The young man was clutching something reddish brown in his frozen right hand and as far as the Skipper was concerned, there could be no mistake as to what it was. At that moment, the crackle of the walkie-talkie startled the Skipper out of his moment of horror.
“Base to Colonel Sutcilff… come in Colonel.”
The Skipper pulled from his pocket the walkie-talkie. “Go ahead, base.”
“Colonel, the meteorologist just passed on an advisory of a category four blizzard moving across your area. This is a big one, Colonel. We’ve got to evacuate your men ASAP. A chopper is already in route to your camp site. Just be ready to go. Acknowledge?”
The Skipper had a thousand things running through his mind, but there was no hesitation. He wasn’t the kind of man to jeopardize the lives of his men.
“Acknowledge, base. We’ll be ready.”
There was no time to discuss the horror of the Albatross; the men just made a bee-line for the camp. The snow was falling much heavier now and the wind was climbing to tempest strength. A small helicopter arrived on the scene just as they approached the camp. The men ran over and the Skipper stuck his head through the door.
“What the hell is this? Where’s the Huey?”
The pilot looked stricken. “Sorry Colonel, this is the best we could do. The Huey’s got engine trouble. We just got to try and fit every body in, that’s all.”
The men piled aboard as best they could but the chopper couldn’t manage enough lift.
“Too much weight!” the pilot shouted with an ominous tone.
The Skipper looked him in the eyes. “If I stay behind, will you be able to make another trip back in this soup?”
“You bet, Colonel,” the pilot responded without hesitation. “All the hounds in hell couldn’t stop me from getting back here.”
The Skipper winked. “That’s good enough for me,” he said and stepped out of the chopper.
The men immediately protested, each offering to make the sacrifice, but the Skipper had made his decision. The chopper labored for a few moments but eventually gained altitude and disappeared into a blanket of white.
The Skipper retreated back to the tent. Once inside, he cranked up the kerosene heater and wrapped himself in a blanket. He was surprised at how quickly the temperature had fallen. He began pacing back and forth, trying to maintain the circulation in his feet, when suddenly a gust of wind tore the back side of the tent open with a loud ripping sound and the snow poured through like a sieve. He stepped up to try and staunch the hole but a second later the wind toppled the kerosene heater, splashing its fuel and igniting the tent in a sudden burst of flame. There was nothing he could do but get out quickly. Seconds later he found himself standing alone in the middle of a raging blizzard watching what was left of the tent sizzle to oblivion. He was now without the least bit of shelter and it occurred to him that for the first time in his life he wasn’t going to come out on the good end of this one. But an idea suddenly crossed his mind. “The Albatross! Of course!” He turned and high-tailed it through a blinding torrent of snow and ice and was much relieved when he once again stepped up into the plane. It was as cold as a meat locker inside but he was grateful for the shelter. He knew he wouldn’t have lasted ten more minutes out in that storm. He tried his walkie-talkie but it only returned static. His body shivered uncontrollably and his teeth found their old rhythm once again. He draped the blanket over his head and sat down against the planes bulkhead, trying to get comfortable. The frozen navigator sat across from him not nine feet away but he tried to push the thought out of his mind.
“Mustn’t fall asleep.” He said to himself. “Mustn’t…”
It seemed like only seconds later that his wife was rubbing his tired feet as he lay stretched out on their leather couch at home. The fireplace was glowing bright in the corner of the room and its warmth felt delicious as he sipped a glass of chilled wine.
“That’s how it all happened, dear. I was truly lucky to make it out alive.”
“Oh, you poor thing!” she said as she squeezed some more aloe scented lotion into her hand. “Now you just try to relax while momma pampers her little baby.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I must say that it’s good to be back home again.” He took another long sip of his drink and closed his eyes. “Ahhh…that feels great honey, you’ve certainly got the magic touch.” For some reason, she started whistling something under her breath and it struck him as odd since he could never recall her whistling before. She stopped suddenly.
“You know dear, if you don’t feel up to going out tonight, I can easily fix something myself. As a matter of fact,” she said with a deep guttural laugh that brought goose flesh to his entire body, “I have a little something here that we both can munch on before dinner.”
At that moment he felt an icy cold object being pressed against one of his feet. He looked down and saw that his wife was holding the same frozen slab of flesh that the navigator held! A scream leapt from his throat and he suddenly found himself back inside the Albatross.
“My G…G…God!” he said to himself; his breath exhausting in ghost-like vapors. “Mustn’t fall asleep ag…again.”
“No, you should definitely try to stay awake, Colonel Sutcliff,” came a whispering voice from the tail section of the plane.
The Skipper felt his bladder release its entire contents and cover the inside of his thighs in warm liquid. At the same time, it felt like a jolt of electricity was shooting through his body as he fumbled for the flashlight that was in one of his pockets. He directed a weak beam of light on the face of the young navigator but his frozen countenance had remained unchanged. “G…get a grip, old man,” he said to himself, “You’re only hallucinating b…b…because of the cold.” A second later he began to hear whistling. He lifted the flashlight once again but the light faded to black almost immediately. He smacked it against the palm of his hand.
“You know Colonel, it was most unpleasant how you and your men have disturbed my solitude.”
The voice shook the Skipper to his very core but he kept reminding himself that it was all just the effect of hypothermia. Only, the hallucination continued.
“Young Williams here broke one of the most cardinal of rules. Partaking of human flesh is one of the most egregious sins there is, Colonel. It ranks right up there with shooting the Pope; a sin that will certainly get a person an expedited, first class trip straight to hell. Yes siree… no waiting in line, no long drawn out evaluations, and certainly no comical pleading of one’s case, thank you very much. Just a one way ticket straight to Hades on the red-eye…pardon the pun. This, of course, is where I come in Colonel. Someone audacious enough to commit such an abomination will always receive a personal escort to the nether regions by yours truly, so they won’t…shall we say…get lost along the way. To be honest, Colonel, I felt rather bad for the chap. Such a nice young man, just a victim of circumstance after all, wouldn’t you agree? Of course you would, Colonel. I know you’d answer in the affirmative if only your frozen lips could form the words. It might have also crossed your mind as to why I’m still hanging around in this young man’s frozen corpse. Well, the truth of the matter is, I’m taking a much deserved holiday. You see, Colonel, hell can be a very loud and annoying place, with the never ending screams and the gnashing of teeth and all the rest. As you can probably imagine, after tens of thousands of years, that kind of thing can really get on ones nerves. When I came for young Williams here, I was taken with the place. The exquisite darkness, the deafening silence…yes, the whole ambience very much appealed to me. So, I decided to return for a little vacation. That is, until the master calls me back. Can you really blame me? Once again, don’t bother trying to speak, your chattering teeth alone speak volumes. By the way, I must admit that your pathetic display amuses me. You humans certainly have no conception of what cold truly is. I’m speaking of a cold so penetrating that it scars the very soul. Hell, after all, my dear Colonel, isn’t a fiery pit of searing heat and caustic
smoke, like so colorfully portrayed by your ignorant clergy. On the contrary, it’s actually a dark and frigid wasteland void of any heat what-so-ever. Come to think of it--this place is quite balmy by comparison. Now let us, for amusement sake, consider the terrain found there… it is mainly composed of razor sharp rock that…”
At that moment, there came the whomp, whomp, whomp sound of two large blades slicing through the night air. “Well now, I do believe your chariot has arrived, Colonel!” Hearing the sound of the chopper, the Skipper felt relief in thinking his nightmare was about to come to an end, but another problem quickly reared its ugly head….the urine had frozen him fast to his seat! As he struggled to free himself, he heard a slight rustling sound; this was accompanied by something that can only be described as the crackling and stretching of frozen cartilage. When he looked up, he saw two red points of diabolical light glowing back at him from the shadows
Outside, the helicopter pilot could no longer find any trace of the tent; he only hoped that the Skipper sought refuge in the Albatross. A few seconds later the chopper was hovering precariously outside its door. The wind was buffeting the chopper like a toy model but the pilot decided to remain aloft since there was a possibility that the chopper’s metal skids would stick to the ice if he landed. He would remain outside the plane for only another minute then head back to base. A longer delay, he thought, would only be suicidal.
“Sorry, Colonel,” he finally said under his breath, “I gave it my best shot.”
He was about to leave when he noticed movement out the corner of his eye. The side door to the plane swung open, a figure draped in a blanket exited and stiffly made its way over. A short time later they were aloft and headed back to base. The pilot turned to his passenger.
“Thank God you’re still alive, Colonel! I don’t mind telling you that I was taking a big risk coming back here and I’m not gonna lie…it’ll be nothing short of a miracle if we make it back alive.”
There was a strange silence from the man next to him and for a moment he thought that the Colonel might have died. The pilot reached over to give him a shake when suddenly there came a whistling from beneath the blanket. The air inside the cabin became foul with the stench of death and decay. “Oh, God! What the hell is that smell!” the pilot screamed.
An animal-like voice beneath the blanket croaked, “It’s not so bad Captain, after a couple thousand years you become quite accustomed to it. By the way, am I correct to assume that you don’t serve in-flight meals on this conveyance? Not to worry… as luck would have it, I brought my own.”
An arm appeared from beneath the blanket and in its hand was a gelatinous piece of rank and putrid meat, dripping with blood. The thing turned its head; the brazier points of red fire in the demon’s eyes were the last thing in life that the pilot ever saw; his face was stricken with terror and he lost all command of the helicopter.
“Oh, dear me… where are my manners,” said the beast as they plummeted toward the frozen tundra. “I’d be most happy to share my portion with you, Captain, that is… if you have the stomach for it.”
EPILOGUE
After three days, the storm abated enough to send forth a number of search teams, but mysteriously, no trace was ever found of either the helicopter or the Albatross. Before the Repatriation Team returned back to the States, they conducted a memorial service for the Skipper at the excavation site, or what they thought was the excavation site, since there was no sign of the Albatross or the twenty-five foot deep hole that was once her home. There only remained a solitary orange flag poking out of the snow, flapping forlornly in the frigid Greenland wind, proving, at least to themselves, that it hadn’t all just been a bad dream.
It is interesting to note that to this very day, all three men swear to the fact that as they were leaving the Skippers memorial, they heard a soft and muffled whistling at their feet. They got down on their hands and knees to listen. To a man, they would forever insist that the sound was coming from somewhere under the ice.
THE HAUNTED WOODS OF PAWPAW COUNTY
A cloud of dust billowed its way down the road and soon a motorcycle pulled up to a small weathered shack where an old man sat rocking on its front porch. The rider shut down his machine, hopped off, and gestured a greeting to the old man.
“Sorry for the dust, mister,” he said, slapping at his powdered covered jeans. “I’ve been choking on this God forsaken stuff for the past three days now.” He stepped onto the porch and held out his hand. “My name’s Burt Nyland. You must be Thaddeus Olsen.”
The old man took his hand. “That surely be my name, young feller,” he said, eyeing the rider from top to bottom. “Don’t get many folks a’comin round these day’s but it’s nice to make yer acquaintance all the same.”
“Likewise, Mr. Olsen,” replied the young man as he removed a bandana that was tied around his neck and patted away the sweat from his face.
“I’m sure you’re probably wondering why I came by to see you today. The truth is, I’m in the process of writing a book and have spent the last four month’s traveling the country trying to track down some stories.”
The old man raised an eyebrow. “Stories? Well now, that makes me a tad nervous why someone would come to see me about such things. Just what kinda’ stories we talkin’ about here?”
The young man laughed and sat down on the porch step. “Not to worry Mr. Olsen, I’m not investigating anyone. It’s just that I’ve been attempting to follow up on some ghost stories that I’ve been researching for quite awhile now. I’ve made my way from Pennsylvania all the way up to Maine and down the entire Eastern seaboard. I’ve heard some great tales along the way but since the very beginning I’ve been anxious to get here. You see, I’ve been hearing rumors of PawPaw County’s haunted woods for years and the folks in town said that if anyone could explain its mysteries it would be Thaddeus Olsen. I was hoping that you’d be willing to share some of its secrets with me.”
The old man turned his head and skillfully spat a stream of tobacco juice into a can next to his chair. “There’s no real secret to it at all, young feller,” he said, wiping his chin with his sleeve. “The hills and surroundin’ woods is haunted, plain and simple!” He pointed to a nearby hill blanketed in a thick pine canopy. “Ya see that ridge over yonder? Well, son, up there aways used to stand an old mansion that was part of a working plantation back in the early eighteen hundreds; there’s still pieces of the main house along with some splinters of wood from a number of slave shacks up on that ridge if’a person would wanna take a looksee. The plantation grave yard is also up there behind the house aways but folks round these parts have good sense not to go up there at night ‘cause that’s when the spirits of them dead people roam the grounds as if they was still alive!”
The young man became noticeably excited and quickly retrieved a note book from his vest pocket.
“Now it’s perfectly fine to be up there when the sun’s up,” continued the old man, “but when it starts a gettin’ dark then a soul better skedaddle quick from them woods!”
After a short while, the young man looked up from his writing. “Could you tell me of any particular encounters that people have had with these, um…spirits, maybe even something that you have experienced yourself, Mr. Olsen?”
The old man considered the question then leaned forward in his rocker and spoke in a low tone as if to disclose the most confidential of information.
“My pappy seen them spooks on many occasion, right out yonder,” he said, pointing to the field that spread out wide from his shack and ran to the base of the hills. “Ya see, them folks musta planted the fields out there before the trees took over the land ‘cause I found many a broken spade and shovel in that ground. My old pappy used to tell me stories about walkin’ home from work and seein’ these workers, black they was, from time to time bent over and doin’ some kinda work with the soil. The first time he saw ‘em it nearly scared the bejesus out of him. He hollered out to get their attention but
they just ignored his calls. This irritated my old man and he walked up to ‘em so’s he could give ‘em a little of what fer, but when he got close, well sir… they just disappeared right before his eyes! Course, after a time he got used to seein’ ‘em and just let ‘em be. Truth is, I seen ‘em myself every now and then. They’s harmless down here in the valley, but like I said, don’t nobody stay up on that there hill after sunset, ain’t safe by a long shot!”
The young man stopped writing and turned to the old man. “This is such a great story, Mr. Olsen…it might even turn out to be the best story of my entire book!” He stood and glanced out towards the woods.
“I certainly appreciate your warnings, but now that I think about it, I’d better spend the night up on that ridge just to see for myself what’s really going on.”
The old man’s jaw dropped and the color seemed to drain from his face. “Don’t you be a damn fool now, son, you take a ride up there and look around a bit, but if yer life means anything, ya best leave before dark!”
The young man laughed under his breath, “I gotta tell you, Mr. Olsen, I’ve seen some mighty strange things these past few months but I didn’t come all this way just to scratch the surface of what could be my book’s most entertaining story.”
The old man shook his head. “Well, son…I spose your mind’s made up on the point but before you go, there’s a story that you might wanna hear…it’s about what happened to a boy that went up in those woods a long time ago.”
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