Location 009R part 2

 Here's another excerpt from the only story in The Agency so far that needed to be written during the day, "Location 009R." This will only be one testimony as the one following this one is very long and will likely be one post all on its own. Strap on your hiking boots and don't listen to the singing.

Location 009R

Testimony 1995-09-26

Arch. Welch: Statement of Paul Rhodes regarding another incident at Location 009R and the disappearances of the hikers Lawrence Compton, Courtney Duncan, and Lindsey Turner, recorded direct from subject by Archivist Simon Welch.

Rhodes: We heard about it, you know. The incident. Almost an entire town just up and leaves, walks into the woods, forty come back a year later and the rest are dead? Yeah, we’d heard about it. Thought it was the weirdest thing ever, but Larry—Lawrence—and I were always into that kind of thing. The weird and all. We planned on coming up here, hiking the trail a bit, maybe seeing the wall that the survivors talked about, and then come back and head home. Figured it would be a cool way to celebrate the anniversary of the event and, well, we brought the girls along because Courtney was into the hiking and all and Lindsey, well, she was her best friend. And, you know, we hoped we’d get lucky. That’s why we brought the tent. Figured we’d hike, set up the tent, have some food, camp for the night, and come back the next day.

            We started the hike early this morning. I think it was this morning. I asked the other guy who brought me here what day it was and what year. It’s still September twenty-sixth, still nineteen-ninety-five. God. It can’t be though. It doesn’t…time flows weird there, that’s all I can come up with to explain it. Nothing else makes sense, but that doesn’t either, does it? Time only goes forward at a set pace, it doesn’t go faster or slower depending on where you are. But I swear it was like we were on that trail for months. I know we weren’t. The calendar says we weren’t, the guy who brought me here said we weren’t, but we were. I know we were.

            We’d been on the trail for hours. We stopped for a break every so often, had some water and a granola bar or two. Around noon, we passed a creek and a couple hours after, we found a perfect clearing where we pitched the tent. I got a fire going and Larry went with Courtney to collect firewood. Well, that’s what they said, but both Lindsey and I knew what they were really going to do. We’d brought a cooler of food. Hot dogs, buns, marshmallows. You know, things that could be cooked over a fire. Besides, we were only going to be out there one night so we didn’t bring a lot. We brought enough for the night, and maybe a little extra if we decided to camp a day longer, though we didn’t plan on it. We should’ve brought way more than we did.

            After Larry and Courtney got back with the firewood, we started roasting hotdogs and talking about what happened in back then. Courtney thought it was cool, but Lindsey was freaked out. She got jumpy and kept saying we needed to go back to town, that it wasn’t safe, and that it was creepy. We all ignored her. That was why we were here. Because it was creepy. We started telling spooky stories, making comments about how we were probably in the same spot where some of the town decided to kill the others, probably roasted bits of them over a fire just like we were doing with the hotdogs. Lindsey just got jumpier and jumpier to the point where she was twitching at every slight sound or movement. A leaf would fall and she’d practically jump out of her skin.

            After dinner, we decided to go to bed. We put out the fire and went into the tent. Lindsey was still freaked out and laid there, jerking and twitching and whimpering at every tiny sound. Since no one could sleep with Lindsey upset, we sat up for a bit and played cards. Everything was good and she was finally calming down.

That’s when we heard the singing. It was faint, we could barely tell it was singing, but nothing else makes those sounds. Besides, it sounded like words. I mean, yeah, I know the human mind is weird and since it was so faint it would be hard to tell for sure what it was, but it was definitely singing. Lindsey told us to knock it off, that we weren’t funny. We told her that we weren’t doing it, it wasn’t us, we had no idea what it was. She got quiet and we just listened. The singing got closer and it…it was definitely singing. It sounded like, and you’re going to laugh at me, but it sounded like “We’re Off to See the Wizard” from The Wizard of Oz, just that song repeated over and over. It was…ominous. Like, it wasn’t upbeat like the song from the movie. It was…slower. More like a funeral march or a chant or something.

We heard people moving around the tent and kind of mumbling as they walked, but we could still hear the singing. It wasn’t coming from the people outside our tent—they were mumbling along to the song, but not singing—but it was louder than it had been, but still faint. Like, it got closer, then farther away. Like it was trying to entice us to follow it.

Larry opened the tent to tell the people to clear out. Things get a little hazy after that, but I remember seeing so many people, just walking and mumbling along to the song. Then, I heard Lindsey begin mumbling the song too. Larry quickly closed the tent flap and we sat there until the singing faded and the people went away. We slept in shifts that night and agreed that we were going to leave at first light.

We packed up the tent and started the hike back to town. We started shortly after seven, because it was just then light enough. We started hiking back down the trail, we passed the creek. We were making good time, or at least we thought we were. But then, we came to the clearing where we’d set up the tent the day before. I know it was the same clearing because there wasn’t one before the creek and this one had remnants of our fire. They noticed and we kept walking. We passed the creek again and came back to the clearing again. We heard the music, distant, again, but kept walking.

I don’t know how long we walked, but we passed that creek several times. I stopped counting. Night was falling and we were hungry so we set up the tent again in the clearing, started the fire, and roasted the remaining hot dogs. We were convinced that we’d just got turned around and we would find the right way home tomorrow. We went in the tent after putting out the fire and the singing came again. We heard the singing, we heard the people. We slept in shifts again.

We got up, packed up the tent, got walking again. Walked past the creek, walked past the clearing, walked past the creek. On and on and on. We kept walking then camped when it got dark and slept in shifts. We did this for several days. Every day, it was like the singing got closer, but then fainter. Soon, Courtney was chanting the damn song again and again in a daze.

Still, we kept our routine. We were so hungry. I don’t know what we did about food, but I know we must have eaten something because we weren’t hungry. I worry about what we did because this blood came from somewhere, something. It doesn’t matter. After the second week of walking and passing that creek, we came to the wall. Twenty feet long, seven feet tall. Just…there. There was nothing stopping us from just going around it or even over it—Larry and I were both athletic enough to climb it—but we didn’t. We just kept walking. We passed the creek again and the clearing and the wall. We didn’t even camp, didn’t stop. We kept walking and walking.

I think Lindsey disappeared first. I don’t really know. I just know that we passed the wall again several days later and I suddenly realized I didn’t hear her crying anymore. I mentioned it to the others and they just…stared at me. Through me. That’s when I noticed the blood on our faces and hands. We kept walking.

Courtney was next. It wasn’t like with Lindsey. It was more I just felt like our group had gotten smaller and then realized there was just me and Larry and the others.

Arch. Welch: Others?

Rhodes: Yeah, the others. We weren’t alone walking. There were others. The ones we heard mumbling along to the song and saw walking that first night. They were there too. They were just walking and mumbling. I don’t think they were really there, but I don’t know. They looked real enough but they never spoke to or looked at us. They just kept walking like we did.

            Larry vanished next and the others stopped walking. I stopped too. I…I heard the singing still, but I also felt like I was being told to go home. I turned and walked through the crowd, all of them staring at the wall without moving. They started walking again and I walked back down the trail, past the clearing, past the creek, and past the landmarks we’d seen on the hike there. I saw the trailhead and finally came out in town. Some guy, a ranger or something, picked me up and brought me here. I still hear the singing, very faintly, but I’m not going back. It doesn’t want me back yet.

Arch. Welch: Statement ends. It would appear that the initial incident at Location 009R was not an isolated one. This latest incident has also made it abundantly clear that The Wizard of Oz film that was confiscated following the initial incident is not connected, though it is still very odd that the ones who vanish quote the movie. Still, that particular copy of the film is not at fault. More research will need to be done and it might be a good idea to limit broadcasting and showings of The Wizard of Oz, at least until we have a better understanding of how that movie connects to the events surrounding Location 009R.

Arch. Welch: Addendum—As of September twenty-seventh, Lindsey Turner’s body—or what remained of it—was found on the trail near what looked to be the clearing they camped at, though there are no signs of a fire or of the tent being pitched. She was killed, blunt force trauma, and her body was either scavenged or cannibalized.

This isn't the last time we've seen Paul Rhodes. The trail isn't finished with him as we'll see on September 2nd.