On the trail

In his late 20’s Eddie found out that his girlfriend was pregnant, and after weeks of fierce arguments with harsh words, threats, and begging, it was determined that the child was most likely not Eddie’s. 

At a little past midnight during a party at Eddie’s best friend Adam's apartment, he was sitting in Adam’s bedroom with Kitty and Adam opposite him. Despite the blur in his head caused by beer and liquor, Eddie was able to comprehend the affair the two of them told him about. After hitting both of them, Kitty on the cheek and Adam right in the nose, Eddie left and never saw either of them after that. 

By the time that Eddie Stewart was standing in Georgia, at the beginning of the Appalachian Trail, Kitty’s and Adam’s son was two years old. Through friends of friends, Eddie had been told that they had broken up countless times and were cheating and circling around each other, as they had been since the birth of Edward Stone. 

The first days on Eddie’s strenuous hike a cloud seemingly followed him and kept him company with light drizzle and heavy rain. For only a few minutes at a time during those first days he could see the sun clearly. He slipped on wet grass and moss, slick like smooth ice, and tore up the small holes he already had on his cargo pants. It started clearing up when he was crossing through North Carolina, but then Eddie was tripping over himself and the boots he had bought for five dollars at a second-hand store. 

At night Eddie put up the neon orange tent he brought, barely big enough for him to sleep in, stretched out. While he lay down in the evening he thought of the snakes he had read about before leaving. The Timber Rattlesnake could be found almost all over the east USA, and all Eddie remembered was reason not to encounter the species rather than the ways to handle them. When Eddie climbed over fallen trees, logs, and tree stumps he was watching like a hawk. He had a pocket knife hanging around his neck, and a red multi-tool clipped onto his belt, but he knew he had no chance with either of them against a venomous snake, and that’s what he thought about when he was alone in his tent and waiting to fall asleep. 

In Virginia the clouds came back for Eddie, and it rained almost constantly the entire 550 miles through the state, ranging from heavy rainfall to small droplets in the air. Once again, Eddie was tripping over slippery mud and vegetation, but proportionally less now that he had gotten used to the terrain and routine of hiking. As he walked and fell he met scarce couples, sometimes small groups. They were either going the opposite direction, or were planning a shorter route than he had. He didn’t talk a lot to them, and moved further away from the starting point at Springer Mountain. In Virginia he missed running water, drinking out of glasses instead of the plastic cup he brought, and drinking tap water instead of filtered water from the rivers he passed. 

At times Eddie was overcome with grief to the point where he sat down away from the main trail and cried loudly, ugly, until he felt pathetic enough to continue. Despite the years he had neither forgotten nor forgiven Kitty and Adam, and he thought about them and snakes. The people he dated he had left after a few weeks after meeting them, and now he was alone in Virginia with scrapes on his knees and elbows. Sometimes he didn’t even notice he was bleeding, he was wet from either blood or rain, and he didn’t mind either. He ran out of band aids and bandages a few miles outside Roanoke, but he had no idea about miles or the nearest city at any point during his hike. He had read about the flora and animals he could potentially encounter during his time on the trail, and he had sent packages with food, first aid equipment and pairs of socks and underwears to the postal offices, but he lost track of himself on the map right when he crossed the state border to North Carolina and had to guess where he was. He got his first package at the postal office in Virginia, but until then he had thought he was still in North Carolina. He didn’t ask people he met on the trail for help reading the map, he always had a lump in his throat and a rock in his stomach whenever he talked to anyone during his month-long hike. 

It took Eddie three weeks to reach Maryland. He ignored the shelters and camps that the hikers he briefly met heavily recommended. He walked along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and watched the few boats and people pass him by. He was alone, and he wanted to be alone. When he had started planning the hike six months before he had the intention of not speaking to anyone for the entire trip. His time in Maryland was shorter than during the previous states, but due to Eddie’s fatigue after walking so much every single day for almost a month, it felt like the 41 miles took forever to walk. His feet were hurting more than at any previous point during the hike. Five miles before the state border to Pennsylvania Eddie took his boots off, and inspected his swollen feet. Sweat and pus had drenched his socks, Eddie had to carefully peel them off his feet to inspect the damage done by his uncomfortable boots. His feet were sore and the only skin left on his bony feet was an inflamed red. He bit his own teeth as he washed his feet and bandaged them as best he could, but he was not able to force them down into the boots again, and for the rest of his hike he walked barefoot. Dirt managed to get between the bandages, but to Eddie this was better than walking in sandpaper boots. He tossed them into the woods and continued on. 

He had walked 23 miles in Pennsylvania when he started to miss people. He was missing anyone. He hadn’t talked to anyone since the border to Maryland, which was several days ago. Eddie talked to himself in Pennsylvania, and he whistled and sang with the assumption that no one could hear him. Even though he felt such a strong pull to talk to someone, he kept his distance when he crossed paths with a small group of hikers in Pine Grove Furnace State Park. The rocky terrain of Pennsylvania took its toll on Eddie’s already mutilated feet, but the cold stone was almost soothing at some points. He looked on the map and estimated that he was 65 miles from Peter’s Mountain Shelter and opted to stay there the following night and to ask for help to properly take care of his feet. The last thing he needed was to lose his feet to an infection. 

He walked for two days until he finally accepted that he was lost. According to the map he had to cross the Susquehanna River around 40 miles from the Pine Grove Furnace State Park. At first Eddie walked around at random, then he sat down among the rocks and thought about all the missing hikers he had read about in the papers. With the desperate panic creeping around in Eddie’s head there was no point in trying to either find his way back to the park or find the Susquehanna River. He set up his tent which by now had tears and holes all over, and cried until he was exhausted enough not to think about the worst outcome. 

He was startled awake to the sound of the zipper to his tent, when his heart had settled from the shock he was able to look through the gap into the dark. At first he didn’t see anything through the slit, but with his eyes fixed he was able to make out a small figure. Just as he opened his mouth to call out, the figure disappeared. Eddie tried to get up quickly, but got stuck in his sleeping bag and then in the tent’s opening. In the moonlight he saw a little girl standing on top of a large stone, so that she was looking down on Eddie. 

Her long hair was in braids, and she wore a dress so white it shone in the dark night.

“Are you lost?” Eddie asked her, and surprised himself with how weak his voice sounded.

The girl shook her head, and pointed right at Eddie’s chest. 

“Am… am I lost?” Eddie asked himself more than her, and she lowered her arm. “Yeah, I’m lost. What are you doing out here? Are you alone? Where are your parents?”

Each time he asked her anything her silence seemed to deepen and become even more harrowing to Eddie. He took small steps closer to her, and she never moved. He then stood at the bottom of her stone, which now seemed like a throne. She stared at him, as if to force him to bow for her. 

When Eddie then reached out to her with his hand covered with band aids she jumped off the stone and stood in front of him.

“Where do you live?” He asked. “Do you live nearby?” 

She nodded. “I live here.” 

Her voice was frail and thin, and her words were slow and few. 

Eddie was silent for a while, shocked by the sudden answer after so much silence. He stuttered the beginning of several different sentences, but stopped as none made sense to him. Apparently he was lost in her home, so when she started walking through the trees, Eddie followed her. 

She held her hand out as she walked, seemingly petting the bushes they walked past. Eddie just hoped he would be able to follow his tracks back to his tent when he had reunited the girl with her parents. It wouldn’t be that surprising if it all came to show that the girl’s family had traveled to hunt in the area and were staying in a lodge nearby. They might even live out here, as the girl said. 

Branches scratched Eddie’s bare arms and the wind of the night sent shivers through his body like a water ripple. 

After walking for what seemed like miles to Eddie, he saw a golden flame through the gaps between the thick tree trunks. The girl started walking when the fire came into view, and Eddie almost jogged to keep up. She slipped through the dense forest with an almost acrobatic ease, when she disappeared between bushes and trees Eddie thought of her as a phantom by the way she moved.

The fire was far bigger than it had seemed to Eddie before. It was placed in the middle of a small glade, and was so large it almost took up half of it. Around the bonfire were almost a dozen children, all standing, watching relentlessly as Eddie clumsily approached them through the shrubbery and tall grass. 

The girl quickly disappeared from Eddie’s sight. He didn’t see where any of the children possibly could live. No tents, cabins, or huts. 

“Hello? Are you all….” Eddie took a step back when the children simultaneously started walking toward him. “... alright?”

The light from the fire flickered over their thin faces and with the dark shadows their prominent cheekbones made their faces seem disfigured. Red flowed through all of their eyes. Eddie felt a tug on his arm. He turned around and saw the girl he found at his tent, gripping a sharp piece of stone so hard that blood was dripping from the primal blade. 

He was tugged at from all angles as the children surrounded him. Eddie didn’t even try to fight back once as they slashed at him. He fell as his blood coloured the children’s hands and feet, as if they had only been messily finger-painting. 

Some used the fire and some were so desperately hungry that they didn’t even bother.