The boy followed his father across the glade, their rifles slung over their shoulders, their breath leaving trails in the air. Streaks of golden sunlight flittered between trunks where the boy saw flashing shapes in the fog. Shadows in the distance that were deer, elk, maybe. They followed the narrow trail, deeper into the pines beyond the posted game land signs, past another single black and white poster tacked to a tree that read: Missing. The boy couldn’t help but notice the girl’s hair. The frizzy monochrome pigtails that curled at the end. Her mouth was full of more metal than teeth, her smile a railroad track stretching from corner to corner.

The boy turned to his father and asked, “what do you think happened to the girl?”

His father silenced him with a long, quiet shush, never taking his eyes off whatever he was seeing. His hand hung in the air behind him, like telling the boy to slow down. Ahead, ferns were beginning to mask the trail by poking up through the blanket of brunchberry. The greenery was a quilt of plants along the forest floor and the trees around them seemed to disappear into the clouds above.

The father, just above a whisper said, “you get turned around in here, you never come out.”

Then, with a spurt of energy, the father crouched low. The soil was still as he shuffled forward in muted footsteps, waving for the boy to follow. Then he knelt down and pointed to a fresh hoof print in the mud. The boy leaned over on his knees and watched as his father held out his hand. The boy’s cheeks were flush, eyes big, filled with innocent curiosity.

“Three fingers wide,” the father said, “probably a younger one.”

He spurted forward. Ducked low off the path, pressing himself against a trunk. The father peered into the vegetation where the boy couldn’t see. He held the boy close by the shoulder, trying to conceal the two of them behind the thick columns of trees. His father turned his head to the boy and put a single finger straight up over his lips. His grey eyes opened wide with excitement like the boy had never seen. He wasn’t wearing cologne, but the boy could smell the afterthought of a cigarette. The boy struggled to see through the fog and said, “what is it?”

He followed as his father skirted around the tree and zig-zagged off the trial. To keep the woods and brush between them and whatever it was he was seeing. They ducked behind a grouping of fat stumps and the boy’s father pointed a leather finger. “A six-pointer.” He whispered under his breath, smiling. There, in the distance, an elk’s head dipped low as it grazed the forest floor. The boy saw how dark the horns were. From this distance they looked fuzzy and covered in fur. He asked, “how come the  horns aren’t white?” The elk jerked his head in their direction and bounded off into a ravine. The boy watched the animal disappear into grey. His father turned slow, his lips smashed into a thin line, almost disappearing in his beard. The steely grey of his eyes were daggers that stole the boy’s breath, didn’t return until the father stood and looked away. When the father began walking, he didn’t look back, didn’t say anything at all. So the boy followed from a distance to let the space lighten the mood.

Some time later, the father crouched against a tree. He dropped his shoulder. Rested the barrel of the gun against a large rock for support. Leaned his head and peered through the eyesight.

“Do you wanna see?” His father asked.

The boy took this as a peace offering. He slid his own rifle around to his front. Crouched down so the bark and roots dug into his knees and took the grip in hand. Peeking through the scope he couldn’t see anything but grey.

“I don’t see it.” The boy made sure to whisper this time.

He felt his father peek into his own scope and, in his ear, he heard, “fog’s tough. You see the brown, at least?”

The boy floated the tip of the rifle in slow circles, figure eights, trying to spot the elk in the fog.

“See it?” This close, both of them nearly prone in the soil, the boy could smell his father’s ashtray breath hot on his neck.

“I think,” the boy said, but the only thing he saw was the faint outline of something. Something dark and half visible in the fog. Maybe the rear of the elk.

The boy stepped back and watched as his father loaded a round in the chamber. How he never took his eyes from the distance. The father pinched the leather fingers of his glove between his upper thigh and the tree, slipping out his right hand. He gripped the handle, resting his finger on the trigger. For a few moments he sat in silence. Then, a long plume of fog exhaled from his mouth. The gunshot ripped through the forest. Nearby birds went scattering in loud, angry caws and the shape in the distance stumbled.

They pressed forward, his father now inching out ahead of the boy. His long legs and excitement lengthened their distance. Something about the silence made the boy uncomfortable, unwelcome. Like they were trespassers on sacred ground. Following his father, the boy watched the rifle bob and sway on his back. Smelled the trailing gunpowder hanging in the air. The boy tried to breathe in through his mouth so he wouldn’t smell it. When he noticed he was tasting smokey, metallic residue, the boy held his breath. Tried to count how many steps he could take before the next one.

At the tree line the boy could hear what he later learned was the hissing and gurgling of blood choking a windpipe. By the time they got down the ravine to the kill, it had stopped moving. The forest was silent. The boy followed the bits of red with his eyes. The crimson drops that dotted along the forest floor like a breadcrumb trail, all the way to the quarter-sized bullet hole in the back of a child’s neck.

The boy felt himself exhale and looked to his father to see what he was going to do. He looked back to the small body that was face down in the dirt. The boy had never seen someone dead before. In the movies, the people who did the killing were the bad guys. This being an accident, the boy wanted to ask what this made them.

“Dad?” The boy’s voice was so small he wasn’t sure he’d said anything.

The father looked around, startled. He let his rifle fall to the ground between them and he scanned the trees, circled. The forest was so quiet that the boy looked out into the greenery, too, sure all the animals had left them behind. He stayed put as his father approached the child, got down on one knee and turned the body over by the shoulder. His father gasped, put a glove to his mouth and turned his head away. Like he might be sick. Or disgusted. Something. The boy thought about how he’d never seen his father cry, not even now. He tried to stare out to the fog, to where the elk might have gone, because he didn’t want to see what his father had. But his curiosity was too strong.

The boy wanted to look at the brown braids matted with dirt. He wanted to see the tips of the pigtails that were ratty and had curled. The glossy eyes that reminded him of antique dolls. But he couldn’t look at anything else except the lower half of the girl’s face that was gone. He knew that if he searched nearby he’d find bits of metal and teeth and bone in the leaves and dirt, the way the exit wound had exploded. The boy swallowed and decided he’d never eat spaghetti again.

The father noticed the boy staring and went to him, knelt so they were eye level, put his hands on his shoulders. Their breath mixed in the fog and twisted between them like a hurricane nearing landfall. The father told the boy that everything was okay. He shook the boy’s shoulders and said, “we don’t say a word about this, understand?”

But the boy didn’t understand. All he could think to ask was, “are we still good guys?”

“What?” His father looked over the boy’s shoulder, back into the trees. His eyes darted as though looking for someone. He rubbed his face with a trembling hand and said, “we gotta work together on this, okay?”

The boy shrugged, looking past his father at the wet dirt. Trying not to notice how dark the blood was against the girl’s pale skin.

“We don’t say anything about this,” his father said with his eyebrows arched high, chin dipped low to touch his chest. When the boy didn’t look at him, he shook the boy hard, pinching his shoulders between his fingers and barked, “right?” Loud enough that the boy flinched. The boy could feel the pressure in the back of his eyes. Like opening his mouth, even breathing, would open the floodgates.

The father exhaled loud, like disappointed in all of it. His breath hung in the air. His head fell, and he stared at the soil and pine needles between them for a long while. By the time the father stood, his face was stern again. Certain. He clenched his teeth hard enough that the bones in his cheeks protruded.

Pointing with his chin, he said, “Why don’t you go on ahead and let me worry about this, okay?”

The boy swallowed, nodded, and tried not to look at the girl as he passed. About fifteen yards ahead the boy slowed. He wasn’t sure if he should keep walking, how far he should go.

“Just a little further,” the father’s voice echoed through the trees. Behind the boy, he slid the rifle off his shoulder, sighted him in, just below his trapper hat. Then, lower, putting the crosshairs on his back, next to where the rifle hung. So he had a bigger target. The father’s finger went to the trigger. In his scope, he watched the boy shuffling forward without looking back. The father exhaled slow. Saw the boy turn around, so the crosshairs were over his heart.

Through the trees, the boy saw the barrel of the gun in his direction. He looked over his shoulder, afraid some animal was behind him. The father then lowered the gun and held it at his side. He looked back at the body, then looked back to the boy. Sucked in his bottom lip and bit it, thinking.

“Actually, I could use your help,” the boy heard his father call.

They spent the next three hours digging a shallow hole in a small clearing. After pulling the leaves and vegetation away. After their fingernails became ringed in dirt, their faces smudged like coal miners. After the father said, “try to keep the roots so we can replant them.” The boy thought they were digging the hole for a fire pit. That it was going to be a long night while they sat with the girl and waited for whoever that might come to help.

But, the father dragged the girl into the hole and the boy understood what was happening.

The boy shook his head in silent protest while his father began shoving the dirt over the girl’s face. So they wouldn’t have to see what he’d done anymore. Could pretend none of this ever happened. The girl was missing and the boy knew she must have a family who wanted her back, otherwise who put up the signs? She belonged somewhere, the boy thought, but it wasn’t here. Not in the woods. Not like this.

“Help me,” the father said. “Sooner we finish, sooner we can get outta here.”

“No,” the boy said. Quiet at first, but then he said it again, louder. His fists began to clench at his sides. He’d never told his father ‘no’ before.

The father took his filthy hands from the mound of dirt and rested them on his thighs. He had his knees pressed into the ground, his rifle was laying at his side. He scratched his forehead with the back of his hand, spreading more dirt over his skin. The boy kept whispering under his breath: No.

“What do you want to do?” The father said, barely looking over his shoulder. “Huh? You wanna run outta here and tell the whole world?” He was standing now, holding his arms out, palms facing the sky. Like, what is it, then? His boot dropped a step toward the boy and the boy stepped back.

“You want the whole world to know your father’s a—” He looked around at no one. Into the endless woods. Licked his lips slow and squeezed them together, moved his jaw like tasting the word, and then he whispered it: “—murderer?”

The boy stepped back again and again, the father following his pace.

“Well?!” The father screamed and the boy jumped, stood still. He only knew he couldn’t let a murderer go free. So he dipped his shoulder, let the rifle slide down his arm. Held it loosely in his father’s direction.

“Give me a break.” The father’s hands slapped his thighs. He turned in circles, his chin tilted to the sky, like asking god what kind of son he had. “What’d I tell you about pointing a gun at someone?” The father asked. Then, he paused, looked at the ground. Then eyed the boy from the side, like he’d gotten a slick idea. He took a step forward and the boy held the rifle closer to his chest.

“I think you’re confused, boy. Because you seem to not remember shooting that poor girl. And here you are aiming the gun at your old man. Like you gone and went crazy.”

The boy looked like he might start to cry again, shook his head, no, that’s not possible. Because he knew that last gunshot in this forest came from his father’s rifle.

“You do this high and mighty thing—,” he was shaking his hands in the air and rolling his eyes. Emphasizing the high and mighty part. Then, he dropped them, got serious, and said, “I’m looking out for you, boy, my own flesh and blood.”

There was ten yards between the boy and his father. A distance the boy knew he could shoot.

He raised the rifle.

The father pushed his lower lip out with his tongue, looked away. He dropped, so his knees fell into the dirt with a lazy thud. He held his hands up in the air, like he was surrendering.

“You gonna arrest me, is that what this is? ‘Cause sure as shit you wouldn’t point that thing at your own father.”

The butt of the rifle went up as the boy shrugged his shoulders. A few hours ago he was sure of everything. Sure they would land an elk. Sure he’d go back to school on Monday and tell his friends. Now, he didn’t know what to think.

“You wanna be a killer, too? That it? Take after your old man? Save the day?” On his knees, the whole front of him was covered in dirt. Like a horse dragged him through a field. His eyes were so pale blue that they seemed to glow against the mud smeared across his face.

The boy was crying, again. He didn’t want any of those things. He wanted to go back to before all this, before the girl, before the woods. Standing here, with his father half sighted in, it made him think of his father pointing the gun at him. That only made the boy cry hard enough that his shoulders hitched. He could barely breathe.

The father’s face became soft, troubled. He sighed hard through the back of his throat, said, “come on,” and he held out his arms, like welcoming the boy for a hug. The boy wanted to run and fall into his fathers arms and feel the comfort of his strength. His father could be cruel, but he was the only one to tuck the boy in at night. It was them two, always had been. They were all they had.

The father stood, one hand still out, the other reaching behind him to pull the knife off his belt loop.

“Come here,” the father was saying, his voice soft. He began walking toward the boy, and the boy noticed something about the way the father was walking. The boy thought about when his father would bound up and march toward him. When the thing on the horizon was the boy’s swatted ass. It was the same gait. The same hard look in his eyes. The anger was in the air, radiating. The boy instinctively stepped back, but he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t want to go to his father, couldn’t read him. His feet kept going backward, step by step. The father was saying, “come on, son, I don’t wanna see you cry.” The boy was moving faster, his feet continuing to back up. He was trying to decide if he should turn and run altogether. The father started to jog, the knife still hidden behind his back. Then the boy was stumbling, falling backward because he’d slipped on a tree root in the soil, rolling his angle. When he landed on his back side, the gunshot ripped through the forest. The only sound, then, was the high pitched whine in his ears.

The father’s eyes were wide. His hands pressed just above the collarbone where the bullet had hit. Blood seeped between his fingers, so dark it was almost black. The boy continued to scoot back, leaving his own trail in the dirt. The father’s pale eyes bored into the boy, his face hard and filled with betrayal. He wobbled, one bloody hand going to the dirt before kneeling, sitting on the ground in the leaves. Across from the boy, the father tried to open his mouth to say something. Instead, blood exploded from his lips and sent mist into the air.

The father fell to his side and went limp, never taking his eyes off the boy.

The forest was still.

Years later, the boy would have nightmares that would rouse him from sleep. For a moment, in the stupor of half consciousness, he would be sure he was back in the forest. Could smell the soil. The gunpowder. Pennies in the air. In the darkness of his bedroom, the boy was sure his father was there in a darkened corner of the room. His hands raised above his head, his steel grey eyes glowing, pleading. His mouth opening and blood draining out like a faucet pouring over his chin. As the boy teetered on the edge of sleep, he’d feel the cold metal on the tip of his finger. The recoil of the butt slamming into his shoulder, the remnants of the black and purple bruise.

He’d remember how the hikers found him days later, trying to build a lean-to against a tree. He never knew he was just off the trail that lead out of the forest. His skin was tight on his cheeks. His clothes matted with dirt, they hung loose on his body. He’d lost his hat and his hair had become ratted and wild. The hikers stared at the blood on the boy’s shirt, but he was too afraid to tell them it was the fox. He wanted to say that he just didn’t know how to gut it, so he ruined the meat. But, instead, no words came out.

The hikers led the boy away from the trees and asked for his name. If he was okay. The boy adjusted the rifle slung over his shoulder. Said something they couldn’t understand.

“Where’s your parents?” The man asked, and he looked around them. Like peering between the trees, as if whoever the boy was with might be right near them.

The boy shrugged and couldn’t stop staring at the pine needles on the ground. He mumbled something under his breath, another something they didn’t catch.

The girl hiker, she leaned down as they walked and asked, “what hunny?”

“Am I a good guy?” The boy asked, again.

“I think he might be in shock,” the man said. He held out a bottle of water. “You need something to drink?”

“We’re gonna get you some help, okay?” The girl squeezed his shoulder, felt the boy flinch under her fingers.

The canopy of trees parted to a blue sky and the gravel lot where the hikers had parked. At the edge of the pines, the boy turned and stared back down the dirt trail. Down the way he and his father had come, now a lifetime ago. He could taste the gunpowder on his lips and he stared at the photocopied poster of the girl, still tacked to a tree.

“What’s wrong?” The girl hiker asked.

He pointed down into the woods, to where he could see the black shadow that he knew was his father. But neither hikers could see, could understand.

Between sleep and awake, he heard his father tell him that if you got turned around in the woods you’d never come out. The words echoed in the boy’s ears until it was nothing but white noise that carved his dreams into the trails he could never find.

And, every morning, after the panic of nightmares had worn off, he was sure his father was right.

By Ricky Olson, is the guitarist in the internationally acclaimed metal band, Motionless in White. In 2018, he independently released the short story collection, GLOOM.