The Valley Where the Fog Has Hooves
J.S. McQueen
Originally published in It Came From the Swamp (Malarkey Books, February 2022)
I am sitting on the forest floor, hearing the sound of hoofbeats rushing through the valley for the first time. I am terrified. I think a herd of horses must be about to trample me because it sounds real and like it is heading directly for me. The wind passes over me and blows my hair back, and the sound drains into the valley behind me. It goes to the silence.
I wake up at home. I am not sure if I was dreaming because it felt so real. I resolve to go to the valley in search of the noise again.
# # #
It was one week before I heard the horses for the first time. I was making breakfast for myself and my father, who had just finished shambling into the front of the house in his underwear and walking up to me and putting his hands on my shoulders and kissing me on the top of the head. I thought to myself, for the first time, that I wished my mother were here to make breakfast instead. Then I thought to myself that I would never have a mother here to make breakfast instead. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom. I did not want to cry in front of him because if I did he would ask what’s wrong.
# # #
Our house has three rooms, plus the bathroom, plus the living room and the kitchen. The entire house is covered in a short blue carpet that burns if you sit on it too much. The living room connects to the bedrooms through a hallway. My bedroom is at the end of that hallway to the right, and it is filled with all of the things my father couldn’t not buy. His bedroom is on the other side, and it has only one bed and a dresser for his clothes. Neither of us go into the third room anymore. It was my mother’s room.
# # #
I go to the valley in search of the sound a second time one week after the first. I have to sneak out at midnight to do it because my father does not like me leaving the house except to go to school. But after he takes his medication, which he sometimes does not do if I do not make sure he does, he will not wake up again. I made sure he did, so I open the window at midnight and slip out of it. I close it behind me. It is a fifteen-minute walk through the dark, smothered trails of the forest to get to the valley. I am not scared because I am used to it. When my eyes adjust, the light of the moon is enough. The forest smells like earth and pollen. I spend the time thinking about how I will tell everyone about the sound, and I remember my grandmother telling me the stories about the horses when I was a kid; we were still able to go and visit her back then. I think to myself that I wish I could tell grandma about the horses. I do not think to myself that I will never be able to tell grandma about the horses.
I arrive at the spot where I thought I heard the sound before, and I am relieved that the spot exists because I think if I had dreamed the spot then I wouldn’t be able to find it. I sit and wait for the sound for a long time, but nothing happens. I go home. The fact that I found the same spot I was in before is enough to convince me to try again later.
# # #
Two years before I searched for the sound a second time, I looked in my mother’s room. It felt like I was breaking a rule, but it looked like a normal bedroom to me, except it had more stuff in it than my room had. I thought to myself that I wish I could have stuff. I thought to myself that my mom must have had money to buy things because my father was always saying he didn’t have money to buy anything for me. The thought that my mom might buy me things my father can’t was exciting to me. I did not think to myself that I will never have a mother to buy me things.
# # #
Six months before I looked for the sound a second time, I went into my mother’s room. I got her clothes out of her closet and tried them on, but they were too big for me. It did not feel like they should be too big for me. I wondered why couples on television slept in the same room but my parents slept in different rooms. I put them away carefully and never went into my mother’s room again.
# # #
When an adult has a room, it becomes full of secrets. I think that is why it feels weird to go inside their rooms when they are somewhere else.
# # #
It has been seven weeks since I went looking for the sound and could not find it. I am back in the valley, not because I am looking for the sound but because I am angry and do not want to be in the house with my father anymore. I sit in the spot crying for hours. The hoofbeats begin in the distance, and I immediately stop crying and jump to my feet. They are coming toward me. And I am scared because it is really hard to remember that there are not horses when you are actually hearing it. The sound passes through me, and I run to follow it, but the forest is tricky, and I trip, and the sound fades away into the distance again. I do not care. I am smiling; the hoofbeats are real, and I am going to tell everyone.
I do not remember how I got back home when I wake up.
# # #
It was nine hours before I heard the horses the second time when I was irritated with my father for reasons I did not understand. I chose to make it the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have friends. He was sitting on the couch when I sat on the farthest side away from him with a sour look on my face and my arms crossed. I waited for him to ask what was wrong, which took a long time. They were talking about the country and patriotism on the news, and he was laughing bitterly at the things they were saying.
When he finally noticed me, I told him I was tired of not being allowed to have any friends.
He looked at me as if I were crazy and told me that of course I was allowed to have friends.
I asked him how I was supposed to have friends if I couldn’t leave the house.
He told me I could have friends at school.
I told him no one at school wanted to be friends with a girl they could only be friends with at school.
He asked where this was coming from, which is a thing I realized he always does when I might be making a good point.
I told him I was lonely and tired of sitting by myself all the time.
He told me I could always come to him when I am lonely.
I could not explain to him why not.
# # #
It was seven years before I heard the sound the second time. We were visiting my grandmother for one of the last times, and it was the last time I would remember, so for me it felt like the last time. This was when she told me about the valley.
She said that there is a valley near the county line, and when people go to it at a certain time of night, they can hear a herd of horses stampeding through the forest, but they checked, and no one has ever kept a herd there. They kept looking because they figured someone was playing a trick on them, and one day, they finally found a horse, only it was pale white with deep black eyes, so they ran because they thought it was satanic, and to this day no one else has heard the horses.
My father laughed bitterly at this, too.
# # #
It is one week after I heard the sound for the second time, and I am telling my father about it. I am telling him I have heard the horses grandma was talking about, and he is laughing in response and shaking his head and saying “Oh did you, now?”
This makes me angry in a way I never thought I could get angry at my dad. I tell him he doesn’t believe me.
He tells me I must have been dreaming.
I told him I already thought of that, and I wasn’t, and it happened twice.
He tells me dreams happen twice all the time. He laughs again, and I hate the sound of his laughter.
# # #
I used to think my dad was bitter about many things. Bitter about the government, bitter about his time in the army, bitter about 9/11, bitter about mom, grandma, ghost stories, and God. I am starting to understand that these are all part of the same bitterness.
I think my father is a lemon man. As I grow older, I’m able to peel him back bit by bit, but instead of something sweet inside, there’s just sourness. My dad is sour, toe to tip, rind to rind.
# # #
It is four weeks after I heard the sound for the second time, and I am in the valley again crying because it feels like the sound is my only friend. The sound is the only thing in my life that does not ask anything of me; it is the only thing that does not want things I do not have to give. I am here because I am angry at my father again. I get angry at dad more and more these days. I don’t want him to touch me anymore, I don’t want to hear him speak or laugh anymore. I see families on TV laughing and playing with each other, and it feels like they have things I do not. I want what they have. I cannot watch TV without crying anymore.
I ask the valley what is happening to me, but I only hear the silence in response. I did not expect a response, I have never gotten one. I already know that praying for people does not fix them; I am here to hear horses.
The sound comes. I am less afraid this time; I jump up and laugh. I am running with the sound as it passes through me, and I do not trip this time. I am beginning to think I can run as fast as a horse, when a clearing stops me.
The sound is here echoing across the empty sky like thunder with no clouds, but it is not getting farther away this time. It is circling me. The clearing is bathed in soap-foam moonlight, so thick I think I could pass my hands through it and feel it bubbling. There is a horse in front of me. I walk toward it and shout hello. It is pale like a sick person’s face, and it is whiter than the moonlight. I shout hello again and it looks at me. Its eyes are black like the darkest parts of the sky, and it begins walking toward me, and suddenly I am terrified.
I am running away now. I can hear it running after me. I am clumsier now, stumbling, falling, and looking back to see it is getting closer, and its eyes are bulging out of its head, and its teeth are moving forward out of its mouth, and its lips are curled farther back than a horse’s lips can curl, and its neck is getting longer; its head is moving toward me faster than its body. I scream, I get up, I run again, and I am screaming and running, and the hooves are so loud it feels like horses are stepping on my chest when I am running. I am crying and shouting for my father, but he is not coming.
When I wake up at home, I do not remember how I got away.
# # #
It is two weeks before I found the white horse. I am standing in the bathroom because I started bleeding a few minutes ago; I was lying in bed feeling something strange trickle out of me, and when I sat up to rush to the bathroom it felt like I was peeing on myself, so I tried to hold it, but it didn’t stop, and when I looked down it was like I had a cup of blood inside me and tipped it over. I have no one to ask what to do, so I stuff a dish towel into my underwear.
I saw on a television show that this means I am a woman now. I look into my reflection and I ask her if she feels like a woman. She does not say anything back because we both know I have never not felt like a woman.
# # #
I tell my father to buy me something to catch the blood. He says he will do it tomorrow but I insist he does it today. He asks if I can just hold it and I get angry and say obviously I tried and I can’t. He warns me not to take that tone with me. He still waits until tomorrow.
# # #
It was late one afternoon when my father called me into his bedroom for the last time. I came in looking angry and impatient, and he asked me why.
I told him we cannot do what he wants to do anymore because I have my period now and I could get pregnant.
He said he was not really my father so it’s all right.
He always said he wasn’t really my father every time. The first time he said it, it made me cry, because I had done something for him that he said he needed that was painful for me because he was my dad, and I love my dad, and when I cried he told me he was sorry, so sorry, and that of course he was really my dad, of course he was.
So this time I told him no, he really is my dad, and I’m not doing it anymore.
He asked me why I don’t like it anymore.
I told him I never liked it, it always hurt.
He got angry and said I should have said something sooner if I didn’t like it.
Guilt tapped me on the chest, and I looked down at the floor, and I tried to hold in my feelings, but I cried. I said I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. I thought to myself maybe we would be more like a normal family if I had just said no the first time.
# # #
I asked him about the war for the first time when I was nine years old.
Why did you have to go to war?
To keep our country safe.
Because of 9/11?
Yes.
Did it work?
No.
Will our country ever be safe again?
No.
# # #
The wind is blowing and it’s loud in my ears as I step outside of the front door of our house. I am going to the valley for the last time. I walk through the wind and it blows my hair to the side and my skirt to the side, but I don’t care; if there’s a storm coming, I don’t care. I am tired of dreaming of white horses. I am tired of feeling nothing all of the time, and I am tired of running away, and I am tired of being tired; I am turning thirteen in two days.
I walk to the valley and stand in my spot with my fists balled at my sides; the horses sound like fear when they come, but I don’t care if I am afraid anymore. I run with them to the clearing; there are angry tears in my eyes. I don’t care anymore. Nothing means anything in this world. Wars are fought for no reason, families are ruined for no reason, and when I pray to God about it he doesn’t say anything back. Before I heard the horses, all I heard was silence.
I make it to the clearing. It feels larger than the last time, and the white horse is standing in the moonlight grazing. The whole place smells raw and alive, and the sound of the stampede fades into nothing.
When I walk up to him, I can’t take my eyes off him. I say hello, and he raises his head and looks at me, and his eyes are still just as black, but it does not look like he wants to eat me. He walks slowly toward me, and I do not run away this time. His hooves click against the ground. He looks down at me and I reach up and touch his neck with my right hand, and it feels warm and fuzzy like a horse should feel, and I reach up with my left hand and pet him on both sides of his neck.
“Hey, you’re not so scary, are you?” I say as I wrap my arms around his neck. He lifts his head and picks me up and I giggle like a little girl until he puts me down.
“You’re a good horsie, aren’t you?” I say, and my voice is light and soft like how people used to talk to me when I was a baby. “Do you have an owner? Someone to ride you?”
When I ask that, he bows his head down to the ground and shows me his back.
I say, “I’ve never ridden a horse before. I don’t even know if I can climb that high.”
He keeps his head bowed to the ground.
I look at him for a moment and then I look back in the direction of where our house is. I stare back at it for the longest time before I finally try to climb on the horse, and it’s hard, and clumsy, but he is patient, and allows my small clumsy fingers to pull on his hair and squeeze his neck without complaining. Then I am on him, and I feel taller than anyone else in the entire world. I lean forward and wrap my fingers in his mane.
“Are you going to take me away?” I whisper.
He rears back and the stampede begins again. He bolts forward and I don’t think I can hang on, but I do, and I am terrified, but then I am starting to smile, and among the hoofbeats I holler “woo hoo!” I feel like if I spread my fingers I could fly away. Then I am laughing, laughing as loud as I can as the herd carries me down through the valley into silence.
Author’s note:
This story is based on a rural legend from the “most haunted county in Kentucky,” which I’ve left unnamed here to avoid outing where, exactly, I’m from. The legend goes that there is a valley somewhere near the county line where you can go in the dead of night and hear a herd of horses trampling through, but no one has ever been able to find the herd. Some have reported various things which largely come from a need to attach a perfectly good mystery about ghost horses to Satan. Some say they’ve seen a pale white horse, or a shack with a pentagram on it, or a goat. I’ve never personally been able to confirm the existence of any of these things.
J. S. McQueen is a novelist by day and a short story enthusiast by night. She was born and raised in the deep dark hills of Eastern Kentucky, where she received her undergraduate degree from Eastern Kentucky University and moved on to a fellowship in the MFA program at McNeese State University. She now teaches composition English and works on her MFA thesis: a novel called King Maker, which is about a woman who encapsulates the millennial generation’s feelings about being born too late to save their own world, and about grappling with being the heirs to a centuries old crumbling empire, told through the lens of her personal struggles with both the family she was born to and the one she found.