The Tower (standard:Psychological fiction, 1848 words)
Author: kendall thomas	Added: May 09 2004	Views/Reads: 3849/2361	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Story of a business man on a camping trip who crashes his plane in the wilderness and undergoes an outre experience. Plus a short poem.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

station that rose in dismal silence high above him. 

A dozen or more guy lines hung loosely from its sides.  A few had rusted
through and dangled down like grape vines..  Saplings had grown up 
inside the log supports that formed the legs of the tower.   Zigzag 
steps led up to the station on top.  Off to the side was a small shack 
where the fire watcher would have lived.  A rusted stove pipe leaned at 
one corner of the slanted roof.  If there was a stove, he would be able 
to make a fire.  He had a hand ax, and there was plenty of dead timber 
lying about.  He had enough food in his pack to last a week, if he 
stretched it, and when he didn't make contact with his next Remote 
Communication Outlet (RCO) , there would be Search and Rescue teams 
(SAR) looking for him. 

He kicked open the reluctant door of the shack whose hinges had rusted
tight, and to his frustration saw that the room was empty except for a 
litter of cast-off junk.  There was no longer a stove. 

Coming back outside he glanced up at the station and decided he would
take a look inside.  But when he came to the stairs at the base he 
hesitated seeing that they were warped and rotted in places; however 
the supporting frame seemed solid enough.  So, cautiously, he started 
up, pausing at each landing to make sure that the next flight of steps 
looked sturdy enough to hold his weight.  And after a climb of  sixty 
feet or more he came to a trapdoor in the station floor.  It had 
swollen shut; he lowered his head and humped his shoulder against it.  
With a protesting crack, it raised.  Ted climbed the rest of the way 
into the cab, which was roughly  7 x 7 feet square.  Each side 
contained dusty windows, still intact, giving a panoramic view of the 
surrounding terrain.  In the center of the floor was a lighter area of 
wear were once a cabinet had  held the alidade, the map and siting 
mechanism for locating a fire.  A small boxwood stove stood in one 
corner.  A hole had been crudely hacked into the wall to accommodate 
the pipe.  A stack of fire wood was piled next to it.  The floor was 
littered with old magazines, empty cans and a few remnants of  soiled 
clothing.   Hanging on the wall, among spider webs,  a pin-up girl, 
wearing a smile and little else, displayed herself on a faded calendar 
dating back to 1942. 

Ted stared at the stove wondering why someone would go to the trouble of
carrying it up here when it would have been more sensible to leave it 
in the shack below and not have to continually haul wood up the stairs. 
 The hole for the pipe looked as if someone had been in too much of a 
hurry to cut a proper one but had hacked away wildly.  Cold air drifted 
in through the ragged space between it and the wall making a low moan.  
Outside fog drifted through the pines lower down.  Night was fast 
approaching. 

In the morning he would clear a space near the tower for a signal fire,
but for the present all he wanted was to get warm and sleep.  The long 
climb from the lake had exhausted him.  He took some of the tin cans 
and flattened their open ends and wedged them in the space around the 
pipe.  This cut off most of the cold air coming in.  He shoved scraps 
of paper into the stove, cut some shavings off a piece of firewood and 
stacked more wood on top of this and lit it with his lighter.  In a few 
minutes he had a cozy fire blazing.  Loosening his sleeping bag from 
his pack, he cleared a space on the floor and soon was sound asleep. 

Late into the night something woke him.  Before he was even aware of
having done so, he was sitting up, his body tense as if instinct was 
alerting him to some unseen danger.  An eerie wind whistled through the 
guy lines.  The station shook slightly as gusts came and went.  Night 
and fog surrounded him. 

But what had awakened him?  Something coming up the steps?   He couldn't
say why he thought this, but, with a rising uneasiness, he knew it was 
so.  Perhaps his ears had picked up a frequency too subtle to register 
with his consciousness . . . or was he overly sensitive to the faint, 
irregular vibrations of the tower? 

Reacting irrationally, he reached  out in the darkness and slid the
recessed bolt in the heavy trapdoor, locking it.  He lay on his 
shoulder, holding his breath as he listened, wanting to press his ear 
to the door but afraid to.  Minutes passed.  He was certain now.  
Certain he could hear the scrape of a heavy tread on the creaky stairs. 
  A prickling sensation raised the hairs on the back of his neck as he 
thought he heard the snorting breath of a beast just on the other side 
of the door.  But what kind of animal would climb six flights of 
stairs? 

A heavy jolt shook him as something rammed up against the door.  Ted
could hear it splintering.  Terrified he rolled away until a wall 
stopped him.  Cowering in the dark, he listened with his heart in his 
throat as something slammed once more against the door -- again and 
again, jarring the small station so fiercely that Ted thought it would 
topple from its supports and crash to the ground.  Then, all at once, 
the attacks stopped.  Only silence broken by the wind whispering 
through the guy lines remained. 

When morning came the fog had cleared.  A blue sky peeped in the
windows.  Overjoyed, Ted heard a plane approaching.  Rushing out onto a 
narrow walkway, he waved frantically as a single engine SAR plane flew 
by.  It circled, tipping its wings, then dropped down on the lake. 

In a few hours, Ted was settled in the seat next to the pilot, relieved
that his ordeal was over.  And he had just about convinced himself that 
the terrifying events of the night had been some kind of hallucination 
brought on by the stress of wrecking his plane and being stranded in 
the wilderness.  But as they took off and banked low over the ridge, 
they passed close by the watch tower, and, glancing down, Ted was 
almost certain he saw a shadowy figure move behind the dusty windows of 
the station and peer up at him. 

. 

~The Emerald Glen~ 

. 

Invisible sprites 

threw wildly dancing shadows 

on the trees 

by firelight 

. 

far away 

I heard their bacchanal 

their flutes and drums 

baculine 

. 

somewhere 

in an emerald glen 

where only dreams can go 

and return 

like dead men 

on stainless steel couches 


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