Once, and only once, when I was nine or ten, I spent the summer at my Uncle Pete's farm in the Appalachians.

I knew Uncle Pete from our various encounters at Birthday's, Christmas's, and Thanksgiving's; but I had never visited his farm, and I had never spent much time with the strange, silent old man.

Despite this, my parents decided that it would be 'character building' for me to help him out for the summer; they were probably motivated by the prospect of a few child free months. Neither me nor my uncle were particularly happy about the arrangement.

The farm lay on a sloping foothill, nestled in a wide open patch of field, surrounded by deep, dense forest. These are the kinds of woodland which are always wet; always damp and mossy and dewy to the touch.

The property was pretty small. Aside from the crooked old farmhouse, there was a cowshed, three pastures for the cattle, and a large cornfield which spanned the breadth of the forest edge.

I became used to waking up early, helping to herd the cows to graze, assisting Uncle Pete in milking. The work was hard; I became perpetually sore and covered in small nicks and bruises as I came at odds with the elements.

But I enjoyed the hardship; I enjoyed the rugged landscape and the fresh air and the feeling of a job well done.

Sometimes, Pete and I would go on long walks through the woods. Out there, when you are properly and completely isolated, time moves slower. It is only in a forest that you can truly view the cycle of life and rebirth, as mud and rot and weeds sprout new shoots and spores. Even death is not the end in a forest; dead things still swell and writhe and multiply, constantly rejoining the great intertwining web of the living, breathing wilderness.

My uncle and I hardly ever spoke; but we both connected in mutual appreciation for the natural beauty around us.

I remember Uncle Pete like that. Always quiet. He was a man who never wasted energy on speaking except when absolutely necessary; he would never use words when a grunt or a nod or a vague motion could suffice. He was getting on in age, but he was incredibly tough, like an old sheepdog, grizzled and hardy. I couldn't imagine anything ever disturbing him or knocking him from his calm, solemn stillness.

One night, Pete and I were walking back up from the bottom of the southernmost field. A cow had just given birth; I can still remember kneeling in the mud and feeling the bloody, warm mass of the calf in my hands.

It was later than usual; already, the total and enveloping darkness of the mountains had settled in. We were guided by the lights of the farmhouse and the bright full moon.

It was as we reached the porch, and I turned to glance at that same moon, that I saw it.

A long way off, right at the end of the cornfield, was a black silhouette. Against the pure white backdrop of the moon, it stood at the edge of the treeline.

Although I could make out no features, only its shape, I recognized four legs and a broad, powerful set of antlers. I gasped softly, my young self revelling in the complete stillness and size of the creature.

I turned excitedly to Pete:

'Look, Uncle Pete - is that a deer? Even for a stag, that's pretty big, right?'

Uncle Pete wheeled very slowly to squint at where I was pointing. There was a long pause, as he breathed in and out, still staring. The three of us, he and I and the black shape, we were motionless together for a moment. Then he replied softly, almost under his breath.

'Ain't no deer.'.

He turned around again, and entered the house without looking back. I didn't even have time to question what he had said. Although I was confused, Uncle Peter was rarely the kind of man to explain himself, and I accepted that he knew these hills and everything in them like the back of his hand. I shrugged it off, and I followed him into the house, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the dark silhouette, so boldly outlined against the moon, still standing so perfectly still. Briefly, it was removed from my line of sight; and when I had reached the kitchen window, it was gone, disappeared back into the trees.

From my bed, I could see across the landing directly into Uncle Pete's room. That night, I awoke at some point, late into the night. As my eyes flitted open, I saw Pete. He was sitting in his old rocking chair, beside the window of his bedroom. In his hands he held a large, high powered flashlight. He had the flashlight beam pointed out of the open window, trained at the treeline. Again, I was confused, but I was also tired. My eyes closed again and I slept. I thought little of it in the morning. It is only now, so may years later, that I try to put all the memories together.

The next week, Uncle Pete had to make the long drive to the nearest down for his monthly supply run; buying canned food, replacement tools, fuel for his jeep. Uncle Pete, unwilling to take me with him, was not fazed by the prospect of leaving a nine or ten year old on their own in an isolated farmhouse. It was a day and a nights journey to town. Pete would be back in the morning, and I would spend the night alone.

On the night in question, I had already spent two nights on my own like that, in previous months on the farm. I went about my usual routine, making a sandwich for myself and then turning on the television.

It would have been about 10 or 11 at night (I liked to go to bed late when I was on my own). I was glued to the TV screen. I remember there was a light rain and the house was buffeted by low level but persistent wind.

Gradually, above the noise of the television, I began to hear something from outside. I cocked my ear to listen properly, and I muted whatever programme I was watching. I wasn't worried yet; you hear all sorts of sounds out in the country at night.

I went over to the back door, and stepped outside. Immediately, I was hit by a really weird feeling. I can't explain it or even really describe it. But as I stood there, rain, trickling down my face, I felt inexplicably certain that something was deeply and terribly wrong.

Now I could make out that the sounds were coming from the cowshed, several hundred yards away from the farmhouse. The cows were making a lot of noise; I could hear them mooing and snorting and kicking the corrugated iron walls of the shed.

At hearing the commotion from the animals, I began to grow nervous about the possibility of a coyote or even a black bear nearby. I scanned the almost impenetrable darkness of the fields.

Then, all at once, the noise stopped. It was as if every cow had silenced at the exact same instant.

Now it was just me, standing alone in the silent night.

And then, out of the darkness, a voice began to call my name.

'Mmmiiicchhhaaeelll....'.

The voice was deep and slow, and cracked on each syllable of my name, a shuddering rasp. It mixed with the wind and became almost a echoing howl.

I stepped back inside and locked the back door. Then I closed all of the windows and I turned off all the lights in the house. I sat down on the couch in front of the television, catatonic with fear, tears streaming down my face.

Once, twice, three times that ghastly voice circled the house, still calling out my name.

'Mmmmiiicchhhaaeeelll.....'.

I sat, nails digging into the flesh of my thighs, shaking uncontrollably. For what must have been fifteen minutes, there was a deathly silence. I began to wonder if perhaps I had imagined that awful voice.

Then, from behind me, I heard a faint, almost indiscernible sound.

It was a dull impact against the large kitchen window, the one which looked out over the vast cornfield.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

It didn't sound deliberate; it wasn't a noise meant to toy with me or make me turn around. It was an unintentional sound, the kind produced when something large attempts to go unnoticed.

It sounded like antlers scraping against glass.

There was another agonizing pause, and then the voice again.

'It's so cold out here, Michael. Won't you let me in?'

Now that the voice was so close, just outside, I could hear how wrong its cadence was. It was utterly alien. It sounded as if the speaker knew what sounds to make, but had no grasp of the words or their meaning, could not produce anything except the correct vocal contractions in the right order.

Still violently shaking, but compelled by something deep and unnatural within me, I turned my head to face the window.

Where the pale moon should have been, there was nothing. A black silhouette was blocking the window with its form.

I was sitting in the dark, but I strained my eyes to differentiate the shape of the figure from the night sky behind it. I could hardly make out anything. I think that it was squatting on all fours, or maybe resting on its haunches.

Only the outline of a wide, misshapen set of antlers was unmistakeable.

The pitiful blue glare of the television gave me just enough light to see that the things face, its wet snout, was pressed against the glass of the window. The dim glow allowed me to make out that its skin and hair was stretched out far too tight over its skull.

I remember feeling that the shaking was getting worse. I remember black spots dancing across my eyes. I remember nausea and the feeling of falling.

I woke up splayed in the middle of the living room floor. I got up, rubbing my head, in time to see Uncle Pete's jeep appear from the trees and pull up to the farmhouse.

I never told Uncle Pete about that night, about the things I heard and saw. Partly because I was sure I wouldn't be believed, and partly because I was still deciding if I dared to believe it myself. Christ, I was just a ten year old kid.

I only had a few days left to spend at the farm. I stuck by Pete's side at all times, and I didn't look out of any of the windows after dark. Thankfully, we didn't go on any walks through the woods.

As I grew older, I tried a mixture of repression and denial about my memories of the farm. I never visited again. I think I managed to achieve some semblance of forgetting, however unhealthy or damaging it was to bury my fears. At last, I reached a point where all I would feel was a shiver up my spine and a vague sense of unease whenever I glanced up at a full moon, or walked through dense trees in the twilight.

That was until a few years ago, when it all came flooding back.

Uncle Pete is gone.

Some of the people who knew him in town noticed when he failed to arrive for his monthly supply run. When he missed the next one too, they sent someone down to see if the old man was alright.

And he was just gone.

His jeep was still in the driveway. There were no signs of a struggle; the house looked untouched. Although the front door was wide open, there were no footprints anywhere around the house or the surrounding fields.

Everyone accepted that he must have had a dizzy spell or a fall when walking through the woods. They combed the mountains and forests for miles, but they never found a body.

The only clue they ever found, the only thing at all that was out of place or wrong, was a set of cloven hoofprints, imprinted in the mud, leading up to the farmhouse, and then away again.

Everyone dismissed these tracks. I'm the only one who can't stop thinking about why they were found in sets of two, not four.

I'm the only one who can't stop thinking about what it was that came up to the house on its hind legs and carried Uncle Pete away, far off, deep into the hills and the trees and the dark.