One Hundred Miles to
Nowhere
Long
beams of sunlight filtered through the mid-October foliage and pools of red
light intermingled with the deepening tree shadows along the trail. If Wren climbed above the canopy, she knew
she would see the bright disc of the sun sinking quickly behind the rolling
Blue Ridge Mountains. Dusk was imminent, followed quickly by the blackness of a
night far from civilization. She
quickened her pace in dread, loping over roots and sharp stones that pushed up
through the dirt track.
Her
GPS watch buzzed against her wrist, and she took a glance down at her stats. A bold
number 45 flashed across the watch face, and she groaned as she calculated the
seven miles left until she made it out of the woods to find her crew at the
next aid station, ready with her head lamp and her friend Nicole, who would
pace her through the first hours of the night.
Wren tried to push the despair that crept though her mind to the side,
but it was clear there was no way she would make it out before true night descended
on the forest.
All
too quickly, the last golden flashes of light faded from the newly fallen leaf
litter. Wren’s steps began to slow as the graying shadows of gloaming settled
over the forest, softening edges and making the obstacles along the trail
increasingly dangerous. Soon, she was
traveling through a moonless night along the treacherous path. The lingering heat from the warm afternoon
quickly dissipated into the atmosphere, and a shiver went up Wren’s spine. The slowing whir of crickets sounded
melancholy and solemn to her ears.
Even
with eyes that had slowly adjusted to the loss of light, the trail was only
visible as a narrow strip of bare ground in the shuffled leaf litter that wound
between the vague outlines of tree trunks.
Wren softly cursed herself under her breath as her toes knocked into a
tree root which nearly sent her sprawling.
She righted herself and pressed on, searching the ground for a set of
white flags marking out the trail. Of
all the mistakes Wren could have made, forgetting to pull her headlamp from her
drop bag at the last aid station was among the most foolish.
All
through the long months of training for her first 100 miler, she never imagined
herself going into the night like this. She’d looked forward to having her crew
take turns pacing her for the final 50 miles, keeping her awake and on track
during the long, sleepless hours and the difficult back half of the
course. Instead, she found herself alone
and at high risk of becoming lost in the Appalachian back woods, a place where
too many people had disappeared without a trace, simply stepping off into a screen
of brush, never to be seen again.
Wren
released a grateful sigh as a set of white flags glowed like pale specters at
her feet. She was still on track. Her watched buzzed again as if on cue, and
its face glowed up at her, marking off the miles. She had three miles left until the aid
station, and if she kept forward at her careful pace, she should be there
within the hour. There would still be
time to pull herself together and finish the race before the cut. She marched forward with dogged steps, taking
deep, calming breaths to maintain her determined mindset.
Another
set of flags marked a bend in the trail, and she smiled as she rounded the
massive trunk of an oak tree. She
scanned her eyes ahead and her smile broadened in pure joy. Just ahead, the light from two headlamps
bounced up and down along the trail as runners moved along the path. She had been saved!
With
a shout, she took off after them, abandoning all caution. “Hey! Wait! I need help!” Wren called out
after them. The racers seemed not to hear.
The
lights pulled away into the darkness, and Wren charged after them in panic.
“Please wait for me! I forgot my headlamp. I need your help!” she shouted
again, but unmindful of her pleas, the runners continued on their way.
Suddenly,
Wren’s toe caught on a root. She felt
herself soar over the trail for a sickening moment. She then tumbled hard into
the underbrush and rolled down a small slope.
Dazed, she lay in the leaves for a moment, staring up through the lace
of tree branches overhead. When she
finally sat up, she looked around, eyes searching the darkness for the lights and
straining to pick out a path of broken twigs and disturbed brush that marked
the course of her descent. She tried to pull up her location on her watch so
she could use the map to find her way back to the trail, but after stabbing at
the buttons with panicked fingers several times only to be met with a blank
screen, she groaned and finally admitted to herself that the watch must have
broken in the fall. As she stood up and shook bits of leaves and dirt from her
shirt, Wren at last admitted to herself that she was completely disoriented.
Since
childhood, she had heard the advice to stay in one spot if you were lost, that
bumbling off in a random direction wasted energy and could hinder a search
party from finding you. Without
guidance, it would be just as likely a lost hiker would wander in a full circle
as find their way out of the woods. Wren
stood and reviewed her options, thinking about the chance of completing her
first 100 miler slipping away. A stubborn streak that seemed necessary for any
ultramarathon runner prevailed. She had rolled down a slope, so it followed
that the trail must be up. She found the upward slope and began to push her way
through the brush.
Despite
her initial confidence that she had made the right decision, it wasn’t long
before Wren felt that something was wrong.
She hadn’t fallen that far, but after ten minutes of hiking uphill, she
still hadn’t encountered the trail. The
thick brush gave way to a rocky, steeper incline. Wren frowned as she began to
grope her way through a mine field of jagged boulders, pulling herself up with
her hands through the endless darkness.
This was not the way she’d come.
If she had fallen through these rocks, she most likely wouldn’t have
survived.
Her
brain flashed with warnings, but Wren pressed on. Logically, the trail should have been up
slope, and she convinced herself she was just climbing up at a different place
from where she descended, that at any moment, she’d come across the trail and a
grouping of flags to lead her to safety.
The
rocky slope finally gave way to level woodland. The thick brush cleared away,
and Wren paced slowly between the mammoth trunks of ancient trees. The trunks were gnarled with incredible age
and twisted roots thrust up from the soil like writhing pythons. A whisper of breeze moved in the branches,
and a few leaves fluttered down to land at Wren’s feet. She paused and looked around, an unsettled
feeling weighing on her shoulders like a heavy cloak. The place was beautiful,
but in an other-worldly way that sent a shiver up Wren’s spine.
She
looked down at her arms, and in the faint, silvery light, goose-bumps pebbled
her flesh. At the sight of her arms
gleaming under that pale, cold light, Wren’s heart began to flutter much too
quickly behind her ribs. She turned her
gaze upward, searching between the towering branches overhead. Her eyes widened
and her jaw dropped open, slack with awe and fear. A full moon was on the rise,
halfway to zenith, huge and sickly yellow through the thinning leaves that
still clung to the branches above.
Thanks
to her obsessive preparation before the race, Wren knew that tonight was the
night of the new moon. She had expected
to run through the night in darkness, no moon rise to light her way. She took a few steps backward, face still
lifted to the sky, until the moon shone full through a clear space in the
canopy. The pattern of craters and lunar
highlands did not look down at her in the form of a gentle, benevolent
face. A completely unfamiliar dappling
of light and shadow shown down on her instead.
Rooted
in place, she stared at that alien moon for a long time. A breath of wind moved through the trees,
sending another drift of leaves swirling down in front of her face. Distracted from her daze, she plucked one out
of the air and stared at it with renewed horror. She’d never seen a leaf like this in the
mountains of North Carolina, let alone anything like it anywhere else, or even
in a book.
The
leaf was roughly shaped like a hand, complete with a thumb opposed to four
fingers. She tilted it to catch the moonlight, and in the soft glow, it took on
a strange and putrid mottling of yellow and black. Red veins streaked through it, more like the
river of veins on the back of her own hands than the even and ordered lines she
normally found on the leaves she was used to seeing. In revulsion, she crumbled it in her hand,
then gasped when it seemed to throb inside her fist. Her fingers popped open, dropping the wadded
leaf to the forest floor. Her palm felt wet and sticky, and when she turned it
over, she found it dripping with a fluid from the leaf that glistened red as
blood from a fresh wound in the pale light.
All
reason and logic fled Wren’s mind, and she dashed headlong through the grove,
compulsively wiping her hand on her shirt.
There was no longer a question of staying in place and waiting for
rescue, let alone orienting herself so she could find her way back to the
trail. All she could think about in the
moment was escaping the trees and their alien leaves.
Through
patches of darkness and silvery light, Wren sprinted on legs already tired from
fifty miles worth of travel. She ran
until it felt like there was nothing left, and the wind pumped in and out of
her lungs in tired gasps. At last, she
stopped and stood, hands on her knees in exhaustion, sucking in air and trying
to slow the rapid beat of her heart. She
had come to a clearing or mountain top bald, and the night sky stretched above
and all around her.
Wren
sought familiar constellations; the Big Dipper pointing toward the North Star
or Cassiopeia on her throne, orienting her to direction so she could find her
way home. Instead, the sky was spangled with a million unknown stars, burning
closer and brighter than any she had ever seen on Earth. They flickered and pulsed like brilliant jewels,
ranging in color from golden to sapphire to a startling ruby. Even the giant orb of the full moon did not
seem to wash out the light from the fiery stellar display. Awe filled Wren’s
spirit, washing the panic and fear from her mind. Mouth open and eyes wide, she was consumed by
stillness, half convinced she had died, but content if the stunning view meant
she had gone to heaven.
“Wren,”
a voice called from across the clearing, breaking her fixation on the ethereal
view over her head. Someone, cloaked in
shadows, stood under the trees across the field. The voice was deep and masculine, but carried
to her with a strange inhuman timbre.
“Who
are you? How do you know my name?” she answered back, trying and failing to
keep her voice from shaking.
“When
a human steps into our realm, we know all, Wren. We know the beat of your heart, each footstep
on our Earth, each thought in your head,” the being said as it moved forward
from beneath the shadowy tree limbs.
“Your heart is racing right now. I hear the blood quickening in your
veins.”
It
had moved nearly into the clearing, and a glimmer of moonlight silvered a form
that had to be at least seven feet tall. Though humanoid in form, an enormous
rack of antlers that should have bowed its head under their weight shown pale
and ghostly in the faint light. Its eyes
took on a golden glow, like the tapetum lucidum of some nocturnal predator’s
eyes locked on unwary prey. Wren stood
stock still, meeting that golden gaze, afraid to move or even breathe, though
it felt as though she’d already been caught in some terrible snare. She watched as, ever so slyly, its mouth
opened into a hungry and snarling smile, full of pointed lupine teeth that
gleamed in the moonlight.
That
smile finally undid Wren as nothing else during that strange night had yet to
do. Some primitive part of her nervous
system told her that if the creature stepped into the moonlight, and she saw
its face in full, she would be completely ensnared. She turned and ran in blind
panic back into the trees, running through falling drifts of the bleeding
leaves. She stumbled and fell and rolled
down the mountain side littered with rocks and boulders, barely taking note of
the scrapes and bruises she acquired as she banged against the rocks. All she could think about was that grin full
of carnivorous fangs.
Free of the
boulder field at last, she bounded across a narrow ravine and up a brushy
hillside. The creature’s words echoed in her mind, driving her exhausted legs
up the incline by sheer will. It felt
futile, to run so hard from something that claimed it knew where every step
would take her, but her instincts pushed her even when her fear could not.
A
jolt of pain traveled from her toe and up her leg as she hooked her foot on a
fallen log. For the second time that
night, she found herself taking headlong flight through the forest. The breath slammed out of her lungs as her
chest struck the dirt, and in the moment before darkness stole over her mind,
she registered the blurry image of a set of three white flags staked into the ground
along a cleared trail.
***
“Wren!
Can you hear me? Where are you?” A familiar voice rang through the trees,
pulling Wren back to consciousness. With
hesitation, she opened her eyes, afraid to awaken into her nightmare forest of
bloody leaves and dark presence. She
found herself on her stomach in the dirt, bits of gravel and twigs digging into
her cheek. In the light breeze, a small flag fluttered before her eyes, and the
gilding of the rising sun was drizzled over the awakening woods.
“Wren?”
the voice called again, intoned this time with relief.
Wren
pushed to her knees and then wobbled up to unsteady legs. “Nicole!” she cried out into the silent dawn,
joy radiating on her face as she saw her friend rounding a bend and sprinting
down the trail toward her.
Wren
watched as the broad smile on Nicole’s face faded to a frown of concern and her
tan cheeks paled with fear. “You’re hurt! What happened out there?”
“I-
I forgot my head lamp,” Wren stuttered.
“I, uh, I lost the trail.” In the daylight, the events of the night
before seemed hazy and half-formed, more likely a hallucination inspired by
exertion and exhaustion than reality.
Nicole
didn’t respond immediately. She silently
scrutinized Wren from head to toe. At last, she said, “You must have taken a
nasty fall. You’re covered in blood. Do you need stitches?”
Wren
looked down at herself, at her ripped leggings and scraped knees. Though she felt sore and achy from her falls,
her long day of running, and her time asleep on the cold, hard ground, nothing seemed
to warrant her friend’s level of concern.
The belly of her shirt finally caught her eye, as she assessed her own
condition. It appeared to be covered in
blood, blotched with rusty red imprints of her hand. The leaf, she thought to herself. Impulsively, she brushed at the stains on her
shirt, trying to rid herself of the memories she hoped were no more than
fantasy. She found herself brushing at
her clothes and hair, pushing away the dust and detritus of her journey as
though ridding herself of each crust of mud and twig could wipe her mind clean.
Her
hand caught on something in her hair, and she pulled it out, holding it in her
hand for Nicole to see. “What kind of
leaf is that?” Nicole asked, her face scrunching in disgust. It was one of the weird
hand shaped leaves from the ancient forest of her nightmare, its bloody crimson
veins and black and yellow mottling like the flesh of a rotting corpse, even
more repulsive and alien seen here in the morning sun, here in the Earthly and
beautiful October woods.
“I
don’t know,” Wren answered with a shudder, letting the leaf drift to the
ground, then stepping over it and walking away. “I have no idea where that came
from.”
It
wasn’t a lie, but Wren also knew she could never tell Nicole the whole truth. With
her friend at her side, she began her trek out of the woods. Perhaps in the
distant future at a post-race bonfire, she would share the tale of her first
100 mile race attempt and failure. She knew that everyone would think it a
ghost story and not a true accounting. Today, she was content to let the night
evaporate with the morning dew like the dream she wished it was and cherish a
sunrise she had feared she would never see.
