I realize you may not be familiar with the Olympic Peninsula, given how out of the way or otherwise unknown it is, so I’ll introduce you. The Peninsula is the farthest western point of the contiguous United States. It’s dominated by the Olympic National Park, the Olympic Mountain Range, and, of course, Mount Olympus. It is home to sprawling primeval forest and one of the only temperate rainforests in North America. This makes it a popular spot for hiking, climbing, and kayaking. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, though I won’t pretend I know what that means. The Peninsula is only a two-hour drive from Seattle. But — I suppose because of the Puget Sound (a vast oceanic inlet separating the Peninsula and Western Washington) It remains relatively uninhabited. Except for us, of course.
Far south of Port Angeles, in a deep valley, is a small collection of settlements deep in an untamed valley. That’s towns built by hermits, rich familymen who wanted to make a tourist attraction, and doomsday preppers. This is the North Forest Region, and it’s doomed. Of course, this community has been dying for the last fifty years; no normal person just has the money to start up and run a town anymore. And the idea of weird reclusive settlers potentially building illegal infrastructure and dumping sewage in a beloved national park makes governments testy.
Such a strange place allows for stranger stories. Such as the man who returned himself to the earth by squeezing into a cave, or the Tall Hiker, or just plain old Bigfoot. And at the risk of being self-aggrandizing, the strangest story is the series of events I’ve decided to share.
December 8th, 2025. The first day I began to be uneasy. It seemed like it had been raining nonstop since June; I didn’t even know the sky could hold that much water. I didn’t open the curtains, not that it would change the amount of light coming in. I panic-ate an orange to stop the sweat and shakes, and went rooting for a real breakfast. I pulled a Tupperware from the fridge. The label on the top indicated it was a salad from two days ago. And held it to the light. I could stomach some wilted greens, soft, mushy croutons. I didn’t have anything else. Beggars can’t be choosers.
I almost dropped it.
The entire inside of the container was sploched with mold, thick and uneven, blooming in colors of white and grey. Sickness churned in my stomach as I stared into the decay. I imagined the mold creeping across my fingers and flinched, tossing it onto the counter.
“Fuck me!” I shivered.
I pulled out my phone and googled how to clean mold out of plastic. I didn’t want to throw away a perfectly good Tupperware just because a salad had spoiled fast. But nothing was loading, my reception was flashing between ‘SOS’ and ‘No Service.’ I wrinkled my nose and, holding the container as far away from my body as I could, dropped it into the trash.
I left my room above the bar, clattering down metal stairs and splashing into a puddle. My boots sank into the muddy slurry. I looked out, towards the horizon, and my eyes darted up, up, up. Climbing from tree to ancient trees that were painted onto the sheer mountain face. That which seemed like a solid wall curved up and over my head, disappearing into a rolling grey mass. The clouds were light and dented, cotton with an internal glow, and only a few raindrops a second splashed down onto my face. A beautiful day.
I had been mopping up mud that customers had tracked into the general store when something bumped into the glass door. A deer, with its two kids. It stared at me with big black eyes.
“Awww hi!” I grinned; it stared aimlessly at me. Nostrils twitching as it smelt the glass.
There was a clatter behind me, a customer glowered at me from around the shelf. He was dripping water all over the floor. And his hood was up. He shushed me, whiskers twitching. “Don’t talk to animals—freak.” I narrowed my eyes and went back to mopping. Dunking the mop in the bucket, watching the dirt wriggle through the clean water. I glanced back at the deer, which nudged its kids, and walked off.
December 15th. I was out in the garden, knees and hands caked in mud, my sleeves rolled up even as cold rain pelted me. Even with my hood up, my hair was wet and stuck to my eyes, so I kept pushing it out of the way with the backs of my dirty hands. It been raining nonstop since June. Not even a small flurry of snow to interrupt it, though that was fine, I suppose; climate change was a thing, and usually snow comes in January. I dug through the dirt, plucking a plump worm out of the soil. I smiled and dropped it into my bucket of dirt. I needed worms for some winter fishing. I dug a little more and plucked another worm out, and another. I set the trowel aside and began moving the soil with my hands. I didn’t want to cut all these guys in half. I moved the handful of wiggling soil, and something in my gut turned.
The bottom of my hole was just filled with—skin. Thick off-pink tubes of wet, wiggling skin. Worms. Twisting and sliding over each other, wrapping around each other like rat tails, not even in soil. I grabbed the trowel and moved more dirt, gingerly. My face in a grimace.
I cleared a large area around the original hole; the whole bottom of the garden box was just worms. A record-breaking amount of worms, something a crappy Fox affiliate would write an article about. They just wiggled over each other, avoiding the soil. I wiped my hands on my coat and pants slowly. Fumbling my phone out of my pocket, I took a photo. The flash was on, brighter than the natural sunlight. For a second, all light was contained to that single cone; the shadows were disgusting, dark anti-worms writhed over their real brothers.
December 16th. I had a cold, so I didn’t go out much that day. I stayed inside and read Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation.
I was woken up by cars going by every couple of minutes. I checked out the windows; pick up trucks. Their brights danced through the trees and cast strange faces on the mountain walls. The sky was a black void swallowing the peaks of the mountains. Clouds so thick that neither stars nor moon cut through.
I closed the curtains in a huff.
There was a clatter at my door. I froze. Sucking breath and all sound into my lungs. Holding it until a cough almost forced its way out of me. In the silence, I heard scraping, slow, deliberate. High-pitched and screeching, occasionally interrupted, like a ball rolling down a rocky surface.
I moved slowly and cautiously. I went to my bed and retrieved the handgun from the nightstand. The cold metal in my palm did nothing to quiet the pounding in my head. Counting my breaths, I loaded it and, with a wince, cocked it. I walked to the front door and closed my eyes for ten years. I was imagining some horrific man, face like wax, eyes like a predator, pressed against the window and leering. Logically, I knew it would be a raccoon or bear. But I didn’t own a gun because it was easy to make me feel safe.
The scraping again. I peeked out the door window.
There was a buck. Full, proud antlers cast twisting, spindly shadows on the ground. Its teeth around my metal handrail. It wasn’t gnawing exactly, but scraping back and forth. Scrrrrrrrp— Scrrrrrrrp— My eyes watered.
I pounded on my door, “Hey!” I shouted, “Screw off!”
It stopped. Its pupils shrank.
“Get out of here! Go on!”
It let go of the handrail. Metal dust falling from its mouth, glittering in the porch light. It looked at me. It saw me. Slowly, it turned and walked away. The way it walked, though, swaying like it was on two legs, not four.
I did not sleep well for the rest of that night.
December 18th. Throughout the last day and a half, the valley was rocked with the crack of rifle fire. Coordinated and constant. Expanding from somewhere in the far forest before ricocheting off the mountain walls and cloud ceiling. The clouds. They pressed down upon us like a lid, perfectly flush with both sides of the valley. There were no imperfections anymore; no divets or puffs or curves. The sky was smooth, flat, and featureless. It sat so low that it erased the upper slopes of the mountains entirely, swallowing them whole along with the sun. Things like noon and dusk were indistinguishable, aside from a slow dimming of the light.
Pillars of smoke drifted lazily up from the forest. Maybe twelve, or twenty. Rising in slow, straight, expanding columns without twisting or thinning. There was no wind to stop the columns from connecting with the ceiling. They were holding up the sky.
I didn’t want to go outside anymore. I sat on my bed, tapping my foot, holding my gun in one hand, and thinking about writhing shadows. This is not why I moved out here. I made sure all my lamps were charged and that I had enough candles. I could just wait out this atmospheric river, as long as the valley didn’t flood. I tried not to cry, I tried not to be angry at myself, I tried to find my glucagon, I tried to find someone to blame. I failed.
Reluctantly, I answered the knocking at my door. The sound muffled by the incessant drumming of rain. It was a man, David, I think. One of the many, many hunters in the valley. He had his hood pulled down low; I couldn’t see his eyes with the way he angled his head. Rain lashed at his back in thin sheets, sliding off the waterproof coat and dripping in sharp arcs onto the threshold. He shifted around, blocking the weather itself from getting inside. He pulled down his surgical mask to speak.
“I heard. You had.” He kept choking up. It couldn’t be the gun in my hand; he had his own slung over his shoulder. “A lot of worms?”
“Yeah. But, not anymore. I got rid of them.”
“Oh.”
“Well, you stay safe.” I went to close the door.
He pressed a gloved hand against it. “Will you be coming to… the bonfire. Tonight?”
“Bonfire?”
“Yes. Celebratory.”
“Oh, are you sure that’s safe with the storm?”
“We’re sure.” I still couldn’t see his eyes.
“Well, I’ll think about it.”
He turned abruptly and clattered down the stairs. His hands balled into fists as he took a sharp turn around the concrete wall and disappeared. He had left mud where he had touched my door.
The world dimmed as somewhere above the clouds, the sun set. I moved slowly towards the largest gathering of people I had seen in a very long time. There were maybe forty, forty-five, gathered around a bonfire roaring in the downpour. The only source of warmth and light in the starless night. Sparks twisted up from the fire, hovering feet above the fire, twinkling in the blackness before winking out.
Rain pelted the ground, making every shuffling, unwilling step forward I took treacherous. I pointed my headlight out towards the river. Despite the raging storm of the last few months, the water level hadn’t risen much, if at all. In fact, the river was completely calm, almost unmoving, the glassy water reflecting the all-consuming void above.
I turned to the fire. People shuffled around, heads down, hoods pulled low. Most were hunters, with the stupid camo jackets, and rifles slung over their shoulders. I did not see their faces. The fire hissed and popped, and rain splattered against coats, but the hunters did not speak. I willed my hand off of my gun.
There were pop-up canopies, but nobody stood under them. I got closer. Hidden from the rain were five rectangular shallow pits. Uniform and equally spaced. At the bottom of each pit was a layer of tinder, laid like log cabins. Also under the canopies were jugs of gasoline. I willed my hand off of my gun.
Two pickups roared up. I hadn’t noticed their approach; the rain was falling ever harder. Everyone turned to the trucks. The tailgate was popped, and a hunter retrieved a large and bulbous item, slinging it over their shoulder. They moved towards me, towards the pits. And as they passed in front of me, the firelight caught the object just the right way, illuminating it.
It was a doe. Its fur long, like a dog’s, and patchy. Bone white. Firelight made it glow against the encroaching darkness. Where there was fur missing, I could see individual pores in its skin, oozing a reddish-black tar. Then its head passed across my eyeline. I could clearly see its teeth, pressed tightly together, frozen in death.
Oh my god, I could see its teeth.
Its mouth had been brutalized, lips and cheek torn away, revealing gums and teeth, and skull underneath, all sticky and caked in tar. A half-lidded eye stared at me.
I drew my gun.
The hunter dropped the doe into the pit, and more followed. So many more.
“You should leave.” A man from behind me whispered, almost whimpered.
I turned; he was wearing a full face respirator; the plastic was fogged and streaked with rain. I could see the fire in the reflection, the fire standing completely still.
“What did you do to those deer?” I was crying now, who the fuck cares.
“They’re sick.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. “You should leave.”
“I need to leave.”
December 19th. I dreamt of my old suburban home, of men with guns standing out on the lawn, and under the orange tree. They had these things, like sharp hooks connected to rope. They tossed them through the windows, glass shattering. I heard my mom scream. The hooks flew at me, biting onto my arms and legs, pulling me down the hall and through the window. Men with guns were dragging me through the woods, into the wetlands.
They weren’t men, they were just boys. I dreamt of them poking me, giggling, playing with my hair, trying to win my favor. Giving me beer and a dog to pet. They were shooting their guns in the air, whooping and hollering as my little legs ran through the marsh.
Snap. I snapped my ankle in a watery hole and fell face-first into a bear trap.
The power was out, a notice on my door informed me that the anaerobic digester that powered the valley had simply stopped digesting. It felt like someone had just broken every one of my ribs individually, but at least I knew for sure now that leaving was the right choice.
I grabbed the straps of my pack, tugging it over my shoulders, feeling the weight dig into my spine. The rain had picked up again, and I pulled the hood of my protective shell lower. I stomped around the Jeep, dragging my feet through the mud as I carried the box filled with all my personal belongings to the car. I swung the door open and shoved it into the back, the cardboard now softened by the rain. My hands slipped against the slick surface. I hoped nothing had gotten wet.
The pack followed. I swung it off my back and onto the passenger’s seat. I crawled over the bag and behind the steering wheel, then reached over and slammed the door shut.
I gripped the steering wheel tight, letting out a long, slow breath. I slid the keys into the ignition and turned. Nothing. Just the whining click of a dead battery. My arms felt like jelly. I took three deep breaths. The constant drumming of the rain wasn’t helping; it was taunting me. I reached over and popped open the glove compartment, retrieving the jumper kit. I checked the charge level.
Dead.
My whole body turned to jelly. I slowly let my head fall onto the steering wheel, gasping in despair, like a fish out of water. Fear crawled through me, sinking its sticky black claws into the inside of my skin.
After I had collected myself, I realized not all was lost; there was a garage nearby, where there should be more car batteries. I stepped out into the rain and manually locked the door. I balled my fists tight as I trudged the mile stretch to the garage.
The path narrowed into a churned-up trail of mud and puddles. I ducked under low branches, the needles tickling my face. I stood still for a moment. There was no whisper of wind through the evergreen needles. I looked up, and the trees didn’t sway.
I walked faster.
The forest peeled away around the garage; it sat on a long strip of concrete. It was nice to walk on something other than dirt for a little while.
The garage was quaint, a relic of a simpler time, like it had been torn straight off a dusty main street and tossed here. Its red brick walls were streaked with moss and rainwater. A faded sign above the single bay read “Geyser Valley Auto Repair.”
A sound scraped across the concrete, soft at first, like someone dragging their feet. From around the corner of the garage, something emerged. A deer, diseased and hollowed, its fur patchy and caked with mud and congealed blood. Its eyes were dull and wet, pupils contracted.
It had its face pressed up against the rough brick of the garage wall with all its weight as it walked forward. Slowly, it slid the side of its head across the wall, raw flesh tearing away against the rough surface. Layers of skin and flesh stretched and snapped with this movement. And I could see dark, disgusting muscle beneath the flayed skin, glistening with rain and tar.
I drew my pistol and aimed at the tormented creature. It jerked its head to look at me, removing its face from the wall. The deer stepped forward, hooves clattering as it dragged them across the asphalt. Its bloodless, mauled maw grinned at me, despite most of its teeth being missing; it grinned. I looked into the eyes of that wretched thing, and I saw something more than predatory. It was not hunting me; it hated me. It leaned back, then leaned forward, like a runner preparing to— It charged me. Barely in control of its own legs, I screamed as that mutilated beast from hell barreled towards me.
Each bullet leapt forward with a deafening clap of thunder. The first grazed its hind quarters, the second its ear, the third and fourth buried firmly into its skull. Its legs gave out, jaw slamming into the concrete. Its eyes rolled, and its cheeks twitched as the hatred drained from its body.
I confined myself to the janitor’s closet of the garage. Sitting on the floor, hiding from the whole world in the dark. I sat on my hands to avoid the urge to draw my gun. I counted to ten, then one hundred, then a thousand. I thought about that night, the stink of the swamp, of the beer on my own breath. I thought about why I moved here. I counted to one hundred again.
There were no car batteries in the entire shop. I did take some double As, though, and a couple of candy bars, one I ate immediately. As I loaded up my bag, I tried not to look out the front of the shop, at the corpse of that thing.
As I walked back, I decided what I needed to do. I would have to hike out of the valley. It was only ten hours to Port Angeles, and I could probably hitch a ride sooner than that. I looked up at the flat, grey ceiling. It had crept down another hundred feet or so.
I could already feel the cold creeping up my legs by the time I had gotten back to the Jeep. I took my waterproof pants and a new pair of socks and changed in the Jeep. I took my most important belongings out of the cardboard box and nestled them carefully into my backpack. I secured my gun in its holster. Ten hours to Port Angeles.
The rain was calm and drizzly. The most calm it had been for months. And the thick trees shielded the trail from most of the rain, giving me some nice, solid ground to work with. I decided to walk as far away from the river as possible, because while it should have been crashing over rocks and rapids, it stood completely still. I tossed a stray maple leaf into the river, and it sank like a rock.
There was a sharp increase in altitude as I reached Goblins Gate. I sat down on a rock and adjusted my pack and re-tied my boots. The last thing I wanted was to get blisters long before arriving at Elwha. I shivered and grinned, happy to be out on the trail again. Then I looked up at the vast, empty forest. I felt my body go cold and clammy. I sat still for a while, and I heard… Nothing. Nothing at all. The entire valley was in an airtight vacuum.
In my panic, I had left at three in the afternoon. That gave me two hours of daylight that were quickly slipping away. The greyness above me dimmed, and shadows along the mountain faces began to stretch. As the greyness once again turned into an infinitely hungry void, I clicked my headlamp on, tossing shadows across the trail. Rain flickered through my beam. I wished I had a lantern; a bubble of light seemed much more comforting than what I had.
The trail became a shifting, uncertain path. Roots spilled out over the trail. And puddles mirrored the sky, turning into endless dark holes, even as rain slammed into them, their surface remained undisturbed.
I stopped to fish out some food for a snack. The sky had swallowed the light completely again. My headlamp was the only source of light in the entire valley at that moment.
I tripped over something, I stumbled and struggled to regain my balance, my backpack swaying and tilting. I looked back to see what it was. A dead mountain lion. The large cat had been gored in the side, and its skull and legs had been crushed. Trampled. Flies covered the corpse like a coat, but like the lion, they too sat still. Occasionally bristling, but otherwise still. It was only six hours to Port Angeles now.
At the edge of the trail, ferns had been flattened, and farther out, whole swathes of underbrush had been folded over. I gripped my pack tight. My headlamp darted around. Every time I cut through the darkness on one side of the trail, the wrenching in my gut said something horrific was happening on the other side, and I twisted my head to make sure.
On the trail ahead of me were clumps of dirty fur; I toed it. Bone white.
My whole body was shaking as I kicked my pace up a notch. I clenched my fists so tight I left dents in my palms through my gloves. The only sound I could hear was the rain, the squelch of mud, and my thoughts thudding in my head. My skin prickled, and I wanted to tear it off.
And one other noise. The rustling of leaves, heavy panting that wasn’t my own. I turned, slowly, very slowly. Two eyes glistened in the dark. I turned more. Two pairs of two eyes. Five pairs. Twenty. The shadowy bodies they belonged to were completely still. I didn’t dare risk pointing the light at them directly. I felt their hot white gaze peel me apart one layer at a time. I turned slowly the other way, more deer there, too. I willed my foot forward, but it was bolted in place. All those times I had frozen a deer in place with my brights, this is what it felt like. With a force of will enough to conquer the whole world, I took a tedious, sliding step forward. And so did they. Moving silently in the dark. There was a sharp exhale from behind me, and I whirled around. The deer all around me leaped forward when I moved, right up to the edge of the light.
Before me stood a tall and once proud bull Roosevelt Elk, one of the most dangerous animals in the Olympic National Park. Its sickly white fur glowed in the light, and the shadows snuck into its sunken eyes, making them appear even deeper. Its lower jaw had been torn off, and its tongue hung uselessly. Fresh gashes in its hide oozed black tar. And its antlers and hooves glistened with blood.
It made a low moaning noise, its throat convulsed, and with a gurgled black bile expelled itself through its ruined mouth. It turned its head, and the light caught its eye. The most pure vitriolic hatred I have ever felt reached out from its eyes and throttled me. My body felt oh so light as I spun on my heel and ran for my life.
My little legs ran down that trail, slipping and sliding and righting myself even as the deer flew through the trees alongside me, limbs twisting and cracking.
I ran, ran, ran.
Deer around me fell in the darkness as their unnatural gait caused them to shatter their own legs. But I could feel the bull gaining on me, its panting synchronized with mine.
My legs burned, my lungs burned. Shadows whipped by me, and the rain picked up. Wind tugged at my face, and thunder cracked somewhere far above. Moonlight dappled the ground and trees. I looked up, there in the sky, unburned by clouds shone a round, silver disc. The moon.
I gasped in relief, then horror, as I felt my foot slide into a hole. My ankle snapped, and I fell face-first onto asphalt.
I screamed in pain. Then cried for help.
I felt the bull loom over me. I dragged myself forward, slapping the ground. I felt a liquid land on the back of my hood, it slid down the waterproof surface and landed by my hands. Bile.
It stepped over me, then turned around. I looked up at the thing, and slowly crept my hand towards my belt, towards my gun.
Hot hatred squirmed in its eyes; it expelled some more bile and then placed its hoof on my left hand. Fuck. I tried to yank my hand away, I tried to roll away. But this was a seven-hundred-pound creature; I was pinned.
We both let out a low moan of pain. It brought its head close. Teeth that remained gleaming in the moonlight. I looked away from its eyes, and the pain in my hand grew suddenly sharper. I frantically locked eyes with it again.
As it crushed my hand, it told me everything. I screamed, and it bellowed in return. The pain spread, and I felt pressure in my jaw, shooting sparks along my spine, the weight of antlers and of consciousness. I felt myself fall from a cliff onto the rocks below, but I still refused to die, I refused even to decay. I felt what had taken hold.
In the deepest forests, it festers in that dark soil, untouched by sun, unmolested by man. There are no drying winds, cleansing fire, or winter to arrest its growth. And so it grows, learning through deer, and moss, and all the green things. It is black mold in a child’s bedroom, a dog trapped in a crawl space in the summer. Life without interruption curdles into resentment of all other life.
There was shouting and gunfire. The bull darted away. People picked me up, took my pack. They splinted my ankle and called an ambulance.
December 20th. I told the doctors what happened when they asked me. I… Toned it down. Said that there was some prion affecting deer and humans in the North Forest Region. They nodded along until I mentioned the NFR.
“Where’s that?” they asked.
“Um, Geyser Valley,” I answered.
They sent me to a ward in Seattle for better care.
Everyone was telling me I had hallucinated the place I lived in for the last five years. They determined I was perfectly stable aside from my insistence that the NFR exists.
It didn’t really matter, as long as they investigated the disease.
I looked out at Lake Washington. It was still as glass, the clouds a lid pressing down on Seattle.
