100 Miles to Nowhere

 

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.