UNCANNY VALLEY

There are two basic types of predation: pursuit and ambush. The first is what most people, I think, picture when a predator comes to mind. A cheetah running down a zebra, a wolf pack nipping at the sides of a moose. Even insects such as the dragonfly hunt mosquitoes and other smaller dragonflies.

Humans were pursuit predators once, though it's more commonly referred to as persistence hunting. We followed beasts over miles of terrain-the sweat on our skins releasing heat more efficiently than the panting tongues of our prey-and eventually killed the animal and brought it back to our tribes.

The second type of predator is an ambush predator. A crocodile, lurking in the river for a wildebeest, or a trapdoor spider waiting for an insect to land on its door. These are camouflage predators, the water of the river concealing the scaly back of the reptile, the spider dragging grass over the web. But what's interested me for the past weeks, ever since I went hiking, are predators that use a different method.

Aggressive mimicry. An evolution where predatory animals have developed the ability to send signals to their prey in a method that the prey will dismiss as harmless or friendly, allowing the predator to close in and feed upon the unfortunate animal. Anglerfish are the most famous example, the bioluminescent light dangling from the top of its head having become shorthand for danger, for a lure pulling in a victim. But they're not the only ones. The snapping turtle's tongue looks like a worm, and so fish swim eagerly into its mouth. The vibrant colors of the inside of the Venus flytraps mouth make it look like a flower to the insects it preys on. The point is: for predators like this, they have to signal to their prey that they're harmless. Friendly. Not to be feared.

I was hiking in the mountains of northeast Vermont, near the Canadian border. It's a lovely place, especially in the last days of summer, though perhaps hotter than I'd like. For all that I was a New England boy, born and raised, the summers and springs were always my least favorite part. I'd driven up by myself, begging off a scheduled trip to Burlington that some college friends invited me to. We all went to university in the state and had decided to come back a week early to spend some time together. It was the last day, and while I wouldn't say any of my other friends were uninterested in the great outdoors, they were all more interested in thrifting along college town streets than hiking the interweaving mountain trails until the sun started to set.

There had been no other cars in the parking lot of the trailhead, the dust settling as I pulled in and locked my car before looking about. The sun had just finished completely rising over the horizon, and I slipped on a baseball cap and applied sunscreen, grimacing as the white spray bottle began to sputter. Back in my backpack it went, alongside pocketknife, flashlight, and compass, and I stepped onto the trails.

I was alone on the trails for seven hours. I followed the creek as far as I could, spotting multiple deer and even a fox or two sneaking through the undergrowth. The dappled sunlight that shone through the canopy was much appreciated, shielding me from the burning sun, and I made a bit of a game out of seeing how far I could get without having to cross an expanse of shadeless grass. There's a certain pleasure about exploring a small section of wilderness without having to actually get lost and endanger yourself.

Squirrels chittered and ran back and forth along the branches of the trees, and one genuinely startled me when it ripped of a chunk of bark the size of my palm. It fell on my head, and I yelped, starting in just the right way to send me tripping to the ground, knees and hands hitting the ground with a heavy thud. Hissing from the pain, I glanced at my hands. Only some minor scrapes meant that it could be safely ignored, and with a grunt, I hurled the bark back up into the trees, causing the squirrels to take off, shaking the leaves from the branches.

Grumbling, I decided this was a good a place as any for a lunch, and sat on a nearby log, sighing with exasperation when I saw the grass stains on my pants. Brushing it off as best I could, I slung off my backpack and opened it up. I had brought some salami, some cheese, crackers and trail mix-a standard hiking lunch in my family.

From the side pocket, I grabbed my pocketknife. I had a Swiss Army in my actual pocket, but this was a four-inch folding knife, one that I kept in my backpack just in case. The handle was orange plastic, with finger grips curved into the material, and the click that sounded out as the mechanism activated to keep the blade firm sounded loud in the natural soundscape. I remember it clearly. Unsurprising, perhaps, but still weird.

I had been sitting there, snacking on cracker sandwiches for what couldn't have been more than four minutes, when for the first time all day, I heard footsteps. There's an unmistakable sound when a hiking boot crunches leaves, the plastic nubs and grooves forming a pattern unlike anything in nature, and there's really no way to mistake it for anything else. Turning, I made to greet the person coming up on the trail behind me and stopped, the words failing to come out of my mouth.

There was something off about the man standing on the trail, something that triggered that lizard part of my brain wanting to run, to fight, to freeze-to abandon the sapience of humanity and bound away into the trees. The first thing I noticed was his shirt: it was inside out and back to front, the tag fluttering in the soft breeze as we stared at each other. It was too large for him by far, the hem hanging down past his waist and nearly to the tips of his fingers. Ripped jeans, stained with mud and grass, seemed to be equally big, and I could only assume the grace of a belt stopped them from tangling his ankles. Those boots were untied, but the laces looked like they were tucked into the boots themselves to prevent him from tripping.

He might have been shorter than me by a head, but I didn't like the way he was staring at me. It reminded me too much of the way the people on the subway would stare at me, the ones who mumbled to themselves and were clearly not mentally well. Brown hair hung from his scalp, tangled and twisted and visibly unwashed. I swear, I couldn't tell when he blinked.

"Can I help you?" I asked, hand tightening around my knife. This was not my normal reaction, but this man was anything but normal. I would have offered him some crackers, asked him how the trails were treating him, where he had come from. but there was a part of me screaming that something was wrong, that this man wasn't right. It was a combination of his clothes and the way he moved. Ultimately, I can try to justify it all I like. The truth is, I didn't trust him. I thought he was dangerous. And I was right.

"Hello," he said, taking a step toward me.

I blinked. His voice was slightly throaty, the word mildly accented. But it was still a word, a greeting, something that my subconscious recognized as a symbol of harmlessness. And my hand loosened my grip on my knife.

That was when he moved, sprinting at me at breakneck speed, boots slamming against the ground and arms pumping back and forth. Yelping, I stumbled backward, holding out the knife in front of me like a spear. A spear the man slammed into with seemingly no regard for his own safety. The shining tip of the blade pressing into his chest, piercing through fabric, then through skin-continuing forward, as if there was no ribcage under his skin. It was like he was a boar running directly into a spear, unable to even understand what he was looking at, even as he slammed into me, barreling me over as a squeal came from his mouth.

My back was pressed against the ground, all air forced from my lungs with the force of a cannon, and in that moment, I thought that I would never be able to inhale again. That thing's face was inches above mine, and was so deep into the uncanny valley it must have been at the very bottom of the thing. I can barely describe what was wrong with it. Just a complete and utter sense of the proportions of the face being off: the left eye being ever so slightly higher than the right, the nose somehow off-center, the mouth too wide to be that of a human. Those eyes were light green and looked like my brother's. More than anything else, that might be what makes me shiver the most when I think back on it now, just how human those eyes were with how inhuman it was.

Its mouth was open in a frozen squeal in that moment, so much saliva dropping from the lips of the things that it looked like the spit-up of a baby. Its teeth: sharp and needle pointed, resembling that of a lamprey or a moray. A single, bizarre thought popped into my head, and I wondered if this thing was a vampire, with those blood-draining teeth. It had a tongue, but not a human-like one, broad and flat. It was more like that of a snake, completely straight but for the forked tip.

The shirt was loose and baggy and torn with a bloodstain. The image of this thing wearing my shirt inside out, stained with my blood, flashed through my mind, and despite there being no more air in my lungs I tried my best to scream as loud as I possibly could. That's the frozen moment I remember, like a snapshot of what could have been the last second I was ever alive. But thankfully, my knife was in my hands, and steel won the day over that creature.

The sound that came from its mouth when my blade plunged into its chest was unholy, exactly what I'd imagine came from a slaughterhouse day in and day out, and the thing jumped back, my knife...