The Revenant by K.D.P. Wildwood

In the fields of haunted pastures, a cursed shepherd faces the sins of his past.

K. D. P. Wildwood is a trans Midwestern author living in Ohio with his husband and their cat. He enjoys tabletop games, observing the weather, gardening, and horror media.

You can read "The Revenant" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the Kayiton Kai podcast, where every story takes
you one step deeper into the world of the strange,
the eerie, and the unknown. I'm your host Linda Gould,
and tonight's story is The Revenant by KDP Wildwood. It
leads us into high mountain pastures where an outcast shepherd
faces a tax on his sheep. What hunts the sheep?

(00:33):
Why is that force so destructive? And is the shepherd
powerless to stop it? KDP Wildwood is a trans Midwestern
author living in Ohio with his husband and their cat.
He enjoys tabletop games, observing the weather, gardening, and horror media.
Now dim the lights, settle in, and prepare yourself for

(00:57):
The Revenant by KDP Wildwood. Enjoy. When I was seventeen,
I lost a sheep from my father's flock out at
the edges of the summer pasture. I was up watching
over them, as I always did every year since I'd

(01:18):
been twelve and old enough to lift the oversized shepherd's
crook my father gave me. I didn't see it happened.
I hadn't heard it in the night. All I found
the following morning was blood and fleece left over from
the attack. It was scattered over the rocks at the
forest's edge. One of the sheep had wandered off all

(01:39):
the way there and been taken, presumably by a wolf.
This wasn't how wolves hunted. I stayed up late and
made sure the sheep were within my sight for the
next few nights. That was it. I kept a closer
eye over them that year and lost no others. It happens,

(01:59):
my father told me, don't let it happen again. When
I was eighteen, I lost four sheep from my father's
flock out at the edges of the summer pasture. I
was not careful enough, and every morning I found their
blood and their fleece scattered over the edges of the trees,
flung into the branches, splattered over their trunks. I asked

(02:25):
for help. I asked for some one to hunt the beast,
but no one ever came up to the high pastures
because they were haunted. My father was angry, but he
couldn't afford some one else to watch over them. He
couldn't pay a hunter to search the alpine slopes for
a lone wolf, and he couldn't pay a stone mason
and his apprentices to build a fence that would stop

(02:46):
the wilds from coming to his flock, so he had
to settle for me alone, with a shepherd's crook, still
too large for my hands, and an oil lantern that
spluttered when I swung it too hard. Out towards the dark,
there were sounds in the hills. I told myself it
was the wolf out there somewhere. It had to be

(03:09):
a wolf alone, screaming in the night. When I was nineteen,
I lost six sheep from my father's flock out at
the edges of the summer pasture. My father did not notice.
Five people went missing from the tiny village nestled between
the sheer shale slopes and the town huddled in on itself.

(03:33):
I only knew because a messenger came to tell me
far up in the mountains that my father wanted me
to stay here for it was too dangerous to return
to the valley. But I said to the messenger, there
is a wolf up here. There's words down there, she said,
and nothing else. She watched me carefully through the corners

(03:54):
of her eyes. She knew who I was, she knew
of my past. She was frightened of me. She knew
I was bad luck. Two nights after that, I lost
three sheep in one attack. I gathered the remainder of
the flock and tried to keep them safe, hidden from

(04:14):
the wolf. But you can't escape the eyes in the dark,
the nose of a wolf not alone in the mountains,
that is its home, and you are a trespasser, no
matter how long you've been there. I lost two more sheep.
I had no choice. I had to find the wolf
myself and kill it, or it would devour my father's livelihood.

(04:39):
Peace by peace. What worried me most was their behavior.
Even as their number dwindled, the sheep were not afraid.
Whatever was killing them did not frighten them. Something had
to be luring them away without scaring the rest of
the flock. This was no wolf. It was far too

(05:01):
intelligent and long lived to be a single beast made
of flesh and blood and teeth. I waited, putting out
the lanterns to see it, know it. It did not come.
While I watched the messenger returned. Three more people had
gone missing from the town. Two bodies had been found,

(05:22):
skulls caved in. She did not look at me as
she spoke. She kept her eyes down and twisted her
hands together and never got too close. I did not
make her stay. This was not the hunger of an animal.
This was wanting, hunger, unceasing, unsatisfied by the warm blood

(05:47):
of my father's flock. It never came while I was watching,
but it stole three more sheep away in the night
under my watch. Once. I even chased after a shape
in the dark to find a dead trail, And when
I returned to the flock, I found another one of
them missing. The messenger came back a third time to

(06:10):
tell me my father had vanished. Along with the three others.
Four were found, all killed the same way, crushed faces,
battered bones, broken, beaten to death as though by stones,
even though they were found on a grassy hill. I

(06:32):
returned to the flock and wrapped myself in my cloak
and gripped my crook in my hands until I could
no longer feel my fingertips pressing into the smooth wood.
No one else pastured their sheep up here in the
high valleys. No one was willing to do so. These
places were sacred and evil and haunted all of these

(06:53):
and more, And I already cursed was the only one
who could walk this desecrated ground, because I could do
no more harm to it. But more importantly, it could
do no more harm to me. The spire spines of
the mountains could not tear me apart. The unhallowed wilds

(07:17):
held no sway over me. I, a tainted soul, could
not be pulled away from truth from good. I have
already fallen, and I will never be able to rise.
The closest I can get is to stand on the peaks.
When I was fourteen, I killed my only friend in

(07:39):
a narrow valley screen rock slopes and precariously balanced boulders
on the slipping mudstone. He fell into the ravine and
could not escape, for the sides were too slippery. He
was not friendly, but he was all I had. He
gave me marks of his affection, bruises my arms, shoulders,

(08:01):
sometimes on my face, but it was only ever in
good fun. In the ravine, he begged me for help.
He said to go and fetch a rope and call
his father, who would pulled him out. Instead, I walked
along the edge and pushed the rocks in one by one,

(08:23):
and eventually he could not dodge them swiftly enough, and
They broke him to pieces and buried him. I told
the village he had disappeared. I told them he had
fallen into the stones and vanished. They found him, and
they never forgave me. There are no wolves up in

(08:45):
the mountains this high, up at the summer pasture. Even
they fear to tread the unhallowed ground. They do not
walk this grass. Only the sheep were stupid enough to
follow me up past the watching stones that guard the path.
These places are haunted, and so am I. I waited

(09:06):
until I could see him. He had always been able
to play tricks on people, stealing things from them, setting
little traps. When he appeared at the edge of the woods,
I only watched. He touched a sheep, and it followed
him away from the flock to the edge of the trees.
He ripped it to pieces with his hands, fingers like claws,

(09:29):
stronger than any beast. He tore the legs from the
body and hurled them into the trees. He shoved with
a flesh down his throat, and he had to move
his jaw with one hand, for his skull was too
broken and misshapen for him to close his mouth without it.
When he had finished, shoving fistfuls of raw, steaming mutton

(09:50):
down his throat. He let his jaw hang slack again
from his lumpy head, points of bone poking through the
gray skin, falling open all the way so I could
see where his tongue hung limp and dry, and his
teeth gleamed slick with blood on the moonlight. And he
used both hands to haul the corpse away into the trees.

(10:12):
It is vengeance that he seeks a repayment in blood,
not the blood of the animals it never was. It
is mine. He wants mine, he needs. He cannot rest
while I walk where he steps. The grass crumbles to dust,
like the dust that coats his hair and rests on

(10:34):
his glazed eyes. If I do not follow him into
the woods, he will break my father's sculd to pieces
and take those from the village until they are all gone,
and only I remain alone. Either I will join him,
or he will leave me, but take every one else,

(10:55):
as if I'm not already alone because of him, I've
driven the sheep down towards the valley. They will go
as I have sent them. This pasture is no longer safe.
It is too cursed even for them. It holds only death,
as it will for me. I have left my father's

(11:15):
shepherd's crook planted between the watching stones as a warning,
do not follow, do not come this way. There is
nothing for you here. There is nothing for anyone here.
Now I go back up to the pasture, to the
tiny wooden hut where I would sleep, and I will

(11:37):
blow the oil lantern out and leave it on the windowsill,
next to the glass, and I will close the door
and make sure it will not blow open. And I
will turn and I will follow him into the dark.

(12:00):
Listen regularly to the Kaiiton Kai. You'll know that I
love stories that start off with some normal, recognizable opening
that then just goes off on some wild path, And
this story really does that. It starts as a tale
of missing sheep and prowling wolves, something we encounter in
many stories, and then step by step, the shadows deepen

(12:24):
until we realize the real predator isn't an animal at all.
It's guilt, festering and unrelenting and growing, and it's a
reminder that what we've done never truly leaves us. We
carry our choices, our mistakes, our betrayals like stones in
our pockets. And how that weight manifests is unknown and

(12:50):
often surprising. Like as this story reminds us, those stones
may take shape and force us to face our deepest
regrets and fears in the most horrible and surprising ways.
The Kaidon Kai features so many fascinating stories across every genre,
and this is just one of them. So be sure

(13:11):
to subscribe to the podcast and visit the substack to
read author insights about their inspiration. Sometimes I don't post
all the time, but I do occasionally. I also share
art that I love of every kind on social media
and on substack, So pick your poison and follow me
on Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky, or substack. You'll find all

(13:34):
the links in the episode description. Thank you so much
for listening today, and I'll see you next week.