“Come over here boy.”
Jolted back to reality by my grandfather’s command I stiffly removed myself from the hospital chair I’d been sitting in for the better part of three days and replaced myself on the edge of the bed he would more than likely never leave again.
“I don’t know why I still call you ‘boy’” he said effortfully between labored breaths. Each one a borrowed moment, final grains of sand in an almost empty hourglass. “It’s hard to explain if you aint got kids of yer own. My eyes see a man, but my heart still sees a messy haired boy running around the woods with his brother . . . My heart gets the better of me sometimes, believe it or not.”
He began to laugh, but it was quickly cut off by deep coughs and gasps for air. His weak and skeletal-like arm reaching out for the plastic cup of water beside him as he did so. I grabbed the water and helped him drink it.
“I’ll call the nurse okay grandpa?”
“No, please.” He said through wheezes and groans. “If I got one dying wish it’s to never see that dumb fucking woman ever again.”
This time it was my turn to laugh. Even on his deathbed at ninety-eight years old, my grandfather had kept every bit of his rattlesnake temperament. He liked what he liked and hated what he didn’t, and hospitals were always at the top of his hated list.
“Where’s little Caleb at?” He asked once he’d recovered enough to talk again.
“He’s deployed, he’s in Jordan until September I think.”
“Ah . . That’s right. I don’t think I’ll last that long . . .You’ll have to do it alone.”
I couldn’t help but furrow my brow in response. The doctors said his medications would make him a little disoriented, but in the three days I’d been here he’d been for the most part a frailer version of his regular old self. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was dying I wouldn’t have known that he was dying.
“Do what now Grandpa?”
“You remember the necklace I gave your brother?”
Chills ran up my spine as the events leading up to the gifting of that necklace came back into my memory. Going into “The Devils Mouth” with Caleb, getting grabbed by whatever ungodly thing was in that hole, trying to run on a broken leg. I’d tried so many times to convince myself it was a bear, that between the dark and the adrenaline and fear I’d somehow created an image of something that wasn’t there, but every time I’d come close to putting it behind me I’d remember that damn necklace, and I’d remember that skull I’d tried to take before everything went to hell, and there was no explanation for it . . . Or perhaps there was. Deep down, I knew there was. The real question I always found myself dodging was if the light the explanation would reveal would be too much for me to accept.
“y-yeah.” I finally responded, trying in vain to conceal the feelings of fear and anxiety that had tethered themselves to the memory of it. “He still has it I think . . . We don’t talk about it much.”
“I know.” He responded. Something close to empathy behind the words. “It aint a pretty thing, but it’s the real thing . . . and it’s our real thing. I don’t have to tell you that what you saw in that cave weren’t no fuckin bear. Aint been a bear round those woods since the eighties.”
I nodded slowly in reluctant agreement. You don’t argue with grandpa, and it’d be pointless to anyways. It’s a fool who argues with a man you know is right.
Several more gasps and deep breaths interrupted my thoughts, this one more violent than the first. As I reached for the call light, I felt my grandfather’s strong grip on my wrist. It was incredible how much strength the man had even in such a state.
“In my box” more coughs and exasperated breaths “at home . . . You’ll find everything you need in there.”
“Let me call the nurse grandpa, I know you hate her, but there’s no way she’s worse than thi-“
“Listen!” he barked as loudly as a man in his state could muster. Drawing my complete attention to what he was saying once more. “It was supposed to be your daddy, but . . . but.”
Dad had been killed in Fallujah when Caleb and I were small, we didn’t remember him much, but Grandpa never truly got over it. Maybe because he never talked about it. I know he cried about it though, twice I’d caught him weeping in the forest by the little cross he’d built in their favorite spot, so caught up in his grief that he never knew I saw him.
“I know grandpa, it’s okay. I’ll find the box, and whatever needs done I’ll do it. I owe it to you.”
I held back tears as my grandfather reached his hand up and grasped the nape of my neck, firmly but with care as he’d done so many times throughout my life. His bright green eyes stared intently into mine as the next words came out in almost a whisper.
“I’m sorry I was hard on you two. . . My heart sees a messy haired boy, but when you were a messy haired boy my heart saw my messy haired boy, and it hurt something fierce to look at, but I tried my hardest . . . Harder than I’ve ever tried at anything else . . . and I’m proud.”
At this the tears I’d been holding back let go. This man who’d taught me everything I knew, who’d sacrificed so much, how a boy could grow up without a dad, and still have the best father a boy could ever ask for?
“I’m gonna miss you Granpda.” I blurted through the tears.
“Don’t . . . don’t cry for me boy” he said heavily, his eyes began to close as his voice trailed off, like someone who was simply falling asleep mid conversation. “Ninety-eight years . . . That’s a good . . .
That’s a good. . .”
With that my grandfather exhaled one more deep and efforted breath. After a few moments the heart monitor he’d been hooked up to went from slow and steady beeps to the silent tone of a flat line. I called for the nurse, but I knew that it was pointless. He was gone.
“The box” was pretty easy to find. Although admittedly it wasn’t so much a box as it was a makeshift trunk. It was heavy as I pulled it out of the closet that my grandfather had stowed it in, but as I sat on the edge of the bed in this now eerie empty house, I knew that the contents stowed inside were going to be even heavier. Perhaps heavier than I could carry.
Whatever needs done I’ll do it. I owe it to you. The memory of my deathbed oath reminded me hauntingly. With a deep breath I unlatched the box and lifted the lid.
I don’t really know what I expected, relics of a time long passed. More jewelry adorned with monstrous teeth. What lay before me, at least initially though was far more mundane. A light wooden panel with a leather-bound journal, and just beside it a letter assigned to me and my brother, as I lifted the letter and drew it close to read, I could tell it was my grandfather’s writing.
If you’re reading this, then it means I’m dead and gone. We’ve said our goodbyes, and you’ve cried your tears, but now there’s work to do.
I’ve told you a lot of stories about the Cherokee. Stories my grandpappie used to tell me when I was little. Stories his daddy told him. Stories the Cherokee told him. Our family weren’t like other folks in the early days. We loved the hills, we loved the ancient trees and streams, and we had respect for the people that were living here when we came around, and because we respected them, they respected us . . . It weren’t just us and Cherokee living in these hills though . . .
The journal beside you will explain it better than I ever could. So I’ll leave you two to read it, but as you do, you remember and you remember good that our people have been hill folk since America was called the new world, and hill folk don’t sit and write in little diaries unless we got a really good reason to. Read what you read as gospel, and don’t you dare refuse the torch bein’ handed to you. You two are Skarmar, men of the hills, and don’t you ever forget it.
-Grandpa
As I read and re-read the letter there were only more questions than answers. Deciding there was no point in procrastinating I flipped open the leather-bound journal and began to read. The first entries were signed “Owen J” my great great grandfather perhaps?
May: Cherokee found another camp today; Three Pines and his father came to me early in the morning to show me. They sleep during the day in their caves, or in the mounds of dirt they build when they don’t have caves. They told me not to bring my musket. Said it’d be pointless; I suppose they’re right. We hiked about an hour west and found them in a gorge. Three of them, two were nearly taller than our cabin some eight feet in height but the third must have been twelve and one half. Maybe bigger. We stayed low in the brush and watched them sleep for as long as it was safe and took our leave as quietly as possible. We made sure to be far away before speaking with one another.
Three Pines says these are runts. Weaker ones that got kicked out. If a weak one is as big as that how big are the strong ones? How is it even possible? He says if they find the Cherokee camp, or our cabin they’ll kill everyone and eat anything they can. War parties going to take them out tomorrow soon as the sun breaks. Three Pines asked if I’d come with my musket. No one fights quite like the Cherokee, but the Swamp Fox taught us a lot during the war. I’ll do my part.
May: They’re dead, but most of the war party was killed as well. They’re smarter than we thought. They were waiting for us. Pulling grown men and their horses off of the ground and tearing them to pieces like they were straw dolls. Crushing them into dust with a single stomp. How something so big can move so fast I will never know. Myself, and a few other Cherokee Marksmen managed to take down the big one. Took us damn near two shots each. It did a lot of damage before we finally took it down. I wish we’d have been quicker. War party had managed to pretty much kill one of the little ones when the other turned them into sacks of bone powder with a tree sapling. Four grown men crushed into oblivion like ants. I’ve seen a lot of death, but the sound a man’s bones make when they break like that . . . I’ll never forget it. Three Pines managed to take out the remaining one almost single handedly. I took a shot, but in my nervous haste I’d used too much powder, the recoil threw my shot off. The noise, however, was enough to distract him long enough for Three Pines to climb up his back and wound him badly with his tomahawk. The remaining Cherokee swarmed the injured beast as soon as they could and stabbed it until their spears broke.
The wounded one was trying to crawl away. One of the Cherokee approached it to finish him off, but he wasn’t careful enough. Caught the poor kids’ leg and damn near tore it off his waist. Three hammer fists into his chest as soon as he hit the ground before I could shoot it in the back of the head.
Some Thirty men, myself not included. Maybe six remained after the fight was said and done. One of the men was wounded badly. I don’t think there’s a medicine man alive that could save him. Three Pines took the heads from the gigantic corpses. Thanked me for helping, and we went our separate ways.
If those were the weak ones. . . I pray we never find the strong ones.
May: Howls from the mountains all night last night. Unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Some so tremendous that the earth would shake.
July: Three Pines met with me again today. He was somber. Said his father had been killed. Asked if I could buy a powder keg from the trading post and handed me furs to trade for it. Moving powder makes me nervous, but not half as nervous as the thought of those monsters, and the colonists won’t trade with Indians like the English and French would. I’ll make my way towards the trading post tomorrow. The weather holds I’ll be back in two days’ time.
August: We killed another one, even bigger than the last. They eat each other. The cave we found her in was riddled with bones bigger than I’d ever seen. Could the two smaller ones we killed in May have been cattle for the big one? Is this one a wendigo as well as a giant? We waited in complete silence until she’d finished her meal and was full, when the sun rose, she lazily went deeper into the cave and was asleep within minutes. Three pines pointed towards the cave and two men I’d recognized from the last fight snuck towards the mouth of it, each carrying a powder keg over their backs. Brave men. Slowly they crept back, and once they were back within the safety of the brush Three Pines looked up at my spot high in a torch pine tree and curled his finger in and out several times. I understood his intentions. Carefully I took aim at the powder kegs and fired. The blast knocked me out of the tree.
Three Pines carried me back to their camp. Said we’d collapsed the whole mouth of the cave. Couldn’t take her head if we wanted to. I didn’t want to, but when Three Pines handed me a necklace full of teeth, some sharp like an animal’s and others flat. It felt good to receive it. Nothing that horrible should be allowed to walk this earth, and I’ll be a dead man before I let them eat my family, be that my family at home, or my brothers beside me. Three Pines seemed to read my expression; he had a habit of such things. I knew then we had a mutual understanding. We would hunt them all. We would slaughter them without mercy. Down to the last. If we could not slay them, then we would die facing them.
As I continued to read through the journal, I shook my head in disbelief at the words before me. Giants in the Appalachian foothills? Who could possibly believe such a thing? However, as I attempted in vain to laugh away at what in another life, I may have found absurd. The events that had happened to my brother and I in “The Devils Mouth” crept into the vulnerable places of my mind. The bones that littered the floor, the strange skull, the roars that shook the earth. . . It was no coincidence. Logic was trying to win, but something deeper in me knew the logic was wrong.
As I continued to read through the journal entries everything began to fall terrifyingly into place, generation after generation of hunting these things down wherever they turned up. Even after the Cherokee were all but gone, even after several horrible deaths of close family members, our ancestors continued to pursue the giants relentlessly. Glued to what I was reading well into the small hours of the night I read through account after account after account.
As flipped pages grew thicker on the left side of the binding, and sparser on the right I once again saw my grandfather’s distinct and familiar penmanship, all to recognizable against the added pages.
December 26th, 1968: Finally got him. Fucker hid in that cave for weeks smelling a trap, but giants got to eat just like anything else. Looks like I guessed his height good too. That grenade bouquet must’ve gone off right at face level. About 25 feet, give or take. It’s only the big ones left now. Them “Little” ones got killed off probably in the thirties. Hard to tell how many got buried accidently by the railroad company and the coal miners blasting dynamite all over the place. I know for a fact a few got killed and sent to the Smithsonian where their bones are probably locked in a warehouse somewhere. Learned men can’t have people thinking giants are real though, could they? It’d get in the way of science. I’ll keep looking, but who knows? Maybe that was the last one. What was left of him was skin and bones. They can’t go out and hunt like they used to. Merry Christmas
October 8th, 1978: Found two, they’ve been moving around. Can probably do a lot of relocating underground, but they had to go outside to get into “The Devils Mouth.” I’d recognize those crazy four toed footprints anywhere. I’ll set up a blind today and see what I can do.
October 9th, 1978: Bullseye, nailed one of them square between the eyes with the M40 as soon as he tried to leave the cave. Dropped him like a bag of bricks. The other one dragged his corpse inside. There was a lot of that “Wail roaring” they make when their mates are killed. Stupid bitch. Don’t be sad just come out and join him.
December 1st: 1978 Still no movement. No tracks out. No surprise though. She’s probably living off the body of the other one. She’ll have a lot to eat.
July 25th, 1981: Cannot believe how long she’s been hiding in there. I don’t want to risk it, but it looks like I’ll have to go in. not far, just deep enough to collapse the entrance. If there was no other way in, then I doubt there’s a way out.
August 8th: 1981 She fucked me up good and proper. Piece of shit. Two broken legs and my back is shot. Told the doctors it was a bear. City folk have no idea what bear attacks look like. You could come in with an arrow in your head and tell them a bear did it. There’s a hole within the cave. No clue how deep it goes, but it’s enough for her to peak out and take wild swipes, grab at whatever walks in. That’s how she hunts now. Like some kind of ginormous trapdoor spider. Animals walk in and never leave. It’s a pathetic existence, but it works, I guess. Going have figure something else out once I’m healed up. I don’t want to drag the boy into it yet. He’s got a bit of life to experience before I turn it upside down on him. If this really is the last one, then maybe he’ll never even have to know. Best to just take care of it myself. She aint going nowhere.
As I flipped through the remaining pages it didn’t take long to realize that August 8th was the last journal entry. Sitting back against the rocking chair I had been reading in, hardly noticing the aches of my now stiff joints and lower back. It was too much to process. If it was just one relative who had written this journal then I could’ve easily dismissed it as tall tales from a time long gone. If I hadn’t seen it myself I could say that once upon a time these things were real, but greater men than me had taken care of the issue, but neither option was the reality, and because of that I had only the actual reality of it all to dwell on. It was a weight that seemed to grow heavier and heavier with each passing breath.
“Fuck it, I can just go.” I said out loud to the empty bedroom. It wasn’t the worst idea. Someone else would come along. The government would buy the land, some wannabe homesteader would never dare venture out that far into the woods. Maybe that . . .whatever it was that was hiding in the depths of “The Devils Mouth” would really just starve and die on its own, but still the haunting words of my oath to my dying grandfather interrupted every fearful conclusion I tried to conjure in the silence of this empty house.
Whatever needs done. I’ll do it. I owe it to you.
“Well, that settles it then.” I told myself finally resigning to the horrible task before me as I placed the journal back into the crate. As I placed it down, I noticed the hollow thumping sound the leather-bound book made against the wood panel inside the box.
Feeling along the sides of the panel I found a spot to lift up the fake bottom. As I lifted the panel out of the crate and looked back down into the bottom of It I felt another sinking feeling in my stomach. The journal had made my experience in “The Devils mouth” real, but the contents I looked at now made the understanding that I was going to have to go back there even more so. I’d never been in any kind of real combat situation, but I’d seen enough movies and History channel documentaries to know what a grenade looked like . . And this box was almost full of them.