Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 23
The Light Inside Tower Four
The firewatch tower rose above the cliffside like a dark skeleton against the fog-covered forest. Rain-stained wood creaked softly in the wind while the narrow staircase spiraled upward around the outside of the structure disappearing into shadows near the top platform.
And inside the upper watch room—
a yellow light glowed steadily through the dirty windows.
Ryan Mercer stared toward the tower while uneasiness tightened painfully in his chest. The light didn’t flicker like lantern fire. It remained constant and warm, almost inviting against the endless darkness surrounding Blackwood.
That somehow made it worse.
Below the ridge, the lantern lights in the valley continued climbing slowly through the forest toward them. Ryan could occasionally see pale figures moving beside the lights now between the trees, but distance and fog blurred the details too heavily to understand what they truly looked like.
Mason immediately began moving toward the tower path. “If anything inside that place is alive, we use the radio and leave.”
Claire hesitated near the cliff edge. “And if it isn’t alive?”
The guide didn’t answer.
The trail leading toward Tower Four looked older than anything else in Blackwood. Broken stone markers lined the narrow path climbing along the ridge while thick moss covered nearly every surface beneath the towering pines surrounding the cliff.
Ryan noticed more circles carved into the trees here too.
Thousands of them.
Entire trunks shredded beneath overlapping rings carved so deeply the bark bled dark sap down the wood.
The farther they climbed toward the tower, the colder the air became. Fog drifted heavily around the staircase now while the old wooden structure groaned softly overhead like something breathing in its sleep.
Then Ryan noticed another sound.
Music.
Very faint.
A record player.
The distant crackling sound drifted down from the watch room above beneath the wind.
Claire looked upward nervously. “Somebody’s definitely there.”
Mason stopped near the bottom staircase.
“No,” he whispered.
Ryan followed his gaze toward the tower supports.
Photographs hung from the beams beneath the structure.
Hundreds of them nailed into the wood.
Rain-damaged pictures fluttering softly in the wind.
Ryan moved closer slowly.
Every photograph showed people standing somewhere inside Blackwood.
Hikers.
Campers.
Search teams.
Forest rangers.
And every face in every picture had been scratched out except one.
The same smiling face appeared repeatedly across the photographs.
Sometimes standing in the background between trees.
Sometimes beside campsites.
Sometimes directly behind groups posing for photos who clearly never noticed it standing there.
Ryan felt sick.
The smiling thing had been watching Blackwood for years.
Maybe decades.
Claire quietly picked up one of the lower photographs near the staircase beam.
The image showed Walter and his brother Elliot standing outside Tower Four sometime in the 90s beneath heavy snowfall.
Elliot smiled toward the camera holding two coffee mugs.
And standing behind them—
barely visible between the trees—
was another Elliot.
Smiling.
Watching.
Mason backed away from the photographs immediately. “Get inside. Now.”
The record player music above suddenly stopped.
Silence crushed the cliffside instantly.
Then footsteps creaked softly across the tower floor overhead.
Slow.
Heavy.
Someone was moving inside the watch room.
Ryan stared upward while fog curled around the staircase railings.
The footsteps stopped directly above them.
Then a voice drifted down softly from the tower.
Walter’s voice.
“Ryan… come up alone.”