Far enough north, the winter seems like a sentient creature. Its ragged breath can make the trees tremble. It howls and moans as it whips snowy tears through the biting cold air. The winter feeds, like any other predator. It consumes the weak and ill-prepared like a wolf picking off stragglers from a herd of sheep. 

On bitter nights, when my knees ache and I sit with my feet towards the fire, I wonder how my ancestors ever survived. I wonder why they possibly thought they should build a town here. But humans are relentless in their quest to conquer nature. Even the most inhospitable tundra must be settled and tamed. 

Pickett is a small town. I wouldn’t expect you’d ever driven past it, unless you make a habit of driving through Montana, near the Canadian border. It’s a town full of ranchers. Old cowpokes and farmers who’ve been waking with the sun to till the land their whole lives. It’s about as close knit a community as you’re likely to find. Idle gossip is the only social currency that matters, and anyone with secrets best bury them deeper than bedrock. 

That’s why the official records say Oliver Watson died of natural causes. Exposure on a cold winter night. The records don’t say nothing about the mangled chickens, lost pets, or the missing girl that led up to his death. 

It’s been so many years since it all happened. Anyone who remembers never talks about it. The young people think it’s just a story to tell around the campfire. Another brick in the endless lore surrounding that godforsaken stretch of train tracks in the rolling fields outside of town. 

The tracks don’t connect to anything, you see. It’s a two mile stretch of steel, starting from nowhere and leading right back to it. 

There’s no shortage of stories about how the railroad was gonna come through and make Pickett a much bigger town. Stories about con artists who stole good people’s money and did just a few days work on a grand construction project before disappearing. The truth of it is probably lost to time. Pickett is too insignificant to have proper history books about it. Local myths are as good as fact, as there’s nothing to dispute them. 

I gave up on trying to correct most stories years ago. People think I’m some crazy old man, ranting and raving about things that couldn’t possibly be true. 

But sixty ain’t that old. I’ve got a perfectly good grasp on my mental faculties. And what happened to Ollie was so terrifying and downright bizarre that it’s been seared into my brain for life. 

Coyotes will sometimes lure domestic dogs out into the woods by playing with them. A single coyote will approach the dog, ears forward, tail up, acting friendly as can be. It may even roll on its back and expose its belly in a show of submission, to draw the dog into a bout of mock wrestling. Gradually, the games will push farther and farther away from home. Deep into the forest. That’s when the rest of the pack appears. Clusters. The dog’s new friend becomes its executioner as the pack begins to attack. 

This is a story about my sisters. Juniper and Marigold. June and Mary. Twins born on the first day of September. Two and a half years older than me. 

We lived in rural Wisconsin. Our father was a long haul trucker and our mother waited tables at the Denny’s. Mary, June and I were great explorers, charting the woods behind our modest home with construction paper and dulled crayons. We spent most of our time playing outside, sun, rain or snow. 

There was safety in numbers. We were always back in time for dinner. In retrospect, I’m not even certain our mother knew just how far from home we strayed. 

What follows are the transcribed contents of a video tape that I, Silas Smith, found in my attic on November 1st, 2017.

I am thirty-six years old and I live in Illinois. I have lived in the same house with various roommates since 2003. This is not the first time I've cleaned out my attic, though it has probably been several years. I do not know when the tape was placed there.

I have tried to salvage the visual parts of the recording. I have even taken it to a few professionals, but thus far, it seems like the only thing that remains is the audio. There are parts where the tape fizzles out to static and on occasion the speech simply becomes unintelligible.

It is my voice on the tape, though I have no recollection of recording it or saying the things I do. There is also a second voice. It is masculine and unfamiliar. Carl, is what I refer to him as in the recording.

Nobody in my family or friend group knows a man named Carl.

Despite my desire to edit for clarity, I have left my sentences in the disjointed state I spoke them.

I do not have any answers for you as to what this all means. I have no idea when it was recorded.

All I can say for certain is that I am deeply afraid.

When you read this sentence, whose voice are you hearing?

Is it your own? Perhaps softer, slightly warped like it's gone through too many layers of post-production tinkering. You never can quite hear your own voice as others do. It sounds different hitting an eardrum at a distance than it does springing from your own lips. It's just like the way you've never actually seen yourself. Not first hand, anyway. Only pictures or reflections.

It's not a good idea to look in the mirror at night.

In the darkness, still trying to shake off the daze of sleep, vision can play tricks.

The eye can't process fluid motion. It takes about twenty pictures a second, and your brain stitches them together into a film reel. Perhaps even more interesting, your eyes don't stay still. Even if you're staring straight ahead, they make jerky little micro-movements. Always trying to take in your surroundings. Always searching for threats.

The pictures your eyes take are actually upside down. They flip vertically before you register them.

Trusting your limited senses can lead to half truths and willful ignorance of what might exist in the gaps we aren't equipped to process.