Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog.
Speaker 1: My dog. We're flying through the air over the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm
Speaker 1: really confused. All I saw was my dog coming over
Speaker 1: the fence and he was dead. And once you hit
Speaker 1: the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I
Speaker 1: saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what
Speaker 1: are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
Speaker 1: around out here? Did you see what it was?
Speaker 2: Or was it was?
Speaker 1: Standing enough? I'm out here looking through the window now
Speaker 1: and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 1: Jesus Quice, you better hello, get thebody out here? What
Speaker 1: quen on out there? I thought of amnures about tex
Speaker 1: forty nine? I don't know. Easy ann out there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm walking right hey.
Speaker 2: November one through fifteenth, seventeen ninety nine, we left the
Speaker 2: valley on the first day of November. There was nothing
Speaker 2: more to see, nothing more to learn. We had found
Speaker 2: what we came looking for, more than we came looking for,
Speaker 2: and two of our company had paid the ultimate price
Speaker 2: for that knowledge. The creatures had shown us their stronghold,
Speaker 2: their population, their ancient presence on this continent. They had
Speaker 2: allowed us to witness things no human had witnessed before.
Speaker 2: Now it was time to go home. The decision was unanimous,
Speaker 2: which surprised me. I had expected Sam to argue for
Speaker 2: staying longer, for pressing deeper into the creature's mysteries. But
Speaker 2: even Sam, who had spent twenty years searching for this moment,
Speaker 2: agreed that we had reached the end. I know what
Speaker 2: I needed to know, he said quietly, as we packed
Speaker 2: our meager supplies. They're real, They've always been real, and
Speaker 2: they're going to be here long after we're gone. Is
Speaker 2: that enough? It has to be. He looked at the
Speaker 2: valley spread out before us, the ancient forest, the winding river,
Speaker 2: the creatures visible on every ridge and clearing. Some questions
Speaker 2: don't have answers we can live with. This might be
Speaker 2: one of them. The journey back through the canyon felt different,
Speaker 2: easier somehow, as if the creatures were helping us leave,
Speaker 2: as they had helped us enter. The passages that had
Speaker 2: seemed impassable before now open smoothly. The obstacles that had
Speaker 2: blocked our path on the way in had somehow vanished.
Speaker 2: They wanted us to go. Maybe they had always wanted
Speaker 2: us to go. Maybe the entire journey, the guidance, the gifts,
Speaker 2: the revelations, had been designed to lead us to this moment,
Speaker 2: to show us enough to understand, to burden us with
Speaker 2: knowledge we could never share, and then to send us
Speaker 2: back into the human world with the weight of that understanding.
Speaker 2: A cruel joke perhaps, or something else entirely with the creatures,
Speaker 2: it was impossible to know. The debate about what to
Speaker 2: do with our knowledge began before we left their territory.
Speaker 2: Thomas argued for publication. This is the greatest discovery in
Speaker 2: natural history, he said, his voice carrying echoes of the
Speaker 2: certainty he'd once possessed. A surviving population of unknown hominids,
Speaker 2: evidence that challenges everything we thought we knew about human evolution.
Speaker 2: We have a duty to share this with the scientific community.
Speaker 2: And what happens?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 2: Sam asked, what happens when the hunters come, when the
Speaker 2: settlers arrived with their axes and their rifles. How long
Speaker 2: does your hidden population survive once the world knows about them.
Speaker 2: We could protect them, establish a sanctuary. The government, The
Speaker 2: government will do what governments always do what benefits them,
Speaker 2: what brings them power. Sam's weathered face was hard. You've
Speaker 2: seen what these creatures are capable of. Do you really
Speaker 2: think any government would pass up the chance to study them,
Speaker 2: to capture them, to use them? Then what we keep
Speaker 2: silent forever? Pretend we never found anything? Maybe Solomon spoke quietly,
Speaker 2: but his voice carried weight. My grandmother's people kept secrets
Speaker 2: for generations, not because they were selfish, because they understood
Speaker 2: that some truths destroy what they touch. The debate continued
Speaker 2: for days as we traveled east through the territories of
Speaker 2: peoples who had known about the creatures for millennia and
Speaker 2: had chosen to keep that knowledge hidden. The Wyandot received
Speaker 2: us with something like respect. We had gone into the
Speaker 2: forbidden lands and returned, which was more than most had achieved.
Speaker 2: She who remembers, listened to our accounts with milky eyes
Speaker 2: that seemed to see through to our souls. You understand now,
Speaker 2: she said, what we have always do, understood why we
Speaker 2: have always been silent. Will you tell us what to do?
Speaker 2: I cannot. This is your burden, Now your choice, she smiled,
Speaker 2: and there was genuine warmth in the expression. But I
Speaker 2: will tell you this. The elder brothers have survived for
Speaker 2: longer than human memory. They have survived wars and diseases
Speaker 2: and the expansion of peoples across this land. They will
Speaker 2: survive whatever you decide, and us will we survive. Some
Speaker 2: truths are heavier than others. Some break the people who
Speaker 2: carry them. She reached out and touched my chest, where
Speaker 2: the pendant still hung. You have been marked. That mark
Speaker 2: carries weight. The question is whether you are strong enough
Speaker 2: to bear it. I didn't know the answer to that question.
Speaker 2: I still don't. By the time we reached the Shawnee Territory,
Speaker 2: a decision had formed, not through consensus, but through exhaustion.
Speaker 2: We would keep silent. The journals would be hidden, the
Speaker 2: knowledge would be passed down through my family, waiting for
Speaker 2: a day when humanity might be ready to learn the truth.
Speaker 2: If that day ever came. We gathered one final time
Speaker 2: by the Ohio River, seven men who had entered the
Speaker 2: wilderness seeking answers and found more than any of us
Speaker 2: had bargained for. The evening was cold, the first hints
Speaker 2: of winter in the air. Across the river, the civilized
Speaker 2: world waited, towns and farms and people who slept safely
Speaker 2: at night, unaware of what walked in the deep places
Speaker 2: between the mountains. Swear it, I said, Swear that you
Speaker 2: will keep this secret, that you will tell no one
Speaker 2: what we found, what we witnessed, what we lost. One
Speaker 2: by one, they swore Thomas the scientist, who had come
Speaker 2: seeking knowledge and found the limits of what knowledge should contain.
Speaker 2: Sam the frontiersman, who had spent twenty years waiting for
Speaker 2: this expedition and now carried answers that provided no peace.
Speaker 2: Jim the soldier, who had been broken and mended and
Speaker 2: broken again by what we'd witnessed. Solomon the blacksmith, whose
Speaker 2: grandmother's stories had prepared him better than any of us
Speaker 2: for the truth. Josiah the minister, who had lost his
Speaker 2: faith and perhaps found something to replace it, Zeke, my
Speaker 2: nephew who had entered the wilderness as a boy and
Speaker 2: emerged as something else entirely, and myself, Elijah Stone, Captain, explorer,
Speaker 2: keeper of secrets. We crossed the river at dawn. Behind us,
Speaker 2: the mountains rose into clouds that hid their peaks. Somewhere
Speaker 2: in those mountains, the creatures watched us go. I could
Speaker 2: feel their eyes on my back. Patient ancient, unconcerned with
Speaker 2: whatever we decided to do with our knowledge. They had
Speaker 2: survived for millennia. They would survive this too. The question
Speaker 2: was whether we would. Marcus turned the final page of
Speaker 2: the fourth journal. The expedition was over. Seven men had
Speaker 2: returned from a journey that had claimed two lives and
Speaker 2: changed the survivors in ways they were only beginning to understand.
Speaker 2: The secret had been sworn, the journals had been hidden,
Speaker 2: and the creatures had watched them go, patient as always, eternal,
Speaker 2: as always, waiting for whatever came next. Marcus looked at
Speaker 2: the remaining journals, three more, plus the portfolio of drawings
Speaker 2: in the bundle of letters, his ancestors' final years, the
Speaker 2: passing of the torch through generations, the chain of keepers
Speaker 2: that had led finally to Marcus himself. He was tired,
Speaker 2: so tired he'd been reading for days, losing track of time,
Speaker 2: neglecting everything except the narrative that had consumed him. His
Speaker 2: body ached, his eyes burned, his mind felt stretched thin
Speaker 2: by the weight of what he'd learned. But he couldn't
Speaker 2: stop now, not when he was so close to understanding
Speaker 2: what his father had spent his life guarding, Not when
Speaker 2: he was about to learn what it meant to be
Speaker 2: the latest keeper of secrets that should never be told.
Speaker 2: He picked up the Fifth Journal and began to read.
Speaker 2: November fifteenth, seventeen ninety nine through February first, eighteen hundred,
Speaker 2: the journey home took nearly three months. Three months of
Speaker 2: winter travel through mountains that seemed determined to kill us.
Speaker 2: Three months of frozen rivers and snow covered trails, and
Speaker 2: nights so cold that ice formed on our blankets. Three
Speaker 2: months of silence, each man wrapped in his own thoughts,
Speaker 2: processing what we had witnessed in ways that words could
Speaker 2: not express. The creatures did not follow us beyond their territory.
Speaker 2: That boundary, invisible but absolute, remained intact. Once we crossed
Speaker 2: back into the lands where humans lived and farmed and hunted,
Speaker 2: the watching eyes disappeared, the wood knocks ceased, the howls
Speaker 2: that had become our nighttime companions fell silent. We were alone,
Speaker 2: truly alone, for the first time in nearly a year.
Speaker 2: The absence of their presence was strange, unsettling. After so
Speaker 2: many months of constant surveillance, the feeling of being unobserved
Speaker 2: seemed almost unnatural. I found myself, looking over my shoulder,
Speaker 2: scanning the tree line, searching for shapes that were no
Speaker 2: longer there. They're not coming, Sam said one evening, reading
Speaker 2: my thoughts. We've left their world. We're back in hours.
Speaker 2: Does it feel different to you? Everything feels different now.
Speaker 2: He stared into the fire, his weathered face illuminated by
Speaker 2: the dancing flames. The world hasn't changed, but we have.
Speaker 2: We can never look at it the same way again.
Speaker 2: He was right. The civilized world, when we finally reached
Speaker 2: it seemed strange to me. The towns we passed through,
Speaker 2: the farms we stopped at for supplies, the ordinary people
Speaker 2: going about their ordinary lives. All of it felt like
Speaker 2: a dream, a pleasant fiction that we could no longer
Speaker 2: fully believe in. They didn't know, None of them knew.
Speaker 2: They thought they were alone on the continent, the undisputed
Speaker 2: masters of a wilderness that was theirs for the taking.
Speaker 2: They thought the forest held nothing but animals and opportunity.
Speaker 2: They were wrong, and we couldn't tell them, couldn't warn them,
Speaker 2: couldn't share the burden of knowledge that had cost two
Speaker 2: men their lives and would haunt the rest of us forever.
Speaker 2: The survivors changed in different ways. Jim grew quieter, more stable.
Speaker 2: The violence that had been building in him seemed to
Speaker 2: have burned out, replaced by something calmer. He spoke less
Speaker 2: than before, but when he did speak, his words carried weight.
Speaker 2: The war that had broken him once had found resolution somehow,
Speaker 2: Perhaps confronting a terror greater than any battle had put
Speaker 2: his old demons in perspective. Thomas retreated into documentation. He
Speaker 2: wrote constantly, notes, observations, theories, as if putting words on
Speaker 2: paper could somehow contain the chaos of what we'd experienced.
Speaker 2: His earlier arrogance was gone, replaced by a of desperate humility.
Speaker 2: He'd spent his life believing that science could explain everything.
Speaker 2: Now he knew better. Solomon carved every night. When we
Speaker 2: stopped to rest, his knife came out, and shapes emerged
Speaker 2: from the wood, creatures and humans standing together or apart,
Speaker 2: symbols that matched the ones we'd seen in the caves,
Speaker 2: a visual record that he never explained, but that seemed
Speaker 2: to bring him peace. Josiah prayed less, not because he'd
Speaker 2: lost faith. If anything, he seemed more at peace with
Speaker 2: spiritual matters than he'd been since the death of his family.
Speaker 2: But his prayers were different, now, quieter, more personal, as
Speaker 2: if he'd found a god who listened, even if that
Speaker 2: god wasn't the one he'd originally been seeking. And Zeke,
Speaker 2: my nephew, who had entered the wilderness as a boy,
Speaker 2: had become someone I barely recognized. There was knowledge in
Speaker 2: his eyes that shouldn't have been. There, a stillness in
Speaker 2: his manner that seemed ancient. Somehow. He rarely spoke, but
Speaker 2: when he looked at the forest, I knew he was
Speaker 2: seeing things the rest of us couldn't perceive. The juvenile
Speaker 2: had changed him. That connection, whatever it had been, had
Speaker 2: left its mark. I worried about him, worried about all
Speaker 2: of us. We reached Wyandot Territory in late December. She
Speaker 2: who remembers, was waiting for us. You survived, she said,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a question some of us. I know her
Speaker 2: clouded eyes somehow saw everything. The elder brothers send word
Speaker 2: in ways we do not fully understand. We knew of
Speaker 2: your losses. We grieve with you. We're going home now,
Speaker 2: keeping the secret as you advised, as we have kept
Speaker 2: it for generations. She reached out and touched the pendant
Speaker 2: at my chest. This belongs with our people, but I
Speaker 2: think it has chosen to stay with you. What does
Speaker 2: that mean? It means you are part of their story now,
Speaker 2: all of you. For good or ill, you carry their mond.
Speaker 2: You will carry it until you die. She was right.
Speaker 2: I've carried it for twenty seven years.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: As I write these final words, the mark has never faded.
Speaker 2: The knowledge has never dimmed. Some truths, once known, cannot
Speaker 2: be unknown. The Shawnee Lands passed in a blur of
Speaker 2: snow and silence. Swift Hawk, the guide who had taken
Speaker 2: us to the boundary and expected never to see us again,
Speaker 2: stared at us in disbelief when we appeared at his village.
Speaker 2: You returned, he said, No one returns we did. Then
Speaker 2: you're either blessed or cursed. I cannot tell which, neither
Speaker 2: can we. The Lenape Territory came next. Gray Owl had
Speaker 2: died in our absence, old Age, his people said, though
Speaker 2: I suspected the weight of the secrets he'd kept had
Speaker 2: finally become too heavy. But as people remembered us, remembered
Speaker 2: the pendant he'd given me, remembered the warnings that had
Speaker 2: gone unheeded for more Sasquatch ot to see. We'll be
Speaker 2: right back after these messages. You have seen them, an
Speaker 2: elder said, not a question. You have walked in their world. Yes,
Speaker 2: and now you understand why we do not speak of
Speaker 2: these things. Yes. Good, he nodded slowly. Then perhaps the
Speaker 2: elder brothers chose wisely in letting you live. We reached
Speaker 2: the first American settlement in late January, a small town
Speaker 2: on the edge of the frontier, populated by farmers and
Speaker 2: merchants who knew nothing of what we'd witnessed. They welcomed
Speaker 2: us warmly. Travelers were rare and winter and asked the
Speaker 2: questions that travelers are always asked, Where have you been?
Speaker 2: What did you find any luck? We lied, We smiled
Speaker 2: and lied, and accepted their hospitality, and pretended to be
Speaker 2: ordinary men returning from an ordinary expedition. The words tasted
Speaker 2: like ash in my mouth, but I said them anyway.
Speaker 2: Some truths cannot be shared, Some burdens must be carried alone.
Speaker 2: We pushed on toward Richmond, toward the tavern where this
Speaker 2: journey had begun nearly a year before, toward the moment
Speaker 2: when we would have to decide once and for all
Speaker 2: what to do with the knowledge we carried. The world
Speaker 2: was unchanged, the towns, the roads, the people going about
Speaker 2: their lives. All of it was exactly as we'd left it.
Speaker 2: But we were not unchanged. We would never be unchanged again.
Speaker 2: We had seen the truth, and the truth had seen us.
Speaker 2: Marcus read the words twice, feeling the weight of them
Speaker 2: settle into his bones. His ancestor had carried this burden
Speaker 2: for decades, had lived in the shadow of knowledge that
Speaker 2: could never be shared, had watched the world continue in
Speaker 2: its ignorance while he alone understood what waited in the wilderness.
Speaker 2: His father had done the same, and now it was
Speaker 2: Marcus's turn. He looked at the window. Dawn was breaking
Speaker 2: over the mountain, painting the sky and shades of pink
Speaker 2: and gold. He'd been reading all night again. Days had
Speaker 2: passed since he'd first opened the trunk in the cellar,
Speaker 2: days of reading, of revelation, of understanding, and he still
Speaker 2: wasn't finished. There was more to come, the Oath, the
Speaker 2: Keeper's Legacy, the epilogue that would bring everything together. Marcus
Speaker 2: stretched his aching muscles and went to make coffee. Then
Speaker 2: he returned to the chair and picked up the journal.
Speaker 2: The end was approaching, and he needed to see it.
Speaker 2: Through February through March eighteen hundred, Richmond, Virginia, we gathered
Speaker 2: one final time at Thornton's Tavern, the same tavern where
Speaker 2: we had met nearly a year before, the same private
Speaker 2: room where nine men had drunk whiskey and shared dreams
Speaker 2: and prepared to journey into the unknown. Now only seven remained,
Speaker 2: and the dreams had been replaced by nightmares that would
Speaker 2: never fully fade. Two chairs sat empty at the table,
Speaker 2: on re Beaumont's chair, Will Harper's chair. We didn't speak
Speaker 2: of them directly, but their absence filled the room like smoke,
Speaker 2: like grief, like the weight of everything We couldn't say.
Speaker 2: The whiskey was poured, the fire burned low in the hearth.
Speaker 2: Outside February rain streaked the windows, blurring the lights of
Speaker 2: the city beyond. We need to decide, I said, what
Speaker 2: do we do with what we know? The debate had
Speaker 2: been ongoing for weeks, but now it reached its final form.
Speaker 2: Each man spoke in turn, laying out the arguments that
Speaker 2: had consumed us since we left the Hidden Valley. Thomas
Speaker 2: went first. The scientific community deserves to know. This discovery
Speaker 2: could transform our understanding of natural history, of human evolution,
Speaker 2: of the very nature of intelligence on this planet. To
Speaker 2: keep its secret would be a crime against knowledge itself.
Speaker 2: And what happens when the hunters come? Sam asked, when
Speaker 2: the government sends expeditions with orders to capture specimens, when
Speaker 2: every fool with a rifle thinks he can make his
Speaker 2: fortune bringing back a creature's head. We could establish protections,
Speaker 2: set boundaries, make it illegal to laws don't stop men
Speaker 2: who smell profit. You know that as well as I do.
Speaker 2: Sam's voice was hard. We saw what they can do,
Speaker 2: We saw what they've survived. But even they have limits,
Speaker 2: even they can't survive a war with humanity. Then what
Speaker 2: we stay silent forever? Let future generations think they're alone
Speaker 2: in a world that's anything but Solomon spoke next, his
Speaker 2: voice calm and certain. My grandmother kept secrets her whole life,
Speaker 2: secrets her grandmother kept, and her grandmother before that, not
Speaker 2: to protect themselves, to protect others from what from truths
Speaker 2: they weren't ready for, from knowledge that would destroy what
Speaker 2: they touched. He held up one of his carvings, a
Speaker 2: creature standing with one hand raised palm out. These beings
Speaker 2: have served because they stayed hidden because they let humans
Speaker 2: believe they were alone. The moment that changes, the moment
Speaker 2: the world knows the truth, everything changes with it. Maybe
Speaker 2: it should change. Maybe humanity needs to understand that we're
Speaker 2: not the only intelligent beings on this continent. Maybe, But
Speaker 2: are we the ones to make that decision? Do we
Speaker 2: have the right to change the world because we happened
Speaker 2: to stumble into something we were never meant to find.
Speaker 2: The debate continued for hours, arguments and counter arguments, hopes
Speaker 2: and fears, the weight of responsibility pressing down on all
Speaker 2: of us. In the end, it was Josiah who found
Speaker 2: the words that resolved our impasse. I came on this
Speaker 2: expedition seeking proof of God's design, he said, quietly, seeking
Speaker 2: evidence that the world made sense, that there was purpose
Speaker 2: behind the suffering i'd witnessed. I didn't find that proof,
Speaker 2: but I found something else, mystery, wonder, the understanding that
Speaker 2: the world is larger and stranger and more terrifying than
Speaker 2: anything I'd imagined. He looked around the table, meeting each
Speaker 2: man's eyes. In turn, I don't think we have the
Speaker 2: right to share this, not because the creatures need protection,
Speaker 2: though they do, but because humanity isn't ready. We're too young,
Speaker 2: too eager to destroy what we can't understand, too willing
Speaker 2: to take what isn't ours. And when will we be ready?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe never, maybe in one hundred years,
Speaker 2: maybe in a thousand. He smiled, and there was peace
Speaker 2: in the expression that hadn't been there when we started
Speaker 2: this journey. But I do know this. The knowledge will survive.
Speaker 2: It will pass from one generation to the next, waiting
Speaker 2: for the day when someone decides the time has come,
Speaker 2: and that's enough. It has to be enough. The vote
Speaker 2: was taken six in favor of silence, one abstention Thomas,
Speaker 2: who couldn't bring himself to agree, but couldn't bring himself
Speaker 2: to oppose either. The oath was sworn. I swear to
Speaker 2: keep this secret, each man said in turn, to pass
Speaker 2: it only to those who can be trusted, to wait
Speaker 2: for the day when humanity is ready for the truth.
Speaker 2: Until that day comes, I will guard this knowledge with
Speaker 2: my life. Seven hands on the table, seven voices in
Speaker 2: the dim room, Seven men bound together by an oath
Speaker 2: that would define the rest of their lives. The partings
Speaker 2: that followed were brief but heavy with emotion. Thomas returned
Speaker 2: to Philadelphia to a career that would never quite satisfy him,
Speaker 2: to a lifetime of knowing that his greatest discovery would
Speaker 2: never be published. He died in eighteen twenty six, still bitter,
Speaker 2: still regretting the choice we'd made, Josiah headed west, seeking
Speaker 2: something he could never quite name. He found peace somewhere
Speaker 2: in the territories beyond the Mississippi, living among people who
Speaker 2: didn't ask questions about his past. He died in eighteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: at peace with himself and whatever God he'd found, and
Speaker 2: went north to find his grandmother's people to share the
Speaker 2: stories that had prepared him for everything we'd witnessed. He
Speaker 2: passed from fever in eighteen fifteen, but not before teaching
Speaker 2: his children the same stories his grandmother had taught him. Sam,
Speaker 2: Dear Sam, who had waited twenty years for answers and
Speaker 2: found more than he'd bargained for, returned to the wilderness,
Speaker 2: not to the creature's territory, but close enough. He lived
Speaker 2: another twenty three years, most of them alone in the
Speaker 2: mountains he loved. He died peacefully in eighteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: exactly as he would have wanted. Jim stayed in Virginia,
Speaker 2: trying to rebuild a life that the war had shattered
Speaker 2: and the expedition had shattered again. He married, had children,
Speaker 2: lived quietly until eighteen thirty, when his heart finally gave out.
Speaker 2: His last words, according to his wife, were about the creatures,
Speaker 2: a language she didn't understand, a secret she would never know.
Speaker 2: Zekephe went home to his mother, who never learned where
Speaker 2: he'd been or what he'd seen. He married young, had
Speaker 2: children young, died young. The knowledge he carried seemed to
Speaker 2: burn through him faster than the rest of us. He
Speaker 2: was gone by eighteen twenty, aged only forty and me.
Speaker 2: I built a cabin in the Virginia Mountains as close
Speaker 2: to the creature's territory as I dared to go. I married,
Speaker 2: fathered children, lived a life that appeared ordinary from the outside.
Speaker 2: But every night I watched the forest. Every night I
Speaker 2: waited for signs that they were still out there. They were,
Speaker 2: they are, And when I die, which will be soon now,
Speaker 2: I think the burden will pass to my son, and
Speaker 2: from my son to his children, and from them to theirs,
Speaker 2: the chain of keepers stretching forward into a future none
Speaker 2: of us can see. Waiting for the day when humanity
Speaker 2: is ready, if it's ever ready. Marcus set down the
Speaker 2: sixth Journal. His ancestor's voice had grown quieter in those
Speaker 2: final pages, more reflective. The fire of the expedition had
Speaker 2: cooled into something steady and enduring, a lifetime commitment to
Speaker 2: a secret that could never be shared. The seventh Journal
Speaker 2: remained Elijah's final entry, the passing of the torch to
Speaker 2: the next generation, and then the epilogue, the present day,
Speaker 2: Marcus's own story. He was so close, now, so close
Speaker 2: to understanding everything. He picked up the Final Journal July fourth,
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty six, Elijah's final entry. Today is the fiftieth
Speaker 2: anniversary of American Independence. Fifty years since a group of
Speaker 2: men signed a document that changed the course of history.
Speaker 2: Fifty years since this nation declared itself free from tyranny.
Speaker 2: Fifty years of growth and expansion and transformation. I am
Speaker 2: sixty nine years old. The men I traveled with into
Speaker 2: the wilderness are dead, all of them. Sam went three
Speaker 2: years ago, peacefully in the mountains he loved. Thomas died
Speaker 2: last year, still regretting what he never published. Jim just
Speaker 2: last month, his heart finally giving out after decades of
Speaker 2: quiet struggle, only I remain. Only I still carry the
Speaker 2: full weight of what we witnessed. I sit now in
Speaker 2: the cabin I built in these Virginia Mountains, looking out
Speaker 2: at the same peaks that called to me all those
Speaker 2: years ago. The forest is different, now, less wild, more tamed,
Speaker 2: the expansion of civilization pushing ever deeper into territories that
Speaker 2: were once pure wilderness. But out there, beyond the farthest
Speaker 2: farms and newest settlements, the creatures remain. I know this
Speaker 2: because I've seen them twice more in my life since
Speaker 2: the expedition ended, glimpses at the edge of clearings, faces
Speaker 2: in the darkness, shapes that shouldn't exist, but do. They're
Speaker 2: still watching, still waiting, still pay in ways that make
Speaker 2: our human concerns seem trivial. The first sighting was in
Speaker 2: eighteen o five. I was walking in the deep forest
Speaker 2: when I felt the familiar sensation of being watched. I
Speaker 2: turned and there it was a creature, standing in the
Speaker 2: shadows between two massive oaks, its eyes reflecting the late
Speaker 2: afternoon light. We looked at each other for a long moment,
Speaker 2: neither of us moved. Then it raised one hand, palm out,
Speaker 2: fingers spread and disappeared into the forest, the gesture of peace,
Speaker 2: the same gesture I'd seen the scarred elder make at
Speaker 2: the boundary of their territory. They remembered. After six years,
Speaker 2: they still remembered. The second sighting was just last year.
Speaker 2: I'd grown old and slow. My leg's no longer capable
Speaker 2: of the long walks that had once been my habit,
Speaker 2: but I could still reach the ridge above my cabin,
Speaker 2: the one that looks out over the deep wilderness to
Speaker 2: the west. I was sitting there at sunset, watching the
Speaker 2: shadows lengthen across the valleys below, when I felt it again,
Speaker 2: that presence, that weight of ancient eyes. I looked up,
Speaker 2: and there on the next ridge, perhaps a quarter mile away,
Speaker 2: stood a figure, large, dark, upright, too far to see clearly,
Speaker 2: but I knew what it was. It stood there for
Speaker 2: a long time, watching me as I watched it, two
Speaker 2: old beings separated by an impossible gulf, connected by something
Speaker 2: older than history. Then it turned and walked down into
Speaker 2: the valley, and I was alone again. They're still out there,
Speaker 2: They've always been out there, and they will be there
Speaker 2: when I'm gone. I've lived my life as a keeper
Speaker 2: of secrets, it's a strange vocation, if you can call
Speaker 2: it that. I married a woman who loved me without
Speaker 2: understanding me. I raised children who grew up thinking their
Speaker 2: father was simply eccentric. I watched the world change around
Speaker 2: me while I guarded knowledge that could have changed it
Speaker 2: even more. Was it worth it? I ask myself that
Speaker 2: question more often now as the end approaches. The answer
Speaker 2: changes depending on the day. Sometimes I think we made
Speaker 2: the right choice. The creatures have survived, the hidden valley
Speaker 2: remains hidden. The balance that has existed for millennia continues
Speaker 2: to hold. If we had revealed what we found, all
Speaker 2: of that would have been destroyed. Hunters would have come,
Speaker 2: Scientists would have captured and dissected and cataloged. The creatures
Speaker 2: would have been driven to extinction or reduced to zoo specimens.
Speaker 2: Some secrets deserve to be kept, But other times I wonder.
Speaker 2: The world is changing so fast, the wilderness shrinking year
Speaker 2: by year. Sooner or later, someone else will find what
Speaker 2: we found, someone who doesn't understand the need for silence,
Speaker 2: someone who will share the truth without considering the consequences.
Speaker 2: When that day comes, will I have wasted my life
Speaker 2: guarding a secret that was never mine to keep. I
Speaker 2: don't know, I'll never know, and stay tuned for more
Speaker 2: sasquatch ot to see. We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: All I can do is pass the burden to the
Speaker 2: next generation and trust that they will carry it as
Speaker 2: well as I have. My son, Marcus, I named him
Speaker 2: after my own father, knows where the journals are hidden.
Speaker 2: He knows enough about what they contain to understand the
Speaker 2: weight of the responsibility. He's promised to guard them as
Speaker 2: I have guarded them, to pass them down through his
Speaker 2: children and their children, and however many generations. It takes,
Speaker 2: the chain of keepers stretching forward into a future none
Speaker 2: of us can see, waiting for the day. I write
Speaker 2: these final words on a summer evening, with the sounds
Speaker 2: of the forest coming through my open window. Somewhere out there,
Speaker 2: not far, perhaps not even very far at all, the
Speaker 2: creatures are going about their lives as they have for millennia, watching, waiting, patient,
Speaker 2: beyond all human understanding. I don't know if we made
Speaker 2: the right choice. I don't know if there was a
Speaker 2: right choice, But the knowledge survives. That's something, And somewhere
Speaker 2: in the mountains.
Speaker 1: So do they.
Speaker 2: To whoever reads these words long after I am gone.
Speaker 2: You are the inheritor of a sacred trust. Guard it well.
Speaker 2: The world isn't ready for the truth. Maybe it never
Speaker 2: will be. But they're waiting. They've always been waiting, and
Speaker 2: they will be there when you're ready to find them,
Speaker 2: if you're ever ready, if anyone is ever ready. Elijah
Speaker 2: Stone July fourth, eighteen twenty six. Marcus closed the final journal.
Speaker 2: His hands were trembling, his vision was blurred with tears.
Speaker 2: He hadn't noticed falling. Two hundred years, two hundred years
Speaker 2: of keepers of guardians, of men and women who had
Speaker 2: spent their lives watching the mountains and wondering if the
Speaker 2: time had finally come. His father had been the last
Speaker 2: of them, and now the burden had passed to Marcus.
Speaker 2: He looked at the pendant around his neck, the stone
Speaker 2: that had been carried by Elijah Stone into the wilderness
Speaker 2: and back, the mark that identified him as someone who knew,
Speaker 2: someone who had been trusted with the truth. They have
Speaker 2: marked you now, for good or ill you are marked.
Speaker 2: The sun was setting outside. The mountains were turning gold,
Speaker 2: then orange, then purple. As the light faded somewhere out there,
Speaker 2: not far his ancestor had said, perhaps not even very
Speaker 2: far at all? The creatures were watching. Had they watched
Speaker 2: his father, all those years of long walks in the mountains,
Speaker 2: of strange silences, of expressions that Marcus had never been
Speaker 2: able to name. Had they watched Marcus himself in the
Speaker 2: days since he'd arrived at the cabin? Were they watching
Speaker 2: him now? He walked to the window and looked out
Speaker 2: at the darkness. The forest was a wall of black shapes,
Speaker 2: apes against the slightly lighter sky. Nothing moved, nothing made
Speaker 2: a sound, but the feeling was there, that presence, that
Speaker 2: weight of ancient eyes. He raised one hand, palm out,
Speaker 2: fingers spread the gesture of peace, and waited present day.
Speaker 2: One year later, Marcus Stone resigned from the University of Chicago,
Speaker 2: six weeks after finding the journals. His colleagues thought he
Speaker 2: was having a breakdown. His department chair suggested therapy. His
Speaker 2: sister Sarah, who had never understood his estrangement from their
Speaker 2: father and understood even less his sudden obsession with the
Speaker 2: cabin in the mountains, called repeatedly, leaving voicemails that ranged
Speaker 2: from concern to frustrated to borderline hostile. He listened to
Speaker 2: none of them. He had found something that changed everything,
Speaker 2: and he couldn't go back to teaching the comfortable lies
Speaker 2: of conventional history. When he knew what he now knew,
Speaker 2: the cabin became his home. His father's life became his blueprint.
Speaker 2: The isolation, the watching, the waiting. Marcus understood it all.
Speaker 2: Now understood why his father had retreated from the world,
Speaker 2: why he'd spent his days walking the mountains and his
Speaker 2: nights staring at the forest. Why he'd never been able
Speaker 2: to connect with his wife, his children, anyone who didn't
Speaker 2: share the weight of his knowledge. It wasn't coldness, it
Speaker 2: wasn't preference for solitude. It was responsibility. The chain of
Speaker 2: keepers had claimed another link. Marcus spent the first months
Speaker 2: reading and rereading the journals, cross referencing every detail with
Speaker 2: historical records, confirming everything that could be confirmed. The paper
Speaker 2: was authentic, the ink was authentic. The historical context was flawless.
Speaker 2: Valley Forge, the Onada Scouts, the politics of seventeen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: all of it perfect. The content was impossible, but the
Speaker 2: content was also true. He researched sightings, thousands of them,
Speaker 2: stretching back centuries, native legends from every tribe that had
Speaker 2: ever lived in the Appalachians, Settler accounts from the colonial period,
Speaker 2: modern reports, hikers who'd seen something massive in the forest,
Speaker 2: hunters who'd heard wood knocks in the night, campers who'd
Speaker 2: felt the weight of ancient eyes. They were all describing
Speaker 2: the same thing, the same creatures. His ancestor had encountered,
Speaker 2: the same beings who had watched humanity for millennia. And
Speaker 2: they were still out there. That was the remarkable thing.
Speaker 2: After centuries of expansion, of deforestation, of encroaching civilization, they
Speaker 2: were still out there, still hidden, still waiting. The physical
Speaker 2: evidence supported this conclusion. Marcus examined the pendant, the carved stones,
Speaker 2: the sketches from will Harper's surviving portfolio, all authentic, all
Speaker 2: impossible to explain by any conventional means. His ancestor had
Speaker 2: told the truth, and Marcus was the latest keeper of
Speaker 2: that truth. The decision formed slowly over the winter months,
Speaker 2: not to reveal everything, not yet, perhaps not ever, but
Speaker 2: not to remain entirely silent either. He began reaching out, carefully,
Speaker 2: testing reactions, looking for people who might understand. A Native
Speaker 2: American studies professor who had collected oral histories about the
Speaker 2: forest people, a conservation biologist who believed the Eastern wilderness
Speaker 2: still held undiscovered species, a documentary filmmaker who had been
Speaker 2: investigating bigfoot sightings for decades without finding definitive proof. People
Speaker 2: who might listen, People who might help protect what needed
Speaker 2: to be protected. The first responses were predictable skepticism, dismissal,
Speaker 2: the polite condescension of academics who believed they knew how
Speaker 2: the world worked. But some listened, Some wanted to see
Speaker 2: the evidence. Some were willing to consider possibilities that their
Speaker 2: trained had told them to reject. The network grew slowly,
Speaker 2: a dozen people, then two dozen, then fifty researchers, conservationists,
Speaker 2: indigenous advocates, people who understood that some truths were dangerous,
Speaker 2: people who could be trusted to protect rather than exploit.
Speaker 2: Not revelation, not silence, something in between, planting seeds, building
Speaker 2: toward a future that might be ready. The first expedition
Speaker 2: happened in April. Marcus led a small group into the mountains,
Speaker 2: the conservation biologist, the indigenous historian, two others who had
Speaker 2: proved themselves trustworthy. They carried no weapons, no cameras, no
Speaker 2: equipment that might be seen as threatening, just themselves and
Speaker 2: the pendant that had marked Marcus as someone who knew.
Speaker 2: They hiked for three days into the wilderness, past the
Speaker 2: edge of civilization, past the point where trails ended in
Speaker 2: the old forest began, and on the third night camped
Speaker 2: beside a stream that his ancestor might have crossed two
Speaker 2: centuries before. Marcus felt it, the presence, the weight of
Speaker 2: watching eyes. He stood up from the fire, his heart pounding,
Speaker 2: and walked to the edge of the clearing. The others
Speaker 2: watched him, uncertain, sensing something but not understanding what. It's okay.
Speaker 2: He said, they're here. He raised one hand, palm out,
Speaker 2: fingers spread, the gesture of peace. For a long moment,
Speaker 2: nothing happened. The forest was silent, the darkness was complete.
Speaker 2: Then something moved in the trees. A shape, massive, dark,
Speaker 2: moving with impossible grace between the ancient trunks. It emerged
Speaker 2: at the edge of the firelight and stopped seven feet tall,
Speaker 2: maybe more. Body covered in dark hair, shot through with
Speaker 2: reddish highlights. Face, almost human but not quite heavy, brow ridges,
Speaker 2: deep set eyes, a mouth that could have been capable
Speaker 2: of speech but never would be. And those eyes, those
Speaker 2: ancient patient eyes. They met Marcus's gaze, and he felt
Speaker 2: something pass between them, not communication, not understanding, but acknowledgment.
Speaker 2: You see me, I see you. That's all, That's everything.
Speaker 2: The creature looked at the pendent around Marcus's neck. Those
Speaker 2: deep eyes studied it for a long moment, and something
Speaker 2: in its posture shifted, recognition, perhaps memory of others who
Speaker 2: had worn that stone before. Then it raised one massive hand,
Speaker 2: palm out, fingers spread. The gesture was returned behind Marcus.
Speaker 2: He heard someone gasp, heard someone whisper a prayer, heard
Speaker 2: someone begin to cry, But he didn't turn around. He
Speaker 2: couldn't look away from those eyes, those eyes that had
Speaker 2: watched humanity since before history began, those eyes that would
Speaker 2: still be watching long after everyone in this clearing was
Speaker 2: dull ust. The creature held his gaze for what felt
Speaker 2: like eternity. Then it turned and walked back into the darkness,
Speaker 2: gone as silently as it had come. Marcus stood at
Speaker 2: the edge of the clearing for a long time, feeling
Speaker 2: the weight of two centuries settle onto his shoulders. The
Speaker 2: inheritance finally accepted the burden, finally understood they were real,
Speaker 2: They had always been real, and now a handful of
Speaker 2: humans knew the truth. What do we do now, the
Speaker 2: biologist asked. Marcus looked at the forest where the creature
Speaker 2: had disappeared, at the mountains, rising in the darkness, at
Speaker 2: a world that was larger and stranger and more terrifying
Speaker 2: than anyone wanted to believe. We protect them, he said.
Speaker 2: We document what we can, We share what we must,
Speaker 2: and we wait wait for what for humanity to be
Speaker 2: ready for the day when we can tell the truth
Speaker 2: without destroying what we found. He turned to face the others,
Speaker 2: and something in his expression made them fall silent. It
Speaker 2: might take one hundred years, it might take a thousand,
Speaker 2: but the knowledge will survive, and so will they. How
Speaker 2: can you be sure? Marcus touched the pendant at his chest.
Speaker 2: It was warm, pulsing with that familiar heart beat. Because
Speaker 2: they've survived this long, because they're smarter than we are
Speaker 2: in the ways that matter. Because they've been watching us
Speaker 2: since before we had names for ourselves, and they'll still
Speaker 2: be watching long after we're gone. He looked at the
Speaker 2: darkness one last time. They don't need us to protect them,
Speaker 2: they've never needed us. But we can help. We can
Speaker 2: buy them time. We can keep their secret until the
Speaker 2: world is ready to handle the truth. And if the
Speaker 2: world is never ready, Marcus smiled. It was his father's smile.
Speaker 2: He realized, the smile of a man who had accepted
Speaker 2: a burden that would never be lifted, a man who
Speaker 2: had made peace with the truth that most people would
Speaker 2: never be able to comprehend. Then we keep waiting, generation
Speaker 2: after generation, keep her after keeper, until the end of everything,
Speaker 2: if that's what it takes. He turned and walked back
Speaker 2: to the fire behind him. The forest was silent, empty.
Speaker 2: The creatures were gone for now, but they were still
Speaker 2: out there. They would always be out there, and Marcus Stone,
Speaker 2: the latest in a long line of keepers, would be
Speaker 2: watching for them for as long as it took, for
Speaker 2: the rest of his life, and perhaps beyond. The cabin
Speaker 2: in the Blue Ridge Mountain stands empty now most of
Speaker 2: the year. Marcus visits when he can, holidays, long weekends,
Speaker 2: whenever the weight of knowing becomes too heavy to carry alone.
Speaker 2: He's married now, has a daughter, a little girl who
Speaker 2: looks at the mountains with curious eyes, who asks about
Speaker 2: the sounds she hears at night, who seems to understand
Speaker 2: things she shouldn't be able to understand. He hasn't told
Speaker 2: her yet, she's too young. But someday, when she's ready,
Speaker 2: if she's ever ready, he'll show her the journals. He'll
Speaker 2: explain what they mean. He'll ask her if she wants
Speaker 2: to carry the burden that he has carried, that his
Speaker 2: father carried before him, that stretches back through generations, to
Speaker 2: a man who walked into the wilderness in seventeen ninety
Speaker 2: nine and found something that changed everything. The chain of keepers,
Speaker 2: still unbroken, still waiting, and somewhere in the mountains, perhaps
Speaker 2: not even very far away at all, the creatures are watching.
Speaker 2: They've always been watching, They always will be.
Speaker 1: Di the ch