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Second Chances

4/16/2022

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While the Soviets girded the North with equipment, weaponry, and MiGs, China provided supplies and a supply route to help the Vietcong fight their war. The enemy was everywhere and everyone. Men, woman, and children bypassed the North and South Vietnam borders, acquiring their arms and ammunition via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So, to disrupt their supply chain, Cambodia and Laos became targets. This wasn’t news. If you asked anyone, they would tell you, “There ain’t no war in Laos.”

It’s called a secret war, but most POWs in Laos fell from the sky. Pilots did not want to fly over Laos, another communist country with the weapons to down most planes. If you flew over Laos, you could count on being shot down. This was one fear.

Another fear was the possibility of hitting friendlies. Sometimes, the only way to slow down the enemy was to drop bombs ahead of the ground support. I’ve been on hundreds of missions from dropping bombs to dropping supplies to give our ground support a chance at survival. My last mission was one I would like back, a second chance at a different outcome.      

Being captured does as much to your mind as crippling injuries do to your body. Time crawls here and hope is non-existent. For some, pride is enough to make a man wake up every day just as a “fuck you” to the enemy trying to break him. If I survive this shit, the men I fought alongside and a true account of what happened won’t die with me. I’ll keep their memories alive and let the American people know what they sacrificed. 

                                                                    *****

The North was still having success in the air in 1965. They grounded more planes than the US could keep in the skies. Fighter jets had to accompany the flights spreading the herbicides to buy them a little time, but both had to maneuver being shot. 

There were four of us on that morning's mission. Leonard Marks and William Brown were spraying herbicides from a C-123, covering the crops, the jungle, and the soldiers who fought in it. You would think these chemicals could do some damage to the human body, the way it burned up the vegetation, but the men on the ground had little concern about the mist as it covered them. They were trying to avoid the bullets zipping past them and the explosions all around them. Myself and Jack Robinson convoyed the mission in a Phantom II fighter jet.

Enemy MiGs outnumbered us. The C-123 took a direct hit and both Lenny and Willy ejected. We lost a wing on the fighter jet to a ground missile and ejected as well. None of us were in good shape and only one escaped capture, but I can’t say what became of him after that. That man was Jack Robinson.

                                                                     *****

In the chaos of war, some welcomed the sweet smell of chemicals over the smell of death and gun powder. Silence was not welcome amid heavy artillery. It often meant the worst you have seen was nothing compared to that which is to come. Silence was the last thing I heard before I lost my freedom.

I had about enough time to lift my head and see where the other men landed before they were upon me. I couldn’t even stand when I first realized I survived the crash and something inside of me died when I saw the group of armed teens. I say teens, but the oldest was maybe 18 and there were several that couldn’t have been over the age of 11. The war hardened them, prepared them to kill and I wished for death.

Lenny laid unconscious until a couple of members from the guerrilla warfare kicked him awake. Two men stood him up, like they were taking him prisoner. Lenny cooperated, but the apparent authority of the group shot him in the back of the head. They executed him on the spot, showed us it was just that easy.

I’m not sure how far Willy could have gone without a concussion. Not that he didn’t try to clear out. Covered in burns, Willy stumbled a little as he released himself from his parachute. Disoriented, he got to his feet about the same time he saw them coming. He didn’t take more than a few steps before a bullet ripped through his calf.

The Vietcong took the two of us prisoner, forced us through a jungle set up to make an amputee out of anyone that took a wrong step. It didn’t matter that we needed medical attention. When we arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, they threw us in different cells. There were no beds in the cold, dark cells, and sleeping on concrete just makes the cold colder while it stiffens your entire body. The conditions were dehumanizing, but we learned early on, anything was better than solitary confinement. 

Solitary confinement was a special kind of torture. Take your darkest fears and multiply those fears by a thousand and you still won’t grasp what this does to a prisoner of war. The guards strap you down so tight the blood flow is cut off from your limbs. That was not the worst of it, but anything worse is too much for the mind to remember.      

Jack Robinson, the one that escaped, Lord knows what happened to him. Our planes went down in a war zone. Even if he evaded the Vietcong, he was a man with many enemies. It’s possible he lost his life to friendly fire or he may have avoided one POW camp, just to land in another.

The VC were relentless and as willing to die as kamikaze pilots in World War II. Our soldiers on the ground would kill a few hundred communists, only to have another thousand appear before them. Comrades going in, none of them knowing who would make it out. Side by side, they fired at the enemy, many times among their own fallen who laid dead or were on their way out.

The attacks came out of nowhere. It was a blur, and they all looked the same, like thin, green, faceless beings that could squeeze through tight spots. Americans fired at the mass amounts of green men running towards them, but more VC fighters were coming out of the ground. Maybe they had no defining characteristics because there were enough substances available to help soldiers endure, or maybe it was because no matter how many the Americans killed, more appeared.

The US government needed their soldiers alert, so they supplied all the speed and heroin a man could survive. Drugs were readily available to develop the soldier and after so many WWI and WWII veterans returned from war with PTSD, a good dose of a numbing agent couldn’t hurt. 

A man in their state could not tell if the dark figures they saw were the commies or just figments of their imagination. They could not even tell if these figures were friendlies, if they were there at all. They crossed leech filled marshes without a thought of the bloodsucking worms. Silence was too much when the enemy was lurking somewhere underground. The VC worked at exhausting the Americans by releasing upon them men who were ok with dying. Sometimes the enemy came at them with knives rather than ammo. It was the amount of guerilla rather than the weapon they carried that gave the VC a chance. A surprise attack could include crossfire so low, men lying flat were not low enough to avoid the bullets.

The guerrillas were easier to spot with the foliage cleared out during the day, but at night, it was pitch black. Nothing but darkness, and the only sound was a constant bratatat, bratatat, from machine guns. Men hid in the trenches or immense holes formed from bombs dropped by the B-52’s. Bodies were often already lining the holes, but they were not fresh. Those men who fought here at a previous time were the reason the soldiers returned. Closing the eyes of their comrades, as they collected their fallen.

During battle, a man’s focus was not on the chemicals being sprayed in the area or whether they could do more damage to their life, if they survive, than the enemy in an ambush. His immediate focus is survival. Soldiers in the jungles looked to put a hole through any man, woman, or child that came out of the ground. Child. I know that sounds horrible, but the armed children would kill a man if their life was not taken first.

                                                                   *****

This hell was the most miserable place to pass the days. Early in my time here, I was worried it was the guards who could bring the worst pain. I don’t think they could touch the pain I’m in today. My bones ache from the inside out. 

Maybe it stemmed from the living conditions or my circumstances. There came a time I was vomiting from the time I awoke until I passed out from the pain for a few hours here and there. The guards could no longer force labor out of me, because the fatigue stopped me from standing for more than a few minutes at a time.  

My back ached from the day they captured me. I always thought I just didn’t heal right from my injuries, but this all seems like more than just an injury. I cannot remember the last time I left this cell. My life ending this way, at this place, fucking kills me. 

                                                                    *****

POW’s laid another to rest. This shallow grave contained the remains of Joseph Collins. He survived the crash and years in captivity, but succumb to an illness most were not diagnosed with until they returned from war. No doctor diagnosed Joseph with the disease that killed him. The other 20 mounds that surround him have their own story. Each one buried by their comrades. 

                                                                    *****

Jack Robinson landed without a gun or ammunition, somewhere along the North Vietnam and Laos border. His only weapons were his bare hands when he left the wreckage behind him. Jack did not make it far from the crash site before he turned to see Lenny get shot in the back of the head. Then he saw Willy and Joseph get captured. He had no communication with his command, but knew it was safer to go south than west. He didn’t want to end up in Laos.

Jack left behind the emergency radio beacon, counting on his personal radio for rescue. He attached some foliage to his helmet for camouflage, but there wasn’t much forest left in the area he landed. He figured some caves a little way up to be the best hiding place for the evening. 

The guerrilla warfare that shot them down kept tabs on the plane for any rescue efforts. They would find their fourth and maybe get a couple more. The military made a couple of attempts to locate the pilots, but the search and rescue had to cease when they could only locate the crash sites and not the pilots. 

Jack evaded capture for about 6 days before the Pathet Lao captured and imprisoned him in a Laos prison camp for over 6 years. In the end, he escaped with 4 others. Jack alone made it to friendly forces around February of 73. Two of the men fell so ill they could not keep up. The other was with Jack most of the way, but was shot and killed on the last day before Jack’s rescue.

All the time he spent imprisoned by the commies in the black pajamas and he made it out just in time for the flight home. He was not on the list of prisoners being released. They had declared him MIA for years. Most of the prisoners in Laos were not part of the negotiations. A secret war with secret prison camps.

                                                                     *****

Planes sprayed their load within minutes and would turn back, leaving behind a fog, as it settled over the war zone. The mist didn’t burn the skin, and the musty scent covered the unpleasant smell associated with war. The effects of the lethal fog on the human body were not immediate, but permanent. Ironic, with all that the chemicals exposed, they had a lot of hidden residuals. Soldiers were not burned alive or suffocating from the herbicides. It attacked their bodies at a gradual pace. The men in the field began getting rashes. Mostly, the attack was a silent one unless a soldier made it home where he would learn he had cancer.

Anti-war propaganda suggested the herbicides were to blame for many various health issues. The herbicides cleared out the foliage that hid the NVA and damaged the North Vietnamese crops. A group of scientists arrived in Vietnam about a decade into the military using herbicides to observe the consequences. The US government emptied the drums before they assessed the damage they contained. 

The scientists discovered deformities among the consequences of exposure to the herbicides. Deformities developed in living things that lived through the exposure, but not all that were exposed survived it. They watched the animals they ran tests on suffer extreme distress before they became so short on breath, they struggled to exist. After releasing their findings, the government discontinued the use of herbicides.
​
A corrupt, but anti-communist, rose to power in the south. The prime minister was assassinated about three weeks prior to JFK. Both were selling the idea that herbicides only destroy the foliage. The Americans and South Vietnamese governments spent a lot of time and money enforcing this idea. US soldiers believed it to be true enough they used the emptied drums to store food and water. Looking back, it may be the greatest war crime ever committed. Decades later, the effects of the substance still cannot be undone. Their assassinations probably had nothing to do with the herbicides. Some things will never be uncovered. 
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Golden Silence

10/31/2020

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I live in one of those artsy little towns. You know the type. There’s always a newcomer setting up shop to take money from the tourists. I ran across a new shop on my evening walk, and couldn’t help but enter. Judging by the name, “Future Artifacts,” I wasn’t sure what to expect. The store’s owner stood about 6’2’’, dark hair, dark skin, not a blemish on him, just solid good looks. He claimed to be a dealer of extraordinary items, each with their own story to tell. I felt his piercing eyes on the back of my neck as I rummaged through his shop. 

I stood staring at a trumpet awhile, picking up the knickknacks around it and rearranging, kind of wishing I had something better to do. I really didn’t though. I picked the trumpet up and examined it. I felt like I was holding the power of something greater than this world. I wanted to put it to my mouth, but hesitated.  
 
He approached and in a smooth, deep voice he said, “There is a story with that trumpet?” My eyes met his. “Yeah. What’s the story?” I had been carrying the instrument around for a few minutes, unwilling to put it down. “It’s not for me to tell you, but something you will learn once you play it.” Next thing you know, we got to talking about those people who can foresee the future. He said diviners aren’t all that special and that he’d met more than one in his day. Said he could see me developing the skill myself. All I had to do was tune into the music. The dealer’s good looks paid a compliment to his flattery, but his eyes really got to me. They were black as coal and sent a chill right through me. He spoke of others who purchased his “artifacts” and how they had come into a great knowledge that led them to meet their fate. Talking as if these people meeting their fate was something good. I couldn’t help but want to buy something from him. Almost felt like I was making a deal with the devil.

Not sure what possessed me to buy an instrument I’d never played a day in my life. I bought it though and couldn’t wait to get it home. Not knowing how to play, I put the trumpet to my mouth and blew. I felt like I was in another world surrounded by destruction. The night sky was dark, void of moonlight. The land was scarce of water and vegetation. I saw people being wiped out by the masses from disease and starvation. A strange man roamed the land, deceiving people in attempts to bring them to their final destination.

The first time the future opened up before me, the devastation looked like something from many decades past. I saw a desolate town of buildings, a few intact, others nothing but rubble. Lifeless remains strewn throughout the streets. With little left untouched, explosions were happening all around me, debris flying through the air. Smoke and fire filled the atmosphere. Civilians were in the process of clean-up to avoid the aftermath of the spreading disease from the decaying bodies.

I played on to see how it ended, but only saw what came next. Prisoners of war digging their own graves. A man in tattered clothing stood smiling a final “Fuck you!” before a firing squad filled him full of holes. Suicides of those who couldn’t handle the worsening conditions. Politicians celebrating victories at the expense of their soldier’s lives. Soldiers returning home to learn that they survived the fighting, but their families didn’t survive the war in the homeland. The chaos was never ending.

All this without lessons. The trumpet I held in my hands delivered a terrific sound. It had a dull finish to its appearance. It was a good trumpet with an adjustable third trigger that improved the playing position. I could argue the quality of the trumpet. I paid such a small price for it though that I can’t imagine what he had to gain. It was solid, but needed an assortment of mouthpieces to hit the right notes. As long as I had many mouthpieces on hand, I could play for hours.

I knew seeing glimpses of catastrophic phenomena while I played may be a sign I should give the trumpet a rest, but it kind of gave me something to do. It was an experience in itself, believing I was witnessing a future that would take place decades or centuries from now. Then I saw a glimpse of various world leaders at a G7 summit and recognized nearly all of them. I realized it was the present future and feared I was hallucinating or crazy. It was clear there was bad blood amongst them, looking as if some had switched sides or positions on some agreement. The tension between the leaders was obvious, as they appeared stiff and anxious all at once. It was what I saw next that floored me. I thought Germany was our ally. 

We were at war with them. Before the military strikes began, people were living their days just like any other. The attacks caught them off guard. People were shopping, commuting, sightseeing, just going about their day when the earth began exploding around them. Two men were walking along the avenue, absorbed in conversation when the blasts occurred. The heavy debris knocked them dead where they fell, one on top of the other.

My obsession with how it would end was quite strong, so I played on. Helicopters hovered above the destruction, looking for enemies to take out. Warplanes carried out airstrikes amidst rescue efforts in response to a band of rebels invading the land. Fires burned out of control, while overwhelmed rescue workers focused on the fallen that had a chance for survival. 

The realization sunk in that the aftermath I saw in my first vision was the residual of our war with Germany. With that I gained an understanding for people who need to have faith in something bigger than themselves, but it was hard to get behind a television evangelist that took money from the masses to purchase his own private jet. He prayed the Lord would bless him with a more adequate transportation, then took up a collection. The congregation of believers opened their wallets, believing it must be God’s will. There was this man though, world renowned as the Healer, even leaders were following him with the belief they could live an eternity under him. Those who thought they would win from works and recruiting found their reward with the Healer. Although their reward only lasted until their first death. 

The Healer was another master of deception. He approached a man dying in the street and lifted him so he could stand on his own. All who witnessed this believed they were seeing some miracle. Those he brought back looked as normal as everyone else, except for the darkness in their eyes. They would all serve a purpose.

He gained believers throughout the world. Natural disasters were devastating the earth while he was forming his army. An earthquake that wiped out Tokyo added millions to his Army. The death toll continues to rise on a small American territory that never chose statehood, further deteriorating with each passing day. There is only one Korea because of man-made destruction. Along the Indian Ocean, more than a 100,000 checked out after a tsunami slammed Indonesia. The Healer was gaining millions of followers from these disasters.

The shop may have disappeared as quickly as it appeared, but I still see the shop owner. I always see him when I play. Like all conductors, there’s a vision to accompany the sound. While the events he orchestrated flowed freely before me, I couldn’t help but feel completely at ease. He was a terrific conductor. He would raise his right hand, as to prepare me for an event. He would raise his left hand to bring sharper images. His narrow, coal-black eyes and pursed lips were telling of darkness. He had an intense look to him when he signaled for silence, and with this signal there was always some loss of life. He always exited the stage at this time, but never without taking a bow. He would return to the stage each time I played. I don’t want to be to blame for all the encore performances, but like I said, he was a terrific conductor and I couldn’t help but play for him as he instructed. 

When I wasn’t playing, the highlights returned to my thoughts. I remember the smiling man standing before the firing squad. Before the deafening gunfire, the words rang out, “Ready, aim, fire!” He didn’t strike me as scared in the least. He actually appeared to be taunting the men with the rifles. His crime was treason. I recognized him as a favorite entertainment personality from the weekly news show I followed.  

Freedom of the Press was a thing of the past. His negative view of the president had an overwhelming influence on public opinion, so much so, that they convicted him of conspiring to overthrow the government. This was a man who encouraged everyone to get out and vote. He was a small man at the height of modesty when it came to claiming credit for the uprising.  

I’m not without a conscience. Once I associated the trumpet with the number of lives lost, I quit playing for such long periods of time. I thought I could play in brief intervals with little impact, but that just brought death to those I saw sooner. There was no escaping the inevitable. It was always something I didn’t want to see, but I couldn’t look away from. The feeling was no different in actuality than it was in my vision, only more permanent. If I wasn’t so obsessed with the instrument, I might have stopped playing sooner. I played until I went numb.

Remember the two men I told you about, the ones walking the avenue when the blasts occurred? I passed them on the street recently and was temporarily paralyzed with fear. The clothes they were wearing were the same ones they wore in my vision. I knew at that moment it was the beginning of the end. I tried recalling from my later visions which buildings were still standing in order to take shelter. All the while, I ask myself if it wouldn’t just be better to run into a building I know to fall first; I mean, do I really want to live through this shit.

Once it began, it was as if they were coming from everywhere. Faces of people I didn’t know, but I knew their end, are the ones I see everywhere now. For those I know will die that day, they’re the ones that get to me the most. From the looks on their faces, they have no idea that they’re about to breathe their last breath. I don’t know what becomes after that last familiar face I envisioned without life, unless that’s where mine ends.

At one time, I wanted nothing more than to be musically inclined. Once I was, I wanted nothing more than for people to believe my visions. I wanted something to become of my talent. Then I had the idea to go along with it: I could be a diviner. When I speak of the visions, I’m told it’s nothing more than pseudo memory. You don’t know what it’s like, being completely familiar with everything that’s going to happen and not having the power to stop it. The images have grown as loud as the trumpet. All I long for now is the enviable golden silence. My visions have become a reality and I’m living the nightmare.

The minority who didn’t follow the Healer are on their way to extinction. In concentration camps, they are lined up by the dozen and executed one by one. You are considered lucky if they kill you first, since you can avoid watching the blood spatter of those next to you as they drop lifeless to the ground. The dead are buried in piles and not confined to cemeteries. Even those considered important or influential at one time are discarded like trash if they’re in the minority. 

Countries no longer have control of their own financial policies. The political economy is at its most corrupt time. While all nations have their own governments, there is one dominant power. The leaders below him must have a considerable amount of interest in the monetary system in order to have any room to negotiate at the same table with him. He has the final say on whom nations can trade with, and the price, quantity, and frequency of those trade deals. They put him in power to monitor not just the money, but the resources too. He is the ultimate deceiver. 

In order to limit the loss of resources, he enforced various methods of population control. He declared the poor, the sick, and the elderly expendables. They’ll be the next in line in the concentration camps. Human rights are a thing of the past. He’s preparing the world for a final battle.

The dealer didn’t just orchestrate the deaths of thousands of people; he brought hell to earth and created an army to protect his interest in it. He was a healer with the ability to bring back those who had passed on. All the lives he took had a purpose further down the road. He was creating an army, not of one nation, but of many nations where he was a great power. Those who became part of his army would fight to keep him in power. All believing there was nothing worse than the first death they had already died, they sacrificed their lives in return for a second chance. 

I’m not sure how he is in more than one place at once, but I swear he’s all three. The world’s highest authority expected everyone was just dying to spend some time with him. It was more their fate than their desire that put them there. I think my obsession to see how it ended developed from his mention of how others had met their fate. His intentions were once ambiguous to me, but now I’m sure more lives were taken than there would have been without my jazzy soundtrack.

I guess I didn’t pay such a small price, and he really made a profit off the trumpet. I was bored the day I made my way into his shop. Thought I could find something interesting for the home. Hell, the dealer himself gave me something to talk about for years to come. He saw my skills before he ever even heard me play and was there to help me see it through. It’s as though the devil himself was in the details. 

“Future Artifacts” didn’t stay in business for long. To be honest with you, I had never seen it before that day. Oddly enough, not more than a week had passed before I returned, only to find an empty shop with a “For Rent” sign in the window. I didn’t see him lasting long, but I was thinking a month or two, maybe. I hate not being able to return it. I don’t want it, not anymore. 

End times lie before me and all I see is darkness. Every time I step outside my house, I encounter people with coal-black eyes. They are not much to talk to, just bodies taking up space. There has been no battle of good and evil. Not yet. I wonder every day if I’m to blame for the apocalypse. I could see everything before it happened and there was nothing I could do to stop any of it. I played on out of ignorance, but never saw the finale. You know as much as I do whether human life will continue to exist after the ultimate battle. If evil wins out, the world ends. If good wins out, those who survive may start again.

As for me, I stopped playing. There is still life in my eyes. If I’m going to join the other lifeless souls in waiting for the end, I would rather not know my fate before it happens. No trying to avoid the inevitable, my Pied Piper days are over. I wonder if someone somewhere has seen my end and if they are just playing along to the music to see it through all the way. 

I can hear him now, selling someone something they didn’t know they needed or even wanted. Then flattering them with how he had seen no one with such an unspoken talent, convincing them they must have some special gift such as the sight. Never telling them they would see him every day if they used their talent. Nope. He tells no one the price is life. 
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"The Lost"

10/31/2020

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North of Brookstone, a malignant air seeped into the atmosphere, unleashing an unnatural feeling on all it hemmed in. Animals were the first to sense the unwelcoming presence, desolating an area thick with forests and marshes. The mountain's mythology and unmatched beauty draws many visitors, but there is no way to determine who can pass through without incident. 

                                                                 *****                                                               

Minor cuts and bruises covered the survivor, having torn through the trees and brush to flee her tormentor. She couldn’t even see what she was running from when she stumbled onto the road, stopping only when her eyes met the headlights of an oncoming truck. A local huntsman swerved to the other side to avoid her. Anywhere else it would have been a deer. He pulled over to ensure she was ok and found a distraught woman desperate to get her spouse help. 

With a tremulous voice, she recounted escaping on foot from some unseen force. “I had to leave him behind.” The huntsman had 911 on the phone, trying to relay what the shaken young woman was saying. She made little to no sense, but enough strange happenings had taken place in these mountains to give him reason to believe her. First responders took the woman to a local hospital to recuperate and allow investigators some time to discover who she was and where she came from.

Another group of emergency responders found her husband behind the wheel of the couple’s Jeep, not far off the road, an ax planted in the right side of his head. His startled wide eyes appeared to be looking out the passenger’s open door. Dried blood covered the ax and the inside of the windshield. The rescue mission ended and an evaluation of the crime scene began. He didn’t have a chance. They pronounced him dead at the scene. She said there was a presence in the Jeep with them. Looked more like the work of a person than a presence.

Sheila Jenkins was vacationing with her spouse, Rick, when their holiday became a nightmare. They started up the off-road trail in the late afternoon and followed it into the night. There was never a map so vague as their off-road map of the area. They had gone with a short trail that appeared to exit on the other side, even with no sign of where the other side was. 

The pass offered some striking landscape but was not as short as it appeared on the map. They kept going just up around the next bend, expecting pavement with distance signs informing of the mileage back to camp. They didn’t see either. Instead, after traveling 30 to 40 miles on a dirt road, they found mile markers with no clue what they counting down to.

The worst day of her life played over and over in her mind. About midway through their excursion, they arrived at a “You are here” map, which gave them no indication of where they were. It showed them alongside a large reservoir with a road that ran from one side of the map to the other. There were no clear names on the map for the road or the body of water to help them decipher their location. Any living people or animals were last seen prior to them starting up the off-road pass. They were alone in unfamiliar territory. Sheila’s phone was dead and Rick’s did nothing but flicker and flash. Electronic issues were a repercussion of the negative energy, comparable to the Bermuda Triangle only in the sense they were lost and their navigation devices were useless. By the time darkness fell, both grew agitated, but they continued on. 

When awake, Sheila was the accused for still being alive. Whispers of her stability surrounded the suspicions of Rick’s death. Detective Hudson was the first on the scene when the local huntsman called 911, and he determined Sheila’s guilt the minute they pulled Rick’s body from the Jeep. During their interviews he reminded her of the life insurance policy she stood to benefit from, then laid out different scenarios and various motives. “Tell me, were you fighting when you struck Rick with the ax?”  When she didn’t respond as planned, he tried a different angle. “Was it self-defense, Sheila? Is that why you did it?” He continued with how all the evidence pointed to her. “Your prints are all over the ax.” Of course, she and Rick both handled the ax. If only she hadn’t moved it to under the front passenger’s seat.  

Sheila wanted to sleep to help her forget, but when her eyes closed, she was back on the road with Rick. The first car they came across, some Subaru crossover, sat empty on the side of the road. The occupants were nowhere in sight. Maybe they got out to hike. There was no sign of camping. There were no tents or personal items nearby.
Mile markers continued to count down to somewhere. As they traveled down the deserted road, her thoughts filled with the illusion of an ax severing the limbs of strangers. Sheila shivered, not knowing what her mind watched. She wished he didn’t leave the ax in the back of the Jeep. The only reason it was in the Jeep at all was Rick saw a free ax that someone left behind. He could never walk away from free stuff.

It was ponderous when she first became frightened at Rick finding an ax after learning the history of the mountains. A man she spoke to at the campground had warned her about how often people left on a day trip to never return. Nobody spoke much about how they just vanished, but the locals always knew when another was gone. Eventually, a service would come and haul their RV or trailer out. She never shared this with Rick. 

After several hours alone on the road, they pulled over to collect their thoughts. Rick opened up the back to grab some waters from the cooler and Sheila picked up the ax. Rick didn’t question it when Sheila slid the ax under the passenger’s seat. It gave her a sense of security against whatever was lurking with them that had chased off all forms of life. They continued without realizing an opportunity to turn back could soon cease. 

During a series of questions from the detective, Sheila reflected on a strangeness that overcame her right before she bailed from the Jeep. A warm breeze encompassed her, while a deep whisper sent chills through her. There was nothing physical about it, but she felt its presence. The detective’s response to this was that she was in the right place. They would not allow Sheila to leave the hospital until the police finished their investigation. She didn't want to leave, anyway. She couldn't face their loved ones or the questions awaiting her when she returned home. 

The detective looked every bit of his fifty years as he squinted at the photographs of the scene before he shared them and several details with Sheila. He told her how they found the ax buried in Rick’s skull. Then pushed her to confess or implicate herself in the murder. No matter how many details he shared, Sheila didn’t remember hitting Rick with the ax, just that she fled to get him help. Sheila stared at the detective in silence as she imagined Rick’s last thought when he saw the ax about to make contact. She had lots of time to think these days and few friends to relate to. She could only speculate what became of the occupants of the Subaru. 

During the investigation, police scoured the area for the driver and any passengers of the abandoned Subaru. More than a week passed before they suspended their search. With such dense forests, they knew the possibilities of finding the lost were unlikely. Besides, they could have found their way out with another motorist. The tags on the crossover were two years expired.  

Not long after they stopped searching, officers stumbled upon the remains of two bodies in proximity to each other. The skull of the female had clear trauma resembling that of an ax. Her skull split apart directly above her left eye. Unlike the recent discovery of Rick Jenkins, someone or something had removed the ax. 

The second body was male. The position he was in almost looked as if he was running from something and eaten alive while in motion. They had never found remains arranged in such a way. It opened up the possibility that something supernatural could have taken hold of Sheila’s body at the time of the Rick’s murder.

The bodies were in the elements for some time. Their clothing had disintegrated, and the bones weathered, but detectives could not have been more certain the remains were those of the missing motorists. Their deaths must have occurred a couple years prior to the newest murder. 

The Subaru didn’t have any documents to identify the two, but that didn’t stop investigators from learning the names of the lost. They identified Dee and Terrell Jackson through the National Crime Information Center database. It’s never easy notifying surviving family members they found the missing deceased. Detectives hoped this wasn’t just the beginning of the deceased notifications.

They recovered more bones and found more victims with an ax related trauma. About half of the remains were the presumed suspects, and whatever devoured them was likely the same thing that first consumed their mind. It must have needed one to kill before it took the other for itself. It controlled the one it used to kill and then killed the one it controlled like it was some game. Maybe it didn’t have the power to kill those it couldn’t control. 

Detective Hudson didn’t want to believe a supernatural force could be the reason for the remains they were finding strewn throughout the mountains. He would rather search for a natural serial killer. No connection existed between the couples who fell victim, aside from them being out-of-state visitors on a mountain getaway. He shuddered to think how many more there may be and whether Sheila Jenkins was the only one to escape. 

It grew apparent this maleficent presence had been living off visitors for years. Investigators saw the only logical way to get rid of it was to starve it. Authorities worried it might just move on to another territory where it could feed off the visitors again, but it would no longer be their concern. They blocked all access to the mountain’s hiking, camping, and off-road trails to the public. Yellow police tape sectioned off areas where they discovered remains. They could not say when the backcountry would be safe again.

When Sheila wasn’t sleeping, or answering the detective’s questions, she found herself with therapists trying to recover her memory. They took her on many guided imagery trips, and not once did she recover the memory of planting an ax in Rick’s skull. They talked of returning to the scene to help her recover her memory, but she couldn’t see how that would lead to anything positive. If they were looking for a confession, she wouldn’t appease them. 
What she remembered was pausing briefly at the top of the off-road pass to take a photograph. It was the last time things felt normal. They discussed turning around at that point, but when looking at the pass before they saw beautiful scenery without the rocky terrain they had just gone over. Their tires weren’t in the best shape to go out the way they came in. 

Their awareness of the lacking wildlife peaked when they passed over the top and started down the backside. The desertion of human and animal life in the area was just one peculiarity of the back-mountain road. Most of the secluded mountain areas they crossed in their lifetime had wildlife scattered throughout, and even though they retreated to the mountains to escape humankind, they had never had such success in finding solitude. There wasn’t so much as a bird in the sky from the time they started up the trail. It was just unnatural. 

It was hard to conceive how all walks of life could abandon such a beautiful green area until she felt the unwelcoming presence of the unseen. Sheila wondered how many it slaughtered and whether any other before her escaped the atrocity. She thought about Rick and their love that continued until death parted them. Sheila remembered the first time they met, their first date, and their first trip together. She reminisced of the day he proposed, their wedding, and their vows. She recalled the fights. Whether good times or bad times, she couldn’t imagine going on without him.  
She tried to remember what brought them to the area. She thought of all the other trails they explored through the years and how different this one was from the rest. From the start, they didn't like it, but they continued on despite it. Now nothing will ever be the same. Like many others who were lost, they would still have each other if they had just turned back.

With the number of bodies they pulled from the area, detective Hudson had to reconsider his opinions of Sheila. None were locals, except for an emergency responder from the crime scene of Rick Jenkins. As for the visitors who never made it out, their families and friends must have been searching for them. Maybe they just didn’t know where they visited last before they were lost. Others who encountered the vile presence had not survived what Sheila survived. He didn’t want to see Sheila imprisoned if there was something else in control of the ax. He had bluffed his way through the interrogations with her. They never checked the ax for fingerprints.

They never brought charges against Sheila. Investigators determined there wasn’t enough evidence to prove intention or even that she was the one to take the fatal swing. With the number of skulls recovered indicative of an ax related trauma, they only found one ax and that was the one left in Rick Jenkins head. The ax never made it into evidence because it never made it out of the mountains. The paramedic who removed the ax from Rick’s skull met his own untimely death by asphyxiation. He didn’t take a swing at anyone when he picked it up. It was like some freak occurrence, maybe he couldn’t handle the toxicity of ax and it just sucked the breath right out of him. No one else attempted to pick it up after that. After they cleaned the rest of the scene up, the ax remained on the road. Two months passed, and she had never set foot outside of the hospital. Sheila was ready to leave behind the small rooms with solid white walls, but she wasn’t ready to go home.

                                                             *****
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Once they released Sheila from the hospital, she returned to the scene. She went alone, with an inclination the ax could not be used to kill if there was no one else there. The ax was easy to spot on the dirt road. She had enough anger in her to break the blade away from the handle when she swung it against a boulder just off the trail. She had to destroy the ax to ensure it could no one could use it to murder again. She built a fire and watched the broken handle and blade burn. A stench strong enough to induce vomiting filled the smoke and air. Once the handle was ashes, she dug the deepest hole she could manage and buried the blade. That was the last effect the ax would have on her or anyone else. 
​
A change in the air took place at once. There was a peacefulness that came with getting away from everything but nature. The fresh mountain air carried the scent of pines and flowers. The only sound was the fast-flowing water of the river nearby. She knew the destruction of the ax cleared out the evil when an eagle took the sky above her.
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