The four-wheeler’s engine growls beneath us like an angry bear with the shits. I hold on to Olivia’s waist as she wrestles it down a winding dirt road, the dust so thick I can hardly see my cargo shorts through it. We jolt and rattle through gravel switchbacks, climbing toward a horizon choked with trees and mountains, everything in sight the same vivid green canopy. Maybe this was a stupid idea, I think, my stomach lurching with every bump and dip, but I’m too stubborn to say so out loud.
Olivia says it’s my turn to drive the rickety beast from hell, but I insist on clinging to the back while she handles the jerking handlebars of the ATV.
“Call me chicken if you want,” I tell her, “but someone’s gotta keep an eye on the local fauna while you drive.”
“An eye on my driving is more like it”, she says, laughing, “but at least I won’t be humiliated being driven around by a city girl wearing a bicycle helmet while muddin’ through the forest.”
She yells something else I can’t hear over the roar of the engine.
“What’s that?” I shout back.
“I said, can you believe people still live up here?”
I tell her I can’t even believe we’ll make it to the top alive, and she laughs like I was kidding. Dust clouds our vision, and loose gravel crunches like popcorn beneath us. We’re on a narrow strip of weed-choked road now, curling around the side of a mountain that makes the town of Maplehill below look like it belongs on a Monopoly board. Olivia gives the engine more gas. The scenery blurs past: bleached white trees like old bones, stagnant ponds in eerie pools of yellow and green, a sky too damn bright for its own good. Everything here looks primordial and untouched. Like the Garden of Eden, I think, only with more bugs.
“My friends stayed up here for a week once,” Olivia says. “They told me none of them could sleep after.”
“What happened?” I ask, knowing I’ll love her answer no matter what.
“Their parents made them go to church twice,” she says, “because they swore they’d seen some kind of white things out here. Said they looked like pale horned devil dogs.”
She glances back to see if I will take the bait and want to return to her home, but I just roll my eyes.
She cuts the handlebars and takes us on a cliff-side path that’s barely visible through the dirt. It’s a miracle we don’t spin out of control and fall right over the edge.
A mile or so later, we climb a sharp hill. Olivia stops at an overlook and lets the engine idle. I can’t say I’m sorry to have a break. At the crest of the hill, she points to a stretch of orange and red earth in the distance that looks like someone took a bomb to it a hundred years ago.
“That’s it,” she says. “That’s the strip mine. You’re the only person I know crazy enough to love it there.”
“My parents told me not to come stay with you,” I respond, “because they were worried about you being a bad influence. I told them they should be more worried about what I will talk you into.”
Olivia cracks a smile, then shakes her head and tells me I’m hopeless. It will take another twenty minutes of rough riding before we reach the mine, and my arms are already so sore from holding on that I can hardly adjust my backpack on my shoulders.
“You said you wanted to go off the grid”, Olivia says while I rub my arms. “Ain’t no grid to be found round here”, she adds, kicking up dirt like a rodeo star.
My mind drifts back to the stories she used to tell me in our college dorm room, about wild mountain people still living up here as if it were the eighteen hundreds. I really hope that we will see one. This place seems perfectly suited for a feral, rugged Tarzan type to come strutting out of the forest to sweep me off my feet.
Before us, the top of the mountain has been sheared off flat, as if the Earth had a buzz-cut. I wonder what kind of machine could cause such destruction; I wonder what kind of person would allow it to. The chewed-up earth is the color of a tangerine peel, orange with streaks of green pockmarking its surface. It spreads out in front of us as Olivia guns the engine again, jerking the handlebars so I almost fly off the side. I hold on for dear life, thrilled and terrified at the same time. We bump over a small rise, and suddenly we’re there. No one in their right mind would ever come here, which is why I feel like the place is perfect. I jump off the four-wheeler while she keeps it steady, and when she kills the engine, I can still hear it ringing in my ears.
The sudden stillness is shocking. The green mountains are piled like old clothes around us as far as the eye can see.
We’re met with the twisted, rusting remains of an old fence, sprawled out like metallic ruins of some bygone era. Olivia shakes her head, like she can’t believe I talked her into this. “This place is insane,” I say, already pulling her toward an old pile of scrap.
“Insane’s one word for it,” she says, falling into step. “The old folks always warned us not to play up here. They said no one would hear us if we screamed.”
Her eyes widen, like she’s not even sure if she’s kidding; mine widen too, but I don’t mind. Instead, I look around as if I’ve just arrived in paradise, eager to get my hands on everything.
The hollow where we’ve parked stretches forever, all streaked with leftover coal seams and veins of clay that leave the ground a dull rust color. I yank Olivia forward, not giving her the chance to think better of it. I might be a pharmacy major, but I’m absolutely addicted to local history. Abandoned places like this make me feel like Lara Croft, only without her physics-defying anatomy.
“Who’d have thought this would be your idea of heaven?” Olivia says, brushing off her jeans and tightening her ponytail.
“Almost Heaven,” I correct her, beginning to sing the first verse of John Denver’s ancient love song to West Virginia. Olivia joins me as I reach the chorus, and we both scream out “West Virginia, mountain momma!” because you are legally obligated to do so anytime that song comes up. I kick at a piece of pipe, and it clatters against an old pile of wood interrupting the song. Everything’s bleached and bare, but still exactly where it was left decades ago. I tell Olivia we should stay for the night. She just gives me a familiar you-must-be-crazy look, the same one she’s given me since we were paired as roommates our freshman year.
The song’s echo fades, swallowed up by miles of trees and rock. Even Olivia, skeptical and shaking her head, must love the feeling that we’re all alone out here. How could she not? She drops her backpack on the four-wheelers seat and lets me lead the way.
“Which direction?” She says, trying to mask her nerves with a laugh.
“All of them,” I say, laughing, too.
Olivia stays closer than usual as we step into the mine’s gaping mouth, every crack and clatter echoing across the desolate earth. I ask if she still thinks it’s haunted.
“Ask me in the morning,” she responds, pretending to smile, then stopping as something loose clangs in the wind.
“That wasn’t me,” she says, her voice suddenly lower.
“Must be the white things,” I tease.
“I guess I’ll see you back at my house,” she says, turning around to leave before I snag her by the back of her t-shirt.
The deeper in we go, the quieter the world gets. Olivia complains we should have brought a flashlight or a tent, maybe a flare gun.
“Look at it!” I say, pointing across the empty, alien surface of the strip mine. “Can you believe this?”
She tries to shrug but gets cut off by the distant, eerie echo of metal against metal, the wind picking up as it dies away. Unconsciously rubbing her arms and putting on a brave face. “We could have at least brought sleeping bags,” she whines.
“This place looks like something out of an old legend.” I ignore her, “and we’ve got it all to ourselves.” I look into the dense trees and rock that surround the lip of the mine with satisfaction.
“Come on,” I urge her. “Let’s capture some memories.”
We head for the tall sheer rock face in front of us; an idea forms in my mind as we approach. I nod toward a crumbling ledge that looks over everything. “What about there?” I say, pointing. Olivia’s smile flickers for a second, then catches.
“Up top?” she asks.
“It’s perfect,” I add before she can argue. “We’ll be able to catch the sunset from there.” I can see her hesitation warring with her natural instincts for a perfect Instagram selfie.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be amazing; you’ll love it.” I say before hitting her right in the social media weak spot again. “We’ll get a few pictures and a perfect story out of the deal. What more could you want?”
She takes a breath, steeling herself, then gives me a small nod that says she’s caving under my patented blend of charm and peer pressure.
By the time we reach the top of the trail up to the cliff, it looks like we are a hundred feet above the mine pit below, maybe more. A staircase to heaven before a fall straight to hell. Olivia pretends she’s interested, but I see right through her false enthusiasm. After a couple of selfies on our phones, she changes her tune and starts back toward the ATV.
“Want to grab my bag,” she says over her shoulder. “Be right back.”
I tell her I’ll never forgive her for leaving me all alone in a haunted strip mine. She laughs, but she’s not slowing down. Soon she rounds a corner on the trail and disappears. I shout at her not to trip and fall on the way. She shouts something back, but the trees have already muffled her voice.
Alone now on the ledge, I pretend that I’m not suddenly nervous, knowing it’s a lie but not minding. The vast stretch of mountains is laid out before me like an endless dream. The sky awash in the pinks, orange, and blue of a perfect sunset, I can’t believe I’m here. Every inch is an epic, and I pretend I’m on the flat edge of the world. It really is almost heaven, I think, almost gasping.
For a few moments, I just breathe and drink in the view. Deep valleys cut by lines of old road. Forest stretching miles past what I thought was possible. Mist and clouds gather on distant peaks. Green and yellow fields so far down they hardly seem real. I stand on the ledge, loving the way the wind feels brushing past my outstretched arms. It feels like no one has ever been here but me.
Like the whole world. At my feet.
I put my phone camera through its paces, working through every filter and angle in an unsuccessful quest to capture the surrounding majesty. I can see Olivia now, far below, approaching the four-wheeler that looks like a toy from this distance. She waves and I wave back, snapping a few more selfies from a high angle with her in the background so I can tease her about her cowardice later.
I pause when I notice a strange blob of white behind me in one of the pictures and begin to clean the camera lens with my T-shirt. Suddenly, there is a pale flash of movement off to my side. Just a blur in my peripheral vision. Before I know what it is, I feel a sharp impact. A mass of white smashes into me at a thousand miles an hour, blurring my sight and flipping me into open space. Next thing I know, I’m in the air. Over the edge. Launched into the bright, terrible sky.
I crash into hard earth, hard air, and I lose myself for a moment when I hit the ground.
The sound of the impact is enormous. I’m awake again. I hear myself screaming.
My world flattens. Then: A jagged breath. A sky full of color. My voice in my ears. The taste of dust and copper and regret.
My mind races with possibilities, each more horrifying than the last. My body lies silent, still, foreign.
I try to lift my arms, but they’re somewhere else, try to feel my legs, but they’ve gone away. I try to call for help, but a gasp is all my mouth can manage. Like my body has just scampered off and left my mind all alone with the thought of what just happened, with the growing awareness of how little I can do.
Time moves strange. It skips like a record, and there’s a part of me that floats away, tries to pretend it’s not happening. Then it comes back all at once, settles into what’s real.
Where’s Olivia? Surely she heard me scream. I imagine her climbing back to the overlook with no idea, finding my backpack where I left it. Imagine her rolling her eyes and wondering what I got myself into. Probably thinking about the hell I’ll give her for ditching me.
She has no idea.
Then I hear it. A distant shout. I know that she knows, and relief floods in.
Her feet are fast; her words are faster. Her breath explodes like a torn engine as she charges into my view. She’s as frantic as I’ve ever seen her. She drops to the ground and looks me in the eyes.
“Hold on!” she shouts. “I’m here. You’re okay.” She wants me to believe it. That her presence is enough. It has to be.
My voice comes out broken, faint. I ask if it’s really as bad as I think it is. She bites her lip, tries to hide what I already know. My body, all wrong, splayed out under the heavy sky.
She stands suddenly, startling me. “Don’t leave me,” I croak.
“I’ve got to get help,” she sobs, shaking. “I’ll be quick.”
Then she runs out of my view. I try to turn my head to see her, but my neck refuses the order. Soon I can’t even hear her footsteps, and I know she’s gone. I’m on my back, crushed into the dirt with the weight of everything, and she’s just gone. I try to shout for her but it comes out a whimper. I try again, but the sound is drowned out by the roar of the ATV engine and the crunch of gravel.
The sky looks like it’s slipping off the planet, sliding into an abyss. Darkness threatens to swallow me, and I am sure I will spend the rest of my life alone on top of this mountain.
The darkness teases. Sometimes far. Sometimes near.
What’s that? A trick of sound? Light? Motion just outside my eye line? A mind made wild with trying?
I imagine the white thing. Imagine the distance to Olivia. To help. How long? How far?
The horizon’s gone. How long have I been here? The mountain isn’t quiet anymore. It starts its own rumors. Is she coming back? Will she find someone? It spreads doubt. She’s only gone as far as she can, it says. Where no one can hear you. As far as she can to not hear you scream. My chest is full of panic and broken glass. Heart working overtime. Dear God, please let her hurry.
I try to pretend I’m tougher than this, tougher than me.
I try to swallow and choke on dust. On the bright metallic tang of the mountain. Olivia’s fast. I hope she’s fast, but what if she’s still here, just out of sight? She finally got one over on me. She got me good.
For all I know, the old four-wheeler stalled before she could get home. For all I know, I’ll never know. Stuck here with no way to find out.
Stay calm, I tell myself. That’s what they say, isn’t it? Keep calm. Keep breathing. Keep the hell calm. Everything is distant, even my own voice. At least I still have a voice, I think. I tell myself that’s good. A good sign. Then I realize the lies I’m trying to feed myself and almost laugh. I would laugh if I could take a full breath.
I hear something moving again, coming closer. The white thing? I imagine it taking shape, then shake the image out of my mind. Or try to. It’s real. No, it can’t be. Maybe. God, please no.
The sound of heavy steps in the approaching night and the entire world slipping away. The sound slips with it. Suddenly silent again.
Where is Olivia? The wind shifts. I hold my breath, listening, until I almost pass out. She’s nowhere near, I think. My racing mind thinks a lot of things. That I’m screwed. That it’s not happening. That the story of devil dogs wasn’t just rumors. Maybe it’s the hillbillies. My mountain Tarzan come to rescue me, or maybe the hill people are all rapey cannibals just like in the movies. I shut my eyes, trying to push the stories out. Just be gone. I beg them. Like Olivia is. Gone.
A flicker of motion. White again. I’m sure this time. Something uncoiling in my mind, a hundred miles an hour. It takes my breath with it, escapes into a shout.
“Go away!” My voice surprises me, so ragged and broken. “Get!”
Just my imagination, I try to tell myself. God, I hope. I try to work up another shout. Or the memory of one. Nothing comes of it. Something moves again. It’s closer. It breathes. I want to scare it off. Want it to be what it’s not. Want to believe I’m alone after all.
“Go away! Go away! Go away!”
It won’t.
The sharp smell of animal musk fills my lungs. More than I can take.
“Jesus. Please.”
It’s gone. Then closer. Gone. Then nearer.
So near, it touches me. Coarse hair brushing past my face. My head floods with panic. It spills over into a scream I can’t hear. The world becomes white.
I try to move, to shake it off, to run. I try. I try. I try. My selfish body swallows every action.
“Go! Get away from here!”
It stops beside me, filling my vision with white and stink. Too close to focus on. It pauses for a moment, tasting my words, then tasting me.
I can’t feel it when it starts to feed.
How can I not feel it?
But sweet mercy, I can smell it. I can hear it. The smell of blood. The sound of flesh ripping. Deep. Wet. Tearing and cracking.
The bitter taste of terror and my own blood fills my mouth. Almost like I share in the feast.
The white thing, shaking its head, a dog with a toy, ripping into my body and tearing the life out.
I feel the motion but not the act. Like a dream I can’t wake up from. One I will never wake up from. I know what it’s doing. God help me, I know. But the only hurt is in my mind.
Its muzzle deep in my belly, its huge paw on my chest. It doesn’t make sense. The shape of it doesn’t make sense.
Still alive. How can I still be alive?
Then a sudden motion. Dragging my still-living body where no one will find me. Where no one can hear me.
It takes me. And it won’t let go.
The last thing I hear dragging through the dirt.
It takes my hearing too.
The last thing I see, the underside of trees passing by.
It takes my vision too.
A final gasp.
Then it takes my last breath as well.
It takes all of me.
Forever.
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The pacing on this is awesome, great suspense - suspense is very hard to write and I think you did a stellar job on this. Absolutely terrifying, loved it!
This one doesn’t mess around. The voice pulls you in with sarcasm and grit, then drops you into something primal. The white things stay just out of focus, which makes them worse. That final scene: pure dread, no escape. It sticks.
Nicely done.