They say these hills are haunted. I suspect they are right.

The hair is standing up on my arms and the back of my neck and scalp. I can taste the blood in my mouth where the huge paw slashed my face. I can hear the breath whistling past my ruined nostrils. I can feel the blood pooling at the back of my throat.

I can smell now. Hot, copper scents of blood are overwhelmed with the scent of piss and other, darker things as he urinates on me … his latest conquest.
_**
My great-grandfather settled this place in 1852, working hard to clear the virgin forest for field crops, built an honest-to-God house for his bride and their five sons, allowing them to leave the sod-roofed hut behind as a sad reminder of tough times.

He’d no sooner finished the new barn, the accompaniment to his wife’s new house, than the “War Between The Statesâ€? broke out. Leaving Great-Uncle Charles in charge, great-grandfather and his eldest, William, left to sign on with the Tennessee Troopers to fight the damn federalist Yankees.