Prologue

Levi Davis had never been a prosperous man.
Indeed. He had never been married; the last date he experienced was in high school, and, in retrospect, was most likely out of pity. Mr. Davis had never been academically or physically gifted,(in fact, his grades had been quite poor and his physique was small and skinny) and he had never been particularly driven in any area besides riflery and taxidermy, leaving a higher education out of the question. Davis had small, close-set eyes, that squinted when he had to read. Brown, stringy hair thinly shielded his scalp, with a mouth twisted in a constant sour expression with a beard surrounding it; your first would thought would not have been that he was handsome. He was never a socialite, he was never opinionated, he never won the lottery, he never got a puppy, or a new car, or even an admiring glance from a peer. Even memories of winning a pencil over a game of bingo in grade school were fuzzy.

He had no dark past to account for this, no secret tragedy. He was the younger brother of a successful doctor, Catherine Davis, and the son of Susan and Paul Davis, regular God-fearing parents who were both dentists, all of whom he has successfully alienated himself from. When he left high school, he had also made the decision to leave behind disappointed scrutinization.

Yes, our Mister Levi Davis has never been a fortunate or gifted man in any manner, to the point where his personality reflected the very color beige; of paint drying. Mr. Davis became utterly bland, and so became his lifestyle.

He chose to never make friends, or partake in any relationship for that matter. He secluded himself deep in the wooded mountains of Pennsylvania, surviving off of game and the produce sold to him by a somber Amish man and his homely wife. He enjoyed the contact, and that it required no real conversation. Davis did not have to pretend he took interest in the weather to these people. He had forgotten their names early in their relationship, and never felt the need to remember them. He could offer them a blank stare for conversation, and they would reply in kind. He regularly preoccupied himself with practicing card tricks, taxidermy, daydreaming, and shooting cans. His life has all but completely melded into a vague blob of mere existence.

And he liked it that way.

But Levi Davis had a secret; deep inside he knew he was destined for something greater than this. Perhaps it was the fantasy novel he paged through while in a line on one of his rare interactions civilization,(he was fairly positive he had been in the line to pay for gas...) or even before then, back to the days when he could still run through a forest and imagine himself riding a horse as a knight. Regardless, at some point Mr. Davis realized his destiny was supposed to be great, and that some turn in his life had made things go awry.

Levi Davis had never understood exactly what made him so different from other people around him. What made him so different from his sister. She had always tried to explain to him how he was "special." At first it had been so exciting, but after years and years and years, the "specialness" lost its luster, like fake pearls with the paint peeling. The being excluded, the extra help from the teachers, the constant shadow cast over him, the attention constantly being given to him, and yet at the same time not being given to him, it was all just too much or too little. He didn't want to be special. He wanted to either go back to the young years when he could be anyone, just stop moving altogether and be no one.

Davis waited in this shack on the side of a mountain for fate to reassert itself, for a man to come to his doorstep and say politely, "Good morning Mr. Davis. I am pleased to inform you that your life will now begin. I now grant upon you the ingenuity and popularity that can only be reached by being ordinary."

So one day in the early fall, Levi Davis sat in a rocking chair on the porch of his shack at dusk, submerged in another blissful daydream, his jean overalls chafing ever-so-slightly from the creaking back-and-forth motion of the chair. Under normal circumstances, he would not have resurfaced to reality until it was dark and the stars and moon were shining brightly in the sky. However, starting from this moment, Mr. Davis' life would not be under normal circumstances.

On that day, our Levi Davis met his destiny.

"SKRA, SKRA, SKREEEEEEEEE SKREEE," screeched dozens of birds clamoring out of the trees, waking Davis from his stupor. He jolted awake and looked around wildly, his heart racing like a drum solo in a rock band, only to realize no action was necessary, and leaned back into his chair. The back and forth motion began again, and soon his eyes were glazed over and half-lidded. But right as he began to doze off again, he hear small squeaking noises and glanced out to see packs of raccoons and deer and other forest life emerging from the treeline around his cottage, running frantically past his home to the other side of the clearing.

I was the strangest thing Davis had ever seen. His mouth gaped open at the current of wildlife flowing past him, in a torrent of fur and paws and hooves. The feeling of utter awe in his chest made it difficult for him to decide whether to laugh or scream.

What the h-, but before he could finish his thought he felt an overwhelming chill, an electrical current shoot up his spine. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run the other direction with the animals. Something is coming, an inner voice whispered to him, Something bad.

Davis grabbed his rifle and sprinted away from the house and out of the clearing, not entirely within his sanity from the cold, concentrated feeling of fear. All the other animals had already cleared out by then, and the moment he realized he was alone Levi looked around frantically, searching for any source of life to comfort his frantic mind.

There it was again; the cold finger trailing up his spine. He sprinted wildly through the trees. It was like forest was collaborating with the strange presence, strategically placing every root, every hidden rock in his path to trip him and lead him to some certain doom. Even his own systems were working against him; he could feel the bile rising in his throat, and his hands would not stop perspiring and shaking, making it difficult to grasp his gun while sprint headlong through a forest at dusk as fast as holding the rifle would allow him.

The leaves crunched beneath his feet, and he tried to follow the sound of the other animals' retreat, but he was panting too heavily and was too panicked to make much sense of what was happening around him. Everything began to go vertigo, and his mind teeter-tottered over the edge of unconsciousness.

Davis gasped as he felt a sensation comparable to the pit of his stomach jumping off a skyscraper into a pit of dry ice. He could no longer breath, and he felt like he never would again. The overwhelming panic was beyond anything he had ever experienced before, and wild impulses shooting from his brain electrified his reflexes.

Davis twisted mid-stride and shot his rifle behind him, making no effort to aim, causing his small frame to be flung to the ground. The gun blasted into nothing, smoking solemnly on the forest floor where it had fallen. A stillness descended on the scene; a calm. After a moment of silence, Levi Davis blinked from the ground and surveyed his surroundings. It was fully dark now, the sky the color of a nasty bruise. He could no longer feel any primal instinct of terror, or hear the frantic screeching of creatures fleeing some dark presence. All he could hear was silence, and all he could feel was the leaves beneath his hands and the warmth pooling between his legs where he had let his bladder go.

Levi Davis took a moment before he leaned to his side and began laughing madly. He was insane! There was nothing! What a loser. How stupid could he be? How stupid could he be? He felt hot tears trickle down his face as the laughter raked his body, taking pauses to vomit and catch his breath. He would have loved for the Amish couple to see him now; even they would be cracking up at the sight of him, the sight of this utter dork. Loser. Eventually his stomach settled and his laughter trailed into a low chuckle, and then nothing at all. Levi Davis spread out on the ground, starfish-style, and breathed in a sigh of relief.

But he never heard himself inhale. In fact, Levi Davis had only a moment to reflect on the utter lack of noise, the complete vacuum in the forest since his gunshot, and the chilling cold, before a voice, so calm, so clear, having an educated, amused tone underlying its words, reached out to him from the darkness, from the nothingness surrounding him:

Try not to panic, Mr. Davis; this will only take a moment.