I want you to look carefully at this picture for a moment. Go ahead, take a minute, and imagine yourself in my shoes. Can you feel it? Until every hair on your body is standing on end, you don’t understand what was going on inside of me at this moment. Let me emphasize again that there was NOTHING around this building, nothing but barely-visible trees that my light couldn‘t penetrate. I’d been walking for 9 hours, and seen absolutely nothing to prepare me for this. In that first moment or two of shock, the brain races like a gray-hound, filled with ideas and theories and explanations and plans and reactions and feeling and maybe even a little bit of panic. A little. Oh my God, what now?
Of course I saw it only for a split second before I snapped my light off. After all, I had passed through three different layers of “no trespassing” areas, and my worry of getting “caught” was ever-present. So I got a quick flash of a three-storied, glass-fronted, balconied, ominously dark house in the middle of the forest, and then I was in the dark. Oh no, I had shined my light directly on the front windows, anyone inside probably saw me! Do I run? Do I hide? What do you hear? Do I ask casual? Who would be living here?!?
That last question, though frightening, brought a little of that logic and reason that has saved me from many potential panic attacks. Who WOULD be living in this God-forsaken place, and on a freezing night like this? I wasn’t sure if I’d seen a vehicle parked anywhere, but probably not… and then the real key: even though it was completely dark already, it was only 7:00 PM. If there was anyone inside, would they have all the lights out and be sleeping already? Not likely. The possibilities that this was an somehow an empty building increased steadily. Of course there’s always the chance that people inside heard me coming noisily up the hill and had turned off the lights. After all, hadn’t I seen something like electrical lights in the distance an hour ago? But I should have passed that a long time back. Or maybe they WERE already sleeping, because they had no electricity… but it wasn’t likely, and I knew I had to go with the odds. After all, you never get a 100% shot of anything in life, do you?
I counted off two minutes, listening intently for any sign of movement. When there was none, I switched my light back on, and examined the house better. It was definitely a house, a very impressive house, the kind you would find up in the snowy mountains where rich people have their winter ski-lodges. I couldn’t imagine what it was doing here. I mean, a little rough cabin maybe, but this was ridiculous! I couldn’t imagine any vehicle making it up the road here. Where did the material come from? Why?!
Then came the question. You know which question I mean: to explore, or not to explore, THAT is the question! And it was a tough one. But obviously there wasn’t much choice. I mean, here I went to all this trouble and stupidity with the hope and faith that I would find an adventure somewhere along the way, and here it was. Could I just turn around and run away scared and ever be able to look myself in the mirror again? I’d trapped myself in a situation where the disgrace of defeat was worse than the fear of the unknown. Okay, now I just needed to get the job done.
I needed help to take the first step, so I did what any courage-needing boy-in-the-dark would do, I pulled out my gun. FAKE gun, remember, but here I figured it might actually be useful. I figured out a way to hold it in combination with my flashlight so that anyone in front of me would see the outline of the gun behind the light, but not the fact that it was made of clear plastic. Hopefully. I figured at this point that if I did encounter anyone, they probably were not the legal residents of the establishment, and that could be any sort of person up here. Having the outline of a gun in my hand might give me just the advantage I needed to control any situation I encountered. But mostly, as is obvious to all of us, it was psychological support. Thus fully armed with a toy gun and a flashlight, I moved slowly towards the front of the house. Then came another surprise that stopped me in my tracks.
Now relax, the real heart-stopping surprise for me is still coming. No, I simply looked to my right as I was getting closer, and realized that there was something behind some trees on that end of the clearing. No, several somethings. It was more buildings. None of them were as grand as the one directly in front of me, all single-storied but of pretty good size. I planned to take a closer look as soon as I’d figured out what was going on with the main building. Not wanting to worry about being watched from the other buildings, I moved to the opposite side of the house (the left side of the picture). I tried to keep my light as veiled as possible, just in case someone was inside. I moved very very carefully along the concrete wall, holding my pistol in front of me. I had some vague notion that if I saw anyone I would yell “Federal Agent, get on the ground now!” I wondered if I’d be able to pull it off without my voice breaking. I was also aware that there’s probably some sort of repercussions to impersonating a federal agent, but I didn’t anticipate meeting the type of person who would call me up on that.
I noticed that ahead of me the wall had a shadowy indent. Probably a doorway, I thought. Okay, this is it. I turned off my light, just in case, and moved silently to the edge of the doorway, my pistol pointing at the ground (just like in the movies!), my back hugging the wall. I was worried that the door might be open, and more worried that someone would be watching for me. I planned to quickly move away from the wall, turn towards the door, raise my gun into position, and shine my light at the door, all in one quick, fluid movement. Actually, this part when very well, and I almost had 1/100 of a second to be pleased, until I followed my light to the doorway… there was no door.
This alone made my heart stop for a second, maybe two. I almost dropped everything in my hands. Then my brain registered that I was seeing the light shine through where the door should be, into the building, onto a rough, uneven dirt floor, scattered with bits of overturned furniture, garbage, tools, debris. It was so unexpected that I almost fell over.
I stood there for a long time, wavering. The impulse to just cut and run was very strong. I held my light in the same direction, hoping that anyone else who saw it from inside wouldn’t notice that it was quivering. Finally, I knew I needed to approach the door. This was why I came, right? ….. Right?!? HELLO?
I tried to not make a single sound on the dirt as I moved closer and closer. I wanted to make sure that I used the pistol to full psychological advantage against anyone inside, meaning that they see it before trying anything. But do you look into the right side of the door first, or the left? And you just know that whatever side you chose, the man is going to be on the other side waiting for you to expose yourself. The only tip is that if a person has free choice, they’ll automatically chose the side that they’re dominant in. A right-handed person will chose to stand on the right side of the doorway. Also, the rest of the house stretched back on that side of the doorway. And finally, being left-handed, I can better approach what would be the right side from inside. So, I moved in from towards the left. I got up to the door, trying to watch both sides, and at the last moment I leaned in and pointed my light and pistol around the corner.
Suddenly everything happened at once. Out the corner of my eye, I saw movement to my right. I looked, saw the outline of a person standing there. Before I had time to react he reached out and grabbed my shoulder.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, just kidding about that part. There was actually no one inside the door. Sorry, I just HAD to do it! What there WAS was more dirt floor, various objects scattered around, and two doorless doorways leading off to other rooms on the left. It was too dark to see into them.
At this point, even without a hand reaching out of the shadows, my imagination was beginning to win the internal war, and for good reason! It had more and more basis in reality. Even if I didn’t encounter anything living in here, it was just the absolute perfect example of those scenes you see in CSI or Law and Order in the beginning of the episode: some kid messing around in an out-of-the-way place, he stumbles over some boards, revealing a dead body grinning up at him. Well, I KNEW it was exactly that kind of place, and I didn‘t want to meet that dark secret hidden here and then have to run screaming 15 miles though the dark with lions hot on my tail and every deer and squirrel in the forest wondering if Armageddon had arrived. That image firmly in mind (if you‘re wondering what happened to my reason-based imagination, just put a sock in it!), I didn’t actually step into the building. I stood in the doorway for a few moments, waiting to see if the courage to step in would arrive, and then moved away.
I walked around the front of the house (giving it a wide berth and keeping two eyes on the windows) towards the other buildings. Two of them were actually more shacks, what I’d actually expect up here. One of them was filled with firewood. An interesting clue, that. But the third building was large, one-storied, with a cement floor, all one room. Actually, it was a lot like a garage except that there was no large garage door in the walls, just a large window and door in front. As I got closer to the open door I noticed that there was almost nothing on the floor. Almost.
I stopped quickly when my light fell on something laying in the middle of the floor. It was a blanket, spread out like it was waiting for a picnic. Or like a bed. It didn’t look like a blanket that had been sitting there for months, it looked dry and disheveled, maybe even slept on, recently. I decided that I was liking the place less and less, so I moved back towards the road.
The most pressing theory about the blanket in my mind was that someone was sleeping on it, maybe VERY recently, and had seen my arrival. Probably that person had no more right to be there than me, so perhaps they slipped into the woods when they saw the light. That certainly wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
Still, I knew I was in control of the area for the moment, so I quickly opened my bag and took the picture you saw of the house. I photographed the other buildings also, but I was too far away for the flash to reveal anything. I didn’t feel like getting closer.
Then I found myself back on the road, wondering. The irony is that if I was looking for a place to sleep or rest for a while, I would never find better shelter from any natural elements then this. But you know, when faced with an unknown natural element (rain, freezing wind, lions, rabid squirrels, falling giant pinecones), it’s never as frightening as an unknown human element. There was no way I was staying here. I didn’t even feel a compulsion to make myself go inside. So what now?
The logical thing was to accept this adventure/discovery as the conclusion to my trip, and start back. But here’s where things started to get internally strange, and even a little surreal. I wasn’t ready to head back. I wanted to keep going. I really couldn’t figure out why, and the strangest thing is that that side of me just stopped talking with me. I mean, usually my reasonable side and adventurous side argue and work things out, but I’d never had one side just quit talking and insist on something without giving reasons. The larger part of me wanted to go on, no explanation. I interpreted it as wanting to know where the road ended. I hadn’t reached the end of my rope yet. So, after arguing silently with myself in the shadow of a shadowy house in the middle of a shadowy forest, I turned up the road, and continued walking, checking behind my shoulder every few minutes, of course.
I really didn’t want to do this, but it‘s getting late, so:
To Be Continued….
1 comment:
Hey Caleb!
Kristina here. I have always enjoyed your stories. U r killing me though with these part 2 and part 3 stuff but that is what makes them good.: ) good job
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