When I was twelve, I looked forward to the summer because it meant my first time joining my cousins in spending a month with my Cherokee grandmother in the backwoods of Arkansas, near the Louisiana line. Originally from Oklahoma, that entire side of the family had relocated to a small, rural area where they could work the land and escape what they called the commercialization of the tribe.

She had a few hundred acres but other than the housing area, a farming area, and an RV trail to a fully stocked natural pond, the rest of the property was so densely covered with pine trees that the kids didn’t dare venture off the beaten path too far.

I was the only one out of my cousins that had left the fold. My mom married a man in the Air Force, which meant I spent most of my childhood traveling the world. I was considered the black sheep of the kids. I had not been been raised in the ways of our tradition so I caught a lot of teasing, mostly good natured.

My grandmother loved having us all there, she always joked that it was free labor to work her crops – fields of green peas, carrots, and corn. We didn’t mind because it made camping out by the pond and night swimming a real treat. Of course we had to be careful of snakes and chiggers and critters and such.

Near the end of my visit we had worked particularly hard, picking the crops and getting them ready for market in record time. It meant our work for the summer was done and it was almost time for us to go home … and back to school. We decided to spend our entire last weekend camping at the pond, since I was being picked up the next Thursday. We loaded up the four-wheelers and took off. We fished, and cooked what we caught (well, the older cousins did) and we played in the pond almost the entire day. After a full day of sun and fun we all decided to crash and get an early start the next day.

To this day I’m not really sure what woke me but I was wide awake and I had to pee. I snuck out of the girl’s tent as quietly as I could (according to my cousins I was as loud as a bull in a china shop when I walked) but when I stood up outside the tent I froze in place. About 40 feet away, standing at the edge of the water, were two glowing yellow eyes, staring directly at me. There was enough of a breeze to ripple the water and the moonlight danced, illuminating a very large, very still black panther.

I’d heard stories, heck we’d even told stories around the campfire this summer, but I’d never seen one before, none of us had. This was like sighting a Bigfoot! It tilted its head, first one way, then the other. I quietly whispered, “Hey, guys, you gotta see this. Hey, wake up.” The cat’s ears perked up at the sound of my voice and it took a step towards me. That’s when I noticed something odd, it didn’t have a tail and it moved … funny. Awkward, not at all like a cat would normally gracefully slink.

And it was moving towards me. It had taken a few more steps. Losing my nerve, I yelled at my cousins to wake up, and that’s when the cat opened up its mouth and screamed at me. Literally it sounded like a woman screaming bloody murder. My cousins shot out of the tents and all came to the same abrupt stop that I had. My oldest cousin sucked in his breath and said one word, a word that sent the other cousins scurrying into the largest tent, dragging me with them.

Skinwalker.

He backed towards our tent, chanting something over and over, looking at the ground in front of the creature, never directly meeting its eyes. The creature screamed over and over until I thought I would lose my mind. The older cousins all joined in the chant, and eventually everyone was chanting but me, since I had no idea what they were saying. We heard the cat growl right outside of the tent and then it circled us, too many times to count, sometimes growling, sometimes screaming. Finally the dawn came and with one last snarl and scream, the panther sounds diminished as it moved away from our tent. When we were sure it was really gone we loaded up as fast as we could and headed back home.

My oldest cousin took me by the arm and sat me in front of my grandmother, then he asked me to tell them both what had happened before I woke everyone. When I recounted my tale my grandmother gasped in horror and rattled off questions, did you look at it? Did you meet its eyes? Did you speak with it? I admitted I had looked at it but I told them I never spoke to it. My grandmother hugged me tightly and for some reason that scared me worse than anything else that had happened. She seemed so sad, like she was saying goodbye to me.

She called in the rest of the family and for the next two days there was a constant stream of chanting as some ancient ritual was carried out with me at the center. I switched between terrified and bored as the hours crawled by and I vaguely remember sleeping … a lot. Occasionally at night we would hear the woman’s scream trailing out from the forest but I never saw the skinwalker again. I also never visited my grandmother’s place again. I wasn’t allowed back.

For the past thirty years I’ve been to so many funerals as one by one my mom’s side of the family died off to accidents, natural causes, and what seemed abysmally bad luck. No children have been born. When I’ve asked about it I’ve just been told that that’s the way it is. So I’ve gone on with my life, moving across the country and settling down in a mountainous area near the west coast. I married, but it didn’t take. No kids for me either. And now, today, I’ve just received the news that my youngest cousin has passed. I’m all that’s left.

As I hang up the phone, I walk outside to stand on my balcony. My closest neighbor is a few miles away and I love this place so much, the nature, the quiet, the peace. The moon is just starting to climb into the sky when I hear it. The screaming followed by snarls and growls as something hurtles towards me from the dark.