The Witness

It was long ago when I worked at station 13 in the deep Siberian wastes. Station 13 was a soviet outpost and the Cold War was still brewing. What we did there, I will not elaborate on, as the expedition I want to tell you about is disturbing enough as it is.

On a day in late autumn, six days after some shooting stars had lit up the dark night, one of our supply planes brought news of a village some day’s walk away. The little settlement had seemingly been attacked, as there was white smoke rising from the wooden houses and no people were to be seen anymore.

Therefore, some of us decided to get to the village and look for survivors and the cause of the catastrophe.

The Siberian landscape is not easily passable in many parts, so we had to use horses instead of cars for traversing the rocky, wild areas. Our small group had started the journey in the early morning hours, slowly fighting its way through a thicket of coniferous trees. Despite the green all around us, the surroundings had felt bleak and barren. All the tree trunks lying around halfway rotten reminded us of the mysterious explosion from half a century ago, a graveyard of once mighty plants.

It had already become noon when the forest was finally behind us and we managed to move on a bit quicker. The village got close when the sun had already started to set, sending down its cold light. Passing by a clear creek, we made for the hillsides were plants grew rampant and my gaze wandered across the many trees in the distance, looking for survivors of the happenings we had set out to investigate.

Russian summer days are comfortably warm and therefore we were not forced to wear thick clothes or traverse frozen lakes or snowy hills. A smell of fresh and healthy nature was in the air and I almost started dreaming whilst my horse carried me onwards. It slowly got cooler and the terrain got rougher and rougher. I still searched the horizon, looking for hollows or caves where some poor people in need might have hid themselves. The predatory animals around those hills were nothing to underestimate and they smelled blood over long distances, making a wound all the more dangerous for possible survivors – if there were any to begin with.

People from around here would normally know how to deal with the wilderness, but in shock and terror knowledge is easily forgotten.

When we had almost reached the village, I spotted five bears, charging towards our little group. The horses had been restless for a while already, but the view of those big predators made them panic and we had a hard time not to be thrown off. One of us – a man from the KGB like me – had taken a shotgun for emergency situations and pointed it at the charging animals, ready to pull the trigger. I wondered whether agitating them with a shot was a good idea, but I also trusted in my colleague to not do anything rash. Indeed, I was right. The man waited patiently as the others tried to get their horses back under control. The bears had almost reached us, darting towards us at terrifying speeds. My heart was beating heavily. I tightened my grip around my pistol, ready to aid my colleague.

“Stop!” one of the others suddenly screamed.

His voice was trembling, confused.

When the bears had come even closer, I noticed that something was wrong with them. The moment I realized what it was, I wished that I had never joined the expedition in the first place. I looked at the animals, disturbed by what I saw. The bears ran right past us, not even giving off a sign of having noticed us. Their eyes and their motions were radiating a bottomless terror.

They... were fleeing?

Soon, I spotted smaller groups of animals nearby, also running across the ridges and hills, squeaking and screaming like a frightened swarm. The horses suddenly started to lose it as well. They rose up and I only narrowly managed to hold onto my saddle. The others reacted quickly enough as well and all of us barely stayed on top of our animals. There were flocks of birds, flying past and towards a horizon far behind us.

Beyond the hills and trees were all the animals had come from, I suddenly sensed an alien presence that made my skin crawl. The taste of acid filled my mouth. Never before had there been such terror in my mind. It was like a slice of hell had descended upon the world behind the ridges, making a bottomless fear resurface deep inside all living things that had gotten too close to it.

Carried by our horses we fled, fled far away across hills and stones and creeks, through thorns and vines and small patches of Siberian trees, until the terror had faded away and the horses fell to the ground in exhaustion.

That evening, we set up camp on the slope of one gravelly hill nearby, close to the rim of a small forest of pine trees. When a little fire had been lit, we finally found some time to rest and process the strange event we had been a part of. Despite some alcohol, sleeping was out of the question for a long time, as I was aware of something being out there between the hills, some entity of malevolence, lurking around. The madness that crept into my mind and the intoxication made sleep a horrid display of terrible dreams and I was thrown into an abyss of nightmares.

In the next morning, I woke up shivering and hung over, as the night had been cold and long. I was not the first one that had woken up and it quickly became clear that something was wrong. Some men were sitting around a campfire, cooking juicy beans. They slowly told me that many of the horses had not lived through the night. The flight had driven them to the brink of death and the freezing temperatures under the moon’s gaze had pushed them over. With sadness, I looked at the cadavers of our companions close by. The terror still echoed through my mind, but the presence was gone and there were also no animals fleeing anymore.

Soon we sat together around the fading fire. Nobody knew where we were, as our flight had been without direction. I could only estimate that on foot it would take us days to get back to the station. Many cursed at the fact that we could not really call for help in this no man’s land. There were also arguments about whether we should try and find a way back towards the village or whether we should flee as cowards. Most did not want to go back and in my head the fear also warned me against it, but there were some protests.

Were we this cowardly, this meek? Not a single man denied the panic that had gotten its hold on us, but some played it down and were intent on heading back.

The debate was getting more heated minute by minute, when a woman stumbled out of the branches, about forty years of age and judging by her clothes belonging to one of the shamanic tribes living here in the Siberian wastes. She seemed insecure, exhausted and was heavily shaking. We were quick to ensure her that no danger was stemming from our group. As some men wanted to tell her about the event of the day before, she interrupted, lost in thoughts:

“You felt it as well, didn’t you? That... entity?”

“We do not even know whether it was an entity yet,” someone immediately interrupted, but without much conviction.

“I am sure of it. I saw it. On one of my journeys. In my dreams,” she muttered.

She sat down and we hurried to give her something to drink.

“In your dreams? Is that a part of your tradition? Dream walking?”

I was a bit sceptic, but also curious. I had already seen things before that defied all logic.

“It is. I was out there. Close to it.”

Her hands were shivering, tightly grabbing onto the old cup one had given her.

“You were there? Please, tell us! That might make planning our next move easier,” someone said hopefully.

“I do not believe such drivel,” another one groaned, but we quickly told him to shut up.

The woman took another sip and her eyes started to drift off, but she soon snapped out of it.

“As you might have guessed by my clothes, I am a shaman. Some of you will think of me as a charlatan – fine by me. But our culture is spread across these lands, as you will know. It has been for ages. My skills in dreaming were never the best, even though my people expect that from me. My nightly strolls and visions were always crazy and ambiguous and save for one or two nightmares always harmless.

But when those fires crossed the sky and rained down upon the earth, everything changed. The night after those falling stars, I found myself standing in a village that had been struck by the stones from the heavens. It was dark and the moonlight was held off by clouds, but I still could see some things. Four cabins had entirely been destroyed and only scorched stumps were coming out of the ground in their place. I could smell death, could hear the cries of the people who had lost their friends and families. The road was bumpy and I had to walk some steps to get a better look at the impact crater. It looked like the ground had just been ripped away.

Then, there were piercing screams.

They came from the houses close by.

Suddenly, I stood in a living room, where a family had by the looks of it just started eating dinner. A man, his wife and two boys. They were lying down on the ground, shaken by spasms, suffering the pains of oncoming death. I just stood there, looking on as their skin started to become strangely white and coarse, turning into a lime-like substance. Their panicked eyes turned red as their veins started to burst. Their throats went silent and a terrible quietness made my ears go mad. Then there were other screams. Louder and louder the chorus of voices grew, begging for their lives and for their god to save them. Soon, however, that was over as well and left was only a dead village, left were only the remains of its citizens, looking like statues, slowly turning into white dust...”

The woman started crying.

“After having woken up, I told my mentor of the dream, but he just fell silent and ordered me never to visit that place ever again in my mind. I immediately told him that I had not done so on purpose and that a strange power had placed me there, but he just advised me to take some herbs for better dream control before sleep.”

“That sounds insane! And you think that what you saw was real?” one of the men asked.

“I think so, yes,” the woman replied hesitatingly.

“So the presence is a disease from space?” I asked, my hairs standing on edge.

She looked into my eyes and I spotted a fear beyond everything I had ever seen.

“No. That was not my only dream.”