A cruel chill shook my body,
and my head throbbed like a punted pumpkin. I probed the back of my sore head
with pruned fingertips, and they came away clammy with black clots of coagulated
blood. In the darkness, I had slipped and fallen in my scramble for the top of
Kill Devil Hill.
The rain continued as I
climbed the trackless route to the Cyclopean hill’s summit. I crested the rugged
rim and saw that the mystic ring of protective salt that I’d put down hours
before had washed away. My campfire was now nothing more than ruined wet ash.
My canvas tent and gear remained
where I’d left them. There was no sign of the two Claiborne State folklore
students, Abby Armitage and Kat Corwin. It was like they had never even been there.
I wiped a thin layer of brown
grime off the face of my wristwatch and saw that it was a few minutes past six
in the morning. It was the first day of November – All Saints’ Day – the day
after Halloween. Sunrise wasn’t far away, but the slate-gray rain clouds made
it darker than it should have been.
I walked to the other side of
the weathered hilltop and looked northwest towards Claiborne. Downtown was over
11 miles away, and I could just make out the eerie green light of the helipad
atop the tallest structure in the city, the medical tower at Claiborne City
Hospital. I closed my eyes and listened to the faint, clacking sound of a train
somewhere far off in the forlorn distance.
I returned to my tent and
took a big swallow from my plastic canteen. The water was cold, but tasted wrong,
as if tainted by some peculiar passage through a rancid screen of ozone. I spat
it out on the indifferent, lichen-covered rocks.
I was suddenly overwhelmed
with the restless urge to leave, to just strike out without my tent and gear. I
could be back in my Jeep and well on my way home before lunch. The forsaken edges
of black panic crept into my tired mind. I took a deep breath. Think. What to
do?
Dauntless, I packed my simple
gear, stowing it Army-style, neat and squared away. Doing so calmed my nerves. I
then shouldered my pack and walked to the edge of the inhospitable hilltop.
After one last look around, like
a man checking his hotel room one final time before leaving, I stepped off the
side of the hill with an eye towards finding the malformed willow tree where
I’d last seen Abby and Kat’s empty clothes. A few minutes later, I was standing
at the gnarled tree, rain falling steadily all around. The empty clothes were
gone.
I looked around for any sign
of footprints but saw none. Any trace of tracks or other clues had been washed
away. I shivered as malefic thunder boomed in the distance.
Suddenly and without warning,
the menacing feeling that something was terribly wrong descended like an
invisible cloud. The primordial forest held its breath in sepulchral silence.
My guard went up. I was being watched.
Thoughts of the strange woman
with the vulpine face and her beastly companion filled my mind. Had these
red-footed haints returned? Were they watching me? Mindless fear and unnerving hysterics
began to run their loathsome fingers around the jagged edge of my haggard nerves,
seeking purchase.
I stepped to one side of the willow
tree and immediately noticed two freshly-carved arborglyphs. These pagan stick
figures were obviously feminine and looked similar to those wiccan carvings
that I’d seen on my Halloween hike to Kill Devil Hill. Who carved them? What did
they mean?
It was time to leave. I moved
tactically in a low crouch down the side of the secluded hill. At the bottom, I
struck out east, my clothes soaked from the relentless rain and wet foliage. Every
few seconds, I stopped to look back through the rain to see if something unspeakable
was approaching from the direction of Kill Devil Hill.
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