Wipe Head – Chapter 6: The Mountains Remember
The night air bit into William's face as he trudged along the narrow, icy road, bandages still tightly wrapped around the left side of his face. The city lights behind him were now miles away, swallowed by darkness and the hum of distant traffic. Each step was a reminder of everything he had lost—the laughter, the warmth, the security of a family that would never return—and of the life that had been stolen from him. His small legs ached, his stomach growled with hunger, but he kept moving. Pain had made him stubborn. Anger had made him relentless. The memory of his mother's gentle voice, Emily's playful giggles, his father's protective hands, burned like wildfire inside him, and he refused to let it go. Not yet.
The streets were empty, eerily quiet, as if the world itself had granted him passage. No voices called out, no footsteps echoed behind him, no lights flickered in the windows of houses long abandoned. Only the whisper of wind through the trees lining the cracked asphalt, the occasional rustle of leaves under his tired feet, and the crunch of his shoes against thin sheets of ice. The darkness pressed close, thick and suffocating, yet strangely comforting. Here, no one judged him. Here, he could be alone.
Hours stretched into an endless procession of cold, ice, and exhaustion. His shoes, too big and worn, rubbed against his feet, leaving deep sores that burned with each step. His hands, raw from gripping the strap of the small bag he carried, were smeared with dried blood from scratches, dirt embedded beneath his fingernails. Rocks and hidden roots tripped him repeatedly, and thin sheets of ice betrayed his tired legs. Each stumble reminded him of fragility—of how easily life could be stripped away. He clenched his fists around the bag strap until his knuckles whitened. He would not be fragile anymore. Not for them. Not for anyone.
At last, against the horizon, jagged and dark against the snowy peaks, he saw it—the wooden house. His sanctuary. His father's creation. A monument of memories, both bright and terrible, looming like a silent guardian over the valley. He stumbled toward it, snow crunching beneath his shoes, wind whipping his bandaged face. Inside, dust and cold air hit him at once, but he barely noticed. He pressed his palm against the familiar wooden door. The faint scent of pine and smoke—faded but still lingering—struck him. For a moment, it was as if his father's arms were around him, as if Emily were laughing somewhere behind him, as if his mother were calling him in from the cold.
He sank to the floor, letting the thin coat he wore do little to ward off the chill. Tears came then, violent and unrestrained, as if all the grief he had swallowed for the past two years had pooled inside him, finally spilling over. They mixed with the blood from cuts and scrapes, stinging as they ran down his face beneath the bandages. He let himself cry—not for the boy he had been, but for the life he had lost. For the family ripped from him. For the world that had laughed at his pain.
Morning arrived with the pale light of winter sun glinting on the snow, so bright it hurt his eyes. He took a deep breath, the cold air slicing through his lungs, leaving them raw. No one would be here to scold him, to laugh at him, to make him feel small. No voices. No judgment. Just silence. Just him. And the mountains.
The days that followed became a brutal rhythm of survival. William ate what he could find—roots dug from the frozen earth, moss stripped from tree bark, the occasional rabbit trapped in snares he fashioned himself, snow melted carefully into drinking water. Each day brought new lessons. Hunger taught him patience. Cold taught him resilience. Silence taught him focus. Every misstep had consequences. One night spent shivering beneath a thin blanket, one miscalculated trap that allowed a rabbit to escape—these mistakes burned in him, teaching him that life was earned with vigilance, not granted freely.
At night, he would sit by a small fire he had learned to build, its warmth lapping at his raw skin, and stare at the stars. They were unchanging, eternal, and cold—like him. Memories of the fire, the screams, the hospital, the orphanage, and the endless loneliness all returned, like cruel ghosts dancing in the flames. The boy who had cried, who had stumbled under mockery, who had screamed silently in the orphanage—he was vanishing, leaving behind something colder, sharper. Something that would not be broken again.
He became meticulous. Every day had a purpose. Every movement carried precision. He learned to fashion tools from what the mountains provided: sharpened sticks, knives from old scraps, even improvised snares for small animals. He studied the patterns of the wind, the behavior of birds, and the subtle signs of the forest. The mountains became both teacher and mentor. Each snowstorm taught patience, each frozen night taught endurance, each howl of distant wolves taught caution.
One evening, sharpening a small, stolen knife, William realized with a thrill that had nothing to do with childish malice: he enjoyed the control he had over life and death. The deer that wandered too close, the rabbits that failed to escape in time—they were under his command here, for the first time. No laughter, no mockery, no one to tell him he was nothing. Here, he was powerful. Here, fear was his alone to wield.
Months passed. The bandages came off mostly, revealing a face marred by burns, shadows of scar tissue stretching across his jaw and cheeks. His eyes, once wide with innocent curiosity, now gleamed with cold calculation. Every glance, every movement, every thought had become precise. The wooden house transformed under his care into a fortress: doors reinforced, firewood stacked high, traps set along the perimeter. Every action whispered a lesson: survive, adapt, conquer. Fear was a tool now, not a curse.
He spent hours walking the perimeter, checking every trap, listening to the sounds of the forest. The snow muffled most noises, but it also sharpened his senses. Every branch that snapped, every whisper of wind, every rustle of fur became a lesson. He learned to anticipate movement, to predict danger, to embrace solitude. He became a predator in his own right, a silent force that observed before acting, waiting before striking.
One snowy morning, William stood at the edge of the clearing outside the cabin. The mountains stretched infinitely, white and blinding, their peaks sharp against the sky. Wind cut across his face, stinging, but exhilarating. Here, he was alone, and that alone made him whole. He whispered into the wind, voice low but carrying across the frozen expanse:
"Goodbye… to everything that hurt me. Hello… to everything I will become."
He was right. The mountains had claimed him. They had strengthened him. The boy who had cried, who had been mocked, who had been scarred and abandoned—the boy called Wipe Head—was gone. What remained was something else entirely: something unstoppable, something that would leave the world trembling before his presence.
And far below, in the towns that hugged the mountain foothills, whispers had already begun. Stories of a shadow moving silently through the snow. Glimpses of a towering figure, knife in hand, eyes burning beneath a mask. Parents held their children close after six in the evening. Doors were locked, windows shuttered. The legend of Wipe Head was being born—not as a rumor, but as a creeping, palpable terror.
Inside his wooden fortress, William sharpened his knives again, listening to the wind's mournful howl. Each note seemed to echo the pain he had endured, the anger he had cultivated. Each sound became fuel. He smiled faintly beneath his bandages, a twist of satisfaction curling on his lips. He had survived fire, pain, cruelty, and mockery. Now, the world would learn his name the hard way.
And one day, very soon, six friends—blissfully unaware—would trek into his domain, into the heart of his mountains. They would walk straight into the nightmare he had become.
Snow fell silently outside, blanketing the mountains, covering footprints, hiding evidence of a boy who had once been broken. But beneath it, something monstrous had been forged. Something ready. Something that would not forgive.
Wipe Head had arrived.