Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding.
Speaker 2: I got a string going on here, something just because
Speaker 2: my dog. Something killed your dog.
Speaker 1: My dog.
Speaker 2: We're flying through the air over the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: How it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused. All
Speaker 2: I saw was my dog coming over the fence and
Speaker 2: he was dead. And once you hit the ground like,
Speaker 2: I didn't see any cars. All I saw was my
Speaker 2: dog coming over the fence.
Speaker 1: Sat, what are you putting?
Speaker 2: We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Speaker 2: Did you see what it was? Or was it was?
Speaker 2: Standing enough? I'm out here looking through the window now
Speaker 2: and I don't see anything.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go outside. Jesus Quice, you better.
Speaker 2: Hellohet theboddy out here? What quent on out there? I
Speaker 2: thought of a bet about tex forty nine?
Speaker 1: I don't know easy him out there? Yeah, I'm walking
Speaker 1: right hey.
Speaker 2: September one through tenth, seventeen ninety nine, Henri Beaumont died screaming.
Speaker 2: I write these words knowing they will haunt me until
Speaker 2: my own death and perhaps beyond. I write them because
Speaker 2: they must be recorded, because what happened in that dark
Speaker 2: hollow between the mountains must never be forgotten. Must serve
Speaker 2: as warning to anyone foolish enough to follow in our footsteps.
Speaker 2: The reunion with the Eastern Party came in early September
Speaker 2: at the rendezvous point Henri had designated. They had resupplied, successfully,
Speaker 2: trading with settlements along the Ohio River for fresh provisions,
Speaker 2: replacement equipment, and most importantly, horses. Will Harper's condition had
Speaker 2: not improved. If anything, he seemed worse, his eyes vacant,
Speaker 2: his hands constantly moving, as if sketching invisible images in
Speaker 2: the air. He draws them every night, Thomas told me,
Speaker 2: fills page after page with their faces. Won't sleep, barely eats.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much longer he can survive like this.
Speaker 2: Despite Will's deterioration, spirits were high. We were nine men again,
Speaker 2: reunited after months apart, carrying enough supplies to see us
Speaker 2: through whatever lay ahead. The creatures had continued to watch
Speaker 2: us through our separation, and they watched us, still, dozens
Speaker 2: of them visible on the surrounding ridge lines, more than
Speaker 2: we had ever seen before. They're gathering, Sam observed, coming
Speaker 2: from all directions. Something's happening. What I don't know, but
Speaker 2: whatever it is, we're about to be in the middle
Speaker 2: of it. We pressed deeper into the forbidden lands. The
Speaker 2: terrain grew more treacherous with every mile, narrow passes between
Speaker 2: sheer cliffs, river crossings that nearly drown two of our horses,
Speaker 2: Forests so dense that we had to hack through the
Speaker 2: undergrowth with machetes that dulled after hours of use. And
Speaker 2: through it all, the creatures multiplied, fifty visible, now sixty, more,
Speaker 2: arriving every day, converging toward the heart of their territory
Speaker 2: from regions we couldn't imagine. Their behavior changed as well,
Speaker 2: more agitated, more aggressive. The threat displays that had been
Speaker 2: infrequent became constant, screams and charges that stopped just feet
Speaker 2: from our position, chest beating that shook the air, rocks
Speaker 2: thrown close enough to feel the wind of their passage.
Speaker 2: We're too close to something, Henry said on the night
Speaker 2: of September eighth. His charming smile had long since faded.
Speaker 2: The man who faced me now was tired and afraid,
Speaker 2: and trying desperately not to show either. They don't want
Speaker 2: us here, they don't want us anywhere. But they've let
Speaker 2: us come this far. The ones we've been traveling with. Yes,
Speaker 2: but look around you, captain. He gestured at the shapes
Speaker 2: on the ridge lines, the shadows moving between the trees.
Speaker 2: These aren't the same creatures, different groups, different territories, and
Speaker 2: I don't think they've agreed to tolerate us the way
Speaker 2: the others have.
Speaker 1: He was right.
Speaker 2: I could see it now that he'd pointed it out.
Speaker 2: The creatures that had been escorting us, the scarred elder,
Speaker 2: the females with young Zeke's juvenile friend. They stayed back,
Speaker 2: watching but not approaching. The ones surrounding us now were different, larger,
Speaker 2: some of them more aggressive. Their displays carried a different quality,
Speaker 2: a hostility that hadn't been present before. We had crossed
Speaker 2: into hostile territory, and we didn't know it until it
Speaker 2: was too late. The attack came on the night of
Speaker 2: September ninth. We had made camp in a hollow between
Speaker 2: two ridges, choosing a position that seemed defensible, high ground
Speaker 2: on three sides, a stream providing water, clear sight lines
Speaker 2: in the direction we'd come from. We didn't think about
Speaker 2: what might come from the other direction. The warning signs
Speaker 2: began at dusk. The creatures we'd been traveling with withdrew,
Speaker 2: all of them suddenly melting into the forest without a sound.
Speaker 2: The howls and knocks that had become background noise fell silent.
Speaker 2: The forest itself seemed to hold its breath. Something's wrong,
Speaker 2: Sam said, his hand on his rifle, his eyes scanning
Speaker 2: the darkening forest. Something's very wrong. Then the screams began,
Speaker 2: not the screams we'd grown accustomed to, the territorial calls,
Speaker 2: the threat displays. These were different, sharper, more urgent, like alarms,
Speaker 2: I realized, like warnings, but warnings of what They came
Speaker 2: out of the darkness, without warning, creatures we'd never seen before,
Speaker 2: Larger than the others, darker, moving with a speed that
Speaker 2: seemed impossible for their size. They hit our camp like
Speaker 2: a wave, scattering men and horses, overturning equipment, filling the
Speaker 2: night with chaos and terror. I fired my rifle into
Speaker 2: the dark. Heard the ball strike something solid, heard a
Speaker 2: scream of rage that made my blood run cold. Muzzle
Speaker 2: flashes lit the clearing, Jim firing, Sam firing everyone, firing
Speaker 2: at shapes that were there and gone before we could
Speaker 2: aim properly, and then are screamed. God helped me. I
Speaker 2: can still hear it, that scream, that terrible desperate, hopeless scream.
Speaker 2: Something had him, something massive and dark, Its arms wrapped
Speaker 2: around his torso, dragging him backward into the darkness beyond
Speaker 2: the firelight. I could see his face in the flickering light,
Speaker 2: white with terror, mouth, open, eyes showing whites all around.
Speaker 2: And then he was gone. I ran after him, so
Speaker 2: did Jim. We crashed through the underbrush, following the sounds
Speaker 2: of struggle, the sounds of screaming. The sounds of the
Speaker 2: sounds changed on re screams became something else, something worse,
Speaker 2: wet sounds, tearing sounds, crack of bone and the rip
Speaker 2: of flesh, and other things I cannot bring myself to describe.
Speaker 2: Then silence. We found what remained of him at dawn.
Speaker 2: I will not describe it in detail. Some horrors are
Speaker 2: too profound for language, too terrible to commit to paper.
Speaker 2: I will say only this. Henri Beaumont, thirty three years old,
Speaker 2: voyageur guide friend Henri Beaumont was scattered across a clearing,
Speaker 2: in pieces so small that burial was impossible. Nothing was
Speaker 2: left to bury, nothing was left at all. We stood
Speaker 2: in that clearing, those of us who had survived the night,
Speaker 2: and looked at what had been our friend, our companion,
Speaker 2: our brother in this impossible journey. Thomas vomited. Will Harper,
Speaker 2: who hadn't spoken coherently in weeks, began to laugh, high,
Speaker 2: hysterical laughter that went on and on until Solomon struck
Speaker 2: him unconscious. Jim loaded his rifle. I'm going to kill them,
Speaker 2: every last one of them. I'm going to no. Sam's
Speaker 2: voice was quiet but absolute. Look around you, Jim. Look
Speaker 2: the creatures were back, the ones we'd been traveling with.
Speaker 2: The scarred elder, the females, the juveniles. They stood at
Speaker 2: the edges of the clearing, watching us with expressions I
Speaker 2: couldn't read. But they hadn't attacked us. The things that
Speaker 2: had killed Unri they were gone, retreated back into whatever
Speaker 2: territory they'd come from. The creatures surrounding us now were different.
Speaker 2: I could see it in their posture, their behavior, the
Speaker 2: way they looked at the scattered remains of Aunri with
Speaker 2: something that might have been regret. Different groups, Sam said,
Speaker 2: echoing what Henry had told us the night before, Different territories.
Speaker 2: The ones we've been with they tolerate us. These others don't.
Speaker 2: Then why did they let us walk into a trap?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe they didn't know. Maybe they couldn't
Speaker 2: stop it. Maybe he stopped, his weathered face twisting with
Speaker 2: grief and confusion. Maybe they have rules we don't understand,
Speaker 2: boundaries they can't cross. I looked at the scarred elder.
Speaker 2: Those ancient eyes met mine, and I saw something in
Speaker 2: them that I couldn't name. Not guilt, I don't think
Speaker 2: they're capable of guilt, but something awareness, perhaps acknowledgment of
Speaker 2: what had happened, and maybe just maybe apology. But Henri
Speaker 2: was still dead and all the understanding in the world
Speaker 2: couldn't bring him back. Marcus set down the journal. His
Speaker 2: hands were trembling so badly he could barely grip the
Speaker 2: leather binding Henri Beaumont, the charming French Canadian with the
Speaker 2: easy smile and the hidden secrets, gone torn apart in
Speaker 2: the darkness by creatures that didn't know or didn't care
Speaker 2: about the fragile piece the expedition had built. He thought
Speaker 2: about his ancestor, standing in that clearing at dawn, looking
Speaker 2: at what remained of his friend, The horror of it,
Speaker 2: the futility, the terrible understanding that all their progress, all
Speaker 2: their exchanges, all their careful diplomacy had meant nothing to
Speaker 2: the creatures that lived in that hostile territory. Different groups,
Speaker 2: different rules, different tolerances. The creatures weren't a unified people.
Speaker 2: They were competing territories, rival families, individual beings with individual temperaments.
Speaker 2: Some tolerated humans, others didn't, and there was no way
Speaker 2: to know which was which until it was too late.
Speaker 2: Marcus looked at the remaining journals. There was more to come.
Speaker 2: He knew that the second death Will Harper according to
Speaker 2: his father's notes, and whatever came after. Part of him
Speaker 2: wanted to stop, to put the journals away, to walk
Speaker 2: out of this cabin and return to his ordinary life
Speaker 2: in Chicago, to pretend he'd never learned any of this.
Speaker 2: But he couldn't. The story had him now, and some
Speaker 2: stories once started, demand to be finished. He picked up
Speaker 2: the journal and kept reading. September tenth through thirtieth, seventeen
Speaker 2: ninety nine. We should have turned back. Every rational thought
Speaker 2: demanded it. Henre was dead. Will Harper had descended into
Speaker 2: a madness from which there might be no return. Our
Speaker 2: supplies were dwindling, our morale was shattered, and the creatures,
Speaker 2: the ones that had killed Nri might attack again at
Speaker 2: any moment, but we didn't turn back. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it was courage or foolishness, or simply an inability
Speaker 2: to accept that everything we'd sacrificed had been for nothing.
Speaker 2: We had come so far, seen so much, lost so much.
Speaker 2: To turn back now felt like a betrayal of Henri's
Speaker 2: memory of everything the expedition had meant. And something else
Speaker 2: drove us forward, something I couldn't name then and struggle
Speaker 2: to name now, a pull, a compulsion, a sense that
Speaker 2: the answers we sought lay just ahead, just beyond the
Speaker 2: next ridge, just through the next valley. The creatures seemed
Speaker 2: to share this urgency. After Henri's death, they began guiding
Speaker 2: us more actively than before, showing us paths we never
Speaker 2: would have found on our own, leading us around the
Speaker 2: territories of hostile groups, leaving food more frequently larger quantities,
Speaker 2: as if trying to strengthen us for whatever lay ahead.
Speaker 2: Were they helping us? I still don't know. Perhaps they were,
Speaker 2: Perhaps they felt something like responsibility for what had happened
Speaker 2: to Henri, an obligation to see us safely through the
Speaker 2: dangers that remained. Or perhaps they simply wanted us to
Speaker 2: reach our destination, wanted us to see what waited in
Speaker 2: the heart of their territory. Either way, we followed. Will
Speaker 2: Harper's condition deteriorated rapidly in the days that followed. He
Speaker 2: no longer spoke at all, not even the fragmented mutterings
Speaker 2: he'd been producing before. His sketch book was constantly in
Speaker 2: his hands, pages filling with images that none of us
Speaker 2: could bear to look at. I looked once, just once.
Speaker 2: The drawing showed creatures that were almost right, but not quite.
Speaker 2: Bodies proportioned correctly, poses captured with remarkable skill, but the
Speaker 2: eyes were wrong, to human, to knowing, and their expressions.
Speaker 2: The creatures I had seen displayed no expression I could interpret.
Speaker 2: But Will's drawing showed something else, something that looked almost
Speaker 2: like hunger, or anticipation or desire. He's drawing what they
Speaker 2: show him, Thomas said quietly. The physician had lost all
Speaker 2: pretense of scientific detachment. What remained was simply a frightened
Speaker 2: man trying to make sense of something that defied understanding
Speaker 2: or what he thinks they show him. His mind has
Speaker 2: created a dialogue where none exists. Is he dangerous to himself?
Speaker 2: Certainly to us. Thomas shook his head. I don't know.
Speaker 2: He barely seems aware of our existence. He's somewhere else,
Speaker 2: entirely somewhere we can't follow. I assigned someone to watch
Speaker 2: Will at all times. We couldn't spare the man power.
Speaker 2: But we also couldn't risk him wandering off in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night, not here, not after what had
Speaker 2: happened to Henri. The terrain grew worse as we traveled,
Speaker 2: deeper mountains that seemed designed to kill, sheer cliffs with
Speaker 2: no paths, rivers that ran too fast to forward for us,
Speaker 2: so dense that even the creatures struggled to find ways through.
Speaker 2: We lost a horse to a fall, then another to
Speaker 2: a river crossing gone wrong. Our supplies dwindled despite the
Speaker 2: creature's gifts, but they kept guiding us, kept leading us forward,
Speaker 2: kept drawing us towards something none of us could see,
Speaker 2: but all of us could feel. And then, on the
Speaker 2: last day of September, we found it. The canyon appeared
Speaker 2: out of nowhere, a crack in the mountain so well
Speaker 2: hidden that we would never have discovered it without the
Speaker 2: creature's guidance. The entrance was narrow, barely wide enough for
Speaker 2: a horse to pass, with walls that rose sheer on
Speaker 2: either side for hundreds of feet, and stay tuned for
Speaker 2: more sasquatch out to see.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: After these messages, the creatures were waiting at the entrance,
Speaker 2: dozens of them, more than we'd ever seen in one place.
Speaker 2: The scarred elder stood at the front of the group.
Speaker 2: His ancient eyes met mine, and something passed between us,
Speaker 2: not communication, not understanding, but acknowledgment, a recognition that we
Speaker 2: had come to the end of our journey, or perhaps
Speaker 2: the beginning. He turned and walked into the canyon. We followed.
Speaker 2: The passage took hours, the walls pressed close on either side,
Speaker 2: the sky reduced to a narrow strip of blue far above.
Speaker 2: The horses balked at first, their instinct screaming danger, but
Speaker 2: we coaxed them through. The creatures walked ahead and behind,
Speaker 2: their presence both comforting and terrified. And then the canyon
Speaker 2: opened up. What I saw on the other side stopped
Speaker 2: me in my tracks, stopped all of us, eight men
Speaker 2: and seven horses, frozen at the edge of something impossible,
Speaker 2: A valley, vast and green, stretching for miles between mountain
Speaker 2: walls that rose like the sides of a bowl. A
Speaker 2: river ran through the center, glinting silver in the afternoon light.
Speaker 2: Forest covered the lower slopes, ancient forest, older than anything
Speaker 2: we'd seen before, giving way to meadows and clearings that
Speaker 2: dotted the valley floor. And everywhere, everywhere there were creatures,
Speaker 2: hundreds of them, maybe thousands, moving through the forest, gathered
Speaker 2: by the river, visible on the slopes above. More than
Speaker 2: I had ever imagined could exist, more than I had
Speaker 2: thought possible, A hidden population, a secret stronghold, a place
Speaker 2: where these beings had lived and bred and survived for millennia,
Speaker 2: known to the human world. My God, Thomas whispered beside me.
Speaker 2: God has nothing to do with this place, I said,
Speaker 2: and led my men into the valley. Marcus read the
Speaker 2: words again, trying to picture what his ancestor had seen.
Speaker 2: A valley full of creatures, hundreds of them, thousands, a
Speaker 2: hidden population that had survived in complete isolation from human
Speaker 2: contact for longer than recorded history. It should have been impossible,
Speaker 2: but the journals were authentic. Marcus's historians training confirmed that,
Speaker 2: beyond doubt, whatever Elijah Stone had seen in that valley,
Speaker 2: he had seen something real something that still existed two
Speaker 2: hundred years later, something that his father had spent his
Speaker 2: life watching for. Marcus looked out the window of the cabin.
Speaker 2: The Blue Ridge Mountains rose in the darkness, their shapes
Speaker 2: barely visible against the night sky. Somewhere out there, not
Speaker 2: as far away as the valley Elijah had found, but
Speaker 2: perhaps closer than Marcus had ever imagined. The creatures were
Speaker 2: still living, still watching, still waiting. He turned back to
Speaker 2: the journal. October one through fifteenth, seventeen ninety nine. We
Speaker 2: spent two weeks in the valley. Two weeks surrounded by
Speaker 2: creatures whose existence challenged everything we thought we knew about
Speaker 2: the natural world. Two weeks observing behaviors that revealed both
Speaker 2: the remarkable intelligence and the fundamental alienness of these beings.
Speaker 2: Two weeks that would haunt me, haunt all of us
Speaker 2: for the rest of our lives. The valley was larger
Speaker 2: than it first appeared, perhaps twenty miles from end to end,
Speaker 2: with the mountains forming a natural barrier that kept it
Speaker 2: hidden from the outside world. A river ran through the center,
Speaker 2: fed by streams that tumbled down from the surrounding heights.
Speaker 2: The forest was ancient, beyond measure, trees so old that
Speaker 2: their bark had hardened into something like stone, their branches
Speaker 2: interweaving into a canopy that blocked out the sky and
Speaker 2: everywhere the creatures. I attempted a census during our first
Speaker 2: days in the valley, but quickly abandoned the effort. There
Speaker 2: were too many of them, hundreds at minimum, perhaps over
Speaker 2: a thousand, family groups, solitary individuals, juveniles, elders, a complete
Speaker 2: population living in complex social arrangements that defied easy categorization.
Speaker 2: They weren't a society exactly, not in any sense that
Speaker 2: humans would recognize. They had no visible government, no obvious
Speaker 2: leaders beyond the oldest and most dominant individuals. They had
Speaker 2: no permanent structures, no evidence of agriculture or animal husbandry
Speaker 2: or any of the other hallmarks of civilization. But they
Speaker 2: weren't simply animals either. We observed them from a small
Speaker 2: clearing at the edge of the valley, never venturing far,
Speaker 2: always aware that we were guests or perhaps prisoners, in
Speaker 2: this place. The creatures tolerated our presence but made no
Speaker 2: effort to welcome us. They watched us constantly, hundreds of
Speaker 2: eyes tracking our every movement, but they didn't approach except
Speaker 2: on their own terms. Thomas documented everything with feverish intensity,
Speaker 2: filling notebook after notebook with observations. They communicate somehow, he
Speaker 2: told me on the third day. Not language, nothing like language.
Speaker 2: But watch how they move together, how they coordinate without
Speaker 2: apparent signals. There's information passing between them. I just can't
Speaker 2: figure out how I had observed the same thing. The
Speaker 2: creatures seemed to operate as a collective consciousness at times,
Speaker 2: dozens of individuals shifting positions simultaneously, responding to threats or
Speaker 2: opportunities before any human could have perceived them. But at
Speaker 2: other times they were clearly individuals with distinct personalities and behaviors.
Speaker 2: Some were curious, approaching our camp with what seemed like
Speaker 2: genuine interest. Others were aggressive, displaying at us when we
Speaker 2: moved in directions they didn't approve of. Still others avoided
Speaker 2: us entirely, treating us as if we didn't exist. The
Speaker 2: caves were perhaps the most remarkable discovery. Dozens of them
Speaker 2: opened into the surrounding cliffs, Their entrances scattered across the
Speaker 2: valley walls like holes in a massive face. The creatures
Speaker 2: used them for shelter. We saw individuals and groups entering
Speaker 2: and leaving at all hours, but they seemed to serve
Speaker 2: other purposes as well. Thomas spent a full day documenting
Speaker 2: the entrance to one particularly large cave, sketching the rock
Speaker 2: formations and the strange markings that covered the surrounding stone.
Speaker 2: These aren't natural, he said, showing me as drawings. They're
Speaker 2: carved deliberately. Look at the patterns. They repeat too consistently
Speaker 2: to be random erosion. What do they mean? I have
Speaker 2: no idea, but they've been here a long time, centuries
Speaker 2: at least maybe longer. The creatures let us observe, They
Speaker 2: let us document. They even let us collect specimens, scat samples,
Speaker 2: hair caught on branches, stone tools they seemed to have discarded.
Speaker 2: But there were boundaries we couldn't cross, territories within the
Speaker 2: valley that were forbidden to us. When we approached certain areas,
Speaker 2: the creatures would appear suddenly, silently and make it clear
Speaker 2: through posture and vocalization that we should go no further.
Speaker 2: What were they protecting? We never found out. At night,
Speaker 2: the creatures gathered, that's the only word for it. As
Speaker 2: darkness fell, they would congregate in clearings throughout the valley, dozens,
Speaker 2: sometimes hundreds of individuals in a single location. They would
Speaker 2: make sounds together, not speech, not song, something else. Low
Speaker 2: rumbles that seemed to come from the earth itself, high
Speaker 2: pitched cries that echoed off the valley walls, Rhythms that
Speaker 2: repeated and varied and repeated again, building into something that
Speaker 2: was almost music, but wasn't quite. Bonding behaviors, Thomas speculated,
Speaker 2: like howler monkeys or humpback whales, they're reinforcing group identity,
Speaker 2: establishing hierarchies, communicating membership in the population. Maybe he was right,
Speaker 2: But watching those gatherings, feeling the sound waves vibrating in
Speaker 2: my chest, hearing the harmonics that shouldn't be possible from
Speaker 2: living throats, I couldn't help thinking that something more was happening,
Speaker 2: something we couldn't understand because we lacked the senses to
Speaker 2: perceive it. Will Harper watched the gatherings with particular intensity.
Speaker 2: His madness seemed to quiet when the creature sang, if
Speaker 2: singing was the right word. He would sit motionless for hours,
Speaker 2: his sketch book forgotten, his eyes fixed on the dark
Speaker 2: shapes moving in the firelight. They're praying, he said. Once
Speaker 2: it was the first coherent sentence he'd spoken in weeks,
Speaker 2: Praying to what, to everything, to the forest and the
Speaker 2: mountains in the sky, to themselves, to the world that
Speaker 2: was and the world that will be. He turned to
Speaker 2: look at me, and for just a moment, his eyes
Speaker 2: were clear. They remember things we've forgotten, Captain, things we
Speaker 2: never knew. They'd been praying since before humans learned to speak.
Speaker 2: Then the clarity faded, and he was gone again, back
Speaker 2: into whatever private world his broken mind had created. But
Speaker 2: I couldn't forget what he'd said, couldn't shake the feeling
Speaker 2: that he'd seen something true in his madness, something the
Speaker 2: rest of us were too sane to perceive. The creatures
Speaker 2: were old, older than we could imagine, and whatever they
Speaker 2: were doing in those nighttime gatherings, it was something they'd
Speaker 2: been doing since before human civilization began, something sacred, something
Speaker 2: we weren't meant to witness, but we witnessed it anyway.
Speaker 2: Marcus closed his eyes. The narrative was building towards something.
Speaker 2: He could feel it. The deaths on Rhe's violent end
Speaker 2: and will Harper's still to come, the discoveries in the valley,
Speaker 2: the weight of knowledge that was changing the expedition members,
Speaker 2: breaking them in ways they didn't yet understand. His ancestor
Speaker 2: had seen things no human was meant to see, had
Speaker 2: learned things that challenged everything he'd believed about the world,
Speaker 2: and he'd spent the rest of his life guarding that knowledge,
Speaker 2: protecting it, waiting for a day when humanity might be
Speaker 2: ready to hear the truth. That day had never come,
Speaker 2: or had it. Marcus opened his eyes and looked at
Speaker 2: the pendant hanging around his neck, the stone pendant his
Speaker 2: ancestor had worn, the one gray Owl had given him
Speaker 2: more than two centuries ago. They have marked you now,
Speaker 2: for good or ill you are marked? Was he marked?
Speaker 2: Had the creatures watched his father all those years? Were
Speaker 2: they watching him now? He walked to the window and
Speaker 2: looked out at the darkness. The mountains were black shapes
Speaker 2: against a black sky. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound,
Speaker 2: but the feeling of being watched, that feeling he'd noticed
Speaker 2: since arriving at the cabin, was stronger than ever. He
Speaker 2: went back to the chair and picked up the journal.
Speaker 2: Will Harper was about to die, and Marcus needed to
Speaker 2: know how. October fifteenth through twenty fifth, seventeen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: the caves held secrets we were never meant to find.
Speaker 2: Thomas discovered the first evidence on our tenth day in
Speaker 2: the valley. He had been examining one of the smaller caves.
Speaker 2: The creatures tolerated this, watching from a distance, but not interfering.
Speaker 2: When he emerged with a face the color of bone.
Speaker 2: You need to see this, he said. His voice was steady,
Speaker 2: but his hands were shaking.
Speaker 1: All of you.
Speaker 2: We followed him into the cave. The entrance was narrow,
Speaker 2: requiring us to duck and turn sideways, but it opened
Speaker 2: into a larger chamber, perhaps fifty feet deep. Light filtered
Speaker 2: in from cracks in the rock above, illuminating walls covered
Speaker 2: in the strange carvings we'd seen before. But that wasn't
Speaker 2: what Thomas wanted to show us. At the back of
Speaker 2: the chamber, in a depression in the stone floor, lay
Speaker 2: a pile of bones, scattered broken old human bones. I
Speaker 2: recognized them immediately, the shape of the skull, the curve
Speaker 2: of the femur, the delicate bones of the hands. These
Speaker 2: had been people once, men are women, who had lived
Speaker 2: and breathed and loved. Now they were nothing but fragments
Speaker 2: in a cave. There's more, Thomas said. He pointed to
Speaker 2: the walls where something had been scratched into the stone,
Speaker 2: lines and curves that might have been symbols, might have
Speaker 2: been decoration, or might have been something else entirely. What
Speaker 2: is this, Jim asked, His voice was rough, dangerous. Since
Speaker 2: Henri's death, something dark had been growing in him, something
Speaker 2: that made me watch him carefully. A burial sight, Solomon suggested,
Speaker 2: some kind of grave. Thomas shook his head. Look at
Speaker 2: the bones, really look at them. I did, and I
Speaker 2: saw what Thomas had already seen. Teeth on the larger bones,
Speaker 2: near the joints, evidence of gnawing, evidence of breaking form marrow.
Speaker 2: These people hadn't been buried here, they'd been eaten. The
Speaker 2: cave felt smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in the weight
Speaker 2: of the mountain above, crushing down. I thought about the
Speaker 2: Shawnee stories, the Wyandot warnings, the generations of conflict, the
Speaker 2: warriors who went into the mountains and never returned. This
Speaker 2: was where they had ended up. This was where their
Speaker 2: lives had ended. The native stories weren't exaggeration, I said,
Speaker 2: my voice sounding strange in the enclosed space. They were truth.
Speaker 2: The creatures had been eating humans for for how long?
Speaker 2: Thomas was already examining the bones, his scientific instincts overriding
Speaker 2: his horror. These are old, very old. The ones at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the pile are fossilized that takes centuries,
Speaker 2: perhaps millennia, But the ones on top caused lifting a
Speaker 2: fragment that still bore traces of dried tissue. These could
Speaker 2: be recent, within the last decade. The warriors, Sam said quietly,
Speaker 2: the ones the Wyandot lost, the children stolen in the night. Yes,
Speaker 2: we found more bones in other caves, different ages, different
Speaker 2: states of preservation, evidence of conflict and consumption spanning centuries.
Speaker 2: The wars the natives had described were written here in
Speaker 2: fragments of bone and the scratches on cave walls. But
Speaker 2: we also found something else, tools, Not the crude stone
Speaker 2: implements we'd seen. The creatures use, something finer, more sophisticated
Speaker 2: knives with edges as sharp as anything a European smithy
Speaker 2: could produce. Scrapers and awls and things we couldn't identify,
Speaker 2: all made from stone, but made with a skill that
Speaker 2: seemed impossible for beings who showed no other signs of
Speaker 2: material culture, and stay tuned for more sasquatch Otty se
Speaker 2: to be right back after these messages. They're not making
Speaker 2: these now, Thomas observed, examining a particularly fine blade. I
Speaker 2: haven't seen any evidence of tool making in the valley.
Speaker 2: These must be artifacts from an earlier period, an earlier
Speaker 2: period of what. I don't know. Maybe they were more
Speaker 2: advanced once, maybe they had a culture. Maybe they lost
Speaker 2: it somehow. He set down the blade and looked at
Speaker 2: me with haunted eyes. Or maybe they're saving it, hiding
Speaker 2: their capabilities, showing us only what they want us to see.
Speaker 2: That thought stayed with me. The creatures we'd observed seemed intelligent,
Speaker 2: but primitive. No language, no fire, no art or ceremony.
Speaker 2: But the tools suggested something else, something more. What if
Speaker 2: they were smarter than they appeared. What if everything we'd seen,
Speaker 2: the behaviors, the patterns, the apparent simplicity was a perform mormans,
Speaker 2: a mask worn to hide their true nature. What if
Speaker 2: they knew exactly what they were doing with us? Solomon
Speaker 2: provided perspective that evening, as we sat around our small
Speaker 2: fire processing what we'd learned. My grandmother used to tell
Speaker 2: me about the forest people. He said quietly. His hands
Speaker 2: were busy with a new carving, a figure that looked
Speaker 2: almost human, but not quite. She said, they were kind,
Speaker 2: sometimes cruel, sometimes just like people, just like anything that lives.
Speaker 2: They eat human Solomon. They've been eating humans for centuries,
Speaker 2: and we eat animals. We kill each other in wars.
Speaker 2: We take what we want and destroy what we can't use.
Speaker 2: He looked up from his carving, his dark eyes steady.
Speaker 2: You can't expect mercy from nature, Captain. Nature doesn't know
Speaker 2: what mercy means. Then what are we doing here? What's
Speaker 2: the point of any of this? Understanding that's all anyone
Speaker 2: can do. Understand it's real, even when it's terrible, especially
Speaker 2: when it's terrible. He held up his carving, a creature
Speaker 2: standing upright, arms raised, as if in greeting or threat.
Speaker 2: My grandmother understood. That's why she told me the stories,
Speaker 2: not to frighten me, to prepare me. Prepare you for what?
Speaker 2: For this? He gestured at the valley around us, at
Speaker 2: the creature's visible on the ridge lines, at the caves
Speaker 2: that held their terrible secrets, For knowing that the world
Speaker 2: is bigger and stranger and more dangerous than we want
Speaker 2: to believe, and for surviving that knowledge. I looked at
Speaker 2: the carving in his hands. The creature he'd rendered looked
Speaker 2: almost peaceful, almost gentle. But there was something in the posture,
Speaker 2: something in the proportions, that suggested power, violence, the capacity
Speaker 2: for terrible things, just like the real creatures, just like us.
Speaker 2: Marcus stared at the page. The creatures ate humans, not
Speaker 2: just killed them, not just defended their territory, ate them
Speaker 2: for centuries, for millennia. He thought about his ancestors standing
Speaker 2: in that cave, looking at the scattered bones, understanding for
Speaker 2: the first time the true nature of what he'd been pursuing.
Speaker 2: The creatures weren't noble savages or misunderstood animals or anything
Speaker 2: else the romantic imagination might want them to be. They
Speaker 2: were apex predators. They had been preying on humans since
Speaker 2: before recorded history, and they were still out there, still watching,
Speaker 2: still hungry. Marcus looked at the window, at the darkness
Speaker 2: beyond the mountains rose in the distance, black shapes against
Speaker 2: a black sky. How many creatures lived in those peaks?
Speaker 2: How many humans had disappeared into those forests over the years,
Speaker 2: written off as accidents or getting lost or simple bad luck.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to know, but he kept reading anyway.
Speaker 2: October twenty fifth through November one, seventeen ninety one, Will
Speaker 2: Harper died on the night of October twenty ninth. I
Speaker 2: will record the circumstances as accurately as I can, though
Speaker 2: even now, years later, I am uncertain what truly happened.
Speaker 2: What I know is fragmentary, incomplete, filtered through the lens
Speaker 2: of a grief I still haven't fully processed. Will's mental
Speaker 2: state had continued to deteriorate in the days following our
Speaker 2: discovery of the bones. He barely ate, He barely slept.
Speaker 2: His sketch book was never out of his hands, pages
Speaker 2: filling with images that none of us could bear to examine.
Speaker 2: When he spoke at all, it was in fragments, broken
Speaker 2: sentences about seeing, about understanding, about the creatures, showing him
Speaker 2: truths we couldn't perceive. He's lost, Thomas told me privately
Speaker 2: on the morning of the twenty ninth. His mind has
Speaker 2: retreated somewhere we can't follow. Even if we got him
Speaker 2: home tomorrow, I don't think he'd ever recover. Is he
Speaker 2: dangerous to himself, certainly to us? Thomas hesitated. I don't
Speaker 2: think so, but I can't be sure of anything anymore.
Speaker 2: I made a decision that I've regretted ever since. We
Speaker 2: were shorthanded, exhausted, stretched thin by the demands of survival
Speaker 2: in this hostile place. I assigned Will tonight watch the
Speaker 2: easiest duty, the one that required the least active involvement.
Speaker 2: Just sit by the fire and wake someone if anything happened.
Speaker 2: I should have known better, I should have seen the signs,
Speaker 2: but I was tired and worried and focused on one
Speaker 2: hundred other things. I let Will Harper take the watch,
Speaker 2: and sometime during the night, while the rest of us
Speaker 2: slept the deep sleep of exhaustion, Will Harper walked into
Speaker 2: the darkness and never came back. We discovered his absence
Speaker 2: at dawn. His sketch book lay open on his bedroll,
Speaker 2: the pages covered with a single word, repeated over and over,
Speaker 2: see filling every available space, written so hard that the
Speaker 2: pencil had torn through the paper. And find him, I ordered.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: We spread out, searching in every direction, calling his name
Speaker 2: into a morning fog that muffled sound and turned the
Speaker 2: forest into a maze of gray shapes. The creatures watched us.
Speaker 2: They were always watching but they didn't interfere, didn't help,
Speaker 2: didn't try to stop what we would find. And then
Speaker 2: Zeke found him. My nephew's scream, the second terrible scream
Speaker 2: I'd heard in these mountains, brought us running to a
Speaker 2: clearing in the densest part of the valley forest, a
Speaker 2: place where the trees grew so close together that the
Speaker 2: canopy formed a nearly solid ceiling, where the light was
Speaker 2: dim even at midday. Will Harper lay on his back
Speaker 2: in the center of the clearing. He was surrounded by creatures,
Speaker 2: a circle of them, perhaps a dozen, standing at the
Speaker 2: edge of the open space and looking down at his body.
Speaker 2: Not aggressive, not curious, just present, bearing witness. I pushed
Speaker 2: through them. They parted to let me pass, and knelt
Speaker 2: beside the man I had led to his death. He
Speaker 2: was clearly dead. His eyes were open, staring at the
Speaker 2: canopy above, seeing nothing. His face was frozen in an
Speaker 2: expression I couldn't interpret, not terror exactly, though terror was
Speaker 2: part of it. Something else, wonder perhaps, or revelation, the
Speaker 2: look of a man who had finally seen what he'd
Speaker 2: been seeking. There were no visible wounds, no signs of violence.
Speaker 2: His body was intact, his clothes undamaged. What happened, Jim demanded.
Speaker 2: He had his rifle raised, though there was nothing to
Speaker 2: shoot at. What did they do to him? I don't
Speaker 2: think they did anything, Thomas said quietly. He had joined
Speaker 2: me beside Will's body, his physician's hands automatically checking for pulse,
Speaker 2: for breath, for any sign of life. His heart simply stopped,
Speaker 2: as if something overwhelmed it, or as if he chose
Speaker 2: to let go chose. I don't know how else to
Speaker 2: explain it. Thomas sat back on his heels, his face
Speaker 2: gray with exhaustion and grief. Look at his expression. That's
Speaker 2: not the face of a man who was murdered. That's
Speaker 2: the face of someone who saw something, something profound, something
Speaker 2: that broke whatever connection his mind still had to his body.
Speaker 2: I looked at Will's face. Thomas was right. There was
Speaker 2: no terror in that frozen expression, no pain, just transcendence,
Speaker 2: the look of a man who had finally found what
Speaker 2: he was looking for, even if what he found had
Speaker 2: killed him. The creatures dispersed slowly as we examined the body.
Speaker 2: One by one, they turned and walked back into the forest,
Speaker 2: their great shapes disappearing into the fog. Until only the
Speaker 2: scarred elder remained. He stood at the edge of the clearing,
Speaker 2: watching us with those ancient patient eyes.
Speaker 1: Did you do this?
Speaker 2: I asked him. I knew he couldn't understand my words,
Speaker 2: but I needed to say them anyway. Did you kill
Speaker 2: him or did you just let him die? The creature
Speaker 2: was silent, of course they were always silent, But something
Speaker 2: in its posture shifted, something that might have been acknowledgment
Speaker 2: or regret, or simply acceptance of an outcome it had
Speaker 2: known was coming. This is what happened sometimes, This is
Speaker 2: how it ends for some. Then it turned and walked
Speaker 2: into the forest, and we were alone with our dead.
Speaker 2: We buried will Harper in the clearing where he died.
Speaker 2: It was the first proper burial we'd performed on Ree
Speaker 2: had left us nothing to bury, and we took our
Speaker 2: time with it. Dug a deep grave, wrapped his body
Speaker 2: in blankets, said words that felt inadequate, but where all
Speaker 2: we had his sketchbook went into the grave with him.
Speaker 2: None of us wanted to carry those images back to
Speaker 2: the civilized world. Let them stay here in this place
Speaker 2: that had consumed him, Let them be forgotten. He saw
Speaker 2: too much Thomas said, as we filled in the grave.
Speaker 2: Some things aren't meant to be seen. Then what are
Speaker 2: we doing here? We've seen the same things. Why hasn't
Speaker 2: it killed us? Maybe it will eventually. Thomas's voice was
Speaker 2: barely audible. Maybe that's what we carry home with us,
Speaker 2: the thing that kills us, just slower, one piece at
Speaker 2: a time. I wanted to argue, wanted to tell him
Speaker 2: he was wrong, that we would survive this, that the
Speaker 2: knowledge we carried would be worth all the sacrifice. But
Speaker 2: standing over will Harper's grave, I couldn't find the words.
Speaker 2: Two men dead. Eight remained when we entered this valley.
Speaker 2: Seven would leave it? How many would make it home?
Speaker 2: Marcus closed the journal and let his head fall back
Speaker 2: against the chair. Will Harper, the artist, the one who
Speaker 2: saw things others couldn't see, dead in a clearing, surrounded
Speaker 2: by creatures, his heart simply stopped. Overwhelmed by understanding, killed
Speaker 2: by revelation. Marcus thought about his father, the long walks
Speaker 2: in the mountains, the strange silences, the expression he sometimes
Speaker 2: wore when he stared at the forest, the expression Marcus
Speaker 2: had never been able to name. Had his father seen something,
Speaker 2: had the creatures shown him what they'd shown Will Harper
Speaker 2: had it been killing him slowly, one piece at a time.
Speaker 2: Marcus looked at the remaining journals. There was more to come,
Speaker 2: the expedition's return, the oath of secrecy, Elijah's final years
Speaker 2: guarding the knowledge that had cost so much to obtain,
Speaker 2: Marcus's own role in this story that stretched across two centuries.
Speaker 2: He picked up the journal and kept reading.
Speaker 1: They say you don't have to go home, but you
Speaker 1: can stay. Oh world happens steps chart, this child, that chart.
Speaker 1: Everything came. Riding back, ride back, joy for me and
Speaker 1: the enjoy. Stay right there, you come in right away.
Speaker 1: Still sat still, don't don't don't abouts still stills, us
Speaker 1: states things steam Uss