Never Alone ~ Kayden Agnus

“Never go into the mountains alone.” 

Those words were ones I lived by as a child. Pa started saying them to me as soon as I was old enough to understand what they meant. Those words would suck the air out of my lungs and twist my gut with a sick feeling for as long as I could remember. I was too young to fully understand the weight of those words but I could feel it — feel it gripping me with a primal-like fear inside of me. That kind of fear that every person has from the moment they’re born, instinctual and vicious. 

Pa started taking me hunting when I was 12. Then he started saying it while we were out in the mountains, really out there, so deep inside the heart of the Appalachian that I thought the forest would swallow us whole. “Never hum at night, Evelyn. That’s just asking for trouble.” He’d say with his rifle over his shoulder, his grip on it so tight that I thought he’d break the damned thing. He’d take me hunting just after mating season, when the elk and deer are at their highest. I’d flinch when he’d use that name. Like he meant to threaten me with it. Like he meant harm by it. His tone was grave but I only figured it was him trying to scare me. I told myself I was too strong for that. A boy wouldn’t be scared of stories like that and I wanted nothing more than to be a boy. 

These were just stories in my mind. Old superstitions about the mountains that came before us and would proceed us until the end of time. But superstitions were there for a reason. Maybe scared is what I should have been. 

Pa and I only ever hunted during the day. The moment the sun began to set beyond the treeline, we’d make our way back to the truck with whatever prize we had shot down and prayed over. If it was getting too late, we’d leave the thing there for the animals to feast on. No matter what, by nightfall, we were in our house and far from the forest of the mountain range. I thought it all as a game that we played. Tiptoeing around the night like it had come to hurt us. I had never been afraid of the dark. 

Hunting was about the only time Pa and I got along. The only time where the barriers between father and daughter melted away and we were simply two animals in the wilderness, hunting to survive. It was the only time I ever truly felt like a boy, in camouflage and jeans I didn’t mind getting dirty, my hands that I used to tie my curls back covered in grime. Pa treated me like one. He’d hand me the rifle only when we had eyes on some animal, a deer most times, and he’d tell me to brace for the recoil of the gun. “It’s gonna knock ya off ya ass.” 

I’d aim the rifle and look through the scope with my finger easing on the trigger. My hands would tremble and Pa would hold me to steady me and keep me upright. Sweat dappled my hairline. I’d always want to go hunting with Pa so I could feel like a boy. The stalking and tracking was my favorite part, when Pa would teach me what tracks belonged to the animal we were hunting, how to know how old they were, when to stop and let things just sit so you could listen. The killing was my least. I couldn’t bring myself to take a life like that. I couldn’t pull the trigger.

I’d disappoint him every time he let me try. “Girls are too soft for this kinda thing.” It was a slap in the face, like being cut open and gutted, a harsh reminder that I’d never be a son. I’d let him take the rifle from my small, weak hands as I pushed back tears and stepped out of the way as he took position. Pa always waited for me to turn my back, the only small kindness he afforded me before pulling the trigger without pause. I let a single tear fall as the deer let out a pained noise and fell to the ground. “Come on, Eve. Help me get it back to the truck.” He’d say breathlessly, slapping my back to get me moving. 

Now he was gone and I was grown and his superstitions were nothing more than hunting stories he’d tell me to keep me on my feet and scared. Pa never understood me, even until the very end. I was a boy born in the body of a girl. He could never seem to wrap his head around the fact that I want to change my name and be referred to as a boy. He thought I was delusional, sick. “Girls just don’t suddenly want to become boys, Evelyn.” He’d shake his head and murmur under his breath before taking a swig of his beer. “You’re not one of them transsexuals.” I hated Pa as much as I loved him. I wanted to be seen by him the way any child wanted to be seen by their parent. 

I couldn’t say Pa was a good father but he certainly wasn’t a bad one. In all respects, he kept me fed, clothed, and made sure I got an education. It was the bare minimum of his responsibilities to me as a parent but I figured that some children don’t even get that so I couldn’t complain. We’d argue more times than we’d get along in all honesty, difficult conversations turning into who can yell the loudest until I couldn’t help but to cry. Our house was mostly quiet beyond his incessant grumbling and occasional yelling. But sometimes — rare times — we’d have good moments. As good of a moment as we could get out there in the wilderness with a rifle on our backs. 

Seeing as our hunting trips were the only times when we could get along, it didn’t seem like too far-fetched of an idea to go on just one more, a final one to commemorate all the times that could have been. That’s why I was there, in the middle of the Appalachian wilderness, with nothing more than a tent, some food, a change of my clothes, and Pa’s old rifle. I had started a fire in the middle of the small clearing where I had set up camp, watching the sun set just beyond the mountains in the distance. I tried to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear but I forgot I had cut it just the day before, short and choppy and too embarrassed to go to the local barber to get it fixed in fear they’d ask too many questions. 

Cutting my hair and wearing mens clothes almost felt like a betrayal. Pa never wanted me to be a boy and now, in honor of him, I was camping as one, wearing his jacket and holding his rifle. Was this in honor of him? Or was this to prove something to him? Something I could never prove to myself? 

The fire was warm against my face, glowing as the day turned to night and the stars began to twinkle above me. It crackled and popped, twisting in its hypnotizing dance before me. I leaned back in my chair, Pa’s rifle across my lap and my feet up against the fire while I watched, occasionally glancing here and there at the slightest rustle in the trees. Pa liked to tell me. “You are one of the most dangerous things in the forest. But you’re not the only one.” Mountain lions

were a real possibility, bears too. I kept a watchful eye on my things, my finger resting beside the trigger of the gun. I’ve never killed a single living thing before but there’s always a first time for everything. 

I pulled Pa’s jacket tighter around myself, feeling drowned in the leather that kept me warm in the cold. Sleep wound me around its finger, tugged on my soul, and pulled me to slumber as I slouched down in the chair. My body tried to fight it, to will myself awake, twitching with the last signs of consciousness. I held the gun to my chest, slouching into Pa’s jacket that smelled of whiskey and too many cigarettes. And as my eyes began to close and fade out into the abyss of sleep, I looked up just a moment and saw him — it. 

It stood just barely in the darkness, right at the treeline, with eyes that reflected back at me like that of an animal. But it wasn’t an animal, not like any one I had seen. It looked like a person — a poor excuse for one — standing there a distance away, twitching and seizing there on its feet. And as it began to move closer, it staggered and seemed to drag itself about as if it were trying to mimic how a human walks. 

I tore myself away from sleep, fumbling with Pa’s rifle as I stood to my feet and aimed it at the…thing. “I don’t know what you are, but go away! I don’t want no trouble!” It did not stop. Twitching and dragging itself like something diseased. My hands began to tremble with a carnal type of fear as I eased my finger onto the trigger. “I’ll shoot!” My voice became high and mentally I reprimanded myself for sounding so girlish and scared. But as it grew closer and my heart began to beat so hard I could hear it echoing in my ears. 

It stepped into the light of the fire and I staggered back. “Pa?” The same lips, and slightly graying scruff, the same eyes, the same scent of stale cigarettes. But there was something wrong, very wrong. It looked like Pa but it very visibly wasn’t, something low inside of me twisted, a gut reaction to the sight of it. It looked like if something stole Pa’s face. His eyes that were usually hard and unfeeling now tried desperately to look soft and welcoming, his lips pulled into a smile that sent daggers down my spine. There was no soul in the eyes. He had died and now something was possessing the visage of his body. 

I stood there, shaking, with the gun still aimed and my finger still on the trigger. My breath came out quivering. “What are you?” The rifle felt so heavy in my hands. My entire body had this visceral reaction, this feeling of my inner works shifting uncomfortably, wilting and shriveling as the thing opened its mouth to speak. Its voice came out like it had never spoken before, hollow and withered. It sounded like Pa’s voice if someone was trying to imitate him. “I’m your Pa.” Its head shook. Its smile grew unnaturally wide with canines that were unnaturally sharp. “I know I look a little different, but I’m here now. I’m here now.” It tried to sound reassuring and gentle. 

I shook my head, slowly at first but soon rapidly. “Whatever the hell you are, you’re not my Pa.” I readjusted my slipping grip on the gun and aimed it at the creature’s face. Pa’s face. We stood on either end of the fire that seemed to crackle and pop louder with the arrival of whatever this thing was. It looked at me with its soulless eyes that tried so hard to look warm in the midst of their lifelessness and cocked its head to the side sharply, unnaturally. Its body was still twitching. “You’re not gonna shoot your old man, are you?” 

“Stop! Stop saying you’re him!” I didn’t mean to raise my voice so loud. It was only then I realized how silent it was. All the sounds of the forest had stopped, as if we were trapped in some lapse in time where everything was frozen. Maybe all the animals of the forest had realized there was a bigger danger, maybe they’ve realized something was very wrong. I was in the presence of something entirely unnatural. “You’re not him.” My voice lowered to a whisper as sweat began to gather at my brow line. 

“I know-” it began, with a twisting voice. “-that I wasn’t a great father. I should have accepted you.” Those words made my heart stop. How could it know that? How could it possibly know? I faltered, lowering the gun slowly, my lips quivering. “I should have seen you for who you were. My son.” 

This was sick. I felt like vomiting. The creature that was beginning to look more and more like Pa stepped forward and I did not step back. It was slowly beginning to come together, like it was learning — learning how to look natural. Learning how to be Pa. The feeling of wrongness was beginning to subside, or maybe I was beginning to ignore it. All I ever wanted was for Pa to look at me and call me “son” and now he had, in a voice that was slowly beginning to sound more and more like his. Tears began to glaze over my eyes. 

“I can be here now.” Its teeth were sharp and vicious. “I can accept you.” It’s eyes like that of a predator, glowing beneath the light of the fire. “In fact, I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I can give you the perfect body. I can make you a man.” Pa stepped closer, one foot in the fire, chest swelling and falling with every audibly ragged breath he took. I wanted to say that it was impossible but how could I say such a thing to the face of my dead father now here in front of me, walking through fire. “We can be together forever. Father and son.” 

The gun lowered completely now, unable to shoot yet unable to put it down, my chest began to ache with the tears in my eyes trickling down my cheeks and mingling with my sweat. I whimpered, a small child once more. A boy just wanting the approval of his father. I was entirely unguarded, vulnerable in a way that left me as easy prey. 

“All you have to do-” he stepped out of the fire and stood before me with wide, wild eyes. He raised a hand, bruised and trembling, and touched my face. He was cold, unfathomably cold, and stunk like rotten meat in its breath. I could see now Pa, in the dim light of the fire, was not Pa at all. No matter how much it claimed to be. “-is give me your soul.” But I wanted it to be Pa and my mind, my grieving, horrid mind, let me believe. 

I let out a quivering breath and nodded my head.