Welcome to part three of Dan’s strange and terrifying solo camping trip. Two weeks ago, Dan fled the motel in the dead of night after witnessing a black cloud and something descending into the forest behind the motel.
Here now is the rest of Dan’s story:
I leap into my truck, watching the motel recede in the distance. I roll down the window to adjust the mirror. I dart a glance at the forest behind the motel and I still see the glow.
However, it too was receding. I sigh with relief and focus just in time to hit the brake.
My tires screech as I regain control.
An animal, perhaps a fox, had just slithered past, narrowly missing my tires. I look at the rearview this time and the glow of green, that mysterious glow that creeped me out, was gone.
Finally, I dare to let out a breath.
Focus.
The woods stretched on both sides of the truck, my lights the only beacon in the darkness. I wonder if “it” could see me. I must focus.
I puzzle through as I drive, the source of the cloud. The green light.
Honestly, it reminded me of a scene in “War of the Worlds”. Tom Cruise’s face and his terror in the moments when he sees those creatures out of the machines sucking blood from hapless citizens. Clothes falling down into the woods, covering trees and the understory. I remember Dakota Fanning walking through the devastation.
I slow down, taking in a curve, then another. I turn on my GPS.
“Welcome to Wyoming.”
How many more hours? Don’t. Don’t let that movie mess with your head, Dan.
I check the digital clock on my dash, a steady green glow on the screen. Four fifty a.m.
Two hours have passed since I dashed out of the remote motel in nowhere town.
A light.
I am near Cheyenne.
I pause, feeling my guts growl with the first pangs of hunger.
Is that a Buc-ee I see?
Gas.
I dart a glance at my tank. A quarter or less.
I see I-25 signs.
Okay, here goes. I turn into the convenience store, all lit up light a Christmas tree, so comforting after that darkness. I see lights… rows of lights. Gas, food and coffee.
Trucks, trucks, trucks. I smell the scent of diesel, gas and tobacco. Several semis are parked side by side in the dim light.
The waitress is a lifer. The proverbial name plate pronounces her name as Delia. She smells like a perfume commercial on full blast, her teeth a study in Colgate. All four buck teeth shine on me as I stare at a menu sealed in plastic, the edges frayed from overuse.
I felt like I hadn’t eaten in two weeks, my thirst pumping in my forehead as Delia returns behind the counter and yells my order. Coffee, hot and heady mist my face, awakening my tiredness.
Outside the window, the sun seems to try to move past a mountain, its rays casting a copper glow on a stainless steel truck parked at a gas bay.
Men in ten gallon hats, sports hats, all kinds of hats. I eat with gusto, the pancakes soft and yielding, the butter flowing towards large hunks of bacon. I ignore the bottle of amber, some concoction that didn’t look anything like syrup. I reach for the sugar instead and pour the kernels on, like a white sandy beach. Delia is watching me, chuckling perhaps at my choice of sugar.
I leave her a good tip.
By noon, I approach the trailhead, my gear and tent on my back. I had planned on seeing the Lincoln statue and perhaps proceed to Mirror Lake and camp there. Perhaps. It depends on the light, as I want to make sure the tent is up and a fire pit is ready for whatever canned dinner I had brought with me.
Serenity fills my being. I am engulfed in the sounds of the creatures all around me, the whisper of breezes that announce I am in my element. Several miles into the woods, the old growth pronounces I am in a less-traveled area and the sound of frogs and crickets herald a spring or some type of water source. I pause, now exhausted and reach for my water bottle which I had refilled at the diner.
I sense someone watching me as I sip. I continue and quench my thirst, mindful of my knife at the side of my Timberland boots.
A feeling akin to when a coyote or wild animal pauses to pounce assails me. There was a preternatural silence in the forest. Sort of a pause when the animals seem to take a breath and held it. I slowly push the water bottle back into my pack and survey the area. I flick on the flashlight and survey all around, making a three-hundred degree turn. My watch tells me in the luminosity of the forest that it’s almost four pm. I walk briskly now, searching for a clearing where I can make camp with a high ridge in mind where I can see what’s around me.
At a meadow, I make a dash for a hill in the distance. The forest lies east and west of me ahead and I need to make water soon.
At a flat area where the grass and mold permeate the ground, I searched for stones and made my fire pit. I piled sticks which I had collected during my hasty exit from the deep wood, away from the dark where something was watching me. My first thought is someone like an escapee from a nearby prison may be walking around and spotted me. Here, numerous boulders are my fortress.
Tent up, fire roaring, I settled to pee over the hill, looking up at the first stars as they made their first appearance in the sky. Big sky of the Wyoming prairie. Beautiful.
I open the first of two cans and stow the trash in a receptacle. I remember the reminder from the park ranger at the trailhead: No human footprint that can’t be erased by your boot. I add some butter to the steaming iron pan and toss the bacon in, then the beans. They sizzle in the firelight as I watch the forest in the distance at least fifty yards away, if not more. I turn behind me and see the forest where I had run from, dark and deep. The treeline all around seems quiet now. No movement.
Mirror lake sits north of me, and like its name, mirrors the still stars. I see a black cloud coming from the south, clearly moving between the two copse of trees.
Strange. Rainstorm coming?
I glance at my watch as I scrape the remains of my dinner, now satisfied and full. I grab a bag of gorp, the M and M’s a good ending to the meal. I munch as I watch the black cloud, turning larger and more ominous every moment.
Then, a prickle hits my skin.
Cold.
The temperature has dropped and I expectantly wait for lightning.
I pause, then realize.
A familiar sensation assails me. Is that the same black cloud I saw at the motel?
As if it heard me, it replied with a beam: A green beam of light, thicker than a Volkswagen Beetle. Down it came, just like in the movie.
This time, since I was about a mile away, I smelled ozone.
Like a bullet, fear struck me.
I am out in the open. My tent is a bright blue with a yellow stripe at the edges, screaming like a beacon in a sea of green and …
Hurriedly, I bury my fire, extinguishing any light from my location. I am in pitch dark.
I scramble to the tent, zipping the flap halfway up as a I watched in horror at the unfolding scene.
It’s here. It followed me.
It’s here in the field right below… Just a several yards, maybe a mile or two.
Should I pack and make a dash for the forest where something or someone was watching me?
Or should I stay put and just zip the tent, hoping it can’t see me?
My limbs tremble and I realize the food is now making its way into my bowels. My body is reacting.
A green glow now travels like a huge blob where the beam was. The beam of light had disappeared as if it winked out.
But the green glow, just like in the forest behind the motel, is now moving…
Towards my location, on the hill.
I dart a glance at the forest ahead and mull over the possibility of dashing out, leaving my tent. I have no idea what the terrain would be from my position to the forest, but it was cover. The forest behind me was not an option as there was something there… or so I think.
I watch, the one hand on the zipper pull, another leaning on the floor for support.
It’s now halfway to my tent.
I run.
I leave my pack, my tent and my sanity in blind panic. Quickly, glad I left my boots on, I slip down the hill and eventually the momentum rolls me.
Downward I go and stop behind a bush, tangled by the understory. I peer between leaves and the smell of ozone is overpowering.
Just a football field away, the glow of green moves. It’s orblike. Intelligent. Like a predator, it seems to ‘sniff’ its surroundings.
I untangle the brush and dart away, a headlong run for the treeline just a few yards ahead.
Inside the forest canopy, I sit, my body heaving with effort.
I watch, stooped behind a series of bushes.
The orb of green slithers like a snake, traveling on the ground without feet. In a few minutes it has crested the hill I had just abandoned and has stopped.
At my tent.
Something black materializes within the orb like a fetus. Something is forming.
My gosh. I see it. A formless black mass with two feet enters my tent. It seems to seep in.
I rub my eyes, attempting to compute what I think I see. I look again. Yes.
A creature, all black, standing upright, slithers out of the tent flap. It seems to pool around where my fire had been. It seems to be examining – my pack. I see it lighted somehow by the green glow.
Oh no.
It’s moving and following my tracks.
It’s headed to the forest. Towards me.
Why me?
No. Nothing personal. It’s seeking a victim. It’s a predator and I’m the animal it’s seeking.
I glance at the forest canopy and see the tops of the trees. Run, hide or climb?
I walk. I walk in silence as much as the twigs would allow me, turning once and again to see where the creature was, but now it’s impossible as the green glow remained where it was near my tent, but now the creature is dark like night. It is now black like its surroundings.
A natural camouflage that left me sightless.
How do I beat and run from something I can’t see?
I stare at my watch, but it’s too dark to tell the time. I feel like I’d been here for an entire week.
My stomach gurgles.
I run, breaking twigs, crunching leaves underfoot. A cliff. I peer over the cliff.
A stream.
I turn and something by a tree, less than a few feet, ten feet, maybe less is leaning or hugging the tree.
Two pairs of eyes glow at me. A marmoset? No. There are no marmosets here, Dan. I am going mad.
Take the leap. I leap.
A branch catches me, and I hang on, assessing the depth of my fall.
Let go.
I let go and I fall, more gently than I could imagine. Brush, thick understory saved me.
I cover myself in the understory and peer up.
Something jumps.
I smell the ozone and hear what seems to be a motorlike hum.
Then, lit by stars I see it. Ahead, the creature of blackness surveys the area. I smell the water from the stream. It follows the stream in a robotic stride.
It is not human. It’s not an animal either. I watch it recede with painful eyes, trying to assess as I sweated what and how far it was from me. Then, finally, I yielded to sleep.
I awakened with ants crawling around me, a broken bar of almonds and chocolate staining my pants. I shake them off and stand in the swelter of sunlight seeping towards me and it’s daybreak.
The ozone scent is gone, to be replaced by the scent of dew and fresh leaves. I thirst and exit my hideaway as silently as I can. Then, by the light of the day, I take out the only object I took with me: a compass. I headed out, walking steadily until I hit a busy trail, hikers saying hello and looking at me like I had not slept.
I never went back again even to get my tent or pack.