The Rules of Appalachia - The Rules of Appalachia (2024)

Growing up in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, you come to abide by an unspoken set of rules. No one talks about these rules, there's no list plastered somewhere or scrawled in a big important-looking book. I'm not even sure where most of them came from. My great uncle, Jedediah, who lived in the mountains all his life probably couldn't even tell you why these rules were put into place, but he followed them like they were God's own commandments. Now I can finally see why they were so important to him. The mountains have a way of playing with your mind. People go missing. People get killed. They say nothing is certain except death and taxes but deep in the hollows of Appalachia, disappearances are top of the list.

Originally I figured that must've been why my uncle drilled those rules into my head every chance he got. I can still hear him now reciting them over and over like some mantra or prayer. Every summer when my parents would ship me off to stay with him for a couple weeks, in hopes the fresh mountain air and time away would do me good, he'd give me the same crash course as if I didn't hear it the summer before. While I was there, there were five rules I had to follow and those rules were my Bible:

1. Never be in the woods from dusk till dawn.

5. Never look too hard into the trees. You might not like what you see.

As a kid, I always figured those rules of his were referring to the wildlife and the forest's propensity to turn you around and disorient you before you even have time to check a map or compass. Anyone can understand why it might be a bad idea to be wandering out in the woods after dark with no trail to keep you from walking right off a cliff. Of course, you wouldn't want to be too loud out there either. The Appalachian mountains are home to dangerous critters you definitely wouldn't want to call right to you unless you, for some masoch*stic reason or another, are hoping to be mauled or torn limb from limb. But what I didn't know back then was that my uncle didn't drill those rules into my head to keep me safe from bears, coyotes, and bobcats. No, there's another predator that lurks in the shadows of those woods. One that doesn't like when you break the rules. If I had known then what I know now, I never would have forsaken what my uncle taught me. I would've carried on the tradition with Sloan, my little brother, and taken over my uncle's job instilling those rules into his head. Maybe if I had, he would still be here.

It's been a year since my little brother went missing. An entire year has passed since the Appalachians swallowed him up in one gulp, leaving no trace of his existence behind. Even the search dogs and rescue parties that scanned every accessible nook, cave, and cranny of the woods in a 20-mile radius for days on end came up with nothing to show except for a few small bare footprints in the mud on the outskirts of the tree line.

I blamed my parents for the longest time. After all, they were the ones who made my brother and I leave our lives in Nashville, Tennessee and everything we've ever known just to move to some rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of a dying town. But when Uncle Jed passed, my sophom*ore year of highschool, he willed the house to my father who wasn't going to pass up on the opportunity to own his very own hog farm even if it meant he had to move to Lost Cove of all places.

The name seems pretty fitting, huh? Lost Cove.

The place where there's a missing flier in every shop window and the telephone poles are full of staples leftover from advertisem*nts promising a hearty reward for the return of a beloved family pet or a loved one who vanished into thin air. A disappearance here is as common as Pastor Whaley preaching fire and brimstone every Sunday morning from the pulpit. It's bound to happen. But the thing is, you never think it'll happen to you or your family; especially not a child as innocent as Sloan. His overactive imagination and curiosity became his downfall in the end.