*The following serves as a continuation of my WIDLT Series. Rather than continue presenting my experience as a recounting of past events, I’ve decided to use them, during October, to present a short, horror, fiction work. I’ve very little experience in writing fiction of this length, so gl me. Never one to shy away from things, always compulsively reaching beyond my grasp, here we go! The following is inspired by the time I spent in Death Valley 4/2018 - 3/2019, and 7/2019 - 8/2020*
October, 1952:
In a remote area in Oregon, a two year old was found face down on an ice covered pond. They had been missing for almost eighteen hours. He had disappeared the day before while playing out in the yard of his Grandfather's wooded ranch. His Grandfather had been checking on him often through a window, when he suddenly just vanished.
The area was a rugged wilderness, and the boy was found, alive, 8 miles from where he disappeared. Searchers had been looking for him all night and they were baffled about where he was located. It would have taken an adult 20 hours to cover the distance on foot. Young Keith appeared to have done it in 18, most of those hours in the dark of night, in freezing cold temperatures. More strange was that, despite having removed his jacket (why he did that is also a mystery) he had not suffered from exposure to the cold weather. If it was impossible for him to have made the trek on his own, someone else must have been involved. No suspects were ever identified though, he had suffered no injury and no one could come up with any motive for an abduction.
July, 1958:
A 10-year old was attending a church camp in Rocky Mountain National Park. He disappeared while following a camp counselor back to camp for supper after fishing. The camp counselor remembered the boy having been right at his heels, behind him, and then in an instant he was gone.
Councilors began searching for him at once. They were joined by 400 people, both volunteers and people from government agencies. The search was discontinued when, after 9 days of searching, not a trace of him was found. Aircraft and tracker dogs were a part of the effort as well. Soon after the disappearance a doctor reported having seen him at a hardware store in Estes Park. That was considered impossible though, as he could not have made the 15 mile journey on his own with no supplies in such a hurry.
A year later his broken hearing aid, fragments of bone, and torn clothes were found 3 miles away, 2,500 feet up a mountain. This was odd because the area had been searched thoroughly the year before. The area was one of very difficult terrain. That coupled with the fact most people who are lost instinctively go down hill, raises several questions about his final resting place. If it can be called that. No other trace of him besides the bone fragments were ever found.
September, 1981:
There was another strange disappearance in Colorado. This time an elderly man had been out gathering topaz with a companion. His companion would take him to a spot where he would search for the mineral. The old man was in bad health, and could neither move fast or far on his own. His more spry accomplice would wander off for ten minutes at a time searching the area and then return to check on him. This time, upon one of his returns, no sign of the man was found. He and all of his tools were gone. He had not returned to the car. After five days of searching, with nothing found, the search was called off. The old man was never seen again.
July, 2015:
Another similar occurrence took place near the location of the church camp in Rocky Mountain National Park from which the boy disappeared in 1958. A two year old had been playing in camp while being watched by his grandfather. He disappeared completely and was never found. The camp was at the end of a long narrow dirt road, so a kidnapping was ruled out. An animal attack would have been noticed by his grandpa. The boy has been missing ever since.
December, 2018:
A skier in New York dropped off the face of the Earth. He had been with friends when he excused himself to retrieve his phone from his car. A few hours later a search was mounted, but the man could not be located. A week later his wife received a call from him. He sounded distant and disoriented. She called the number he called from back. He answered, but was still unable to make sense. Police tracked the call and found the man in Sacramento, California, still in full ski gear, having received a haircut, and carrying a brand new Iphone.
These are just a small cross section of true stories of the more than 1500 people who have vanished in the United States wilderness under bizarre circumstances. All of these are true stories.
September, 2022:
The huge rock formations across the wash at the edge of the parking lot glowed in the moonlight. The long flat topped ridges, stretching down from the mountains, looked like soft vanilla ice cream which had at one point flowed down towards the larger valley floor before refreezing into gullies. I scanned the area noting the contrasting shadowed recesses where no luminescence from the moon shone off of the calcium rich canyons. It was a blackness of a different quality than the night sky above. The entire landscape was transformed at twilight, losing its pastel pinks, greens, and blues so visible in the daylight.
Despite the full moon, one of the dusty arms of the Milky Way glimmered above. Out here one could see the night sky more clearly than in many places in the world. Death Valley was an hour from the small town of Pahrump. Another factor contributing to the fabulous darkness was the folds of the Basin and Range Region which projected light pollution straight up (in the few spots where it did exist). There was a purity to the stargazing that was hard to find elsewhere.
Artist’s Drive, the route by which I'd driven to Artist’s Palate, was closed from dusk to dawn. Few rangers patrolled the park in the summer though, and if you could bear the heat, you could find all the solitude you desired. I stood outside my car and felt the silence: a tiny ringing in my ears; my slowly relaxing muscles; my realization of the remoteness of my experience.This is why I had taken the job and came out west. This exactly, right here.
I was really high. On the drive in I had smoked half a joint of Death Star. That I could feel, in my rapidly beating heart, as an awareness of the interstices between my bones. I wasn’t entirely present. I worried a federal agent would appear, dragging me back to Cow Creek, ruining my life completely. Subconscious anxiety from such a terrible prospect was there as well, swirling together with my buzz in a beautiful internal cacophony of stoned paranoia. Outside, however, there was no ranger. There was nothing but me, my car and the stargazing equipment I had brought with me.
In the neighboring valley, the Amargosa Valley, at the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, there was a display near a crystal clear spring flowing in the middle of the desert. It described how the Indians of the area believed that what one experienced was a reflection of their being. If one had a chance encounter with wildness, that indicated a wild aspect of themselves. If one was surrounded by peace and tranquility, well then that's what one'd find. I proudly thought of this belief as I set out to scout a spot to set up my telescope.
I was descending the slope down to the wash below. I used my phone’s flashlight to find my footing as I made my way. Suddenly the sandy scree underneath my feet slid and I did with it. I tried to catch myself. My right hand landed on a medium sized rock. I would have caught myself, had I not had my cell in my hand. Instead I slammed the phone against the rock with all my weight. I sat on the ground. I felt a burning sensation on my left forearm. I looked at it. In the moonlight I could see little pebbles stuck to the skin around a red welt with a small scrape. I shook my phone twice to turn the flashlight back on and nothing happened. I looked at it and the screen flickered very briefly. There was a crack across the glass under my palm.
“Dammit!” My voice echoed back to me from the chasms in the alluvial fan before me. My heart was pounding with frustration and the vestiges of panic from my fall. I got up and brushed myself off. I stood on the baked cracked scorched earth of the draw separating the parking lot from the network of gulches. I looked up at the moon. I thought about how I'd read that bathing in the moonlight was good for your chi. After reading that I had looked it up and found that moonlight actually did provide one with vitamin D. It was sunlight actually. I imagined the sun on the other side of the earth illuminating the moon.
...and then I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. For the briefest of seconds I thought I saw something swiftly pull back, or run off, into one of the canyons. If it was a "pull back" I wouldn't have seen it had it not moved. A "run off" was very unlikely because whatever it was would have been exposed in the wide brightly lit creek bed. There wasn't much that was out here that could explain this. I was 100% sure there were no cars in the parking lot so there was no one hiking around down here. Possibly a coyote or a bobcat. Those stayed closer to Furnace Creek where there was water and food. I was more curious than I was apprehensive. There were no bears or wolves out here. What got most people in trouble was the heat. I had water in my car just back up the incline. I could never resist a mystery.
I walked slowly across the dried mud. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. If I was going to see what was in the ravine I'd have to not scare it. I silently crept to where I could peer around the opening of the gulch. It was your typical canyon floor. Rocks, creosote bush, desert holly, and mesquite dotted a floor of both gravel and sand. The chasm extended maybe fifty yards until it narrowed and the walls, blocking the moon, threw a shroud of blackness across the box canyon. I saw across this expanse the most bizarre thing. I saw a small person, a child? It was wearing a red and blue outfit that immediately made me think of my son's superman pajamas.
"Hey!" I yelled, and they quickly ran into the darkness of the box canyon, making small crunching noises as they lightly sprinted across the gravel.
I stood there totally confused. What the fuck had I just seen? I looked back towards the incline leading to my car quickly, then back into the canyon. There had been nothing behind me. My exit was intact if I wanted to take it. Had I seen a child?
"I'm high." I reminded myself and stepped out into the canyon, I walked across the length of the gully exposed in the moonlight. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the rhythmic crunch of my boots in the gravel. My heart rate increased as I reached a spot where the cliffs squeezed closer together, blotting out the moon. I took my phone out of my pocket and shook it twice to turn on the flashlight. Nothing happened. I remembered I had broken the phone in my fall moments before. The darkness yawned beckoning. "No way."
I turned back to the comfort of the moonlit ravine and almost took a step in the other direction when I thought I heard something coming from behind me. I listened intently. I thought about my son and his superman pajamas. How small and helpless he had been. I turned back toward the darkness, pulled my lighter from my pocket, and lit it. Almost useless. The wind blew it out immediately. I couldn't just walk away from a kid lost in the desert. "Hello!?" I started into the shadow. I put my hand on the cool rough stone wall to guide me. My feet crunched in the gravel. I couldn't see the end of my nose. I made it about ten feet into the gloom and paused. What was I doing? There was no kid in here. That made no sense. If there were a kid missing at a roadside attraction in a National Park, there would be people here looking for them. Something didn't add up
I turned to return to the larger well lit portion of the canyon. Doing a 180, I could see the bright desert canyon floor ahead. However, before me, in the box canyon with me, framed by the moonlight in the canyon beyond it, was a silhouette. My heart leapt into my sternum, trying to escape my chest. I stepped back into the darkness, uttering "What the fuck?" The dark shape moved toward me, matching my pace. My heart beat harder in my chest. I started feeling panicked. The silhouette raised an arm like appendage and placed it on the same stone wall where I had had my hand guiding me
I turned back into the darkness to run and stepped directly into somebody, something. I felt my chest against something soft. I felt a cold and wet pressure enveloping my hands and forearms. I struggled to get free. The thing behind me was upon me then too. I felt something moving forward across my shoulder first, then down into my shirt. The same cold wet pressure. Quickly it enveloped my arms, and now I felt it spreading. The sensation was something similar to getting into a tight damp wet suit. Dark, cold, wetness moved up my neck and into my mouth, down my throat. I tried to call for help, but I couldn't vocalize anymore. I realized I couldn't breath and my fear reached a level I had never known. I thought about my son in his superman pajamas.
To be continued….
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