WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID
The little, gimcrack cabin, owned by the Alcotts, was completely snowed in, usual to the region of which it had been built and of that time of the year, with the hills and thick forests covered in the heavy white blanket. The dim light of June Alcott’s fireplace had snuffed out in the wee hours of night—the freezing cold biting at her enough to force her from her sleep. She clutched the blanket she had pulled from the bed tightly around herself as her eyes scanned the dead land outside the window. If she had not known any better and had let her mind wander into fantasy, someone could have spun a yarn about that mountain being from hell itself and she would have believed them. The eerie silence of the mountain at night was more discomforting than anything existing in hell that the Bible might have portrayed. The full moon over the land cascaded the snow in a soft, blue glow against the black backdrop of night. It was like time stood still—the sky not even allowing drops of snow to force the world into turning. It was all silent. It was all unmoving. It was like the universe had died and left her ticking along by accident.
Her husband, Ephraim, had built the cabin many months ago. In his early imaginings, the cabin was to be as large as stately southern homes of years past, existing in the mountains among hunting shacks and empty wilderness like a beacon of pioneering success, but his talents had fallen short of his wild dreams. If anything, their home closely resembled a large hunting shack. But Ephraim and June had found that patch of land and humble cabin quite perfect, so they both threw out all notions of what they had wanted and replaced it with what they had been blessed with and all the fantasies of the bright future they would have on that mountain.
The summer had not been as easy as they had imagined. June had struggled greatly with growing a garden, and Ephraim had found it difficult to keep fresh meat on the table. They both began to realize that summer how ill-prepared they were for their dream, but June had adamantly disagreed with Ephraim’s propositions that she return to her family’s home in Louisiana until next summer and then rejoin him at the cabin when things were not so bleak. June had made it clear to him that they were to be together through all of it, and if they had to eat leaves off of trees, they would do so and be happy because they would at least be together, and June had stout faith in their capabilities together in that wilderness. The summer and fall had been hard, but they had had each other in those months and felt happy at the prospect of the winter to come. June had been able to can at least a few jars of cabbage and carrots—only enough to last for a few weeks—but Ephraim had promised that he would be able to hunt well enough by the time winter came to keep them stocked up on meats to see them through. But when winter hit hard, so did nature’s cruelty on the two of them as if trying to push out the new interlopers on the mountain. Animals were scarce, rationing of what little vegetables June had been able to can became nothing more than a couple of spoonfulls on a plate, and not even a rat that had found its way inside could be caught and roasted. Ephraim had gathered up his gear one day when only one jar of cabbage remained, and he swore that he would return with plenty of meat from an animal for them both. June had vehemently tried to stop him from venturing out far away from the cabin when the winter had become so harsh and unforgiving, knowing fully that if Ephraim hadn’t had the ability to hunt in the summertime, he surely would not be able to amongst the freezing cold, but Ephraim had ignored her pleas and left the cabin to go out on his own.
And then, June was alone, and weeks passed without his return.
June watched the empty land for as long as her eyes would stay focused before turning away and crouching in front of the dying fire in the hearth. With some care and patience, she revived it and sat on the hard, wooden planks of the cabin floor with the blanket still wrapped around her tight as it could be. She felt her skin rejoice and her bones melt a little with the warmth of the fire filling that little space. It wasn’t warm enough to keep her content, but it was enough to keep her feeling alive and not so alone.
June tried to keep her troubled mind satisfied for those long weeks with the idea that Ephraim had simply lingered too long wherever he was on the mountain and had gotten himself lost but would find his way back eventually, though it never failed for her brain to conjure up images of a bear who had gotten a little too angry with his presence, a mountain lion who had lunged for him when his back was turned, or an inadequacy of clothes and blankets that had allowed frigid temperatures to take him into a forever sleep far away from her. And then rationality would trickle into her brain and remind her that Ephraim had been gone for weeks and being lost for weeks did not offer a promise of return. A few weeks into his disappearance, and once she had made peace with her loss, June had went out back behind the cabin to bury him symbolically, putting up a large rock she had found like a headstone and praying over the patch of land for his soul to rest. She had felt a bit better with the finality of his existence in her mind, but each time she went out to pray over the empty ground and nameless rock, she felt the same old tug of sorrow when her mind flickered back to false realities where the grave might not be needed—that her Ephraim’s return would erase its need.
Ephraim was a tough man, at least as tough a man as she could imagine one to be despite their shared lack of mountain finesse, but she knew that no man was tough enough to withstand weeks in the cold winters alone with only a gun on his back. The two of them had not one ounce of hard mountain survival in their bones that so many of the people in the nearest town, Black Hills, had. They had been outsiders coming to Glastenbury Mountain to claim as their home, penetrating the quiet, clan-like lives of folks that had been raised from the very dirt and roots of Colorado. June had expressed her unnerved feelings surrounding the people they had had the displeasure of meeting to Ephraim, who reciprocated her feelings, but nonetheless always attempted to comfort her worries with an explanation of them all just being solitary, mountain folk, which kept June appeased for the most part when she was in the company of her husband. But it was times like these, when she was utterly alone, that she had the slight bit of worry that one of them might come to take advantage of her or be too unkindly to her presence on the mountain and cause harm.
“Please, come home, Eph,” June whispered to herself as her eyes stayed focused on the flames in the fireplace. Her stomach growled angrily at her, but she knew she could not answer it. The hunger pains had become violent at times after weeks of only subsisting on what little was left in that one jar—vinegar marinade sticking to the bottom of what was once a bit of cabbage.
At times, June let her mind float into images of what death might be like. She thought on both starvation and freezing, and she came to conclusion that freezing would probably be preferable. And at other times, she would pray that it all might be over soon so she could leave that evil wasteland that she was a prisoner to. She would never take matters into her own hands to answer those prayers, no matter how much they clawed at her at night, but she was in no rush to pray for continued blessings of life if God deemed it fit to make arrangements for her in heaven.
June stood up and looked at a picture on the shelf above the hearth. It was an old photograph of Ephraim that he had had taken years prior to them uprooting from the South and claiming land out west. June held that picture in her hands, studying that large scar on his forehead that he had had since his childhood and the smile on his solid face and hearing his voice calling her “my beautiful summertime” instead of “June” like he always did. She thought on how he was always sliding over his last biscuit to her at the dinner table because he knew that she wanted it but would not tell him so, and then she thought on those nights that he would read certain poems out of her collection of books to her before bed not because he liked poetry but because he knew that she loved it and he wanted to share in her joy. June wanted to see his smile again. She wanted to hear his deep voice calling to her from outside after a day of chopping wood and tending to things, asking her when dinner would be ready. But more than anything, she wanted to imagine him in the ways that she had always known him, as this picture portrayed—not in the ways that her nightmares painted him now. June took the photograph out of the frame and tucked it down into her shirt pocket right by her heart to keep him there as she plucked one of the books of poetry from the shelf and nestled down onto the floor again to read some of the poems he had recited.
Every day, hours passed like that—her reading and stoking a sad fire as the icy wind whipped against the wooden frames of the cabin. It was night that she always dreaded as any sensible person would. The poetry that painted pictures of sunshine and life that she tried to force into her mind would come leaking out under the harsh squeezes of scary stories Ephraim used to tell her sometimes when they sat around the fireplace. One time, he told her a story about Glastenbury Mountain that he had heard from some of the people in Black Hills who had been passing on the tale for generations. They had talked of strange sightings on Glastenbury Mountain, missing people from Black Hills who had last been seen heading to the mountain, and strange cults formed from the Indian tribes in the area that danced around at night. The story used to make June laugh at its absurdity, but now, in the dead of night, living on that very mountain alone, the stories called to her like evil omens awaiting outside the door and windows. She even found herself, at times, using the story as a means of an answer to his disappearance. But such nonsense had no place in the reality of it all—Ephraim had simply frozen to death or had been killed by a very real animal.
As June sat by the fireplace reading, she heard what sounded like movement outside the cabin. Her skin went cold and her body froze as she eyed the window and door. She shut the book of poetry and stood up quickly from the floor, looking back and forth at the door and the shotgun above it, wondering if she had courage to race over to the door to grab the gun. During her contemplating, a knock rapped at the door, not threatening in its force, almost like a question. June’s feet felt like they were melting beneath her and she tried to muster what little was left of her bravery to answer it.
“Who is it? What do you want? I–I have a gun aimed at the door right now!” She yelled, noting the shaky fear in her every word.
“Darlin’?” a man’s voice came from the other side. June nearly fainted when she heard it. Ephraim.
For a moment, she was so overcome with emotion that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t rationalize hearing the voice as truth.
“Darlin’, I’ve returned!”
June felt herself propelled to the door and opened it. She stood in the doorway and looked into the eyes of her husband. He was wearing a hint of a smile and then reached out to grab her hand in his.
“Ephraim? How? How are you–?”
“May I come in, Darlin’?”
June nodded, a bit lost in thought and separate from the situation, like she had floated up into the sky and was looking down on what was happening. It was impossible. June looked him up and down, waiting to see blood, or scratches, or dirt, or anything that gave credence to his long weeks alone out in the wilderness, but he looked perfectly intact, as if he had never left. June shut the door behind her as she followed Ephraim back into the cabin. The man walked around the room and shed his coats and gear as he did so, keeping his eyes on every little thing in the cabin as if studying it to pieces. He kept walking around as if she wasn’t really there, but then he turned to her and just stood there in front of her wearing a smile. The man she had mourned, the one she had given a final narrative to of having rotted under some tree far from their home or torn to pieces by some hungry animal, stood before her as if he had simply retired for a nap and awoken a few hours later. He looked warm and had a glow in his features, well-rested, and he smiled at her in a way she had not seen since they had been young lovers in a long-ago past time before their hard lives had taken such simplistic joy.
“Ephraim?” June barely even recognized her own voice, hearing the weeks of hunger and exhaustion that had taken over it.
“Darlin’?” He smiled as he walked about the room and touched everything. His fingers dusted over pictures on the shelf, the backs of the chairs, and on one of his shotguns above the door.
Darlin’. Darlin’. Darlin’.
June repeated her husband’s blasé word over and over in her head as she stared at him, dumbfounded. Ephraim started to look around the room again without laying his eyes on her—like he was bored with her presence or had forgotten the life they had lived and needed to be reminded, yet apparently needn’t be reminded of her at all. Overcome with grief and sadness for weeks had molded her into a husk of a being and she was no longer June, so perhaps Ephraim didn’t see June either. Her terrible sorrow had been wiped away with joy at the sight of him, but now June felt an uncontrollable rage bubble up inside herself, and in an instant, without thinking, she lurched forward for the poetry book she had been reading and chucked it at his head. It hit him square in the jaw, but June noticed that Ephraim didn’t even flinch when it struck him. He simply eyed the book on the floor before stooping down to pick it up and study it in his hands. June was still seething—her eyes harsh and awaiting something, anything, from him besides “Darlin’”. Ephraim placed the book on the kitchen table and finally lifted his eyes to his wife.
“I know I’ve been gone too long. It took me a little bit to get back–”
“You been gone weeks, Eph!” June nearly spit out, “What happened to you, huh? I’ve been starving. I’ve been freezing to death! I conjure up dreams where you scream out to me in fear and pain. I hear your voice calling to me from underneath the cold ground out in the middle of nowhere on this damned mountain! I satisfy my mind by saying you are with God. I bury you in my mind by giving you a stone out back with no body underneath it. And when I say your name, finally get to say your name to your face again, all you can say to me, standing there like a ghost, is ‘Darlin’”? Not even June? Not even the name of the woman you love? Did you leave me on purpose, then, Eph? Did you leave me with the intent of never returning?” She walked over and started pushing at his chest to feel the sturdiness of it and grabbed his chin forcefully to examine him, “You a ghost, that it? You don’t feel like a ghost, Eph.”
Ephraim didn’t blink as he watched her. His lips formed a straight line on his face. He shook his head.
“June,” he said almost as if to himself more than her, like he had never held her name on his tongue before. She wanted to throw more than a book at him then. “June, I was coming back to you. You think I would leave you on purpose? How could you think that? I was lost. With that storm that came through, I couldn’t find my way back to you.”
“You look like you barely stepped outside this door for more than ten minutes, Eph.”
“You think I’m lying? About how I survived? Are you not happy to see me again? I am so happy to see you again, Darlin’,” Ephraim finally grabbed hold of her and tightly pulled her to him, burying his face in her neck. “I thought I had lost you forever.”
June was stiff in his arms, holding her own arms back away from his body. His words felt empty and almost practiced. They felt odd and she hated them. His body was freezing, so much so that she barely felt any warmth in him at all. He squeezed her tighter and she felt tears form in her eyes. This was the man she had waited for, and now he was here, her prayers answered, and she had thrown a book at him and become filled with anger. Had she been so angry at the world, so angry at God, that she had turned it all onto the very man that she had prayed to see again? She felt numb to it all—to a moment that she had imagined over and over again in her mind over the weeks and the hope that had kept herself strong through it all. Her anger began to ebb and revert onto herself at her own reactions. She was no longer June. June had died when Ephraim had died in her mind. She didn’t know who she was now, but she slowly wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back. Ephraim kissed her on the cheek and breathed out a sigh of relief.
“I’m so sorry, June.”
“You’re here now, Eph. That’s all that matters.”
Days had passed since Ephraim’s odd return. He had left the house only once to scour a small area around the cabin for food, since June refused to allow him further than a few feet away from the front door. All that had been collected was some kind of animal that Ephraim had already cut up and wrapped when he returned. They hardly spoke to one another, which June was not used to. She couldn’t remember a day before Ephraim had went missing that he hadn’t wanted to talk with her from dawn until dusk. She told herself that it was simply the peculiar situation that they both had been thrust into that had stolen their words. She had asked him in depth about what exactly had happened to him out there for those weeks, but Ephraim would steer the questions back to her and ask how she had managed alone and would repeat how happy he was to be with her again. After her fifth attempt, June stopped asking, figuring Ephraim would eventually share those weeks with her when he was ready. She thought on how debilitating her own survival had been and could not begin to fathom how much more horrifying it had to have been for Ephraim out in the wilderness without the comfort of anyone or anything besides snow and ice.
On the second night of his return, June woke up in the middle of the long hours with a jolt and she quickly searched the bed for Ephraim for some semblance of comfort to the odd feeling of loneliness and disconcerting manner that the entire house had taken on. The bed felt full with Ephraim’s presence, and she peeled back the covers to see her husband sleeping soundly beside her. She was grateful for being awake without such images of her husband’s death that had previously haunted her nightmares. June stood up from the bed and walked over to the lazy fire burning in the fireplace and pulled over a chair to sit against its warmth. It had become such a natural occurrence to not sleep and only find the ability to pass through the night by starting into the flames—an act that not even Ephraim could erase.
The fire fell short of its promise of warmth. The entire house had taken on an even more icy and frozen feeling to it that June found herself being unnerved by. Ephraim’s presence always brought comfort into the four walls of the cabin, even with him gone for those long weeks it had still held a bit of his existence to keep her going, as if his spirit was floating in the midst to reassure her, but now, it was as if everything had been sucked out of the cabin. She felt tired. She felt the overwhelming need to constantly look over her shoulder like a mountain lion was lurking by their bed, ready to pounce on her. The longer she sat in front of that fire, the more she wanted to run from the cabin entirely. June shivered and shot her eyes back at the bed and watched Ephraim sleeping. But she felt no comfort at seeing him. June stood from the chair and walked lightly over to the door.
She put her boots on and wrapped a blanket tightly around herself as she unlatched the door and went outside. The door closed with a thud behind her, and she hoped that she had not jostled Ephraim from his sleep. Her eyes studied the vast, snowy landscape. No snow fell. The forest was dead. But in its silence, June immediately felt herself flood with something different once she was outside of the cabin. Her body felt alive and her soul did not feel buried hundreds of feet below the surface. And she felt like she could breathe again. It was like Ephraim’s mere presence was suffocating now even though she had been without him for weeks and longed for the stuffiness in his existence. But this existence was unfamiliar and quite sharp in how it felt. Had she grown apart from him so much so that he only existed as a ghost or a corpse in her mind, and now she could no longer feel him as if he was truly alive and human? The fear of him actually being a ghost and her finally having lost her mind pierced her soul. Was he a detailed recollection in her brain now formed from her insanity out on that mountain? But she had touched him. He had kissed her. He had to be real, she knew that much. But even if she had lost her mind, she would rather live out her days with a ghost than the truth of loneliness and a promised, frozen death. Perhaps she, too, had become a ghost. Perhaps they had passed on to their next life. But if that was true, she would hate God for forcing on them a never-ending life of ice and emptiness. And then she pondered on her soul’s judgment and that their cabin on the mountain might actually be hell for the two of them as punishment for their sins.
June shivered hard and decided to trudge back into the lifeless cabin, but then a black figure in the distance by the lake caught her eyes. It was an odd form that shifted back and forth, and then June saw three more appear behind the trees and then three more after that. She cocked her head to her side with wide eyes as she watched the figures dance around together, and she listened to an odd chanting in some language she could not pinpoint. Perhaps it was a language no one knew. The figures’ heads were mounted with what looked like horns from a variety of different animals and their bodies were covered in fur as the moon shown down on the scene. June felt frozen as she watched, not from the chill of the night but from the fear of what she was witnessing. June backed up as she kept her eyes on the figures dancing and her boot caught the side of a bucket next to the door, sending a sharp rattle around the area. In an instant, the figures stopped mid-dance and turned their heads instantly over to June. She could not see their eyes, but she felt them on her. June sucked in a sharp breath and then mustered enough courage to open the cabin door back up and run inside. She quickly struggled with the latch to lock the door, and Ephraim sat up in the bed instantly. His eyes were awake and strong like he had not been sleeping at all, and he walked over to June who was harshly breathing in and out. June looked over to Ephraim and jumped in place as she saw him standing right next to her.
“Eph, there are people out there! By the lake! I don’t know who or what, but they saw me, and I’m scared, Eph. It’s like that story you used to tell me. The story about the cults on the mountain.”
Ephraim eyed her and then grabbed her shoulders. June shifted uncomfortably as he held her in place, just looking at her. “It’s just the mountain folk up here, June. Or Indians.”
“Well, which is it? Because no one lives out here, Eph. You know that. Indians won’t come near this place,” June remarked, and then she shifted her eyes quickly to the door, “And now, I understand why.”
“Then it’s mountain folk,” Ephraim explained, looking completely indifferent to the situation.
June focused her eyes on her husband and huffed. “They are something wrong, Ephraim, and they are far too close for my liking. I’m frightened.”
Ephraim remained silent.
“You said no one lives out here,” Ephraim said, very matter-of-factly, “That’s right. There are not many people to come across.”
June shook her head, a bit astonished with him and confused. She pulled out of his hold on her and kept her eyes on him. “What is the matter with you? You been strange since you came back. You feel different.”
Ephraim grabbed the shotgun above the door and held it in his hands, checking the bullets and pulling back the lever. June’s body went stiff and she felt fear creep up inside her. Ephraim always used guns, and never before would a fear like that have penetrated her soul at the sight of him holding one, but now, she felt the overwhelming feeling of danger and a building need to run.
“What are you doing, Eph?” June nearly whispered.
“I”ll go out there and see what is going on,” Ephraim answered, but he didn’t move. He didn’t open the door to leave. He simply stood still, staring at June with sharp eyes and a set jaw.
“Eph?”
“Stay here,” he said, but still, he didn’t move.
June heard the chanting from the odd strangers outside by the lake in the distance getting louder, like they were making their way over to them.
“Eph!” June screamed. Ephraim kept his eyes glued to her. In the light of the dimming fire in the room and with the shade of the darkness in the cabin, June could have sworn that she saw his face contort into something unfamiliar and strange—that his eyes had started to melt in his head and his mouth had started to melt down into a deep grimace like his skin was beginning to slough off—but his appearance quickly shifted back to Ephraim’s usual self again. Ephraim smiled wide then, showing all of his teeth and grinning so hard that his eyes were squinted.
“It’s okay, darlin’,” Ephraim said and then resumed his unnerving smile again.
No, that’s not my husband, June thought, That’s not Ephraim. That’s not my Ephraim.
Ephraim seemed to catch onto June’s sudden shift of fear, and he erased his horrible smile from his face. “Darlin’, calm down, what is it?” Ephraim asked calmly, walking closer to her to close the distance between them.
June threw one of the kitchen chairs down between her and Ephraim as she started walking backwards away from him.
“You ain’t right. You ain’t right!”
Ephraim forcefully kicked the chair out of the way. “Now, Darlin’–”
“Get away from me, now, I mean it! Get out of here!”
“Why would you want me to leave, Darlin’?” Ephraim asked with little emotion. June picked up a pot from the table and aimed it at him. Ephraim ducked as June launched the pot at his head. “Darlin’, calm down, please.”
“Stop calling me Darlin’! Stop it! Stop! Get out of my house! I don’t know what you are, but you better get the hell out of here now!” June screamed, still backing up and circling herself around the room, making her way back over to the front door. “You are wrong. You are not right. You ain’t my husband. I know you ain’t my husband!”
As soon as she uttered those last words, Ephraim’s face went straight. “Darlin’, come here.”
“What did you do to him?”
“Come here, please.”
June leaned against the front door and unlatched it. She peeled out of the cabin and ran around the side, fighting against the heavy snow-covered ground as her boots cut through it. She tried to not think about the sharp cold air that cut her skin to the bone and stole her breath. The light from the fireplace cascaded outside from the door left open, but then Ephraim’s shadow came into view against the light shining on the snow-covered ground. She could tell from his shadow that he was still holding the shotgun. June try to stifle her heavy breathing as she kept walking around to the back of the cabin, hoping to figure out her plan of action as she went along. She wouldn’t be able to run out into the woods without dying but she couldn’t be in that cabin any longer with something she was sure was going to kill her. June shot her eyes around the area, and then her eyes landed on the makeshift, empty grave she had dug for her husband’s ghost. Ephraim was not buried beneath nor more than he existed inside the body of the man she loved that had found its way home. She shook herself back into reality as her eyes caught sight of the woodcutting axe propped against the side of the cabin. June fought away thoughts of apprehension at the sight of it and with the images and possibilities of what to do swirling around in her mind. She heard Ephraim again and the chanting from the lake grow in volume with its frantic noise. June picked up the axe and studied it, touching the blade and then swinging it in her hands to feel out its weight. And then she breathed out and settled herself.
“Where are you?” Ephraim asked and he almost sounded a bit afraid, but June pushed away her hesitation and gripped the handle of the axe tightly.
June kept her eyes on the snow and waited to see Ephraim’s shadow dance against it under the light of the moon. June could hear the crunch of his heavy boots coming closer, making his way to the back of the cabin towards her. The silence of the dead mountain was as icy and palpable as the air spinning around them. There was only the occasional whisper of “where are you?” from Ephraim’s lips. But then she saw his shadow come into view. She felt her heart sting and her fear mount to an overwhelming level that nearly brought her to her knees. June raised the axe above her head as much as her strength would allow—her mind numb but focused on the blade ‘s angle.
Ephraim came around the side of the cabin and met her eyes. “There you are, Darlin’.”
June buried the axe in Ephraim’s skull. The man fell to his knees and opened his mouth as if to yell, but nothing escaped. June screamed and pulled at the axe handle, trying to retrieve it and bury the blade in Ephraim again, but she wasn’t strong enough to pull it free. She quickly grabbed the large stone that stood in as Ephraim’s headstone and bashed him in the head repeatedly—her arms nearly giving out at the excursion and quickly becoming red—until she could no longer make out his face and the axe finally fell out of the cracked skull. She leaned back on her knees and lifted her bloodied hands to her face and screamed again with such force that she nearly vomited.
And the woods were silent again.
Ephraim laid faceless in the snow—the crisp white on the winter ground now soaking up his essence and turning the color that sugar did when sprinkled on mashed strawberries. June stared at him, emotionless and her eyes harsh. The chanting at the lake had abruptly stopped. June brushed her hair back from her face as it fell in front her eyes, staining her blonde hair with blood before wiping her face with the back of her arm to try to remove the blood from her face. All she could smell was blood, but all she could feel was a heavy weight lifted from her soul. June started laughing, feeling it build up into a frenzy inside her, and in its utterance, she could not hear herself in its midst. June laughed and laughed until the laughing twisted into screams. But then June forced her screams to stop and quickly fell back into a silence. She stood from the ground and began pulling at Ephraim’s body to move him around the back of the cabin, but it was too much weight for her to bear. She decided to leave him where he lied, and then she piled snow on top of him until the blood was packed down and hidden and Ephraim existed as only a large hill of snow. June picked up a few twigs and placed them around the pile like spikes as a warning not to enter his area. She glanced over at the first grave she had made for her husband that was a few inches away from the one that now held his body. Two graves. Perhaps someone would make it three one day when they stumbled upon her body, frozen, starved, and decayed.
As June walked back inside the cabin, she breathed in deeply and shut the door behind her. The house felt warm again. The house finally felt livable. And June scrubbed herself of her husband’s blood before falling back into their bed to sleep.
Within the next hour, June was jostled from her sleep and sat up in bed as she looked around at the empty cabin. Though she had cleaned herself of what she had done, all she could smell was blood. All she could hear was Ephraim saying her name as he always had before. June replayed his voice in her head and then replayed the voice of the man she had just killed. They sounded the same. Of course, they would have sounded the same. But, she wondered, what was it that she had killed? What in her mind had thought it rational that her husband was not her husband? Nonsense had. That was what all of the stories of the mountains and its people were. Nonsense. But nonsense was not real. Everything that seems unbelievable can be explained. All except what she had done. June looked down at her arms and saw them covered in blood even though they had been cleaned. June screamed as she jumped up from the bed and studied her arms. She ran over and grabbed a towel and scrubbed them frantically. Then, she looked down and it was gone as if none of it had ever been there. As if it all of the blood had been imagined. June stepped over to the kitchen table and grabbed the side of it, trying to steady herself.
He was not my husband, June told herself, He was not my Ephraim. He was not my husband. He was not my Ephraim. He was not.
And June nodded over and over again to herself as she repeated the mantra. She turned her eyes to her husband’s hat resting on the wall still frozen in time from before he had left so many weeks ago, and then she looked at the empty bed.
He was not my husband. He was not my Ephraim. He was not my husband. He was not my Ephraim.
June glanced over to the window and saw that it was snowing outside, like the earth had finally resumed its turning. As June watched the snow pick up, she noticed that it was falling down from the night sky with a red hue. She stood up straight and walked over to look outside the window fully. The lake near the cabin was no longer frozen and it was crimson in color and the water looked thick and sludgy. June opened her mouth to scream but there was nothing left of her to do so. She pulled her hands up over mouth and began shaking.
The snow around the lake was red like it had been around Ephraim’s body. And even the moon’s glow was red and casted the entire mountain in a red hue. June felt the pain in her body from wielding the axe finally pierce her bones, and she shot her eyes over to Ephraim’s hat again before dropping to her knees.
“It was–It was–He was–I killed–I–Ephraim!” June finally screamed as she clawed at herself. “Ephraim! Ephraim!”
June bolted out of the cabin and ran around the back to Ephraim’s dead body still packed underneath the snow. June glanced over at the stained axe resting next to him and then she dropped to the ground and used her hands to haul off the snow from his body. She kept digging and digging and digging and digging until she saw his upper half. Her eyes regarded every inch of him, and she ghosted her fingers over what was left of his face. June stood up and started running towards the lake, wanting to run until the cold could take her and she could get lost on the mountain.
“Ephraim!” she screamed until her throat became so frozen that she could no longer speak. When she finally gave out under the strong clutches of the cold, June sank to her knees and laid face down in the snow.
A group of fur traders had been camping out on the edges of the forest for the night and when sun rose that next morning, they packed up and headed out. As they neared a lake, one of the men caught sight of something in the snow. He walked briskly over to whatever it was and then placed his hands on his knees to lower himself enough to study it. Immediately, he let out a holler. The men came over next to him and did the same.
It was a body, and they could tell it was a woman. She was hardly more than ice, parts of her were missing, and the remaining parts were removed from her body, but the traders hardly inspected her closely, presuming the poor woman had been the victim of the weather and then hungry animals. Two of the men left the group to search the area and try to find where the woman might have come from.
June and Ephraim’s cabin sat quiet and alone in the distance on the other side of the lake—smoke still rising from the chimney. The men approached the cabin and knocked heavily on the wooden door, praying that they would not find children inside awaiting a lost mother, but to their surprise, a woman answered the door.
“Hello, Miss, we were out over yonder and came across a woman in the snow. She’s dead, and we were trying to figure out where she had come from and if someone might know who she is,” one of the traders explained.
The woman who answered the door was still and her face did not shift at hearing such awful news. She neither frowned nor raised her brows in shock.
“Oh my!” she exclaimed without showing any emotions, “How very tragic. No, I’m sorry. I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one that lives around here for miles.”
“You’re all alone out here? No husband, family?” the man asked squinting his eyes.
“No. It’s just me.”
“And you’re alright out here?”
“I am.”
The man looked at his friend with some surprise and then turned back to the woman.
“Well, my name’s Abram and this is Lawrence. We’re just passing through for furs, but if you need anything, Miss, we’ll be camped down on the other end of the lake under a large rocky overhang for a couple of days. You be safe out here, Miss.”
“My name’s June. And thank you,” the woman remarked with a small smile. “I’ll remember where to find you all.”
Abram and Lawrence tipped their hats to her and then walked back to meet up with the rest of their party. The other men were all still hanging their heads and whispering amongst themselves near the dead woman’s body, seemingly unsure of what to do. As Abram and Lawrence approached them, they realized that it was not just the woman’s body that the men were still struck by, but a man’s body as well lying just a few feet away.
“It’s two people, Abram,” one of the men remarked, “They both look like they died the same way and were eaten up the same way after they died. It’s strange, though. Their limbs are detached from their bodies, and all of their fingers are missing. It’s odd, isn’t it? Animal can’t do nothing like this. What you think happened to these poor folks?”
Abram shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know, but you know what locals say about this mountain. No one likes it. Something odd about it, indeed.”
Abram walked over to the woman’s body and kneeled down to study her. The more he did so, the more she looked familiar to him. And in that moment, his stomach twisted at the sight of her, and his mind went back to the woman that he had just seen at the cabin on the other side of the lake. She looked exactly like the dead woman. But Abram just shook his head again and cleared the men away from the bodies and told them to start heading back to camp to gather their things to head out for the day. Abram followed behind them but he stopped to look down at the dead man as he walked by. Abram could make out a prominent, old scar on the man’s forehead. He looked like he had been out hunting with his rifle still slung on his back.
“Poor bastard,” Abram grumbled as he closed his eyes briefly, “This mountain surely holds devils upon it.”
The men had placed the couple side by side next to the lake, assuming that they had been lovers out there together since they had found a photograph of the man in the woman’s shirt pocket.
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