I told Roger and Martina that I needed some time. That I would call if anything happened. I turned down the volume on the radio and tossed it on my bed. I pulled at my hair. I turned my back to the charred remains of Rebecca’s foot lying in the deck outside the glass door.
This had to be a nightmare. It couldn’t be real. I turned back around and there it was still. A sickening sight. A heart-breaking sight. She had a family and friends and plans for the future.
I had to get rid of it. I pulled open the drawer in the cupboard below the grill and grabbed the steel tongs. I sucked in a huge breath and opened the door and pinched the ankle with the tongs. When I tried to lift them the whole mess slipped free and tumbled back to the timber deck. I gave it a second try with a similar result. Releasing my breath and with a cry of anguish I picked it up with my bare hands. The skin felt clammy and cold. I hurled it as far as I could out into the darkness. I shut the door and locked it and cried.
Roger had lied. He had told me there was nothing to worry about. He had every chance to warn me of something out on the mountain and inexplicably had not done so. He had warned me about the woman in the blue dress, but what had she done except whisper and stand in the rain. I couldn’t trust him.
And now he told me to sit tight. Martina told me to trust Roger. They were friends. Was she in on this too?
In my mind I played through the scenario of contacting the Ranger Station. They would likely send Hitch up here to get me. I would watch him come through the binoculars, ambling up the slope. My imagination furnished him with a rifle. And then it came, that hideous dark shape trailing smoke. Weaving through the trees it came up from behind him. At the last Hitch hears it and turns and raises his rifle. But it is too late. It has him and he is toast.
So I ask them to raise an army. Send a dozen Rangers up here all with their rifles at the ready. Whatever this thing was couldn’t take them all, could it? It played like a movie in my head, sometimes rifles clattered to the ground as it picked the Rangers off one by one, and other times the Rangers stood over it victorious, rifles pointing to the sky. With these thoughts running through my head, I slipped into a feverish sleep.
When I woke a thick grey mist had replaced the black of night out the windows. The fire had burned down to a clump of grey ash. Inside it was cold and I coughed, the phlegm dancing in my lungs.
I checked the time. The sun should be rising above the horizon, but the mist hung so thick in the air that all directions were grey. Thick droplets of condensation clung to the windows. I had to call the Station. Roger be damned.
I grabbed the radio for the Station and begged someone to pick up, my voice trembling. It was a few minutes before someone finally replied.
“Lookout 2, we read you.”
“I need help. There’s something up here.”
“There’s something up there?”
“I don’t know what it is. It’s big and dark and has burning red eyes. It killed a hiker yesterday. Her name was Rebecca Hughes.”
“Where did this happen?”
“To the east of my lookout.”
“You saw it?”
“I saw the remains of her foot after the thing hacked it off.”
“Was it a black bear?”
“I don’t think so.”
‘What then?”
“I don’t know. You have to come and get me down. And for the love of god don’t let anyone in the Park today.”
“No one else is here, day shift doesn’t get in for a couple of hours. I don’t think we’ll have many hikers through here today. The mist won’t clear until late, if at all. What are conditions like up there?”
“I can’t see more than a few feet.”
“We’ll have to wait for the weather to clear to send someone up. Are you hurt?”
“No. When you come be sure to send the cavalry. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“Hang tight. Stay inside.”
Stay inside. That was Roger’s instruction. I put the radio down. I flirted with the idea of telling them that Roger was up here, but I couldn’t deal with that conversation. All I knew is I wanted down from this mountain.
I sat in silence, the lookout shrouded in an impenetrable grey gloom. I had seen similar mist back home on cold and still nights. On the flat the fog lifts after the sun comes up and warms the air. Even on the worst days it clears by midday. Up here the weather was a different animal. I read about entire days where visibility is no more than the tip of your finger on an outstretched arm. Today might be one of those days. There wouldn’t be much scanning the forest for fire.
I decided to lie down. I buried my head below the lumpy pillow and tried to sleep. Those red eyes from the night before burned on the inside of my eyelids. They watched and waited for an opportunity to pounce, to do to me what it had already done to Rebecca Hughes. I flicked the pillow free with a flourish and turned to the window. Nothing but fog.
Then whispering. At first I thought it was the whistling of my own breath through half-blocked nostrils. I held my breath and the sound persisted. The creature with the red eyes had not whispered. It had wailed and screamed in the night. The woman had whispered.
I shifted my feet to get a view of the door and sat up with a start. The deep blue of her dress was striking against the dull grey background. It was the brilliant colour of Oz compared to the black and white of Kansas. She stood hard against the wall, her button nose almost touching the glass. As she whispered the droplets of condensation on the door crystallised into tiny fragments of ice.
“What do you want?”
The whispering stopped. Her mouth opened wide and her lips pulled back exposing her teeth as she made an exaggerated effort to speak, like it was something she rarely did. The words came clear now, the sound shrill and sharp like the call of a bird.
“The ceremony nears. Their preparation is almost complete. They will give body to the destroyer. The forest will burn and then the cities and then the earth.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The sacred tree will burn. They will destroy the balance.”
“Is this a joke?”
Her mouth opened wide and her face distorted and elongated and she uttered a low groan. The coldness of her breath created an opaque circle in front of her head. The icicles cracked as they fell away from the glass. Her face returned to normal, she spoke again.
“You must look. You will see.”
She raised an arm and pointed north. This is what she had done the first time she came.
“What is out there?”
“The third lookout. It is there. You will see.”
A third lookout? I hadn’t asked, nor been told, how many lookouts there were up here. I knew I was in number 2. Martina was in number 1. We had a radio to communicate between the lookouts and it had only been Martina, and then Roger. Was there another lookout?
I went to the disc in the middle of the room, the circular map used to get the bearings of a fire. I tapped my lookout, marked red in the centre. I slid my finger due north, and there it was. A tiny black dot with the notation L3. Lookout 3. What was there? Who was there? Is this how Roger had been communicating with us?
I went back to the door. “I can’t go out. There’s something out there. It killed a hiker called Rebecca. It knows where I am.”
“It is a creature of fire. In the wet of the fog it is as a fish out of water. It will not come so long as the fog persists.”
“And what if it lifts? The sun comes out and it burns off and I’m caught out in the open.”
“It will not lift. You have time.”
I lifted my arm to the door handle and then let it drop back to my side. I shook my head. The hideous sight of the charred remains of Rebecca’s ankle flashed in my head. I couldn’t bring myself to open the door.
The woman half-turned and pointed to Martina’s lookout. “They will take her.”
“Martina? Why?”
“You must see for yourself.”
I wrapped my fingers around the handle. I turned my eyes to the sky searching for a break in the mist. The woman held out her arms and turned her palms to the sky. She took in a deep breath and exhaled a plume of water vapour that could have been the exhaust from a steam train. The cloud coalesced above her head and turned grey and a light drizzle began to fall.
“Did you just make it rain?”
“I bring the rain.” She turned to me, a seriousness in her eyes that was not there before. “And he will bring the fire. Once he has taken from her. He is the destroyer and he will consume all and leave nothing behind.”
“Then you go stop him. What do you need me for?”
“There are some places I cannot go. There are some times I cannot be. The balance is fragile. Once he has taken from her that balance will shift.”
I picked up the radio and turned up the volume. “Martina, are you there?”
Heavy breathing came back before she spoke. “It’s early Tom.”
“What do you know about all this?”
“About what?”
“About what is going on up here. Do you know what killed the hiker yesterday?”
She sighed into the radio. “Roger told you to stay inside and everything will be ok.”
“Stop dodging the question. Do you know what killed her? Have you seen it?”
“No Tom.”
“Why are you lying to me? What part are you playing in all this?”
“It will all be over soon.”
She was feeding me the same line as Roger. I took a deep breath before responding. “I called the Station this morning.”
“What? Why?”
“They’ll be up here as soon as the weather clears.”
“Tom you shouldn’t have done that. When Roger finds out.” She trailed off and a few seconds passed. “I can’t protect you.”
“You won’t have to.”
I threw both radios and a water bottle in a backpack and opened the door. I could not see beyond the edge of the lookout.
“I can’t see where I’m going.”
The woman smiled. “I can lead the way.”
I fell into step behind the flowing trail of her dark blue dress. Her bare feet kissed the rocky ground. She showed no signs of pain. I scrambled awkwardly behind, first down the slope to the northern side of the peak and then through the trees of the forest.
Down among the trees the fog thinned, but then it was the forest that blocked the view. The path I had come up with Hitch followed a distinct trail cut through the wilderness. Now I skidded over dense and wet ferns growing at angles from the bases of the trees.
The air had a density to it, and a cold wetness. It felt heavy and pushed deep into my lungs. I expected a coughing fit, but it never came.
I scanned the space between the trees for the burning red eyes of the creature who had come last night. My heart jumped at the dark shadow of a stunted tree. I imagined the thing that had swept through the forest and taken Rebecca. It had trailed smoke. The woman described it as a creature of fire. Heavy drops fell to my head from the canopy above and my hair was soon soaking wet.
Ahead the thick and charred trunk of an enormous tree dominated its friends standing by its shoulders. Like the burnt out tree behind my lookout, it had singularly burned while the other trees around it were unharmed. And there was a triangle carved into the bark. I paused at the tree and traced the triangle with my fingers.
“What does the triangle mean?”
The woman did not respond.
The trees thinned and we started up an incline. We must be getting close. Out of the fog rose a timber structure built on stilts at the top of the peak. It stood a few stories above the ground. A timber staircase criss-crossed up to the elevated lookout.
I looked to my feet as I stepped on the first tread and pulled my foot away. The timber tread was warped and split and stained with black char. I followed the staircase up and all the treads were like the first. I held onto the rail and put my weight on the tread. It felt sturdy enough.
I turned back and the woman was gone. My stomach dropped and I scanned the peak for her. A whisper came from above. She stood at the top. I smiled to myself. It must be nice to have the ability to bring the rain and to not have to climb stairs.
At the top of the first landing my head turned to a loud rumbling sound coming from the valley to the west. It was like a truck rumbling along a highway, the engine straining under its load. A burst of warm air sucked all the moisture from my mouth. Down in the valley the fog began to disperse. Waves of warmth sucked the grey from the air. Trees and mountains emerged, crisp under a bright summer sun.
The woman in blue screamed. The trail of her dress billowed in the burst of hot air, the ends fraying and disintegrating. I ran up the stairs, taking the treads three at a time. The wind blew her sideways, lifting and tossing her from the elevated platform. She threw out a pair of desperate hands and clung to the rail. Her whole body was horizontal to the ground as if she carried no weight at all.
When I made it to the top she was straining to hold on. Strands of black hair pulled from her head and the deep blue of her dress faded to almost white. Her skin shifted like dry sand blowing in the wind. She removed one hand from the rail and grasped her necklace and tossed it onto the deck. And then, like the mist had done in the valley, she dispersed, her body and desperate pleading eyes evaporating into the air.
My head snapped around at another rumble from the valley. Twin pillars of smoke rose from below the ridge on the other side. The creature. There were two of them now. They climbed the slope at an inhuman pace. My eyes lifted to the peak and there was Martina’s lookout, in the direct path of the creatures made of fire. I scanned the horizon and the mist and the clouds were gone, leaving a brilliant blue sky. It will not come so long as the fog persists, she had said. The fog was gone. I had to get inside.
I picked up the necklace from the deck and stumbled to the door and tried the handle. It gave and I tumbled inside and closed the door behind and turned the lock. The inside of the lookout was a picture of disarray. Sheets and books and splinters of wood littered the floor. It smelled of stale smoke.
I turned the necklace in my hand. I had seen it the first night the woman came to my lookout. The pendant was an inverted triangle forming an arrow pointing down. I shoved it in my pocket and fumbled in my backpack for the radio. I clicked the volume up and depressed the button.
“Martina, are you there?”
No response.
“Answer me Martina. They are coming for you.”
The radio crackled to life. “What are you talking about?”
“Look east. There are two of them. They are coming.”
A few nerve jangling seconds passed. “No. Not yet.”
I got to my feet and rifled through the mess looking for the binoculars. I spotted them on a shelf and glassed the ridge and found Martina’s lookout. The two pillars of smoke were almost there. Charcoal grey humanoid shapes emerged from the trees near the top of the peak, leaping up towards the lookout.
“They are almost there.”
“I’m not ready. They can’t take it from me yet.”
“Take what Martina? What are they going to do?”
A shape moved at the peak, Martina. She was a stone’s throw from the lookout, what looked like firewood spilling from her arms. She wasn’t inside. She had gone for wood or for a walk and wasn’t behind her door. I watched her sprint for the lookout as the two beasts rose up the peak. They moved too fast. She wasn’t going to make it.
Martina stopped dead in her tracks as they crested the peak. The radio crackled.
“Help me Tom.”
And then silence. I watched in horror as the two creatures pounced on Martina and dragged her down the mountain until they disappeared behind the cover of the forest.