The Quiet Between Shots

It was late October, 1987, and my friends and I had claimed a stretch of the old logging road that snaked through the Monongahela National Forest. The rusted sign at the trailhead read ‘Sable Hollow,’ and the trees pressed in like they were waiting for something. We’d driven up from Charlottesville in my beat-up Ford, and by the time we’d hauled our gear to the ridge, the afternoon sun had already turned the valley into a pool of amber light. We set up camp on a flat shelf of rock that overlooked a creek, its water black as oil. Marcus had brought his grandfather’s lever-action .30-30, and I had a 12-gauge. We’d been shooting at tin cans balanced on a fallen log, the cracks echoing up the hollow like applause.

We were maybe twenty minutes into that, laughing and reloading, when a truck painted in Forest Service green rattled down the logging road and pulled up at the edge of our site. A man in a flat cap and a flannel coat stepped out, no badge, but he had a clipboard and a hard look. ‘You boys know this is a designated silence zone?’ he said. We stared at him. ‘There’ve been complaints from the outfitters downriver. Storm’s coming in tonight, and they don’t need your noise scaring off the game.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’ll take your firearms and your knives. You can stay, but you’ll be quiet about it.’

We looked at each other, but there was something in his voice that made the hair on my arms stand up. Marcus handed over the rifle, and I gave him the shotgun. We’d each carried a hunting knife, except for me, I’d clipped a small hatchet to my belt, and he didn’t ask for that. He also didn’t notice the slingshot I had stuffed in my pack, or the handful of smooth stones I’d been collecting. He put our weapons in a canvas bag, nodded once, and drove off without another word. The engine faded, and the hollow fell into a hush that felt unnatural, like the world had stopped breathing.

We decided to make campfire coffee and wait for the storm he’d mentioned. But as the light drained, the temperature dropped faster than it should have, and the wind began to move through the pines with a sound like distant whispering. We sat closer to the flames, but the fire seemed to shrink, its heat barely reaching our hands. Marcus said he thought he saw a figure standing at the edge of the trees, just a darker spot against the darkness, but when we looked, there was nothing. My cousin Pilar, who had the sharpest eyes, kept turning her head as if someone was tapping her shoulder, but no one was there.

We tried to talk, but every word felt swallowed by the forest. The creek, which had been a steady murmur, went silent. And then I noticed something odd: the ground around our fire pit had started to look wrong. The soil, which had been packed earth, was now shifting, as if something beneath it was moving. I reached down to poke at it with a stick, and the stick sank in like moisture, and when I pulled it back, the end was wet and black, and it smelled like old iron.

The storm never came, but the air grew thick, and the stars vanished behind a ceiling of clouds that seemed to lower until they were just above the treetops. That’s when we heard it, not a sound, but a pressure in our ears, like a held breath. And then a voice, clear as if it stood beside us, but it came from the creek. It said, ‘You gave them your voices.’

We all jumped to our feet. The voice was not loud, but it was intimate, as if it knew us. Pilar whispered, ‘Who’s there?’ The creek rippled, though there was no wind. And then the trees at the far edge of the hollow began to lean inward, creaking, and we saw that they were not trees, but shapes that had been still, and now they were moving. They stepped into the ring of firelight, and they were not human, they were made of bark and moss and something that glistened like wet bone. They had no faces, just smooth expanses where eyes might be, but they turned their heads as if watching us.

Marcus grabbed a burning brand from the fire and swung it, but the flame sputtered and died before it touched them. The creatures stopped moving, and the voice from the creek came again, ‘You are not silent. You will never be silent again.’ And then they began to speak, all at once, in a chorus of whispers that filled our minds with images of us as children, crying, laughing, screaming, and every sound we had ever made was being taken, being drained into the ground. I felt Pilar’s hand on my arm, but when I turned, her face was blank, and her mouth was moving without sound. I looked down and saw that my own knife, the hatchet I’d forgotten, was gone, and in its place was a small white stone, smooth and warm.

The last thing I remember of that night was running. We ran through the forest, branches scraping our faces, and the sounds of our footsteps were muffled, as if the earth itself was absorbing us. We burst out onto the logging road, and there was the truck, empty, the engine still running. We climbed in, and I drove until we hit pavement, and we didn’t stop until we saw the lights of a gas station. We stumbled in, covered in mud and scratches, and the clerk looked at us like we were ghosts. We tried to speak, but only Pilar could manage a whisper, and even that was fading. She croaked, ‘We left something up there.’

It’s been three years. We don’t talk about it. We don’t camp. Marcus won’t even touch a gun. But last night, I was in my basement, and I found that white stone in my coat pocket. It was warm. And when I held it, I heard a distant sound, like a shot, but it was wrong, it was the sound of my own voice saying my own name, coming from deep underground. And then the stone went cold, and I knew, with a certainty that froze my blood, that they are still there, and they are waiting for us to come back, so they can finish taking what we owe them.

I’m writing this because I need someone to know. If you hear a voice that sounds like your own, calling from the woods, don’t answer it. And whatever you do, don’t bring a gun, because they will take the noise, and they will leave you with nothing but a stone that remembers the sound of your heart.