The car pulled into the visitors carpark.
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” Cody grumbled as he shouldered his backpack, “I thought we all swore never to come back here.”
“Think of it this way,” April said as she strapped on her own backpack, “This time we might be able to finally solve the mystery of the mountain.”
“Look at this,” Cody pointed to the sign next to the large information board.
Mt Despair is off limits to hikers and campers due to dangerous conditions. Penalties apply.
“They’re still trying to keep people off the mountain,” April observed, “Well they won’t keep us off. We have a mission. Let’s go.”
They set off along the walking trail. After about forty minutes they left the trail and started climbing up the lower slopes of the mountain. As they climbed April’s thoughts went back eight years to that morning she, Cody, Sarah and Kaitlin had awoken on the mountain in the thick fog. What she had seen had given her such a scare that she had blocked it from her memory. She and the others had never talked about it since. But the memory was still there locked away somewhere in her mind, and as she and Cody clambered up the tree-covered slope towards the site of the old Bergen cabin, she started having flashbacks.
First she saw the thick grey-white mist. She and the others had stared into it mesmerized as the vague shapes of five people gradually appeared, two adults and three children. They were waving frantically as if warning April and her friends of something.
The memory disappeared. She tried to get it back, but was distracted as Cody called out, “Hey look over here, it’s the stream.”
Two hours later they sat down exhausted in the flat clearing on the side of the mountain, the clearing where once had stood the Bergen family cabin. The clearing where the three men in 1878 had fallen off the edge to their deaths. The clearing which was the source of the mysterious lights. The clearing where there had been ghosts warning them to stay away.
April stood up and walked around the entire clearing. It looked the same as before. Maybe no one else had been up here. She went back and sat down next to Cody.
“Cody,” she said, “I know we agreed to never talk about it, but now I think we have to. What do you remember that morning in the fog right here where we are now?”
He sat in silence for a few seconds, obviously concentrating on the past.
“You woke us up and we heard a sound like a voice. We just sat there staring into the fog and we saw a man, but it was just the dark outline, we couldn’t see his face. He was saying something like “Danger, danger, go away, and……” He stopped.
April’s memory was jolted back into clarity, “and he was holding a lantern” she added.
“Yes,” Cody agreed, “that’s right, he was, and it had a blue flame in it, I remember that part. But there’s more, the really scary part, which is when we packed up our stuff and ran down the mountain, but I can’t remember what it was. Can you?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“No,” April answered, “but it will came back to me, I’m sure of it.”
“April, do we really have to spend the night here again? This place gives me the creeps. Can’t we just have lunch and go back home?”
“No,” April said firmly, “We have to stay here tonight. We have to find out what’s really happening up here.”
They had sandwiches for lunch, then April told Cody to bring the small spade from his backpack over to the cabin site. “I want to see what else we can find buried just under the surface,” she informed him.
So they dug in various random spots, but found nothing. Finally April walked a few metres to the east of the site, looked around for a few moments, then pointed to a slight bump in the ground. Dig here,” she said.
“Okay, but what do you expect to find?” Cody asked, “We’ve come up empty so far.”
April sighed, “Probably nothing, but in the dream I had that night when we were up here, this is about the place I saw the lantern sitting on the ground.”
Cody started digging. The ground was hard so it took some effort, but after only digging down a few centimetres the spade hit something with a metallic clunk.”
“Oh wow, we’ve got something,” he exclaimed.
“Be careful,” April said, “Try to dig around it, then prise it up.”
It took ten minutes of careful working, but finally Cody managed to lever out the ground an old rusted metal object.
April took it and gently brushed as much dirt off it as she could. It was badly rusted and partly dented, and the glass was missing, but there was no doubt about what it was.
“A lantern,” April said in a hushed voice, “The lantern. The lantern poor Hans Bergen used to signal for help from Eden Vale, the help that never came.”
They both sat down and stared at the lantern in silence for a minute.
Finally Cody spoke. “But help from what? What had happened to make Bergen flash his distress signal?”
“In think I know,” April murmured.
Cody looked at her, “Well don’t keep me in suspense.”
“I’m not saying what I think it was, not yet. Wait till tomorrow morning. I have a feeling we’re finally going to get some answers tonight.”
“You mean Bergen’s ghost will appear and explain it all to us?”
April rolled her eyes, “No, nothing like that, but I just have a hunch something will happen tonight.” She placed the lantern on the ground where they had dug it up. “Come on,” she said, “It’s getting late, I’m going to fix us some dinner before it gets dark. You light a fire.”
“What if we fall asleep again tonight at eleven o’clock?” Cody asked as they walked back to their backpacks.
“It won’t happen this time,” April said, “I’ve set the alarm on my phone for ten thirty.”
