Weirdbook 31

by Doug Draa

  The terrain will change, he told himself, just to keep his mind off the impending evening. It had been not fifteen minutes since he watched Vanessa drive away, and already his nerves of steel were scratching on glass. The trail runs for eighty miles, so yeah, the terrain will change.

  He put his nose to the grindstone and increased his pace, figured to burn up some adrenaline. To reach the road Vanessa would pick him up at, he had to make roughly six miles a day, which was a breeze no matter how he cut it. And Kevin was in good shape. Eighty pounds of gear on his back and he hadn’t yet broken sweat—which was good, since ‘sweat kills’ as the saying goes. Kevin had prepared for that also. His clothes were layered, and nothing cotton, not even his underwear. He had dropped several hundred dollars on some of the best name-brand items on the market: Smartwool Microweight T-Shirts, Terramar Thermasilk tops and bottoms, Dakota Grizzly convertible pants, Merrell Moab Ventilators—the works.

  In Kevin’s mind was a list of all the crap on his back, and it was a beautiful list if there ever was one. He found his extra clothes halfway down the page, between waterproof matches, and anti-fungal cream. He went through the list regularly, methodically, as it was a comforting exercise. (One that stood as a wedge as much as a crutch; and by two weeks, he hoped that wedge would dislodge itself, that he would find comfort with just being alone in the wilderness.)

  Still, comfort was a ship on the horizon. Absently, Kevin reached down and tapped the can of bear spray on his hip. He had a K-bar knife also, strapped onto the side of his backpack. Small comforts, but not any real comfort; the kind he’d find lying in his own bed, next to Vanessa, her chestnut thigh angled over his abdomen. Get your mind off them thoughts boy, back to the list—wool socks, first aid kit, hundred feet of parachute cord…

  Later, the trail opened into a meadow the size of three football fields. The terrain had changed already, into another picturesque backdrop. It looked like a photographer’s wet dream. Kevin’s thoughts instantly went to bear, or elk; potential encounters, both as equally prevalent and dangerous.

  He glassed the meadow with the binoculars hanging from his neck, saw a couple of black-tailed deer grazing off to the right; they seemed comfortable enough. The grass stood knee-high, swayed steady from a slight breeze, and was spotted with pink lilies and purple hyacinths. Kevin caught the smell of oats, and damp earth, with a slight touch of botanic potpourri.

  He took his time through the meadow, contemplating this and that, until his thoughts ran aground onto the topic of kids. Vanessa had been bugging him for months now. Her clock was ticking, ticking fast. The woman had recently changed, Kevin observed. She’d become more neurotic, started getting on him about those little messes he’d leave around the house. He thought this was called the “nesting phase” of pregnancy—even though she wasn’t pregnant.

  A dark blur off to his right clipped his thoughts. The flash of movement preceded a series of low thumping sounds. Kevin froze, turned his head, then spotted the last deer as it dashed into the tree line. He glassed the area again, found nothing but a few swaying branches. In the peaceful silence that followed, Kevin thought he heard his own heart beat.

  * * * *

  He went through his list half a dozen times, and it had been over an hour since he left the meadow, but the forest still appeared to be closing in around him. “Appeared” is a nebulous word though, often associated with the imagination. Kevin had read about this; along with the human psyche, and how it became unbridled from the jitters.

  “Just part of the process,” he said to himself, none too quietly. “There’s a logical order to getting over my fear of being in the outdoors. Just have to work my way through it.”

  There was a placating effect to hearing his own voice, and he decided to run through his list another time, speaking aloud. He’d alert most animals, but for now, Kevin was fine with that, figured he’d see plenty of wildlife in the days to follow.

  He started at the top of his list with raingear, and this got him past the next hour and to the next clearing, which was half the size of the previous one, but contained a small lily pond. Kevin looked up at the sun, raised a flat palm just below it, estimating how much time he had before things got dark. It was an old trick—fifteen minutes for every finger—and with trees this tall, he calculated two hours. He reasoned he would soon need to make camp, looked for a good place, and found one a half mile past the clearing.

  It was an open area in the trees, beside a massive boulder. Kevin set his backpack in the dirt and scanned the area, looking for sign of bear. He proceeded to set up camp, keeping certain to make a lot of noise. He had a one-person bivvy tent, which he never really liked. It made him nervous, claustrophobic even: to be so close to the worries of the night, yet unable to see anything. He would have preferred a much larger tent, but that was unrealistic for backpacking. Sleeping out in the open was a possibility. He thought he might try that one night.

  Before long, Kevin had everything squared away in his camp. He’d built a fire ring using granite knock-offs from the residing boulder, and collected plenty of dry wood from a fallen ponderosa. Soon, he had a roaring blaze going, and that did wonders to his psyche. Dinner was dehydrated stew, corn bread, and plum pie. All that was missing was a cold beer, and that got Kevin contemplating potential business opportunities, until the remaining twilight slipped off into the forest. After a series of three long yawns, he reluctantly crawled inside the bivvy, and into his sleeping bag. He clutched his bear spray in his right hand, and the K-bar in his left, listened to the crackle of the fire, and prayed he’d fall fast asleep.

  * * * *

  His nightmare contained Vanessa, with three strange, humanoid creatures, each dressed in gray lab coats and surgeon masks. Roughly, the creatures took turns peeling Vanessa out of her clothes, while, (and with considerable horror), she made quick work at theirs. Fully naked, they looked half-man, half-bear, with bald, leathery skin stretched taut, revealing boney frameworks. Their heads were gnarled and coarse, faces protruding into short snouts, bearing ragged canines. They never spoke, only made wet and labored guttural sounds. They led Vanessa through an exhaustive night of debauchery, and more than once, she groaned something about making babies.

  The dream had come and gone throughout the night, in between Kevin’s usual midnight piss in the dark, and several heart-stopping wake-ups, where he thought he had heard something big walking around his camp.

  Morning came with nothing short of relief.

  * * * *

  After a good stretch, Kevin brought the fire back and made coffee. He sat on a rock, hands cupped around a steel mug for warmth, and inhaled deeply the aroma of dark roast, as he stared at the surrounding woods, the patches of blue sky, the cold dirt at his feet. The nightmare had stamped his morning with disturbing images; along with grim reminders, as he suddenly recalled how the media had reported Spencer Heathrow’s fate: …thoroughly disemboweled, roughly butchered, and stuffed unceremoniously into his backpack.

  Even so, Kevin had made it through his first night alone in the wilderness. The city-boy felt a slight surge of victory tumble down his spine. Thirteen more nights to go, and he was confident that he could do it.

  After breakfast, Kevin released his bowels over a fallen log, broke camp, then languidly strolled down to the trail, working the stiffness of the previous day’s hike out of his joints. It was then he regretted not packing some marijuana along for the journey.

  To the east, snow-capped mountains rose into a steel-blue sky, brushed with brass and fire. Along the shoulders of a distant riverbank, groups of Whitebark Pine stood proud, like sentries of old, long and forgotten. The morning was both peaceful and lonely, yet around noon, suddenly, and unexpectedly, Kevin came across a man and woman at the side of the trail, sitting against the base of a sequoia. They were fellow backpackers, presently snacking on granola and dried plums.

  “Hey there,” greeted
the man, cheerfully. He looked about Kevin’s age, late twenties, and the woman a little younger. Her smile was inviting.

  “Good afternoon,” Kevin said, with vigor. He was thrilled to be in the company of other people again. “Isn’t it awesome out here?”

  “Sure is,” replied the man. He had a lanky, athletic build, suggesting a familiarity to one or more of the activities of a triathlon. His face was relatively clean-shaven, save for ten inches of hair sprouted from his chin. A blue bandana wrapped tight across his forehead, fanning backward, marginally concealing a bushel’s worth of short, stubby dreadlocks. “Been out here long?” he asked.

  “Came out yesterday.” Kevin slithered out of his pack, set it on the ground. He dug into the top pocket and pulled out a bag of cashews. “Staying for two weeks, though.”

  “Righteous,” replied the woman.

  They took an hour visiting, sharing anecdotes about backpacking, and other general topics. The man’s name was Vance, and he worked at a bicycle shop outside Tacoma. A mountain biker on the semi-pro circuit, he was hoping a good finish in one more race might get him a sponsorship with Yeti Cycles.

  His fiancé, Willow, worked customer service at a Trader Joe’s. She had originally planned on beauty school, but the many chemicals associated with that occupation proved disconcerting. She was saving money to open a boutique, featuring all-natural products.

  Kevin thought Willow would have little problem representing those products of her future store. Normally not one for dreadlocks on women, he observed a mild appreciation for the burgundy tendrils stretching to her waist. The locks were artfully festooned with what he soon learned to be maple beads and lavender-dyed hemp fiber. Willow’s slim build and narrow facial features insinuated birdlike qualities, but the tone of her voice had Kevin thinking more along the lines of a cartoon caricature of a mouse. In a natural way, Kevin admitted, she was both cute, and provocative.

  Heading the same direction, the three of them spent the remainder of the day hiking, pointing out wildlife, and philosophizing on the human condition as it related to nature. Later, around a fire, they had taken this topic (as well as others) into a more speculative realm, via the inducement of certain hallucinatory amplifications. (Vance’s homegrown weed was stellar, Kevin declared, and with much gratitude.)

  The evening trolled on into the small hours, and the mood eventually grew listless and heavy. Conversations whittled away, and despite the euphoric membrane surrounding Kevin, (thanks to the pot), he now felt like the proverbial third wheel. After a piss in the woods, he bid Vance and Willow goodnight, and crawled into his bivvy. He fell fast into a deep sleep, his last thought being that of his wife’s face.

  * * * *

  They were gone in the morning. Their stuff was still there, but they were gone. A day-hike was the logical assumption, but it seemed to Kevin that the couple hadn’t taken anything with them. They’d even left their water bottles. By late afternoon, when they still hadn’t come back, and after Kevin had searched the general area more than once, called out their names numerous times, his nerves were having the best of him. Where the hell were they?

  It was half-past two, and Kevin’s stomach was mad with hunger. He sat on the ground near his tent, ate crackers and cheese, and pondered over the situation. He had hoped to get a few miles down the trail, but felt awkward to leave without saying goodbye to Vance and Willow. (Or, at this point, without resolving the question as to what had happened to the couple.)

  After putting away his food, Kevin drank from his water bottle, when he then spotted a peculiar blemish high on the trunk of a nearby birch tree. The scaring appeared to be from the result of some sort of writing, and sat roughly fifteen feet high.

  Curious, Kevin stood, walked to the base of the tree and looked up, studying the scabbed bark. It took less than a minute before he felt the cold finger run down his back, as he made out the words, MOTHER SPENCER WAS HERE.

  * * * *

  He decided to stick it out and wait at the camp, hoping Vance and Willow would eventually return; their arrival would release him from the anxious dread presently swinging an eight-pound hammer in his gut. He made piles of wood near the fire, enough to last until the morning, and pulled his sleeping roll out of the bivvy. If he got any sleep at all, it would be on the ground, free from the claustrophobic confines of the little tent.

  His hands felt like wet tortillas, and as dusk slowly sucked away the light, it seemed to Kevin that the surrounding forest had come alive. Peripheral shadows moved, sounds occurred, the air breathed. He clutched his bear spray to his chest and walked circles around the fire, trying desperately to convince himself that it was all his imagination, and that Vance and Willow would return—any minute now! And up until he heard the great sound in the trees, Kevin had almost wholly convinced himself that yes, his mind had been playing tricks on him.

  It came from back down the trail, a hundred yards or so: a mass rending of wood, deep churn of earth and rubble, accompanied by a cavernous groan lasting for several minutes. After, a gust of hot air rushed through the camp—the furnace blast—carrying with it a stifling stench of compost, and something else…blood?

  Kevin’s knees buckled, his mind dithered. Nothing rational about any of this, he was sure. There was something dreadful out there.

  He moved fast. He packed his gear, all of it, pausing when finished. The night had fallen silent once again—too silent, he thought. He was reluctant to leave the fire, and, adding more wood, he crouched low, listening.

  It was as if the night had drawn a long breath, then held it. The monotonous hiss and cracks from the burning wood were the only sounds. The surrounding forest stood as an ominous wall, black as the grave. Kevin’s knuckles grew white over bear spray and the K-bar, and he swore to God this wasn’t happening to him, swore to God he should have stayed home.

  A sudden onset of continuous screaming pulled a jagged razor across his scalp. A shrieking noise in the distance, it was unerringly human, sounded male, and unremitting. Amidst the high-pitched wail, Kevin repeatedly heard the words Help!, God!, Please, and No!, mixed and combined as they were, into horrific variations. And it lasted all night. It moved throughout the forest, and it came and went, like a reoccurring nightmare, but the screaming lasted all night.

  Sick with dread, Kevin crouched by the fire and trembled. Completely, physically, he shook with fear. Twice he vomited in the dirt, and almost soiled his pants after a particularly long and arduous wail, containing the phrase, My God, please…no more, no more! But he didn’t dare move. To leave the fire meant to go into the darkness and join that which was producing the torment.

  He was convinced it was Vance out there, screaming in pain, for mercy. Kevin thought about Willow: Was she too in hiding, her stomach clenched, nerves knotted, as she listened to her fiancé’s blood-curdling throes?

  It occurred to Kevin that a bear would have finished the job long ago, and a sick joke from the couple did not explain the prodigious noise he had heard earlier. Whatever was causing all that horror wasn’t natural.

  But his thoughts were transitory; thin moments of reduction stretched over an all-encompassing face of terror. Bear spray in hand, Kevin sat in the dark and waited for the light.

  * * * *

  When it came, it brought silence. The first shade of light was a pallid veil that smoothed over the sky and between the trees, and it brought with it the most unnerving calm. Kevin strapped his backpack on and headed out. He would go the other way, back to the trailhead, the dirt road, down through the canyon, the main highway. It was the shortest distance to any semblance of civilization, and he thought he could cover it by nightfall. Damn if he was going to stay another night in these woods.

  He paced himself at a slow jog. He felt the efflux of adrenaline congregate above his knees, in his fingertips, below his eyes; electric, like the jitters from too much coffee. His bowels roiled from fear,
and the urge to shit was both strong and often. As he imagined something cold and ugly staring from the trees, he decided to keep moving.

  Minutes on the trail, and Kevin came across a gaping hole in the ground, as wide as a city bus, elongated like a mouth, a perimeter strewn with the detritus of earth and wood and other things; he saw broken bits of bone, scraps of curled flesh, knobs of blackened meat. He felt the sudden press of a chilled hand onto his abdomen. A damp odor of decay hung in the air, thick and foul, and it wormed its way into the back of Kevin’s throat, sat there like a wet sponge. As he looked upon the grisly site, his mind went to the “great sound” from the night before. It was as if the forest had wrestled in labor, prospered, and Kevin was now observing the afterbirth.

  An opalescent sheet dropped over his eyes, fogging his vision, his thoughts. At once, the world felt so heavy, even as he dropped his pack and hit the trail at a full sprint. He became acutely aware of the sound of his boots slapping against the ground, and the feral strain of his breathing. A sharp laugh came from the distance, and then Kevin stumbled, gouged his palms on gravel, tasted dirt.

  He pushed up, rising against the invisible anvil fixed between his shoulders, and broke into another run. And he ran for days, so it seemed, his mind lost within that pearly veil, until at last, the spiral of his absence uncoiled with a vivid snap!

  As it happened, Kevin found himself on the bank of a fast-flowing river: an afternoon sun riding treetops, birds skipping on branches, the scent of pine stirring in the breeze. Presently, he was staring at a large steelhead idling in the ebb behind a boulder, unsure as to the admiration he felt for the thing, why it made him weep so.

  Something inside his gut whispered that the trail was forever gone. Nothing around him appeared remotely familiar, only thick woods hunched behind him. A map of scratches caked in dried blood covered his arms, and his face felt the sting of a hundred ants. Excrement soiled his clothes. He was missing a front tooth.