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darkaviarymc · 4 months ago

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The Evergreens Enfold the Shrine, A recursive fic of The Incandescence of a Dying Light by @quaranmine

Title is from Another Grieving Forest by Alfred Kreymborg. Page divider by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

On June 12th, 1995, a group of campers at Pinnacles Campground in Shoshone National Forest decide it’s perfect weather for ghost stories. On June 13th, one of them takes a wrong step. The Ghost of Pinnacles Trail is just some harebrained internet legend... right?

Chapter 1

June 12th, 1995

A full moon shone brightly over Shoshone National Forest. The spruce trees cloaked the small campsite of the three young campers in eerie shadows that danced in the light breeze. There was still a notable chill in the late spring mountain air, but these Canadian college students were used to the cold and were largely unbothered.

They had been lucky to get this spot. It was the opening week of Pinnacles Campground, and they’d reserved a site with a fire ring, the only place where campfires were allowed. It was there the three sat, chatting away and drinking the last of their beer.

Beef rolled his broad shoulders and stretched his neck. “I’m kinda tired, but I don’t want to go to sleep yet.”

“I feel ya,” Etho agreed. “Makes the time pass too quickly. I don’t want to go home yet.”

Gem laughed, tucking a stray strand of her long auburn hair behind her ear. “I know, right? I could stay out here forever; these mountains are so beautiful.”

“You guys wanna tell ghost stories?” Beef asked with a teasing smile. “That way we can’t fall asleep.”

Etho skeptically narrowed his eyes. “Hm. I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Gem teased and elbowed Etho in the shoulder. “You scared?”

“I’m not scared,” he insisted a little too emphatically.

Gem laughed. “Well, I’m gonna tell one then.”

“Noooo,” Etho groaned.

“Oh, come on. It’s not even scary. It starts out really tragic but ends up actually being pretty wholesome.”

“What?” Beef scoffed. “Whoever heard of a wholesome ghost story? That defeats the whole purpose!”

“We don’t want Etho to run screaming into the forest never to be seen again, do we?” Gem leaned in close to Etho and wiggled her fingers at him. “The ghoOohst of Pinnacles TraaAiLl will find you!”

A great gray owl hooted somewhere nearby, perfectly complimenting Gem’s spooky, if a bit silly, inflection.

Etho batted Gem’s hands away. “Cut it out. I’m not scared, okay? I just don’t believe in the supernatural is all.”

“Neither do I,” Beef said. “It’s all in good fun, eh?”

Etho sighed. “Fine.”

Gem smiled and folded her hands in her lap. “Good. Don’t worry, Beef. I’ll try to make it a little scary. So.” She lowered her voice in tone and octave and leaned in closer to the fire. “The year was 1988.”

“This isn’t one of those ‘based on a true story’ ghost stories, is it?” Etho interrupted.

Gem waggled her eyebrows. “Oh, it’s true, alright. We can even check the archives in the library when we get back to town on Tuesday if you don’t believe me.”

“You owe me $20 if it’s not,” Etho grumbled.

“Deal. Right, now where was I?” Gem continued in a voice mimicking the ones in dramatized missing persons documentaries. “In 1988, seven years ago almost to the date, it was a cool June night just like this one. A cyclist set up camp just a few miles up the trail from this very spot. Little did he know,” she paused for dramatic effect, “it would be the last time he ever would.”

“Oh snap!” Etho interrupted. “Don’t tell me somebody actually died on this trail!”

“Shut up,” Beef said through his teeth.

Gem continued, ignoring her friends’ interjections. “In the morning he left his bike and backpack behind for a day hike. The farther he hiked, the steeper and rougher he found the trail, and the thicker with smoke he found the air. The wildfires in Yellowstone had ravaged their way into Shoshone Forest faster than any hotshot team, let alone a lonely hiker, could keep up with. All it took was for the wind to change juuust a few degrees and point the fire uphill, and before the hiker knew it, he was cornered by the inferno!"

At this point, Beef wore a small, nervous smile and Etho was nodding along with his jaw clenched to avoid showing any real emotion.

“The hiker knew he couldn’t outrun the blaze, but he couldn’t go back the way he came. His map showed a creek up ahead, so he ran. He abandoned the trail and bolted in the direction of the creek, but he’d failed to account for two very important things.”

“W-what did he fail to account for?” Etho asked.

“The first is what everyone who goes hiking during fire season should know: fire travels faster up hill. The second was that it wasn’t a straight shot to the creek. His path was interrupted when he came to a dangerously steep hillside. He tried to climb down, but the smoke blurred his vision. The exhaustion made his hands shake.” For emphasis, Gem held out her hands and made them tremble. She watched with a morbid sort of glee as Beef and Etho stared at her hands, the firelight reflecting in their wide eyes.

“The gravel gave way. His feet lost their balance. His fingers lost their grip.” Gem quieted to a whisper that could barely be heard over the crackling of the campfire. “He fell.”

A dramatic moment of silence passed over the campsite. Far in the distance, coyotes let out their screaming howls, as if to imitate in their own way how the hiker might have sounded as he fell.

“Did he die?” Etho asked.

“Well duh,” Beef answered. “You don’t get ghost stories from people surviving. So what now? Do people say he can still be heard to this day screaming as he forever plummets to his doom?”

Gem rolled her eyes. “No, dummy. I told you, this is horror with a wholesome ending. But we’re not quite there yet.”

“Oh?” Etho raised a eyebrow.

Gem cleared her throat and continued the story.

“The body of the fallen hiker was never found… until one year later in early July when a fire lookout was scouting out the trails in the exact place where the hiker was last seen alive. Just like the previous year, a fire was moving at breakneck speed up Pinnacles Trail. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme, and soon the lookout found himself cut off from the trail, just like the hiker had been. Just like the hiker, the lookout ran. And just like the hiker, the lookout came to the steep mountainside. And again, just like the hiker, he lost his footing and went tumbling down!”

“So there’s two ghosts on this trail now?” Etho asked in shock.

Gem smirked. “I thought you didn’t believe in the supernatural, Etho.”

“I-I um. I don’t,” Etho stammered. “Just, uh. You’re a really good story teller, Gem!”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay. Anyway, as I was saying. Just like the hiker, he fell. But unlike the hiker, the lookout survived. And what he found at the base of the mountain was…” Gem saw Etho and Beef’s anticipation, and drew out her dramatic pause just to get under their skin, “The thing the rangers had been searching for for over a year: the dead body of the fallen hiker. Or what was left of it anyway after the bugs and coyotes were finished with it.”

Etho cringed. “Thaaat’s disgusting.”

Beef nodded. “Yep. Nature’s as nasty as it is beautiful.”

“Breathtaking either way,” Gem said. “But ever since the body was found and returned to the family to be laid to rest, there have been sightings described in outdoorsman’s forums of a man that matches his exact description. A tall, broad-chested man with short black hair and a mustache dressed in a hot pink Hawaiian shirt and khaki cargo shorts. Sometimes a bicycle bell can be heard ringing when there are no bikes for miles. The thing is, he only appears under very specific conditions.”

“Fire? When people go off trail? The exact time when he died?” Etho guessed.

Gem shook her head. “They say when there’s danger on the trail ahead, he’ll appear and point you back to where you came from to keep you from encountering a fate like his. They also say that when a hiker is lost or injured, he’ll lead them back to the trail. Last year near the end of the season, a woman and her teenage daughter were on Cloud Lake Trail when the girl fell down a hill. She hit her head and was knocked unconscious. The mother screamed for help but no one came. No one except a man with a mustache. She called out to him, but he disappeared into the trees. The woman stayed with her daughter until a forest ranger came running up to her. He said he followed the sound of a bike bell until he could hear her calling out, but neither the ranger nor the mother and daughter had seen a bike. The ranger didn’t know who the mustached man was, either. No one matching his description had a permit for anywhere remotely close to the Two Forks quadrant. The only explanation for stories upon stories spanning the past six years of hikers on Pinnacles and Cloud Lake about the mustached man, is that the ghost of the fallen hiker still walks these woods. He watches over hikers, cyclists, and campers and either leads them out of danger or leads rescuers to them. The Ghost of Pinnacles Trail they call him: the benevolent watchman of Shoshone National Forest.”

Gem stood up and gave an exaggerated bow, and Beef and Etho cheered and clapped.

“Bravo, Gem!” Beef congratulated. “You were right. Horror with a wholesome ending.”

“Yeah,” Etho agreed. “It’s all bunk though, right? Like, some cryptid hunter probably saw a bunch of news stories, posted some whacky theory, and everyone else just piled on until it turned into a whole thing.”

“I don’t know exactly where the ghost stories started,” Gem admitted. “But ghost or no ghost, there really was a hiker who looked just like that who actually died on the cliff at the end of Pinnacles in ’88. And there really was a fire lookout who found the body during the wildfire in ’89.”

“All myths and legends are grounded in a bit of truth,” Beef said. “It’s pretty awful, though, what happened to that hiker.”

Gem nodded and stared into the fire. For the first time since Beef had suggested ghost stories, she felt no cheekiness or bravado.

“His name was Mumbo.”

The three shared a solemn moment of silence for the fallen hiker. For Mumbo.

Etho shook his beer can, finding just about a mouthful left. He stood and raised up the can in the air. “To Mumbo.”

Gem and Beef raised their own nearly empty beer cans and tapped them against Etho’s. “To Mumbo!” They shouted in unison and together, they downed the very last of the drinks.

“And with that,” Beef said, “I think it might actually be time to call it an evening.”

“Yeah. If we want to do one last side trail tomorrow, we need to get an early start if we want to have time to go to the library,” Etho said, giving Gem a pointed look. “I’m still holding you to our deal, you know.”

“I’m aware. Give me your beer can. I’ll put them in the bear box and throw them away in the morning.”

“Good call,” Beef said, also handing his can to Gem. “I’ll wait to put the fire out until you're back.”

The bear box that each site was equipped with was a little over thirty feet from the fire ring. There were some trees between the box and where their tents were set up, not enough to fully block Gem’s view, but enough that she felt just a tad bit isolated. As beautiful as the mountains were and as clear as the sky was so far from any major city, it was that very beauty and remoteness that induced a feeling of unease. She shuddered at the thought of being out there all alone. She was with two of her closest friends and knew exactly where they were. But even so, being just a few meters away, she already felt alone. To be a ranger? A solo hiker? A fire lookout? She didn’t know how they managed. In that moment when she looked up at the full moon and more stars then she’d ever seen growing up in St. Johns, Gem felt a deep admiration and respect for each and every one of them.

It would be so terrifyingly easy, Gem thought as she stuffed the empty beer cans into the bear box alongside their food, to get lost in a place like this. Her reading on the online message boards and multiple documentaries viewed on television provided her with countless such stories of that very thing happening of which Mumbo’s was only one.

Some versions of the story she’d read on the forums said Mumbo had gotten lost when the fire cornered him. Some said that the fire had come in later, after he'd already been reported missing. Still others say his disappearance and death was something… else. Official sources like news articles tended to be vague, giving only the broad strokes. Details were often kept away from public knowledge to protect not only the investigative process but the dignity and privacy of victims and their families. This fact only served add fuel to the fire of speculation and theorization that let misinformation and contradicting stories to grow from its ashes. Gem wasn’t too keen on the conspiracy or cryptid theories herself. They could be entertaining to read about sometimes, though, usually with the company of a bottle of wine.

Standing here in the dark wilderness, she couldn’t fathom why anyone would actually believe in those things or even feel the need to. Nature itself was mysterious and fascinating enough without government coverups, Sasquatch, or feral cave people who sacrificed hikers to the devil.

Perhaps, Gem thought, some people just needed something to solve.

Something else Gem had learned in her research but had only truly come to realize this past week was that there is no such thing as a quiet forest night. Crickets, owls, and the occasional coyote created chorus that sang of just how alone and surrounded humans were in the deep forest. She remembered something she’d read one of the message boards she frequented, one of the more rational ones that was populated by serious hikers and forestry service workers. A man who called himself “mrg00dtimes,” one of Gem’s favorite frequent posters on that particular board, posted once that you’re never really alone in Shoshone National Forest. There may not be another human for miles, and it’s okay to feel that isolation, even to be a little afraid of it. But the forest is full of life. Birds, wolves (vanishingly few as they may be), coyotes, bears, dear, mountain lions, and so many other amazing creatures.

Over half of the things on that list could eat her if they wanted to, though, so Gem wasn’t sure how comforted she was by that thought.

The woods In nighttime were haunting; that much was certain. But we’re they haunted? Was the wildlife the only company visitors to the campgrounds kept? The moonlight cast long, dark shadows, and their swaying motion was as mesmerizing as it was disorienting. Some things were shrouded in complete darkness while others were bathed in soft light. Ones eyes and mind could start to play tricks on them if they looked at a single spot a little too long or let their mind wander while a leaf moved in a particular way in the corner of their eye. These dancing patches of darkness could easily be mistaken for mysterious figures stalking in the foliage, the shuddering branches could be arms reaching to the starry sky if one’s imagination was wild enough.

Gem didn’t know what would be more frightening: being alone, or not being alone.

She heard a twig snap behind her. She spun around with a loud gasp, reaching for the bear spray in her pocket.

Behind her was Etho, who laughed at the sight of the fear in her wide green eyes.

“Did that make you jump?” He asked with a teasing lilt.

Gem huffed and punched Etho’s chest. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, only enough to get the point across that she was no where near as amused at being startled so badly as he was.

“You’re a jerk, Etho,” she chastised with no humor in her voice despite the fact that Etho was still laughing.

Etho gripped his chest and staggered back with a comically over-exaggerated cry of mock pain.

Gem rolled her eyes. “Oh, cry me a river.”

Etho straightened himself out. “We were worried about you. Thought you got snatched up by Sasquatch or something.”

“Out of all the things in this forest that it could have been, you’re mind went straight to Sasquatch?”

“Just come back to camp, okay? It’s time for bed.”

Gem followed Etho back to camp. The surge of adrenaline she’d gotten from Etho sneaking up on her kept her head and eyes moving. Her previous deep thought combined with this new hyper-awareness compelled her to check every tree and shadow.

Beef waved at them when they returned. “Hey, you’re alive.”

“Of course,” Gem replied. She puffed out her chest and stuck her chin out. “You know I’m the undefeated Gemini Slay.”

Beef snorted. “Yeah, well, I don’t know how much water an arcade rep holds out here. Last I checked, there were no bears in Mortal Combat.”

“I don’t know," Etho replied, "The really hardcore competitive players are finding new cheat codes all the time." Etho's eyes lit up with an idea. "Maybe once regular classes start again, I can trick the freshmen into thinking there's a cheat to turn Liu Kang into a grizzly bear and get them to pay me for the code!"

"Aaand, on that note, I'm going to bed. Night, boys."

"Night, Gem," they both replied.

Gem got into her tent and listened to Beef and Etho argue about the ethics of committing fraud against his classmates while she changed into a warm set of pajamas. Soon the camp site quieted down as the men followed Gem's example and settled into their own tent for the night.

Gem closed her eyes and let the music of nature lull her to sleep. But in her last seconds of wakefulness, the sleepy haze of her mind could almost be convinced of the sound of a bike bell ringing somewhere in the distance.

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