David Golemon - Primeval

"Well, I can tell you it belonged to a Russian named Petrov. By the looks of it, he was a colonel of some sort."

"Can you read it?" Ellenshaw asked, still looking around him, finally settling on the trees and the plateau beyond.

"It'll take some studying, but maybe, yeah."

"Are we about finished here?" Charlie asked, feeling uncomfortable.

"Yes, we had better get back to your friends before they get themselves lost out here," Lattimer said as he closed the journal. "Look, uh… Charlie?"

"Yeah?" Ellenshaw answered as he kicked at another piece of the black aluminum while turning for the river.

"Let's keep this between you and me. I mean, give me a chance to see what this thing says… okay?

"Whatever you say," Ellenshaw said as he continued walking away, looking around at his surroundings nervously.

Lattimer watched the young man wade back into the Stikine. Then he raised his head and looked around him. He had the same thoughts that Ellenshaw had had a moment before: that feeling of being watched. Or was it nervousness at the few words he had read from the journal that he hadn't mentioned to the kid. He turned to follow the grad student across the river, repeating the one word he had read that stood out clearly from the rest of the water-stained passages and one that he kept muttering, the lone word keeping him warm as he crossed the cold waters of the river— Gold.

While the other graduate students from Stanford sat around the large campfire, the song "Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock, wafting through the moonlit night, Charlie Ellenshaw was somewhere else. As he sat on a large rock, he kept taking off his thick glasses, wiping them clean, and then replacing them. The others didn't think much of the quiet Ellenshaw because he always seemed to be somewhere else, and after his return to camp late this afternoon he had virtually been antisocial.

Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III waved away the leather bag full of cheap wine. The girl who had passed it to him looked at him strangely.

"Charlie, what's with you tonight?" she asked, taking a swallow of the bitter-tasting wine.

Ellenshaw acted as though he didn't hear her as he scanned the woods. They were camped three miles downriver from where he had been this afternoon with L. T. Lattimer. Instead of answering, he stood when he thought he saw something move just inside of the tree line, a darker shadow among many.

"Charlie!" the girl said loudly enough to be heard over "Incense and Peppermints." She quickly handed the Volta bag of wine off to the next person in line. "You're starting to freak me out, man."

Ellenshaw saw that he had been fooled by the wind in the trees. The shadows they cast made it seem as though something was standing near a large tree trunk and every time he tried to focus on the shadow it would slip back behind one of the ancient trees. He had been seeing things like this all night. He swallowed and then finally looked down at the girl.

"You did your thesis on the Tlingit tribe, right?" he asked, about the local Indians that inhabited the Stikine River. As he waited for her answer, he slowly sat back down onto the large rock.

"You know I did, you helped me with the research. You know that thesis as well as I do."

"Not everything. What about their legends of this area, did you find anything…" — he paused, almost as if afraid to broach the subject—"strange… you know like—"

The girl laughed, making Charlie shrink away.

"You mean the Bigfoot legend?" She tried to stop her chuckle, but between the wine and being stoned she was having a hard time keeping the laughter in check. "Charlie, you kill me. Are you attempting to tell campfire stories to scare me?" She finally got herself under control. "I think that's so cute."

Ellenshaw didn't say anything. He turned away and shook his head. He then looked back at the young student and he was showing no humor in his asking of his next question.

"Are they firm believers in the legend?" he asked.

"Charlie, the Tlingit aren't the only ones that have a Sasquatch legend in their shared history; the Apache as far south as Arizona and Northern Mexico have the same. There has been eyewitness accounts handed down by the plains tribes, too. The Sioux and Northern Cheyenne have their own legends about a large creature that inhabits the highlands of the continent. That doesn't mean that they are grounded in solid fact. Besides, most of the old stories have been cast off by the newer generations of Indians; it's just not politically correct these days. They're trying to be taken seriously."

Charlie was about to retort when he saw their guide, L. T. Lattimer, placing items in his pack on the far side of the campfire. Ellenshaw scratched his head and stood, ignoring the girl when she asked him where he was going. He strode quickly to the old guide.

"Where are you going?" he asked Lattimer.

Placing his old brown fedora on his head, Lattimer looked up and frowned.

"You again?" he asked Charlie as he straightened up, and then shook his head. "Look, most of you kids are staying close to camp tomorrow doing paperwork, so since none of you were going to be much in the way of danger, I thought I would take another look-see at that area we found today. Figured I would start out tonight… no sense wasting time."

"It's after midnight."

"Ooohhh," the older man joked as he shrugged into the straps of his backpack. " 'fraid the ghosts in these woods will get me?" Lattimer laughed and then held Charlie motionless with his gray eyes. "Son, I quit being afraid of the boogeyman many years ago."

"Okay, you're a tough guy. But I'm tagging along with you."

Lattimer looked at Charlie as if he had been a bug climbing out of his kitchen cabinet.

"The hell you say."

Charlie turned and ran toward his tent as Lattimer stood there stunned. He quickly returned with his own pack and stood next to the old prospector.

"You got the gold fever, sonny?" he asked.

"This has nothing to do with gold," Charlie said as he squirmed into his pack.

"Ah, I see. You're interested in monsters aren't you?"

"Shall we go, Mr. Lattimer?"

Lattimer looked at the kid and shook his head.

"Well, if you want to make a fool out of yourself, I can't stop you. But if we find any color, don't think you can stake a claim, boy."

Charlie swallowed and looked up at the swaying trees and then quickly back down at Lattimer.

"No, sir, I'm only interested in the boogeyman."

After saying good-bye to the rest of the graduate students, and with the four track tape player belting out "a Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)," by The Swinging Medallions, Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III stepped into the woods lining the Stikine River, and he and L. T. Lattimer headed north toward the plateau, which was just visible in the moonlight.

Once they arrived at the site south of the plateau and had crossed the river, Charlie used his large flashlight to pick out the aluminum they had discovered that day. Whatever it was, the pieces were easy to see even though they were covered in black paint due to the river-washed white rocks of the riverbank.

"I don't know, but it looks like all that aluminum trash may lead us in the direction we want to go," Lattimer said as his flashlight picked up the same trail.

Charlie started picking out larger pieces of the strange debris as they entered the tree line. He really didn't know how much he wanted to observe in the three hours leading them to daylight. As he shone his light around, he had noticed the cool breeze had stopped completely and the surrounding woods seemed to become oppressive.

Lattimer was moving fast, making Charlie nervous as he tried to keep up with the prospector. Then Ellenshaw struck something about three hundred yards into the thick woods. He hissed through his teeth as he stumbled back and then looked down, his light picking up what looked like a chair. Charlie angrily kicked out at it, wanting it to be Lattimer for hurrying foolishly through the trees. When his boot struck the chair, it slowly slid over onto its side, almost in slow motion because of the twisted vines that had curled through its base. When it hit, Charlie felt his bowels almost let go. He fell back as the eyeless sockets of a skull stared back at him. He fell backward, his light never leaving the body. He struck the ground and stared at his grisly discovery. The crash helmet was missing its faceplate. The torn oxygen hose dangled away from a rotted rubber mask that had once covered the features of the pilot. The face had a massive crack in the bone that ran from the brows to the jaw, where the lower half was missing.