I should have listened when the mountain man told me “there’s things in these woods Miss. Things you don’t want to awaken.”
“Heed the warnings of the Appalachian foothills,” he urged me.
Eyes forward.
Ignore what you hear.
Never look back.
But that sound. The cacophonous shrieks from some devil that stalked me through the trees. It called to me as a crow calls for its mate.
Only, there were no crows here. Not a whisper from the living, save for a ghastly wind roaring through my ears like a raging sea.
If only I hadn’t taken notice, turned my head to see what creature beckoned me. The death knell of its horrid cry, cawing in a rhythmic chime of a ticking clock.
Stare straight ahead.
Eyes focused on the trail before me. Deep breaths. Just make it to the clearing. Don’t look back until your doors are locked.
From the corner of my eye, the shadow of blackened wings and enlarged claws reached for me. The voice of my long dead mother singing to me in a monstrous softness made my heart race, the chill like ice running down my spine.
Pay it no mind. Do not look at it.
Once more the caw of a wild winged beast seemed to shout my name with a blood curdling screech that slowed my blood.
I was so close to the clearing, my fence line just within view through the ashen sky only illuminated by the sliver of the waxing moon.
So close.
And yet, I looked.
Hovering in the canopy were the red eyes glowering, fixated on every labored step, every jolt of my defective body, every sharp inhale of my short breath.
It stalked closer as I quickened my pace, making a dash for the clearing, towards the safety of home.
The deep bellow rumbled through the trees and the stinging gusts of hell’s winds stirred from its beating wings as it took flight.
It was ready to dive into me, just waiting for the moment my senses were completely overtaken by terror, waiting for me to seize up and accept my fate.
There was no outrunning it with these stiffened limbs of mine. Each step was a chore as my body fought against my mind, how I had so desperately wanted to stroll through the woods as I had always done.
I didn’t let my physical limitations stop me. Diagnosis or not, I would not surrender what I loved. I just hadn’t anticipated how long the trek would take, how many breaks I needed to catch my shallow breath, how long it would take my breaking body to recover as I trudged forward.
I should have been home hours ago, long before the darkness could stalk me. Everyone knew Blue Ridge was no place to be when the sun descended and the demons of the night came out to play.
Everyone except me, the transplant not native to Georgia and its stories.
With every step my bones ached and I felt my body seize and rebel against me. My extremities hardening as if they were turning to wood.
I hobbled faster, as fast as my gnarled feet would take me as I felt its breath hot and venomous against my neck.
Don’t stop. Whatever you do, keep moving.
I stopped, another rule broken. Perhaps if it were like a bear, my best bet was to stop entirely. Play dead. That wouldn’t be too far of a stretch, anyway. I contemplated dropping to the ground like a rag doll, but I knew getting up swiftly to flee wouldn’t be an option.
The clicking of its beak chattered by my ear as it smelled me, tasted me.
No running. No escaping through speed or strength. My only hope was a mercy kill on its part.
If only it knew.
Blood pooled in my chest as I felt this thing grazing its talons against my upper arm.
“If it catches you,” the mountain man had said, “pray that it be quick.”
Please. Let it be quick.
Feathers ruffled with its wings outstretched and suddenly… it vanished.
I wanted to turn back, to see where it was. What it was.
Run.
I was never an avid jogger, but I suppose the adrenaline electrified me with just enough energy to push through my pain and dash into the clearing.
My hand fumbled with the keys in my leggings pocket as I narrowly approached my back porch and barricaded myself shut inside the safety of my home.
In the distance I could still hear its cry mocking me, letting me know that this was just the beginning of its sadistic game.
I wish I could say that was the last I had heard of the creature, but its harrowing cries tormented my brain for days – weeks – after our meeting. Its visage infested my dreams, and in my waking days the echo of its glowing eyes haunted my senses. I’d turn to catch a glimpse of it, only to be met with nothing. No creature. No demented screeching. No wind to scratch at my cheek. As the taunting ensued, I began to wonder if I had really seen anything that night or perhaps it was the hallucinations of my rotting mind playing its final tricks on me.
The doctors had said as much, that I’d feel myself slipping as it took a fatal hold of me. Perhaps it was my own fault for refusing treatment, and letting the chips fall where they may. I saw no sense in prolonging the inevitable and wasting away from the chemicals poisoning me when I could live out my final days with dignity and grace.
That fearsome creature must have smelled death on me, must have decided I wasn’t worth its energy. Maybe it knew I would soon be dead. Was that why it let me go? Because I’d no longer be a threat? No longer invading its woods? Nature would take its course soon enough so I must not be worth the trouble.
Then again, why would it continue to mock me with its call?
Those ravenous cries in the chilled wind, more ominous than the crack of ice before an avalanche.
Curiosity always got the better of me, and I went searching for any information I could find on this creature. If for nothing else than my own peace of mind, just something to confirm that I wasn’t going crazy. Something – anything – that told me this wasn’t the scared machination of a dying woman not yet ready to yield to that brilliant light at the end of the tunnel.
Searching through every agonizing moment of that encounter in my fragile memory, I could recall the details – large black wings, red eyes, a beak protruding from its humanoid face, shrieks of wind and the terrifying cries of a bird.
Not just any bird. A corvid, a raven. But much, much louder and far unholier a sound than a raven could summon.
Scouring the internet blogs, stumbling down rabbit holes of conspiracies and ghost stories, I found something promising that corroborated my own memory.
Kalona Ayélisgi. A Raven Mocker.
From what little I could gather, this demonic creature is regarded by the Cherokee tribe as one of its most evil spirits. One that preys on the sick and dying.
My stomach dropped. That is why it had fixated on me. The sick and dying.
Part of me didn’t want to continue my research. I didn’t want to know more, and yet…
This creature can take several forms – a raven, a person – typically feeble and old, or some grotesque mixture of the two. Black wings, red eyes, beak protruding from its humanoid face.
And when it finds its prey?
It waits. It stalks.
As you lie asleep in your bed, it comes for you. An invisible force, undetectable to anyone but a Cherokee shaman. Creeping closer to your bedside as you battle sickness, it pounces – flinging you from your blankets and crushing you against the floor. Reveling in the torture of your mangled body as you gasp for air under its groteqsue talons.
Death is quick… once it decides to kill you, but not after it’s had its fun with you. Flaying your skull open, you finally succumb to the Raven Mocker’s primal desires. And then with surgical precision, steals the heart from your disheveled corpse. Its voracious thirst for eternity devours your heart, and with it, your life essence. Whatever years you have left, it takes for itself – like the remaining minutes on a parking meter.
It smelled the death in my body. It had marked me, waiting for me to ripen like a grape from the vine. A skilled farmer ready for the harvest. It had known before the doctors had confirmed my worst fears. Somehow it sensed my sickness, and it is taking immense pleasure in haunting me until it is ready to pluck me and squeeze my juices for its wine.
Perhaps it had sized me up. A young woman in her prime years with a sickness inside her that made her lose control of her body. A pesky immune system boycotting itself. It had watched me struggle in the woods as I tried to flee, my legs wobbly and my face contorted in pain with every movement. A delicious meal with decades to harvest for itself.
If only it knew.
Shamans are hard to come by here, especially one skilled enough to kill one of these indestructible monsters. Time is a luxury not afforded to me. Even if I could find a medicine man to bless me with charms, what could that buy me? A few days?
It had been five and a half months since the six month prognosis. Borrowed time was all I had.
Every day now, its ear piercing cries – the pangs of hunger and desperation in them – stalked my evenings. Louder, closer with every night that past.
It knew.
The fruit is ripe.
Harvest night is coming, and it wants me to know.
My affairs are in order, my loose ends tied. All that was left is the waiting. Waiting for the things I still refused to accept.
The hallucinations are becoming more frequent. Visions of my mother, my grandfather, even my beloved cat. Open arms calling me to join them. I’m not ready. Then again, I suppose no one is. I fought back the angels of my mind with such vigor that I wonder if I could battle the demon after my spirit.
I always wanted to do something with my life, something meaningful. Dreams of falling in love, having a family of my own. Being an inspiration who uplifts others. Had I defied these odds, my story of medical marvel would touch so many lives. To leave behind a legacy that could help the world once I was ready to enter the Great Beyond many, many years from now.
There is no point in dwelling on the crushed dreams of a life unrealized. Fate decided to cut it short, barely any life to live. Anger for the unfair hand I was dealt would not be the last emotion I feel as I breathe my last breath.
I thought about that creature, how many lives it must have siphoned. How ancient it must be, how insatiable that appetite for immortality must run through its blood. The blood of the innocent souls it has stolen so greedily.
How it would never stop unless someone could manage to kill it.
The blogs never tell you how to vanquish the evil; only a bunch of speculations and rumors of a week-long window between feedings. If a shaman were to spot it in its true form, or if it failed to feed within a week… perhaps it was possible this thing could die.
Something meaningful with my life – however short lived. I don’t want to die, but I can’t change that I am. I’d rather do something with my last bit of time to save others who have a chance to live. Let them keep their years, let them live long and happy lives not all of us were afforded.
Seven days. My window was seven days. If I could hold out just long enough, maybe I could put an end to this. End its life with mine.
But I wondered, if the enchanted skills of the medicine men and Cherokee warriors couldn’t manage to kill these beasts, what chance do I have?
It was like a mountain lion hunting a rabbit, and my only hope was that my bones would lodge in its throat. Destroy it from the inside. The creature had marked me. I couldn’t run or hide from it. When the time comes I won’t be able to see it as it cowardly creeps in on me through the guise of invisibility.
Of course this could all be a fool’s errand to hope that I could somehow save others from this curse, but I have to try.
The bile and blood rose in my throat, occurring more frequently as the discomfort in my body grew every day. I’ll be lucky if I have a week left in me.
I left my bedroom window open, and I laid in my bed, watching the full moon glowing in the night sky as the crickets sang me a final lullaby and the scent of the honeysuckles beneath my windowsill wafted into the room.
Truly, it was a peaceful night to die.
Until the screeching of the midnight banshee’s caws rattled the foundation, and I clutched my ears as a strong gust of wind burst through the window.
It was here.
Somewhere.
My eyes scanned the room, but they could see nothing. The hair standing on the back of my neck told me that I wasn’t alone.
I stared straight ahead at the foot of my bed, unsure if I was making eye contact with the Raven Mocker, but I wanted it to know that I would not go gently into that good night.
The room grew cold, too quiet. I could hear my blood dripping through my veins. The crickets trembled into silence.
Make a move, I dare you.
Perhaps I caught it by surprise by not sleeping sweetly on my deathbed, but rather sitting up and ready for a confrontation my body couldn’t dream of winning.
Seven days.
There was pressure on my body as I felt its razor-sharp claws dig into my flesh and rip me from my sheets. It flung me in the air where I hit the slanted ceiling and crumpled to the ground, blood pouring from my mouth. I spit it on my floor and glared into the empty air.
Had my circumstances been different, I might have begged for my life. I might have tried to run. I might have emptied my savings to hire however many shamans I needed to kill it.
It stalked up to my broken body. Thanks to the concoction of sedatives the hospice nurse had left for me, I could hardly feel the extent of my injuries.
There was no rationalizing with it. There was no bargaining with it. It wouldn’t hear my pleas through its insatiable hunger.
There was no questioning if I deserved this end. Evil befalls innocence every day. Good people find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time whether that be in an oncologist’s office on a Tuesday morning or a midnight stroll in the woods.
There was no point in contemplating my morality and winding back the clock to right my wrongs, to pray for mercy. No time for that now. Deserved or not, this was my reality; but there would be no acceptance if there was still a fight in me after it feasted on my flesh.
Go on. Do it.
The low growl that preceded the shriek into the Heavens told me that it had heard me.
An intense pain shot through my skull as its talons gripped my scalp. Not even the sedative cocktail could mask the pain as I felt it tear my skull apart with ease.
I heard my skull crack and my skin begin ripping at the seams, and a hoarse scream left my lips.
And then numb darkness devoured me.
It must have taken my heart because life slipped back into me as I watched through something else’s eyes the mutilation of my corpse. Stealing my bones for itself.
Selfish.
Greedy.
Unbelievably stupid.
Seven days.
I only needed to fight inside the mountain lion for seven days.
And surely, when it discovers my bones are riddled with cancer and won’t last more than a couple days, it will realize its fatal mistake.
My bones are lodged in your throat.
I had to trust that my body was as decayed as the doctor’s believed. For years they dismissed me as having nothing more than Rheumatoid Arthritis. Constantly berated for asking questions about my body, insisting they knew best. Begging them to assess me because the medicines never worked, and being rejected as a young woman who knew nothing about medicine.
By the time they discovered just how brittle my bones had become, completely depleted of marrow, it was too late. Too late to rewind the clock, to put me on infusions, to put me on a donor list.
I had my life to be angry for their folly, but my death was glad for it. If it meant stopping this monstrosity once and for all.
Once it was done harvesting whatever scraps it could scavenge from me, I felt it lift into the air and through the window to who knows where it was taking us.
It went back to its lair in a sunken cave somewhere in the woods where it plucked the bones from its body. Our body.
I wondered if it could hear me scream in agony as it ripped its rotting flesh from its horrid form in exchange for the paper mache carcass it stole from me. The cave was unnervingly quiet as it performed some ritual, as if blessing the gods of whatever Hell this thing came from for the gift it received.
Whatever I was now – an essence, a spirit – was nothing but raw hatred as I felt trapped inside a body I could not control as it reassembled itself with my parts.
Seven days.
Just last one arduous week in this flesh prison, and then I can find peace once it’s dead.
Let it use your bones, I told myself.
Let it have the years you would have lived.
All seven days of it.
The ritual ended as the sun rose above the horizon, and it retreated deeper into its lair. While it slept, I stayed awake, swimming in darkness, wondering how long it would take for my bones to take effect.
I had one advantage that the Raven Mocker did not. I lived with these bones, and I knew what was about to happen over the next week.
And so the race of whose will was stronger was afoot.
It awoke as dusk approached, and I felt our collective body stir with familiar pains that had been my daily norm.
Six days.
It will be dead in six days.
The cracking of its new bones caused it to lash out into a scream, not one of ravenous gluttony that I had heard for weeks, but rather one of the heartbreaking realization that its latest meal wasn’t about to settle.
Gnawing and gnashing, it writhed into a new amalgamation. Taking on a human visage that felt all too familiar. Stepping out into the woods and approaching a nearby stream, it looked into the moonlit reflection.
I stared at a perfect recreation of my body through eyes that were not mine. Not only did it take my bones and my spirit, but it took my face. Was it intentional? Or had I willed it?
I hoped it was the latter. If it appeared during the day in my body, there’s a small sliver of hope that I could take control. Pilot this body until the six days passed and it was dead.
Five days.
I suppose with its belly full of my essence, there was no dire need to feed. It was content to live with the false knowledge that I had bestowed it many long years. Gifted it those years set aside for falling in love, raising a family, growing old.
How foolish.
It flew into the woods, silently stalking for anyone drenched in the stench of decay. The air was sweet, but I could smell the scent of every creature around me through this being’s heightened abilities. It seemed to bask in the moonlight and enjoyed taking flight under the stars. How unfair for this devil to live so freely on the stolen years of the sick and innocent. I hated it for it.
Four days.
It took three days for my decaying bones to catch up with the creature, as it limped out of the cave. The clicking of its beak was almost a string of obscenities while it hobbled back towards the stream and stared at its reflection. At me.
I told you I wasn’t going down without a fight.
The gnarled talons swatted at my watery reflection. It had taken everything from me, what else could it do to me now?
I know if you die that I will die. I wish it.
It splashed at the water once more, our mouth opening into a horrendous scream. Those pesky, frail legs wobbled underneath its weight.
That will teach you not to take things that don’t belong to you.
The sound from its beak seemed to scream “what did you do to me?”
And feeling its life force clash with mine, I replied.
“What did we do to us?”
Three days.
We woke up ravenously famished, and we wanted to hunt. We cursed the human girl’s defective bones that crippled us. Unable to fly in our weakened form.
“Good,” that part of her spirit that clung to our chest seemed to say.
We were hungry. We would die.
Three days. We have three days.
We have to feed. We have to persist past the shriveling limbs.
She was young. She should have had so many long and delicious years to give us.
Yes, I should have.
But she only gave us days. She tricked us. We need to feed. We must feed to survive.
You have survived long enough.
Her spirit still torments us. Her bones are brittle and fragile. We can’t hunt with brittle bones.
We must rest, gather our strength before we can hunt and feed.
Two days.
We can’t get out of the cave. The pain. We are so tired, but we must rise. We must seek food. They are so easy to kill if we can just push through the pain.
The clock is ticking.
She continues to taunt us, challenge us. She mocks us with her jests.
Each day her light dwindles, and she becomes more of us. While she torments us, thinking she’s oh so clever to have fooled us into feasting on her, the more she becomes us.
Tomorrow we will be one in the same, and she will not fight us in our quest for food.
Tomorrow we shall be Kalona Ayélisgi.
One day.
We made it to our favorite hunting ground, while she whispered her protests. The pulling and prodding inside our chest as she tried to stall our legs. These legs are as brittle as caked dirt now.
Our hunt would be challenging, but not impossible. As her essence fades into us, fully absorbing into us… we will feed.
You will not feed today. Not while there is still fight in me.
She wishes so gravely for us to die. Even the parts of her that have succumbed to us. We did not expect her to hold on this long.
Our breathing is so labored, every step a chore. We remember why we let her go that day.
We are her.
You are me.
Her greatest revenge, making us live as she did. We curse her for it.
The sun is almost up. You are losing time.
We found a delicious victim, not too far from here. If we can just walk there.
You can try.
The never-ending taunts and mockery from her. We hate it. We detest her. With every painful step forward, we curse her. Our cries fill the sky with her name as she laughs inside our chest.
Just a few more steps, we must push ourselves. The sun is nearing the horizon. We must fight.
You won’t make it.
You mean we won’t make it. We couldn’t catch our breath, and we collapsed on the trail. Our heart…fading.
Go gentle into that good night.
We are so hungry. So cold. So much darkness… so much nothing.
I jolted straight up, panting as air rushed through my lungs.
Has it all been a dream? Is it over? Am I in the Great Beyond?
Looking around, I don’t see the body of the creature. My fingers study every crevice of my face. I am in my body, but this body is healthy, strong, invigorated. Powerful.
At long last, I have found peace. The Raven Mocker is vanquished. It will no longer prey on the innocent, and I can relax knowing that I had won. I have bested the unkillable creature.
Its body is nowhere to be found, but I am me again. I am restored, and this peace filling me is proof that it is over. No longer trapped as an echo inside its insidious chest, I am free to explore this beautiful world. In this holy place, I can build a life for myself.
This is my chance to live the life robbed of me so cruelly, to do all of the things I had set out to do and make a difference, to be remembered.
Picking myself up from the trail where I had awoken, I walk through the woods. The same woods near my house. Odd. I had imagined being greeted by Pearly Gates or brilliantly blinding white light.
The air is so peaceful. No sound of that horrid creature. No howling wind.
But I am famished.
So incredibly famished.
Starving.
The pangs of ravenous hunger pierce through me, and I let out a tearful cry.
Stopping by the stream to wash my face in the crisp, cool water, I look through eyes that are now mine at a body that is not.
Talons. Black wings. Red eyes. The real me that shapeshifting could not hide. I let out a blood curdling cackle.
I need to feed.
As I walk through the woods, I see that old mountain man who had warned me all those months ago, looking more feeble and weary than our first meeting.
There’s things in these woods, Miss. Things you don’t want to awaken.
Eyes forward.
Ignore what you hear.
Never look back.
And he smells so delicious.