‘Visible for miles around, the ‘Eye in the Sky’ is a vestigial component of the region’s old fire alert system. No single part of the hike is difficult, but the trek is complicated by a system of ridges that make for an extended approach. Reaching the ‘Eye in the Sky’ and returning is difficult in a day- most literature recommends spending the night and waking for the sunrise.
Most literature also includes a caveat- that campers should not come alone.
A little research reveals a series of scattered incidents at the site, usually an unpleasant run-in between a family and a crazy- never the same family, never the same crazy. The crazies range in age and background but few have a history of erratic behavior. They claim, unanimously, that the ‘Eye in the Sky’ is to blame for their brief, psychotic break but are, also unanimously, unable to explain how.’
The author does not say whether he reaches the ‘Eye in the Sky’ alone and he does not say whether he spends the night. Can I trust that he would warn me of danger, as he did at the rest stop so many months ago? Is the passage, as written, warning enough?
The hike is hard for me, but, then, I am carrying everything I own on my back and, also, I am terribly out of shape. I think of the stranger often as I follow the path. It’s a narrow thing, occasionally muddled by overgrowth or a fallen tree but never unclear. There are no signs past the trailhead, only the sure footfalls of those who came before me.
It is nearly night when the tower rises ahead of me on the hillside. I find a soft place in the ground and build my camp there. I am on the lookout for crazies early in the process- the author does not always offer a full warning in cases like this, but his printed word is often to the point. If he’s willing to spare a few sentences to mention trouble at a site, it’s likely worth my time to consider it.
My ratty tent manifests and swallows my bag as the last gray strands of twilight pull away. I find my flashlight and start toward the tower, now a dark silhouette marking the invisible precipice beyond.
I am not the only one spending the night, here. I spot a couple’s tent near the base of the ‘Eye in the Sky’ and a family huddled around a small, illegal campfire. I sense their eyes on me and I know they, too, have heard rumors of this place’s particular dangers. I try to look unimposing and, in doing so, trip on the stairs to the base of the tower. Could be that helps my case- could be it makes me look drunk.
The inside of the ‘Eye in the Sky’ contains the cigarette butts and broken bottles necessary of a place like this, but the refuse keeps to a corner and moonlight leaking in from several barred windows is enough to climb the stairs by. There is no guard rail, no qualifying sign regarding the risks of ascending the tower. Places like this are becoming rare- they sit on budgetary back-burners until some idiot manages to break their neck and sue. Places like this are being made safe, given time.
The view from the top of the ‘Eye in the Sky’ is staggering. Little midwestern towns twinkle and smoke in the darkness below, separated by the vast, dark forest that winds its way up this hill, up to the very base of the tower. As is often the case when faced with stars, I am struck by an uncomfortable sense of oneness, a feeling that sinks in my stomach and pools in the soles of my tired feet. It is terribly quiet as I try to understand my place in a world that sprawls out of sight in all directions.
I am turning away when movement draws my attention to the woods. A figure moves along a path toward the base of the tower, not the common path, the path I walked in on, but a separate, almost invisible path. A path that is made visible only by following the thing that walks it.
The figure is fast and it walks carelessly. It is pale and dressed in light clothes, appearing to glow under the moonlight, a roving oblong speck, ecstatic in the darkness. It is a long ways a way, but its strange march fills me with a fear that is quite unlike the dread oneness from before. This is a fear that pricks like needles in my hands and my back. I scratch nervously at the tower wall and watch- the thing is still quite far and there is plenty of time for it to turn another way, or to reveal itself to be something less fearful than I imagine.
But it does neither.
The thing does not become comfortingly clear in its approach, but remains stuttering and fast and vague. I find myself inching away from the window without realizing, stepping forward again when I nearly lose sight of it. At times, I think I see waving arms, as though it is engaged in some sort of strange dance. Other times I see a head, lolling on a limp neck. Each time I try to focus on a feature, it gives way to another, though I come away with the sure afterimage of a human figure and a feeling like a high-pitched noise. It is undoubtedly coming here, to this place, from wherever it was before.
I step to the other side of the tower and look down at the family’s little fire, at their forms huddled around it. Further along I see the couple’s tent, lit from the inside by a lantern. I rush back, expecting the strange thing to have vanished but see that it has only grown closer, that its troubling movements have grown wilder. It seems like it could be skipping now, that its legs skip while the rest of its body hangs loosely.
This is no drunk, it is no normal person or thing. I am thankful for the relatively few times in my life that I have looked upon something and been sure of its malevolence but this is one of those times. The prancing white figure means harm- some buried instinct, some ancestral fear tells me this is the case and it is all I can do to think of the others as I begin to flee.
I am hardly out the front of the tower, having nearly become the inevitable broken-necked idiot on the stairs, before I shout out a warning to the campers:
“Something’s coming this way! We all need to get out! It’s almost here!”
The father of the family reacts immediately, he dives into their tent as I gesture toward the path of the thing, the thing that remains out of sight. The man reemerges with a baseball bat and the child screams:
“It’s a crazy man!”
I planned to run anyway.
-traveler
