On Lonely Hill by Alice Kinerk

Inspired by the Japanese legend of the Ubume, On Lonely Hill is an atmospheric folk horror story by Alice Kinerk. When an early morning run takes an unexpected turn, an ordinary routine gives way to an unsettling encounter rooted in ancient folklore. Blending modern life with traditional Japanese ghost lore, this tale explores what happens when legends come alive.

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On Lonely Hill

My husband and I don’t have kids and we don’t want any. We value our freedom, our ability to jump up anytime the mood strikes and backpack through Europe or hike the Andes. Although if we’re being honest, this has so far been hypothetical. With climate change we ask ourselves is jet travel really in the best interest of the planet? With rising rent/skyrocketing grocery bills/student loans we ask ourselves can we really afford to leave the couch?
No use wanting what you can not have.
Instead of kids we have houseplants.
Anyway, today before work I go out jogging. It’s early, moonlit, foggy, dark. I jog to the end of our woodsy dead-end road. Hubs is home, I don’t know, watering the houseplants.
I am cresting the lonely hill at the end of our little road when I observe what looks to be a silhouette. And yet my eyes have played tricks on me before. In the dark, I’ve become alarmed by low-hanging cedar boughs. So I tell myself it’s an illusion and keep on. 
But then it moves. It (she?) is hunched over, roly-poly, clutching a bundle draped in cloth. Okay, I’m spooked. Weird to come across another person here in the dark woods on Lonely Hill. I’m not one for body-shaming, but it’s the bulbous shape of her torso and her wide-set legs, the way her head pokes out forward. Part bird? It’s fucking weird. 
Also, what’s up with the bundle?
She zips forth on spindly legs at impossible speed. Now she’s five inches away.
Her hands are not normal hands. Her fingers are too long and thin. Her nails are claws. Dark sharp points. Did I mention she’s six feet tall? God, she’s ugly. Her mouth’s a lipless gash, beak nose, eyes of a traumatized soldier, the whites visible all around.
My heart is a bird in a cage.
Hold… 
my…
bay… 
beeee… 
Her voice is reedy, like she’s speaking through a box fan.
“What?”
Hold… 
my…
baay… 
beeee… 
She stinks of blood. Rich and raw. I’m terrified, and yet I can't look away. 
“Hold your baby? Why? Is there an emergency? You need me to call 911?”
She presses the bundle to my chest.
Now, I’m a kind person. I don’t body shame, and I’m drawn to help. So I raise my arm, honestly to push her away, but regardless, she takes the opportunity to dump her bundle on me. I catch it.
The whatever-it-is starts to wriggle.
Birdwoman zips to the woods and disappears.
“What’s happening? Where are you going? Are you coming right back?”
No woodsy rustling, nothing. 
So here I am on Lonely Hill, sweating through my high-vis pullover, holding some weirdo’s baby.
I crunch through dead grass and into the woods. I squint, but the Pacific Northwest woods are dense and dark. The tree branches spread out like black capillaries against the blue-black sky.
I think about calling out again, but my voice catches in my throat.
Here’s a weird thing. The baby is becoming heavier. At first it was five pounds, a sack of flour. Now it’s cement. My shoulders ache. My fingers cramp. My muscles start doing that overtaxed shivery thing. I shift my hips forward, sort of prop the weight on my stomach while I go to shift my grip. Now the cloth slides back and I get a whiff of new baby smell. 
Aah, new baby smell. 
But a minute later it becomes too much. My knees buckle. I tilt backwards, off balance. I fall. 
The baby lands on me like a boulder. My breath is expelled in a grunt.
This time of year, Pacific Northwest ground is squelchy from rain. It’s half marsh. It swallows things. 
I feel myself starting to sink. Baby’s sinking too. She wriggles onto my chest, crushes my lungs. Ubume! she screams. Ubume! Ubume! Ubume! 
At least that’s what it sounds like, I don’t know.
I try to pry her off of me, but there’s no use prying at a boulder. Flailing against the rising earth, I glimpse movement in the sky, hear the reedy caw of Mama bird. I scrape my fingers raw. Dirt flies into my mouth. My rear end is already underground. 
Baby thrashes toward my head. Ubume! she shrieks in my ear.
My mouth makes a gummy sound, trying for air. What the fuck? I keep thinking. Is this how I die?
Mama bird perches on a branch.
Now baby slides up further, noshing my neck. She sort of nuzzles for a moment, then her dagger teeth tear into my flesh. The bite is deep. Blood begins spurting. The smell of that plus the mossy Pacific Northwest woods mixes into one.
In my last moments, I think stupid stuff. I panic. Like, how will they ever find my body? Will I asphyxiate or bleed out first? Or, if I could only unzip my fanny pack, I’d get out my phone, call Hubs, tell him to put down the watering can and come pick me up.
It’s a nightmare and I can’t wake up.
Also, and this is the prominent thought zipping around in my sweaty head, fuck yeah I want kids. I don’t know, it’s instinctual. I want the experience of lying in a hospital bed, crying as a little squirming newborn pops out of my underside, and watching her grow incrementally year after year until one day I’m sitting in a massive university stadium, crying as a full-grown graduate pops across the stage. I want kids! I want kids! I picture descendants of me and Hubs sitting around the candlelit post-apocalyptic table, holding up their Kerr jars of homebrew wine. Doesn’t Mom make the best stewed rabbit? 
I grow lightheaded, foggy. My thoughts break apart like bread in water.
But yeah, kids. I would have wanted them. Who doesn’t want a jab at immortality? Instead, I’m being shoved into an early grave.

                                                                  💀💀💀

Alice Kinerk enjoys writing, reading, and sometimes jogging. She has published dozens of stories. Read more at alicekinerk.com.