Warmth Pt. 01

I

West Virginia is an interesting place. Among other things, it's sometimes called "the northernmost southern state and the southernmost northern state." Due to its location, it doesn't really belong to any of the big groups of states, like the Midwest or New England. It also has a climate that doesn't fit into a neat category or description. Due to how much it varies in elevation, the temperature and average rainfall can be widely different across the state. Most of the area is mountainous or forested. Like all places to live, West Virginia isn't for everybody, but I'm happy here.

I'm not originally from West Virginia. I was born and bred in Alabama and had to move here after college because of my job. That was around four years ago. I missed my family and my hometown, but there were things about my new location that I was glad to get used to. Besides the colder weather, the people around here are different. Next to the classic charm of the Deep South, the people in West Virginia are more laid back and quiet. Also, at least compared to where I grew up, the communities weren't knit nearly as tightly. Being an introvert myself, I didn't mind that at all and grew to love the peacefulness of the area.

It was moving to West Virginia that led me to develop a new hobby with hiking. I'm an inside person for the most part. My body is lanky and clumsy and not really athletic, but I discovered that I quite enjoyed hiking. There was a sort of solitude in it that appealed to me. I started out small, sticking to easy trails that were close by, but over the years I got better at it and allowed myself to branch out, finding tougher and longer trails all around the state. I was doing just that on that one Friday in September.

I woke up early to go try out a trail I hadn't hiked that was a moderate distance away from my house. It was so long that going up and down it was going to take a majority of the day. I had a normal, full-time job, but we were given every other Friday off. In fact, this was the Friday before I used a week of the vacation time I had saved up. I figured that a good hike was a fitting way to start off all the time that I had to myself.

The trip up the trail went without anything too noteworthy happening. I was early enough that I didn't cross paths with many other hikers, and aside from the occasional airplane or helicopter, it was quiet. The walk wasn't taxing as much as it was time consuming. I paced myself and took a break about halfway up, so it took several hours to reach the place where I wanted to stop and have lunch before turning around.

Once I was finished eating, I decided to explore the nearby forest before I made the trip back. Careful to keep in mind where the trail was, I walked around the woods a little bit. It was at a clearing around a quarter mile away from the trail where I noticed something that made me stop and stare.

There was a man on his back in the middle of the clearing, sleeping on the grass.

Considering where I was, it was a strange sight indeed. I walked closer to get a better look and saw a few other things that struck me as odd. He wasn't dressed properly for hiking. All that he was wearing was a simple white t-shirt and jeans. He didn't even have shoes on. I thought that maybe he just decided to put down his stuff and take a nap, but looking around, I didn't see any indication of that. I took a closer look at him. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties, close to my age. He had a very fair skin tone, much paler than mine, and his hair was even lighter than his skin. It was such a pale, almost icy shade of blonde that it was nearly white.

Aside from the general dirtiness that comes from laying around on the ground, he also just had an unkempt look to him. He had a stubbly beard that appeared about a week old. His fingernails had grown out quite a bit, much longer than most men would let them get. His hair was tangled, matted, and so long that it looked like it hadn't been touched in years. He didn't look like a hiker. He looked like a passed-out homeless man, except we weren't in some alley. We were pretty far up into the mountains.

I normally keep to myself and try to stay out of other people's business, but the whole situation raised a lot of red flags. I figured that the best thing to do was wake him up, just to make sure everything was okay.

"Excuse me," I said. He continued sleeping.

"Excuse me," I repeated, this time a little louder. I still got no reaction from him.

I lightly nudged him with my foot. "Hey man, wake up." I was almost shouting now to absolutely no effect.

I tried a few more times, getting louder and more physical, but he didn't even stir. I was starting to worry. If I listened, I could hear him breathe quietly, so I knew he wasn't dead, but that didn't grant me much relief. I was starting to wonder if he had overdosed on something or was even in a coma.

Don't ask me why, but for whatever reason I thought that giving him some water would help the situation. I had an unopened water bottle in my pack, so I got it out and broke its seal. I knelt down next to him, raising his head up a bit so I could more easily pour the water in his mouth.

I can't really say what I was expecting the water to do, but it was extremely effective. It seemed that the moment the liquid touched his lips, he snapped awake, jerking up to a sitting position and scaring the hell out of me. I cursed and stumbled back a bit, but when I recovered, I could see that he had fully returned to the world of the living. He was just sitting there, looking me up and down.

The way he sat was definitely strange, cross-legged and with his palms down on the ground in front of him, but what really grabbed my attention were his eyes. His right eye was a bright sky blue and his left eye a warm, rich brown. The overall effect was so distracting that I felt like I wasn't even making proper eye contact and could only look at one eye at a time.

It was after almost a minute of silence that I realized he wasn't going to say anything. He was just staring at me with the most unemotional look on his face. I decided to try and get a conversation started.

"Are you okay?"

He didn't reply. I tried asking that question again, as well as some others, like "What's your name?" and "Are you even awake right now?", but all he did was slightly tilt his head to the side, never changing his expression or averting his gaze. I wondered if he was deaf. I scooted closer and stuck out my hand next to his head. He continued staring at me, so I could tell when my hand was completely out of his vision. When I sharply snapped my fingers, he flinched and slightly turned in the direction of the sound. Well, that ruled that option out. He could definitely hear me.

It occurred to me that he might not speak English, but considering where we were and what he looked like, that didn't seem likely. Besides, he wasn't acting like I was simply saying words he couldn't understand. He was acting like he didn't even know what words were.

My initial idea was that he was messing with me, feigning his lack of comprehension as some sort of joke.

"I heard you mumbling in your sleep," I said, lying through my teeth. "You can stop pretending that you can't talk."

If that fazed him at all he didn't show it, so I tried calling his bluff. "I have a knife in my pack," I lied. "If you won't talk to me, I can just make you talk."

All he did was scratch his scalp with his long nails.

"I also have a rifle," I continued. "I could just blow your head off if you want."

He didn't even blink. I had never met anybody so catatonic before. He also had one hell of a poker face. Whether he could understand what I was saying or not, I couldn't discern anything about what he was thinking. I quietly accepted defeat, determining that he either couldn't communicate, or wouldn't, no matter what I said.

It was then that I noticed him shivering slightly. It was no wonder, he was barefoot and wearing short sleeves. It was a problem I knew I could fix, so I jumped on it. I didn't have any extra shoes, but I could afford to take off my jacket, and he needed it more than I did. I tried to hand my coat to him and he just stared at it. It was then that I lost my patience and just walked over to give it to him myself.

He acquiesced, allowing me to manipulate his arms and put the jacket on him. In fact, he resisted so little that it was kind of strange. Moving his arms made me feel like I was handling a mannequin. Once he seemed less cold, I pondered what I was going to do next. I had no idea who this man was or what was wrong with him, but I couldn't just walk away and leave him to his own devices. I didn't know how he got there, but I doubted he could just walk back down on his own. He wasn't prepared. I figured I should at the very least help him back to civilization.

I stood in front of him, offering a hand to help him up. He just stared at it. I don't know why I expected otherwise. I shook it a bit, and he actually did reach his hand out. I thought he would grab my hand, but instead he just touched it with his fingertips. I had no idea what he was doing. He just lightly probed at my hand, like he wanted to examine it but was scared that it would explode. After a few seconds I sighed and grabbed his wrist, trying to pull him up.

I let go too soon and he fell forward. He landed on all fours like he was doing a push-up, but with one knee tucked under him. He just held in that position, too. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him up until he was standing. Thankfully he was able to do so without help. Now that he was on his feet I saw that he was a little on the short side, maybe 5'8". He was definitely a good deal shorter than my 6'2".

I walked a little and saw that he followed me. Soon we made it to the trail and began our trek down the mountain. The whole process was kind of a pain. Every few minutes I would hear his footsteps stop behind me, and when I turned around, he was doing that strange light touching thing he did with my hand to something else he found interesting, whether it was a tree or a rock or whatever. He would stop when he noticed I was looking at him and continue following, but that didn't prevent him from slowing everything down a fair amount.

Being later in the day, I crossed paths with many more hikers than I did on the first trip. I smiled and nodded like I always did, but most of them gave me strange looks when they saw who I was walking with, which was understandable. What I didn't get was the reaction he had to them.

Every single time we came across other hikers, whether on their own or in a group, he took care to make sure I was always in between him and whoever it was. He got a little bit closer to me as well, like he was trying to hide behind me. I had no idea what to make of it.

Eventually I realized that I was getting tired, which I figured meant that my companion was probably dead on his feet. When I found a place to stop and sat him down, his knees sort of buckled and he almost fell. I was shocked that he let himself get that tired without saying anything. That was when I suspected he legitimately had no concept of communication at all.

I gave him the rest of the water and he drank it slowly, taking a sip and then waiting a few seconds before taking another. I made the break longer than I would have otherwise, letting him finish the water and taking my time checking him for ticks. After I let him rest, I got him up and we continued walking.

The hike continued the way it had been for about an hour. It was then that I once more heard his walking stop. I turned, expecting to see the same thing I saw the dozens of other times, but what I saw almost made me jump out of my skin.

His body language had changed drastically. He was hunching over and bending his knees slightly, like he was ready to pounce. He turned his palms up and curled his fingers to show off his long nails. His normally blank face was contorted into a scowl, and I could hear a low rumble coming from his throat, the first sound I'd ever heard him make. The way he held himself combined with his dirtiness and scraggly hair to horrifying effect. He didn't just look crazy, he looked dangerous.

It took a few seconds to realize that he wasn't looking at me, though. I turned around, following his gaze until saw something just as unnerving: a black bear that was standing near the edge of the trail. It was definitely looking back at us.

Black bears are plentiful in West Virginia, so much so that they're the state's official animal. Even still, you could usually avoid confrontations with them as long as you kept to the trail and didn't do anything stupid. It was rare to have a bear take interest like that. My hiking partner decided what to do before I could even think. He stepped in front of me, placing himself between me and the bear, and started screaming at the top of his lungs. The sounds he let out gave me chills; they were howling, primal cries that I could tell had no words underneath them. I'm not sure what the bear would have done otherwise, but when it heard what he was doing it must have decided we weren't worth the trouble and walked off.

He held his stature, growling and snarling until the bear was completely out of sight. When it was, he stopped and immediately went back to acting like he did before as if somebody flipped a switch in his body.

He turned around to face me with that blank expression I was used to. Realistically, I can't say how much of a difference his actions made, but I knew that he had tried to protect me from the bear. I chuckled nervously.

"Uh, thanks, man."

He reacted by not reacting and we continued hiking, making it to my car without further incident. For some reason, he still cowered at any people we passed, despite having no problems facing a bear earlier.

When we got to my car and I had checked us both for ticks one last time, I realized that I had no idea what I wanted to do next.

I was aware that I didn't really have any obligation involving him. I could have just left him with the police and he wouldn't be my problem anymore. Still, considering how he put himself on the line to help me, I knew I couldn't just ditch him at my first opportunity. I still didn't know what the best choice was, though. I looked at my watch and saw that it was late afternoon. Mostly I just wanted to go home. I looked at the man with me, without any doubt the strangest person I had ever met. I figured that it wouldn't hurt to bring him home with me, just so that I had until the morning to decide what my next move was. I buckled him into the passenger seat of my car and began the long drive back to my house.

II

The car ride took about eighty minutes. I usually listen to music while driving, but I opted to instead spend the entire ride in silence so it was easier to think. It wasn't like the man riding with me was going to interrupt, either. As expected he was quiet the entire time. Occasionally he would play with his hair or lightly touch his seatbelt like he had done to so many other things that day, but for the most part he just sat still, dozing off for the last thirty minutes or so.

I'm not a shrink. I don't know that much about the brain, but I spent a sizable length of time trying to think of any disorder that matched with the symptoms he had shown me. I couldn't. He was something that didn't line up with anything that I knew of. The only theory I could form was more abstract, but the idea was so bizarre on the face of it that I wanted to dismiss it entirely. Even so, all my observations supported it, and it was the only idea I had that made any sort of sense.

I also wasn't able to wrap my head around how he got to where I found him or why he was there. He didn't seem to know the area, and it was unlikely that he got to where he ended up all by himself. If he had been put there, I couldn't imagine that whoever had done it wanted him to be found. It was through pure coincidence that I came across him myself.

More than anything else, I just wished that I could talk to him. It would have taken a two-minute conversation to answer nearly every question I had, but I knew that that wasn't possible, at least not for the time being.

I tried to push all the details inside and look at him more plainly. He didn't seem like a bad or dangerous person. Without being asked, he put himself in danger to aid somebody he had just met. Still, he didn't exactly strike me as happy. He either didn't feel emotions or did everything in his power to hide them, but the way that he would never indicate or hint at his needs disturbed me. I had to make him take a break from the hike. If I had waited any longer to do so, he might have collapsed. It was like that in other respects, too. I had to notice that he was cold or thirsty and do something about it because he wouldn't. I wondered what had happened in his past that made him that way.

I was pondering, analyzing the day's events for the whole trip, but eventually we had arrived at my house. It wasn't big or fancy, but I didn't need it to be. At that point in my life I was perfectly content to live in a small suburban house alone. I was sure that my new guest wasn't going to complain, either.

I woke him up and let him follow me into my house, taking off the jacket of mine he was wearing. After I did that he started walking around freely, and I realized what he was after when he went in my bathroom. Letting him do his business, I went to the den and sat down on the couch, completely exhausted physically and mentally. After a few minutes, he came out and walked into the room I was in. It seemed that time after time he did something new to confuse me. He was perfectly capable of going to the bathroom when the need arose but let himself walk without complaint until he could hardly stay on his feet.

I was pulled from these thoughts when I suddenly realized that he was standing right in front of me. A moment later he hesitantly held out his hand. Slowly and haltingly, he lowered it until it reached my knee and he touched it, using that gentle probing motion of his. After a few seconds of that, he got on the couch next to me, but instead of sitting he laid down, curling up on his side and putting his head on the armrest. It was certainly quite a sight and did more to give credence to my theory from the car ride than anything else he had done prior, so much so that I decided to stop discounting it and make it my working theory, at least until something better came along.

As far as I could tell, he was physically a normal person, 100% an adult human male, but mentally, he seemed more like an animal, likely a dog. He wasn't a human with a dog's brain, he was somewhere in the middle. He walked like a human, wore clothes like a human, even used a toilet like a human, but many of his other actions seemed more like those of a pet. I've never had a dog myself, but growing up some of my friends did, and the way he would lightly touch things with his fingers had an uncanny similarity to the way dogs would sniff things they were interested in. He also growled and barked at danger, putting up a vicious front when he saw that bear. He could hear, but couldn't find any meaning in words, just hearing them as random noises. So many of the things he did lined up with this idea.

It also made me realize that he had taken an interest in me. From the moment I woke him up, he followed me around, did what I wanted him to do, and wouldn't keep his eyes off of me. Considering how scared he acted around every other human we had come across, the way that he behaved towards me made me think that he had attached himself to me in some way, whether he saw me as his master or his parent or something else.