The Nameless Dark Story #2

Landslides are common here in the early spring, and that means extra policing of the trails and backwoods areas where we know people go. Most of the time we'll send out a few helicopters, but about three years ago we went massively over budget after a fire in the main lodge and we couldn't afford to bring them out. This meant we had to go in by foot. K.D and I teamed up and headed out to the southwest, which is mostly mountainous terrain and a couple of small rivers. Essentially, we get paid to go out and camp for a week. If we find a landslide, excellent. If not, excellent. Either way, we come out on top.

K.D and I are both fast in the woods and we made great time. Our designated quadrant was about fifteen miles from the trail head, relatively close, but not frequently used due to the steep incline. Both of us are familiar with the area, and we were in good spirits. We camped out about a mile from our target to eat dinner and turn in early. This was back when I still slept relatively well, so I fell asleep with no real issue.

K.D said it took her about five minutes to wake me up. She was crouched over my bag with her hair in all directions and her eyes slightly unfocused.

"Stop." I said, pushing her hands away. She blinked and frowned.

"Something's yelling." She mumbled. "You got the blinker?"

I didn't understand what she wanted so I tried to tell her she was sleepwalking but she kept insisting on the 'blinker.'
She made a sweeping motion with her hand.

"Flashlight?" I asked. I pointed at the bag by the fire pit and she dug through it. "What is it?"

"I dunno." She said. She pushed her bag to the side and turned the light on the ground.

"Something get in there?"

She shook her head. "I dunno. It was weird."

"Well what do you want to do?"

She kept the flashlight trained on the ground. "I dunno."

"Go to sleep." I said. She blinked a few times and dragged her bag back. She kept the flashlight on but I was tired and I shut my eyes.

I'm not sure if I fell asleep or not but K.D was shaking me again and this time she was awake.

"What?"

"Listen," She said.

From somewhere close by, we could hear a strange sound. I heard it in the very back of my ear, and if I even breathed too loudly I drowned it out. I cocked my head to try and figure out where it was coming from but it was coming from all directions. A kind of distant, intermittent tone that I wasn't able to identify.

"What is that?" I asked.

"No idea." She whispered, looking over her shoulder. "But I've been hearing it for an hour and it's not going away or coming closer."

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I have no idea."

We sat on my bag and listened to the sound.

I got up and walked in a wide circle around the camp. It was almost impossible to tell, but I began to suspect that the sound was getting louder when I passed by the north end of camp. K.D got up and grabbed the light and I took my rifle off my pack. The sky was clear so there was a good amount of light and from all around us we could hear deer. Nine times out of ten, the mysterious rustling visitors here at night is the deer. Every so often, the beam of the flashlight passed over a set of eyes low to the ground, and I cut them a wide berth. The females won't generally become aggressive but the males are assholes, especially in the early spring.

We'd gone maybe a quarter of a mile and the sound was definitely getting louder. We started to call out, and the sound seemed to respond. We started to jog and the beam of her flashlight bounced off the trunks of the trees.

We jogged faster and the sound got louder. It was a man's voice, and it was coming from somewhere above us. We called out, identified ourselves as Rangers, but the voice stayed constant, a wordless muffled wailing. The sound got a little louder and K.D made a hard right, slowing down fast enough that I almost ran into her. The sound was right there, right in front of us, but I couldn't see anything. I dropped down and felt along the ground, put my ear to it, but it wasn't there. I spun in a circle, calling out, and K.D grabbed my arm.

"Russ." She said. "What is that?"

She was pointing at something on a large boulder about ten feet from us. The flashlight bled whitewashed the surface and I adjusted the beam. Something on the boulder was moving slightly. Something small and pale. It wiggled as I walked forward, and the sound continued to get louder.

Whatever the thing was, it was firmly embedded in the rock. Nothing about it was familiar, and I was curious. I picked up a stick and poked it very gently. It responded but didn't move away. I leaned forward slowly and carefully, my hands near my face in case the thing had some kind of spray defense.

Something on the back of the pale thing caught the light for a brief moment. Something came together and I moved away very slowly. K.D watched me with wide eyes and I stood in front of her, squinting into the light.

"What is it?" She asked.

I turned and looked at it.

"Russ?"

I led her over and helped her get a closer look. She reacted to the sound, flinched away when she saw the back of the thing, and she fell on her butt and scooted away, her eyes wide.

"That's-"

"We have to get it open." I said.

"He's-" She pointed.

"We need to."

We looked at the boulder, where the sound was still coming from, and where the tip of the man's finger wiggled.

We searched the surface of the boulder, took rocks and rang them against the sides, and the screaming got louder. We yelled at each other and pounded on the boulder and neither of us would leave to get help and the man screamed and screamed from inside the boulder. I kept turning to the rifle even though I knew it wouldn't help and I pounded the surface with my fists.

I thought about cubic inches and how much the man was screaming and I told him to conserve his air but all he would do was scream and when we realized there was nothing we could do we sat with him until the next afternoon, when the screaming finally stopped, and the finger was still.

We packed up camp and kept going to the target area and spent days searching the land. On our way out, we passed by the boulder, and the finger was gone, the rock around it clawed and chipped.

I haven't really thought about it much ever since.