Dark Mountain

Sometimes in life… you wonder if you should have just home.

It was 5:30 PM and the road leading to Camp Fortune was long, cold and getting progressively darker.  I had reached the start of the dense forest just as the sun began to set, the rich aroma of Evergreens and Pines pouring through the vents was almost overpowering.

I was a couple of hours from my destination, where I was meeting up with my homies, who I haven’t seen all together in about two years. My rental was doing great on gas, so much so that in my five-hour drive getting here, I neglected to get any gas on the way.  When the warning light came on signally twenty-five miles to empty, my phone told me the nearest gas station was twenty-four miles away… in the other direction. At this point, I had no choice but to keep on going and hope a friend could give me a lift to the gas station where I could bring some back in a gas can.

I glanced at my docked cell phone, that was providing me directions, sighing heavily as my cell battery had fallen down to eight percent.  I considered myself a smart individual who packed for everything, but on this occasion, everything didn’t include my charger.  

IF… I somehow got lucky I might make it to camp before the cell dies and my car runs out of gas. My cell rings, the caller ID displaying the name of my buddy Wayne.

“Keep it quick bruh, my phone’s dying,”

[Wayne]  “Where you at?”

“I just got to the mountain”

[Wayne]  “Just wanted to-- you--”

“Bruh, you’re breaking up, I’ll hit you later.”

I hung up before pushing onward, the climb up the mountain became steeper.  That great fuel mileage on my rental started to go down… drastically. Coincidentally, so did my miles to empty.  According to the car’s computer, I was four miles to empty, but GPS directions stated Camp Fortune was five miles away.  

If running low on gas, low on cell battery wasn’t enough. I had to pee… badly.  When the urge first hit me an hour ago I thought I could make it. Now that my bladder felt like it was about to release a flood,  I wasn’t going to try to risk it any longer.

I pulled over, undoing my zipper before I got a full ten foot into the forest.   I relieved myself of the fullest bladder ever, my eyes narrowing as I envisioned me already at the camp, stuffing my face with good food.

That’s when I swore I saw something move behind a tree at the extent of my vision. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as a chill ran down my spine.  

I was back in my rental, front tires kicking gravel away as I wanted to get as far away from this area as possible. As the minutes flew by, I convinced myself that I really didn’t see anything at all and it was just my exhausted mind playing tricks on me.  

Occasionally I’d glance at my phone, 20 minutes more of this… 

19 minutes… 18 minutes…

18 minutes…

It took me five more minutes before I realized the decreasing minutes of my ETA … were no longer decreasing.

Once I realized that my ETA hadn’t changed, I also put it together my relevant position on the map hadn’t changed.   Looks like my phone had frozen at three percent. When it rebooted, it was down to one percent.

My only hope was that this winding path was pretty straight forward all the way up, and I’d be there in less than half an hour with a story to tell.

Did I just say half an hour? It was about 6:12 PM, so I had about a good hour left of sunlight, so if I got lucky...

If I got lucky…

My rental finally ran out of gas, coming to a full stop along the right side of the road, I stared blankly out the front window.

My options were limited;

No gas.

No phone.

I began beating myself up in my head, “Seriously??? How could I be so stupid to put myself-”

I stopped my thoughts when something hit the passenger side of my car.

Pissed beyond belief, I turned over my right shoulder, “WHATEVER PUNKS ARE OUT THERE THROWING ROCKS-”

My threats stopped when another rock loudly dinged my right rim.  I immediately jumped out of the car and saw nothing.

“What the %@#$ was going on?”

I  begrudgingly hopped out of the car, wanting to run… I’m not ashamed to admit.  As a West Philly guy, it’s the hood in me. When you are raised in the concrete jungle, nature is all cool and sweet… till the sun goes down.    Then you are thrown into a world where there were no light poles, no reflective green location signs every couple hundred yards, not even a bright double yellow line to prevent an oncoming out of control driver from mowing me down.  My mind envisioned me walking up this hill, alone and afraid, in a darkness that was almost primordial.

I continued onward, checking my phone, hoping that one percent ...

Phone’s dead, no such luck.

The sun had gone behind the top of the mountain, the area around me has turned a brownish-grey.  My mind nervously pondered as I briskly walked along the side of the road, “I should run… if I ran I’d get there faster.”

A vehicle suddenly approached from behind.

“My luck finally changing!” I thought.

The driver slowed, their passenger side window stopping right alongside me, allowing me to take in sweet perfume.  I stooped down a few inches to see the driver.

Inside the car, a young woman, stared back at me wide-eyed. Before she even had a chance to ask me a question, I immediately threw myself onto her mercy. “Thank you for stopping miss, my name is Rob, my car broke down back there, I’m trying to make the campground to meet up with my friends.”

The woman’s amazement turned into a casual smile. With a growing relaxed posture, she casually rubbed her steering wheel with her left hand as she finally addressed me, “I’m sorry to hear what happened to you, that must of been your car I drove by back there.”

I relaxed as well, this young woman was clearly sympathetic to my situation, there was no reason why she wasn’t about to give me a lift.

“You need a lift?” she asked.

It’s like she was reading my mind!”

Before I could answer, a deep voice came from her car’s speakers…

“Who is he?  Describe him!”

The deep voice was coming from her vehicle’s hands-free phone system. The young woman, who was smiling a second ago, eyes suddenly narrowed, regarding me with a mild sliver of speculation as she went into my description.  “He’s tall, clean-shaven, casually dressed … seems to look normal enough.” 

I was pleased when she didn’t describe me as a big, black guy, whose face was on the verge of losing it.

“Look,” I said, tempering my growing frustration as I addressed her caller. “My name is Rob.  My car broke down, your friend-“                                             

“GIRLFRIEND!” the now identified boyfriend quickly and rudely interjected.

I sighed heavily before continuing in a low, slower and calmer tone, “You heard your GIRLFRIEND already confirm she drove past my car a few minutes back, so there would be NO other reason I’d be on this road if I wasn’t going to the same location.”

There was a pause on the boyfriend’s end of the line, I was hoping that was a good thing.  The girlfriend’s smile returned, although she looked a tad nervous.

The boyfriend’s voice returned, coming off stern, “Your story might be legit, but I’m sorry … I’m not comfortable with my girlfriend giving a stranger a lift in the middle of nowhere.”

“Look… I get that.” I said, my voice edging into a pathetic plea.  “But it's almost dark!”

No response came from the other end of the line. I looked back at the young woman, my eyes non-verbally begging for some sort of rebuttal on her behalf.

She sat there silent, before finally offering, “Is there anything I can do? Besides the obvious...”

“You obviously have cell service, can you call my friends for me?” 

“Okay… what’s one of their numbers?”

With my phone dead, I searched my mind for an answer that wasn’t there. Even though my friends had these numbers for years… I could not remember even one of them.

I ducked down to meet her gaze again, my face displaying deep desperation, “I’m sorry, I can’t even remember their numbers.  Can you at least do me the favor of passing on the message to the camp that I’m down here? I doubt there will be many black guys up there, so perhaps finding my friends so they can come back and grab me.”

“I’m sorry I can’t do more,”  the young woman said apologetically.

“What’s your name?” I asked her. 

“Amy,” she replied.

“Thank you for doing this Amy,” I said.

Her vehicle sped off, ascending the mountainside, it's tail lights becoming dimmer every second, as did my hope of making it to the camp before nightfall. Then again… if Amy kept her word, no doubt one of my boys would be here in minutes, busting my shoes over my constant screw-ups thus far.

Minutes later it was dark, causing a lump formed in my throat the size of a baseball. 

The senses around me became heightened, feeling everything, including the pain in the falling arches of my flat feet. I was beyond exhausted and starving. Early on, I only ate moderately, because I figured I’d buss a real grub once I got to the campgrounds. Whatever energy reserves I had left, were almost depleted due to this super-long walk.

“WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS?” I screamed inside my head. “This &%$# is getting ridiculous. Did Amy blow me off?”

While I wasn’t the “camping” dude, I did have family who lived in the country down south.  I recalled at nighttime how the area sounded… quite different. Here, I noticed none of those usual sounds of nocturnal nature that I was expecting. No ambient, random animal sounds were present at all.  No owls, no coyotes, not even any insects.

Walking in silence with my senses adjusted did allow me to hear everything else though.  This included my own labored breathing, my unsteady gait because of my sore feet and my grumbling stomach.  Unfortunately, I also picked up on the crackling of dead leaves of something that was just out of my sight in the darkness to my right.  I wasn’t too worried about any predators, cause the friend who set this all up swore there was nothing up here we’d have to worry about. I dismissed it as a raccoon.

I continued on and the sound went away seconds later, allowing me to once again relax. Minutes later, it was back again. Every time I stopped walking… it would stop. When I began again, so did it.  It was literally mimicking my gait, so it could stay undetected.  

“Why was I nervous? I was from the hood, where wild animals avoid!”

The only problem was… I wasn’t in the hood anymore, I was far from it. I was now in THEIR hood.

I nervously continued on, this time staring DIRECTLY into the forest at my right where I heard the sound. This time, no sound mirrored my movements.

Eventually, I let my guard down again, focusing on the dark silhouette of the poles of a sign.  I was too far away to see the sign itself, cause it was completely blocked by dense tree branches.  I got closer, hoping to see a sign reading, “Welcome To Camp ...”

But as I got closer, my entire body went numb, as the poles of sign… suddenly began to move.

I froze, not wanting to believe what my eyes were showing me. There was something standing right up ahead, and it was so big, I mistook its legs for the utility poles of a sign. 

I crossed over to the left side of the road, my eyes staying glued to those massive legs. I got up right alongside the left shoulder of the road, only about a good twenty-foot roadway separated me from whatever this thing was.  The thing waited till I got one step past adjacent to it, and then it stepped out into the roadway. Two giant steps later, this thing was in the middle of the road.

By the time I thought to flee,  I was already ten feet away, running at full speed up the left side of the road on pain-ridden feet. Whatever fatigue I was previously experiencing, was gone as fear sent enough adrenaline in my system to think I was still a teenager.  

I had no idea whether I was being pursued or not.  All I wanted to do was quickly create some distance.  While I was too gutless to turn to see If I was getting pursued, it didn’t stop my ears from picking up on something in the forest now coming from on my left side… getting closer

I shifted into the middle lane, trying desperately to tap into an extra gear that wasn’t there.  When I got into the middle of the road, whatever was coming from up my left side let out a bestial scream that somehow reverberated throughout my entire chest … almost stopping my heart. 

 What unnerved me more than anything, my original pursuer sounded so close that it could probably read the manufacturer of my jeans. The footfalls behind me were so close, I could feel the footsteps through the asphalt of the road.  At the edge of my vision, I saw a pair of tiny headlights in the distance. A vehicle was coming my way… my friends?

That’s when I heard another deafening roar that caused me ears to ring in pain. It sounded like I had a train behind me.

A half-second later I got hit, sending me into the air.

I came to groggy in the forest, the limited vision I did have in the darkness spun wildly as I had just stepped out of an amusement park ride.  I heard more creatures yells. I tried to get up, but my body felt heavy… broken. I saw the lights again, they were still coming. But with me situated over ten feet into the forest, no way this person could see me.   The breaking of branches and twigs told me that my pursuer from the left was nearly upon me.

I had just traversed a good twenty yards… through the air.   I could only imagine what this other one was going to do with me in my helpless state.  I struggled to get to my knees, before finally collapsing back to the ground. The creatures stood over top of me, blocking out the stars of the sky as if I was covered in their black, furry canopy.   The smell they gave off was like being surrounded by a dozen wet canines. 

The creatures yelled back and forth with one another, probably debating which one would get to take a bite out of me first. Suddenly I was hit again and my world went dark.  

I thought that was it.

I thought IF I ever came to again, I would find myself getting pulled apart by the creatures over a fire.

Instead, I awoke to a blinding light. 

My vision still blurred from my beating, but my ears told me it was a vehicle.

It could be my friends…

But It could also be Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers.

At this point, I didn’t care. As out of it as I was, I would have looked directly into their car, “Scoot your &%$ over Mke!”

The vehicle stopped alongside me, it’s driver immediately jumping out.  Before I heard the voice, I smelled the familiar fragrance of my savior.  

“Rob???” Amy asked, her gaze twisting in disgust as she looked upon my beaten face and body.

“Amy! You’ve got to get out of here. There’s these things…”

I looked around through clearing vision, confirming there were no creatures in sight.  “And how did I get out in the middle of the road, when I was just in the forest?

“What happened to you???” Amy grunted as she struggled in getting me into her backseat.  “Did you get hit by something?”

Nodding my head gingerly in agreement, “You can kind of say that.  Not that I’m complaining, but why are you even here?”

“I went to the camp, spreading the word about your breakdown. But I was told your friends hadn’t arrived yet. They were going to send one of the rangers, but their vehicle wouldn’t start. So I figured I’ll just go back myself.”  

I applauded her decision to come back for me, despite her boyfriend's wishes. 

Amy jumped back behind the wheel, my head rotating on a swivel, still anticipating a sudden yell, a sudden growl, a sudden ferocious attack. But those things I anticipated… never came.

DAMN RACIST FOREST MONSTERS!

Minutes later, we were at the camp, half a dozen campmates attended to my wounds. As everyone attended to my every need,  my mind continued to ponder what happened to me.

I’ll never know why I was suddenly spared.  

Perhaps it was the two creatures weren’t in tandem after all. Perhaps one wanted me dead… while the other wanted me left alone.  It was pretty obvious which one won since I was no position to move my own body back into the middle of the road myself for Amy to find.

As of right now… I just want to get some good food in me, relax and eventually share with my friends a doozy of a story.

The End