A Cold Night in Hades

Thousands of brightly colored leaves are falling from the trees as I hike in to my favorite campsite, some 6 miles from the nearest road. The weather is almost too perfect, though a bit crisp, and it threatens to become downright cold overnight, but this last "girl and her dog" backpacking trip of the fall is something I look forward to every year, and no pesky cold snap is going to ruin it. Morg-my K9 sidekick- is happy and running like a mad thing, per usual. There would be no reason to question the decision to come, the perfect setting, or to even imagine that the dark evening ahead would be any different.

After setting up camp and lighting a fire in the fire pit, I fix both of us some dinner and play with Morg, letting her get any leftover energy out of her system before bedtime. Soon, the fire is banked and we snuggle down in my tent, with the full rain cover on to help conserve what heat is inside. I wrap myself in my warmest sleeping bag and drape a thick, fleece blanket over Morg, who is finally exhausted enough to rest, thank goodness. As I begin to drift off, without any logical reason, I suddenly remember a story I'd read somewhere, almost as if it is forcing itself into my thoughts. Rumours in this area have long held that a railway brakeman was killed only a few hundred yards from this campsite almost 100 years ago, when this area had a considerable amount of mining and lumber business. The brakeman, it is said, was killed when a train he was waiting for on this end of a nearby tunnel did not stop upon seeing him swinging his lantern. Locals say that his ghost haunts the area still, swinging his lantern and trying to stop the train that ran him down. Mercifully, I doze off quickly, dismissing the story I'd remembered so vividly almost immediately after it crosses my mind because it seems so far fetched.

Somewhere near midnight, I wake up, stunned from sleep by something I can't quite pinpoint. I glance around the tent to see if Morg has moved, which she has not. After eliminating that obvious cause, I take a hesitant look through the only window, which gives only a very vague idea of what is happening outside even during daylight hours. The shock begins when I glimpse a small, irregular patch of light moving outside of the tent, far off in the distance. I can't help but remember the tale I'd dismissed so quickly earlier in the evening and wonder what is happening. With one easy motion, I grab my knife from the gear loft, in case anyone should try to get into the tent. That done, I quickly lay back down, fearing that I could be seen more easily if I remained sitting. Once I lay down, the simple fear of what I might find if I dared to look outside almost physically forces me to remain still, hardly daring to even breathe. As I lay there, frozen in place, I can watch through the beige storm cover as the swinging light comes closer and closer. Then, surprisingly, I begin to hear the sound of a chain clanging, faintly at first, but clearly coming closer as well. Fighting the urge to look again, I manage to stay stock still in my bag as I watch and listen to the growing commotion.

The chaos continues for what feels like an eternity. As that chilling clanging sound and the constantly arcing light come closer still, I hear a sound I would have never expected in this largely deserted wilderness area- a shrill, impossibly loud train whistle, followed by a distinct sense of the ground shaking and the sinking, cold feeling that something bodes badly for me. I can hardly question what that feeling is before I am hit by a powerful, blunt, and painful sensation, as if I'd been hit by some large, hard object. Laying there, my sides aching, I can hear the train whistle again as it fades in the distance. Even after it fades away, I spend the rest of the night frozen with fear, unable to move or to sleep.

When I recover my senses with the dawn, Morg is laying directly on top of me, as if she'd moved to protect me sometime during the night, though nothing else wis out of place. I look around camp as I get out of the tent, and nothing stands out as different except for a broken old lantern, which looks to be about 100 yrs old if it's a day, that I notice laying on the yard outside of my tent near where I saw the light flashing the night before. That alone would be a shock but, as I look more closely, I also find that the handle of the lantern is clutched in a bony hand, next to a complete human skeleton which has collapsed in the underbrush. The skeleton looks for all the world as if it had been knocked over during the night, and I can only scream when I see a faded railroad emblem on a shred of clothes laying beside him. It must have been meant as a warning from the Ghost who haunted me through the night, to remind me that not all stories are as untrue as they may seem, especially on Halloween night.