visitor

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window" whispered Jerome, his face dimly illuminated by the dancing light of the campfire. "The flame was so faint, and yet the flickering wick spat orange waves against the decaying wood now exposed from the inner walls of the window frame; they looked like they were breathing."

"We've heard this one before!" Michelle, Jerome's Fiancee exclaimed. "Also stop trying to scare everyone before bed. These woods are scary enough without you talking about candles and abandoned cabins."

This was the groups first big getaway in over two years thanks to the world shutting down. Jerome and Michelle were on a camping trip deep in the remote woods of British Columbia with their two good friends Paul and Maura. Jerome chose this spot because of its remote aesthetic and picturesque natural surroundings; not another human for miles. This trip had been in the planning stages for weeks, and Jerome was hoping for it to be a welcome relief from the stress of work and the monotony of day to day life in the city. More so, Jerome was hoping it could bring him and Michelle closer. The stress of the last two years had taken its toll on them both.

“I've never told this one before” Jerome said. “You just don't like getting scared.”

“I don't like not sleeping, and yes I hate getting scared” said Michelle.

Just then, a loud crack came from the woods surrounding the campsite. Both Michelle and Jerome turned to look into the darkness towards the distant sound.

“See! Great, now we are gonna get killed by whatever is out there” Michelle said.

After a moment, there was a distant scattering sound that faded into the thick woods.

“See? It’s probably just a bird or something...” Jerome said. “This is the outdoors, not a department store parking lot. There are going to be noises and other things out there.”

Paul and Maura were already half asleep, or half pretending to be asleep, in their sleeping bags next to the now dwindling fire. The embers were shuffling and popping their final burns as the wind slowly shifted the large cedar branches above them. Jerome and Michelle had been nipping at each other all night. Seeing as there was no more noises, they both turned back to each other.

"Fine, let's do what you want to do. What would you like to do?" said Jerome with a hint of frustration.

"Don't do that"

"Don't do what?"

"That. Don't turn this into a fight that it doesn't have to be. It's already been a long day and I think it would be best if we just went to sleep and saved our energy for tomorrow, we've got a long hike out of here" Michelle said; emotional fatigue setting into her every word.

"Fine. You can go to sleep, but I’m going to go for a walk to just try and enjoy myself." Jerome stood up, grabbed a flashlight and turned away from the campsite.

“Good, go walk off that ego of yours. Try not to get eaten by a bear or something” Michelle barked as she zipped herself into her sleeping bag and thrust her head in her pillow.

The sky was completely cloudless; the pale moonlight casting a bright swath of light across the mountain lined horizon. The silence was deafening, only briefly interrupted by the occasional rustling of branches and a distant babbling stream. Jerome soldiered through the brush, the flashlight dancing off each individual stem and leaf.

After a few minutes, and with thoughts of anger and regret burning in his brain, he emerged from the brush into an open clearing and there he stopped. He stood at the mouth of an alpine lake that was almost perfectly round in its circumference, and as still as it was hauntingly tranquil. The way the moonlight danced over the entire area made the landscape look not of this world; as if he stepped out on to another planet. He gazed across the mirrored lake, which held all the reflections of the surrounding mountains in its canvas, and he sighed.

Was this the end? Should it be the end? Why can’t it be easy, like it was in the beginning?

The thoughts smashed against the inside of his head like waves against an eroding shoreline, leaving less and less of himself in the wake of each proceeding wave of negative thought.

He picked up a rock and threw it out as hard as he could into the middle of the lake. Nothing. No splash, no skip, nothing. He looked out for a moment and saw what looked like his rock hovering in the middle of the lake, and then it appeared to slowly start to rise towards the nights sky.

Not possible...

Jerome picked up another rock and threw it even harder, surely reaching the middle of the lake, but again it never hit the surface. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, and the lake was actually shallow enough in the middle to... or maybe... maybe he actually threw it across the whole lake? But... no, it couldn’t be.

Jerome picked up a third rock, and just before he threw it he looked up at the night sky. Amongst the billions of stars shining back at him, he saw it.

A shooting star? A satellite? No, it’s too slow for a shooting star... too fast for a satellite.

A ball of immense light entered the horizon and was moving across the visible patch of sky between the mountain tops, close enough to even appear in the reflection of the lakes still waters. Jerome stared in awe, his arm still in the throwing position, as the light travelled slowly across the atmosphere; he lowered his throwing arm, and just stared up at it.

After watching the ball for a few moments, he pulled out his phone to record a video. He held it up to the sky, but when he tried to zoom in on the object his whole screen went bright white. He kept trying, but noticed his phone was getting increasingly hot. Just when he tried zooming in again, his phone screen cracked and the inner wiring instantly burst and caught fire. He dropped the phone and frantically rubbed his hands on his shirt to cool them down as well as clear the glass shards from his palms.

Jerome knelt down to examine his phone, now smoking in the dirt and mud of the rough ground. As he was investigating the pieces of his phone, the moonlight seemed to go from dim to pure daylight. He looked back up to see where the ball was, and it was now hovering fifty feet or so above the middle of the lake. It was silent, but illuminating a light so bright Jerome couldn’t look directly at it. Even when he closed his eyes, the light penetrated through his eyelids with the same intensity as if he was staring at the sun. Beams of individual light rays danced behind his eyelids forming three-dimensional shapes, and other geometrical designs.

The air around him felt like it was flexing, almost breathing; in and out towards the object. Jerome couldn’t move, he was paralyzed in the position he was in. The silence was broken by a low-level bass hum that seemed to rise and fall in pitch in a matter of seconds; like a muffled ambulance siren or a ship’s horn. The sound felt like it was shaking the inside of his brain, rattling it against the sides of his skull. His skin felt like it was twisting around his bones as the sound echoed throughout the entire mountain valley. Just when Jerome thought he was going to pass out from the pain of the noise and flexing air, the ball disappeared as quickly as it arrived with an impossibly loud sonic boom.

The boom shook all the nearby trees, and made the centre of the lake geyser like a bomb had just gone off at the bottom of it. The mountain echo of the sonic boom gave way to a slow and haunting return to silence that once again began to fill the landscape as the water settled and rippled against the surrounding shores.

Jerome lay in a heap on the shore of the lake; his ears ringing, and his brain and body still pulsing from the whole ordeal. Now in absolute silence, he slowly sat forward and opened his eyes which were still adjusting to the once again dim moonlit landscape in front of him. The landscape looked just as it did before the light, but as his eyes adjusted fully he could now make out a distant colour that he did not see before. As he stared across the lake, he saw a small orange glow along the opposing shoreline.

Jerome stood up and started making his way around the edge of the lake towards the distant flicker of light. Before he got too far, he stopped. Was everyone else okay? Did they hear it or see it?

“Michelle!” He screamed out into the void of night. Nothing.

Jerome slowly carried on along the path that hugged the lakeside. As he started getting closer, the area began to feel familiar — a mix of nostalgia and memory. He felt like he had been there before. The trees and the pathway felt familiar. He pulled out his compass to see what direction he was walking. When he gazed down, the needles were spinning in a counter-clockwise motion, and never settling on one true position. He tapped the compass against his leg to try and get it to stop, but the needles kept spinning. He looked back up towards the orange light and carried on, fuelled by a mix of curiosity, confusion, and terror.

After another hundred feet of walking, he realized why everything looked familiar — he had passed through these woods on the way to his campsite. Once he was within fifty feet of the light he realized it was the dim-lit campfire he had left behind earlier, and he was staring at four people gathered around it. He was staring at Michelle, Paul, Maura, and himself.

He froze in his position as he watched himself sitting in front of a campfire, telling stories to his fiancee and friends. Jerome, now crippled with disbelief and mind-altering confusion, knelt down and kept looking. He gathered up what little courage he had left and slowly moved towards the campsite.

As Jerome got within earshot, he crouched behind a tree and began to listen to the people gathered there. He could hear the same argument unfold as the one he had earlier with Michelle only now he was watching someone else have it.

“I've never told this one before" The other Jerome said. "You just don't like getting scared."

"I don't like not sleeping, and yes I hate getting scared" said the other Michelle.

Jerome felt his body go numb. His brain couldn’t comprehend what his senses were revealing to him. This isn’t possible, none of this is possible.

Jerome tried to pull himself up using a tree branch, but as he grabbed hold it broke and made a loud cracking sound. The other Michelle and Jerome looked in his direction in unison.

“See! Great, now we are gonna get killed by whatever is out there” the other Michelle said.

Jerome froze in horror.

How could this be happening?

He stood up and ran in the other direction as fast as he could; the other Michelle and Jerome stared in his direction as he bolted through the forest. He ran all the way back to where he dropped his phone and found it still laying there, but next to that phone was another phone that looked exactly like it.

“What's happening... I think I’m losing my mind!” Jerome screamed. “This isn’t real! None of this is real, I’m dreaming. I’m just dreaming”

Jerome closed his eyes as hard as he could and tried to wake himself up from this horrific nightmare of a reality. The recent memories of the ball of light ripped through his mind; tearing at his thoughts and senses. He began to feel the pulsing and flexing around him; reliving the agony he experienced before. His brain began to feel too big for his head, and his muscles were so tight he couldn’t move an inch in any direction. His skin began to tighten, and he grabbed his head so hard he thought it might explode.

“Make it stop!” he shouted into the darkness. “Please! Make it stop! I don’t know what’s going on!”

As quickly as all the feelings and pain began, it dissipated in an instant. Silence enveloped him once more. He released the grip on his head and slowly opened his eyes. He stood up slowly and gazed around the lake, and that’s when he saw them.

A glowing orange dot, and then another, and another, and another. There were numerous orange lights all around the edge of the lake, and deep in the thick of the forest; pulsing and flickering through the trees like alien ships. Then, from all directions, came the distant screams.

“Make it stop!” “Please! Make it stop!” “I don’t know what’s going on!” “Make it stop!” “Please!” I don’t know what’s going on!”

The screams came from everywhere, all at once and overlapping each other. One would start, then another, and another would start, and then another.

Jerome’s brain had nothing more to give. He stood there frozen; unable to conceptualize what was happening around him. His eyes were glazed and his thoughts stopped processing. He managed to shuffle small steps forward until his feet were submerged into the lake. He looked around the lakes perimeter, and then he saw them all... just standing there.

Other figures on the lakes edge, fifty or more, standing still and lifeless in the shallow lake water. Barely visible in the moonlight, but looking like slender black figures with no recognizable facial features. Jerome raised his hands in the air, and the others raised their hands in the air in unison.

“HELP ME!” Jerome screamed, and the others screamed in unison. The sounds echoed across the lake and up into the mountains; reverberating off the rock walls, and sending sound waves pulsating down the valley.

As Jerome stood there with his hands stretched above his head, one by one the figures started running back into the forest. Every figure disappeared, and Jerome was the only one left on the lakes edge, alone. He brought his arms back by his sides, and fell to his knees in the shallow water. As he looked around the lake, the orange glowing lights began to fade one by one until there were none left. Moonlight once again washed over the dark mountain lake.

Jerome pushed himself up from kneeling and shuffled a few steps back to the dry ground of the lake shore. He saw his flashlight that he had left behind earlier laying in the dirt. He picked it up, and turned it on. While shining it into the forest he was able to make out the trampled grass and brush of the forest path he took when he originally left his campsite earlier that night. He slowly shuffled his way down the beaten path towards what he hoped was his campsite.

After walking for a few minutes, some tents and campfire smoke appeared in the distance. He focused his eyes directly on them and kept his pace. He tried to call out, but no words left his mouth. He got closer and closer and eventually was standing at the edge of the campsite. He noticed Michelle was still outside the tent, sleeping in her sleeping bag next to the now extinguished campfire.

Jerome fell to his knees, and the sound of him hitting the ground woke Michelle.

“Who’s there?” she said softly as she awoke.

Jerome couldn’t even speak.

Michelle grabbed her phone, turned on the flashlight, and aimed it in front of her.

She let out a blood curdling scream as the 50 slender black figures were illuminated directly behind a kneeling Jerome.