Chapter 5 Nite of the Skinwalkers
Have you ever noticed how dark it is different out in the desert? Not the gentle midnight of New England, where the trees lean close and the nite creatures rustle in the brush. No. Out here, the dark is something with fangs. Hungry, patient and as old as sin. I learned that the hard way, and maybe, if you’re a listener, you won’t have to.”
My name's King. Stephen. People know me for the stories I tell, but the land out here tells her own stories. If you have the ears to hear it.
Caleb owned the ranch, but I'd come out west to write and, hell, I was running from my own ghosts. Caleb took me to the land, the rough grass, the way the wind cut through your bones and whispered secrets. Respect it and you get by, he said. “Forget that, and you’ll see what’s waiting in the dark.”
I didn't believe him. No, not at first.
Last autumn, though, his sheep started to vanish. One, two, six half gone. Caleb shrugged it off. Coyotes. Maybe a mountain lion. But then there are the tracks. I saw them with my own eyes. Hoofs that turned into the deep indentations of bare feet halfway through a step. Something that didn’t know what it was. Or maybe it did not want to.
I went along with my notebook and pen, thinking I’d just get a good story out of it, while Caleb took his rifle and told his wife he’d be back by sundown. The sun bled out across the rocks, shadows pooling like spilled ink. Even Buster, the dog, slunk low, tail tucked.
We followed the trail, through juniper and red dust, past places that felt wrong in ways you can't quite name. Bits of wool snagged in barbed wire, smears of blood browning in sand. The footprints went on and on, like whatever made them was fucking with us, or maybe just wasn't quite tied to this world.
It was dusk. The wind changed and they caught the smell of rot and something like burned hair. Buster whined, rubbed against Caleb’s leg. And then: A voice in the dark, ragged, broken, calling Caleb's name. Not a beast. Not a man. I felt it, like you feel a storm coming.
"Caleb... “Come here, Caleb…”
I saw the old pain in Caleb’s eyes as he froze. "That's Jacob." His voice was as thin as the moon. His brother Jacob died seven years buried on the hill. The skin on the back of my neck went cold.
Wild and desperate, Caleb's hands gripped the rifle and cracked it. We went on, the ravine closing round us, the moon-light narrowing to a thread. The world held its breath, as if in silence. Then the voice again, nearer, echoing:
Caleb. “Why did you leave me out here?”
Buster ran into the dark, we lost him. And that’s when I saw it. Moving to the edge of the light. I’ll never forget it: Jacob’s face, but not quite. Slack-mouthed and wide, eyes too bright. A grin of too many teeth. The thing was tall, joints wrong, skin flickering between fur and flesh, between shadow and bone.
“Caleb,” it sang, lips barely moving. You left me. “Leave me here with the sheep, take me here.”
Behind it, shapes moved. Sheep. Or what remained. Bowed and wrong their bodies, half-human faces, eyes wide with fear. One bleated Caleb’s name. Not quite his brother’s voice. That ended the spell.
The gun went off. With a boom the thing recoiled and lunged. We scrambled, tripping over rocks, the chorus of lost voices rising behind us, all the dead and gone calling Caleb home.
“You don’t run, Caleb. This is your country, your blood on the floor. You’re part of us.”
We shot out of the ravine, the moon glaring down, and ran. I heard Buster's last yelp and something laughing. Jacob's voice. Twisted and cold.
In the morning, we found Buster at the edge of the field, mouth ripped, eyes wide. With shaky hands Caleb buried him. The sheep were sold. Down came the fences. The land was left with its secrets.
If the wind is right some nights I hear voices too, Jacob’s maybe, or the land itself, remembering. Caleb once told me, “The desert will take what you give it. Sometimes it hands something back in your face. If your dead brother calls to you from the shadows, do not go. There are stories you don't want to be involved in. Trust me.
I do.
Chapter 5.
The Nite of the Skinwalkers
Witch Graveyard
I never mentioned it, but there was always something wrong with Six Lakes. Not to my wife, not even within the bounds of my old horror stories. Writing used to be my entire life, the clack of keys ringing late into the nite. But that faded, replaced by the slow hum of family and the dull ache of regret. I thought I’d start again in this nowhere. I was mistaken. Evil has a geography. Six Lakes is in its longitude and latitude.
Behind our house was a broken iron gate that gaped into the cemetery, a place the neighbors avoided like an open wound. The land fell away into a shallow bowl, tombstones leaning and crooked as if dodging some ancient curse. There, the earth was always cold, even when the sun was bright, and mist slithered between the markers. The kids never wanted to play among the stones and I never allowed them. Now I know they felt what I lost.
It was the night after the first frost, the one that veins the windows silver. I woke to my wife’s voice far off, calling from the field on the other side of the woods. It started gently, almost tenderly. "Come out," she yelled. Her voice was clearer, but wrong. off, in a manner that pricked some animal part of my brain. I sat up, sheets cold as grave dirt. Something inside me told me to stay.
But I did go. Of course I did.
Outside the air could bite. I shivered, breath steaming into the dark. My heart beat fast and I followed the voice, my feet carrying me toward the broken fence of the cemetery. That’s when I spotted her.
She was on the edge of the woods, limbs at impossible angles, head cocked far to the side. Her skin drooped and stretched, and her mouth stretched into a parody of a smile. Her movements were sharp and jerky, like a puppet with tangled strings. She jolted forward, then stopped, then jolted again, flickering between right and wrong with each step she took.
Her voice dropped lower. “C-c-c-come—h-h-h-help me,” she chattered. Her voice was empty, mechanical, something behind her skin trying to learn how to be human and not quite getting it.
My children then emerged from behind her, eyes glazed, faces stretched into masks. They moved like me, robotic, glitchy, repeating my name in broken syllables. Wanted to run, wanted to get them together, but every instinct said No. My family didn’t go that way.
The graveyard squirmed beneath the moon, the mist curling like a noose. The ground was strewn with animal bones and odd hand-carved amulets. I saw prints in the dirt, clawed prints around the graves, leading into the trees. Even the woods bowed away from the graveyard, their ancient trunks bowed as if in fear.
And that was when I realized what the locals never said. Skinwalkers were the guards of this cemetery. Guardians of secrets thicker than the coffins they guarded Not flesh predators, but identity predators. They had you when you were them. They took your skin off and wore it like a Halloween mask, copying your words and gestures, always just a little off. They fed on memory, they fed on love, all that made you you. And when they were done, they'd use your voice to draw in more.
I saw the thing in my wife's skin lurch closer, mouth opening too wide, teeth white and wet in the moonlight. Her eyes—black holes. Her children copied her, jerky, stuttering, flickering bodies. They murmured secrets only my family would know, only we shared. Trying to pull me in, to make me forget what I'd seen.
But I remembered. And I thought of the stories I'd written, the rules I'd made up to keep monsters away. The most dangerous thing is what you can be. Wear your life like a mask and erase you from history.
My heart jackhammered as I staggered backward at their advance. The skinwalkers moved as one, their voices blending into one terrible chorus. Their shadows writhed, reaching out, falling on the cracked stones. I knew then, there was no way out. This is our place now.
So I write these words to warn you. If you are in Six Lakes and you hear your loved ones calling from the darkness, do not follow. The graveyard is hungry. The skinwalkers are waiting. They will take in your entire being—and no one will ever know you were there.
This is not a story. It’s an admission.
5 The Skinwalker’s Nite
The Night-Watchman
There are places in this world that are meant to be alone. Not just empty, but hollow, the emptiness that rings in your chest. We landed on the edge of the desert where the wind never quits and the moon stretches shadows beyond any fence line. Four of us, trapped in a house that moaned and groaned with every change in the wind, a house thirty miles from the nearest neighbor. Out there the sand was hammering the windows and it fell like a door shut.
We moved for Mom's health, or that's what Dad said. “There’s no room for healing in the city,” he said. So he packed us in. Him, mom, Anna (my little sister who still carried stuffed rabbits around) and me. We drove until the highway had no more excuses, until the asphalt gave up, until it was just dust and grass and the tracks of things that didn't want to be found. The house was waiting already. The kind of old that gets angry. Inside the first thing I noticed were three locks on every door and boards nailed over every window.
“Why?” I asked Dad. He shrugged and didn't look at me. “Coyotes,” he said. But I saw his hands shake as he got the shotgun out, saw his eyes flit to the shadows as if he was waiting for something to spring out.
Desert notes are something else. The darkness presses in thick and oily and you begin to wonder if the world outside your window is even real anymore. The silence is so complete you can hear the house tick, Anna’s breathing, the slither of your own thoughts. The first night I told myself the wind had woken me up. But then I heard... her. The voice. My mother's voice, soft, thin, could have been the wind if you wanted to believe it.
Let me in, please, it is cold out here. Let me in, please.
I put my hand over the lamp. I turned to see it was Mom, asleep, her breath slow and deep, her chest rising and falling as steady as the tide. But the voice outside kept calling, kept pleading, right outside the front door.
And I lay there, eyes wide, heart pounding, until the light started to creep in. I tried to tell Dad. He just grunted and stomped off to check the locks, pulling his hat low. Mom looked older, her skin waxy in the morning sun. She squeezed my hand and told me to go out and get some fresh air.
Same song, nite number 2. Only now it wasn't mom's voice. It was Anna's. Open the door. I'm hurting, I need you please. But Anna was curled up, holding my leg in her sleep. I dragged myself to the window, and peered through a crack in the boards. The moon made everything wrong, made shadows creep, Something stirred near the fence. A hunched figure with arms too long and a head cocked at an angle that would break a person’s neck. It shuffled. Stopped. I looked at the house. And each time it spoke it used a different voice. Anna’s first, then mine.
Let me through. I swear I won’t hurt you.
I told Dad. His face turned the color of old paper. He took us into the living room and checked all the locks. His hands shook so badly when he loaded the shotgun that he spilled half the shells.
“It can’t get in unless you let it,” he said, looking away. “Whatever it sounds like, you do not open the door. You get me?"
I nodded, but his fear was infectious. We took turns sleeping that night. One awake, three huddled, a prayer between us, the shotgun. Again the voice, quieter now, more desperate. Sometimes it was my dead grandmother, sometimes it was my best friend from school, sometimes it was a guttural growl that made my teeth ache.
Each morning in the dust, footprints—wide, bare, splayed. Round and round the house. Dad hung sage in the windows, salted the thresholds, muttered prayers like broken teeth.
Fourth night, back door. The handle rattled, gently at first, then more fiercely until the door rattled in its frame. I put my ear to the wall. Breathing was heard. Wet, keen, animal. I sat up, a kitchen knife in my hand, flashlight trembling, Anna asleep beside me. My voice. My voice. Begging to get in. I wondered how easy it would be to open the lock, just take a little peek. But then I remembered Dad’s eyes, that look of raw fear.
The following morning: Dead coyote on the porch, throat torn out, eyes wide and glazed. Fresh footprints in the dust, halfway across the yard and then gone.
We were prisoners in our own home. We patched the roof, fixed the walls, and looked after Mom. By day. But at night the fear came home. The voice grew louder, sometimes shrieking, sometimes whispering promises. Love. Forgiveness. Anything. "Just open the damn door.
One night I woke Anna at the door, a hand on the lock, eyes fogged. I drew her back. “I hear you,” she said, sobbing. Sounds like mother. I just wanted to help.
And then none of us went to sleep. We kept watching the doors and counting the minutes till morning. Dad’s gun is always loaded. I wondered how long it would be before one of us slipped up.
The voice was gone in ten nights. We sat in silence, afraid to hope. When the sun came up there were no footprints, not a mark. The air seemed lighter. That morning Dad packed us in. We got out of the desert and the house got smaller and smaller till it was just another bad dream.
But sometimes, when the wind is just right, when the nite is too quiet, I still hear that voice—my own, Anna’s, Mom’s—calling out of the darkness. Begging to get in. I lock my doors. I will never, ever answer.
If you're alone in the desert and you hear someone you know calling from the shadows, remember that not everything that speaks in a familiar voice is your friend. Some things are best left outside, for the nite to consume whole.
Chapter 5 Nite of the Skinwalker
The Imposter’s Game
You never thought your own face would betray you. Not after seventeen years of living in your own skin, watching it stretch and sag and freckle in the mirror, knowing every scar and every blemish like the lines on a well-worn road map. But that summer after my junior year, that’s exactly what I did. That was the summer I learned the most terrifying thing in the world might be the person you’ve always been.
It started the day I came home from camp. Four weeks in the mountains, where the air tastes like pine and smoke, where the only screens are the windows of the mess hall and the only connections are stories whispered in the dark. I’d come back smelling of bug spray and woodsmoke, my skin peeling in strips, my mind still lost in the forest. My parents insisted it would do me good. “You’ll come back as a new man,” Dad said. Well, maybe I did.
My twelve-year-old mutt, Bandit, should have been there, wagging his tail so hard he’d knock me over with his joy. Instead he drew back, hackles up, growling -- a deep, strangled sound I had never heard from him before. My parents shrugged. Mom said, “He’ll be warm. Bandit never did, though. In the dark he would follow me, his eyes wide, his tail stiff as a broomstick.
Something was wrong. I couldn't quite locate it. My room looked the same, but it was wrong. As if the air was heavier, or the shadows too long. The floor beneath my bed made a different noise. My bathroom mirror reflection stared at me a beat too long, waiting for me to blink first.
First, it was my little sister Claire who said it aloud. “Something’s wrong with you,” she hissed one nite, the hum of the A/C behind her words. "You aren't... you." Then she quit hanging around me. No texts anymore. No more in-jokes.
The little things began to pile up. Mom lost her glasses, her keys. Dad’s temper, which usually took a lot to light, burned hot and fast. When I was in the kitchen, the bandits wouldn’t eat. At midnight the house creaked with voices and footsteps, right outside my door. Once in a while I saw my parents watching me, their faces a mixture of concern and suspicion.
And then Claire disappeared. Mom said she was going to a friend's for the weekend. Her phone was still charging and her window was wide open, the curtains flapping in the breeze. “Which friend?” I said. “Where?” Mom just stared, voice flat, eyes glazed. Dad didn't look at me.
Then the robber vanished. His leash still dangled by the door. I found clumps of fur in the hallway, muddy paw prints leading to the basement, ending at a blank wall. I told myself it was accidental. I told myself I was exhausted. But Mom changed as well. At dinner she looked at her plate as if it might speak. Sometimes I heard her muttering to herself, urgent, afraid. Dad had more nites away, coming home smelling of sweat and dirt.
One night I woke up crying. Mom was on the couch, holding Claire's old stuffed rabbit. When I touched her she flinched. “You are not my baby,” she whispered, her eyes wide and wet. “You're not who you think you are. She ran upstairs and locked herself in her room.
That was when the nite Dad vanished. Outside I heard him pacing, muttering, voice rising and falling like a man arguing with ghosts. I saw him at the fence, looking into the dark. I went out and the yard was clear, the gate swinging in the wind.
Now it was just me and Mom, going around each other like strangers. She stopped eating, stopped talking except when it was necessary. I tried to prove who I was, stories, old photos, desperate pleas. She just shook her head, the tears streaming, wouldn't even look at me.
I woke up the third day, alone. The house was far too quiet. The air was thick and stale. All the rooms were empty. Haunted by memories that didn’t quite belong.
That afternoon the doorbell rang. It was Mrs. Delaney, our neighbor. Her face was white, lips quivering. “I saw you yesterday,” she whispered, “but you never came home from camp. I saw your folks go without you. I saw them return alone.”
Her words were a slap in the face. "I'm me," I protested but her eyes were full of fear. “Don’t come to my house. “Stay the hell away from my family.
I prowled the empty rooms that night, looking for proof I belonged. But all the pictures in the hall were wrong. Faces melted together, smiles too wide, eyes black and empty. My mouth twisted into a grin I couldn’t control as my reflection flickered in the mirror.
And that’s when I realized: I didn’t remember the drive from camp. I couldn’t recall hugging my parents, Bandit licking my face, Claire rolling her eyes at my jokes. My memories were like a scratched film, jumping, skipping, full of static and holes.
The house got colder. Shadows danced in the corners, whispering my name, promising I could belong if I would just let go. I dropped to my knees, holding my head, trying to cling to what was left of me.
Sometimes I think about leaving. Out the door, into the nite, and away, letting the real me have a chance to find my way home. But something keeps me here—something old and hungry, wearing my face like a mask.
If you get home someday and your dog won't look at you, if your family starts disappearing, if the neighbors cross themselves when you walk by - don't trust your reflection. Don’t hear the voice that tells you that you’re home. Sometimes what’s in your shoes isn’t you. And sometimes the trickster wins.
#### Chapter 5: The Nite of the Skin Walkers
The Campfire Pact
You think you know your friends. You believe you know their stories, their nervous tics, the way their faces crumple when you drag out some embarrassing tale from the vault of your shared childhood. That’s what I thought anyway. Five of us packed into an old mud-spattered SUV, our weekends and worries rattling in the trunk as the highway unspooled behind us like a strip of black ribbon. We went deeper, deeper than we’d ever gone, into a place where the pines were thick and the cell signal died with the last light of day.
It was supposed to be an easy trip. Me ( Eric ). Josh, my brother from another mother. Mallory, Josh’s girl—the kind of woman who could make a joke out of your darkest secret and then hug you until you forgot why you were sad in the first place. Gabe, who was always hungry for something more. And Liv, who was wild and weird and made every summer feel like a dare. Every year since high school, we've done this. But this year, we’d gone further, looking for something we couldn’t name.
The first night was simple. Beer. Laughter. The old stories, worn smooth by years of retelling. The fire popped and hissed in the circle of stones, and we all tried not to think about jobs, breakups, or the quietly gnawing ache that was adulthood. But as the flames burned down, Mallory leaned in, shadows flickering across her face, and began to talk about skinwalkers.
"I was reading about them," she said. "Older than the pines. “It’s always someone you know,” she whispered, the red glow of the coals drawing out her cheekbones in gold. “They’re like us. But they are not. They wear your skin, your voice, but there's always something...off. Once you think someone's a skinwalker, you can never talk to them by their real name. Or you let it in.
We tried to laugh, and something in the woods laughed too. A coyote gave a howl. Liv joked she could outrun us all, but then zipped her sleeping bag up to her chin and didn’t move all night.
Liv was gone by the morning.
At first we figured she had gone to pee or maybe wandered down to the creek for some alone time. But the minutes ticked by and no Liv. We called her name into the trees, but only the jays answered. Josh and Gabe went one way, Mallory and me the other, calling until our throats were sore. We reached camp, shaken and empty, long before noon.
Then Liv walked out of the woods. Her hair was wild, her smile too big, her eyes alight with a light that didn’t seem like Liv at all.
“Where have you been? Mallory's voice was thin with relief and something keener.
Liv gave a shrug. “Was turned around. It’s a maze out here.
She said all the right things but couldn't look me in the eye. She chewed slowly at lunch, her eyes on the trees, flinching at every snap and crackle. Gabe tried to make her laugh, but Liv just smiled, wide and toothy, and wandered away to gather firewood.
I saw her as the dusk came. She walked differently. Rigid and cautious. Like she was considering each step. She sat with us and her stories were all wrong. Details scrambled, punchlines flat. Mallory saw it as well. She squeezed Josh’s hand so hard I thought it would snap.
That nite the woods seemed to close in on us like a mouth. I awoke to footsteps. Slow, deliberate, crunching leaves. I peered out of my tent. Liv was at the treeline, whispering in a guttural voice I’d never heard before. She turned her head, further than it ought, looking into the darkness.
Mallory was gone the next morning. Her boots and jacket were missing, but her sleeping bag was zipped and smoothed, as if she'd never been there. Josh started to scream. His voice was wild and animal and echoing. Gabe tried to soothe him, but his hands were trembling. We looked. Nothing. Silently, Liv watched, her eyes too bright.
By nightfall the panic was freezing and thick, and closing in from all sides. We sat around the fire. Gabe prodded the fire, Josh paced and Liv watched us with eyes that caught the light of the fire like an animal’s. Then Mallory was back, just when the sun went out, dirty, streaked face, torn clothes.
"I'm fine," she said, and her laugh was too high and sharp. She wouldn't say where she'd been. She would not look at me.
That night I lay awake listening to the others breathe. I tried to look back. Was Mallory always scarred over the eyebrow? Was “Bowie” Liv’s favorite song? Small things, but they ate away at me.
I heard voices outside the tent. Crossing, turning, speaking in a language I didn't know. I lay frozen, flashlight gripped, muscles tight with the urge to run.
Gabe was gone by morning.
Mallory and Liv looked at each other and then at Josh. He didn't say anything. That was when I knew I didn’t know what was real now. They looked right, sounded right, but their eyes were hungry, empty.
We packed quietly, the air thick with tension. The hike out took longer than it should have, the trees crowding in, the light thinning though it was morning. Liv led the way, humming something unmusical. Mallory’s footsteps were close behind. Josh looked back once more.
We got to the parking lot and Liv stopped. She turned to me, a smile too wide splitting her face.
“Always someone you know,” she said. Her voice was a blend of laughter and tears. “Always,” I said.
I ran.
I don’t know how I got out. Only the parking lot, the burning metal of the SUV, Josh screaming, footsteps fading into the trees. I never saw Mallory, Gabe or Liv after that.
I see them sometimes, a crowd, on social media. Their faces are right but not their eyes, and their smiles are just a little too big. I don’t respond to their texts. I don’t mention their names.
If you go into the woods with friends, remember: Sometimes you return with strangers. And then sometimes you never return.
Chapter 5: Nite of the Skinwalker
Voices Beneath the Floorboards
On some nights the desert is silent, and you can hear your own blood pounding in your ears. On some, the silence shatters and things crawl out—sounds you pray you only dreamed. We begin there, on the ragged edge of the reservation, where houses squat low and mean against the wind and secrets hang thicker than dust.
If you'd asked me before that summer, I'd have told you the worst thing out here was the emptiness. The kids leaving, the jobs drying up, everyone just scraping by. But by the end, I would have sold every bone in my body to be back in that simple, ordinary loneliness.
It all started with the pets. First, the old tom cat of Tommy Begay. Then Yazzie’s hound, a dog so old its bark was a whisper. And then parakeets, rabbits, maybe a goat or two. Gone, as if pulled from the earth by an invisible, careful hand. All they left were feathers or tufts of fur or muddy spirals about the porch. Mom blamed the coyotes, but the dogs didn’t buy it. They wouldn’t go near the crawlspaces after dark—they just sat and shivered, whining into the corners.
And then the scratching. At first it was nothing, little scurries, like mice nesting for the winter. But it grew, nite after nite, to sound like claws raking the beams, something pacing back and forth right under your feet. If you put your ear to the vent, you could hear voices. Not words. Just a slurry of groans and whispers that made your skin crawl.
One night I woke up and Shadow, our mutt, was going nuts in the kitchen. My heart skipped a beat. I came upon him stiff-legged, baring his teeth to the floor. The scratching was so loud, it sounded like it was inside my skull. Then, suddenly as a blink, it ceased. I lunged for Shadow, but he was through the dog door and away into the dark. Never saw him again.
I found prints in the morning, mud from the crawlspace leading out into the yard. They were not dogs, nor even coyotes. They were long and narrow, almost human, except for the claws. My stomach fell.
The news spread quickly. People left lights on all night, put salt on their doors, tucked sage under their pillows. "Skinwalkers," my uncle said. "Witches that wore the faces of men and beasts. I tried to laugh it off but the scratching came in the daylight and the voices under the house got bolder.
Then one night my cousin Ben showed up at our door, pounding, wild-eyed.
“Come on!” he panted. 'There's something under Grandfather's house!'
We ran, the dusk running out behind the mesa. Nana's yard was full of neighbors whispering, looking at the porch. We saw them in the half-light, eyes like burning yellow coals. Watching.
“Get out!” Nana screamed, swinging her broom. “You do not belong here!”
The eyes were gone, but the scratching returned, savage, frantic. That night, the entire town howled. Animal and human voices merged into one monstrous wail.
Sleep was a memory. The whispers followed me into my dreams, whispering my name, begging, mocking. I would wake up in a sweat, knowing something was lurking just beneath my feet.
Then everything fell apart.
I was reading with a flashlight when the lights went out. The air had a flavor of sage and old dust. The scratching came again but this time there was a new sound, a growl, low and guttural. Something heavy thumped beneath the house.
With my heart in my throat I crept to the window. The moon turned everything silver and strange. Across the street, at the Johnsons’ place, a coyote slithered from beneath the porch. It was on all fours at first. But then it stopped, looked around and, god help me, stood. Slow and jerky it got up, its paws stretching into hands with black claws, its fur sloughing off to show blotched, inhuman skin. Its face contorted, yellow eyes flashing, and it almost...smiled. Then it melted away into the shadows, gone.
“Mom,” I whispered, voice trembling. She hugged me, whispered prayers to me The next day the council assembled. The old ones spoke in whispers, telling old tales of things that walked by nite and wore stolen skin.
'We must not tell them,' warned Nana. We can’t let them in.
Things went differently from there. Locked doors. No one walked alone. No one would go near the crawlspaces. But the voices came. Some begged. Some laughed. The scratching ceased. Then a silence as thick as wet wool.
But the pets kept disappearing. Sometimes there was a tuft of fur, a streak of blood, those half-human, twisted footprints leading out into the desert.
Some nights when the wind is just right, I still hear the whispers through the floor. Sometimes it’s voices I know, Shadow, my uncle, even my own. I keep my window locked, sage burning at my bedside. And I never, never listen too long.
Out here in the long shadow of the mesa you learn quickly. Some voices you aren't meant to hear. Some things that wait under your feet, waiting for an invitation you're dumb enough to give.
If you hear scratching under your house, ignore it. Don’t look. And don’t answer whatever you do.
Chapter 5 The Nite of Skinwalkers
The Abducted Skin
Memory is said to be a treacherous thing. After trauma, your mind is a patchwork quilt, frayed and stained, sewn together with mismatched pieces. Maybe that’s why when I hit an empty stretch of desert highway, blood sticky and drying under my clothes, the world didn’t make sense at all. Not the past, not the present, and certainly not the person I was meant to be.
The cold is the first thing I remember. Not a normal cold, but a deep marrow-sick ache that started in my bones and chewed its way out. It was a high moon, and silver and shadow on the ground. My car was gone. My body—bruised. I got up, staggered, looked at the bloody wreckage of my jeans and shirt, and saw the stains were mine and not mine.
I must have walked miles, stumbling, flapping my arms, trying to flag someone down. But my voice sounded wrong in my ears - higher, brittle, like an instrument played by unfamiliar hands. My mind spun uselessly, trying to piece together the crash, the screech of tires, the world tumbling end over end. I saw only black holes, broken by flashes of pain and brightness.
The headlights cut through the nite. I waved, frantically, some atavistic part of me knowing to beg for mercy. The car slowed. Doors opened. Voices shouted in fear and concern.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” a woman screamed, clutching her phone like a talisman already.
A man, her husband, threw a blanket about my shoulders. I shivered. So did he. The cold was catching.
A paramedic asked me my name.
I spoke. Only static. My name was a knot of syllables I couldn't untie, a room without a key.
I.... don't remember." "I could. And I didn't. The truth, then, was a moving target.
The hospital was a carnival of faces, lights too bright, questions without end.
"What do you think you are?
"What happened to you?
“Who do we call?”
All I got was blank stares and apologies. No ID. No cell phone. There is no history. The bloodied clothes clung to my skin.
There was something wrong when they washed me. My skin. Too smooth, too white. As if it had never seen a day of sun. I looked in the mirror for the crooked scar on my chin, the birthmark on my thigh, the chicken pox marks on my arms. Nothing. My face—almost right, but not quite. My eyes are the same color, yet colder, darker, as if someone had turned down the warmth inside.
The couple who’d found me visited the next day, looking like they hadn’t slept all night.
"You’re lucky to be alive," the woman said, avoiding my gaze. "They found your car. No one else is inside."
Her husband coughed—a wet, dragging sound that made my own skin crawl.
"We’ll pray for your recovery," he said. It sounded more like a warning than a blessing.
Then things took a turn.
The nurses who changed my bandages fell ill, one after another, their eyes going hollow and fever-bright. A week later, the couple was admitted—gray-skinned, unfocused. The doctors called it a "mystery illness." Behind closed doors, I heard the word curse.
I became obsessed with mirrors, hunting for traces of the old me. But the reflection never changed. My hair darkened, my eyes sharpened, my smile grew too wide. My hands moved with a confidence that wasn’t mine, recalling habits I never learned. My voice, too—stronger, deeper, enough to make people flinch.
A detective visited, badge glinting in the fluorescent light.
She grilled me about the accident, my past, anything I could remember. I tried to answer, but the words felt borrowed—lines from a script I hadn’t auditioned for.
"Have you got any scars?" she asked suddenly.
I shook my head. "No. Should I?"
She frowned. "We found another body a mile from the crash. Same build. Same hair. But... different. Like someone peeled them off and left the skin."
I shuddered. She watched, eyes sharp.
She said, “Tell the truth. “Are you feeling yourself?”
That question plagued me. Nite after nite in the hospital I heard whispers in the halls, voices calling my name, voices that sounded like my own but were not. I dreamed I was walking through the desert and my skin was peeling off in sheets, revealing something raw and hungry underneath. Faces against the window glass, mouthing things I couldn't understand.
One morning a nurse set my breakfast down and stood at the foot of my bed. Her eyes were red, frightened.
"You should not be here," she whispered. You're wearing somebody else's face. Go. Before you hurt someone else."
That night I left, slipping out from under the moon’s watchful eye, walking the streets until I came to the ravine where they’d found my car. The place was far too familiar. I knelt in the dust and for one horrible moment memory returned:
The incident. The crawling horror within my flesh. The thing on the road. The smile. My hands clawing at my face, peeling off the old life, slipping into something new.
Now I just drift from town to town, never staying long. Those who help me always get sick, always fade away. I stay away, but the hunger never leaves. The hunger to be loved, to belong, to have a face, even if the love is borrowed.
Think twice before you stop if you see someone on the road at night, covered in blood and confusion. Some things can't be saved. Some skins don’t ever fit. And sometimes, what you save isn’t what you think it is.
Chapter 5 The Nite of the Skin-Walker
The Pack That Hunts Alone
You never forget the first time you see real fear in a man's eyes. Not the everyday kind. No, I mean the kind that scrapes you raw, that peels away all the years and bluster and leaves the small, shivering child underneath. I saw that kind of fear three winters ago in the North Woods under a sky so low it felt like it was pressing on your skull and snow so deep every step felt like wading into a grave.
Hunting was in my veins. My dad's old Remington was heavy in my arms, the way old sins are heavy, and the first time I pulled the trigger the kick nearly knocked me flat. But I did learn. Learned to read the woods, learned to slip between the trees, learned to see the warmth a deer left behind the icy ground. That winter I hunted with Uncle Ray and my cousin Will and Ray’s friend Carter. Carter was one of those guys whose smile was a rumor and whose eyes rarely wandered from the tree line.
We'd been at it three days, chasing stories of a black wolf, something the locals whispered about when they thought you weren't listening. Something big, something mean, with eyes like red coals.
The snow deadened everything. The woods were a cathedral of silence – just our boots, the nervous cough, the crunch of doubt. The first clue was on the fourth morning, a torn scrap of fur snagged on a low branch and, not far away, a deer gutted so expertly it almost looked like a joke. In the morning chill a broad arc of blood steamed.
“Too big for a wolf.” Carter crouched beside the carcass. "And just look at these."
The tracks were huge—huger than any wolf had any right to be—but halfway across the drift something happened. The paws expanded, toes lengthened, claws shrank. Naked human footprints melted in the snow at the edge of the clearing.
We looked at each other. We all thought the same thing but didn't dare to say it. Ray hawked and spat, his lips whitening. "Come on," he said, only it came out as a prayer.
The woods drew in closer. Branches cracked just out of sight, snow fell from the branches, and something out there was keeping pace with us. Carter took point, shotgun raised. Will murmured prayers, old words in a voice I had never heard.
We found an abandoned campground an hour later. Tents torn open, bloody clothes, a half-burned pack. Footprints everywhere. Some men, some not. It was as if something had been around the camp, spiraling closer, churning the snow.
“That’s enough,” he said in a whisper. “Let’s go back.
But the woods wouldn't let us. The trail was gone, scoured away. The sky grew dark. The cold gnaws deeper, into your bones and your brain. We breathed out in thick, desperate puffs.
Then the howl, deep and guttural, almost human, rolling through the pines. Then laughter, high and crooked, flitting from tree to tree. Carter swore. Ray checked his shells. My heart was a trapped animal.
We moved as one Guns drawn The world closing in I caught glimpses - a tall, pale thing darting between trunks, a hunched, black thing slithering behind a log. Blood and old fur thickened the air.
Then came it. Something black and teeth glinting struck Carter. Carter was in the lead. He shot once, there was a sharp crack, and then he was gone, dragged into the brush, screaming. Blood spattered the snow, steaming in the dark.
Ray shot into the trees, wildly, but there was no shot back. The laughter returned, closer, wrapping itself around us like smoke.
We gotta go," Ray said, pulling my arm. Will was crying, the shotgun rattling in his hands. We stumbled and fell, eyes, alive in the woods.
We found Carter's body, or what was left of it, by a frozen creek. His face was contorted with a sort of terror I shall never forget. His chest had been torn open, as if something was trying to get in, not out. More trails beside him—man and wolf, side by side, impossibly crossing.
Ray drove us low, guns rattling. "It's hunting us." His voice was barely above a whisper. "It's wearing on us."
The sun sank. Shadows crept to fill your eyes. Eyes glitter in the brush, a mouth too wide, hands tipped with claws. With every blink something new.
Will was the first to break. He ran, calling for help. The woods took him, a snarl, a ripping sound, wet, his cries cut off like a switch. I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to block out the world.
Ray and I ducked under a thick pine, guns like talismans, back to back. Again came the laughter, softer now, almost gentle. “Next,” it hummed. “Your turn.”
Something moved, a figure on the moon, fur standing up, eyes aflame. It was a wolf. But then it was standing, bones cracking, skin rippling and I was staring into Carter's face, grinning, eyes black and hungry.
“Don’t you remember me?” it crooned, its voice a twisted parody.
Ray fired but the thing just laughed, dodged, leapt--claws flashing. Ray went down like a ton of bricks. I ran, brush smacking my face, laughter following me, winding into my bones.
I don’t know how I got away. Maybe it allowed me to leave. Maybe it tasted my fear and liked it sweet. Torn clothes, bloody hands, gone shotgun. At dawn I was on the road.
Now when I hear the nite howlers I lock my doors and whisper old prayers These woods I know what walks in. She wears the faces of those you love and those you fear. It waits for the next pack. Too dumb to think they're the hunters.
Some things in the woods hunt alone. But they have many skins. If you see snow tracks that are changing shape, turn around. If you hear laughter where there is only silence, RUN. Because in these woods you're never really alone, and sometimes you're not even you.
Chapter 5: Nite of the Skinwalkers
The Mirror's Deception
For most of my life mirrors had been background noise. Milk - as common as. Who cares about a reflection, unless you're twenty and vain, or fifty and fighting the uphill battle with crow's feet? They were set decoration, nothing more. That's what I figured anyway. Before death came to Pine Hollow, and death brought with it a chill that slithered through bone and marrow, the kind of cold that can only creep up on you behind the glass.
Name's Jesse. Barber by trade, confidante by accident. In a place like Pine Hollow you become both, whether you want to or not. My hands got to know the faces of this town like a blind man knows the shape of his own house. By touch, by repetition, by love and habit. I knew every wrinkle on old Mrs. McIntyre's brow before I saw her lying out there in the tomato patch, eyes wide as dimes, her hands twisted toward something only she'd seen. The sheriff said it was a heart attack. But I saw her face. You can't fake that kind of terror. Not even in Pine Hollow.”
Something changed that night. I was wrapping things up, cleaning the big mirror above my chair. Like always. It was a habit. A muscle memory. But for a moment, a stutter, a hiccup in the world, my reflection was behind me. Quick stuff, the kind you blink and miss, except I didn’t blink. The smile looking back was mine but not mine. Broader. Merrier . It was like it wanted to eat me alive. I blamed the hour, the whiskey, the grind of the day. I deceived myself. It’s easier this way.
Next morning little Tommy Burke, sweet kid, bowl cut, never liked his hair too short, was found dead. His mother said he screamed and then stopped. They found him stuck between his closet door, like he was trying to claw his way through. The mirror on his desk was face down, the glass unbroken, except for a bloody handprint that must have been made by somebody who wasn't alive.
Hannah from the bakery had disappeared, and the pulse of the town had changed. People whispered in the aisles of the IGA, cast sideways glances at the slightest gleam of glass. Hannah's note was brief, like a radio searching for static: “It is me. It’s not I.” After that no one laughed at ghost stories
The mirrors in my own shop I began to hate. The glass was thick, syrupy, as if it was concealing something on the other side. Sometimes I'd be shaving somebody and I'd see another set of eyes looking back at me, or a mouth moving a beat behind the words. At night the air thickened as if all Pine Hollow were settling down into a black pond, its surface quivering at every frightened glance.
Mr. Yates, my next door neighbor, was the oldest man in town. He told us kids stories about things that lived in the trees, shadows that whispered from the cornfields. I tried to ask him what he thought but his wife met me at the door, red-eyed and shaking. "He won't come out of the bathroom," she murmured. Inside I heard him say, again and again, “It’s me, but it’s not,” until the door banged shut.
That night I dreamed of mirrors. Endlessly, for eternity. Each reflection showed a different Jesse. Some smiled, some cried, some pressed broken fingers against the glass, mouths opening and closing like fish, mouthing words I couldn't hear. I woke up sweating, my heart pounding. I was sure something in the dresser mirror was watching me.
I pulled every mirror out of my house. No help. I saw my reflection in doorknobs, window glass, even the gleam of my barber's shears. Not quite right my own voice shouted out of the darkness Jesse moved closer.
The sheriff posted fliers: If you see your own face in the wrong place, look away. No interaction. Don’t talk. It was too late. Death kept coming. Everybody with eyes wide open. Mouths frozen mid-scream. A silent chorus calling from the other side.
I began to lock up early. Late one night, Walter, one of the new guys, nervous as a mouse, came in for a trim. “Mirrors are safer in public,” he grumbled. I switched on all the lights and averted my eyes. But when I looked up Walter was smiling back at me in the mirror, eyes black as tar. The real Walter shook, staring straight ahead, his lips barely moving.
The thing in the glass leaned forward, grinning so wide its cheeks cracked. "Getting close," it whispered, and Walter didn't move his mouth. I recoiled, my spine freezing with cold sweat.
Walter blinked at me. You saw it too?" I nodded. Together we left, the mirror rippling behind us like pond water in a summer storm.
Nobody was alone anymore. People poured into the diner, into the church, anywhere without glass. But still, sometimes you'd hear a scream ring out from the bathroom, or someone would freeze, frozen by the glint of their own face in a spoon.
That night I called my mother. People said she lived out beyond the edge of town, always a little “witchy.” She told me an old story, one I half remembered from childhood, something old and hungry living behind the glass, waiting for a crack in your courage. “It can wear your face,” she said, “but only if you let it see you’re afraid.
I didn't want to look, didn't want to hear. But you can't hide from your own reflection all the time.
A week after the first death, I was in the shop fixing a loose tile when I heard my own voice behind me. I wheeled. There I was, in the mirror, but not myself. The thing smiled, slow and cold. My hand rose against my will, as its own hand lifted.
You're tired Jesse,' it whispered. “I’ll help you.”
I ran. I hit the door, felt the glass break under my boots. When I looked back, the reflection was gone. But I knew it was out there, waiting in every mirror, every window, every shining blade.
Now Pine Hollow is a town of glass and broken promises. I don’t know who is real any more. Sometimes I see my own face staring back at me through a darkened window and I wonder if it is still me looking back or if the thing from the other side has finally slipped through.
If you come to pine hollow, don't look in the mirrors. No response when your own voice calls out from the glass. Some thoughts are concealed, some faces are masks. The dark always has hunger, always patience, and always a little bit closer than you think.
#### Chapter 5: Nite of the Skinwalker
The Uninvited Guest
Family reunions aren't supposed to be dangerous. Maybe a little tense, sometimes awkward, but always secure. Anywho, that's the story we tell ourselves. The worst thing you’re supposed to suffer is Aunt Ruth’s potato salad that’s gone bad in the sun, or Uncle Jim’s jokes that make the younger cousins blush. I kept saying that to myself as my tires crunched up the old gravel road to my grandmother’s house, dust curling in the heat. But sometimes family is more than old stories and paper plates. Sometimes the family brings something hungry.
Haven’t been back in years. Life, work, cheap excuses, take your choice. Mom had been sick, and I heard the plea beneath her words when she called. “It’ll do you good to see everybody.” So I packed a bag and took the trip with a heavy heart, heavy with guilt and something else I’d rather not name.
The house looked just like it did when I was a kid, sun-bleached siding, a sagging porch, a cottonwood tree out back, gnarled and old. Laughter and the smoke of the grill drifted across the yard. Kids ran amuck, elders gathered in the shade, fanning themselves with church bulletins and rumors.
I was just starting on a beer when I saw him. Too tall, too thin, in a crisp black shirt, slick back hair, pale as bone. He stood half in shadow on the edge of the yard. He didn’t look like a Sanchez, but he knew how to play the part. He shook hands, hugged aunts, clapped uncles on the back. He was smiling too big when he got to me, his teeth too white.
“Yo, primo.” Just like that, like we’d grown up together, like he belonged in every memory.
"Yeah," I lied, mirroring his grin. Tell me again—what’s our connection?
Then he laughed, slow and hollow. "It is a long family tree," he told them.
I tried to shake it off, but it stayed with me, a cold finger down my spine. He knew everyone's name, every secret entombed. He teased Rosa about her high school sweetheart, the one we all promised to forget. He winked at Uncle Jim and told about the time he’d wrecked Granddad’s truck, the sort of story we never told outsiders. Then he turned to me. You remember that nite down at the arroyo? “You weren’t supposed to be out that late.
My stomach fell. I had never told anyone about that nite.
The old men watched him, their faces pinched under their hats, their eyes bright and scared. I saw Grandma clutching her rosary, her lips moving in silent prayer.
After dinner I found Tía Carmen in the kitchen shaking hands while chopping onions.
“Who is he? "I asked.
She winced. “He doesn’t belong here,” she breathed. “There are stories… ancient stories. About things that come up at family get-togethers. Wearing masks. Revealing secrets. Looking for a door.
I laughed. It was a tight laugh, a dry laugh. Shadows filled the yard outside. The stranger was playing tag with the youngest cousins, their laughter cutting through the dusk. He looked at me, smiling, his eyes as black as a starless note.
Then the disappearances began.
At first it was the little things. A phone rang, went unanswered. Cousin’s car in the drive, keys hanging in the door. Rosa, off. Then Uncle Jim. Then Tía Carmen The tension was thick as molasses, each silence threatening to consume us. But the stranger didn't care. He ate with gusto, laughed too loudly, eyes always on me.
My phone was dead. The landline vibrated. I searched the house, under beds, behind doors, into closets thick with mothballs and older secrets. The stranger followed at a step behind, humming a tune I almost remembered. A song about bones and wind and blood.
On the second night there were only a few of us left. Grandma, two aunts, a couple of cousins and me. The others just...weren't there. Their plates grew cold, their laughter echoed through empty rooms. Grandma was in her rocker, white-knuckled, holding her rosary.
“Not one of us,” she whispered. "He's here for the pickup."
I asked her what she meant, but she shook her head. Every few generations we forget. We open the door to a stranger and he takes what he wants. He knows our names. He knows of our sins. “He eats us,”
I tried to find someone, anyone, who could help, but the house turned into a maze, hallways twisting, doors opening to places I’d never seen. The voice of the stranger rang out, mingled with the laughter of the dead.
I discovered Rosa in the attic. Her eyes were dull, her mouth moved soundlessly. I touched her shoulder and she fell to dust that was sifting through my fingers. I shouted. Retreating. The stranger moved in front of the stairs.
“Don’t go.” His voice was a silk over steel. "Not when it starts to get good.
I raced through the house, bumping past Grandma’s empty chair, the quiet kitchen. With each room another relative disappeared. One by one, till I stood alone. The stranger was in the living room, hands folded, eyes hungry.
“Why me? I breathed.
He grinned. Every family needs a witness. Someone to remember.
He contacted me. I bolted, out the front door, into the screaming wind and the house behind me collapsed. I looked away. Then the lights blew out. The stranger stood in the doorway and waved. His smile was a cut in the nite.
I don't know how I got home. I don’t know if it was all real or if Tía Carmen’s stories finally ate through my mind. But I know the house is empty, my family is gone, and now there’s a stranger in every crowd, watching, smiling, waiting for an invitation.
So if you ever see someone at your family reunion that knows too much, that looks wrong no matter how right they look, don't let them in. Do not say their name. And whatever you do, don’t be the last man standing.