Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 22
The Lights Moving Through Blackwood
The three of them stood silently on the hillside while the pale lights drifted through the valley below like rivers of glowing insects moving beneath the trees. Fog rolled heavily across Blackwood now, softening the distant lantern glow into wavering lines of pale gold weaving through the darkness.
Ryan Mercer felt cold uneasiness settle deeper into his stomach the longer he watched them. At first the lights almost looked beautiful from a distance.
Then he noticed the movement patterns.
They weren’t random.
Every lantern moved slowly in circles through the forest below.
Large endless loops weaving between the trees.
Claire zoomed the camera lens toward the valley while trying to stabilize her shaking hands. “Maybe it’s a search party.”
Mason answered immediately.
“No search team walks Blackwood after sunset.”
Ryan kept staring toward the distant lights. There had to be hundreds of them moving through the trees beneath the fog. Too many for hikers. Too organized for random wanderers.
Then some of the lights stopped moving.
Ryan frowned slightly.
Several lanterns below had turned toward the hillside.
Toward them.
The guide saw it too.
“We need to go.”
Claire lowered the camera. “What are those people doing?”
Mason finally looked toward her.
“I don’t think they’re people anymore.”
The sentence barely had time to settle before a whistle echoed from somewhere behind them among the trees.
Close.
Ryan spun immediately toward the sound.
Nothing visible except dense fog and endless black trunks stretching uphill behind the trail.
Then another whistle answered farther to the left.
Then another.
The sounds surrounded the hillside gradually while the lanterns below the valley slowly began changing direction.
No longer circling.
Now they were climbing.
Ryan’s pulse quickened instantly as lines of pale lights started moving uphill through Blackwood toward their position.
Claire stared in disbelief. “They’re coming here.”
Mason grabbed her arm immediately. “Move.”
The group hurried deeper along the ridge trail while darkness swallowed the hillside behind them. The forest grew steeper here, forcing them between enormous roots and jagged rocks slick with moss and rainwater. Ryan kept glancing downhill through gaps in the trees.
The lantern lights followed.
Always visible beneath the fog.
Always climbing.
And every few minutes the whistles echoed closer again between the pines around them.
Ryan’s breathing grew heavier as exhaustion slowly set into his legs. They had been walking through Blackwood for hours now without rest, and the forest itself seemed determined to make every mile harder than the last.
Then Claire suddenly stopped moving ahead.
Ryan nearly collided with her.
“What happened?”
She pointed silently through the trees ahead.
At first Ryan thought it was another rock formation rising through the fog.
Then lightning flashed somewhere far beyond the mountains.
And the structure appeared clearly for one brief second.
A firewatch tower.
Tower Four.
The abandoned station stood high above the forest on a rocky cliff surrounded by towering black pines. The structure looked ancient now, weather-beaten and partially collapsed on one side, yet still tall enough to overlook miles of Blackwood beneath the storm-dark sky.
Ryan immediately understood why people feared it.
The tower didn’t look abandoned.
It looked waiting.
One dim yellow light glowed faintly inside the upper windows.
Claire whispered shakily, “There’s somebody up there.”
Mason stared at the light with visible horror spreading across his face.
“No,” he said quietly. “There shouldn’t be.”