It was 2002.
We had been wandering for two weeks since the plane crash. The snowy wilderness and the sounds of things just beyond our view had taken a toll on us mentally even more than it had physically. There were only four of us left. Danvers, a brash imposing man with a crooked nose, James, a young man just out of college who looked forward to moving to New York at the beginning of the year, and Rebecca, a robust middle aged woman who was a conservationist. All of us had been looking for this ultimate climb that had been making its way around the message boards. Sadly, we never made it that far.
We were forced to leave the crash site as an avalanche had torn down the mountainside. Three other people had survived the crash as well, but were not able to escape the avalanche. We found refuge in the forest below, where the snow wasn’t very deep due to the thick canopy. We had found a river and had been doing our best to follow it in the hopes that we’d be found. We had heard no planes for days, which told us that any rescue that had been mounted was looking in the wrong place. The only thing we could do was trudge through the dark and bleak forest and hope. Danvers was a smoker. Thank God. Fire was easy enough to make, provided we could find dry fuel.
It was on the second night in the forest, the night that Danvers had made a raging fire, that we first heard the sounds in the dark. Upset branches and broken underbrush. We were sure it was only animals, but of course the fear that it might be a bear kept us awake all that night. The next day, hardly any progress was made beside the river due to our exhaustion. Food was scarcely found, and the thought of some of the things I had to eat in order to survive still turns my stomach to think of it now, but at the time were some of the most delicious things I had ever tasted.
The third night is when we heard the strange call. The maddening sound which still comes to me some nights even now. In the beginning, we had thought it was once again the sound of something upsetting the forest, and although those sounds were there too, there was something else hidden in the wind. A call that could be felt as well as heard.
CHIK CHOK
CHIK CHOK
It was quiet at first, but then seemed to be everywhere around us. Danvers had made a smaller fire that night, and every night after to keep from bringing too much attention to ourselves. For ten nights we were followed by the noise. Sometimes it was so far away that it could barely be heard over the sounds of the river, but other times, it seemed to be just beyond the reach of the fire light. And then on the eleventh night, there was nothing. We had waited and waited but it never came back, and after two nights without the sounds, we all finally broke and slept throughout the night without waking until the sun was peeking through the thick canopy. For two more nights, we had peace, but I believe it was that peace that finally began to break us down, because the anticipation of the sound was worse than hearing it.
On the 17th night, if I was keeping the days correctly, we were huddled around a small fire when Danvers pointed to something in the distance. It didn’t take us long to see it. A small ball of blue light. It was an unnatural thing with a cold dim light. It shimmered.
Although it was treacherous walking through the forest at night, all of us left the warmth of our fire, each picking up branches that were blazing, and started out toward the light.
It led us deeper into the forest, and after a few minutes, I realized that it seemed to be moving away from us. The other three must have realized it as well, because they all began to pick up their pace desperate not to lose it in the maze of the ancient trees. Why we followed it, I can’t say, other than any light in all that darkness and hopelessness seemed like something we should pursue. There was no discussion on our parts as to whether we should follow it. Instinct, it seemed, had taken over our higher faculties. Or maybe, we had been drawn to it. Almost hypnotized by it.
I’m convinced that I am the only one who noticed that for several stretches of steps, we were running over what appeared to be mossy slabs of granite that showed signs of some kind of tooling. After this realization, I will say that I ventured glances to our surroundings. Some of the trunks around us weren’t trees at all, but rather stones set up on end. How tall they were, I can’t say. In my haste to keep up with the others, I never stopped. I should have, but even after all these years, I’ve convinced myself that had I even called out to them that something wasn’t quite right, they would have ignored me altogether. We were all drawn to that light.
I kept time, and saw that we had been at a brisk pace for forty seven minutes before we came down upon a small clearing in the forest, and on the other side of it, there was an opening into what looked like a small cave that the light had gone into. My fellow survivors ushered in single file in front of me, tossing their torches to the side of the entrance as they did so. I could feel it before I even entered the cave; the air inside of it was warm, hot I would even say. For the first time since the crash, I wasn’t seeing my own breath and I wanted to go inside. But the smell inside was of something rotten, and there was an energy inside of it that I could feel, and the only way to describe it was an anxiousness. The ground inside looked moist, I waved my torch downward, and it had the appearance of a wet sandy beach; bumpy. Moist. The walls had the same appearance and were covered in a slick film. Everything in the cave was a slight gray splotched with dark spots. And there in the middle was the blue light. It shimmered, adding to the anxious feeling in the air.
Instinct, suddenly being in my favor, made me stay out of the cave, while the others talked in hush tones about what to do next. The ball of light was floating in the air. Danvers was the first to walk up to it. I watched him take off his glove and reach out for it. I cried out to him to stop, but it was no use.
“It’s so warm!” He placed his hand on it and it shivered slightly against his touch, an almost unmistakable physical expression of pleasure, and it seemed to press itself against his hand. It was then that a slight movement underneath the light caught my eye.
I could see that the light was being supported from beneath. The support structure was thick and curved this way and that, and it was swaying. The light from the ball glowed brighter as Danvers touched it with both hands, and there seemed to be a new light within all that blue; a white light that was burning. From the brighter light, I could make out the sinewy surface of the structure underneath the light. It was a dark pink pulsating mass that appeared to have pustules, some of which were closed and some having apparently just opened, spilling a diseased yellow muck down the length of it and gathering in a pool on the floor of the cave. It was obviously some sort of appendage of something.
CHIK CHOK
CHIK CHOK
The two others moved forward despite my screaming at them to get out of the cave. The opening to the cave violently closed just in front of me with an awful sound that reminded me of a woman’s scream. I could hear the muffled screams of my fellow survivors. I backed up some feet and after only a moment, the screams were gone. Everything around me was silent, and then the mouth of the cave slowly began to open. I turned and ran, following our tracks in the snow back to the river. I never looked back once, and only when I reached the river again, did I allow myself a small break.
After a few moments, I hunted around and grouped together a small bundle of dry sticks in order to keep my meager flame alive. For the next four days, I did not sleep. I only walked. I didn’t eat. I only drank from the river. I somehow managed to keep the last flame Danvers ever made alive until I was found. During those last four nights, I could hear a sound on the wind, and I could see that blue light off in the distance, beckoning me to follow it.
CHIK CHOK
CHIK CHOK