the Payment

My entire life followed a routine I never understood. At 4:30 every morning, my father woke me, always before the sun, always silent. He would lead me into the woods that swallowed our house on all sides, stopping only when the trees grew thick enough to hide us. Then he made me dig. He never said why, and I learned not to ask. But sometimes, even when the sounds of the forest didn't sound natural–he’d tell me to just keep digging. 

  Every day, no matter the cold or the heat or the storms in between, I dug, I built, I learned how to coax fires out of wet earth. Survival shows replaced cartoons, and camo filled my closet like a uniform I'd been born into. It was the only life I knew, and I never questioned it, not even when my father insisted these skills would matter soon, his voice tight in a way I didn’t fully understand. Whenever I found the courage to ask, my father never told me why he made me dig.

After I started going to school, I remember asking my classmates when they dug holes, only to be met with wide-eyed confusion and the same answer every time– they’d never dug holes in their lives. That was the moment I realized I wasn’t normal.

 I tried to break the cycle–to pretend I could be like everyone else. But no matter what I did,  I always found myself back in the woods, shovel in hand, digging again. 

One Monday morning, Sophomore year, as I had just gotten out of the shower, washing away the dirt from the hole I had dug that morning, my father knocked on the door. He told me that I wouldn’t be going to school that day, and that I wouldn’t be going back. I was dumbstruck, I stood in the doorway in nothing but a towel and tried to collect my thoughts.  

School had seemed like my only escape from the survival show my life had become, and now even that was being taken from me.

 That day, he made me dig for hours. I spent the whole day outside, lighting fires and tracking small game until my hands shook and my legs went numb. By the time the sun went down, I was too exhausted to stand, but he still watched me like I hadn’t done enough. 

That night, I slumped down onto the couch, the TV playing a survival show on low, the light from the screen covering the room in a blue hue. My whole body throbbed. I had no idea why I was still digging–still being forced to prove I could survive. I’d already shown him I was capable. So what else did he think was coming? My schooldays from then on consisted of digging, hunting, and learning the things I already knew, but I got stronger.  I could dig a six foot hole in 2 hours, I knew every native animal track, and most importantly, I knew how to survive, better than any survival show could ever teach you. 

 It was about two weeks out from my eighteenth birthday, and around that time, my father had started acting strange around me. My father was never an affectionate man, even when my mother was alive, he was cold as ice, so I thought it strange that he suddenly was wishing me goodnight, and hugging me extra tight. He had become very paranoid, constantly checking over his shoulder, jumping at every noise, and worst of all, he made me dig. This wasn't regular digging anymore, though. He made me dig constantly, never stopping, until I forgot what my own bed felt like. The routine blurred days into nights and exhaustion became a permanent weight on my body. 

One morning, my father jolted me awake with a sharp command. This time, he said he was really going to test my survival skills by dropping me somewhere and forcing me to find a way back home. and I had no choice. I swallowed hard, slipped on the blindfold he handed me, and climbed into my truck–my hands trembling as the engine roared to life.

I tried to feel where we were going by the turns he took, or the bumps in the road, down to the very way the wind whipped around us the night he took me.  I concluded that he had really just taken me around three miles down the road, not actually that far at all, but the woods just made the trek look very daunting. I was led blindly to the edge of the forest and heard my father and my truck pull away right back down the road. I looked down at the shovel and survival bag my father always made me carry on trips and I knew that this was the ultimate test. I convinced myself that if I could pass this test, my father would finally be proud, finally see me as something other than a burden. That desperate hope was all I had. It was the only thing carrying me through the cold, blind wandering, keeping my legs moving even when I had no idea where I was heading. 

  By the time the sun had come up, I could tell I was close to home. I started recognizing the trees and bushes I had spent my life training with, and I could even spot some of my own footprints, slightly faded, but mine nonetheless. I followed the faint path until the forest revealed pieces of my past, old holes, half-filled and forgotten, stretching out like scars in the earth. With every step, anticipation grew inside me. I wanted to see my father’s expression, to prove I'd survived, to prove all his years of drilling and digging and pushing hadn’t been for nothing. 

 My heart was racing, my mind and body were heavy, but I was finally home. Slowly, I trudged my way to the screen door and pulled it back to start knocking, but when my father opened the door he looked more terrified than relieved. His eyes were glossed over as he seemed to stare at something I couldn’t see before quickly grabbing me inside and slamming the door. He spun me around and stared at me with a look I've never seen him give.

 “You weren’t supposed to come back.” His voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried the weight of a scream. My blood ran cold as I glanced at my father, his eyes wide with a terror that mirrored my own. Behind us, shadows shifted, as if whatever he was trying to leave behind had followed. He grabbed me and quickly led me through the house, closing the blinds and double-checking every window as if there was something watching us. He guided me to the dining table before sitting me down and sliding a folder across. It was old and yellow, with torn edges and a thin stack of papers on the inside. “ I need to show you these, this will explain everything.” my father said with a slow nod as I reached towards the pile.

 At the top was a contract, I thought it was just a legal document and I was confused about what it would explain, until I read it again. The contract was signed in a deep red ink with both my mother and fathers names, accompanying it, was a third signature, signed with a name I couldn't recognize and a binding agreement at the bottom that read, “ In payment for the son you so wished, he will be reclaimed by me once eighteen veils have fallen, if the boy is aware of his origins, this contract is void and he returns to me, and so do you.” 

My mind was racing. I tried to open my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I removed the contact and kept staring at the other papers inside, hoping, praying, that this was all just some big joke.

I hoped my dad would jump up, pat me on the back and laugh at me for being so gullible. But nothing in the folder, nothing in the expression on his face, told me that would happen. Everything was telling me otherwise.    The rest of the folder was filled with maps of local areas, tracked times for how quickly you could get to another state, and something small that I almost missed, an old, dusty journal that seemed to have seen better days. I opened it to the very first entry, dated on my third birthday, with an ominous message written in messy handwriting. “I handed him his first shovel today, the training begins now. Fifteen years remaining.” I flipped through the pages– all documenting every survival milestone and counting down the days till my eighteenth birthday. The last entry was titled,  “For him” a long note written by my father, recounting all the details of my survival training and how this was all to protect me, because my father hoped I could find a way to escape whatever was coming to collect me.  A wave of terror washed over me, realizing that I was preparing for my death my entire life. Then, in that moment, I knew that I needed to get out of here as fast as I could, before whatever my father couldn’t escape was coming for me. 

I looked at the clock on the wall above the fridge, I had ten hours left until I was officially eighteen and the only thing on my mind was leaving.  There wasn’t any time to pack before my father ushered me out the door and grabbed every survival kit, rifle, and notebook he had ever kept and put the key in the ignition of my truck. Before I rolled up the window, he put his hand on mine, and for the first time in my life, he said he loved me, and that, even though he didn’t know what was coming, he knew I could survive.

  I had no clue where I was going, I just needed to go. Somewhere far, far away. I drove, I drove until I couldn’t recognize street names and the farmland turned into cities. Five hours later, I stared down at my GPS. I was one hundred miles away from home, shaking, and aware of death at my doorstep. I might have thought I had outrun the creature, but no stretch of earth felt far enough to hide from it. 

I pulled over on the side of the road near a small clearing at the edge of a massive forest, an easy place to disappear, or at least try. With only three hours left, hiding was the only thing that mattered. I jumped out of the truck, grabbed every piece of survival gear I had, and started my trek towards the trees. 

I forced myself to focus. If my head wasn’t in survival mode, there was no way I was going to make it out of this alive. 

The woods were deep and unknowable, but with familiar animal sounds chirping and buzzing all around me, I slowly found my footing in the darkness. I pushed through, forcing my way through trees and uneven terrain. My only plan; dig in, hide, bury myself if I had to. Anything to keep this creature from finding its prize.

 But when I finally looked down at my watch, my stomach dropped.

Only one hour left til midnight. 

I dug harder than I ever had before, my fathers voice filled my mind, a torrent of memories and commands, each lesson from years of training flowing back into my hands. One hour left, one hour left to hide, to survive. And it was all because my father wanted a son. I was frantically checking the time, slowly watching the minutes tick away faster and faster in front of my eyes. One moment I looked and had forty, the next moment I only had thirty.

  By that point I could hear something rustling in the bushes, the sound of someone or something getting closer by the second. 

A voice slowly calling out in the distance, the smell of rotting meat slowly wafting its way into my nose as I tried not to gag. I dropped my shovel, adrenaline spiked as my body took over, trying my best to find my way in the unknown of this pitch black forest, with the moon as my guide.

I came to a stop at a little clearing in the middle of the forest, glanced around, and sat down, catching my breath. I peered down at my watch as I watched the time change from 11:59 to 12:00 and my heart stopped. 

 My eyes slowly trailed upwards to face the entity in front of me, and it was not human.

He or rather it looked down at me from its place four feet above me, its gaze a void that seemed to swallow all light. Its breath hit me, rotten and fetid as it leaned in closer, “Eighteen veils fallen..” it growled, each word clawing across my mind. “Now.. you are mine once more.” The once cool air shifted, now heavy and suffocating, wrapping around my neck as shadows began to crawl across my body like living worms, digging their way into my flesh and tearing me apart from the inside. I tried to move–to scream, but my body was no longer mine. The shadows burrowed into my chest, strangling my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter, darkness whispering, 

“You can never escape a debt unpaid… and I always collect what’s owed.”