The morning I turned 10, I saw my dad on his knees, on top of a pile of snow in the middle of the living room. Bouquets of bones bloomed on both sides of his skull, his bright green eyes cried mossy tears. And before I could say anything, I find myself looking at the carpet, where he once was.
At least, that’s what I thought I made up to rationalize why he’d leave me, why he’d leave mom. Child me must have conjured up the image; though I know he loved us dearly, he still, was a monster to abandon us. Mom never touched his stuff after he’s gone, I know she still waits for the day he comes home.
I take out the journal in his nightstand to read it from time to time, just to understand why he did it. To be frank, I still don’t. The last entry is from the night before my 10th birthday, and he seemed content, excited even.
But as I opened the nightstand drawer today, I saw something different. A purple, wooden handle jutted out the top of the journal. I opened to find a weathered, blackened blade, and a new entry.
***
It has taken my grandfather, it has taken my father, and now it has taken me.
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When I was eight, I was told of the beast that took my grandmother’s love away.
My father was only ten when it happened. They were sledding on a hill, the hill that the highway out of state was built on. There’s a field right beside the hill, and it would always be a plain of white after the annual snowstorm. An untainted, brand new whiteboard paradise known only to them both. They got on the sled, and went down the hill. When they hit the bottom, that’s when they saw it; a thing, standing on two legs, in the middle of the field. Before my father said anything, my grandfather told him to run along, ‘lest he made his mother upset with cold dinner on the table. My grandfather smiled, and waded through the snow towards it. Leaving my father all alone to find his way back home.
My grandfather was never seen again.
I thought my father made it up just to scare me from wandering through the freshly fallen snow, piling up taller than little ‘ol me.
Then I was ten, in the back seat of a Cadillac being driven out of state to a Chuck E. Cheese for my birthday party. I thought I was lucky, the snowstorm that raged on for a week passed right before sunrise, just in time so I wouldn’t miss the celebration.
What was I doing in the back seat again? Was I playing with a McDonald’s toy, annoying my parents with the constant “Are we there yet”, or was I reading a picture book my mother got me last birthday? I don’t recall. All I remember is the car slowing, to a snail’s pace, and to a complete stop. I looked up in front of me, and saw my father staring out the window. I followed his gaze, and that’s when I saw it; wearing a woollined leather jacket, navy denim jeans, with leather gloves and boots darkened with age. The head a skull of an elk, painted with blood long since dried and frozen, and strips of flesh dangling off each tip on the antlers. The emerald green lights shining through the eye sockets.
I knew what he had to do.
My father turned around, looked at his wife, and then me. “You go on without me. I’ll be right back, kiddo.”
He stepped out of the car.
And just like his father, he gave a smile warm enough to melt the frost, and walked towards it.
My mother hopped into the driver’s seat and started the car. I never got to see him walk down the hill.
The car ride was silent. I saw the tears welling up in my mother’s eyes through the rearview mirror. She knew this day would come, and maybe I did too.
I never saw my father again.
After my mother became the stars in the night sky, I moved out of state, to somewhere that I wouldn’t have to worry about icy roads in the winter. I got a decent job, fell in love, got married, and had a beautiful baby boy. I never told my wife, Emily, about my father, it would just keep her up at night knowing how worrisome she is. And I never told my son, it would only scare his little socks off with how much he’s still afraid of the dark.
But none of that matters. He’s turning ten in three days. I can’t wait to teach him what my father taught me when I was little, maybe I’ll start tomorrow! One trip a day to the wilderness, right up until his birthday. He’s going to be thrilled, and I’m going to be a proud father.
I wonder if this is what my father felt when he had me too.
Well then, I better get some rest early, a groggy mood is the last thing I need tomorrow morning.
I lie down on the mattress, careful not to wake the love of my life, close my eyes, and wait for dreamland to arrive.
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I awake to the piercing winter gale upon my cheeks, and open my eyes to bramble covered branches against the white, blinding sky. I am standing, in the middle of a forest, towards a frostbitten mountain road. How did I get here, and why do I feel like I’m holding a stick?
I look down and see the collar of my down jacket, and a hunting rifle.
What the hell?
It’s weird enough that I’m clutching onto a gun and nothing else in the middle of the woods, what’s weirder is that for a second I thought it was my father’s old huntingrifle that my mother threw out years ago.
The scare gave me a chuckle, I mean it just looks like it right? There’s no way this is THE rifle that I used to hunt hares with my father, right? That would be ridiculo-
Right under the barrel, at the end of the wooden stock, was a little rabbit sticker.
The rabbit sticker that I put on as a joke between my father and I. This is the rabbit gun, I would say, because I was always too loud for my father to hunt a deer, and hares are always what we’ve ended up getting.
Three bullets. Just three, loaded in the chamber.
Why is this rifle back in my hands and what am I supposed to do with it?
I feel it before I see it. The penetrating green gaze, unrelenting in power, staring right through me. It’s there, at the clearing in front of me, unobstructed by the tree trunks. The head, still as horrible as I remember, but it now wears a green windbreaker and khaki pants, missing boots replaced with fur covered hooves. The familiarity gnaws at the back of my mind. And I see in its hand, a ball of fluff.
Shit.
No time to think, I point and shoot, not even aiming as I should. The recoil almost blew my shoulder right off.
I missed.
Its just standing there, not even acknowledging my attempt at its life.
For a minute, or maybe just seconds, we never left each other’s sight, not even taking the risk to blink.
Its grip loosens, and the ball of brown fur drops to the ground. It turns its back against me, and vanishes deeper into the forest with a few steps.
I stride cautiously towards the pile of fur on the ground, and find a pristine corpse of a hare, seemingly untouched by death, yet never alive.
Seeing as I have no way of getting home, and no food on hand, I really have no choice but to take it with me. Thankfully, my father taught me how to process a hare. I know I won’t go hungry tonight.
I reach into the pocket of my jacket expectedly.
If you’re giving me the gun, then you might as well- Aha!
Smaller than I remember, my trusty hunting knife. As if no time had passed at all, the grayish blackened steel connects firmly to the polished, purple heart wooden handle. My father’s last birthday gift when I turned nine years old. I learned how to butcher a hare and toast a perfect marshmallow that night.
But no time to reminisce.
There are hoofed tracks left by the beast. Good. I will make it pay sooner or later, but I have to track it down first. Let’s see where it leads.
This thing walks fast, I’ve been following the track for hours now and there’s still more? Does this thing not rest?? It’s almost night too. All this walking is making my feet ache, I should just camp here for now and chase it down when day breaks. My father did always say not to wander in the forest after dark anyway.
Even though I know the chances a slim, I gather some twigs off the ground, find a dry patch of land free of snow, and try to light a fire. There’s no way I’m going out with hypothermia like a chump before I kill that thing.
To my surprise, I manage to start an ember, which prosper into a small flame.
It was after I had finished roasting the hare by the fire that I notice the green in the distance. it was just staring at me again. Unmoving, unblinking, like a floating sculpture of two green jewels in the void beyond the touch of man.
But I feel… safe, in a way. If it wanted, it could’ve struck me from behind and put an end to me already. It chose to be where I can see it.
There’s no way I can hit it with no light, I’m not that good of a marksman. Call me crazy, but I’m just going to lie down, and sleep the night away. If I’m dead, I’m dead. Goodnight mother, goodnight father, and goodnight to you too you monstrous son of a bitch.
I hope Emily and Junior are doing okay without me.
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Still nothing but white. So white, that I almost forget what a blue sky looks like.
I have to end this today, I promised my son I would be there for his birthday this year.
I crank my head towards where it last stood, and of course, it’s nowhere to be seen. It should bring me relief, not having to wake up with that godless abomination leering at me, but relief never came. And I sat up with a conviction I never knew I had.
The tracks are still there, probably because it didn’t snow much last night. It leads to where the tree lines end, next to a vast plain of tundra, eerily flat, dusted with speckles of the heavenly flakes.
I set foot on the land, it’s unusually hard. Much harder than frozen soil should be. I kneel down and wipe away the snow with my hand, and uncover the glistening aquamarine underneath. That explains why there’s no more trees ahead. At the same time, a fog starts to roll in, thick enough to block out the shore on the other side; but that’s where the tracks lead, so I follow. And deeper into the center of the lake I go.
As I venture through the mist, the trees behind fade away with each passing minute, leaving only me, the sky, and the lake. I haven’t been this alone since I stood in the yard the day after my father went after it.
I see it again, coming into view, still enveloped in the fog, waiting, like a figure encased within a portrait. Expectedly, like it knew I would reach it in time.
I stop. Distancing myself just far enough where I could still adjust if it decides to charge, but a part of me thinks it never would. I am prepared this time. With steady hands and a still breath, I aim the scope, and fire.
I see its shoulder fling back with a sudden jerk, and it drops something I didn’t see it holding. Maybe I was too far away, or I was rusty with the gun. Nevertheless, its still alive. And as I cock the lever and ready my last shot, I see in its eyes a warmth, a sense of achievement. It is, for the lack of a better term, proud. I feel a rage leaking through the crevices of my soul. Yet for whatever reason that compels me for revenge, I drop the barrel. As our gaze breaks, it wanders into the fog, disappearing once again towards the shore beyond.
After a short walk, I see a trout lying on the ice, right beside the tracks. Still limp when I pick it up, like it was freshly caught in a lazy stream on a chilly autumn’s afternoon. Reminds me of the days where I would go on fishing trips with my father, we’d catch a car-load full of trout, enough for a whole week’s worth of meals. The fishing restrictions were more lax back in the days.
The hoof print continues to the shore, and takes a sharp left hugging the edge of the lake.
The wind is picking up, there might be a storm tonight.
It is keeping me alive for some reason, as the tracks lead to another dry patch of land, underneath a small cliff of soil. As if it’s telling me to stay here for the night. And I oblige. I’m not wearing nearly enough to brave the wind head on.
With only rocks and dirt surrounding me, I have no choice but to go without a fire, and cooked meat tonight. After scaling the trout, I brace myself for the fishy stench that will surely fill my mouth, and bite down.
I find an unexpected blandness, along with a lack of bones. Taking a few more bites in confusion, I could find no trace of guts present in any part of the fish. Besides the fins and the head, there is nothing but tasteless meat.
I fall into unconsciousness as soon as I am consumed by the inky atmosphere.
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Only a sliver of light is shining through the gap between the snow and the ceiling of the soil, accompanied by the horrible whirring of a winter storm. A storm did, or rather, is still passing through.
I shovel away a dimple in the wall of ice, and crawl out with the grace of a bear out of hibernation. I don’t even know where the ground ends and where the sky starts anymore. This time, without a doubt, all I see is white.
But the tracks remain, clear as day, untouched by the storm. With how much snowfall last night, it isn’t possible, it makes no sense. But perhaps it never had to.
I can’t see what is ahead of me, my face feels like it would peel off if I look infront for more than five seconds, so I only looked at the ground, following each step itleft behind. I knew a trek through the storm would be hard, it may even cost me my life,but that’s the least of my worries now. It made me hunt, and I’ll see it to its end.
Before I know it, I stop. My body tells me this is the journey’s end, and I lift myface to find us both, standing in a field. Its back facing a slope, and on top, a guardrailwith a lamppost. This is it. The hill where it took my grandfather, and where it took myfather.
Within an arm’s reach, I now see its ragged ink green windproof coat, waterstained khaki pants, and a golden locket dangling from its fist.
I raise the rifle, the barrel almost touching the gap between the eyes. It looks at me still, with a melancholic joy I would one day understand. Its fist tighten around the chains of the locket.
And I pull the trigger.
It never wailed, much less flinched. All it did was drop.
The locket snap open when its body hit the snow. And I see a time where all was well, where all my troubles flew away with the cicadas on the windowsill; I see myself, laughing in my mother’s arm, and the happiest she’s ever been.
I drop to my knees as my vision turns an iridescent green, and I see the expanse of the everlasting meadows, more than anyone could ever know. My father, sinking, swallowed by the earth, the mound warps, and shapes, into an emerald heart. It beats. It beats a thousand life, and it will beat a thousand more. A small white flower, with purple bulbs, blooms at my feet.
I look up and I see my wife, frantic, on the phone. She must be worried sick.
I see my son, having cereal for breakfast, as he always have. He turns his head, our eyes lock.
As the sides of my brows split open, I see in his eyes a rage, and a sorrow that I’ll
never get to amend.
And I cry
***
I never knew where my dad came from, or where he went, but I’ve always known where to find him.
I’ll set off tomorrow, to make amends, and to find the bitter closure he deserves.
Maybe the snow is greener on the other side.