text: The night was cold, an angry wind swept through the trees. My dog and I were two miles into a hike near Cedar City, Utah. Most people didn’t like to hike at 2 a.m. in the middle of winter, but I’m not most people. The seclusion and danger of the hike made the trips a thrill. My dog was just excited to get out of the house. Trees stood around me, each of their needled arms trying to block the sky above me. A gentle snowfall had started moments earlier forcing me and Titan to turn back. “Sorry buddy, it’s time to go home.” Titan wagged his tail at the sound of my voice. He responded with a lift of his leg and a sprinkle on a nearby bush. My dog was the best companion for these hikes. A girlfriend might complain twenty minutes into the hike, a friend wouldn’t be interested unless alcohol was involved. No, these were my little getaways, just myself and my good boy. The large black dog cheerily followed me up the mountain, tongue wagging out the side of his mouth. His ears perked at the occasional sound deep in the woods, but he never strayed from my side. A powerful gust of wind snapped a branch somewhere in the mass of trees. The rustle of falling needles complimented the crack of splintering wood. A gentle cascade of snowflakes, shaken loose from the branches around me, danced in the glow my flashlight. There was an unmistakable energy present in the air. A second even stronger gust of wind nearly knocked me on my ass. The howling stung my face, the blanket of snow doubling in intensity. A blizzard had started. I pulled out the leash from my backpack. Titan sat down paw in the air in anticipation of it being hooked onto his collar. “Sorry buddy, just until we get to the car I promise.” He was a great dog, incredibly loyal, but even a loyal dog could get spooked. The nylon loop reassured me he’d stay by my side. Slowly, we trotted through the darkness of the mountain. With every passing minute the storm grew. What was initially a gentle snow fall had quickly escalated to a howling wind of icy shards. My nose and ears burned like I had been buffeted with a torrent of bees. Where had I parked the damn car? Crouching low to the ground, I placed my backpack on the snow in front of me. After a short while of rummaging, I pulled out my GPS. “What the hell.” My expression resembled a child whose nose had been stolen. The GPS wasn’t working. Actually, to say it wasn’t working was an understatement. The device was going completely nuts. My position was changing rapidly jumping to locations miles away only to return to my current position. Sometimes multiple location indicators would appear at different spots. An aura of panic settled around me. My vision was now limited to mere feet in front of me, the flashlight doing little to reveal my path. That’s when the humming started. Titan’s ears pricked up, his attention shifting to a spot just behind us. I tugged on his leash to get him moving but he wouldn’t budge. He was frozen like a statue, eyes unwavering from the location. Just above the gusts of wind, a melody, if you could even call it that, could be heard. A chorus of dissonant hums reached my ears. They were cut short by a bark. Titan’s hair stood us as though he had been statically charged, his tail tucked between his legs. Through the torrent of snow, I thought I could make out a figure. I squinted my eyes to double check, but nothing was there. “Come on Titan, we’re going to freeze to death out here.” I gave the leash a firm pull. A furious growl escaped his throat as he turned and bit my leg. Warm blood trickled into my sock from the spot just below my knee. I kicked him hard in the ribs out of reflex as I tried to retrieve the leash I had dropped. No luck. I watched as the blue leash disappeared into the blizzard like a serpent, Titan barking until I heard nothing. “Come here boy.” My only answer was the howl of the wind. Even through my gloves, I felt the chill of the storm on my hands. Holding the flashlight was like holding a handful of dry ice. “Titan!” I yelled again. I thought I heard a whimper from behind me. Swinging the flashlight around, I limped towards the sound. Each step sent a throbbing pain up my thigh that came to rest in my eyes. Just in front of me, I saw something dangling from a branch. The occasional break in the snow allowed me to glimpse it just barely. I came up to it and saw that it was Titan’s leash. I traced it up to the branch and my light illuminated a figure on the tree branch. Two snow covered legs swayed in the wind devoid of clothing. Naked arms protruded from the frozen torso. The surface of this thing was covered in ice crystals with black chunks of frostbitten flesh where the hands and feet should be. My eyes came to rest on the blank mass of flesh where the face should be. Eyes like snow globes glared back at me. A mangled sound came from within its chest, no mouth opened to let it escape. What met my ears was the hum I’d been hearing earlier. The creature fell forward out of the tree landing directly in front of me. I bolted in the opposite direction, unsure of where I could run. The chorus of hums surrounded me once again. I tried to avoid them as I shifted my direction to anywhere they were not. Behind every tree I would spot the figure. If I stopped to catch my breath, it was there watching me. All the while my ears were flooded with the awful humming. I pulled out my GPS hoping that it would just show me where I was. Of course, I wasn’t that lucky. According to the screen I was everywhere. Dozens of blue arrows appeared and disappeared across the mountain. A bark pulled my attention from the device and with it, the humming stopped. “Titan!” I screamed into the blizzard. I stepped through the snow only to see the dog standing next to... it couldn’t possibly be... myself? There I was standing with his leash; it was the moment he had bitten me. I remember thinking I had spotted something in the blizzard, the words I had spoken reached my ears as a garbled distortion of my voice. Titan growled furiously and bit the other me’s leg tearing away and rushing towards where I currently stood. I pulled back my flashlight and prepared to strike the dog with it, but he never reached me. Instead I found my self postured up against a blank patch of snow. Titan and my doppelganger were nowhere to be found. “What is going on up here.” I found myself speaking to the mountain. My answer was a torrent of increasing snow fall. The cold bit deep into my clothing. I tucked my face further into my hood hoping to shield it from the boreal weather. My world no longer consisted of a forest but instead was replaced by the constant howl of wind. But it wasn’t the wind I feared. All I feared was the hum. Every time the storm let up my ears listened for the pursuer. Not long after a break in the wind, I saw a figure stumbling ahead of me. They were facing away, the large hooded coat concealing their head. “Hey!” I nearly lost my footing as I increased my pace. “Help!” My voice was fighting the gusts of wind, but one soundwave must have won. They turned to me, the large jacket obstructing their face. They bolted away. “No, please wait!” The pleads came out like gravel. I tried to keep up with the person, but I had no luck, soon I lost sight of them. Not wanting to give up hope, I continued charging forward. My mind kept reminding me of the encounter with the phantom me, kept reminding me of how I was an outside viewer of an event that had taken place earlier. My thoughts were interrupted as I tripped over something. I hit the ground hard. My leg landed on a rock protruding from the snow. I rolled up my pant leg to assess the damage expecting a fresh stream of blood. The wound hardly bled. Frostbite must be setting in. My eyes didn’t focus on the leg long as they discovered what had tripped me. A body. Face down in the snow lie a frozen bundle of clothing, the wearer was stiff as a board. I recognized the jacket, the man I had spotted was wearing it. I also noticed it was the same jacket I was currently wearing. My heart was racing as I rolled the body over. I stared into my own frozen eyes. I was stunned. There was no mistaking it was my body, even the dog bite was visible on his leg. My shock was cut short by the familiar hum. It permeated the air around me as suddenly as the blizzard. I had to move. It was as I stood to run that I saw something clutched in the reflection’s corpse. A blue leash. Without really knowing why, I took it with me. It’s hard to say how long I wandered in the storm. It felt like an eternity. The strange sighting continued, draining me mentally. I tip toed around the endless corpses of myself that now littered the mountain, a never-ending blanket of snow burying them. I found myself falling into the snow, my hope for finding the car shattered. Then it was there. As though responding to my helplessness, my car peaked at me through a gap in the storm. The endless humming came from the same direction, but I didn’t care. My body had long since lost feeling, I was ready to escape or die. Although I reached the car with no issues, I couldn’t ignore the endless faces peaking at me from the trees. The entity following me had multiplied into an army. I came face to face with one for the last time as I reached the vehicle. My body sat in the driver’s seat. This corpse had not yet frozen over like the others I had seen. Instead I witnessed it as the ice and frostbite consumed the corpse. The face became a featureless mass as the eyes popped open. What started off as a scream, soon twisted into a familiar sound coming from the corpse’s mouth. The hum. I turned away not wanting to see it. My eyes locked upon the monster standing mere inches from my face. My senses were overwhelmed with the cold, a strong smell of death filling my nostrils. I fainted. One eye popped open, the other slowly followed. I was inside of my car, heater bathing me in warmth. From outside the foggy windows I could see the storm had stopped. I noticed the leash sitting in the passenger seat. Titan. Hopping out of the car I began to yell. “Titan!” Memories of the creature had surfaced as I slowly regained my bearings. I must have run to the car while the storm started and fallen asleep as the storm raged, but why would I leave my Titan behind? As I searched for the dog, I noticed the footprints surrounding the car. I could see that they were heading off into the tree line. I pulled the leash from the car as I followed them. I must have searched for him for hours with no luck. The limp soon reminded me of the dog bite. Blood still stained my pants. This confirmed that at least some of what I had experienced was real. The icing on the cake was what I discovered shortly after. Hanging on a tree branch in front of me was Titan’s leash, exactly where it had been when I encountered the first entity. A large imprint lay beneath the tree not yet hidden by the snow fall. I never found him. I officially gave up hope after a week or two of returning to the mountain. I still return to the mountain from time to time, something inside me keeps drawing me back. Although this event took place years ago, I still entertain the idea of finding him. I guess I should say I would like to find the real him. Sometimes, If I wait until just the right time of night, I can catch a faint glimpse of him. I never see all of Titan, just catching a glimpse of his tail behind a tree or the flick of his ear in a nearby bush. I know this isn’t the real Titan. Every time I see him, he’s always moving away from me, heading deeper into the mountains. I never follow him though. Whenever he appears that familiar hum is right behind him, calling him away from me, luring me with Titan as the bait.