Setting out with grandma into the Cleft Pallet forest with grandma was always fun. She would get enthusiastic about moss and tree bark, bug cocoons and fungus. ET got the impression she was looking for something nefarious but he couldn’t place why exactly he thought that. ET has heard about larvae in the rain ponds. ET has always heard strange things about this area. People taken away by the military to be returned with pieces of their brain and organs missing. Man made UFOs, cattle mutilation and floating embryos in the creeks. Grandma has many specimens of deformed birds and frogs. These journeys into the unknown always reminded him of episodes of Johnny Quest. Grandma wasn’t exactly a mad scientist but she was retired on a mental disability program, so somebody thought she was a little touched in the head.
Cleft Pallet was a coastal swamp that led into the foothills of the Hourglass Mountains to the south. It was not a beautiful place but it had a stillness that made one feel unease. currents in the marsh always went opposite the tide from the strong wind. Exotic flowers with no known relatives grow here. A couple species of duck and fish not in textbooks as well. Alaska has so much bio diversity, far beyond any other region. Varieties of Honey Bee, Bat, Bird, Reptiles and Dragon Flies live among the striking granite cliffs and fog laden valleys. Grandma is looking for the chrysalis nests of certain flies and moths. She described finding a cabin filled with mucus and dead men in radiation suits. ET is sure this is a dream she had but he is willing to humor anything if he can remove a couple rounds from Grandmas handgun.
The low lands have varieties of moss she takes samples of in small jars. Gathering up some purple flowers and yellow mushrooms, they move on into the rock formations. They have to cross a mass of green coastal caves and arches totally green with plant life. Here there are some dangerous places where the tide can rise up to 70 feet in unuseual geological contentions where the racing sea water cuts deep channels among the spiderwebs of rushing white water and slick black stone. Running between gouts of frozen sea water, climbing tree roots and traversing deep casysms like “The Devils Cistern,” “Monkey’s Neck,” and “Broken Teeth Grotto.”
Finally they get to the proper forrest away from the sea. This is where the fog really gets intense. There are endless lava fields here inundated with Red Wood and Sequoia so old they have lifted off the ground, leaving deep culverts in the roots where you could get out of the rain and start a campfire. Which when the rain turned to violent lightning around noon, they tried to cook a nice lunch. Finding dry leaves, abandoned books and news papers in what could have been a homeless camp, they heat up coffee, biscuits and tuna salad. Grandma has a secret way of making tunafish sandwiches with secret ingredients with bits of martini olive, red onion, cabbage, pickled carrots and celery. Served on hearty Cinnamon-Rye bread with nuts, oats and sesame seeds. Today she has Black Rye bread. ET smells it since he suspects she grabbed much of the weeks groceries from the dumpster behind the health food store.
Grandma goes into one of her stories about being pregnant with his mother while she was on the run from Federal Authorities for some act of late 60’s revolution. ET liked the idea his Grandma was a fugitive, living under an assumed name, has had books banned by the Government and survived several assaults by Swat teams. Even being shot once by a sniper when she was imbedded as a journalist with the Black Panthers. She tells him about his real grandfather who turned out to be an informant for the FBI. He was a native man but she can’t bring her self to mention his name. She says he was at once the best friend she ever had and the most detestable enemy.
They had met during the summer of 69’ while she was working with Native American revolutionaries who occupied Alcatraz. His Grandfather pretended to be interested in the rituals, the old songs, culture of his people. In actuallity he was a Bureau of Indian Affairs Informant to the FBI, working undercover to frame the Indians for terrorism. Trying to bait people into buying drugs over the phone and setting up fake bomb making schemes for busts. The fact he had gotten her pregnant soured his case. Giving her a chance to escape from the Hospital and leaving him with a nasty scar down the side of his face where she cut him. ET imagines his grandma as young and ferocious, punching cops and throwing hots kettles¥ of feces on storm troopers breaking down the back door.
As the rain broke, leaving a calm in the air. The bugs were crawling around. ET got a big centipede for grandma and they decided to move on past the pioneer ghost towns of Goose-Neck and Bramble. When the US purchased Alaska this area was rich with cooper and silver mines. They went bust sometime before it became a state. Sitting empty and home to only looters looking to salvage windows, plumbing and old doors. This was a place ET did not come alone. Several of the fallen down shacks had signs of big animals in the basements. The settlement was built across a hillside out of stone and worm eaten wood. Everywhere the roofs and chimneys were hidden under raspberry bushes. Making it an ideal habitat for Bears and Wildcats. They had to pass this place to get to the abandoned military hospital she was curious about. There was an eerie quality to green stair cases where no house stands. Unpleasant trails where you could trip over a lost tomb stone or peace of broken masonry.
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Grandma was distracted by ever piece of fungus and odd bird. Taking pictures and stooping to collect residue, she was running around like a chicken with its head cut off in the scientific ecstasy of discovery. ET starts to wonder why grandma brought him and not Callisto, Mad-god or the Old Man. Something here must be dangerous. That made him both proud she trusted him and worried about what would cause pause in the most fearless person he knows. ET started to think about things he thought he saw on Surveillance Mountain to the North-East. Unpleasant glimpses or hallucinations scrambling in the grass. Chewed up faces, bloody and burnt. White eyes and lipless mouths gnashing teeth in vicious hunger for flesh. Thats not what he envisions here.
ET remembers the movie Matango about Japanese sailors marooned on an island where the only food they can find when starving is psychedelic mushroom caps. Mushrooms that mutate them into outlandish freaks shambling through the forrest, in the bellies of abandoned ships. He remembers the bible passage “Beware! Your old enemy the devil stalks the darkness, seeking whom he may devour.” Here there is always darkness, even in the bright glow of the sun. Tripple tree canopy leaves pools of darkness among the ruins. Gulfs of loathsome shadow where biting insects and hungry bears lie still in anticipation of ripping flesh.
Feeling like he is tricking him self into being scared he runs back to Grandma. Trying to hurry her into getting to where they are going. Every second alone he fells like malshapen creatures with fungal grows popping out their eyes, and cannibalizing their own faces until they appear like ghouls from Thriller. He tripped over a dead dog that had become a home to biting flies and worms. Among the exposed ribs and spine mushrooms were coming up, covered in hair and full of noxious slime. ET felt instant repulsion, disgusted by the crawling mass of life in the eye sockets of what was likely someones pet. He wanted to pick up the name tag on the collar but it was too much for him.
The yellowish green eye balls with pale blue corneas. Reminded him of a halloween breakfast cereal with like dried grapes and marshmallows that made him puke when he was a kid. Thinking about cockroach eggs and fleas in his breakfast as a kid made him actually throw up. He tried to deny the unconscious reaction but it was overwhelming. Retching on his hands and knees as a shrub broke behind him. Instantly feeling the cold air turn sour on his flushed skin. A chill ran down his spine as he looked out into the layers of trees and sees a hateful yellow eye. ET wonders if bears have yellow eyes? He knows Mountain Lions do and before he can get a good look, what ever it is sunk back into the undergrowth, disappearing from sight.
Losing all sense of composure, ET sprints back to the last place he saw his Grandmother. She wasn’t there and he was too scared to cry out to find her. ET stayed low and checked around the buildings, the bricked up culverts and broken cement rain gutters. The unending copse of trees growing from roofs of fallen in dwellings blotted out the sunshine. Every where ET checked there was no sign. Finally realizing there next ghost town over was just as likely. ET gazed out across the expanse of ferns and gullies that separated the places. He sees her pink traditional Haida straw hat with peacock feathers among the rocks of a stream about 2 football fields away.
ET wanted to close that distance but was never a fast runner. Stumbling over sharp roots, broken chimneys and decaying structures until he was in shouting distance. Grandma was oblivious while searching pools of rainwater with a magnifying glass. She took water samples and all around them ET felt an ominous shuffling on his heels. Coming to a deep brick pit that must have been the foundation of a factory that spanned the width of the valley… he was not eager to jump down into the pit to cross the flooded pit 20 feet deep and 400 feet long.
Feeling something touching him, he turns to see Callisto has followed them and is making a shush sign up to her mouth. Among the leaning walls and vine covered rusty sheet metal roof are what look like people. At least a dozen figures are fanned out around them, blocking the way they came. Their heads had no faces or human features, or rather living human features. Empty husks of eye sockets and mouths warped into rainbowish growths. Shocking neon colors on grey pallors of dead skin. He was about to say it but Callisto whispered it first. “Zombies!” Times like this reason and common sense do not dispel the fight or flight impulse to dash through broken machinery rusting in pools of orange pollution to escape the unknown figures surrounding them with rusty farm tools.
Callisto shrieks and ET is horrified to see he falling 20 feet down into the abandoned glass factory. Turning to look behind him he sees the lurking figures closing in with Axes and Pitchforks rusted black. The figures don’t seem to be looking at him, but responding to the sound of Callisto’s cries. She doesn’t look hurt, she landed on a deep pile of sand. That was lucky because all around her are broken pipes, crushed boilers and shards of twisted metal. Feeling no fear he leaps down as Callisto scrambles out of the way. His aim wasn’t as good and smashes his face into a pile of sharp thorns, reacting to which sent him splashing into a deep pool of yellow water.
No time to rest the siblings rushed to the other side of the foundation, pulling pieces of sharp thorns from their faces and hands. Reaching the other side where a staircase was visible under a century of undergrowth. Reaching the top they look back and see no sign of the figures pursing them. Thinking the things would stumble over the edge or end up impaled on sharp metal was too much to ask for. The crests of the foundation were empty. No sign of life beside darting Dragon Flies and mounds of red ants. Coming to the place where grandma was happily eating an oatmeal cookie she smiled and asked if they wanted some.