I’m going to post this here because there’s a chance some of you might believe me. There’s no one else I can tell. Not unless I want a nice, long vacation in a psychiatric hospital.
My friends and I are avid hikers and campers and we spend most of our weekends exploring the forests and mountains that covers our state.
A couple weeks ago, we decided to do something a little different. We were going to drive up north, to a popular canoeing area, and canoe into the million-acres of wilderness there.
There were four of us: Pete, a big guy and pretty good hockey player; Taylor, Pete’s girlfriend and a great rock climber; Rob, a guy I’d been friends with since first grade, and myself. There really isn’t much to say about me.. I work in a local accounting firm, and the old cliché about accountants being boring is probably true, at least as far as I’m concerned. Other than hitting the wilderness most weekends, my life consists of a simple work, eat, sleep routine during weekdays.
So, it felt good to take a vacation from work, and I was looking forward to our trip up north.
Pete’s black Jeep Renegade arrived outside my apartment on Friday morning, with him and Taylor inside. Pete had managed to procure two dark green canoes from a buddy of his who worked at the local outdoor outfitters, and they were lashed to the Jeep’s roof.
Rob was already at my place, his pack leaning against the sofa, next to mine. To be honest, I was surprised he’d agreed to come on this week-long vacation.
Although Rob joined in with most of our outdoor activities, I sometimes got the impression he only did so because he thought it was the only way he and I could remain friends. And as far as I knew, I was Rob’s only friend.
Sure, he got on well enough with Pete and Taylor and the others who were in our social circle but weren’t coming along on this particular journey because they couldn’t get the time off work, but I don’t think he’d be friends with those people if not for me.
Pete honked his horn and leaned out of the Jeep, shouting up at my window. “Come on, losers. Take your hands off your cocks and let’s go!”
Sometimes, I wondered why I was friends with Pete.
We grabbed our packs and went down to the street, where we loaded everything into the back of my Ford Timberline.
Pete sauntered over and said, “You two got your own tents or are you sharing?”
“We’re sharing,” Rob told him. “Less to carry that way.”
Pete grinned. “You sharing a sleeping bag too?”
I let out a sigh, hoping we weren’t going to be subjected to Pete’s juvenile humor all week. “Don’t be a douche, Pete.”
He held up his hands and walked back to the Jeep. “Okay, okay. I can see you guys don’t have a sense of humor. But don’t worry, I’m here all week.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Rob muttered under his breath as we got into my car.
“Don’t take any notice of him,” I said. “It’s just Pete being Pete.”
I started the engine and we began the two-hour journey north.
***
We arrived at the parking lot, which was nothing more than a patch of dirt in the middle of a forest, and got out of our vehicles. When Taylor got out of the passenger side of Pete’s Jeep, she smiled at us and began helping Pete take the canoes down.
Rob, who was standing next to me, gave her a short wave, which she was too busy to see. Rob was a little in love with Taylor. I didn’t blame him. She was a mixture of cute and hot in a compact, blond-haired, blue-eyed package.
I’m not going to wax lyrical about how her hair was like a ring of fire around her head when the sun hit it just right, or how her eyes were a deep blue like the sea, or any of that BS. I’m just going to say that all of us were a little in love with her and leave it at that.
“Hey, Pete,” Rob said, gesturing to the trees around us. “Where the hell is the water?”
Pete pointed at a bulletin board and a sign at the head of a trail that led into the trees. “That way.”
Rob stared at the trail in disbelief. “We have to carry the boats and all our stuff?”
“It’s called portage,” Pete shot back, lifting the first canoe down to the ground.
“I know what it’s called. I just didn’t realize we’d be doing it before we even started.”
“Aww, did you think we were going on the baby routes? This is the wilderness, dude. We’re getting wild!” He ended that declaration with a whoop and helped Taylor untie the second canoe.
“He’s going to kill us,” Rob said, turning to me. “He’s going to kill us all.”
“Relax, man,” I said, heaving my pack out of the back of the Timberline and setting it on the ground. “Let’s try to enjoy ourselves. That’s what this is all about, right? Having fun.”
He shrugged and mumbled, “Yeah, I guess.”
We put on our packs, locked the cars, and carried the canoes along the trail to the lake. Pete and Taylor were in the lead, with Rob and me close behind. The trail was overgrown and at times, we had to climb over deadfall, but we eventually cleared the trees and stood on the shore of the lake.
“We start here and follow that river northwest,” Pete said, pointing at a narrow river that left the lake and snaked into the forest.
“So, you planned an actual route?” Rob asked.
Pete frowned at him. “Yeah. I’m not stupid.”
“You can give me the details later so I can mark it on my maps. In the meantime, we should each carry one of these.” He reached into a pocket on his pack and fished out four small walkie talkies. He gave one to each of us. “In case we get separated. Carry it with you at all times.”
Taylor slipped hers into her pack and Pete did the same. I hooked mine onto my belt. Rob attached his to the outside of his pack and said, “We should leaver them switched off until we need them. But if anyone gets separated from the group, they’re all tuned to the same channel.”
“Okay, Mr Safety, we’ll keep them with us.” Pete threw his pack into the canoe and slid the craft into the water. Taylor climbed in and steeled herself on the front seat. Pete gave the canoe a shove and lifted himself into the rear.
Rob and I managed to get our canoe into the water. I sat at the back while Rob clambered into the front seat and grabbed a paddle. We followed Pete and Taylor out onto the water, the canoe gliding over the still surface of the lake.
***
We followed the river northwest and reached a small lake by evening. The mosquitos and black flies, which had bugged us all day, came out with a vengeance, driving us to seek a campsite and the safety of our tents.
When the tents were erected and we were inside, safe from the bugs behind polyester and netting, I realized how sore I was. My shoulders and back ached from a day of canoeing, and there would be more of the same tomorrow.
After an hour of taking refuge from the airborne bloodsuckers, we braved their attacks again to light a fire and cook some hot dogs. Rob produced some beers and we sat around the campfire talking into the night.
That was the first of four normal nights. When the fifth night arrived, that’s when things turned crazy.
***
I don’t know how many miles we’d traveled into the wilderness by the fifth afternoon. Rob probably knew. He pored over his maps every night in the tent, marking our route with a green pen. He had a red pen to mark our route back. After tonight, we’d turn around and retrace our steps back to where we started.
I had no idea where we were. Rob and Pete were the navigators and I left them to it. All I knew was that we were deep in the backcountry now. We’d canoed along rivers, portaged over rough terrain, and crossed wide lakes to get to where we were now.
In the beginning, we’d seen other boats, hikers, and a few cabins. For the past two days, we hadn’t seen anyone at all. No signs of human life. Just squirrels, turtles, and the damn bugs.
We were paddling side-by-side with Pete and Taylor, looking for a place too set up camp and spend the night, when Pete pointed at the forest to our left and said, “Hey, who wants to climb a mountain?”
I looked the direction of his gaze and saw a rocky hill rising from the forest. It wasn’t what I’d call a mountain, but climbing it right now, after a morning of canoeing, would probably feel like climbing a mountain.
“You bet,” Taylor said. She’d always liked climbing. She wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to conquer this hill.
“Sure thing,” Rob said.
That surprised me, until I saw him flash a quick smile in Taylor’s direction. He was trying to impress her, I guess.
I simply shrugged. I didn’t see any reason to not go up the hill—other than the fact that we were going to have to carry the canoes over more rugged ground—but the idea didn’t appeal to me either. Still, I was outvoted three-to-one, so we changed our course and headed for shore.
The terrain was even more rugged than I’d expected, and after two hours of making our way over deadfalls, rocks, dried-up stream beds, and thick undergrowth, Pete stopped and said, “Let’s leave the canoes here.”
Rob looked worried. “No, we shouldn’t do that. We need to keep them with us.”
Pete sighed. “What do you think’s going to happen to them? You think a bear might steal them?”
“No, but—“
“If you want to carry that thing all the way up the mountain, that’s up to you. But I’m leaving this one here.”
Rob looked at me for help, but I didn’t know what I could do. When Pete’s mind was made up, he wouldn’t back down. And I kind of agreed with him. The canoes were heavy.
Realizing that I didn’t have his back on this one, Rob turned to face Pete again. “Listen, we are in a survival situation. It would be crazy to—“
“Hey, guys,” Taylor said. “What’s that?”
We all looked in the direction she was pointing. At first, I couldn’t see anything except more trees and rocks. Then my eyes picked out what she’d seen. It looked like a log cabin.
“Who the hell builds a cabin in the middle of nowhere?” Rob muttered.
“Let’s go and find out.” Pete heaved the canoe back onto his shoulder and he and Taylor set off at a rapid pace toward the cabin.
Rob and I followed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about making ourselves known to whoever lived in that building. As Rob had said, who would build a cabin out here in the middle of nowhere? I’d seen enough horror movies to know that this could end badly.
When we reached the log structure, it turned out to be larger than I’d thought. It was two stories high, with a stone chimney and windows that didn’t seem to have any glass, but were shuttered with panels of wood.
“It’s a fucking house!” Pete said when we were all standing in front of the building.
There was no sign of life and the areas around the house—and the walls themselves—were overgrown with long grass and climbing weeds. Now that we were closer, I could see that parts of the structure were damaged. It looked like some of the logs had rotted away over time.
“It looks old,” Taylor said. “I don’t think anyone is here.”
“Great.” Pete strode to the front door and tried the rusted metal latch. It opened and the door swung inward, revealing darkness inside. “The perfect place to store the canoes.”
He pulled a flashlight from his pack and went inside. Taylor followed, leaving Rob and me outside.
“I guess we should go inside,” Rob said, eyeing the wooden building with suspicion.
“Yeah, I guess so.” I didn’t know why, but something about this isolated house creeped me out.
Peter appeared at the doorway. “No need to put up the tents tonight. We can stay in here.”
“That’ll be fun,” Taylor said from somewhere inside. “We can build a fire in the fireplace and tell ghost stories.”
Like I wasn’t already creeped out enough.
“Yeah, come on. It’ll be fun.” Rob turned on his flashlight and walked confidently into the house. He was faking that confidence, of course. I guess his hormones overcame his fear.
Sighing, I grabbed my flashlight and went inside.
I found myself in a large room that was furnished with a wooden table and chair, but nothing else. The stone fireplace adorned one wall, towering up into the ceiling. Taylor pushed one of the shutters open and light flooded the room, revealing dust, cobwebs, and mold. No one had been inside this house for a long time.
A set of wooden stairs led up to the second floor. Pete tested the bottom step with his foot, shrugged when it didn’t break beneath his weight, and went up.
“What’s up there?” Taylor called after him.
“I guess this was the bedroom.” His voice sounded muffled by the damp, wooden walls. “There’s nothing up here except a pile of wood that was probably the bed.”
“Guys, it looks like there’s a basement.” Rob was shining his light down in front of his feet, where a trapdoor was clearly visible in the floor.
Now, I was getting real horror movie vibes. I could have happily lived the rest of my life not knowing what was down in the subterranean room beneath this isolated house.
That wasn’t to be, of course. As soon as Pete heard about the basement, he came bounding down the stairs and crouched next to the metal ring in the floor that served as the trapdoor’s handle.
He pulled it and the door swung open, crashing into the floorboards and sending a plume of dust into the air.
Pete grimaced. “It stinks down there.”
That figured. If there was mold spreading over the walls up here, there was bound to be more down in the basement.
Pete shine his light down there. “Looks like this is where they guy stashed his stuff.” He lowered himself onto the wooden ladder that led down to the floor below and descended into the basement.
“What do you see?” Taylor asked. Then, she put her foot on the top rung of the ladder. “Screw it, I’m coming down.”
She disappeared into the basement. I looked at Rob. He looked pale. Even his lust-filled motivation had its limits, and going down into a strange basement beneath an isolated house in the woods seemed to be a step too far.
“There are books down here,” Pete called up to us. “They look like diaries.” He coughed. “I gotta get out of here. The mold is too much.”
“Bring one of the books with you,” Rob said quickly. I wasn’t sure why he wanted to see a moldy old diary, but I didn’t question it.
Taylor emerged from the trapdoor, followed closely by Pete, who held a thin leather-bound book in his hands.
He passed it to Rob as he climbed out and closed the door. Another cloud of dust rose from the floor as the trapdoor sealed the basement yet again.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said, coughing. My throat felt like it was closing, full of dry, irritating dust.
We all went outside and sat on the ground next to the canoes.
“There’s no way we can spend the night in there,” I said. “The mold spores would probably kill us.”
Pete stood up. “Well, we can leave the canoes out here, at least. It isn’t far to the mountain from here.”
Even Rob seemed happy with that, so we left the canoes outside the house and trekked through the forest to the rocky hill that rose above the trees.
***
We found the stream two hours later. It flowed from a fissure in the rocks halfway up the mountain—which I was willing to call it, now that I’d been struggling to get up it for the past couple off hours—and flowed over the rocks, glittering in the sunlight.
We were all parched by now, and we tested the clear water by taking a couple of wary sips before finding it cool and refreshing. I now think that drinking from that stream contributed to what happened later. The water must have come from the pool we found at the top of the mountain, and it was the pool that seems to be at the center of all the craziness.
I guess I’ve moved ahead and told you what we found at the top of the mountain, but before we reached the pool up there, we discovered the cave.
It was so well hidden that we almost passed it by, but Taylor was examining the rocks closely, saying she’d like to scale one of the sheer faces sometime, and she spotted part of the cave mouth. We all went over there to investigate and peered into the cave, which seemed to reach deep into the mountain.
The weirdest thing, though, wasn’t the cave itself, but the carvings on the walls.
Someone had painstakingly carved intricate symbols into the rock. The patterns consisted of circles and curves bisected by straight lines that formed shapes whose meaning was unclear.
“What the hell is this?” Pete said, staring at the geometric designs that covered every inch of the cave walls.
I had no idea why anyone would go to the trouble of carving all this stuff inside a cave that was hidden and remote.
“Who did they think would see this?” Taylor asked, echoing my thoughts. “What’s the point?”
“We’re seeing it,” Rob said.
She shrugged. “Yeah, but part from us, I bet no one else has been up here since forever.”
“Maybe they’re, like, caveman carvings,” Pete offered. “They could have been here for millions of years.”
“Millions of years ago, this area was under a glacier,” Rob said. “And cavemen didn’t do stuff like this. Look how intricate it is. This is pretty recent, relatively speaking.”
“So, are we going inside?” Pete asked.
“Sure,” Rob said, his libido-driven confidence returning.
“There might be a bear in there,” I said. I didn’t want to go into the cave. Something about those intricate designs disturbed me.
“You could wait here,” Taylor suggested.
I thought about that for about two seconds. I didn’t want to be left standing on this mountain alone. I cleared my throat, summoning my courage. “No, I’ll go inside.”
We turned on the flashlights and entered the cave. The creed passageway seemed to gradually slope down into the mountain, and it showed no sign of ending. As we made our way deeper inside the carvings on the walls changed. The mass of shapes and spirals lessened until they vanished entirely, to be replaced by lone symbols carved at irregular intervals. They reminded me of occult symbols you might see in a movie, but were also unlike anything I’d seen before.
As we moved deeper, the air felt…heavier somehow. It was hard to breathe deeply. As if on cue, even though there was nothing but silence between us, we all stopped at exactly the same time.
“We should leave,” Pete said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, looking at the dark passage before us. I felt unable to take another step.
We turned around and walked back up the slight incline to the surface. Our pace was quick, and on two occasions, I felt that there might be something in the darkness behind us. Watching us. Following silently on our heels.
When we got back outside, I breathed a lungful of air. The heaviness I’d felt inside the cave was gone.
Without a word, we ascend to the top of the mountain and discovered the pool.
***
It was almost a perfect circle, sitting at the top of the mountain, surrounded by a rocks and pine trees. I might have expected Pete to rip off his T-shirt and jump in with a whoop, but he did no such thing. He simply walked to the edge of the water and gazed into its murky depths.
Taylor and Rob also seemed subdued, and now I realized that I felt a sense of danger here. As if I was vulnerable to attack, even though there was nothing here other than the trees, the rocks, and the water.
“Looks like the carver has been up here too,” Rob said, pointing at a flat rock that jutted into the water. Symbols similar to those we saw in the cave had been carved into the rock’s surface.
“I’m going back down,” I said. “I don’t like it here. I’m scared.” I was the first of us to express such an emotion, but I didn’t care. An overwhelming sense of fear pervaded this entire area. I felt that if I didn’t leave right now, I’d curl up into a ball on the ground and be able to move, so great would be the fear building inside me.
We all turned around and went back down the mountain. Pete didn’t even offer one of his humorous quips as we descended to the forest below. On the way back down, we stayed away from the cave.
***
We reached the house—and our canoes—by late evening. The sun was rapidly disappearing, leaving a gloom that would soon become complete darkness.
As we quickly erected the tents, I felt the sense of foreboding fade, until it was gone entirely. The others must have felt it too, because before long we were laughing and joking as if we’d never been to the mountain or the pool.
As darkness descended and we settled down in our tents outside the house, I fell asleep quickly.
***
I had a vivid dream that night. The first of many. In it, I was standing on top of a mountain, a black void all around me. The blackness that seemed total, as if it were a living thing instead of an absence of light. I looked down at my feet and saw the pool. But unlike earlier, when the water had been calm, it roiled and bubbled and I knew that something was rising from the depths. I also knew that I had to get out of there.
I turned and looked for a way down the mountain, but the void surrounded me. I either had to face the creature in the pool or leap into the total blackness.
Panic rose within me. I felt paralyzed with fear. The water in the pool swelled and churned. I couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. Steeling myself, I turned and stepped into the void.
Instead of complete darkness, I saw a scene unfold in front of my eyes. I saw stars. Billions of stars. I was floating in space, looking at galaxies, and nebulae, and moons. Then, something hurtled past me, blindingly fast. I turned to follow its progress and saw Earth in the distance. As I watched, the thing that had sped past me entered the atmosphere and then disappeared from view.
I felt a sudden fear that it was now on Earth.
***
I awoke with a start, almost crying out but stopping myself when I realized I was awake. Then I looked around and felt my blood run cold. I wasn’t in the tent. I was at the pool. It wasn’t possible. I didn’t remember climbing the mountain again. There was no way I would have done that. My feet were bare and bloody. I’d climbed up here barefoot, in my sleep, somehow.
The waters of the pool were calm, reflecting the moon and stars like a mirror. I scrambled away from the water and realized I’d been sitting on the flat, carved rock that jutted into the pool.
My heart hammered as I made my way back down the mountain, my bare feet painful and bloody. My breathing was ragged and I found it hard to catch my breath. Shock and fear combined with adrenaline drove me on as I descended. On the way down, I saw the cave, its mouth black and impenetrable, even in the moonlight.
***
When I reached the tents, I found the others awake. Pete saw me first. “Where the hell were you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, unwilling to tell him I’d been up the mountain.
“We’re getting out of here,” he said. “Taylor is desperate to leave.”
I looked over at Taylor, who was taking down their tent, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She had a nightmare,” Pete said. We all did.”
Rob was disassembling our tent. When he saw me, he looked relieved. “We wondered where the hell you were.”
“I went to take a piss,” I said.
“What happened to your feet?”
“I’m fine. I’ll put my boots on and take a look at them later.”
Rob nodded and gave me a look of understanding. We both wanted to be out of here as soon as possible.
Our flight through the woods wasn’t easy. Carrying the canoes and all out stuff in the dark was arduous. When we finally reached the lake and launched our craft onto the still water, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
As we paddled through the moonlight, I didn’t look back at the dark mountain that rose above the trees.
***
It’s now a week since we got home. I’m trying to forget about the events of our canoeing vacation, but I still have the nightmares every night. I haven’t told the others. I don’t want them to think I’m going crazy or something. I haven’t even asked them if they’re still having nightmares of their own.
My life has returned to my old routine of work, eat, sleep. But the sleep isn’t so great anymore.
I asked Rob about the diary from the house and he said it’s too moldy to read, although he could see a date that had been written on one of the pages. 1913. It’s a miracle the books survived at all if they’re that old. I sometimes wonder if the other books in that moldy basement are in the same condition, or if they might have some answers regarding who built that house so close to the mountain, and what those symbols on the cave mean.
There’s something else. Something worse than the nightmares. I sometimes feel a compulsion to return to that place. It’s almost overwhelming. If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s a five day journey into the backcountry, I’m sure I would have given in to it by now.
Part of me think I should return, to find out what I can about these dreams and feelings that are affecting my life. For those of you who believe what I’ve told you, what do you think? Should I go back there? Should I try to find answers in those books?
Part of me is sure that no matter how hard I resist, I’m going to end up going back there at some point. It almost feels inevitable. I wonder if Pete, Taylor, and Rob feel the same way.
They probably do. We all drank the water in that stream. The water that flowed from the pool.
Whatever is in there, waiting in those murky depths, is probably inside us now.