Watcheress

The desert feels endless. Sometimes when you walk through the sagebrush you hear things. You turn around and you make sure to never lose sight of the river again.

The cities are rotten. It’s not until you’re far away that the spell leaves you and you realize how lucky you were to get out.

You find a pile of bones in the woods. You walk away and you don’t go back to that spot.

At night you hear noises. Some say fireworks. Others say gunshots. You never find out what the noises are.

Every year the smoke comes. At first you think it is clouds. Then you see the orange light through the trees. They say it’s wildfires. Sometimes you smell it. Once you had to evacuate. Everything is slightly different when you return.

The rain falls for months. Time loses all meaning and the days blend together. You forget what the sun looks like. And you never go into the woods.

The ocean is shrouded by mist. The water is cold. The shores are rocky. Every year the shipwreck sinks a few inches deeper into the grey sand.

You hear the coyotes every night but you never see them. Finally one misty morning you see one staring at you, blending into the brush, slanted eyes never blinking. You turn toward home and you don’t look back.

The rivers are beautiful. Sometimes they even seem tame. But the rapids are named after the things they swallowed up and never released, people and train cars and boats. Every year more people drown.

The lakes are murky. Sometimes when you’re swimming you feel something brush your foot. They say it’s water lilies. You aren’t sure.

Sasquatch lurks in the mountains. People come from far away to look for him. They never find anything. But you know. Everyone knows.

The mountains are all dormant volcanoes. They haven’t erupted since before settlers came, but the rivers are still choked with ashes and the landslides speckled with obsidian. Sometimes you think you see a thin stream of smoke slowly rising from the nearest peak.

Something rustles outside your tent. You sit still and you don’t go outside. Some things are better left alone.

The twisted forest road that snakes down the valley is dark even on a sunny day. Every so often you’ll see an abandoned car balanced precariously between the road and the ravine. You grip the steering wheel and drive a little faster.

There’s a single driveway high up a mountain road that sends shivers up your spine whenever you drive past it. You can just imagine a mangled elk head stuck on the gatepost. It’s only later you hear about the blood cult.

The endless thick woods between the city and the coast are dotted with logging towns that feel somehow sinister. You wonder what they are hiding. Maybe you don’t want to know.

You drive on the remote highway in the plains for hours without seeing a single other car. You do, however, see scattered limbs of a deer, and wonder what happened to the rest of it.