For everyone that has made it this far, thank you. What happened out in that forest still haunts me to this day, and we just have a little further to go.
I pulled the other radio from my backpack. I called the Station. They answered immediately. It was Hitch, the Ranger who led me up the first day.
“I have an emergency,” I said.
“Is there a fire?” Hitch asked.
“No. Martina, from Lookout 1, something attacked her.”
“Where is she now?”
“It took her into the forest.”
“Is this a joke Tom?”
“What? Why would you think that?”
“You made a report this morning, the death of a hiker. Burning red eyes, but not a bear.”
“It was the same thing. Except there are two now.”
“Ok. I’m going to get Martina on the line.”
The radio went silent. An eternity passed. I scanned the forest. Ripples of warm air rose up into the sky. Nothing else stirred.
“Ok Tom, we have no patience for this type of thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We spoke to Martina and she’s fine.”
“That’s impossible. They attacked her. I watched it happen.”
“You know there’s a waiting list to get in a lookout tower. I can have you replaced within a week.”
“Replace me today. Get up here and drag me down off the mountain.”
“We told you this morning that we can’t get up there on account of the fog.”
“The fog is gone. It’s clear skies.”
An audible sigh came through the radio. “The fog coupled with the weather warning the met office just issued means no one is going up the mountain today.”
“Are you insane? What weather? There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“Listen to me carefully. You are going to watch for fires. There’s lighting and high winds on the way. When it has blown through we can get someone up there to replace you. In the meantime stay in your lookout and keep this channel clear unless there is a real emergency.”
“I’m not in my lookout.”
“Where are you?”
“Lookout 3.”
“Where is Callum?”
I ran another eye over the inside of the lookout. Furniture and paper strewn across the floor, like a bomb had gone off. And still the smell of burning.
“No one is here.”
“Why are you there?”
I almost answered and then put the radio down. I’m at Lookout 3 because a fairy of some sort led me here through the fog. And then the fog lifted and the fairy disintegrated before my eyes. That would go down well.
Was this a dream? I grabbed the necklace the woman threw onto the deck before she evaporated into the wind. The points of the triangle left indents in my palm. That was real.
I picked up the other radio.
“Martina? Can you hear me?”
A man’s voice. Roger. “If you want to live, get back to your own lookout. The forest is about to burn.” In the background Martina made a muffled cry.
“Don’t hurt her.”
“There’s no stopping this now.”
The radio crackled and then went dead. I shouted into it until my throat was sore, but there was nothing more from Roger or Martina. I looked down at the base of the elevated structure. Unlike the barren peak at Lookout 2, up here the trees grew at the top. There was a well maintained clearing around the base of the structure, but in high wind could a fire spread far and fast enough to light the structure? The image of hot and red flames played in my head, so real I almost felt the heat. I had to get out of here.
I opened the door to the lookout and a wave of hot air shifted my weight onto my heels. The windows rattled. I put one foot onto the deck and remembered my backpack. The hot air followed me inside and picked up loose sheets of paper and pushed them against the windows. I grasped my backpack and straightened and came eye to eye with one of the sheets of paper stuck to the glass. The same hand written script that filled the pages of the book bound in black.
What the hell?
I put the backpack down and gathered up as much of the paper as I could. A couple of sheets beat me out the door and fluttered into the trees. I took the stack and dumped it down on the circular map in the middle of the lookout. I rifled through the pages, looking for some clue to unravel all this. There could be a clue in here that could help me get off this mountain alive. The woman in blue had told me I had to see what was in this lookout. This could be it.
Unintelligible script filled the pages. Geometric shapes overlapped with the writing. The same crap written in the book I found on the shelf of my lookout. This was useless. And then something else. I pulled out the page from the stack. What looked like a map.
I traced my finger over it. A series of curved lines, sometimes close together and sometimes far apart. I remembered enough from geography class to recognise contour lines. Two peaks and an elevated ridge. I threw the rest of the pages on the floor and compared the map to the larger disc map on the contraption to pinpoint fires. They matched. The two peaks were my lookout and this one. The ridge line was where Martina’s lookout stood. And the valley in between.
Deep in the valley, down at the lowest point was a black splotch. It occupied the exact centre of the page. I found the same spot on the bigger map, offset from the middle but not far off. In tiny lettering beside it read the word ‘cave’.
I went to the window and searched the forest for the place. Tracing a line between this lookout and Martina’s, I got a rough bearing on it. The trees parted slightly, but from this far away I could not see a cave. I picked up the binoculars and trained them on the spot. The trees hid whatever was down there. A shimmer of warm air rose between the trees, like the hot exhaust from a jet engine. That’s where they were. That’s where they took Martina. It had to be. But why?
Is this what the woman in blue wanted me to see? A low rumble rose above the sound of the wind and the rattle of the windows. A thin band of purple climbed above the western horizon and flashed. Lightning. The storm was on its way. If there was anything else up here to find, I wasn’t going to wait around and look for it.
I stuffed the map in my backpack and zipped it up and stumbled out the door. The adrenaline turned my legs rigid and I almost fell down the stairs. I grabbed the rail and shouted at myself to calm down. I ran in the direction of my lookout and came to the charred remains of the burnt out tree. The trunk ended abruptly at the top, a headless remnant of what it once was. And then I noticed something strange. The trunk had a hollow interior, like a giant black pipe sticking out of the ground.
I ran a palm over the rough exterior, black soot sticking to my skin. When I got to the triangle carved into the trunk I applied pressure. The charred bark cracked. I used both hands now, smashing the butt of my hand against the burnt wood. The bark splintered and a triangle shaped wedge fell came loose. I put my eye to the opening. The tree was hollow from top to bottom. It was the strangest thing. I wondered if the tree out the back of my lookout was the same. As far as I knew, trees did not grow with hollow insides.
I set off at a jog back towards my lookout. I had resolved to get off the mountain and beg a rescue team to come up and save Martina. Between the coming storm and Roger’s warning that the forest would burn, I had no interest in hanging around. The creature had taken Rebecca the hiker, and then two had taken Martina. But if I were right, they were down at the cave in the valley marked on the map. I had to be fast. I had to stay ahead of them or they would do to me as they had done to the hiker. I shuddered.
First stop was my lookout. It was on the way back to the Ranger Station and I could grab the rest of my things. I’d take down the black book of strange script too and show the Rangers. Let them tell me I’m crazy when confronted with evidence of the weird things going on up here.
Despite going downhill, I was soon puffing and spluttering. The infection in my chest had not yet cleared and my insides burned. I pulled the straps on the backpack to stop it slamming against my back as I hurdled fallen branches.
Near the bottom my right shoe slipped on a stray tuft of fern just as I readied to leap over the desiccated remains of a fallen tree. My balance thrown, I failed to get my left leg up in time and it caught on a branch sticking up from the tree. Pain shot through my ankle as it twisted into an unnatural position before the branch finally cracked under the pressure exerted by my falling body.
I cried out as I slammed shoulder first onto the forest floor. I lay there panting, my left leg dangling in the air. A terrible heat filled the ankle joint. I rubbed it with my hands and then rolled and got to my knees. The ankle was cooked and I knew it.
In high school I spent a season on the football team; in part because I loved the game and also in an attempt to raise my social standing. To the surprise of everyone I hadn’t performed badly and made a valuable contribution or two. That was until the last game of the season, a knockout fixture. I rolled my ankle barely two minutes into the game and, stupidly, stayed out on the field. While the injured ankle is still warm it works for a while and then the swelling and the bruising comes and the hobbling begins. It was at the start of the hobble phase that I missed a tackle. We lost the game and there was plenty of blame to throw around, and I copped more than my fair share.
I looked up the slope leading to my lookout. If I hustled it would be forty five minutes to the top, a hard slog uphill. I put some weight on my left leg and winced. I had to move now, the pain was only going to get worse.
Going uphill is infinitely harder than running on a flat patch of grass on a twisted ankle. All the grip comes through the toes and places stress on the joint. I started going up sideways to at least keep my foot in a neutral position.
Sweat poured down my face. The forest trapped the heat and the air was warm and suffocating. My throat burned. I needed water. Thunder rumbled low in the distance. I could not see the horizon through the trees, but it sounded closer than before. I pushed everything else from my mind and focussed only on the next painful step.
The radio crackled. I shook my torso trying to set the backpack free. Sweat soaked my shirt and made everything sticky. I overbalanced and tumbled to the ground. I freed myself of the straps and pulled the radio free.
“Tom? Tom?” The voice was a whisper. Martina.
I whispered in response. “I’m here.”
“He’s coming.”
“What?”
“He’s coming for you.”
A clattering noise came through the radio and then it went dead.
“Martina? Martina?”
No response. I groaned and got to my feet, exhausted and dehydrated and sore. The first step on the twisted ankle shot pain right up my leg and I almost collapsed back to the ground. I looked ahead, the roof of my lookout poked up above the peak. I was close. Was I close enough?
The rising slope of the peak became the long hallway at my high school. Lockers pushed up against the wall. Doors with glass windows to the classrooms. In my memories that hallway is empty aside from him and me. In truth there were kids everywhere, but they were unimportant. He yelled out down the hallway. Winslow! He was already running. I slammed shut the locker and went. I skidded and slipped on the polished tiles. That time I almost made it, almost. In sight of sanctuary a violent tug on my backpack and I went down. The blows burst through my defences. I covered my head. Tears flowed. Now the other kids fill in the blank spaces. They laugh and taunt. Waterworks Winslow.
Somewhere behind me a branch cracked. I turned back and it is the forest once more. I searched the trees for the sign of movement. My ankle is almost shot. All the force driving me up the slope towards the lookout comes from my good right leg. The left leg is nothing more than a prop keeping me upright.
I look back up and stop dead in my tracks. Above me on the slope stands the creature I saw take Rebecca. One of the things that abducted Martina. It looked a version of human, the body and limbs and head in the right proportion. But the skin was ash-grey and smooth, like the surface of pottery hardened in a kiln. Its eyes burned red. It radiated heat, the air shimmering off its shoulders.
“You’re coming with me.”
The voice of a man. I did not recognise it. A notion had worked its way into my head, that this thing hunting in the forest was in fact Roger, the missing man from my lookout. But this was not Roger’s voice. I had heard Roger through the radio, and even though a radio can distort a voice, this was so different in pitch that it could not belong to Roger. That left one option. Callum. The occupant of Lookout 3.
I turned and shuffled down the slope. He laughed. He laughed with the same derision as those bullies in high school.
I reached up and grabbed a low hanging branch. I yanked it hard until it splintered and broke off and provided a weapon of sorts. I pointed the branch up the slope and swung it back and forth. This only elicited more laughter.
He sprung downwards and gripped the end of the branch. The muscles in my arms tensed and I pulled back. His face broke into a hideous smile, the teeth the same grey as the skin. With a single pull of unnatural strength he yanked the branch from my hands.
For a moment I stood on the slope, exposed and defenceless. And then I ran. My ankle screamed with pain, but I ran. I whimpered under my breath, waiting for a pull at my backpack to confirm that my assailant had caught up to me. I anticipated the feeling of helplessness and for the world to beat me down one more time.
It was not a pull of the backpack that stopped my flight. I heard the whoosh before a tree branch crashed into the side of my head. The impact set off a flash before my eyes and then everything went black.
An explosive crack of thunder flicked the lights back on inside my head. I blinked a haze of blurred green into focus. The canopy of the forest and between it jagged slivers of blue sky. My head lifted and smacked back down on the forest floor. My shirt rode up and formed a twisted mess around my shoulder blades. I looked to my feet, elevated and ahead. The smooth and grey skin of Callum. He dragged me through the forest, down towards the cave. He was taking me to Roger.