The summer of 2022 was a warm one as far as summers in Alberta go. During covid, I had taken up hiking as a means of both passing the time and keeping myself in some semblance of good shape. Now that the pandemic and its related restrictions had largely abated, I had grown so fond of my hiking expeditions that I began to retain it as part of my regular activities. I won’t claim to be any sort of professional hiker, but I had learned my fair share via trial and error to the extent that I always packed well and took all the necessary precautions for wherever I was heading.
If you’ve never been to Alberta before, I would highly recommend it. We’re not well known as far as Canadian provinces go, but we have some of the best wilderness in the world for campers and hikers looking to enjoy the serenity of nature. The northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains form our western border and provide an abundance of trails, campsites, and provincial parks that can be enjoyed for free (sparing the expense of getting there).
It was to the Rocky Mountains that I had planned my latest hiking excursion. The Heritage Day long weekend was fast approaching, and I had decided to abscond to the mountains for a good four-day hike to get a break from the bustle of city life. I had recently found a trail which I had never hiked before – called Crestwood trail – which, from the pictures online, promised to be a beautiful trip, dotted with suitable campsites for a three-day journey.
I had managed to rope a couple of friends into coming with me on this hike. Two were well seasoned in mountain hikes – Evan and Evangelin. The other two – Emma and Erin, not so much. The plan was for all of us to arrive separately on Friday afternoon, make camp at the trailhead, then begin on Saturday morning, to return sometime on Monday.
Having the Monday off due to the holiday, I booked that Friday off work so that I could make my way to the mountains at a leisurely pace. Departing Edmonton as the sun reached its zenith, I made Hinton just after three o’clock and pulled into the parking lot of a local diner to put something in my stomach and to check on the status of my fellow hikers.
I settled into a booth, ordered a cup of coffee along with a greasy plate of meat, eggs, and hashbrowns, and took out my phone. The rest of the company was still some ways away, so I had plenty of time to eat, reach the campsite, and pitch my tent before expecting the presence of anyone else. I finished my meal and leaned back satisfied. I always used hiking trips as an excuse to binge on my favourite unhealthy breakfast foods.
I got a refill on my coffee and asked for the bill the next time the waitress happened by, and sat at the booth gazing out the window, watching the cars zip by on the highway. The coffee was strong and bitter, but there’s something about a shitty cup of diner coffee that scratches a particular itch like nothing else.
“Need the machine?” Came a voice from my right, and I pulled my attention away from the highway to focus on the waitress standing next to me – smile on her face and debit machine in her hand.
“Yes, I will… thank you.” I said, as I set down my cup of coffee and tilted to the side to fish my wallet out of my back pocket.
“Heading to the mountains for the weekend?” The waitress asked as I punched my PIN into the machine.
“Yeah, three-day hike actually.” I replied with a smile as I returned the machine to her and drained my cup of coffee.
“Ooh, fun – whereabouts you headed?” She asked, tearing a receipt off the machine and handing me a copy.
“Crestwood trail, a bit northwest of here – never been.” I said with a smile that quickly evaporated as I watched the face of the waitress darken as I mentioned the trail.
“They say that’s an evil trail, you know.” She said.
“Evil? Like… it’s haunted?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Well… no, it’s not a ghost – folks say it’s a monster.” She said, with a sly tilt of her head.
“What kind of monster?” I asked. The waitress glanced around the diner – it was in between the lunch and the dinner rushes, so the whole place was pretty much empty aside from me and two other tables. After satisfying herself that it wasn’t too busy, she sat herself down across from me in the booth and leaned forward. I always enjoy a good folk legend, so my attention was fixed on her.
“So – way back in the early days,” She began. “When settlers first showed up here at the foot of the mountains, there was a preacher who came from the east with his daughter and set up one of the first churches around these parts. Now this preacher was one of those old school men – the puritans or whatever, super strict, him and his daughter would be working all day, never laughing and never smiling. But! The one thing this preacher would allow his daughter, was that he got her a pet dog after her mama died, big, beautiful dog, who loved that girl and was always by her side. Problem was, as the preacher got older… well, he got even stricter and harsher in the house. Before long, the preacher was saying that his daughter loved the dog more than she loved God. He might have been losin’ his marbles a bit by that point too, because he was saying that the dog was possessed by a demon that was making his daughter stray away from the Lord.”
A text pinged on my phone, which I ignored, and the waitress poured me another cup of coffee, which I sipped at absentmindedly as I listened to the story.
“So, this preacher, thinkin’ that there’s a demon in his daughter’s dog, gets up from his prayers one day, and grabs his musket to go put an end to the mut – which was out playing in the field with his daughter. Now as you might guess, the daughter is screamin’ and cryin’ and begging her dad not to do it, but the preacher won’t listen. Now, the preacher goes to shoot the dog, and the daughter… she pulls out her pocket knife and stabs her dad right in the arm, before her and the dog – they book it off into the woods, right up where Crestwood trail is nowadays.”
“So… The girl haunts the trail or something then?” I asked, taking a sip from my coffee.
“Nope. The thing is, that preacher might have been right about there being a demon in that dog, because…” She paused to look around. “They never saw the girl or the dog ever again – but they say that when you go up that trail, sometimes you find these… things… with the heads of dogs and the bodies of people.”
“So, like a dog minotaur?” I asked with a smile.
“Pretty much.” The waitress said, laughing and standing up from my table.
“Well, that’s a good story – where’d you hear it?” I asked.
“Family, it’s a story that makes the rounds. In all seriousness that trail does get some bears and wolves now and then, along with a couple rockslides – you be careful up there. May not be no monsters but it is a dangerous trail.” She said, as she took my plate.
“Oh, don’t worry I know what I’m doing.” I said, standing up with a smile after finishing my coffee. I strode out of the diner, taking a mint from the bowl by the front door on the way out. I lit a cigarette and leaned against the driver’s side door of my car. I gazed up at the handful of clouds that were drifting lazily across the sky and sighed out a cloud of smoke into the pleasantly warm summer air.
I chuckled as I thought over the folk tale that the waitress had told me and crushed my smoke out underfoot. I gave my back and legs a final stretch, sat down in the car, and hopped back onto the highway, heading west into the mountains.
It only took another hour to reach to the trailhead of Crestwood – and most of that delay was due to having trouble finding the spot. I parked in the lot, packed up my things, notified the gang that I was here, and set off for the campsite we were all planning to meet at. It was a brief walk, quiet close to the trailhead, which we planned merely to use as our staging ground for the first day. The trailhead was nearly deserted, with only one or two other cars in the lot, and not a soul in sight. I had snapped a picture of the trail map at the lot just in case I needed it later.
It was the height of summer, but a cool breeze was blowing off the mountains from the west – the world felt fresh, crisp, and alive. Birds were singing, squirrels chased one another back and forth, and a few rabbits were nibbling on patches of grass aside the trail. I reached the clearing that we had decided on for our first campsite, tossed my bag on the ground, and took a deep breath of fresh air.
A small creek was gurgling past the clearing, and ancient pines ringed the space around. The Crestwood trail was just visible past the underbrush – which would make it easy to call out to my friends as they passed by. I gathered a pile of stones from the creek and created a small spot for a fire in the centre of the clearing – and after gathering up enough deadwood and kindling, had a respectable blaze going shortly after. I pitched my tent and sat down by the fire to bask in the peaceful serenity of unadulterated nature.
When I’m in nature, the closest I get to keeping track of the time, is knowing where the sun is – so I can’t tell you how long it took for Evan and Evangelin to show up, but it couldn’t have been that long. I said hello and asked all the standard questions like how they were and how their trip was, and then helped them set their tents up. We were halfway through the setup when Emma and Erin came plodding up the trail, causing the whole process of questions and setup to begin anew.
Barring a few hiccups by the two inexperienced hikers, we quickly had our campsite set up and a small dinner cooking over the fire. Stomachs full, we settled down and passed a few drinks around the circle. As the sun began to sink below the horizon, I heard the howling of something deep off in the wilderness – either a wolf or a coyote, and it sent a quick chill up my spine, reminding me of the story the waitress in Hinton had told me.
I piped up – told the group I had a story and related the tale that I had heard that afternoon, to the general approval of my friends. They thought it was at least a unique local folk tale, albeit not a particularly “scary” campfire story. This devolved into us telling scary stories around the fire for another hour or so, though it was nothing beyond your very stereotypical ghost stories or serial killers with hook hands stories.
With a slight buzz and a full stomach, we all retired to bed after spending a good half hour gazing at the beauty of the mountain stars, which were shining in full, unobstructed beauty – unimpeded by the light pollution of a city. As I slipped into my cool sleeping bag, my head filled with thoughts of trees gently swaying in the wind and crystal-clear glacial creeks snaking silently along the floors of ancient valleys.
We woke early to the gentle tittering of the mountain birds, and I stepped out from the tent, shivering as I yawned. Sunbeams were shattering themselves against the dewdrops that coated both the trees and the grass – causing the whole clearing to glitter like crystal. A few ribbons of fog were hung about the creek, distant and dismal cousins to the rolling banks of fog that embraced the upper reaches of the mountain peaks about us.
I relieved myself and dug through the ashes of last night’s fire, where I found a few red coals desperately clinging to life and heat in their ashen tomb. With some kindling and a series of deep breaths, the crackling of a fire soon joined the chorus of sounds on the morning mountain. I sat for a while as I let the warmth flood over me – summer though it is, a night in the mountains is almost always cold regardless of time of year, a lesson I learned the hard way when I almost froze on a mountain one summer night.
I boiled a pot of coffee on the fire and began to fry up breakfast – the smell of which served well in waking up my still-sleeping friends. We gathered around the fire, eating and drinking in silence, until everyone’s moods seemed to perk up once they had some coffee in them. We broke camp and kicked out our fire, chatting all the while about what had been going on in our lives. At eight o’clock that morning, we returned to the path and began our hike up Crestwood trail.
The hike that day was largely uneventful. Don’t get me wrong, it was an absolutely beautiful trail – snaking through the hearts of a number of valleys, we were passing by groves of trees, fields of flowers, and pure blue ponds and rivers. We sat on the side of a shale outcropping for a quick lunch and a break from the walking, and camped that night on the banks of a glacial pond. It was another great night of stars and good company, and we all went to bed early to rest our aching legs. Emma and Erin not being avid hikers had slowed us down somewhat, but we were still on track to reach the trail end by tomorrow and be back to the trailhead on Monday.
I had my morning coffee while laying on the bank of an ice-cold pond and watching dawn break over the peaks of a mountain range – it was absolutely beautiful. Like the day before, we broke camp quickly, and were off again on the trail. This day promised to be harder than the ones before – as it was largely uphill, with terrain far rockier and more treacherous. The end of the trail was supposedly one of the most captivating glacial waterfalls in the world however, so I found sore feet a small price to pay.
The five of us were crossing a portion of the trail that was buried under a shale slide, when I heard a yelp from behind me and the sound of rocks being tumbled down the side of the hill. I spun around to see that Erin had slipped on some of the loose stones and tumbled a few feet off the trail.
“You alright?” Evan called, as he picked his way down to her to help her back to her feet.
“Yeah, I think so.” Erin winced, as she was lifted back to her feet. She let out a little yelp and had to lean on Evan for a moment, who lowered her back down.
We had gathered around, and Erin had pulled her boot off, to reveal that her ankle looked in somewhat of a bad state.
“Could be sprained.” Evangelin said worriedly.
“It’s hurting when I put pressure on it.” Erin said.
“I don’t think you should keep walking on that.” I added.
“Well, not much of a choice at this point.” Emma said, gesturing to the broad wilderness all around us.
“I can head back and you guys can keep going without me, I don’t want to spoil the weekend.” Erin said with a smile.
“Not alone you won’t.” Evan said.
We sat there on the shale and debated for a bit. We found a walking stick for Erin and managed to bind her ankle up so it stayed in place better. It was decided that Evan would take her as far back as they could go that day and camp somewhere, meeting up with us as we made our way back the next day. We sat on the shale slide, taking a break and passing some whiskey around, which seemed to put everyone (including Erin) in a better mood. We bid goodbye to one another as Emma, Evangelin, and I carried on up the trail while Erin and Evan hobbled slowly away in the distance.
After about half an hour of walking, they were out of sight.
With just the three of us, and now feeling like we were in something of a hurry, we reached the end of the trail not long after the sun had peaked in the sky. It was as beautiful as promised – a stream of ice-white water cascaded down the stones above us to spill out into the riverhead that bounded down the mountain into the valleys below. Pine trees and shrubbery filled the entire mountain cove where the waterfall began, and we spent some time exploring and taking pictures.
“Hey, come check this out!” I heard the voice of Emma cut through the sounds of the afternoon. I pushed through some underbrush before I found her, standing at the mouth of a yawning black cave.
“Woah.” Evangelin said as she emerged from the undergrowth to stand next to us.
The mouth of the cave opened up the face of the mountain rock, and before the cave was strewn a random collection of bones, blood, feathers, and fur. Some sort of… totem? Was constructed just outside the mouth of the cave, a pile of rocks stacked one on top of the other, with strange symbols and patterns drawn on them in what looked like it was blood. On top of the pile sat what looked to be the skull of a wolf or huge dog, that glared at us from empty black eye sockets.
On the sides of the mountain, flanking the entrances of the cave were what looked like ancient cave paintings – scenes of animals being hunted. But unlike most cave paintings where it was humans hunting buffalo or whatever… this one seemed to show some sort of… animal headed man hunting things – it looked like some sort of ancient Egyptian God.
The three of us stood in dumb silence gazing at the scene before us, and my stomach started to turn as I thought of the story from the diner. I knew (or thought I knew) that monsters weren’t real – they were just stories. But in this moment, all reason was out the window, and I was ready to get the fuck off of that mountain.
“Alright that’s enough for me, let’s go.” Emma said.
“Yup.” I said.
“Okay.” Evangelin said, and the three of us turned and nearly ran back down the trail away from the waterfall.
I shuddered at the sound of a howl far off in the distance as the three of us descended in a silent haste. I was taking up the rear, and though it was never vocalized, I could feel that the cave had unsettled all of us – the unease was palpable. I cast a number of furtive glances back over my shoulder, and periodically I could swear I was seeing things in my peripheral vision. We moved so quick down the trail that we soon had to stop and take a break.
“What do you think that was?” Emma asked with a quake in her voice.
“Probably just some prank that has to do with the folk legend – that waitress was pretty excited to tell me that story.” I said between gulps of water.
“What if there’s actually a dog-man monster thing on the mountain?” Evangelin said with an unconfident smile.
“No such thing as monsters.” I spoke.
“Either way, I’m not dying sober.” Emma said, as she took a swig from the bottle of whiskey that she was carrying in her bag. She passed it around and we all took a drink as well.
We kept a quick pace going as we traced the trail back to its source. Each of us had picked up a stick to use for support while walking and perhaps on some primal level we wanted them as weapons in the event there was a monster out there. Emma and I had each brought bear spray with us, which we kept very close at hand as we walked. All of our heads were on a swivel as we passed back down the shale slide where Erin had fallen earlier.
We hit the floor of the valley quickly and were nearly jogging down the trail when we stopped again for a break.
“With Erin’s ankle – her and Evan can’t have made it much further, I bet we overtake them soon.” Evangelin said.
“Do we stop and camp or do we make them keep moving?” Emma asked.
“I say we find them first then we can decide.” I said. Emma shrugged and Evangelin stayed silent, so I took that for a tacit agreement with my idea.
We began moving again, trudging down the trail as fast as we could with our packs and hiking boots on. The serene wilderness, that had before been so peaceful, now seemed to be a happy façade that concealed something terrible just under the surface.
“Look!” Evangelin said, bringing our group to a halt as she pointed off the trail just ahead, to where the coloured fabric of two tents and the smoke of a fire could be seen through the treeline.
We hurried ahead to the camp, crashing through the trees and arriving next to the fire out of breath. We called for Evan and Erin but received only silence in reply. I opened the flaps of both tents, and found the packs of the two there, but no sign of the pack-carriers themselves.
“Evan! Erin!” I shouted, with my hands cupped around my mouth.
“Shut up!” Emma hissed. “What if it hears us?”
“There’s no monsters, they probably just went off to fetch water or firewood or something.” I said.
“Yeah, and got eaten.” Emma replied. Evangelin scoffed as she continued to beat at the underbrush around the campsite.
“Well, now they’re missing – what do we do now?” Evanglin asked.
“I say we set up our tents and wait for Evan and Erin to come back – they probably didn’t expect us for a few hours more and just wandered off.”
“And if they don’t come back?” Emma asked, sitting down and fishing her whiskey out of her pack.
“Then we deal with that when it happens.” I said, shrugging my pack off. Evangelin remained silent.
We set up our tents and heaped the campfire a bit higher – everyone was moving and working in nearly complete silence, ears trained on the woods around us, starting at the slightest sound. As much as I was trying to ram the idea into my head that there was a perfectly rational explanation for what was going on, I couldn’t help but be startled a few times at the sound of some of the sticks cracking and breaking in the fire.
We sat silently as an hour passed, and then a second one. Our shadows were beginning to lengthen, and the only thing on everyone’s mind was that Evan and Erin should by all means have been back by now. It was almost as if we were all too paralyzed to broach the subject – that if none of us mentioned it, that if we didn’t speak the words, it wouldn’t be real.
“They’re not coming back.” Emma said, slurring her words slightly at this point. Evangelin turned away and rubbed her face with her hands – I stared straight into the fire.
“We’ll find some park rangers when we get back and report them missing – they’ll find them.” I said.
“Find their bones more likely.” Emma scoffed.
“Let’s eat something and get some sleep, we can start back right at sunrise.” I said, as I began to assemble a few things to cook over the fire.
“I’m not hungry.” Evangelin said, as she quietly walked away from the fire back into her tent. Emma followed her with her eyes and then shrugged towards me.
I cooked for Emma and I in silence, and we ate quickly as the sun began to set. We finished and packed our things up before I knocked on the front of Evangelin’s tent.
“Yeah, what?” Came her voice from inside.
“Emma’s going to bed, I’m going to stay up and keep watch.” I said.
“Okay.” Evangelin said quietly. “Goodnight.”
Emma retreated to her tent, and I took up my walking stick and my bear spray, and planted myself next to the fire, which I heaped with a few extra branches. My legs and back were sore and I was exhausted, so I boiled some coffee for myself and shakily smoked a cigarette. The nicotine calmed me down, and the coffee perked me up.
The valley was silent save for the hooting of some owls and the skittering of some nocturnal animals along the forest floor. I paced around the campsite for a while to keep the blood flowing through my legs and managed to smoke my way through about half the pack of cigarettes I had with me. Something howled far off in the distance, which sent a primordial shiver of fear through my body. What was normally the serene beauty of the country-side blanket of stars now seemed to mock me, displaying its beauty with cosmic indifference to what was happening below.
I turned at the sound of a tent being unzipped. Evangelin was emerging from her tent wrapped in a jacket and looked at me. I nodded to her.
“Want me to take over?” She asked quietly.
“Sure.”
“Give me one of those cigarettes first.” She said with a weak smile.
I handed her one and held up my lighter for her. She breathed the acrid iron smoke out into the still night air and walked over to the fire.
“Goodnight.” I said. “There’s coffee there that’s still warm if you want some.”
“Thanks. Goodnight.” She smiled.
I crawled into my tent and tucked myself into my sleeping bag without zipping it closed – preparing in case I had to suddenly leap to my feet. Sleep overcame me quickly, but it was a brief and fitful sleep choked with nightmares, visions of running through the forest, pursued by some unnatural, antediluvian beast that snarled and snapped at my heels. I was dreaming that the beast had caught me and was sinking it’s teeth into my ankles. I let out a shrill scream – but the scream sounded like it was made with a voice that wasn’t my own.
I bolted awake.
The scream wasn’t a dream.
I ripped out from my sleeping back and smashed through the flap of my tent, walking stick in one hand and bear mace in the other. The scream was coming from Evangelin, who was sprawled on the ground next to the fire, with some sort of hulking human form crouched overtop of her. The beast had the body of a huge, hairy man, something like seven feet tall – but the head… the head was that of some mangy, wild dog, with blood on its teeth and a huge tongue lolling down from its snout. Its eyes were a deep blue and flashed violence by the light of the campfire.
I raised the bear mace and released it at the monster. A jet of aerosolized spray leapt towards the beast and coated it from the head to the waist. It reeled back off of Evangelin, howling and tearing at its eyes and face. It backed and bounded off into the treeline, crashing into the trunk of a huge pine as it went, howling and screeching all the way.
“What the FUCK was that!” Emma yelled as she was fumbling out of her tent flap.
“No idea.” I said breathlessly as I rushed over to where Evangelin was lying bloody on the ground.
Whatever it was had got at her throat and opened up what I assumed was an artery by how much blood was coming out. She looked at me, her skin deathly pale in the firelight, and she grabbed my arm with her blood-soaked hand. She tried to move but grunted and fell back onto the ground. She looked as though she was trying to say something, but all that came from her mouth was a gurgling sound, followed by a trail of blood running out from her lips. She went limp on the ground and shut her eyes.
“Do something!” Emma yelled.
“No use.” I said, as I stood back up and readied my bear spray again. The sound of the beast’s howling had faded to silence, and I couldn’t make out the sound of underbrush being crashed through any longer.
“What do we do now?” Emma hissed.
“Grab only bare necessities, leave everything that would just be extra weight, we’re going to make it back to the cars.” I said, as I scanned the treeline for any signs of movement. Emma rushed back into her tent to pack things.
I gazed up at the sky briefly, where the stars continued to twinkle and the moon sat, shining down on the scene of horror unfolding in the wild. Emma was ready in a moment, and I left her to keep watch with her can of mace while I packed my things – which amounted to almost nothing save some water, snacks, and a flashlight. I came back out and we left our tents there in the clearing next to the smouldering fire.
We hit the trail and immediately started running, allowing the moon to light our path and saving the flashlights for only if they were absolutely necessary. Emma was much shorter than me, so we made a slow pace, and before long, the sound of howling began to cut the silence of the night behind us.
“We’re never going to outrun it.” Emma said, panting and stopping on the side of the trail.
“Do you have a better idea?” I said, as I opened my water bottle and took a long drink.
“Nope. Give me a cigarette.” Emma said, extending her hand. I gave her one and lit one for myself.
“Now doesn’t seem like the time.” I said, still catching my breath.
“It ran from the mace once, I think our only chance is to hit it again and keep running.” She said.
“Or I leave you behind because you’re not as fast.” I smiled.
“Fuck off.”
We moved off the trail and hid in a small ditch that was surrounded by bushes, deciding that we had to try and immobilize the thing one more time. The howling was quickly getting closer, and we wouldn’t be able to run all night. We each had a final swig of the whiskey bottle as the howling started to get so close that the hair all over me was standing on end. We could both hear the thing prowling around just over the lip of the ditch, and we made eye contact and nodded.
We both jumped from the ditch at the same time, each of us discharging a shot of the mace at the thing. It was covered head to toe, but instead of immediately turning the monster, it merely howled and leapt towards us. It landed on Emma and sent her crashing down to the ground. The beast had obviously been blinded somewhat by the mace, as it tried to sink its teeth into her but merely managed to bite into the ground next to her head.
As I raised my walking stick to strike the monster, the last thing I saw was Emma’s hand, that had managed to squirm its way into her pocket, flicking the lighter she had taken from me when she lit her cigarette.
With a sudden woosh, a blinding light, and a searing heat, the monster and Emma were immediately engulfed in a towering flame as the butane from the bear spray ignited in half a second. The monster shrieked and screamed and howled with a terrible, primal ferocity that made my blood run cold, as it writhed on the ground. I heard a pitiful, choked scream escape from Emma’s burning form as I turned in fear and began sprinting down the trail.
Adrenaline is an unbelievable drug – I ran for what felt like hours, my legs screaming in pain and my mind a furious hurricane of thoughts that had only the goal of survival in mind. The screams of the dying and the smell of burning flesh and hair never left my consciousness for a second as I was running. As the sun began to make it’s presence known in the eastern sky, I reached the parking lot, and collapsed on the gravel in front of my car.
I began crying – heaving sobs that were both gasps for breath and attempts to expel the horror I had just witnessed. My limbs felt like jelly, and it took nearly ten minutes before I was breathing regularly enough to be able to swallow some water. I climbed into my car, a shattered husk of a person, and began to back out of the parking lot, with the goal of finding the nearest ranger station.
Before I could floor the gas pedal away from the Crestwood trailhead, I looked back to where I had come from, and far off through the treeline, I could make out a terrible, black, loping shape. The hair had been burned off of it across it’s entire body, and what wasn’t covered in soot and dirt was a mess of bloody, ragged skin that was beginning to slough off from the flesh-consuming power of the butane.
It merely stood in the treeline and stared at me with it’s hateful, icy blue eyes.
I made it to a ranger station and spilled out this entire story. Unsurprisingly, they think I’m insane. There’s a huge search currently underway for the four that I left behind, but nobody has been found yet. Safe to say, I’ve now become suspect number one in the disappearance of everyone, so I’ve been asked to put my story into writing, for the use of the police and whatnot.
They might all think I’m insane – and who knows, maybe I am, maybe my mind got shattered on that mountain and I killed all my friends. Monsters aren’t supposed to be real. Either way, I’ve never been the same, I might as well have died on that mountain too.
They say I’m crazy.
But I know what I saw.