gray light, as if it felt safe, there it was, tall and narrow and wrong in the joints, like the knees bent too much and the elbows not enough.

The head sat too high on the shoulders, it had something dark in one hand that flopped against its leg as it walked fur hide.

I couldn't tell.

The worst part wasn't the look, it was the sound that came out of it as it started to jog our direction.

A sound that was not a voice or an animal call, but a copy of my own Footfalls in rhythm.

Like it was recording us and playing us back at the same time.

Every step I took I heard it.

E1 beat later in a second set.

I didn't have breath to spare for being sick, but that's how it made me feel.

The gate came into sight up ahead, a metal bar across the gravel with my truck just beyond it.

The truck looked like a toy from that distance.

Rook pulled so hard the leash burned my.

Palm, the thing behind us speed up.

Its steps lost sync with mine and became fast and light.

I risked one glance back and saw it lean forward into a run that didn't match a human run.

It flowed like it was used to moving on all fours and the two legged part was just for show.

My keys were in my right pocket and my right hand was full of bear spray and in my head I kept seeing myself fumble the keys and drop them in the gravel.

The thought didn't.

Help.

We hit the gate and I shoved Rook under the lowest bar, then flung the gate sideways at its hinge.

It moved three inches and clanged.

I vaulted and almost ate it when one boot scraped the metal.

I hit the ground on my hip, popped up and sprinted the last 30 feet.

The truck beeped as the key fob finally registered.

I yanked the driver door open, fired Rook into the passenger seat, dove in after him, and slammed the lock buttons with both fists.

The thing closed the last stretch in 3 floating strides and hit the side of the truck broadside with a sound like a deer hitting a fence.

The whole cab shook.

Rook screamed, not a bark, a scream, and tried to get into my lap.

I jammed the key and the engine turned and caught and the dash lit up like Christmas.

I threw it into Dr.

floored it, and the tires spun on gravel.

The truck fishtailed and corrected and something white and Gray passed the windshield on my left.

Too close and I felt the truck lift a fraction like a weight had.

Been on the hood for a second and then wasn't.

I drove blind for 20 seconds.

I mean it.

My eyes were open, but I wasn't seeing the road, only the speedometer climbing and the edge of the ditch in my peripheral.

When my head came back into the world, we were already rounding the bend that drops out of sight of the gate.

I checked the mirror.

The road behind us was empty.

I kept driving.

Rook climbed into the foot well and pressed his head against my calf so hard I couldn't feel my foot.

The smell of pepper spray in the cab made my eyes run.

My hands shook so bad the key ring clattered against the steering column like teeth.

I didn't stop until I reached the paved County Road.

There's a gas station at the junction.

I pulled in under the tall lights and turned the engine off and sat there with both hands tight on the wheel, feeling the truck tick as it cooled.

2 guys in hoodies stood by the ice chest and watched me with that blank gas station look people get.

Rook crawled into my lap and I let him all 60 lbs of panic, his heart thudding through my jeans.

When my phone registered bars, I called the county non-emergency number and told them someone was up on the Ridge messing with hikers and trying to block the road with lines.

The woman asked if anyone was injured.

I said no, not really, just scared.

I didn't know how to describe what had happened without sounding drunk or crazy.

She said they'd send a deputy to drive through before dark and check for trespassers or poachers.

I said thank you and hung up.

At home, I found a red scrape across Rook's rib cage under his fur, like something had caught him as he went under the gate.

It wasn't deep, but it was clean, as if a wire had grabbed him and slid.

He let me.

Clean it without protest.

He didn't eat that night.

He lay by the front door with his nose on the threshold and his eyes half open.

Around midnight he sat up and growled at nothing for a full minute, a steady low sound I felt in the floorboards.

I turned on every light in the house and sat with him until he dropped his head again.

The next morning I drove back with a friend in broad daylight.

I told myself I wanted to prove to myself it was all a panic mistake.

In low light.

The gate was how I had left it, scuffed with boot marks.

The string with the deer bones was gone.

There were prints in the dust that could have been mine and could have been anyone's.

In the turn out.

We found three more little strings tied between saplings at different heights, like a kids prank set up by someone who doesn't know how kids move through space.

We cut them and left them on the ground.

My friend kept trying to make jokes but they fell flat.

He finally asked serious, do you want to keep going?

I said no and we went back to the truck without a word.

I've gone on plenty of hikes since then, but not up there, not on that road.

I take Rook to the river trail in town and throw a ball and smile at people with strollers.

He's fine most days, his normal self, but sometimes in the yard he pauses in the middle of chasing a toy and points his nose to the wind with every hair on his back standing up.

When that happens, I call him in and lock the door.

I still carry bear spray.

I added a whistle and a brighter headlamp.

None of it feels like it would matter if I ran into that thing again.

I don't say its name out loud when I'm near the woods.

I don't say my dog's name out loud either, Not when it's quiet and the trees are still and the air smells like cold metal.

I keep my voice for inside, where the walls are close and the lights are strong, and I take the long way home if dusk is falling.

Because I'll tell you this, some things in the trees learn fast, and some of them learn your name.

We only just got away and I'm not going to hand it another chance.

Four days in the aspens.

I'm not posting this for points, I want it out of my head.

We were four friends who thought we were smart about the Backcountry.

We planned a simple four day loop in Fish Lake National Forest in Utah because the map showed water, tree cover and enough space between dirt roads to feel alone without being foolish.

We were not chasing ghosts or legends.

No drugs, no drinking.

We packed stove only because of fire restrictions, brought a paper topo and an offline map, a satellite messenger and a bear can.

We checked in at a tiny Ranger office in town.

The guy behind the desk said watch the weather and don't leave food out.

And that was it.

If I had to label what followed, I'd use a word people throw around too easily.

Skinwalker.

I don't know what we meant.

I only know it used our voices and it wanted us to follow.

Day one, the last cell bars died on the washboard road and then it was just Aspen's and a thin trailhead sign with a sun bleached map.

The four of us, me, my sister Jess and our friends Nate and Marco, shouldered packs at noon.

The plan was to hike in about four miles, camp near a small Creek that crossed the trail day hike a loop on day two and three, and walk out on day 4.

The trail ran through pale Aspen trunks that looked smooth until you got close and saw all the old carvings.

The air had that dry, high country smell.

Every few minutes we'd break into a little Meadow and you could hear water even when you couldn't see it.

We found the Creek by mid afternoon.

It was narrow but steady, the bank muddy in places which mattered later.

We picked a flat spot back from the water, under a stand of aspens, and set camp.

Two small tents, one on each side of the bear can, so we'd hear anyone trying to mess with it.

We filtered water, made a late meal and watched the light turn flat behind the trees.

No fire to stare at, so our world shrank to headlamp cones and the hiss of the stove.

The first odd thing was small.

While Jess and I were cleaning pots at the Creek, we both heard a short whistle from upstream.

3 notes quick, like someone telling a dog here, we called out.

No answer.

The sound repeated the same spacing and pitch and then stopped.

We shrugged it off.

A hunter, a hiker, or an echo we didn't understand around.

Midnight I woke to pee and checked the tents.

Everyone was where they should be when I unzipped the fly.

The cold hit and the woods were dead quiet.

I took a few steps toward the tree line and heard my name.

Lo, the way Jess says it when she doesn't want to wake others.

Hey, over here.

The voice came from the Creek side.

I turned with the headlamp.

Nothing.

Both tents were zipped.

I let the beam sit on the fabric of Jess's tent until I saw her roll over.

I told myself she'd talked in her sleep and the sound had bled through the nylon.

But my mouth was dry in a way that had nothing to do with altitude.

I went back in and didn't sleep much.

Day 2.

We woke early and decided to carry day packs to a Ridge on the map that promised a Longview, then looped back to camp before dark.

It felt good to move.

Most of the day was textbook hiking.

We saw a deer, heard a woodpecker somewhere off in the timber, and stopped for a late lunch on a log that had the Forest Service stamp burned into one end.

On the way back, we dropped to the Creek crossing below camp and hit the muddy bank.

There were prints there that weren't ours.

At first I thought they belonged to a barefoot kid.

You see that at lake sometimes.

But these weren't at the lake.

And the toes were wrong.

Too long and spread out like there was space between them that should not have been there.

The stride wasn't a child's either.

I stepped beside one and my heel matched the depth but not the shape.

Jess crouched and held her hand next to the toes.

No way, she said, and then made a joke about someone doing it with fake feet.

We stood around doing the thing people do when they're uncomfortable, laughing and pointing out other explanations.

We followed them a few yards and they vanished on dry leaf litter.

Back in camp, more small things were off.

My boots had been moved not far, just turned to face the trees.

The top of my pack was unzipped.

Nothing was missing.

A thin stack of three smooth stones sat on the Flat Rock where we'd set the stove last night.

We don't stack rocks in wild places we know better.

None of us had done it.

The bear can had a smear on one side, like something with mud on its hands had tried to get a grip and failed.

We ate early.

No one said it out loud, but we were listening.

The woods weren't loud, and that was part of the problem.

Every small noise stood alone.

At dusk the whistle came again, 3 notes, same pace from a different direction.

Marco muttered OK that's enough and clipped a small bell to the zipper of his tent.

We settled in and took turns on a loose watch, which is just a fancy way of saying we lay in our bags awake, listening for each hour to pass.

Sometime after one it came closer.

Nate a whisper, clear right outside the tents.

I sat up so fast my headlamp strap slid down.

Jess, I said.

Her answer came from inside her tent, groggy and annoyed.

The voice outside came again, the same tone and breath.

Nate.

It wasn't just copying names, it had the rhythm of the way we said them.

The zipper on our vestibule twitched like a hand testing it.

I grabbed the knife I keep on the floor and said if you touch that again I'll spray you and meant bear spray.

But my voice shook and I know it didn't sound like a threat.

Something heavy went from heel to forefoot in the leaves and walked around us in a slow, even circle.

It paused at the bear can long enough to make the plastic creak, then kept moving.

It tapped a tent pole hard enough to bend it and moved on.

When it was behind Jess's tent, it spoke in her voice.

She was breathing fast in the dark beside me.

When it said from outside, everything's fine.

That broke us.

We didn't go out.

We didn't challenge it.

We stayed still, bear spray in hand, counting it as it circled by the sound of its steps.

Near dawn, the bell on Marco's tent chimed once, then twice, then nothing.

Day three.

We broke camp as soon as the light was good enough to see more than shapes and decided to move toward the trailhead.

We weren't running for the trucks yet, but nobody wanted another night on that exact spot.

I collected the stacked stones and tossed them into the Creek because I needed to do something, even if it only satisfied.

Me.

We hadn't gone 1/2 mile when Nate stopped with his hand out to the side.

A thin line of monofilament stretched low across the trail between two shrubs.

Easy to miss if you were moving fast.

Someone had tied tiny bells to it.

There were a few more lines in a fan, one at ankle height.

One closer to the ground.

Prank, Marco said, but his voice had no air in it.

We cut the lines and coiled them on a branch because I could not make myself carry them.

Farther on, we found a shallow scrape with a little pile of bones, small like rabbit or squirrel, laid in a circle with bits of charcoal at the four corners.

It was a scratchy thing, thrown together, but I didn't want to step near it.

The woods past the scrape felt wrong in a way that's hard to explain without sounding dramatic.

It wasn't a movie heaviness.

It was like when you walk into a room and realize someone was standing behind the door and you missed them by two seconds.

By mid afternoon we reached an older logging Rd.

that the map showed.

Crossing our trail.

It was rutted and half reclaimed by grass.

We followed it a short ways and found a flat spot with old fire rings and a view through the trees of a Ridge we'd crossed yesterday.

It wasn't the trailhead, but it put us closer.

We decided to camp there and make an early push out in the morning.

We set the tents in a tight triangle and hung a tarp so we could cook under it if the weather turned while we set up.

Jess said I'm going to the Creek and a minute later I heard her call.

Can someone bring the filter bag?

The problem was Jess was 10 feet from me clipping her guidelines.

We both froze.

The call came again, a perfect copy from the trees to the left.

Bring the filter bag.

Same exhale at the end, same note on the word bag.

Just looked sick.

We got under the tarp and stayed there a long time.

Full dark, fell like a curtain.

We ate in a ring with our headlamps on low and said out loud that we would not respond to any voices tonight, that we would not check on each other unless we were face to face.

It felt childish to make rules, but it also made me feel steadier.

I set my watch to beep every hour until 3:00 so we could rotate watch without talking.

When my watch chirped at 10, I listened.

In the silence, I could hear staccato breaths from One Direction, then nothing, then a single step close enough that the tarp line sagged.

I waited and heard it again.

One step, a pause, another.

Around midnight, coyotes called far off.

A few yips and a rise of sound, like it always is, and then nothing.

I've heard them many times.

This was like someone hit a switch and cut the chorus mid Yip after one.

A voice that was mine said Marco, can you come here for a second?

It came from maybe 20 feet beyond the tarp down by the road.

There's nothing in my toolkit for hearing your own voice say words you didn't say.

My mouth decided to be dry again.

No one moved.

It said it again with the same pace.

Like it knew a script.

Marco, bring your light.

Marco whispered no to himself and held onto his spray like a Talisman.

The thing took two more steps and tested the tarp edge with a fingertip.

The movement showed as a small pull on the fabric.

I aimed my light dead at that point.

I didn't flip to high, I just set it there and waited.

The pull stopped.

A slow, careful hand, palm down, slid off the line and withdrew into black.

The skin was the wrong color for the night, and the fingers were long enough that my brain tried to edit what I'd seen into something I could file under normal.

For the first time, I thought about running in the dark and how that would go.

Broken ankles, lost packs, and someone falling behind while the rest had to decide whether to stop.

At 3, the bell on Nate's zipper jingled twice in a row, sharp like something brushed past it, then again.

A few minutes later, softer, as if pinched, we didn't sleep.

We lay there until the thin light showed through the tarp, and then we moved at a speed that said everything we hadn't said out loud.

Day four, we didn't make breakfast.

We shoved cold food into pockets and took the road back toward the trailhead.

It should have been 3 easy miles on a line.

The road curved and dipped and the aspens closed in where the sun hadn't reached in a while.

At a low spot, the road cut through a moist stretch and turned to slick clay.

That's where we saw the Prince again.

Bare, deep, 1 foot straight, one set slightly toe in the distance between.

The Prince wasn't a lazy walk.

Something heavy had moved fast across the mud and up the bank into the trees.

The hair on my arms tried to rise.

It wasn't fear in the usual sense.

It was recognition.

We took the road at a steady pace without running.

After a bend through thick cover, a fresh stack of stones waited in the center of the track.

3 stones this time, and a fourth leaning like a tiny sign.

I kicked them aside without stopping.

30 yards later there was another stack.

I didn't kick that one.

I walked around it because I understood what it meant.

It was ahead of us.

The road split.

The map showed both spurs ending near the same place, but one line cut closer to the Creek and the other stayed on higher ground.

We picked high ground and moved fast.

For a minute I let myself think we'd left it behind.

That was when the voice came from the brush to our right, low and a little breathless, like a runner.

This way.

It was Jess's voice again.

It said my name next.

Soft, private, exactly the way she speaks to me when we're trying not to wake others.

On the left in the trees, I heard Nate say, hold up in his voice.

Except Nate was in front of me.

The road was a corridor and something ran on both sides, never showing more than a patch of color between trunks.

The last half mile was a bad dream where your legs don't work right.

The road climbed and then dropped through a notch.

The track narrowed off to the side.

The bank fell to a jumble of deadfall.

I saw movement ahead and raised my arm to stop the others.

A shape crossed the road in three steps and went up the opposite bank without using its hands.

It was man tall but not man shaped.

The head turned without the body turning.

It paused with one hand on a spruce trunk and then folded down out of sight.

When we reached the spot there was no trail.

There was a smell like wet dog fur and rust.

We didn't.

Talk.

I think we were past talking.

We pushed the last bend and saw through the trees the pale shape of a vehicle hood.

I didn't trust my eyes until I heard the tick of an engine cooling.

A white pickup was parked by the trailhead sign.

Two guys in orange vests stood by the bed, pulling on gloves.

Hunters.

Or maybe they were checking on something else.

They looked up and saw us, and something in our faces must have gotten across before we opened our mouths.

The older one said you all right?

And we all said yes and no at the same time.

We told them enough to make sense.

Strange voices, something circling lines across the trail.

We didn't say the word.

The younger guy glanced down the road, swallowed and said we heard somebody last night calling like he knew us.

He tried to laugh and couldn't find the sound.

We figured it was a guy messing with us.

We moved camps, the older one said, too quickly, probably some kids, and then handed Jess a bottle of water, like the act of doing something normal would fix it.

We got in our trucks in a hurry that still looked normal, the way you hustle while pretending you're not.

We didn't look in the rear view.

Back in town, the Ranger listened to our report and nodded.

More than he talked.

He wrote down the thing about the fishing line.

He said.

We have had folks string trip lines for game before.

It's illegal.

We'll take a look.

He didn't write down the voices.

He did say, after a pause that stretched.

You did the right thing by sticking together.

It was the only sentence that felt honest.

That night, in a motel in Richfield, all four of us sat on the floor between the beds with our gear spread out like we were debriefing a climb gone wrong.

The satellite messenger had no unusual pings, the offline map showed our breadcrumb track and three short detours into the trees that we didn't remember taking.

My phone's voice memo from the first night recorded 20 seconds of wind and nylon creeks, and then my own voice said soft come here a second.

In a way I have never said it.

I deleted it without a word.

I don't know if deleting helps.

It felt like standing up to something that likes to get inside sentences and ride them into your ears.

People will jump in here and say it was coyotes or a person with a cheap speaker.

I've lived with coyotes near my house and their sound is its own thing.

I know prankers exist.

I know the woods carry sound in strange ways.

I also know how my sister's voice sounds when she's tired and how my own voice sounds when I'm afraid.

I know the shape of a human step, the rhythm of a person walking a circle, and the way a hand pulls back when light hits it.

I know when something is ahead of you on a road and laying markers to let you know it knows you're coming.

We promised each other we wouldn't go back to that loop, not next summer, not ever.

We didn't make a big dramatic vow, we just said it plain and meant it.

We still hike, we still camp.

But when the woods go too quiet and a whistle comes in, three quick notes from a place where no one should be, we don't answer.

And we don't stand there listening for the next one.

We go the other way together.

And we keep going until there's a hood warming in the sun and a road sign with names we can pronounce.

That's as close to a rule as I have now.

The rest I'm leaving in the aspens.

I went in because the reports clustered in one place and.

Because they were plain.

Not lights, not dreams, not campfire rumors stretched thin over beer.

It was a run of practical stories told by people who work outside and measure their days in miles.

A ranch hand found his dog hobbled by a nylon line strung shin high between two juniper trunks on a decommissioned road near Chevalon Canyon.

2 elk hunters came out.

Early, after a night of voices in the timber that matched their own, same cadence, same vowels, asked from the wrong direction.

A volunteer on a trail crew flagged a barefoot trackway melting through hard frost at 8000 feet, toes long and splayed stride.

Steady and deep.

In late October, the forest on the Mogolian Rim gets quiet under a flat sky, and the dirt holds prints like a notebook.

I make my living as a field producer, and sometimes that means I become my own crew.

I told the county dispatcher the coordinates of my planned camp.

I texted the same to my partner before I lost bars on the High Road and I checked in with the Blue Ridge District office to confirm fire restrictions.

I logged a simple plan in my field notebook.

2 nights, 1 long loop on foot, 1 short spur to a line cabin ruin.

That is only a ruin if you believe a roof matters.

The word people used for what bothered them wasn't my word to handle, and I wrote that at the top of the page too.

Skinwalker, they said.

And then they said they wouldn't say it again.

Chevalon sits in a country of broken edges.

The rim lifts in pale steps and the canyons cut away into long dry slots hung with juniper and oak.

The big storms here announce themselves a day ahead and then come like a wall.

But the week I went in, the forecast called for high clouds and a N breeze.

I packed for cold nights and dry days.

0° bag, stove, canvas drop cloth so I could layout gear on needles without losing pieces.

Extra headlamp, satellite messenger, 2 quarts on the belt and a bladder in the pack.

I tuned the barometer on my watch to the Forest Service sign at the last cattle guard, 7600 feet according to the posted

survey, and marked the time 3:45 in the afternoon.

Sunset would be a little before 6.

I nosed the truck into a flat clearing within the dispersed camping zone, made a quick sweep for broken glass, and oriented my bed toward the road so I could leave in reverse if I had to.

In the dark.

The routine matters.

Doors lock, food been in back under the tarp, orange flag tied to the antenna so anyone arriving would know a camp is staked and occupied.

If I'm alone, I sleep light the first night no matter what.

That's not fear so much as a way of keeping the forest in the edges of my hearing, where it belongs.

The first walk was reconnaissance.

I left the truck at 4:30 with the light going Gray and cut S on a faint 2 track that showed more elk than rubber on the map.

The line cabin ruin sat 3/4 of a mile out on a shoulder above a shallow drainage.

I've learned to trust old foundations and windmills.

People put them where shelter and water once made sense, and things that want company also circle those places.

The two track narrowed to a game trail and then into a braid of footpaths the elk made in late summer when the tank still held water.

I went slow, eyes at the level of my shins and thighs, because anything set to catch a runner is set for those heights.

20 minutes in I found my first line.

It was fishing mono clear and hare fine and for a breath my eyes slid over it like it wasn't there.

The line sagged between a set of branches wedged like a brace between two trunks fixed to a knotted clove hitch on the far side.

1/2 inch brass bell hung on the Leeward branch, taped with electrical black along the top so it wouldn't shine.

The wind teased it and made a sound so light it could have been a leaf clicking against bark.

The bell wasn't old and the knot was clean and the height mid calf felt intentional.

I photographed it, measured the height with the tape I carry clipped to my belt, cut the line with a pocket shear and coiled it into a bag.

It takes time to build fear out of details.

But it only takes one detail to warn you that someone else is working the same ground.

The ruin stood where the map promised.

Low walls of stacked stone, a collapsed roof of planks and rusted tin slid into a corner like shale, the door frame still standing with a hinge plate in place.

The yard held the old garbage of work, square nails, a cast iron lid, a length of chain with twisted collars that show somebody ran it over with a tractor at least once.

Across the clearing, a cedar post leaned into a wire panel hung with empty cans.

The wires had been cut long ago, but the pattern of holes in the posts showed years of use.

The wind had varnished the cut, faces Gray.

Somebody made signal here once.

A human voice carries thin through trees, but metal gives back what you ask of it.

I stepped close and saw fresh scuff Marks and a clean section where a new can had been wired on and then removed.

I set my recorder on a Flat Rock and let it run while I made a loose circle of the clearing.

I don't use bait and I don't leave food in places where I camp, but I do leave a recorder when the air feels like you could pluck sound out of it with your fingers.

At 5:20 I walked back through the bell line gap I had cut and made the truck with the last light pooling cold in the roads wheel ruts.

Night came, as it always does here, quickly with the trees going black and the sky hanging onto its color for a minute longer than feels normal.

I ate in the cab with the doors shut because I prefer the sound of my chewing on glass when I'm alone.

At 6:40 I stepped out with a mug and listened.

Coyotes work the far side of the road.

A single owl called and repositioned 3 times in 20 minutes and then stopped.

The air was the kind that starts to freeze your breath to the cloth of your jacket if you stand still too long.

I set an alarm for 12:30 to do a perimeter walk so I wouldn't sit and imagine every tick as footsteps until dawn.

At 9:10, from the direction of the ruin, I heard my name spoken in my voice.

Not shouted, not whispered.

It came like the end of a sentence, spoken as I turned away, the tale of a thought caught and carried by white air.

I said nothing.

The sound didn't repeat.

Two minutes later, a bell rang.

Once lightly, far off, I watched the road shoulder with the red beam of my headlamp and picked up a slow movement.

2 steps where the light ended.

Not a body, just a shift in the density of darkness, like someone passed behind a trunk.

I stood still long enough for my feet to hurt in my boots and then went back inside the cab and locked the doors.

I tell this part plainly because nothing happened.

No banging on the glass, no hand on the handle, no face in the side mirror.

Boredom and vigilance shook hands and I dozed for 20 minutes and woke at ten O 4 to coyotes again.

The recorder from the ruin gave me something I'm still not sure how to.

File.

I took it back in the morning after coffee, running the truck heater for 15 minutes to soften up the cold in my hands.

The light was pale and slow coming through the trees.

The ruin was unchanged, and my boot tracks from the night before cut clean through the frost.

I took a photograph to fix that, my boot tread crisp, my heel edges sharp, the Gray crystals showing they formed after I walked there last.

The recorder had 84 minutes on it.

I sat on a flat stone and scrolled through the peaks on the waveform.

Wind.

A mouse in leaves once.

A long Yip too deep for coyote.

Possibly a dog or a fox at 48 minutes.

A cluster of flattened energy 3 seconds apart, 7 times.

Bells of different pitch and size rung by a moving hand between the 5th and 6th rings.

There is a word my name said in a voice I know too well.

I played it on loop until I hated the sound of it.

It's easy to forget how often our own voices spook us in small rooms on voicemails.

I still wrote it down the way I felt it because that is part of this work too.

The note says name my own distance uncertain, no footfalls on recorder.

I made a deliberate loop that morning because I wanted to see what a person would see if they watched my camp instead of approaching it.

I took the two track past the ruin and followed A contour around the head of the shallow drainage to a saddle where elk come through in the hour before dawn.

There were prints there from before the freeze, hooves scalloped and softened by a thin snow that fell Sunday and melted with Monday's sun.

Between a pair of those older tracks was a fresh human print, bare.

The toes were long.

The third toe on the right foot crossed the second, a small deformity that made a distinct notch.

The heel cup was deep and clean, and the midfoot showed collapse.

I knelt beside it and touched the outboard edge.

The crystals broke and lay down into water.

I measured the width, just over 4 inches, the length 10 and change, and I set my boot beside it.

My boot is 11.

The stride measured exactly 3 feet between right heels, step to step, and the direction LED upslope into thicker timber.

I followed the trackway for 40 yards before I lost it in the needles and shade.

What I saw in those 40 yards is what I can say.

The prints are from a bare human foot, not cat, not bear.

The mid foot is too broad for a hoax foot on a stick, and the weight distribution is correct across the foot for a person walking uphill and balancing briefly on the ball of the foot before committing to the next step.

If a person went barefoot at 23° before 10 in the morning, they did it because they could.

Or because they had a reason to prove they could.

That distinction is academic when you are alone on a slope and the air hurts to breathe around noon.

I cut E for the deep drainage.

Chevalon Canyon holds cold and smells like rust in the dry season.

The pools are black and ringed with prints, and if cattle or elk die down there, the bones stack in ledges like someone staged a lesson.

Half a mile below the ruin, I found a doe scattered in a way that didn't fit cats.

I've watched.

The viscera had been opened cleanly between ribs on the left.

One rib snapped.

The lungs were missing.

The head was still attached.

There were drag marks for three feet.

A pause, then drag marks again.

Coyotes had worked the hind quarters and left the small white flags of tendon cut ends.

None of this is unusual in itself.

Predators are efficient and messy at once, and scavengers undo any pattern you think you found.

What gave me pause was the cord, the same clear mono threaded through the lower jaw like a bridle and tied to a branch at thigh height.

It was cut or torn, but the knot style matched what I bagged the night before.

I took photographs and measurements, rolled the line in a separate bag, and left the area.

Because bodies become hubs and hubs collect spokes.

10 minutes later on the bench above the pool, I found the second line knee high, this time doubling a trail between 2 low oaks.

No bell.

A loop nodded on one end as if meant to slip.

I stepped over it and wrote loop and kept moving.

The words don't get heavier if you keep them plain.

Field work hiccups on small things.

At 2:20 I saw that my map case had a seam opening on one corner and the paper map inside took a crease that I didn't.

Want to become a tear?

I stopped on a flat of Duff and taped the seam and shook my hands to get blood back into the fingers.

I could hear wind at the level of the crowns, but down where I was it came as a steady pressure, moving right to left against my ears.

I heard the voice again.

Then it said my name.

The second word was here.

A long beat after came the bell, a different pitch than last night.

I turned slowly and saw nothing but the idea of a shape that had been near and was not now.

I clicked once on the radio, because a click is easier to take back than a call.

Another click came from the north side of the drainage.

Same duration, same quiet.

I let the silence sit as a measure and then spoke my name and location once.

I don't like to break a quiet place with my own noise, but I dislike mirrors even more.

The response was my name again, over my shoulder to the West, low and wrong, as if the mouth that made it wasn't sure where the word ended.

I don't run in the forest unless I see fire, and I didn't run.

Then I packed the map case.

I stood up and I walked up Canyon toward the road with the kind of pace that keeps your steps light and your breath steady.

So you can stop quickly if you need to hear behind you.

The third line would have put me down if I hadn't been thinking of the first two.

It was high enough to clip the top of my boot.

I caught it with the left toe and felt the pull and threw my weight back and sat into it instead of stepping through.

The line snapped at the knot and flicked out of the branch in a ring.

The bell didn't ring because there wasn't one.

The loop on the far end held a pair of fish hooks taped into a cluster with athletic white to present as a single Barb.

I took them down and put them in the bag.

When people heard other people out here, it is almost always with a truck first and a gun second.

Wire and hooks feel like a different kind of thinking.

I came up out of the drainage and walked the road back slow, scanning for tire tracks and boot prints that weren't mine.

The road gave me one thing, a barefoot left foot centered inside my boot print from last night, heel to heel, The third toe crossed the second.

The crystals in the boot print were melted and refrozen in a different shape, a thin gloss on the heel.

The person who stepped there did it after I did, and cold enough to make a glaze.

I photographed it, held the camera square over it to preserve scale, and then I stood up and looked into the line of trees and nothing looked back.

The second night I didn't set a recorder.

At the ruin I set 2 at the edges of my camp, 1 low in brush to catch footfalls, 1 high on a branch to collect air.

I pulled the drop cloth and stowed my bins under it and I loosen the trucks parking brake to save a movement if I had to leave at dusk.

A single vehicle came down the road and slowed at my pull out.

I stepped into the road with both hands visible and the driver lifted his palm and rolled by.

He was older, ball cap, local plates, no dog in the passenger seat.

A yellow rope coiled high in the bed like the top of a cinnamon roll.

People here keep rope handy.

The coyotes didn't call until 10.

The owl worked the same circuit as the night before and then added a fourth stop.

The air pulled colder than the forecast, and the frost began earlier, at 8:50.

At 11:10, the high recorder captured a series of clicks, nine of them in 40 seconds, each different in pitch, metal on metal like cans tapped with a stick.

At 11:31, the low recorder caught a sequence of footfalls that moved in a semicircle 20 yards out, slow and thoughtful, a pause between steps that suggested a person who was placing weight carefully into each foot, not an animal that tipped onto toes.

At 1150, something touched the rear bumper of the truck.

The recorder has that thud light and a second, and then a long steady scrape, like a nail or a stick drawn along paint.

I sat up in my bag and put my hand on the door and watch the rear window in the mirror.

There is a frame of mind where the fear is not of being hurt, but of losing the clean line of what you know by making the wrong move.

I did nothing.

At 12:12 a voice said from behind the tailgate Here.

Not like a question, not like a call.

What you want to see here is a person.

You want a sheriff who has set a trick for you and announced himself poorly.

You want a neighbor's kid doing the stupid thing before he learns not to?

I unlocked the doors with the FoB.

The sound startled me the way it must startle others in the night.

The voice didn't speak again.

There is a kind of tired, you get it 2 in the morning that makes time strange.

It is a tired of holding your attention in your own hands so it doesn't spill.

And when the spill comes it is sudden.

I must have lost 7 minutes.

At 12:21, both recorders captured 3 steps at the same time from opposite sides of the truck.

The steps have a tell, there is a soft strike, a smudge where someone brushes Duff, then the full weight, then a roll that is a human gait.

A cat does not roll.

The steps moved to the front of the truck and stopped by the bumper.

Something lifted the drop cloth a few inches and the cloth fell back.

The low recorder caught 2 breaths.

They were not fast.

I lifted my head and looked over the dash.

The front of the truck was shadow, and the glow of the license plate, a shape, was a fraction darker than the dark behind it.

I didn't move, I didn't speak.

There are times when the only way to keep a thing from getting larger is to let it measure itself and find you boring.

The breaths went away to the right, down the ditch and up again to the two track.

A minute later a bell rang once.

10 minutes after that I heard my name again, now distant now from the ruin.

And the sound did not reach me through the body, as my own voice usually does, but through the hair on my arms, standing up under the sleeve of the jacket.

Morning is a kind of scale you set the rest of your story against.

When I stepped out at 702, the frost broke like sugar under my boot soles.

The rear bumper had a thin scratch from the right edge inward, low, 20 inches sharp, tapered at the end.

It is a small thing, an easily made thing.

I made coffee and wrote the measurements in the notebook with the distance from the ground and the temperature.

When I walked to the road, I found that someone had stepped again into my boot print from the day before, now twice, now layered heel on heel, the same cross toe making the same small notch parallel with that offset 12 inches to the left.

There was a second set of bare prints from a smaller foot, the second toe straighter, the arch shallower.

The two sets went a dozen steps and then left the road together into the trees.

People walk barefoot.

People teach their kids odd strength tricks like winter on cold stone.

The Prince left a human story I could hold and a human story I could face.

The other story, the voice that copies and moves wrong remained as thin and strong as fishing line.

I spent the last day running a simple experiment, because simple experiments survive sloppy conditions.

I set the recorder on the two track where the first bell line ran the previous evening, with a bell wired to a branch and a second bell lying on the ground close enough to ring if the first moved.

I made a circle at 100 yards with flagging I would collect later and tied a piece to my pack so I could see my own movement at a distance.

Then I walked the circle clockwise slowly, staying just inside the line, stopping at each hundred step count to listen.

I walked the circle counterclockwise the second time, adjusting the interval.

The wind was steady enough to make the bells flirt with sound, but not enough to ring.

On the 2nd loop at the South quadrant, I heard three clicks from the ruin, metal on metal, odd intervals.

I stopped and made no sound and counted my breaths to 50.

The clicks repeated, long gap, short, medium, and then silence.

I photographed the ruin again at a distance and could not see any new cans on the wire.

The recorder at the bell line captured nothing at those times.

When I closed the circle, I found a fresh barefoot print near the flagging tape that I know I did not make.

The third toe crossed the second.

The direction of travel paralleled mine from the opposite side of the line.

I picked up the flags, recorded the locations, and walked back to the truck by a different route.

Respect has to live between 2 facts when you work with stories like this.

One is that the word people use, skinwalker, belongs to a culture with specific histories and taboos that are not mine and that should not be made into decoration.

The other is that people use that word in these woods because they need a label for something that behaves human and not, and because saying it gives their fear a shape it otherwise lacks.

I called a friend who grew up east of here and works on language preservation and asked him, as I do now and then, to tell me where the edges are.

He said the edges are where they always are.

Don't speak lightly about things that other people carry, heavy.

Say what you saw and heard.

Don't tell a story that pretends you know what you don't.

I put the phone away and went back to the ruin for the

recorder at 3:20.

The afternoon held onto its warmth like it wanted to show me how quickly the next night would fall.

I stood in the yard and looked at the wire panel and the old posts and the square nails and the chain.

I put my hand on the doorway.

You can be watched here and never see the watcher.

That is not mystical.

That is just a feature of trees, wind and patience.

The last thing that happened is the only violent thing I will describe, and I will do it without commentary.

On the way out, a half mile from the main road, I found a dog on the two track.

It was young and pale and wore a collar with a number I could read.

The body was unmarked but for a single shallow cut along the shoulder.

There was no blood pool nearby.

The eyes were open and had frost in the corners, so the dog was dead before the freeze came down the drain.

The tracks around it were confused with tire Marks and old boot prints, none clear.

I put the dog in the bed under the drop cloth and drove to where I could find a bar and I called the number.

The man who answered lived 20 minutes N He said the dog had run off the previous evening when something rang the bell.

They hang beside their back porch to let the little ones know dinner was up.

He said he'd come meet me at the guard.

He arrived with his cap in his hand and took the dog under the cloth without lifting the cloth all the way.

Because some things can be seen with your hands and not your eyes after dark anymore.

He didn't say why, I didn't ask.

We stood there and the wind was small.

He thanked me.

He said the word I won't repeat.

And then he said nothing else at all.

Back home, I did the work I always do I.

Cleaned the truck.

I downloaded the audio and made notes.

I compared times.

The clicks line up with one another and not with the bells.

The footsteps are human in spacing and wait.

The voice on the recorder is my voice, pitched lower as if spoken through a scarf, saying my name once and the word here once.

The scratch on the bumper is there and it catches the cloth when I wash it, and that is how I know it is not a trick of light.

The photographs of the footprints are clear enough that a friend who teaches kinesiology traced them and said the midfoot load is heavy and the toes sound arthritic.

The third crossing the second in a way that suggests a long standing habit rather than a prankster's staged mistake.

The bell line knots are the same knot in three places.

The dog's collar number is written in my notebook with the man's first name and nothing more.

The map has smudges in the places I always.

Touch when I.

Think if you ask me what was out there, I will not give you a creature with a clean outline.

I won't give you a man with a reason either.

I can tell you that something used sound the way a patient hunter uses wind from down the draw and not up it from behind and then ahead from my own mouth and then from the edge of my ear.

In the months since, I have been careful.

With the word in my head I let other people own it and the weight it carries, and I use my own for the parts I can carry.

Watcher mimic, hand at the edge of the canvas.

When I can't sleep, I play the Ruin.

Recorder and I.

Hear only wind and mice and leaves and the shape of air moving through broken places.

When I do sleep, I wake to the feeling that someone is standing by the truck waiting for me to unlock the door.

If I drive that country again, I will do it the same way.

I will log my plan, mark my maps, tape the seams, and put my hand on the old door frame where other hands have learned a different kind of knowing.

I will hear my name in my own voice and not answer at first light.

Frost has a color like crushed glass and when you step on it, the sound carries.

Farther than you.

Think I remember that more than anything.

It's the one clear fact that never changes.

Even when you try to move quietly.

The ground keeps a record of the moment you were there, and sometimes something else steps in your print to remind you it was watching.

I don't read that as a warning anymore.

I read it as the forest saying there are.

Kinds.

Of company you can't accept or refuse.

You register them, you go and you carry.

Them.

Home in the small ways.

How you lock a door.

How you turn.

Your head at your name.

How long you stand by a threshold before you cross it?