Uncollected Blood by Daniel J. Kirk Read Free Book Online Page A

through these woods. It is something you have to be careful when trekking back to camp late at night. You might think you are on a path, but deer don’t think like we do. They have their own reasoning for going the way that they do in the woods.
    You see deer are very much aware that they still have predators, but perhaps technology and convenience has made it easy for mankind to forget his.
    Spend a night out in the woods, look at how dark it is ten feet from the fire. Pitch black. Anything could be out there waiting. Oh it would be disconcerting if you could see what hid in the shadows, or maybe it would be a relief. But man’s enemy is not a bear or a boar.
    It is a hunter with patience and poise.
    It wasn’t all that long ago that my friend moved out into the mountains. He had found a cabin real cheap that he intended to fix up. He took a small camper up there and would park it on weekends and work all day long before spending the night enjoying the stars and a campfire, much like we are tonight.  He would work himself until his arms couldn’t swing the hammer anymore, or his old knees felt as bad as his lower back. Then he would plop down and have a cold adult beverage until he was good and warm and ready to pass out.
    He did this every weekend, obsessed with creating the perfect cabin to retire to within the next year or two. He would come back each weekend and share pictures of sunsets and sunrises and the improvements he had made.
    At work we joked about how he was going to become a bearded hermit who spooked hikers by day, and his snoring would drive away all the wildlife in the area. He wasn’t too far from the Appalachian Trail, but he said there was no trail connecting his cabin to it, nor to the creek that ran just below him. But it was all part of his plan once fall came around and all the leaves were off the trees, much like they are right now.
    Fall came and true to his word my friend was deep in the woods cutting paths. He returned one week with pictures of the scenic spot he had uncovered.
    “It’s on my property,” he told me. “Realtor never had a picture of it, would’ve made the cabin worth double what they asked for.”
    He was so excited. “Funny thing is, I can see the remnants of a trail. Like the original owners had one and never kept it up.”
    I warned him about it being a game trail, but he was certain.
    “It leads straight down from the cabin. When you look back up the hill you can see it clear as day. As the trees on the edge of the path were much older than the saplings which had sprung up.”
    A week or two later he was obsessed with plant life and had bored me to tears listing all the trees he’d identified in his woods, but the note of interest was that the saplings he’d cut up on the trail were not native to that part of Virginia. He even found a tag on one of the trees from a nursery.
    “The trees were planted. They’d actually covered up the trail. Makes no sense.”
    The property had been fenced all around afterwards. There was no gate leading down to the creek until my friend had fashioned himself one. He had assumed it was because the previous owner had dogs, as they had also left behind a couple of pens and igloos.
    “Why have a place in the mountains, with a scenic few at a creek and fence it off?”
    I told my friend I had no idea, maybe it was just a hermit who wanted to be away from town and didn’t want to bother with the upkeep of the trail.
    “No, they had a family.” He told me, “They move a few years ago and let it fall apart a little, but they didn’t move far, just closer into town, big lot, no trees at all. Plenty of mowing and upkeep.”
    I agreed it was odd because that’s what you do in polite conversation, but I doubted my friend’s concerns. He seemed obsessed with how he had managed to find the cabin at such a cheap price now.
    The next time I saw him he was a different man. He looked old enough to be retired. His body moved like a limp