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Dark Watcher
Jantallian
"The blue eyes did it, o' course!" This was Jonesy's amused verdict, once he had heard the tale through to the end. It was a tale to tell in a solid log house with kindly people around you and the lamps lit and the fire blazing. It began by a fire, but the fire was the only thing both the present and the time of the tale had in common ...
It was right that Jonesy should have the last say because, after all, it was Jonesy who started the whole thing. Of course, he had no intention of starting anything, he was simply entertaining the Sherman household with snippets of news gleaned from a San Diego newspaper, passed on to him by one of the guards on the midday stage.
"Fire spreadin' for ten days and causin' damage t' $50,000 worth o' property!" He gave a low whistle. "Still burnin' too. They ain't gonna be able t' put it out till it rains. Sure am glad it ain't as dry here as California."
Slim, dozing in his chair, opened one eye and suggested, "Don't tempt fate! We get fires here. And it doesn't rain that much."
This brought a grunt of disbelief from the Texan in the opposite chair. "Just snows like hell's frozen over," he grumbled.
"Naturally hell would be cool compared to Texas," Slim teased with a grin.
But before the climate argument could rise to a climax, Jonesy had passed on to a more immediately relevant item. "Southern Pacific Railroad's extendin' from Watsonville t' San Francisco," he informed his audience. "That ain't gonna do the stage companies no favours."
"Yeah, always gonna be a losin' fight," Jess responded realistically. "Steam'll outrun horseflesh any day."
Slim grinned again. "I seem to remember you and Trav giving a steam engine a good run for its money," he reminded his partner.
"Only over a short distance. An' only when th'need's pressin'!" Jess yawned. This evening, nothing was more pressing than putting your feet up and enjoying some well-earned relaxation at the end of a hard day.
There was a comfortable silence, filled only by the crackle of the fire and the scratching of the nibs of two pens. Andy and Mike both had schoolwork to complete. Jonesy continued reading to himself.
He turned a page.
Something about the way he was reading made the others, one by one, look up at him.
Jonesy shook his head slowly and murmured, "Guess folks'll believe anythin', don't matter how strange!"
"What kind of thing, Jonesy?" Mike demanded.
The boys left the table, crowding onto the hearthrug, where Amanda was sitting at Jonesy's feet. When Jonesy did not answer Mike, she asked softly, "What is it, Oopa? Why are you worried?"
Jonesy put a reassuring hand on the small girl's shoulder and told them all, "It's a long way off. Just reminded me o' stories Mose has been passin' on."
Slim sat up a bit. "Yeah, stages haven't always had an easy time on the route into California," he agreed, "but stage teams aren't easily put off either. What kind of strange things, Jonesy?"
"Guess I'll read it t' y' – well, most of it," Jonesy replied. He cleared his throat, took a long breath, stared at the somewhat blotched text of the newspaper, and began to read:
"About ten days ago Turner Helm and myself were in the mountains about ten miles east of Warner's Ranch, ... we were separated ... Mr. Helm, who was walking along looking down at the ground, suddenly heard somebody whistle. Looking up he saw 'something" sitting on a large boulder, about fifteen or twenty paces from him. He supposed it to be some kind of an animal, and immediately came down on it with his needle gun. The object instantly rose to its feet, and proved to be a man. This man was covered all over with coarse black hair, ... like the hair of a bear; his beard and the hair on his head were long and thick; he was ... medium size, and had rather fine features—not like an Indian, but more like an American or Spaniard. They stood gazing at each other for a few moments ... Mr. Helm spoke to the creature, first in English and then in Spanish, and then in Indian, but the man remained silent. He then advanced toward Mr. Helm, who not knowing what his intentions might be, again came down on him with the gun to keep him at a distance. The man at once stopped, as though he knew there was danger. ... The wild man then turned and went over the hill, and was soon out of sight; before Mr. Helm could come to me he had made good his escape. We had frequently before seen this man's tracks in that part of the mountains ... I did not see this strange inhabitant of the mountains myself; but Mr. Helm is known to be a man of unquestioned veracity, and I have no doubt of the entire truth of his statement."
A silence greeted this story. It was a different silence, thoughtful, perhaps a little uneasy.
Slim said firmly, "There are plenty of wild tales all over the country. I'm certainly not going to believe every one I hear without any proof."
"Imagine, though!" Andy responded. "A new creature! Something no-one has ever found before."
"Yeah, but you have to have evidence," Slim countered. "Just saying you saw something isn't good enough. You need a real body, dead or alive. Something you can actually examine."
"But if you shoot it," Mike objected, "you might kill the only one." He and Andy were both unequivocally on the side of the as-yet-unidentified new species.
"Anyway, I don't see what it's got to do with Mose's gossip," Slim observed, unwilling to get into an argument with the two budding zoologists. "No wild man's going to be taking a ride on a stage."
This made them all laugh and lightened the atmosphere a little. Jonesy, however, continued seriously, "Don't be so sure o' that. He was sayin' there's bin trouble around that very area. He mentioned Warner Springs and the place they stop t' water the stage horses."
"Probably not as well run as the Sherman Relay Station, then," Slim quipped, still trying to keep things light. "What did Mose mean by trouble, Jonesy?"
"Well, they don't call the pool 'Deadman's Hole' for nothin'," Jonesy explained reluctantly.
"They don't? So who died there?"
"Accordin' t' the gossip, as y' call it," Jonesy retorted, "quite a number of people – some good f' nothings on the run from the law, a couple of local farmers, and at least one stage passenger, a wealthy gentleman from San Francisco called William Blair. An' more'n that, Mose said one shotgun guard an' a fella who worked at the relay station said they'd seen odd creatures around the place at night as well."
Slim frowned, still thinking about the effect of such reports on the reputation of a relay station. "But they didn't die together, not all at once, surely? It'd be a massacre."
Jonesy shook his head. He was beginning to wish he'd never opened up the subject. "No. It was over a number o' years. But they all had two things in common – they'd all been strangled and nothin' had been stolen from any of them."
This brought back the sombre and uneasy atmosphere with a vengeance. None of them, even the youngsters, imagined that life was guaranteed to be safe in the largely untamed territory of their homeland. But this news suggested something malevolent at work, something outside the confines of human community.
Suddenly Amanda said fiercely, "The wild man didn't hurt anyone. Maybe he was afraid. He didn't like the gun."
Jonesy nodded. "True enough. At least if the story's true."
"Oh, it's true. Or at least, it's about truth."
With a shock they realised one member of their family had made no contribution to the discussion until this point. They all stared at Jess.
"What makes y' say that?" Jonesy asked.
"Bein' there," Jess said simply.
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"Tell us. Tell us the story, Jess."
It was Mike, whose fearless, nay reckless, love of adventure equalled his guardian's; Mike who now encouraged him to expand his cryptic comment.
"Yeah, why were you there? It's a long way from Texas," Slim pointed out.
"It's even further from here," Jess replied. He looked at the faces of the three younger members of the family and said reassuringly, "What happened was a long way away and quite a long time ago. An' it ain't something y' gonna run into every day in y' own yard."
"So what happened?" Andy demanded.
"An' how is it true?" Mike put in.
Jess looked round these people whom he loved and trusted. He knew they would listen without prejudice to his tale.
"I took a job. The usual kind. Protection for people who weren't able to protect themselves. These people couldn't do it because they were too busy wadin' in water and siftin' shingle through sieves."
"Prospectors?" Andy guessed quickly.
"Yeah. There was supposed t' be gold up in those mountains, the ones runnin' right down the Pacific coast, like the spine of a great monster."
"Are there monsters?" Amanda asked, but she did not sound afraid.
Jess looked down at her for a moment, turning over her question in the light of his experience.
"There are a lot o' things we don't know about or understand, 'Manda. Some of them seem like monsters t' us because they're strange an' unchancy." He paused, weighing up his knowledge and insight. "I don't think my story is about monsters. It is about somethin' strange. You listen an' decide."
Then his eyes shifted to the depth of the fire, as if he was drawing reassurance for his story from its warm flames and strength from its power and truth from its purifying heat. He took a deep breath and began to yarn, as he always did, in the soft, deliberate and almost unaccented tones which were so different from his usual Texan drawl.
"I rode until I came to the place called the Eagles' Nest. The mountain where the miners were workin'. There was no-one there ..."
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He sat on his horse and looked carefully round the narrow valley which slashed a deep defile down the mountainside. Like a wound. But the wound, the injury, was not in the formation of the earth, but in the assault which men had inflicted upon it.
He gave himself an abrupt shake, surprised at the vivid image which had, for a moment, transformed the terrain before him. Yet he knew well enough that the interaction of men with the earth on which they walked too often forgot their dependence upon it. Here the harmony which sustained life and created growth had been shattered.
Harmony was not the only thing which had been shattered.
Jess dismounted stiffly and dropped the reins, leaving his mount to crop the pasture along the edge of the valley's little river. He walked slowly over to what had obviously been an encampment – rough huts thrown together from hastily felled trees and just as hastily tumbled down, a firepit with blackened logs scattered around it, the ironwork for hanging pots now rusty and a rudimentary spit looking like some crazy totem. Everywhere he looked there were signs of human occupation, but deserted and already falling to pieces as if they had been abandoned long ago.
Of humans, there was no sign at all.
He had been expecting at least half a dozen men. There was no-one. There was no sound or movement. Only the soughing of the wind amongst the branches of the trees and a very faint whistling ...
He could not tell where it was coming from and it faded beyond the reach of hearing almost as soon as he identified it. He shook his head again. Maybe he had not heard the whistling. Because if he had ... if he had, he was going to find it hard to forget the haunting sound ... not a melody, not even the sense of a tune ... more like words, a language breathed on the wind and aching with its lonely lament ...
The tumbled settlement told him nothing. Only that it no longer existed for the protection and comfort of the men who had toiled here. Of their toil too there was little sign. By the edge of the river he found a couple of sieves, their mesh broken and their rims cracked. In the river itself there had recently been a small dam, created perhaps to catch fish or to create a pool for bathing. Or maybe to pan for gold. Now the water swept and splashed and churned merrily over the remaining stones and boulders. If you did not know people had been living here, you would have thought the little waterfall was natural.
Turning back, he surveyed the whole area again, reading with the eyes of an experienced tracker the writing left on this landscape. There was none. Certainly no evidence that the miners had achieved their aim and found gold and gone to away to register their claim. Nor signs of an attack by rivals or enemies. So why had they all gone and where? There was no indication. Not a footmark, not a hoofprint, not a wheel rut. Nothing.
It was growing late in the day. Jess had been hoping for a good hot meal, even if a soft bed was too much to expect. The fading light meant that riding back down the mountain, through the forest and the canyon in the twilight on a trail with which he was barely familiar, would be foolhardy. He had not much option but to bed down for the night as best he could in the deserted camp. Maybe someone would turn up ...
Someone did not turn up, but something did ...
Accustomed as he was to camping alone in the wilderness, Jess swiftly attended to his horse while the light lasted. Then he found himself a sheltered hollow below some rocks not far from the river's edge and on the other side from the abandoned encampment. Quite why he was reluctant to use its shelter he could not have said but his gut told him to choose his own place. There was plenty of dry wood about, enough to last him through the night, which he gathered and stacked ready to add to the small fire he had laid. There was no need to create a great blaze nor to fell living timber as had obviously been done by his predecessors, judging by the wreckage of fallen trunks and broken branches littering the edge of the forest.
Predecessors. That, taken literally, meant the men who had hired him, the men who had established this camp, who had lived and worked here – were dead. Up to this point, Jess had not questioned why they had hired him. It was just a job. Just useful money. He assumed they wanted him to see off any rivals who might jump their claim. Now he was not so sure. What exactly had they needed guarding against? And was it responsible for their complete disappearance?
Under the circumstances, it would not have been unreasonable for Jess to stay awake all night. But even if he did, he did not reckon it would do him any good. He was one man, alone in uncharted territory and a good distance from the nearest point of contact with anyone else. A sleepless night would not improve his ability to look after himself. Accordingly, he banked down his small fire so that it would last till morning, hobbled his mount close by and laid his rifle to hand beside the bedroll into which he then rolled himself.
He lay gazing into the distance for a while, letting the tranquillity of the stars, as they took their proper places, sooth the confusion of his mind. Across the stream the land dropped away, falling almost sheer into the canyon he had ridden up to reach the camp. On either side the heights were mantled in shadow, framing the heavens. But on the western side the earth cut away, forming a small and inaccessible plateau, almost level with his eyes. From it rose a single tree. He remembered how it had seemed to point the way up the mountain, a companion visible for most of the ascent to this deserted valley.
The night was quiet. Only the rustle of a small animal going about its nocturnal business and the occasional flutter of a bird settling for the night in the safety of some forest tree. Only the sound of the wind sweeping across the stars. Nothing else moved in all the mighty darkscape surrounding him. Things were are they should be. As soon as he lay down, he fell serenely asleep.
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Jess woke suddenly. In surprise.
Darkness.
Silence.
Stillness.
Each complete in itself, as if nothing else had ever been.
Like anyone used to being alone he knew at once that he was not. He lay for several minutes letting his eyes and ears adjust. The silence was absolute. The stillness was unbroken. The watching darkness did not change. It was still there.
Presently he eased himself as slowly and carefully as he could into sitting position. He kept his hands away from his rifle. He did not feel threatened, just observed, and he had no wish to upset the delicate balance by appearing a threat himself.
Staring into the night, he brought up a picture of what he knew was facing him. Below his sheltering boulders the grass ran down to the water. Beyond the stream was more grass, with the ruined camp a little upstream to his left. From here the land fell away into the vast canyon. Directly ahead were half a dozen scattered boulders of various sizes. On either side of them outlier trees formed the fringe of the denser woodland cloaking all the slopes. Two things struck his enhanced perception at once.
One of the boulders had doubled in size.
The tattered border of the forest had become solid in several places.
Jess blinked once or twice. The dark shapes remained. Remained unchanged. Remained unmoving. Remained silent.
He turned his head and looked towards his horse. The animal stood calmly, not grazing but not showing any fear. He looked again towards the trees. The dark watchers were still there. No other living thing made a sound or a movement. The little creatures whose world was the night time were one with the greater darkness whose power lay like a rich velvet mantle over the land.
Jess waited. He did not sense hostility. He was just being watched. Watched and weighed in a balance whose scale he could not comprehend.
Watching implied eyes. Eyes which were focused on him.
He was never quite sure whether the thought of eyes came before the eyes themselves or afterwards. Whichever way, he suddenly saw two points of piercing blue, at head height above the boulder which had grown in size. There was no moon, just the vast cloak of millions upon millions of stars swathing the heavens, each star glowing coldly with a pure azure light. The eyes were not reflecting the light of the stars. They had a radiance all of their own. A light which came and went again almost before Jess's senses had registered it.
He sat and waited some more. The eyes of whatever was sitting or perched or standing on the boulder did not reappear. Instead he saw another set, on the borders of the forest this time. These eyes remained steady for some while. Then, suddenly, they seemed to glide along the fringe of trees, not bobbing up and down the way they would if the creature – whatever it was – had been walking, but moving smoothly as if the motion had no dependence on feet or wings or any normal means of locomotion. That was what frightened him most. Especially when this set of eyes also vanished, only to be replaced by more at two or three places amongst the trees. They all moved with the same uncanny smoothness, yet they did not seem connected to each other.
Before Jess could react, however, there were no longer any bright blue eyes. As suddenly as they had appeared, they vanished. There was just the darkness and within it the deeper and more profound presence of the dark watchers. Everything, including Jess, lapsed into stillness. Time did not seem to pass. He was unsure even if the stars themselves had continued to move.
Into the starlit silence, the haunting whistle whispered again. A word. A single word.
For several minutes, there was no response. Nothing happened. Everything remained caught in a timeless present, without past or future. This state was broken by a brief, hollow knocking, the merest reverberation from the empty heart of a tree. The sound came from one place in the trees. It was answered from another. A third knocking echoed the rhythm of the first two.
Silence fell. Then the first pattern sounded again, farther away this time. The second answered. The first signal came once again, deeper into the forest and almost on the edge of hearing. The second followed it. The darkness lost its solidity and was just darkness under the trees. The knocking patterns diminished into the distance.
Jess stirred and then froze.
The watcher on the rock remained. The eyes were not visible, but the shape was there, hunched and rounded, settling down and sinking into itself, like any animal preparing to sleep in the night.
A single whistle drifted on the still air.
A word.
A benediction.
Jess pulled up his blankets and rolled on his side and slept once more.
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A scream woke him! A whistle which was undoubtedly a scream. A cry of horror and despair ... of something trapped and fighting for life ... of something suddenly tethered to a mortal existence and ending ...
These thoughts scarcely touched the surface of his mind at the time. It was only afterwards. Afterwards when he had time to think about the whole experience. Afterwards he felt he might have understood.
In that moment, he was only concerned to find the source of the terrible cry, the eldritch whistle whose words tugged at his spirit, though his ears and brain could not comprehend them. He grabbed his rifle and sprinted in the direction of the sound as if he was being towed across the river and into the trees by an invisible, intangible but irresistible thread linking him to the source of the sound.
A few hundred yards into the trees he came upon something he hated. An iron trap. Someone had set it there, for a cougar or a wolf or a bear - for some perceived danger threatening the camp.
Jess hated traps with all his fierce independence. Hated the thought of some wild thing gouged and torn and unable to escape the iron teeth more savage than its own nature. If you wanted to rid yourself of an animal, you used a gun and a bullet and a clean death.
This trap had caught something. Something large and powerful, with a coarse coat of long, black hair. A bear, probably. He set himself to put it out of its misery. He checked automatically that his rifle was loaded and ready as it had been when he had laid it down to sleep. Then he approached the trap cautiously.
As he did so, the creature turned its head and looked at him.
Looked at him with eyes as brilliantly blue as his own. Eyes set in a face which belonged to no animal. Yet it was not the face of a white man. Nor of an Indian. Nor of any of the many racial types Jess had come across in his travels. It was an ageless face, finely carved as if from some precious, translucent stone. A timeless face, unmarked by the scars and stains of human existence. If Jess had thought about it, he might have said it was the face of an angel, yet it was also the face of the earth which pressed to its cheek. A face at one with the huge, slow and inescapable transformation by which the world turned in its seasons and its centuries.
"Iron binds the spirit to the body, the eternal to mortality."
He could not remember who had said the words – the old Catholic priest who had gifted him with more than education - the Apache elder whose wisdom was beyond books - the chance-met traveller offering unexpectedly deep philosophy – but he remembered the truth of them now.
At all costs he had to free the captive from those iron jaws before it was too late. There was no time to hesitate. No time to plan for how the trapped one might react. No time to take in powerful frame and strong arms. Only time to see the iron teeth biting into the leg just above the foot, biting and draining the very essence of this being – containing and confining what should be free, trapping the immortal within time and inevitable death.
Jess reversed his rifle and thrust the stock against spring of the trap and heaved with all his might. There was a grating screech, a whistling cry and a resounding thud as the unleashed force sent him flying. He lay on his back in the leaf-mould, looking up at the branches of the trees and struggled to regain the breath which had been knocked out of him. Breath which was about to prove how essential it was to a mere mortal.
The dark, hairy figure with the angel's face loomed over him.
Although his body was firmly plastered to the ground, Jess was adrift in time. His mind stumbled with half-recalled knowledge and he croaked out," Watcher ... guardian ..." For good measure he repeated it in Spanish: "Vigilante oscuro!" and in the Indian languages he knew - as if this would make some difference.
The dark being did not respond.
Instead it reached out and took him by the throat. Then and then only did the whistling speech echo in his ears. His brain whirled dizzyingly in an effort to interpret it. Or maybe it was just his lack of oxygen. He seemed to understand that they were ... going on a journey ... to know ... to share ... something precious ... threatened ...
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... There was a split second of excruciating pain, dislocation and a sense of suffocation in a place without anything to breath at all.
Then they were standing together beside the stream where the camp had been … or would be?
For a moment everything seemed the same. The sound of running water. The resilience of the grass beneath the feet. The dark cloak of the forest. The heaving shoulders of the mountains. And between them, the great canyon opening towards the distant sea.
The land was empty. There were no habitations and no inhabitants. Only the vast web of life spun by the myriad creatures living and dying, hunting and being hunted, burrowing, building, spinning, soaring, each in their own place and purpose.
On the little plateau above the canyon he could somehow see the tree as if he were standing close to it. An infant. A seedling. Its trunk already thrusting skywards, its branches shaking out their brave and fragile leaves to the mercy of the winds.
He had no sooner seen than the hand touched his throat again. The valley spun, scattering a shower of brilliant stars across his darkened sight. Pain, dislocation, suffocation.
Then the pressure on Jess's throat eased and he heaved in a mighty and mightily thankful breath, only to lose it again at the beauty which struck his waking eyes.
The heavens were dancing with living colour. Deep turquoise and bright green in vast veils drifted and swayed. Purple billows flamed with piercing gold. The tall tree stood proud and bold and still, heraldic against the sky. A guide, a sign, a companion.
His dark companion now seized his shoulder and turned him so that his back was to wonder of the tree and the sky. Now he looked into the shallow valley where the miners camp had been made. Immediately his senses were assaulted with searing light and strident sound and suffocating stench.
Huge lights were mounted on towers taller than the trees. But there were no trees any more. The air was full of fumes and dust and horrible to breath. Strange vehicles without any obvious means of propulsion raced past. Machines were digging. Wheels ground and turned and sparks flashed from them. Trains made up of huge wagons ground up and down along multiple sets of rails. Rumbling and rattling and distant explosions reverberate as if the earth was groaning. For it had been ripped open, the soil and the trees torn away and deep gouges opened in the exposed surface, which the machines dug into with vast sharp-toothed jaws. Whatever they dug out was loaded into the wagons and hauled away to some unknown destination. Men and women were everywhere, some in uniform, some in white coats, some with curious brightly coloured hats. Voices spoke suddenly into the clouded air but did not issue from any mouths.
Jess's own mouth was covered by a hard hand and his throat closed again. Again there was no air, only pain and disorientation. For a split second.
To his relief they were now standing on the mountain plateau beside the tree. It towered over them in all its power and majesty, deep-rooted in the earth, a strong pillar supporting the heavens. He could breathe again. He looked down. And words came unbidden again.
"The devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time."
He didn't actually think he was in the company of the devil, although he was not at all sure who or what the dark watcher was. And he wasn't actually looking at all the kingdoms either, just a vast city. It stretched from the mountains to the sea and all along the coast as far as their eyes could see and probably a lot further. Enormous roads ran through it, filled with strange vehicles of every size and shape imaginable. There were more houses than you could possibly count if you stood there all day. And not just houses – vast buildings, tall towers with many glass windows and oddly shaped structures of unknow purposes. Like the muted grumble of some vast beast, jumbled roars, shrieks and wailing assaulted the ear. Steam and smoke rose in clouds from some parts of the city, ascending to mingle with the real clouds. Above the clouds there were gleaming metal flying objects which were far too big to be birds, despite their shape, and these too trailed smoke behind them. It was not easy to breath the fouled air, even though they were in the open and far above the city.
It came as no surprise this time that, as soon as he thought about breathing, Jess couldn't because he was grabbed once more and dragged through confusion and pain to what proved to be their final destination.
They were back in the valley again. It was daylight. The trees were sparse, clinging to the hillside in a kind of weary resignation, hardly a wood at all, still less a forest. Yet the outline of the canyon was as recognisable as it had been when Jess rode up to the deserted camp. Now the trail was a broad road with a gleaming surface which Jess presumed was to help the smooth running of the strange vehicles. None of these were in the vicinity and it was blessedly peaceful after the two previous visits to chaos. The warm sun made you want to stop and rest and doze for a while.
Right in front of them was a wide area of gravel, dotted with one or two isolated trees. In the shade of these were wooden tables with a build-in bench on each side. They appeared to be fixed to the ground. It was very odd to see furniture in the middle of a wilderness – or rather what was left of the wilderness – far from any home or even a building.
At one of the tables sat an old man, an Indian of a tribe unknown to Jess. Around him was a little group of children. They were listening intently, the way children only listen to a really good storyteller. Jess could not hear much of the story, but when it was finished and the children had clapped delightedly, the old man's words seemed clearer and louder:
"Our people have always known this guardian, this watcher over the forest. He is a shapeshifter and can walk between the physical world and the spiritual. If you are able to see him or hear him or even meet him, it is because he is making sure you know he is there and that you will keep the rules, so you to live in harmony with the natural world. The dark one is of the earth and yet not on it, a good protector but a fierce enemy ..."
The old man's voice faded into nothing.
On the plateau, still rooted in the earth, was the broad stump of a mighty tree.
In the air - the scent of newly cut wood.
In the heart and mind the unearthly whistle breathed the words of its lonely message ... fainter and fainter ... as if it was receding through the forest ... into ...
Silence.
Stillness.
Jess opened his eyes.
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"So what did you do next? Were there footprints? Did you think it was a dream? What did it all mean?"
The questions came thick and fast at the end of the tale.
Jess stirred as if he had indeed been dreaming. He stopped looking into the past and let himself focus once more on the familiar faces and the homely room.
"What did I do? Well, I waited another day, just in case any o' the miners turned up. Then I told myself, y' ain't been paid and y' ain't gonna get paid sittin' up here in an eagle's nest. So I went down t' the relay station an' got m'self a hot meal an' a sleep in a real bed, t' set me up ready f' the next job."
"You would!" Slim couldn't resist exclaiming, but Jess just grinned and went on answering the questions.
"No, there weren't any footprints, only the trap."
"No hair or blood?" Andy asked hopefully. "You could prove it was true then."
Jess shook his head. "There was nothin'. Just the cold iron." An involuntary shiver ran through him and Amanda reached out and took his hand.
"You don't have to prove anything," she said firmly. "And I don't believe the watcher was a monster. He wanted to take care of you and stop you trying to breathe when there wasn't any air."
"Yeah, thank you, I hadn't thought of it like that," Jess admitted before he continued to answer their questions. "Was it all a dream? I don't think so, but there wasn't any physical evidence, except the disappearin' miners an' y' can't prove much with people who aren't there."
"And they never turned up?" Slim, as always, was concerned for facts, not to mention people's safety.
Jess shook his head. "I can't say. I didn't know anything about them."
"What, not even a name?"
"Well, the man who hired me was called Jebediah Smith. You got any idea how many Smiths there are in this country?"
Slim shook his head in appreciation of the problem. Jess continued wryly, "There was no way of findin' out who they were or where they'd come from, never mind where they went. No-one at the relay station knew anythin' about a mine being started at Eagle's Nest. They could just've packed up in disgust because they didn't find any gold an' gone home."
"So a claim was never registered?"
"Not that I heard," Jess said. "An' it seems no-one ain't wanted t' prospect on the Eagle's Nest since, even though I never said a word about what happened to me. As for what it meant –"
He thought for a moment, trying to find the right words.
"I think it was a reminder that we need t' think about how we live an' what we care about. There are lots o' things that could be invented t' make life easier an' better f' people, that's for sure. But it was a warnin' maybe t' take care of what we do an' how we do it. Else we might break more'n we mend. That's the truth of the story, even if I can't prove the story is true."
"And do you think you'll ever meet the dark watcher again?" Mike asked hopefully, his imagination still on undiscovered wonders.
"Probably not. I think that kind o' meeting only happens once in a lifetime." Jess reached out and ruffled Mike's hair affectionately. "But there's absolutely no reason why it ain't gonna happen to someone else."
"Probably someone very enthusiastic!" Slim agreed with a smile.
"Yeah. Can't think why he picked on me that time," Jess acknowledged. "After all, I was thinkin' about something completely different."
"That's easy," Jonesy told him with a chuckle, "It was y' blue eyes that did it, o' course!"
.
.
Acknowledgements:
This story is a tribute to the Sycamore Gap tree, which you may have read about recently. Quotations conveying its importance include:
* 'It resembled another soul'
* 'A symbol of something natural in its perfect form'
* 'I was surprised at how much this has affected me. I know it was just a tree but it represented so much more at the end of the day.'
* 'I felt sick and when I discovered what had happened to that magical location, and now bereft, a jewel in our crown is now lost for future generations.'
* 'The iconic tree was a friend to so many, an old friend.'
If you'd like to see photos, go to the BBC website: A photographer's dream - your memories and pictures of Sycamore Gap tree.
However, the story originally stated as an exploration of the Bigfoot phenomena as you can see from the research below. This didn't work imaginatively for me and recently there have been new sightings, so I guess we'll wait and see if that mystery is ever solved.
For all chapters: The great creative writing of the 'Laramie' series is respectfully acknowledged. My stories are purely for pleasure and are inspired by the talents of the original authors, producers and actors.
Particular acknowledgement of Kelsey Charlie, a Sts'ailes band councillor, whose words I have paraphrased for the old man.
Thanks as always to Westfalen for excellent beta-ing and gifting me with ideas.
Sources:
The newspaper extracts Jonesy first reads come from The San Diego Union and Daily Bee, 31st October, 1871.
From Wikipedia: 16th century Spanish explorers and Mexican settlers in California told tales of the los Vigilantes Oscuros, or "Dark Watchers", large creatures alleged to stalk their camps at night. Some Bigfoot researchers allege that Bigfoot throws rocks as territorial displays and for communication. Other alleged behaviors include audible blows struck against trees or "wood knocking", further alleged to be communicative.
From BBC website travel section: The Sts'ailes people tell stories about sasq'ets, a shapeshifting creature that protects the forest. Sts'ailes tradition holds that the creature can change from its physical form to a rock, tree or even another animal. "My grandpa used to say, 'The slollicum is a shapeshifter and can walk in the two realms, the spiritual and the physical. That's why you'll never catch him,'" Ultimately, seeing Sasquatch is considered a blessing and a sign of good luck, Charlie's grandfather used to say. "If you're able to see him, hear him or see his footprints, there's some type of good fortune that's going to come your way because he's making sure that you know that he's there and that you still have to live by the rules," said Charlie, referring to the agreement between humans and sasq'ets to live in harmony with nature. "They live off the land, they live on the land, they are the land."
From Longreads website: It was March 1876 when a more credible report appeared in the San Diego Union. A man named Turner Helm claimed he saw a "missing link" near Warner's Ranch.
(I looked up the actual report in the San Diego Union and Daily Bee for 9th March 1876 and the full text reads:
A WILD MAN IN THE MOUNTAINS.
The following strange story is sent us by a correspondent at Warner's Ranch in this county. We know the writer to be a perfectly reliable person, and believe his statement, singular as it may seem, to be fully entitled to credence: About ten days ago Turner Helm and myself were in the mountains about ten miles east of Warner's Ranch, on a prospecting tour, looking for the extension of a quartz lead which had been found by some parties some time before. When we were separated, about half a mile part—the wind blowing very hard at this time— Mr. Helm, who was walking along looking down at the ground, suddenly heard somebody whistle. Looking up be saw 'something" sitting on a large boulder, about fifteen or twenty paces from him. He supposed it to be some kind of an animal, and immediately came down on it with his needle gun. The object instantly rose to its feet, and proved to be a man. This man appeared to be covered all over with coarse black hair, seemingly two or three inches long, like the hair of a bear; his beard and the hair on his head were long and thick; he was a man of about medium size, and had rather fine features—not at all like those of an Indian, but more like an American or Spaniard. They stood gazing at each other for a few moments,-when Mr. Helm spoke to the singular creature, first in English and then in Spanish, and then in Indian, but the man remained silent. He then advanced toward Mr. Helm, who not knowing what his intentions might be, again came down on him with the gun to keep him at a distance. The man at once stopped, as though he knew there was danger. Mr. Helm called to me, but the wind was blowing so hard that I could not hear him. The wild man then turned and went over the hill, and was soon out of sight; before Mr. Helm could come to me he had made good his escape. We had frequently before seen this man's tracks in that part of the mountains, but had supposed them to be the tracks of an Indian. I did not see this strange inhabitant of the mountains myself; but Mr, Helm is known to be a man of unquestioned veracity, and I have no doubt of the entire truth of his statement.)
(End of newspaper report)
The report generated great interest because of the many unsolved murders at Deadman's Hole, then a water stop on the Butterfield stage line. The bodies had been piling up at the stagecoach stop's waterhole for two decades, with the victims including a French-Basque shepherd, several dubious individuals on the run from the law or creditors, and a wealthy San Franciscan named William Blair. Many of the victims were found with bruised and broken necks, their money or gold untouched. The last unsolved murder at the waterhole dates to 1922, when again a strangled victim was found there, 64 years after the first recorded murders at the hole.
Deadman's Hole — "Deadman Hole" on modern maps — is located in a grove of live oaks about 15 yards east of California State Highway 79, an 8-mile drive up from today's Warner Springs, just southeast of the place called Takwi at the headwaters of the Santa Margarita River.
Report of staff at Edwards AFB: Heading back to the main base, I noticed maybe 200-300 yards to my left, these large blue eyes. I do a lot of night hunting and it was strange — they were larger than anything I'd ever seen before. The [blue eyes] had to be about four inches apart and seven feet off the ground. I stopped the truck and sat there watching them. It was too dark to see any body shape to the thing. The blue glows proceeded toward my truck at a right angle for about 100 yards and then stopped. As an overpowering stench filled the desert air, Sgt. House saw the huge blue eyes again, now just 50 yards away. "The movement of the eyes was extremely fast. Another thing that bothered me was that they didn't bob up and down. It was like two lights on a wire moving from one point to another."
In Celtic mythology, the sycamore was associated with the world tree, a sacred tree that connects heaven, earth, and the underworld. The Celts believed that the sycamore was a home to fairies and other spirits. Sycamore trees provide food for a variety of animals, including bees, pollinators, caterpillars, birds, and insects. Sycamore trees also provide habitat for a variety of animals, including birds, mammals, insects, and fungi.
In folk tales, the elm (rather than the sycamore) holds the power to give you prophetic dreams and iron has power to disrupt magic (or in this case, the immortality of a being who is essentially spiritual).
