This is a follow-on from Edgar Brent’s recollection of day one in the Tikshama, so titled Kalander Hut. The journal was discovered in 1958. What became of Brent and his party is still a mystery.
Journal of Edgar Brent.
The Tikshama - Day II, Bluewood Hut.
July 24, 1932.
I woke up with much relief this morning seeing blue skies and the radiant sun. Following the bizarre events of the previous evening, I expected the world to have been taken by the same gloomy disposition of my heart. Plagued sleep. Restless dreams. My poor Vera felt the blunt end of my sour mood. Yet, I could not shake the awful visage of that serpentine woman. Her distended jaw, the toothless gums. The violent stretching of her mouth as she bore down to devour me whole. The warm dawn dispelled much of the fear gripping my soul. And as I promised myself, I ventured back to the lavatories. I retraced my steps beneath the all-revealing auspices of the holy sun, and re-entered the cubicle where I had witnessed the monstrous bête noire. To much of my relief, there were no signs of the she-devil, not even the carved trails of her fingernails. No evidence at all. “A mere phantom of the mind,” as Vera would say. A phantom of the mind.
Emboldened by the lack of evidence, I regathered myself in the confines of the cubicle, enrobed myself in the proud values and sturdy courage of the man I knew myself to be, and stepped back out into the growing heat of the climbing sun. It was a new day, July 24, our second day venturing into the Tikshama. And I was adamant to make it a successful endeavour. For myself. And for the party.
If yesterday’s trek to Kalander Hut was a luxurious meander along the coastal ridges, then today’s trail was our first true introduction to the wilderness that awaited us. Under the morning sun we traversed a steep cliff, snaking our way back and forth to its peak. The wet forest of the lower reaches stiffened into a stubborn and hardened woodland. Saplings, bereft of youth and twisted with white bark, cracked through the ancient rock of the cliffside, and as we ascended onto the escarpment, we were met by lumbering trees as old and ragged as the bedrock anchoring their roots.
Our path was ever upward, our next overnight lodging nestled along what the first expeditionaries had christened Bluewood. Ridge after ridge, mountain gulley after mountain gulley, we carved our way into the Tikshama. The elder forest intensified around us, the great trees and murky foliage breathing a soupy magic that seemed to dull our thoughts and recalibrate the passing of time. Henry expressed it so succinctly. I believe his words were, “One could walk a week beneath these trees, and it would take a lifetime for your soul to catch up.” And so it felt. Not only did we traipse through that venerable wood, but we waded through the slumbering air, and a silence fell upon us as we were swallowed by the vastness of the Tikshama.
At last, we came upon Bluewood. The hut stands on a foundation of stone, and before it, the land drops away to reveal a deep valley. On all sides, the forest presses in. Thick limbs feathered with impenetrable growth encroach upon the border of the camp, whilst beyond the precipice, the bowels of the Tikshama sprawls into the distance. It is as if the Bluewood Hut resides within the naval of this great forest. It is here, that we feel truly encompassed, marooned in this fathomless, sylvan wilderness.
Yet, for all the majesty of this place, despite the daunting enormity that begs reverence, there is something insidious here. I cannot know if it is this small clearing amongst the ocean of trees, or if it is the Tikshama itself, that bears hostility towards our presence. The dreamlike shroud which hovered over us as we followed the winding paths, whilst we traversed the narrow steppes to Bluewood darkened as we came upon the hut. That placid haze became suffocating, and the silence which we all shared turned oppressive. But what is most disturbing, and I thank providence that it is not just me, are the whispers. At first, we all ignored the susurrus voices behind our ears, but it was Lilian and Vera who first brought them to light to the rest of the party. Considering my experience the previous evening, I held back my relief when Henry and Karl confirmed it too. I still kept mum about the horrific she-creature I’d seen the night before. Whispers were one thing. Seeing a demon was something else entirely.
Nevertheless, we all could hear the whispers. They were subtle in the beginning. Quiet, hushed things lurking around the boundaries of the trees, but as night fell, and darkness stretched its shadow, the whispers crept closer. In the light of our lanterns, or in the glow of the bonfire, they were no more than timid rustlings, but in the swathes of black where night reigned absolute, they cajoled and spat venomous banter. At one point in the evening, whilst we nursed our food around the cooking fire, a wind swirled through the camp, and on its back came laughter like dried leaves across stone. Lilian later said it sounded like the giggling of a woman and child. But it was the voice that followed which curled our spirits. A deep groan stalked the air, and it barked an inaudible but vicious order that banished the laughter.
For some time after that there was only the silence of the night, and the creaking of the Tikshama far below us in the valley. And for that space, we comforted each other, we warded the chill of the whispers away, and Vera fashioned the core of our reasonable response to the incorporeal. Later in evening, what shelter we sought in our rational minds was brought to an abrupt end. Karl, one who has seen the horrors and evils of many a new world, froze as he reached for the kettle beside fire. His head cocked to the side as he listened to something. The ability to witness terror in another’s eyes is one of the last primordial instincts left to modern man, or so I believe, and it exercised itself promptly as we saw the colour drain from the soldier’s face. What follows, and what we have agreed unanimously to be a shared experience, is what happened around that campfire. For the sake of retelling, I shall share, or at least try to share, what I heard and felt.
As I watched the colour drain from Karl’s face, the life in his eyes cramped with terror, I felt a breath upon my left ear. It were the whispers of a child’s voice. What it said, I cannot be sure, its tongue flicked and turned in a language I have never heard, but it spoke to me, and it giggled to itself. As it did so, another voice tickled my right ear. The voice of a woman. Whilst the childish whispers played on the left, the woman’s voice pressed with dire nervousness on the right. A sodden smell followed her foreign hushes. A smell not unlike an abandoned hothouse. Humid, swampy, and ladened with the choking fumes of rotting earth. Her invisible tongue licked my inner ear with fragile warning. The child’s innocence shuddered, and then halted. The fetid stink of the woman’s tongue paused. And then a deep groan came out from the darkness. An abrasive, guttural complaint that washed over the campfire and flooded my soul with a terror blacker than the deepest holds of Pandæmonium. It cast its shadow, and spread its carrion wings like a bird of doom and gargled its vile breath before my face. To the left, the childish whispers squealed and scampered away. To the right, the woman wailed a final black note before vanishing into the night.
Since that inexplicable event, and as I conclude this entry, we have retreated indoors and fortified ourselves within the walls of the hut. The door is shut. We have barred it with our equipment. The beds, all except one, have been drawn to the centre of the room. The last bed, we have not touched. It remains in the corner, furthest from the door. We can still hear their voices whispering beneath it. A child whimpering. A woman weeping. Out in the darkness, something circles the hut. We can tell by the moaning that drags across the ground. It is deep and heavy, and it will not leave. And from the darkness beneath the bed, we can hear them whisper.
- AB.
My skin is crawling...(apologies for being several weeks behind in reading)