Part 1

Part 2

I’m back again, but I think this may be my last post.

It sounds like I may have attracted the attention of someone I didn’t intend to, and after this update, I’m going to lay low and try to disappear.

Let me bring you up to speed. First thing this morning, as I was getting suited up and ready to head down to the storage sheds near the old fire watch tower, I heard a knocking on the door to my cabin. Being in the middle of a closed national park in the heart of an Alaskan winter, you can imagine I don’t get very many visitors. About the only people I even see out here is my ranger buddy, Rick, and the guy who brings me fresh supplies every few weeks.

Rick has never just shown up at my door without calling on the radio first, and I know he’s had his hands full recently with a few separate incidents of missing hikers and one self-professed cryptozoologist, so I was surprised to hear his muffled voice calling my name through the locked door.

When I opened it and ushered him inside, I saw immediately the concerned set to his expression. Without a word, he stepped over to the fireplace and warmed his hands in front of the freshly smoldering log I had just added.

“Hell, Rick, you gave me a bit of a start,” I told him with a small chuckle, trying to lighten the air a little. Something was up, and I had a sinking feeling that it might have something to do with me.

He turned away from the fire and looked at me a long moment in silence before speaking.

“I got a call last night, John,” he said. His face was creased with a frown. I couldn’t tell whether it was one of worry or muted anger, or maybe a combination of both.

“Oh yeah?” I replied, trying to keep the tone as casual as I could.

He pulled the wool cap off his head and ran a hand over it, smoothing out his short, neatly trimmed hair. “Yeah, and so did a few other rangers, apparently.”

I nodded and took a sip from my coffee, feeling more uncomfortable by the moment. “What about?”

“What do you think? It was about you,” he said, pointing at me with his cap. “You’ve attracted someone’s attention with your little stories that you’ve been posting online.”

“My stories? What stories?” I said evenly, feigning innocence. I hadn’t discussed these posts with Rick since I started updating them. Sure, we’ve chatted about the possibility of me doing some in the past, but I haven’t told him that I’d actually written them. As far as he knew, I was just blowing smoke.

My palms began to sweat, despite the fact that my cabin’s internal temperature was probably in the low-50’s, even with the fire in the hearth. I’d been so sure that there was no way the NPS, or the agency, or anyone else could figure out who’s been writing these posts. I didn’t stop to consider that they didn’t need to figure it out themselves – all they needed to do was to start poking around at the rangers in various areas.

See, there’s no way that anyone who wasn’t intimately familiar with this area could have identified it just by the details I’ve given – I’ve even made sure to change the names of the places and alter the descriptions of some of the events a little, just to try to make it that much more impossible for anyone to figure out exactly who or where I was.

In retrospect, my mistake was obvious; if I was trying to identify the source of these posts, I’d probably go directly to the rangers who knew the territory even better than I do.

I made the mistake of thinking that my friendship with Rick was strong enough for him to look the other way, to cover my ass.

See, the Witch’s Lodge isn’t really known by that particular name around here – I just made that up as an alias for its real one – but I’m sure Rick would be able to identify it immediately by reading what I’ve written about it. The same goes for the other stories, too.

And I’m also pretty sure that other rangers would be able to recognize them for what they really were as well, now that I’m really thinking about it.

Shit. I fucked up good this time.

Okay, so here’s the deal – there are things that happen out here, more than I’ve told anyone about. More than I was ever planning on alluding to in these posts. Things that they do out here.

And things they definitely do not want anyone to know about.

I thought I was being so clever by sharing this with you all and disguising the details enough that they couldn’t be deciphered and traced back to me.

Fuck!

Rick tilted his head at me and gave me one of those looks that told me he wasn’t in the mood for any games right now.

“You know the stories I’m talking about, John,” he said in a flat tone. “The ones that I’ve told you time and again were a bad idea. The ones that I told you were going to get you into trouble.”

I tried to shrug it off, downplay it. “Hell, they were just a few stories on the internet, Rick. I was just having a little fun. It gets lonely out here, we go stir-crazy sometimes – you know that.”

“Yeah, well these little stories have stirred up trouble for us both,” he said, setting his hat on the chair and turning away from me, back towards the fireplace. “They know who wrote them. They know who you are.”

I just stood there in shocked silence, mouth hanging open as I stared at my friend’s back, sudden comprehension flooding my thoughts. My eyes grew wide.

“You told them?” I asked, stunned.

How could I have been so naïve? Rick had a job to do – we all had jobs to do out here. We all had people we answered to.

We all knew the score.

He didn’t turn to face me, but I could see his head fall a little in resignation. His face was probably twisted up in frustration at my recklessness, at the position I’d put him in, if I had to guess. I hope there was a little regret there, too. I’d like to think that our friendship had been real enough.

“What did you expect? That they’d just look the other way again? This isn’t the first time you’ve pulled this shit, John,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me.

I could see the darkness in his eyes in that brief moment, the resolve that had turned his features to stone, and I knew what was coming.

The crackling of the flames from the fireplace almost covered the quiet sound of a fastener being unsnapped, but not quite.

He was quick, but I had the advantage.

Before he even had the chance to spin around to face me, my magnum was out of its holster and thundering with unimaginable violence in the small confines of my cabin. The air filled with acrid smoke and the after-image of the muzzle flash glowed in my eyes, superimposed over the dim firelight.

Rick staggered to his left, his own handgun falling to the floor as he reached up to clench at the blackened hole in the chest of his jacket, which was now already growing red from the terrible wound beneath.

He looked up at me and I could see the realization in his eyes of what had just happened. He reached out to steady himself against the mantle, gasping for breaths that now had a horrible wet rattle to them.

“I’m sorry, Rick,” I said, grabbing my pack from beside the door and slinging my rifle over my shoulder with trembling hands. “I screwed it all up. I’m sorry about all this.”

He didn’t hear me, though. He had slumped to the floor and now stared vacantly at nothing, his blood pooling and spreading from beneath him across the wooden planks.

He was gone.

That was this morning.

I took off out of my cabin as quickly as I could and strapped my pack onto the snowmobile. Within a couple minutes, I was speeding along the northern trail, away from my cabin and in the direction of the decommissioned ranger station.

I had killed my friend.

He would have killed me if I hadn’t acted first, I know.

But that doesn’t change anything. I’ve never used my gun to kill anything, man or beast. It was always something that was there if I needed it, like a security blanket, but I never really thought I’d have to pull the trigger on anything.

Fuck! I’ve made a mess of this whole thing.

I thought it was all over for me when I skirted a little too close to the edge back in Montana, but fortune had smiled on me and the powers-that-be decided to give me another chance then.

There wouldn’t be another pardon for me this time.

I’m sitting here in the back room of the old ranger station. I’ve concealed my snowmobile around back, covered by a tarp and whatever snow I could throw over top.

It’s starting to snow again outside, so I’m hoping that my tracks will be obscured before too long. Maybe it will buy me some time.

Just enough time to get some of this out there. To allow me to post some of the truth.

I have no delusions about my capabilities. I’m just a caretaker – my training was cursory at best. I’m certainly no match for their teams.

My name – my real name – is John Wright. I do actually work for the US government, but not for the National Parks Service. At least, not really. I’m not going to name the organization that I work for, not because I’m afraid that they’ll find out – it’s too late for that now – but because their RAPTOR AI protocols will identify and censor this entire post before it has the chance to proliferate if I do. Once the post gets out and starts bouncing around to various servers, it’s much more difficult for them to make it go away.

My job here is mostly what I’ve told you – that part’s true. But that’s mostly just busy work; my cover, if you will. Primarily, I’m responsible for keeping an eye out for trespassers who wander a little too close to their facilities.

Or things that have escaped from them.

Or unintended by-products of whatever the fuck they’re doing in there. I don’t really know what goes on under the mountain and I’m sure I wouldn’t understand it even if I did.

What I do know is that I’m pretty sure those cars that just appear out of nowhere, hundreds of miles from anywhere they have any business being, are from one of those by-products.

The shades? Hell, I don’t know – escapees, maybe?

I don’t even know what I hope to accomplish by writing all this right now. Maybe it’s my way of trying to make it right.

Maybe I just want to make sure there’s something left of me for anyone to remember.

When I was posted here three years ago, I saw the entrance to the facility – it’s about ten miles from my cabin, bored directly into the base of a mountain. I have no idea how big it is inside or how many people are in there, but I know that there are a lot of big military helicopters flying in and out at the beginning and end of my seasons here. I assume they’re transporting researchers or equipment or whatever.

It just hit me that, if Rick had shown up at my door a half-hour earlier, I would have been just finishing my breakfast instead of fully geared-up and ready to head out the door for the day. I wouldn’t have had my holster strapped to my chest and I’m certain I’d be the one laying in a pool of my own blood right now.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Concentrate, dammit! I don’t have time for this.

I don’t know what the communication protocol was that Rick was supposed to follow after he took care of me, but I assume someone was waiting for his report to confirm that I’d been silenced. I have to believe that, by now, they know something has gone wrong.

There’s probably a team at my cabin right now. It hasn’t been snowing long enough to cover my tracks, unfortunately, which means they’ll probably have no trouble figuring out which direction I took. It’s only a matter of time before they show up here.

Then it’s all over.

Right now, I’m typing this on my notebook computer and relaying it through the ranger station’s communication network. I’m surprised they haven’t locked down the firewalls yet. I fully expected to be completely cut off from the world when I got here. Small blessings, I guess. At least I can get this out there still.

You’ve probably gathered by now that most of the rangers around here aren’t what they seem, either.

Some are, I think. But most are ex-military, special forces-types, recruited by the agency to provide security and make sure that the caretakers don’t go off the reservation, like I did.

Rick was that way. His real name is Mike, by the way. I won’t tell you his last name – I don’t want him remembered as anything other than a hero. I’m the one that fucked this whole thing up; he was just doing his job, fulfilling his sworn commitment. He was an honorable man, and that’s how I want him remembered.

Heh. My nerves are starting to get the better of me – I just took a look outside because I thought I heard something. I don’t think they can get here this quickly, so I’m thinking it was just my imagination.

Look, this isn’t something isolated to Alaska. They have research facilities all over the US. The last one I was at was in Montana, but I know there are others spread across the states. Wyoming, Texas, Kentucky, South Dakota, hell, they’re everywhere. They like to build them in national parks, especially those with huge areas of wilderness. It ensures a reasonable amount of privacy without drawing the sort of attention to it that places like Groom Lake and Cheyenne Mountain have done. Those two places are basically tourist attractions at this point.

But man, once they tried out Alaska, it was like they hit the jackpot! The whole area is so remote and uninhabited that they are virtually guaranteed isolation and secrecy to do whatever it is they’re doing in there.

Did I tell you about the man I found once, half… integrated into a boulder?

I don’t think so.

He was wearing a lab coat, but the only parts of him that were accessible were his right arm and shoulder and the back of his head. The rest of him was somehow inside of it, which was probably for the best. I’m sure he died pretty quickly.

I called that one in and they had a team out there within an hour. I left once they arrived, but when I came back a couple days later, the whole boulder was gone, and the landscape had been made to look like it had never been there. I’m talking about a rock the size of a small house, just gone.

The bear story is true, by the way. The only difference is that it was us who covered the whole thing up. That one scares the shit out of me, because that thing is still roaming out here, somewhere. They never were able to find it – hell, they lost a dozen men just trying.

Same story as the bears, by the way. We found the teams down near the runoff gully, just standing there, dead. You’ve never seen a nightmare until you’ve seen a dozen armed corpses just frozen in place. By the time we found them, they weren’t much more than gray skin stretched tight over skeletons, but there they stood, looking like some goddamn zombie army out of a horror movie.

I saw it once, I think – the thing that did it. It was about the size of a tall, thin, man, but the shape was all wrong – the joints bent in strange ways and the head was something that reminded me of a praying mantis. It was covered in black and gray mottled skin that looked sort of like scales, but not quite.

I don’t know. I’m just a caretaker.

I came across it while out making my rounds one day. It was clamped onto the back of one of those big Grizzlies, arms and legs wrapped around it like it was some sort of monstrous insect or something. The bear was just standing there, making the most God-awful screams you’ve ever heard, like it was being burned alive or something. But it wasn’t moving, it was just standing there perfectly still while this thing did whatever it was doing – feeding on the bear, somehow, I guess.

I hid behind a tree and nearly pissed myself. I thought for sure it was going to hear my panicked breathing and come for me next, but it didn’t. Eventually, the bear stopped making that terrible crying sound and went quiet. A few minutes later, this thing unwraps itself from around the Grizzly, takes a few steps towards a big pine tree, and just vanishes.

Only it didn’t really vanish. I nearly stepped out from behind the tree to take a closer look at the bear when I realized that I was still looking at that thing, only its skin had camouflaged itself perfectly into its background, taking on the exact coloring and pattern of the snow-covered pine.

I mean, perfectly.

The only reason I was able to see it was because a part of it – one of its appendages, I think – was slightly protruding away from the tree. It was this break in the shape of the tree that caught my attention, and probably saved my life.

I must have stood there for another hour before it finally took a step away from that tree, its surface returning to the black and gray splashes of color. When it moved, it was like a stalking spider, slow and deliberate, graceful and ungainly all at the same time.

It was a fucking nightmare, is what it was. It took a few steps closer to the bear, like it was trying to figure out whether this was some new prey or whether it was already used up. Like it had forgotten about it and was just looking for its next meal.

After that, it glided on down the trail without a sound, thankfully in the opposite direction of my hiding spot. I waited another hour before daring to move an inch, and when I did, I hauled ass back to my cabin, locked the door, and radioed the whole thing in to Mike.

They sent a team out, but never found anything other than the bear, which they very quickly made disappear.

While I’m sharing my sins, by the way, the real rangers, the ones that originally found the dead bears and reported it to the NPS - well, you won’t find them anymore. There were three of them that worked with the researchers, just like I said in my story, but a week after the researchers left, all three of those rangers somehow wandered off trail during a snowstorm and died of hypothermia.

Yeah, right. Hypothermia.

You’d think that the agency could at least use a little imagination when they came up with these stories.

I know this whole thing took a sudden sharp right turn on you guys, and I’m sorry about that. I’m out of time, though – no more time for pretexts or lies.

The bottom line is, you’re better-off staying out of the parks. Go see a movie, go for a drive, play video games, whatever. I suppose even state parks are probably safe enough, but I wouldn’t chance it.

The shit I’ve seen. What they’ve done…

…Okay, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t my imagination that time.

Time to upload the post. If I’m mistaken and if I have more time, I’ll just send an update, but I want to make sure this gets out there before they stop it.

-John Wright – former Seasonal Caretaker at an Alaskan National Park