The Chief lives on the former site of a hippie commune that was an experimental farm back in the 60s. When he came back from the Vietnam war he moved in and started growing pot and magic mushrooms. The property has a long history of logging, fish farms, mining and substantial quarry on the edge of Surveillance Mountain. This was the saving grace since a couple of the commune leaders were actually members of radical underground revolutionary groups tied to the Weather Underground, Black Panthers, Brotherhood of Eternal Love and AIM.
The Chief was in jail for pot bust trying to drive through Canada with 800 pounds of high grade smoke, and got sent away for 5 years that he did 3 and half on. Meanwhile the FBI came and busted the place as a training camp for Irish and Palestinian Revolutionary communists, creating a ghost town that he moved into when coming home. The place had a couple Aquarian age names like “Golden Lantern Farm of Mystical Mountain Light” and finally “Geodesia” based on the multiple stained glass domes and trippy architecture that the Chief uses now as chicken coups and duck ponds. The place had hundreds of koi ponds, rustic churches and little underground grow houses all falling into them selves and covered in miles of blackberry vine thorns.
ET was still down on his spirits but could limp around much better with a cane. Since the assault he had trouble sleeping at all. The night was full of little sounds that tore into his state of mind. He tried to sleep as the Chief loaded up enough beer and liquor for 2 week trip into the unknown. ET looked at the leaning sheet metal windmill in the yard, the antique iron yard chairs with a gothic floral pattern, the real living and screeching peacock colony and the sky above. The air had a weight and stillness that felt hostile. The Chief seemed to not notice the blackening of the clouds, the wind picking up or the far off lighting. Loading up camping gear for some hunting and fishing they headed out in the Chief’s 1970 GMC K2500 Super Custom Pick Up towards the wilderness.
The road into the mountains was dizzying, great mist shrouded cliffs, waterfalls emptying into vast chasms and a sea of trees that disappeared into deep black shadows. They had left around the blue hues of early dawn and around 3 they came into a meadow bathed in golden light. The sounds of water rushing and wind in the trees gave this place an almost spiritual light. Waist high grass with swaying seed made ET go info a fit of sneezing so much so he was useless to help the Chief unload the car. Knowing the kid was borderline crippled the Chief has brought an antique tricycle for ET if the walking becomes too difficult. ET feigns outrage but before they leave the meadow he is leaning over in on one knee and kicking him self along like a skateboard on the wide dirt path. Every once in a while he gets carried away and wipes out on his face.
Arriving at the fish camp ET sees a slow and deep stretch of river but can hear some violent rapids around the bend where the Dead Indian creek comes down from Northstar falls bellow the headwaters of Tempest Mountain. ET slid down to the bank with a cooler full of beer where the Chief is fly fishing. ET has managed to get into a sunlit pool close enough to throw the Chief beers and listen to his stories about Indian mummies found in a mine shaft near here, of phantom tidal waves that come in the night and only disturb certain homesteads, of a place where the seafloor is empty and an endless lightning storm brings the dead of ghost ships walking among the living who do not honor the land. ET loves these stories about the fragile edges of reality that seem to bend here under the weight of tribal lore.
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The Chief is cool to hang out with, he knows ET is opening one for him self ever other beer he throws to the Chief, who when catching him only gives a wise knowing look at doesn’t say a word. After going through a 12 pack, ET is sent back up to the truck to fetch another cooler, of which they had substantively more full of booze than food. ET now alone feels something off about the meadow. He hears a sound like a great bird screaming in the trees but sees nothing. Every time ET gets his mind back on opening the truck and dragging down a heavy cooler something else unsettles him. Sounds of great boulders being kicked down a rock face, sinister snapping branches into the blackness of the tree-line or skeletal figures in his peripheral vision that disappear when he turns his head.
He feels like if he can stay still enough these figures gain more and more detail, missing noses, white eyes, black skin and exposed muscle. But he knows this is either due to head trauma or some secondary cause like infrasound that vibrates the ear and eye by some auditory distortion that it create hallucinations. Still the feeling of being stalked by malevolent spirits is present as he drags down the heavy cooler that is breaking under its own weight and starts to drag it backwards like a crab. Now he hears running in the grass. Could be rabbits or a fox, but his imagination sees burned children with hallow eye sockets, starving and looking at him as a last meal, of witches or shape shifters waiting for him to turn his back to scurry up to him and stab him to death with sharpened bones or pieces of rusty metal.
Making it to the final rise before the creek he sees the Chief coming back up. “What took you so long?” ET tries to mumble some bullshit but the Chief walks on to set up camp. Alone again ET decides to look in the cooler and sees bags of cranberries, nuts, sodas and a bottle of whiskey. Feeling like he needs to steady his nerves he takes a big pull only to lower the bottle and see the Chief now annoyed snatch it back and say. “Not what we are here for, last thing i need to to contribute to your delinquency.” The Chief grabs the cooler and heads back into the grass to set up camp. ET kind of startled, breathed in some of the whiskey and is choking on his hands and knees to the point of pissing him self. Which wasn’t entirely a bad thing since he was soaked from the creek and shivering as the sun passed behind the trees.
At camp the Chief is jovial, making huge slices of salmon on what looks like pieces of a metal shopping cart, slobbered in chilli powder, pickled onions and some secret sauces wrapped in tin foil. The Chief mentions some girls might stop by if the weather holds up. ET wonders what kind of bar flies or starving hookers would drive all the way out here to hang out with him and the Chief. After a while the Chief’s eyes glaze over from his pungent marijuana and drinking all day, he absentmindedly passes the weed and the whiskey. He was cool about it, no lectures or tests of manhood just minding his cooking fire and laughing at his own jokes.
The Chief had so many stories that feel off, about an Indian man accused of being a witch and burned alive in the last witch trial in America. ET asks to hear the one about his mothers sister who could shape shift into a bunny and one day was taken away by a hawk and eaten. Stories about ruins of forgotten buildings where burn victims skulk away from people deep in the woods where stairs, doorways and chimneys give the forrest an evil feeling of a place existing between realities. Mumbling about tribes of “unwelcome” Indians who lived here, black eyes in the wind and giant owls who grant wishes for offerings the Chief falls asleep sitting up, waking in night terrors chasing phantoms off in the dull northern lights.
The Chief gets weird when he is drunk sometimes, whispering curses too low to hear, crying and yelling. Talking about people who died in Vietnam or people he had to kill, then he gets quiet and stares off into the horizon. ET asks about any strange things that exist in these woods and the Chief says “There used to be some missile silos out here. Doomsday bunkers where they used to do military tests. A network of intercontinental missiles was abandoned here in the 80s when some virus broke out. They hired locals to seal up the place with the bodies still inside.” ET doesn’t tell him about the strange things he has been seeing. They make a plan to check out the head waters above the Northstar Falls but the Chief won’t agree to take ET up to see the missile silos. Listening to owls and the sound of distant thunder they skip finishing the half built tent and sleep beside the fire.