I used to hike in the gorge a lot.
The trails beside the Black River are some of the best in the world, in my opinion or were until new development brought new overpasses and places for people to conduct full-blown crimes. I don’t know who thought it’d be a great idea to make the concrete passages under the overpasses so wide and with little alcoves to hide but they should move away from Bridal Veil Lake; we do not like you.
Yeah, okay, crime has always been a problem in Bridal Veil. We’re a tourist town close to the American border, so it could be a lot worse…. But it is worse in the gorge since those overpasses went up. And it’s the reason, after fifteen plus years of hiking, I don’t go down there anymore.
I’d gotten off work early and thought I had plenty of time to hit the trails before sunset. It was early May, not the peak tourist season, at least, not for the kind of tourists that wanted to go camping in a Canadian forest. So I had the trails to myself, which is how I preferred it.
The expansion above the gorge and the overpasses had made it easier to access the trails, and people had been, and it showed in the amount of litter left behind. I became irritated by the sight and went as far west as I could, away from the well-worn paths to the ones only serious hikers knew about. Deer and animal tracks mostly.
The walk became strenuous, and I went further than I intended to. The sun seemed to sink like a stone. I had my cell flashlight, but the dark made the hike a lot less fun and far slower. To make matters worse, I thought I knew which way to go to get back to one of the main trails. But after walking for a while, I realised I got turned around somewhere. Great. Lost. Some man of the woods I was.
As I struggled with my GPS (or the GPS struggled) to figure out where I was, I heard faint voices. Reluctant to engage strangers in the middle of nowhere at night, but still very lost, I reluctantly approached, hoping to study them from a distance before revealing myself. The shadows of their fire played against the canopy of trees. I crawled under a thorny bush to watch and listen.
Even in the dark, I could tell by their shoddy clothes they were homeless. They were eating sliced bread and drinking whisky.
“This won’t keep us,” one of them said before tossing a bread slice into the fire.
“You shouldn’t waste,” another said.
“When’s he gonna get here?” a third asked seriously. “I’m tired of just bread, too.”
“Whisky okay, though?” another criticised.
It was too hard to tell how many people were over there. The talk became garbled, and I was about to crawl away, worried about being at the mercy of some possibly dangerous strangers, when another guy walked into view. He was dressed plainly but stood out from the others because he looked clean. He also wore something over his face, a mask or rag, maybe.
He dropped a heavy object that rustled like it was in a garbage bag. Without a word, the man left. And the homeless people struggled with the object. Like they’d been waiting for this to happen. I didn’t have a clear look at what was inside the bag.
Noises like ravenous eating came from them. I caught a glimpse of long hair bouncing up and down in the firelight. Holy shit. I didn’t stick around to confirm what I thought they were doing. What I know happened.
Completely freaked out, I managed to crawl away quietly. I doubt they would have noticed anyway. Their noisy consumption of whatever… whoever was in that garbage bag was loud enough to follow me a long way. I couldn’t get the noise out of my head for days. It’s sickening. I threw up a lot until nothing came out. After a lot more time, I made it out of the forest far away from where I went in. I didn’t know exactly where, and this was a problem.
I couldn’t tell the police much about where I saw these guys eating a human corpse.
And they just looked at me like I was nuts.
I didn’t hike again in those woods and get nauseous if I even pass by.
You think, Cleriot, this is related to the other weird stories you’ve been sent ?