Defiance Comes With a Price

Never having hiked Mount Tecumseh Trail before today, Deidre fell in line behind the more experienced foot travelers in the group. Fritz, the tour guide, warned everyone to stay together, which should be easy enough since there were only five hikers on this particular tour. Although she had successfully trekked along many trails in the White Mountain National Forest, this one was unfamiliar, so Deidre silently vowed to stick with the group and follow their lead. It would be a short trip; they were due back at the rendezvous point at the foot of the trail by sunset. Deidre looked forward to taking photos of the fall foliage and the various wildlife that inhabit the forest and had come prepared with her telephoto camera and backpack full of distilled water and nutritious snacks to keep her energy up during the hike.

The views along the trail were breathtaking. Wildflowers, including mountain laurel, ginseng, violets, and geraniums dotted the perimeter of the trail and beyond. Pine trees, red spruce, sugar maple, yellow birch, Eastern hemlocks, and tamarack provided a haven for pileated woodpeckers, nuthatches, warblers, barred owls, deer, and red squirrels. A variety of butterflies enticingly danced around the hikers, as if to lead the way. Deidre snapped photos with every step she took in order to chronicle her journey along Mount Tecumseh Trail. At the beginning of the tour Fritz warned the group to keep their eyes out for black bears, moose, coyote, bobcats, peregrine falcons, snowshoe hares, and the occasional mountain lion. The hikers were reminded to appreciate the wildlife from a safe distance, which Deidre had to keep in mind when she was tempted to step out of formation to take close-up shots of the beauty that surrounded them.

At noon, after traversing the trail without incident, Fritz suggested the group find a shady spot along a stream to break for a quick lunch. He’d brought some peanut butter and jam wraps, nuts, granola bars, Babybel cheese packets, salami, apples, oranges, and Gatorade to restore the group’s energy and fuel them for the next few hours until they were scheduled to reverse their steps. It was a welcome reprieve for all. As she gobbled down the most delicious PB&J she’d ever tasted, Deidre scrolled through the photos she’d taken so far and looked forward to the rest of the trip with joyful anticipation.

After carefully stowing away their lunch discards, the adventurous group continued on their way with Fritz in the lead. Four of the five: Ace, Alma, Cliff, and Jeffrey paired off while Deidre chose to take up her previous position behind the group. That way she’d have a clear view of what lie beyond both sides of the trail. With her camera securely strapped around her neck, Deidre pulled her waist-length amber hair into a ponytail to keep her locks from blowing into her face and obstructing the view. Ever on the alert, she kept in step with her comrades, sweeping the vistas and continually clicking the shutter so she wouldn’t miss a thing.

It seemed as if they’d only been back on the trail for an hour at the most when the sky suddenly darkened and a shadow fell over the forest, making it difficult to see and creating an ominous atmosphere. Off to the western side of the path, Deidre spotted what appeared to be sunlight streaming through the treetops, creating an ethereal passageway to the forest floor. Quietly, and against her better judgment—not to mention Fritz’s strict instructions to stay together—Deidre inconspicuously veered off path in the direction of the light to investigate, with full intention of rejoining the group within a couple of minutes. But as she got closer to what she perceived to be sunlight, it turned out to be something else entirely. Deidre couldn’t believe what she was seeing and chalked it up to a possible hallucination caused by...caused by what? Heat stroke? Fatigue? With hands shaking like an off-balance washing machine she dug in her backpack, jerked open a bottle of water, poured it over her head, and slapped the streaming liquid on her face in hopes of dislodging the incredulous image that appeared before her.

Deep breaths, Deidre. Deep breaths. This can’t possibly be what it appears to be. Not here. Not in the middle of the forest. Deidre’s inner voice kept needling at her until she gained the fortitude to step closer to the shimmering light. Despite the trepidation that threatened to consume her, Deidre convinced herself to put one foot in front of the other and started making her way towards the source of the light, which seemed to emanate from a stand of massive Eastern Hemlocks.

***

Jeffrey peered behind himself to check on Deidre and panicked when she was nowhere to be found.

“Fritz! Deidre’s gone! I turned around to make sure she was keeping up with us, but she wasn’t there. She was just a coupla feet or so behind me all along the path, but she’s not now and I don’t see her anywhere!”

“Okay, folks, about face! And this time I want you to hold onto each other. Don’t let anyone out of your sight. We’ve got to retrace our steps and find Deidre. She can’t have gone very far in a few minutes’ time.”

With Fritz once again taking up the lead position, Ace grabbed onto Fritz’s backpack loop, followed by Alma, then Cliff, and Jeffrey, all tethered together by their knapsacks. A few hundred yards down the path Cliff spotted Deidre’s camera half-buried underneath a fallen tamarack branch.

“Oh, shit! Deidre doesn’t go anywhere without her camera! Where is she?”

The team frantically called her name as loudly as their lungs would allow in their desperate state. When they received no response, they feared she may have fallen and was lying somewhere in the dense foliage, hurt and unable to speak.

So they moved on, continuously shouting, “Deidre! Deidre! If you can hear us, please answer!”

Farther to the right of where Cliff uncovered Deidre’s camera, the group spotted a shimmering light reaching around the slender trunk of a yellow birch, much like fingers of fog on a lamppost. Beyond that, lined up as sentries, was a cluster of Eastern hemlocks. The appendages of wispy light beckoned to the hikers, drawing them beyond the birch to the line of massive conifers. The luminescence waxed brighter and grew painfully reflective as they drew closer to the origin of the nightmarish spectacle. What they saw next could have been plucked straight from a horror flick; this shit doesn’t happen in real life! A doorway made of impenetrable glass was embedded in the lower portion of a huge hemlock, filling the entire internal depth of its trunk, much as a tomb swallows the dead. In their collective reflection, the would-be rescuers witnessed Deidre feverishly banging on the glass from the inside despite the fact that there was no evident way in—or out, for that matter. She appeared to be yelling for help, but neither mass nor sound could escape the translucent prison that held her captive in the mighty forest.

If only Deidre had stayed with the group…