Momma Said To Never Go To Gander’s Peak

I’ve never been to Gander’s Peak, yet I know the stories about it. Like everyone else around here, I grew up with the hushed voice of my mother telling me about it, warning me when I wandered too far into the woods behind our house. It seemed to always be that way when people spoke of Gander’s Peak: a hushed voice here, a sideways glance from the old men who sat outside the lone gas station chewing tobacco and shaking their heads when I asked about the mountain, and the worried look on old women’s faces as they warned: “Best to stay away from there. That place ain’t meant for folks like us.” Then there was the one and only warning I received from the preacher when I was sixteen and determined to find the elusive peak and check it out for myself. He said, “That place ain’t meant for regular folks like us.” I scoffed and turned to leave;I’d heard that a hundred times.But then he added in a low voice, “Some folks that go don’t come back, and some ain’t folks no more at all.”

So, I’ve never been to Gander’s Peak. Not really. But over the last year, I have begun to dream of it. In fact, I dream of it often enough and in such vivid detail that I wake with the feel of dirt under my nails, the taste of pine on my tongue, and the feel of damp earth on my feet. The dreams are always the same. There’s a narrow, winding path through the trees, and the distant sound of something breathing just beyond my field of vision. I never see it, but it’s there, and I know it’s watching me.

In those dreams, the air is thick, and feels almost alive as it clings to my skin, presses against my ribs, and sinks into my lungs like something more than thick, pine-scented mountain mist.It seems to speak as it rushes from my lungs and into my veins. It urges me farther into the forest, assuring me that I’m doing what I should, and that the rewards for ignoring the lifelong warnings will be worth it in the end.

It should scare me, but it doesn’t.

Gander’s Peak lies hidden amid the many dense mountains that converge in Unicoi, Tennessee. It isn’t marked on any map. And it would be easier to do a root canal on a bear without anesthesia than to get the exact location of Gander’s Peak from anyone around here. And yet I am drawn to it.

Drawn to it in a way that I’ve never been drawn to anything in my life. Some nights, I wake and I’m already moving. My bare feet whisper against the hardwood floor, my hand already curling around the doorknob before my mind catches up. The air outside is thick and waiting for me. My pulse quickens. A heartbeat away. A breath away. I know where I must go. And I know that something waits for me at Gander’s Peak.

I should be terrified, but instead, there’s a kind of anticipation that curls in my stomach on those nights. A quiet thrill. It’s a feeling that is not completely mine, but it’s not totally foreign, either. When I close my eyes, the pull toward the peak thrums beneath my skin, steady, patient, undeniable.

It should scare me, but it doesn’t. And that is what unsettles me most of all.

I keep telling myself it’s nothing. Just paranoia, just lingering thoughts and feelings from the dreams that refuse to fade after waking. I went on for a couple of months that way—trying to convince myself that the dreams were nothing and the residual thoughts and feelings were even less. It was a stage, something to do with me being only in my mid-twenties and living on my own. Too much time on my hands to let my mind dwell on the intriguing darkness that the deep, dark forest might be harboring. I thought maybe it was like when a teenager finds a celebrity they really like and admire, and they become obsessed with that celebrity. Suddenly, they’re dreaming of the celebrity, and that’s all they think about during the day. They can’t concentrate in class, or while trying to complete their chores. Maybe I was a late bloomer in that aspect.

But then…

One morning, I woke up and stumbled through my morning, pushing those intrusive thoughts away as much as I could. I put a couple of eggs on to boil, and my stomach grumbled loudly. I grabbed the bacon from the fridge and peeled off the first slice to toss in the skillet, and my mouth watered. The second slice, I held under my nose and inhaled deeply. My mouth watered, and I dropped it into the skillet with the other. Was I that hungry?

I called my friend who had recently moved out of state. I didn’t tell him about the weird dreams, or any of that stuff. I didn’t want him to think I was losing my shit under the pressure of buying my first home and living alone. I just wanted to talk about normal things for a while. I hoped it would break the cycle of dreaming, waking and not being sure whether I was awake, going to work, trying to get information about Gander’s Peak, and then repeating it all over the next day.

It seemed to work for a while. Until I sat to put on my work boots to head out for the day. I was happy to be going to the job for a change. It had started to feel like the job was a hindrance, an obstacle that I couldn’t avoid. I whistled a tune while I pulled on my socks. I grabbed one of my boots, and the whistle died. Died right along with that good feeling I was experiencing.

The boots were streaked with thick mud across the front and sides. The treads were caked completely, and when I dropped them back to the floor, clods broke loose and lay on the floor accusingly. You know what happened. You know what you did. Just admit it to yourself, Seth.

But I didn’t know what had happened, or if I had done anything. How could I admit something I didn’t know anything about? All I knew for sure was that I had not set foot out of the house in two days. A thunderstorm had raged through the holler, and I had stayed in the house since. I’m an outdoorsy guy, but not when the front yard is standing in water for more than twenty-four hours. Not when the mud is so deep that you slip and slide on even the slightest incline or dip in the ground.

The faint scent of pine clung to the boots. The smell was much stronger than it should have been. The last time I had worn the boots into the woods had been nearly a week prior. No way the scent of pine should have stuck to them so strong. Picking up one of the boots, I examined it closely, confused. That’s when I saw the pine needle sticking at the top of the laces. I plucked it out and dropped the boot again. The needle was green. Fresh. No way it had been stuck to that boot for a week. Feeling sick, I told myself that I had just gone outside for something maybe the day before, and I had just forgotten. Deep down, I knew it was a lie, but what else was I supposed to do? I mean, there’s no way someone had broken into my house and wore my boots into the woods while I was asleep. Right? That was crazy.

And then…

One night, I dreamed of running. I was sprinting in fast, fluid movements, and my breath came in short bursts. The exhilaration surpassed anything I’d ever felt. It was better than the first time I sat behind the wheel of my own car, more exciting than bungee jumping off New Embreeville Bridge, and more addictive than a drug. When I woke, I was immediately disappointed and heartsick that the feeling was gone. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to call it back to me, but I couldn’t. I sat up, frustrated, and threw back the cover. The sun was already streaking the sky with its pastel oranges and reds. Sighing, I stood, and that’s when I realized that my legs ached and my muscles were tight like I had run for miles. My fingernails were uneven, broken, and chipped with dirt packed under some of them even though I had gone to bed clean.

The creeping sensation of being watched followed me all through that morning. As I was shaving, I kept thinking something dark, like a shadow, was moving toward me from the bedroom. My heart would skip a beat, and I would jerk in that direction only to find nothing.

The only explanation I had was that I was sleepwalking. That would explain the dirty boots, the aching legs, and even the broken, dirty nails. It might even explain the vivid dreams of running. I researched somnambulance, and you’d be shocked to learn what people can do while they are sound asleep—and they never have a clue about it.

I read accounts about people who cooked and ate whole meals in their sleep. Others cleaned, and some did nothing much but sit and stare at a blank wall. One woman had a nightly conversation with a ceiling fan, and she said she remembered dreaming about talking to God. But there were a handful of people who drove while asleep. I started locking my car keys in a metal money box and putting the keys on top of a cabinet where I had to climb to get to them. I hoped if I ever got the bright idea to drive while I was snoozing, I would fall before I got the keys.

The sleepwalking was probably making the paranoia worse. That would explain the feeling of being watched that lingered for days after that episode. The morning I woke and that feeling was gone, I remember the relief that washed over me.

A few days later, I was really beat after a hard day at work. I fixed a bologna sandwich, grabbed a soda from the fridge, and flopped on the couch. I turned on the TV and started watching reruns of some late night show. I finished my sandwich and kicked my feet up on the coffee table. My eyes were locked on the screen, but my body felt heavy. I wasn’t going to fight it if sleep came for me. The host on TV called the first guest: Jim Carrey. The audience exploded into applause as Jim Carrey appeared and raised a hand. I blinked, and I was standing in the kitchen. I felt invigorated, as if I’d slept a full night, but I stood barefoot staring out the window beside the back door as if I had been there for a while. Waiting. But for what?

I shook it off and went to shower before bed. The clock by the bed said it was a few minutes after three in the morning. I had turned the TV on at eight the night before.

I couldn’t say for sure whether that was an episode of lost time, or if I had fallen asleep on the couch and did some more sleepwalking.I did what I had become so good at: I brushed it off and went about my day.

Another day, some of the guys at work had invited me to go to the pool hall with them. It was a Friday night, and it had been months since I’d gone anywhere and had some fun. I came home and showered and then went to the kitchen to make something small.We would all grab something to eat at the sports bar and grill across the road from the pool hall, so I opened my fridge to grab the cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich.The smell of blood took my breath, and I stepped back. There was a pack of ground beef I had bought a few daysearlier. It was on the bottom shelf, and the plastic was still intact.I thought maybe it had gone bad, and I made a mental note to toss it in the trash later.I made the grilled cheese, and afterward, I was still famished, but I didn’t have time to make what I really wanted, which was a huge, juicy hamburger.

I got my keys and went out the door. Who knew? Maybe I’d even get lucky and hook up with Suzy Mackie, the girl I had wanted to go out with since I met her two years ago. I had always felt inferior around her, though, like she would never give me the time of day, let alone go out with me. She always wore a light rose perfume that sent me over the moon for some reason.As cliché as it sounds, her smile really did brighten any room. She wa sa nurse, super smart, beautiful, and came from an affluent family. In short, she was the exact opposite of me.But that’s who was on my mind when I stepped out the door.

I remember the sound of the door closing heavily behind me, and then I woke up in the living room floor to the sun blasting through the windows. It was so bright, it stabbed at my eyes and hurt my head. My first thought was,How much did I drink last night? But then, I couldn’t even remember going to the pool hall.

I stood. I was full of strange aches and pains in my joints and muscles from sleeping on the floor. I wanted only to get a shower and go to bed. I hadn’t been so fatigued since I’d had mono in ninth grade.I pulled my shirt over my head, and caught a faint whiff of flowers. I sniffed the shirt, and my mouth watered as the flowery scent filled my nose. I threw the shirt across the room and almost ran to the shower.

I dreamed of going to Gander’s Peak again that night.The dream started with wind. Not the kind that rustles leaves or bends branches, but something deeper, something that moves silently but carries weight. I felt it even when the air was still, that thing, that living, sentient thing that coiled beneath my skin and thrummed through my veins.It’s not mere wind, it’s a presence, and the presence was intelligent.

My feet found their way onto the narrow, winding path through the trees.Damp earth under my bare feet, rough bark scraping against my arm, and the sound of small night critters scattering through the shadows and underbrush as I went from a leisurely walk to a jog to a run. The running turned into a full-on sprint, and I darted through shadows, down slopes, up steep inclines that I could never climb in my waking life. The world had gone to monochrome colors under the moon’s silvery light. I slowed to enjoy the beauty of the landscape. Then I caught movement. A flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye.Something small darted across the forest floor.A Jumping Mouse, its tiny body barely visible in the dim light, and its long hind legs propelling it forward in quick, erratic leaps.

I didn’t think. I just moved.

Reaching forward, I ran. I wanted to see if I could catch the little critter. It seemed like great entertainment. It went as you’d expect. I thought I had been the most graceful thing in the forest while I’d been sprinting, but the mouse proved that I was nothing but a big, clumsy man with big ideas. Laughing, I continued to give chase. It was a dream, so why not?

The mouse leaped again, and my muscles reacted before I gave them the order to.The world sharpened around me. The scent of the damp earth filled my nostrils and lungs, the rustling of leaves was too loud and too clear,I could hear the frantic heartbeat and breathing of the mouse. I lunged forward.

And completely ate dirt as I fell in the middle of a steep path.The mouse squeaked and disappeared into the shadows. I stood, dusting my hands and checking for blood. The feeling of being watched by something with sinister intentions came back, and I forgot about my hands.

I’m dreaming. It’s just a dream, I kept repeating in my head as I looked around, scanned the dense foliage, and listened for movement.

At first, there was nothing moving. My fumbling around had scared all the animals into silent hiding.The dirt under my bare feet suddenly felt as if it had sprouted sharp small rocks that bit into my tender soles.I moved off the path and into the lush grassy area at the side.The air grew chilled and that chill pushed through my clothes and into my bones.Shivering and scared, I turned to head home. Maybe I’d been sleepwalking again.Maybe I’d gone into the woods for real. Nothing looked familiar, but the forest has a way of looking insanely different in the middle of the night. I made it back to the top of the incline, and stopped in my tracks.

Ahead of me, in the middle of that skinny ass path, stood something that looked roughly human-shaped, but it seemed taller, its head too elongated, and its chest too big for its scrawny legs.

Something to my left growled. It was a low, menacing sound that sent the chill deeper into my bones. I’d finally done it.I’d finally screwed up so bad that I was going to die. How long would it take anyone to find me? How far was I from home?

The shadow figure ahead of me was still for several seconds, and I couldn’t move despite the growling. The shadow didn’t run, didn’t dart, or jump…it faded, it melted into the deeper darkness of the woods.

The dream had ended for sure.I had to walk in the direction where that thing stood.I couldn’t go off the path. I didn’t have a light, hell, I didn’t even have shoes. I kept thinking it was probably a bear, but that comparison wasn’t right.It wasn’t right, but it is what allowed me to get past that spot while walking barefoot with nothing to protect myself and no light to guide me.

Happily, I was not as far into the woods as I feared.I walked through a deep ravine and came out on an old defunct logging road. I knew exactly where I was and could make it home in under thirty minutes.

About five minutes after hitting the logging road, my upper back and arms started itching. It was tolerable at first, but by the time I stepped into my backyard, I picked up a stick and ran it down the back of my shirt. When that stopped working, I found a pine tree and used its rough bark to ease the torment.

I woke up curled on the rug at the foot of my bed, and the itching returned.Little red bumps covered my arms and upper back. They broke and bled when I touched them, but at least the bleeding eased the itching. No, I didn’t seek medical attention. I’m a guy. We rarely do the logical thing in these instances. The rug was rough on my skin, but that felt so good. I lay on my back and twisted back and forth to rub my back against those delightfully harsh fibers. I knew I was bleeding on the rug;I just didn’t care. All that mattered was stopping the itch.

With the terrible itch relieved, I fell asleep right there on the rug, curled in the warm morning sun. I dreamed of Gander’s Peak, or rather, the thing that supposedly lived there. In the dream, I watched the strangely-shaped shadow glide through the dark woods, running as gracefully and quietly as a cat on the hunt. My heart raced each time the shadow plunged into a dark area, and I yelped with excitement when it emerged again. I desperately wanted the thing to catch some animal: a rabbit, a cat, a snake, or something bigger. Bigger game would be better. Maybe a deer.

I woke with a start. In my sleep, my ears had picked up the barking of a dog somewhere nearby. I could find no sign of a dog anywhere. After walking around outside just to make sure there wasn’t a stray dog somewhere, I went back inside. It was a little after one in the afternoon. I had slept all night and most of the day.

In the shower I noticed that the itchy rash had healed a bit, but not completely. The hot water stung and simultaneously felt good. I scrubbed at my upper back and arms with a brush and copious amounts of soap. If it was a reaction to something, maybe the soap would dry it out and quicken the healing process.

When I got out of the shower, the itching returned with a ferocity that made me want to scream. I nearly twisted into a pretzel to look at my back in the mirror over the sink. The rash had spread. It wasn’t just the tops of my shoulders and the extreme top of my back anymore. The red, oozing bumps covered me all the way to the bottom of my shoulder blades and ran down the center of my spine. I could barely see it starting to take shape at the small of my back, too.

My fingers hovered over the red, irritated patches. The skin looked too tight, like it was stretched over muscle that felt denser and heavier. I pressed against my shoulder, expecting the usual give, but instead, it was firmer. Not like muscle, and not like bone, but something else.

I swallowed hard and turned away. I wasn’t going to be that guy—the one who spirals over a rash, who convinces himself he’s dying over some skin irritation. That was my dad’s job. The man got hit with a mild case of seasonal allergies, and you might as well go ahead and dig the grave and hire the preacher because he was gonna die. No, I wouldn’t let myself be that guy. I just needed more sleep. That’s all. Sleep heals the body. That’s what I’ve always heard. I guess the right way to say it is that sleep allows the body to heal, but whatever. That explained why I had slept so much.

There was a knock at the door. My heart burst into erratic pulse patterns, and I snatched a shirt to pull over my head. The rash would have to wait. The long sleeves were uncomfortable, and the thing was too tight across the shoulders, but it would have to do.

I went to the door. The preacher and my mother stood on the porch. I didn’t know why the preacher was there, and that he was there with my mother made me think something was terribly wrong. I opened the door slowly, not wanting to hear whatever bad news they brought, but knowing I had no choice.

My mother wrung her hands and kept her gaze from mine. The preacher stank. At first, I thought it was really bad B.O., but then the wind shifted, and I knew it was fear that made him smell so strongly. My pupils dilated painfully, and I cringed back, squeezing the tight against the pain. My veins seemed to mirror the action of my pupils, and pain screamed through my entire body with the speed of my heartbeat. I stumbled to the recliner and fell into it, pulling air into my lungs in great gasps.

Mom rushed in, but the preacher grabbed her by the arm. It spun her around, her graying hair flew wildly to the side, and she squealed at the suddenness of it.

“Lemme go,” she screamed, jerking her arm. But he held tight.

“Don’t touch him, Bess,” the preacher bellowed as he hauled her into an embrace meant to keep her away from me. “He ain’t right. Whatever is wrong might be contagious.”

She struggled, and fury seeped into my chest. The anger overtook the pain, and suddenly, I was wrenching his hands away from her so violently that he stumbled back over the threshold. He fell on the porch, staring up at me with his mouth hung open and his eyes wide.

The stench of fear assaulted me, and I wanted to pounce on him, tear out his throat, make that odor disappear for good. Instead, I slammed the door, leaving him out there and focusing on Mom.

Terrified, she backed away only meeting my gaze once. Her eyes kept flitting to something behind me. “It was you, wasn’t it? It was, oh God, it was.”

“What? What happened? I’ve done nothing, Mom.”

She pointed behind me. “You hurt Suzy.”

Dread filled my midsection as I turned to see what she was pointing at. There, hanging from the edge of the Grandfather Clock tucked into the corner was a green ribbon with long strands of copper-red hair still tangled in it.

Fear shot through me. “I didn’t do that. I don’t know where that came from. I swear, I didn’t hurt her. I didn’t know she’d been hurt.” I rushed to my mother and put my hands on her arms, forcing her to look me in the eye. “Mom, I didn’t hurt her. Where is she? How bad is she hurt?”

“You’ve been going to Gander’s Peak, Seth. Everybody knows. It’s not like you try to hide it anymore. How long? How long have you been going there?”

“I’ve not…” My words faded and my hands dropped. I stepped away from my mother. I hadn’t been going to Gander’s Peak, had I? Not really. I’d only dreamed of it.

Mom eased toward the door like a woman escaping a crouched lion. “I told you to stay away from there. Everyone told you; warned you that place ain’t for folks like us.”

“Maybe I’m not like the rest of you,” I screamed. I was so angry. Why was I so mad at my mother? She’d done nothing to me, yet I felt so disconnected from her at that moment. Like she was a stranger wrapped in distant familiarity.

The door whipped open, and she was gone, slamming the door behind her. I watched through the window, and when she and the preacher hurried down the steps, I wanted to chase them. Would a true mother run from her only child like that? Would she abandon him when he was in obvious need of help?

I slammed my palm against the door and fought the urge. My fingers curled, my jaws clenched, and I felt it.

Something was wrong with my hand, with my fingers. I yanked my hand away from the door. My nails were longer—not by a lot, but enough for me to notice they had grown. They were wrong. They curled downward at the tips of my fingers ever so slightly, and they were thicker, stronger than before. And so too were my knuckles. The skin on my palm was thicker, and my fingers reminded me of my grandfather’s. He was old and his hands were full of arthritis that made his knuckles swell to twice their normal size.

I shoved the hand in my pocket. People didn’t just suddenly get a bad case of arthritis in their twenties. Not without some underlying medical condition—which I didn’t have. I walked to the Grandfather Clock and stared at the ribbon and strands of hair. The smell of blood was thick in the air. I searched the corner but found nothing that should have caused the smell. Then I looked more closely at the ribbon. The hairs weren’t just the normal strands that fall out, and they hadn’t been cut. They had been ripped from Suzy’s head; torn from her scalp with such force that bits of scalp were still visible at their ends. Holding them under my nose, the scent of old blood curled into my sinuses. My top lip curled, and my stomach tightened. I dropped the ribbon, unable to hold it correctly. Whatever was wrong with my right hand had spread to the other by then. I was torn between the strange things happening to me and wondering about the woman I loved. Where was Suzy? In the hospital? At her mother’s house?

I went to my cellphone and pulled up the phone app. I couldn’t remember Suzy’s number, but that was all right. I had her number stored in the…what was that called? Why did the phone smell funny, like electricity, like danger?

I was standing at the edge of the forest, shirtless, shoe less, and grinning into the darkness. It was night, and I couldn’t remember when I’d left the house, or if I’d ever called to check on Suzy. I was happy down to my soul. I don’t know why I was happy, but I was.

Turning toward the house, I could barely contain the urge to run and jump and chase the moths dipping and fluttering around the porch light.

Something was watching me from the tree line as I fumbled clumsily with the doorknob. I could feel the eyes. The gentle, urging weight of that knowing gaze followed me as I went inside.

That was just last night. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and things have escalated. This morning, I woke up as I was running out of the woods and into my yard. Elation coursed through my body as I ran to the back door.

Once inside, I realized I wasn’t wearing clothes, but my shoulders and arms felt heavier than usual. Thick fur had begun to push through the skin where the rash had been. The taste of blood, so delicious, so metallic, so fulfilling lingered in my mouth. I tried to make my mind worry about it, be repulsed by all of it, but I couldn’t focus long enough. An hour ago, I woke on the rug again. With the lingering taste of blood in my mouth, I knew I had done something horrible. I clung to the human emotions I could discern within myself and cleaned up, rinsed my mouth, and decided to call the cops to turn myself in. I was convinced that I had hurt Suzy, maybe even killed her, and then I had gone out and killed someone or something else. If I wasn’t turning into Dog man, I was sure as hell going crazy. Either way, I was a danger to others and to myself. The only people I could think of calling were the cops. They could at least lock me in a cage where I wouldn’t be a danger to anyone.

The phone is lying on the desk as I write this. I’ll call them as soon as I’m finished. My legs are changing, or at least, my perception of them is changing. I know if I stand up, I will resemble that shadowy thing I saw in the forest—an upper body that is too large for the scrawny legs. What’s that sound?It’s distracting me. Thump-thump, thump-thump. It’s steady. Rhythmic. Sounds like a heartbeat of something small. Of something that smells like prey. The window is open, and I can smell the pine trees and damp earth of the deep forest from here. The wind through the lush green is whispering my name.

Something is watching me. Waiting for me. It feels like mother, like love, like acceptance.My stomach twists, but not in fear. In recognition.

It feels like home.