“Little Brushy Mountain ain’t right,” old Cal used to say, spitting tobacco into the dust by his boots. “Never has been. Ridge like that, it keeps what it takes. You walk up there, best remember to mind your manners.”

He’d lean forward then, voice dropping low. “You heard about Audie Murphy, ain’t you? War hero, made it through more firefights than you got fingers, walked away from hell in Europe without so much as a limp. They say the man had death’s own handshake but never let it stick. Then in seventy-one, him and a few others was flying over, and that mountain pulled ‘em down. Fog come sudden, thicker’n buttermilk, and the next thing, metal screaming and fire blooming. Folks said you could smell the smoke all the way in Catawba. Not a one survived. That’s the way Little Brushy wanted it.”

Old timers claim the fog that day wasn’t weather at all. “That was the mountain drawing breath,” Cal would say, eyes narrowing at the tree line. “Pulling the plane into its lungs.”

And then he’d rattle off the stories. A hunter hearing an engine sputtering overhead on a still night, nothing in the sky. A woman walking the trail and seeing soldiers in the mist, marching slow, their boots never touching the ground, fading right into the brush. Kids daring each other to sleep by the monument but running home before dusk because the woods were too quiet, too thick.

Cal always spat again after telling that. “There’s a sayin’ here. Sudden death makes a shadow that never fades. Brush Mountain’s belly’s full of ‘em. And Murphy’s shadow, it’s the heaviest.”

I asked him once why folks left coins and trinkets by the stone. He tapped the brim of his hat like it was obvious. “You don’t bring the mountain a gift, the mountain might take somethin’ else. Could be your luck, could be your way back down. Folks don’t play dice with ridges that’ve tasted blood.”

I went up there myself, once, just to see. Walked the trail till the stone rose out the clearing, bronze glinting dull in the evening light. Left a coin at the base, though my hand shook when I did it. The woods pressed close, thick and watching. Air heavy as iron in my mouth. For a moment I swear I saw a figure by the trees, cap pulled low, one hand resting on the stone. Then the wind groaned through the branches and he was gone, or maybe just deeper in.

Cal had one more thing he’d say before he’d rock back and light his pipe. “That ridge don’t forget. Don’t forgive neither. You go up there, remember, the mountain is awake. What it takes, it never gives back.”

And the lantern light would flicker, and the night insects would start up again, and you’d know he wasn’t just telling tales. Not all the way.