Early in the morning dark, Laney missed the viscera on the way to take the dogs to their outdoor kennel, but on her way back up to the house her headlamp spotted the heart-shaped mass of large and small intestines. They were snuggled together within a filmy sheath, like a baby born in caul. Could it be human?- the thought passed quickly through her mind as she looked around, but she knew, out in the country, in nature, this kind of thing happened. Laney walked toward  a line of dogwoods on a terrace tattered with dogwood anthracnose disease to find a stick and managed to break off a dead limb.

Upon closer examination with pokes from the stick she saw that there was still excrement in the large intestines-emerald green, there was no fur, skin, or feathers anywhere, as if they had been excised perfectly from their womby home. They were clean, no blood. 

The flood alarm sounded off in the distance, letting fishermen know that the nearby nuclear plant was letting out water into the man-made lakes.  A series of dams yoked the Keowee River in the late 60s and started making hydroelectric power in conjunction with the nuclear plant by the early 70s. The flood alarm made her dogs bay in their kennel; the plant’s buzzing hum was ever present, like the birds and crickets. She took out a doggy bag from her knapsack to see if she could fit the intestines in it to throw them away-the dogs would mess with them if she didn’t, but they were too big, so instead she put two bags on her hands and picked the heap up. They were smooth, gelatinous, but more solid than she thought they would be; she cradled them with her fingers. She didn’t smell a foul odor-the waste must be safely tucked inside still, she thought. She set them down outside the garage to get a bag big enough to dispose of them.

She was tired, the dogs had howled and barked throughout the previous night, making sleep fitful. Laney had turned and tousled in her bed, hearing the hyper howling and yipping of coyotes coming from one of the distant folds of the hills. Coyotes unsettled the night. Being winter, they could be trying to find a mate, but it was probably territorial howling. Under the covers, she had decided to set up the game camera near the stream that weekend. 

Laney had come home to the house she grew up in and her elderly parents after her divorce and taught English at a high school near the Blue Ridge Mountains in the next county over. The house sat on about fifty acres, half old terraced farmland and half a fifty-year old forest with a small stream with its spring on the southwest side. The forest had been timbered just before her parents bought the acreage. 

Winters were for slugging away at the academic calendar and the non-working farm and wood’s upkeep, discriminate shopping near the holidays, and a renewed appreciation of the landscape, with the leaves gone. As much as she and her dad battled the encroaching privet, poison ivy, and weed trees, these unwanted mainstays always seemed to get closer to the house and fill the pastures every year. Three summers ago she had adopted 2 rescue puppies, one a Treeing Walker Coonhound mix, and the other a Bloodhound mix. Laney had to be constantly vigilant with them outside-their higher power was their nose- and it would lead them far into their neighbor’s hunting preserve and beyond if they were left to roam. They weren’t easy-going dogs, but they were companions. 

“I’m running late,” she muttered to herself as she screwed the lid to the trash container down. A high-pitched screaming cry seared through the darkness followed by spastic, ecstasy-ridden yips and short shrieks, the coyotes last calls of the night, making her shiver as she turned to enter the house.

Inside the house, she washed her hands more than the usual amount and told her mother about her find. 

“Strange, but that’s how nature is,” her mom replied.

The next day was Saturday, so she was not up as early as usual; it was light out. The dogs rushed to the north side of their kennel when she led them in, barking and sniffing. There was a furry clump about a yard away.  She gave the dogs fresh water and locked them in their kennel to go look at the mound-it was a rabbit whose skull had been sliced open from the forehead to the base of the skull with such precision it seemed to Laney surgical. The skull was hollow. 

“I guess whatever ate the brains was looking for a delicacy,” she said out loud. “It couldn't have been all that hungry to waste the rest.” She looked to the woods and the mountains beyond and wondered. She’d seen dead animals before but those deaths were messier and ripped, these instances made her think of Jack the Ripper. She scooped the rabbit up with a doggy bag, its light head flopping side to side as she carried it to the trash. 

At lunch, her father told her he’d seen a neighbor mentioned in the obituaries, Abe Merrick.

“Said he died suddenly,” he said. 

“Was he sick?”

“I just talked with him at Shady Grove last week. He was saying his boat took on water when the plant was letting water out.”

Shady Grove was a tiny, old-time grocery store on the way to the mountains. Her father liked to go there for gossip and to socialize. 

“Does it mention the visitation and funeral?” she asked.

“Says visitation is Tuesday evening. Funeral Wednesday.” 

“When did he die?”

“According to the obituary, just last Thursday. I saw him at Shady Grove…must have been Wednesday, no Tuesday, it was Tuesday.” 

“Damn. A week later and he has his visitation.” 

“That’s something for sure. It can happen quick.”

 Laney was quiet as she helped her dad with the dishes, both their minds on Abe. 

“Did you ever see a body part of an animal, just laying around outside like the intestines?” She asked her father when they were done with the dishes. 

“Not that I recall,” he said with a chuckle. 

“Those intestines I found. I find it strange. There was no hair, no feathers, nothing.” 

“Strange, but that’s nature for you. It was probably an owl.” 

“Yea. Maybe so.” 

In the late afternoon she took her dogs on a walk, taking them into the woods to set up the game camera. With winter hikes, you got a better lay-of-the-land since there were no leaves on the trees. What blocked the view was the rise and fall of the land- it was as if someone had picked up a handkerchief in a pincer grasp and then let go.

The smoke from the house’s chimney crawled into the woods, laying low with fog in the valleys and ravines. The scent of oak bark and trunk and soot was ubiquitous.  It was often foggy in the area ever since they dammed the Keowee, according to Shady Grove talk. The dogs were pulling her towards the stream and she was letting her mind wander as they all traipsed downhill. Wintered muscadine vines tripped her feet and mountain laurel blocked their way. The stream was rushing when they finally got to it, but there had not been a recent downpour. The dogs pulled her through thorny doghobble-they didn’t seem to mind it- then yanked greedily to get to the other side of the stream. As she put a foot out to step on a rock, the dogs pulled again, harder this time, and her foot glanced off the rock and she toppled into the stream.

The water was bitter cold and deep-much deeper than it should be. She couldn't feel the bottom which made no sense for their little drought-threatened stream. She reached the hand up that held the dogs’ leashes and the handles enveloped her wrist. The dogs pulled her through the water as the current whacked her around. She broke the surface to gulp air, but only had time to expel breath before resubmerging. She drew in a big gulp of stream water that tasted of algae and water snail slime. The dogs continued to pull her, but she had no illusion as to it being to save her life-they wanted free. She tried to wrench her hand out of the leashes’ handles, but they seemed to get tighter. 

“Dad! Mom!” she called when she breached the stream’s surface again, but she knew they were in the house, baking bread or sewing. The thought of them finding her, as her back hit a rock, left her furiously kicking her legs and she ended up splayed on top of a log lodged between a tree trunk and a large rock, just above the rapid flow of the water. The leashes’ handles unsheathed her hand and she rolled onto some mossy rocks, away from the main current. The dogs shot up the hill toward the neighbor’s land, barking and giddy, unconscious of her close call. She called them back, but it was useless-they were tracking, it was born into them. 

She laid there, back sore from the log and rocks, wrist crunching when she moved it, and wretched and coughed, spitting out bits of water moss and grainy sand onto the ground. The sun was already setting. She drew her swelling wrist up to her stomach and slid on her hip and elbow up onto the stream bank, staring in disbelief at the water, the reflections of the trees looked haughty and malicious. 

“I’ll walk up past the spring. I’m not going to cross this water again,” she said to herself and shambled up the hillside, leaning on a fuzzy-vined white oak.

Laney called to her dogs and heard far-off barking, but they didn’t come. Keeping a wide berth of the stream, she trekked southward, towards the stream’s spring. Within five minutes she had reached the old pond site and the stream had calmed down.  She called to her dogs again, but this time she didn’t hear any barking, down near the spring she couldn’t even hear the hum of the nuclear plant. The stream bent to the right in a graceful curve, then, in an eroded hole about a yard or so deep, was the spring. The spring was unimpressive and resembled more of a watery puddle, than any kind of majestic emergence of flowing water. From the spring, the stream was shallow, only an inch or so deep, wide, and scattered with quartz and mica. When the cows were pastured here, they often stood around commiserating, drinking, urinating and excreting all in the same place.  As Laney got closer, she heard barking that sounded like it was coming from the spring. She rounded the spring and felt an icy hand of water grab her ankle. 

“No!” she yelled and, trying to jump away, hit an oak. Another frigid hand wrapped around her other ankle and they both yanked her down to the ground and started pulling her into the spring of the stream. She grabbed at rocks and a hornbeam trunk as it dragged her down. She picked up a rock and threw it into the spring, making a bigger splash than it should have. One watery hand pulled away from her ankle. She twisted and pulled, trying to wrench her way out of its grip. She called for her parents.

Two aqueous hands yanked on her leg and her shoe was immersed in the miry water. Struggling, she cinched her arms tighter around the hornbeam trunk, but whatever was in the water was too strong for her. Her arms ached and her wrist stung. Another jerk tore her from the top and she was in water up to her waist. Above, on the ridge of the hill, she saw her dogs, or maybe they were coyotes. Water poured over her head as another hand pushed her head down. She went under hearing howling. Underwater, the water felt jelly-like and pulsed, she couldn’t see anything, and was in the tight grip of gummy hands and arms and impinging rocks. She kicked her legs and thrashed her arms, getting one arm free, and grabbed a root of the hornbeam. It was warm to the touch and the water on her hand made it seem sweaty. She freed her other hand, her wrist throbbing with pain, and launched it toward the root as well, using the rocks in the spring she heaved herself up and out, jelly-like water trickling down her legs. Laney peered at her reflection in the spring’s puddle. Her eyes were wild, lips open, gashes on her cheek, but when she peered deeper, holding her aching wrist, her face changed from staggered and terrified to triumphant.