Narrator

I'm not afraid she'll answer.

I'm afraid that something else will learn the sound of it through the walls of my memory.

That's the residue this kind of thing leaves.

Not a belief in monsters, but a fracture in the assumption that your life is private.

The Appalachians are old.

Older than the roads, older than the cabins people rent for a week to feel rustic.

Older than the stories we tell to entertain ourselves.

There are hollers that never get full sun.

There are ridges where the fog rises like breath from the ground.

There are places where people disappear and the paperwork says exposure because that's a word that lets everyone go home.

I don't go looking for explanations anymore.

I don't post this as a warning meant to scare you into superstition.

If anything, it's the opposite.

It's a statement of respect for how easily confidence collapses when the environment is bigger than you, and something in it decides you're worth studying.

If you go into those mountains, and people should, because beauty matters, go in like you belong there only temporarily.

Carry what you need.

Leave before dark if you're deep.

Lock the door, not because you believe in monsters, but because the human world ends faster than you think once the light does.

And if you ever hear a voice outside a cabin at night calling your name in a tone that sounds almost right, remember this.

In the dark, familiarity is not proof.