Burden of the Hills 

    Ceaseless mountains blanketed by mist on oak and pine speak in chirps every morning in anticipation of daybreak. Their translators consist of robins, wrens, and whippoorwills, all of whom would by other corners of the world seem confused, for they sing these same songs throughout the day and into the night. It is now past dawn, yet their yearning for daytime lingers. “What’s up with these birds?” I asked, peering at the passing trees. 

    “Huh?” My partner huffed, keeping his attention on the trail road. His gravelly morning voice made me want to go back to sleep. The way he had both hands on the steering wheel of our UTV made me want to reassure him that I didn't want it for myself and that I knew I was the new one around here. 

    “The birds, they chirp for daytime after the sun is out. Why?” I asked again. “Blinded. Yeah, they’re blinded.” He muttered. 

    “Blinded,” I repeated with dissatisfaction. “ALL the birds here are blind?” “Keep the questions about the job. I’m not your partner, I’m your partner. Alright?” He cleared his beard-hidden throat. 

    “Are you always this happy?” I tried to joke. 

    He sighed. “Happy? My mom died three weeks ago, that make you happy? It make you happy that no matter how damn hard I worked, I couldn’t afford her proper care.” I had nothing to say. I allowed him to continue. “Maybe the birds aren’t blind, maybe they just see better than all of us people, that we aren’t living in a place where the sun rises. No matter how beautiful to the eye, the problems still remain behind it all.”

    He let the words hang, like smoke trapped in the valley. I didn’t know if he wanted me to respond or sit with it. So I kept quiet, watching the tree line slip by, each trunk like a cross waiting for someone to bear it. 

    “You’ll figure it out,” he muttered after a while, eyes still on the road. “This place eats folks up. Not with teeth or claws. With bills. With silence. With no one coming when you call.” His hands tightened on the wheel, the leather squeaking. I thought of the birds again, endless in their songs that nobody answered. 

    Before I could think of a response, the static-filled radio crackled, “Unit Three, copy smoke report on Ridge Twelve. Possible wildfire. Proceed for assessment.” The veteran finally glanced at me, his eyes bloodshot, not from lack of sleep but from carrying too much weight too long. 

    “First day,” he said flatly. “Guess we’ll see what’s burning.” He clicked the mic, answering back. But his expression didn’t change. It was like he already knew. Out here, the fires never really went out. The UTV jostled over rocks and ruts as we climbed higher into the hollow. The trees grew closer together, shutting out more of the light. My partner didn’t say a word, but the silence carried more weight than speech. By the time we reached Ridge Twelve, the mist had thickened into a gray veil, and sure enough, smoke coiled up through it like a second skin. It wasn’t the raging wall of flame I had braced for. Just a slow, steady column, drifting from the forest floor as though the earth itself was exhaling. The veteran killed the engine and sat for a moment, staring at it. 

    “Doesn’t look natural,” I offered. 

    “Nothing here does,” he muttered. His voice was lower now, flat. We climbed out. The air smelled wrong, less like woodsmoke, more like something old and sour working its way up

from the dirt. I crouched, brushing away damp leaves, and saw it: a thin crack in the soil, glowing faintly, as though something burned deep beneath the roots. He saw it too. “Coal seam fire,” he said, though without conviction. “Been down there decades. Some say longer. You pour water on it, it just finds another way out.” The birds had gone silent. That struck me harder than the smoke. It was as if the whole ridge was holding its breath. “Feels like the mountain’s alive,” I said. He didn’t laugh. 

    “Maybe it is.” His eyes flicked past me, toward the trees where the mist bent unnaturally, like something large had moved through it without sound. I turned, but there was nothing there. Just the forest. Just the smoke. 

    Then the radio crackled again. “Unit Three, confirm fire status.” But neither of us moved for it. We just stood there, listening, as if the hills themselves were about to answer first. The smoke bled upward in slow ribbons, but the ridge was quiet. No whippoorwills, no robins, no wrens. The forest felt hollowed out, like sound itself had taken flight. I crouched next to the glowing crack in the Earth, feeling the painful heat. I looked up to answer, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on the treeline. That was when I saw them. Two dots of glowing scarlet, faint but sharp, suspended above the brush in the distance. Not lanterns, not tail lights, too high. They didn’t move, didn’t blink, just watched. 

    They trapped my eyes and made me shudder. The veteran’s jaw tightened. I blinked, and the eyes were gone. Just mist curling between trunks. The radio on the dash barked again, impatient: “Unit Three, confirm fire status. Copy?” My Partner clicked the radio, telling them that the fire was contained. 

    “Now, back to our patrol.” My partner said, climbing back into the UTV. I stood there for a moment to check the treeline again, then followed. I did not ask, then or later.

    It was not for a couple of weeks until I started to ask, and it was because something had happened. My field training officer’s chair was empty one day; apparently, his plate was heavy like my partner’s. The thing is, before this, he asked me about the eyes, like he knew, but with a curiosity that wanted to learn. There was more he wanted to do. Something tells me whatever those eyes belonged to led to his disappearance. But I didn’t ask my partner then. 

    We were out on night patrol one night, and that is when I asked, “Something ain’t right about how he went.” 

    “What are you talking about?” He asked, but he knew. 

    “William Puckett,” I stated. 

    “It’s never right to go out like that.” He said. 

    “That’s not what I mean. He talked to you more than me. He knew something about those eyes we saw back on Ridge Twelve.” 

    He looked like he wanted to spit. “He went the same way the bears have been going. The ones that the park rangers have been picking up, I mean. With claw marks insulting their bodies. Claw marks with three scratches. The same black bears that represent the state of West Virginia. That’s what you’re saying?” 

    “What is it?” I asked. He kept driving, never responding. 

    The trail made the UTV bump around, causing major discomfort. The engine whined from the steep incline. The forest at night was different. Not silent, but sharp. Every cricket chirp and rustle of leaves felt magnified, too crisp, like the woods were whispering secrets through a cracked door. Our headlights cut narrow tunnels through the dark, catching ghostly flashes of birch bark and startled deer eyes. The veteran drove without speaking, his beard shadow stretched across his face. I didn’t bother filling the silence anymore. He carried it like a second uniform. The night had swallowed the ridge when we reached the overlook. The valley stretched below, dark and silent, the wind whispering promises I didn’t want to hear. The scarlet eyes appeared again, a twin flame in the mist. They lingered, watching us, unblinking. This time, there was no denying it. To my surprise, my partner marched up to the railing of the overlook. 

    His hands then grabbed the wood, and he used it to support his bodyweight. “He causes it,” he murmured, “all of it.” I didn’t understand, then the railing snapped, and he fell forward. His boots scuffed the wooden railing, then nothing but the sound of the wind. A scream lodged in my throat. No one else could hear it. Only the echo of the wind answered. And then the sky turned. 

    Scarlet light bled through the mist, spreading from the ridge like a wave of molten iron. The air pulsed with heat I couldn’t feel, pressure I couldn’t resist. I realized, horrified, that the ground beneath me wasn’t collapsing from fire. Not from coal seams. Something more sinister. The earth shuddered, splintered, and cracked in long, deep lines. I tried to step back, but the ridge itself shifted, tilting like the world was being peeled open. Smoke and dust rose, coiling into the sky, tinted with the same scarlet hue as the eyes. The red lights hovered above me, immense now, burning in the mist, observing. I understood in a terrifying instant: it was never just a creature. It was the accumulation of everything ignored, the grief, the poverty, the sickness, the silence, and it had waited until the world looked away. I stumbled, hands scraping at the cracking earth. The ground gave way beneath my boots, and I fell into darkness, tumbling as if the valley itself were swallowing me whole. The red eyes burned above me, watching, unblinking, eternal. And I knew, in that instant, that I wasn’t just falling. I was witnessing the weight of what gets ignored, finally making itself known.