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It's a beautiful day for hiking; by which I mean that it's a bit cloudy and a bit misty out. Anybody who tells you to go hiking in sunny weather is either immune to sweat or an idiot. I can't stand the heat, and anyway there's something so refreshing about the feel of moisture in the air, and something so inherently beautiful in the refractions and reflections of the dewdrops on the leaves. I pass a spiderweb, and the glittering beauty of it causes me to stop and snap a photo; that one's definitely a keeper.
This is a new trail I'm hiking on today; I only recently moved out here and am trying to familiarise myself with the local terrain. The awesome photos are just an added bonus. This particular trail is an eight-hour trek, all up and down rocky hillsides and through forested areas. I've been walking all day and am probably about two-thirds done. In all that time I've not seen a single other human being, and am taking a lot of pride in my good taste in moving out here. I'm not a big fan of other people.
That being said, I'm not only surprised but also a bit annoyed when I happen to come across a little cottage in the middle of a clearing. I realise that most people would jump at the chance to say hello and maybe get a bit of rest and a cuppa, but I'm not most people so I walk on past, trying to look inconspicuous so they won't try to talk to me. Then I happen to glance through the open windows and realise that it doesn't look like anybody's home anyway. Good. I relax and take a better look around without having to worry about attracting anyone's attention. There's a tombstone by the side of the cottage that sparks my interest. I wander over to take a look, stopping a minute to read "Here Lies Bob, aged 12. He was the very best of friends." and run my fingers over the course texture of eroded stone, wondering who Bob was and why his life was cut so tragically short. Why he was buried out here. And why such a young kid is being remembered only as a friend, not as a son. Maybe he was an orphan, and the friend who lived in this cottage was the only one willing to bury him. It’s an old tombstone, so his friend is probably grown up now.
It occurs to me then, that just because nobody's home doesn't mean they're not heading towards home. I don't want to be here when they get back. I certainly don’t want them to find me looking with interest at the tombstone of their childhood friend. I mentally cross my fingers and start back up on the trail, then groan as I hear a bark up ahead. Don't misunderstand me, I love dogs. In fact I plan to get one myself now that I live around here. I just hate their owners.
A little further along I see them; an old shepherd dog and a far older man. They're playing fetch with a stick by a fork in the trail. Perfect. I'll have to get my map out anyway to see which of the two paths I'm going down, which means I can avoid eye contact and the small talk that inevitably follows. I take my time about it, searching my bag longer than is strictly necessary and taking an unbelievable amount of time to find where I am on it, a confused look on my face like I'm not used to this.
Huh. I squint at the map and my pretend confusion turns real as I find exactly where I am on it, and find there is definitely no fork there. That's odd. Every tiny little deer-track should be on this map, and has been up to this point. I only buy the most detailed and recent ones. I like to know every inch of the area around me. My heart quickens a bit as the five-year-old boy in me realises what this means; this is uncharted territory. He grins happily and I can't stop him from leaping at the chance to play explorer for real, so I pick the left-hand path that’s been left off my map and pretend like I had some choice in the matter.
I plan on spending such a long time putting the map away that I'll be far down the trail before I'm done, successfully avoiding any human interaction, but my plans are foiled. The second I step foot onto the left-hand fork the old man speaks up in a thick accent, "Ya doan't wanna goa daan that road."
I ignore him and walk on past. I can barely understand what he's saying anyway, as every vowel sounds almost the same.
"Ya doan’t."
I pretend like I can't hear him. I've gotten quite adept at pretending to be deaf, and manage to keep my face perfectly straight, not a single muscle betraying the fact that I know he's speaking to me. He gives up after the second time I ignore him. Most do. I try to keep the victory smile off my face as I walk on.
As the trail leads on I can't help but feel like I'm getting further and further away from humanity. I happily open myself up to the world of natural sounds surrounding me. I revel in the birdsong, in the chirps of the various insects, in the rustling of the leaves overhead and in the crunch of leaves underfoot.
The crunch of leaves behind me takes me by surprise, though. I freeze and then turn my head around, ever so slowly, being careful not to make any sudden movements or noises. There's nothing there. Either I'm a lot louder than I thought, or this particular animal hears like a bat. It can't be a bat, of course, as it's daytime.
It occurs to me then that it's actually a lot darker than it should be for this time of day. It's only the afternoon and yet the sky is darkening by the minute. The trees aren’t helping. They grow so close to the trail here that their branches interlock above it, blocking out any residual sunshine.
Fine, I think, trying to reassure myself. Maybe it was a bat.
Now that I'm aware of the declining light, though, I start to worry about it. Even if I headed back right now it would still take me a good three hours to get home, and that would mean not exploring the unmarked trail, which I don't think I could bring myself to do. The problem was that I hadn't thought it would get dark anywhere near this early and so didn't think to bring a torch, and I really don't want to go stumbling along down here with only my inferior human night-vision against all the terrors of the nocturnal animal kingdom. I check my map again to see if there are any likely camping spots around here, guessing at where the trail should be on it, and find a cave not too far ahead, which gives me hope for my bat theory again.
I start collecting kindling and firewood as I walk, trying not to think about the fact that I'm probably going to be spending a very cold night in a damp and dark cave with nothing to eat. I mentally take inventory of my pack; I've got a blanket that's really not warm enough for October, and a first aid kit that isn't really helpful in terms of warmth but is always good to have on you. At least my box of waterproof matches will finally come in handy, although admittedly not because they're waterproof; I just need matches.
As if the universe is mocking me, a low rumble of thunder sounds overhead at that and I groan as the first few drops of rain spatter sporadically onto my head. Funny; I always check weather forecasts before I go on a long hike like this and there had been no mention of any rain, let alone a thunderstorm.
By the time I stumble into the entrance of the cave I'm soaked through, and very glad of the waterproofness of my matches. I dump my armload of firewood into a rough pile near the middle of the cave and settle down next to it to see whether I can get anything lit or whether I'm going to freeze to death despite my blanket. I run through about half the matches just trying to dry out the kindling enough that I can light the fire. When I finally get it lit I place the larger sticks near it to dry off, and cross my fingers that it doesn't go out.
Tending to the fire gets easier the bigger it gets, and soon I'm able to relax a bit and let my mind wander away from the persnickety business of fire-building. I watch the shadows play on the walls and lose myself in their dance. I trance out a bit, vaguely aware of my consciousness floating in and out of the murky waters of sleep as I do so, but unable to do much about it; I can't seem to take my eyes off the fire-shadows.
The dance continues to change and shift before my eyes, a never-ending evolution of shapes that ends the same way any evolution does; intelligence. I don't bat an eyelid when the man-shadow takes shape before me, for some reason it doesn't bother me right now, and the fact that it doesn't bother me also doesn't bother me. All I care about is the dance of flickering shadows in front of me.
The man-shadow beckons me and I can't stop myself from going to it, although my limbs feel as if they're wading through treacle. He points, and I unwittingly watch myself follow in that direction, no longer in control of my own body, until I'm standing right at the back of the cave. The shadow continues pointing, and this time I see that it's pointing at the floor. My eyes follow the finger downwards and my hands soon follow as it becomes obvious that he's pointing through the floor to something buried here.
I dig frantically and uncontrollably–literally–with my bare hands in the dirt, cutting two of my fingers on sharp rocks and inadvertently burying dirt deep under my nails. I watch in horror as a nail rips off, exposing the raw flesh underneath which is then shoved right back into the dirt without so much as a brief respite. But now the pain rushes through me, the adrenaline cutting through the fog of my trance. I finally manage to tear my eyes away from the dig and steal a glance at the cave wall. The shadow-man is fading away now, the flames returning to their normal flickering.
When he's disappeared entirely I scramble back to the fire, breathe a huge sigh of relief, and collapse for a minute or two while I get my thoughts in order. First of all, I need to clean the dirt out of the cuts and the ripped nail-bed of my fingers. Fortunately the first aid kit I always carry with me takes care of that, and I feel a little better with cleaned and plastered wounds. Enough that my curiosity gets the upper hand again and I wander over to investigate the dig that I was so frantically obsessed with before. The five-year-old boy in me pipes up to tell me that there must be some buried treasure here that the shadow wanted me to have, and once again I have no choice but to do what he wants.
I'm a lot more careful about the digging now that I'm actually the one in control and doing it. I take my time and manage to pry a few rocks out of the dirt without cutting myself once. When I'm a few feet down I encounter something that doesn't feel like a rock. For one thing, it's not trying to cut me. I can't get a grip on the smooth surface of it so I dig around and underneath and eventually lift out a large hunk of dirt with the smooth object embedded neatly in the middle of it. I gently brush the dirt off, working meticulously on one part at a time so that for the moment all you can see is a smooth, round, creamy-white bump in the dirt, about two inches in diametre so far and growing bigger the more I expose it. The five-year-old boy in me tries to tell me that it must be a dragon egg, and I honestly can't think of anything better to shoot his idea down with. A buried treasure that's just a smooth, round stone? If this was in a story, there'd be no convincing me it was anything else.
That is, until I move to the next part and my thumb encounters a dip in the surface. I frown, confused, and brush the dirt off more vigorously, uncovering an empty eye socket.
I can't do anything but stare for the longest time. I don't blink; I don't even breathe; I just stare silently, trying to wrap my head around the fact that I'm holding the remains of someone else's head in my hands. Then I get my breath back and scream, drop it, and run the hell out of the cave, back the way I'd come.
I don't stop for anything, least of all to think. I can't think; I don't want to think. I let the adrenaline take over and act on pure impulse, letting my brain play white noise where my thoughts should be; it deserves the break.
I don't even notice the fact that it's stopped raining and has become daylight again until I reach the fork where I'd originally strayed from the trail. I slow down a bit then, distinctly happy to be back in charted territory. As I pass the little cottage I seriously consider stopping and seeking the comfort of another human being for once, but again it looks as if no-one's home. In fact, as I look closer I realise it doesn't look like anybody's been home in a long time; the place is falling apart. That old man and his dog must have just been out hiking like me, not living out here.
The first thing I do when I get back to civilisation is shower, trying to rid myself not just of the dirt on my body but of the feeling of dirt on my soul. The second thing I do is call the police, who take my directions and go out to the cave while I stay at home huddled in warm blankets with a hot water bottle and all the lights on. Normally I have the fire on at home to keep warm but for some reason I don't want to have a real fire lit anymore. I'm not sure I ever will again.
A couple of days later the police call me in for a statement, and tell me that the skull I’d found had belonged to a man that used to live in the cottage I'd passed, who had disappeared years earlier and had been presumed dead, possibly murdered; there was a lot of intrigue and mystery surrounding the case.
When they show me his file I nearly choke on the stale coffee they gave me. The picture clipped to the front of it is of the old man I'd met on the trail. The one who’d warned me away from the trail where he’d met his own doom.