It’s been a few years now since this all happened, and I guess that the main reason I’ve been sitting on the memories for so long is because I’ve been clinging onto the hope that I’ll still somehow process it all. I’m not gonna shill you some bullshit about how difficult it is to unearth the memories or how I just want to move on with my life. If that were the case, I would never be posting this for the whole world to see. The truth is, I do want to share. I wasn’t entirely sure how or where, but my first instinct was that if anyone would listen, it would be the people of the internet. As for the how, maybe the best method is to deliver it straight from the source. I kept a thorough, detailed journal throughout this whole ordeal. I’ve filled a number of journals for my job over the years. They help me keep my thoughts in order. In this case, I think all the writing just helped me retain my sanity. It’s 3 in the morning as I’m writing this, and I don’t want to think anymore, so instead, I’m just gonna dust off the old journal and open it up. I’ll transcribe it for you all verbatim with as little editing as possible. That’s the best way for you all to get the story. Whether it’s to give myself some closure, call out for someone to make sense of this and give me an answer, or just another attempt to process everything, I’ve decided that this is what I want. If you guys have any information about my situation beyond what I already know, I have open ears. I suppose this is enough of an introduction, though. I’m getting antsy. Eager to start transcribing, so here’s my story as I wrote it in 2019:
Alaska. Everything I had been working toward directed me here. Alaska was not a place I ever saw my job taking me, nor is it a place that I would ever voluntarily go were I not to chase some rabbit here. Nevertheless, all my hard work had brought me here. It made sense. It’s frigid and desolate. At its worst, there’s nothing to see here, nobody to talk to. All of the reasons I would never come here are exactly the same reasons that made it an ideal place to hide.
I pulled my scarf tighter around my face and neck in an effort to shield myself from the subzero winds that broke through the treeline. My boots sank into the snow. I wasn’t making much progress on foot, but there was no way I would be able to navigate a snowmobile through a forest like this. It would be easier if I was following a path. Of course there wasn’t going to be a path, though. If there was, this wouldn’t have been a good place to hide.
As I walked, I stared down at the blanket of white that stretched across the entire state. My footprint stood out visibly on the otherwise undisturbed snow. My mind wandered. I had no reason to believe that these people were still here. What if they were, though? They were certainly not safe to be around. I certainly couldn’t just contact the authorities—there was no reception for miles. I was never one to carry a weapon on me—not that it would even help if I ran into trouble here. What if my information was less reliable than I thought? This wasn’t a real concern, but I couldn’t help but let it cross my mind nonetheless. I could walk for miles and never reach a village. Whether it was because I lost my sense of direction or because there was no village here to begin with didn’t matter. I’d be stranded out in unlivable weather, and conditions would only get worse after sunset.
I was restless for the entire walk. When you spend so long looking into something, digging up long forgotten information and trying to piece together history, pouring in time and resources, the moment of truth can be stressful. That effect never goes away. It’s only an extra layer of stress when there’s something at stake, be it safety, money, or even your entire career.
The ground hit a steep, downward incline, and my concerns were laid to rest. The drop was far, and led into a large, white valley devoid of trees. The ground leveled out to a handful of sparsely spaced buildings. Most of them were small, wooden country-style barn houses with four walls and pointed roofs. The ones closer to the middle of the valley had crumbling walls and foundations. It was hard to make out through the flurry, but at the center of this village was a crater with some sort of collapsed structure and a bright, white light shining amongst the ruins. I couldn’t make out the source of the glow, but it was the only source of light coming from anywhere in the village. I took that as a sign that nobody occupied the place. Or at the very least, they didn’t have working electricity. That wasn’t a surprise given the location and architecture of the place, but it was reassuring to think that the technology these people had might not have been nearly as advanced as I initially thought, even if that meant there would be less here for me to find. Still, I had no idea what the white shine was. Maybe the sun reflecting off of something? I couldn’t tell.
I quickened my pace, moving toward the steep downward slope. One of the trees in my peripheral caught my attention, though, and I slowed down. I was never easily unsettled, but I felt goosebumps forming on my skin. Slumped against the tree, nearly concealed by a thick layer of snow, was a corpse. I couldn’t make out any of its features. It was clad in full black body armor, complete with a combat vest and full-head helmet. There was some kind of rifle resting on its lap. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a dead body, but the sight of this one was deeply disturbing. This proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in the right place. I slung my carrier bag in front me and fished out my camera. This is what I was here for. After putting the strap over my neck, I pulled my scarf down from my face and brought one of my gloved hands to my mouth, biting the tip of the index finger and tugging at it with my teeth. I peeled off the first glove, and then the other. After adjusting the settings, I lifted my camera’s viewfinder to my eye, took a deep breath in, and snapped the first photograph. I now had official documentation; irrefutable proof that this was real. I was unearthing something big, and the click of the camera sent the weight of the whole situation crashing down on me. I was on the cusp of capturing what was left of what could very well have been the most elusive and dangerous shadow organization this country has ever seen, maybe even the world.
I approached the body slowly, kneeling down to eye-level with it and taking more photos. I shifted around, making sure to capture it from every angle. I took note of an armband over the combat gear wrapped just below the right shoulder. It was grey with a white insignia printed on the front. I gathered that it was some sort of emblem or logo. It looked runic. Up until this point, I hadn’t ever found any sort of emblem that represented the cult. I made sure to take close-up photos of the design. Dozens of photos taken of this one body, I was nothing if not thorough. After I was certain that I had all the photos I would need of the untampered body, I lifted a hand and gingerly placed it upon the helmet. I needed to be quick. My fingers were already beginning to numb, and my nose stung as my nostrils grew wet. I dragged my hand across the surface of the helmet, wiping off the snow. I heard a snapping sound and quickly withdrew my hand. The helmet—along with whatever was inside—dropped down to the dead person’s lap, striking the rifle before rolling down onto powdery ground. My stomach and chest tightened. Only after knowing that the crack came from the person’s skull disconnecting at the vertebrae did it seem so foul. I choked back the growing urge to vomit, instead gagging toward the ground.
After that, the shock subsided, and I was able to take another picture of the headless remains. There was no way I would be able to find any identifying features. Unsurprisingly, the corpse had decomposed down to bone; skeletal remains encased in a kevlar sarcophagus for what was likely decades. Instead, I resorted to kneeling next to the body and patting it down, digging through each pocket in search of some form of identification. Having a name and face to pair with a member of the cult would work wonders for my investigation. Unfortunately, I had no such luck, instead finding a field knife and a pair of binoculars. I photographed them and tucked them into my bag. There was also a walkie-talkie clipped to the body’s belt, but there was no way in hell that thing still worked. I checked anyway. It didn’t. I hurriedly got the rest of the photos I needed and struggled to fit my damp hands back into my gloves.
The sun was suspended lower in the sky. I needed to get moving again. I stood up, placing my camera back into my bag, and began the trek downhill. My first step onto the slanted earth made me stop in my tracks. It felt as if I would begin to slide down the hill if I shifted my weight to that foot. I couldn’t rush this. I watched my feet and took slow, careful steps. The hill was steep, and the snow and sleet threatened to send me tumbling down at any misstep. My knees were bent, and I held my arms out to either side, taking each step as delicately as possible. It was going well. I looked toward the village down below. It was closer. The further down I got, the steeper the ground became. I made sure to plant each boot firmly. I lowered myself further to the ground, placing one gloved hand in the snow behind me to steady myself. This helped, and I was able to inch my way down even further securely. Through these gradual movements, I developed a method, and I was making slow but undoubtedly certain progress. After some time, I began moving much more quickly, pulling myself along the ground with my feet and steadying myself with my hand. Before long, I had made it about halfway down. I planted my foot in a patch of particularly deep snow, but it shot forward, slipping on the ground. I completely lost my balance, landing on my ass and sliding downward.
My hand dragged along the snow behind me, and I dug my fingers into it in a desperate effort to slow my descent. I pushed my heel into the ground in front of me, sending clouds of chalky, white snow down the hill. I felt myself slowing down, and I took the opportunity to press the bottom of my free palm into the ground. I finally came to a stop about two thirds of the way down. After such a close call, I decided it would be a good idea to slacken my pace. The last thing I needed was to risk another mishap like that. I was positioned awkwardly, with one one leg outstretched, one hand behind, and the other on the ground at my side. My arms were shaking and I hoped I was composed enough to keep my balance. I pulled my leg back toward my body and put both hands to the ground at my side in an effort to push myself up, but as soon as I shifted my weight, my hand slipped on ice and I lost my footing again, sending myself into freefall down the hill. All bets were off. I collapsed onto my back, sliding, but as I gained speed, I started to roll. I just closed my eyes and prayed that I didn’t crash into any rocks or obstructions. Picking up speed, I lost track of time. My clothes were coated in wet snow, and grains had gotten into my scarf and coat, but that was the least of my concerns. I felt the ground start to flatten beneath me, but my body kept going. For several more seconds, I clenched my eyes and braced for any sort of impact. It never came. Rather, I stopped sliding. I laid idly for several moments, gasping in the winter air that stung like magma in my lungs. I was alive. More than that, near as I could tell, I was unharmed. At the very least, adrenaline was combating any pain.
I let my eyes slide open and sat up. The sun was rapidly setting now, and as the grey sky lost its light, so too did the air lose what little heat it had. Now that the experience was over, I found myself shivering. My fingers and toes felt like they could barely move. I pushed myself to my feet and turned in all directions, surveying my surroundings.
The lofty hill which I had just toppled down now featured a long drag mark stretching across the entire bottom half. It would have been a miracle if I hadn’t lost anything. Several dozen meters beyond the foot of the hill was the nearest building. I counted seven other similar looking structures in the vicinity, some of which were barely standing. Collapsed in the middle of all of them, at the dead center of the wide crater that swallowed much of the village, was something that I had no doubt used to be much grander than all of the other buildings. What it was before it met its demise, I couldn’t tell you. Now it was nothing more than a pile of singed and splintered wooden shards buried in decades of snow. I had a better look at it from here, but I still couldn’t identify what the source of the light was. It was brighter from this distance, illuminating the fallen structure and reflecting off the snow.
I decided that whatever it was could wait. First things first, I needed to check on my belongings. To my dismay, my bag was sodden. I unbuttoned it and peered inside. Just my luck. Snow had gotten inside and covered everything I had. I immediately reached for my camera. Upon first inspection, it didn’t seem to have suffered any critical damage. That didn’t mean it still turned on, though. If this thing was broken, then all of my hard work would have been for naught. I would’ve had to pack up with what I had and head back, hoping that the memory card was still intact. Hopefully that’s not the case. I bit my lower lip and pressed the power button. The screen flashed to life, showing the Sony logo before switching to displaying the ground beneath me where I pointed it. I breathed out a sigh of relief and opened to my gallery. I was greeted by the familiar display and an array of all the photographs I had taken that day. The memory was fine. I opened the most recent picture. It was a close up of the dead cultist’s disconnected skull and helmet resting on a blanket of snow. A grizzly sight to be sure, but I was only thankful that I hadn’t lost the image. I began flicking through the photos, examining each one. There were more than enough pictures of that one dead body, which was good. I needed to make sure I left no stone unturned.
I did my best to shake the snow out of the bag without spilling any of the other contents. I got enough out to ease my worries about storing my camera in there, and with that, I placed it back inside and closed the bag.
My daylight was running thin. Another quarter hour and I’d be relying on my camera’s flash to take photos. That wasn’t good for anything further away. I elected to take some pictures of the scenery first, and then start poking around the buildings once the sun settled beneath the hills. I put my camera back around my neck, and started pacing around the valley, taking various photographs of each house. I call them houses, but really, they could’ve been anything. They looked enough like houses. I figured that they had to be if the cultists lived out here. I started by photographing the structurally sound ones. Each time I heard the SNAP of the camera, I let it remind me how close I was to shedding light on this whole fucked up situation. After I was sufficiently pleased with the photos I had on the homes closer to the exterior, I made my way back inward, toward the crater. The houses near the crater were dilapidated and falling apart. I quickly realized that at least two of them had their roofs caved in completely. There would be no exploring the interiors of those. By the time I was finished, I had taken over three dozen photos of the eight houses. The buildings weren’t anything impressive, and I couldn’t discern anything special about them, but they were important to document either way. Still, I put a lot more of my attention toward the ruined structure in the middle with the light. While taking my pictures, I noticed that the light was pulsating. It was subtle and rhythmic like a heartbeat, but it was there. It would dim and flicker about once every second.
It took me nearly all of my remaining sunlight, but I was pleased with what I had gotten. If there weren’t a crater and collapsed ruin at the dead center, the village might not have looked all that remarkable. It was isolated and didn’t have much to offer, but it was quaint and probably once peaceful. It staggers the mind how such a place can be transformed by humans. Now the snow had been stained with blood and the buildings were in disrepair. How exactly, I still wasn’t sure. That’s what I was here to find out, though. I needed to know what happened to the cult. I needed to know what caused the crater, what caused the buildings to start falling. How did the group die off? I had tracked them this far, and I sincerely hoped that coming here would open the way to more answers.
With those thoughts in mind, I started toward a nearby house that still looked almost completely intact. It was about time I finally got a look at what was inside. I waded through maybe thirty meters of snow to the front entrance and eyed it down. Enough snow had piled up at the front to block the wooden door. The brass handle was crusted over by a layer of ice crystals. I wrapped my hand around it and twisted it, but the door was caught in the snow. It just rattled in the doorframe. Using my boot, I tried to sweep away the snow that had been piling in the doorway, but there was just too much. All I succeeded in was knocking some grains into my boot. The cold flakes nipped at my ankle and I stopped. The door felt like it was ready to be ripped off its hinges. I knew I could take the thing down without much trouble. I paused to consider whether this was actually a good idea, and my growing impatience with the Alaskan wind got the better of me. If the door wouldn’t budge, I would make it. I reeled back my dominant foot and thrusted toward the door. The whole front wall shook, and I sent a flurry of white powder trickling down from the overhanging roof. The fragility of the building showed. I drew my leg back again, readying myself to put in more weight this time. With a deep breath, I swung my leg toward the door. I kicked a hole clean through the center and my foot lodged inside. I yanked it back out, taking chunks of fractured wood with it, letting them drop to the ground. There was now a sizable hole in the door. I figured that it would only get easier from here. I began kicking at the area, knocking off chunks at a time. Finally, I got a good enough kick in to crumble most of the door. Hurriedly, I ducked inside.
The air around me was still cold, but the walls provided immediate relief from the wind. The interior was dark. I retrieved my cell phone from my bag and tried turning it on. It worked just fine, thankfully. I turned on the flashlight and shined it around the room. All of the windows were completely coated in webbed crystals of ice, and it was impossible to see outside. I took a few steps further in, scanning my surroundings. It was a single room, not even a bathroom inside. A twin size bed was up against the far wall with a nightstand beside it. Other than the bed and nightstand, the room was empty. It was unnerving how minimalistic everything was. If all of the cottages were like this, I couldn’t fathom how a community of people lived here.
My eyes drifted toward a dark mass in one of the far corners. It was resting on the ground, and when I illuminated it with my flashlight, I took a step back. The walls and floor around the mass had black stains that would have been impossible to make out without my light. I gathered my nerves and stepped closer.
It was another body. Another skeleton, rather. At first, I mistook it for another cultist. Maybe it was, but it was different. Donned in black combat gear with a rifle next to it. This one didn’t have a helmet, though, and as I got closer, I realized that the armor was different. It was also missing the armband. The skull was partially concealed by a black combat scarf.
Who was this? Why was it different?
I knelt down, inspecting the body further. It had a pistol holstered at the belt (I couldn’t tell you what kind or model or whatever), and what I assumed to be a kind of long, almost cylindrical throwable. Maybe a grenade of some kind that I couldn’t identify. It had a yellow band along the middle, though. There was no way I was touching anywhere near that thing. This person was armed to the teeth. Whatever killed them here was violent, as evident by the leftover black bloodstains on the wall and floor. It was sickening. I had never seen anything like this. I didn’t touch the decayed body or anything it had, I just took out my camera and started gathering photos. First of the guns and throwable, then of the body at various angles. I backed up and took photos of the interior as a whole, getting the bed, the nightstand, the broken door, and the frosted over window.
Finding the second body, I was sure that, were I to explore the village further, I would only find more carcasses. The more I saw, the more I became deeply uncomfortable with the situation I was in. Discovering such gruesome sights by myself, it felt wrong. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was witnessing all that was left of these lives. These people who had died maybe before my time, forever frozen here. Nobody had been here since it happened. Whatever had happened, it was tragic, and it was fatal for so many people. I didn’t know what to make of anything yet, but I made a resolute decision to investigate the collapsed structure at the center of the crater. If I was going to find anything here, it was going to be there. I no longer felt right sifting through the remnants. I needed to just go to the root.
Slowly, I exited the broken home and everything inside with my eyes ahead. Standing back out in the winter air, I fixed my eyes on the pulsating light coming from the ruins. It blinked in the same rhythm, beckoning me. The sun had set completely, and it was now the only thing that stood out in the night. I began marching toward it, passing by the other buildings. During the whole walk, I felt like I was in some sort of trance. My fixation was locked on the light, paying absolutely no mind to anything else. Before I knew it, I was nearing the light; the ruins. There was nothing left of this building. No furniture or walls or memories. Just rubble. Piles of shattered concrete and wood and steel. From this close, it was easy to tell that this building was much different than everything else surrounding it. It was massive, much larger than everything else, too. It wasn’t constructed with the rest of the buildings. No, it was definitely added later. It was also at the dead center of whatever the fuck caused the crater. At the back of my mind, I wondered and speculated about the building’s purpose. Once I entered the perimeter of the ruin, I could make out that the light was being emitted from something on the ground lodged in the snow. I couldn’t tell what it was. My body carried me closer and closer, and then I found myself standing right above it.
I’m not quite sure what exactly it was. It was certainly smaller than I expected. Some sort of box-shaped frame made from metal. There were no faces on it, and the inside was hollowed out, creating the metal outline of a box from its vertices, completely frozen from the snow. Running through the center from one corner to another was a glass tube, and the inside was beaming white. It looked like some sort of neon. This contraption, whatever it was, was completely alien to me. I cautiously bent down and took it in my hands. I wiped it clean of snow and looked in awe. I just studied it in my hands, watching the light pulsate. As I did so, my thumb found an indention near one of the corners—a button. This thing was no doubt of great significance. I should’ve been taking photographs of it up close, I should’ve been documenting it. I didn’t do any of that. I rubbed my thumb gently across the button, never breaking my gaze. I wondered if this had anything to do with the reason the town was in disrepair and its occupants were dead. My curiosity was getting the better of me. I was spinning wild theories in my mind. Somehow, I had decided that this must have been what I was looking for. This must have been the key to the answers I needed. I had tracked it down. I had discovered it, and now it was in my hands. I was being presented the opportunity to take a step forward. A leap of faith. A plunge into the unknown for the chance to finally reach the answers I had been looking for.
I pressed the button.
My hands started to vibrate. No—the device was vibrating. It was violent. It shook my body, shook my very bones. I could feel my teeth chattering involuntarily. My knees buckled beneath me, and my vision was consumed by a blinding white light. My ears started to ring, it was deafening, and my skin felt tight. I was certain that this was the end.
My consciousness started to fade. I was drifting around in my own thoughts, barely clinging onto any lucid ideas. At some point, I saw a blur of faded colors amidst the white. I tried to reach out, but I couldn’t feel my own body. I thought I heard muffled voices. It sounded like I was hearing them from underwater. Nothing was audible, no words could be distinguished. I didn’t have the mental stamina to strain my ears and listen. Then I slipped out of what little consciousness I was holding onto, and my world faded to black.
Christ, it’s been a while since I’ve read through all of that. Even still, as I processed the words, delivering them from paper to this post, I feel like so many of the little details are still burned into my brain. I think this is where I’m gonna stop for tonight. I feel this this is a good ending point for now. My eyes are starting to burn and sleep beckons. There’s still more to this entry, but this is the longest one, so I’ll post the next half whenever I have the time to sit and transcribe it. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after. In the meantime, I’m gonna catch some shut-eye. Hopefully in that time, at least someone sits down to read this and maybe, by some stroke of luck, has some sort of information. For obvious privacy reasons, I’ve had to keep specific details to a minimum. I hope that doesn’t inhibit anyone’s master detective abilities. Thank you for hearing out my story. There’ll be a whole lot to take in after this point, and it’s therapeutic to have anyone who will hear all of this. I’ve got to hit the hay, though. I’ll have another update soon.