Whisperings

The Cessna was somewhere over the Aleutian Chain headed toward Alaska and lost in a dense fog and heavy winds. Ted Mayner, a businessman on a camping trip, peered out the windshield praying that a mountain peak wouldn't suddenly loom up in front of him as blinding tendrils of the fog swirled through the propeller and funneled rapidly over the fuselage. He had been flying on instruments when, without warning, the electrical system failed. The voltage regulator or the alternator had gone out, and foolishly he had never got around to installing any backup systems.

All avionics and panel instruments were gone. In the turbulence the magnetic compass oscillated erratically by as much as 15 to 20 degrees making it, for all practical purpose, useless. All that remained functional was his vacuum-driven artificial horizon -- which wouldn't be enough in the present circumstances.

Flying manually, he was having a hard time maintaining his spatial orientation; then, to compound his problem, ice began building up on the wings, and the plane started dropping fast, buffeted by the strong winds coming off the North Pacific and rising up the rugged shoulders of snow-covered peaks.

He tried his radio in a frantic attempt to send out an emergency call, but the transmission was blocked by the mountains. He hung up the mike; it was pointless; even if he got through, no one could help him. He set the transponder to 7700 -- the squawk code for a flight emergency -- and turned it on, then switched off all

electrical equipment to minimize the drain on the battery.

After a tense minute or two, the plane dropped through a break in the fog. To his right, not more than a hundred feet, he saw a snow-covered ridge and down beyond it a white, level clearing among a forest of pine: a lake that was frozen over.

He banked the plane over the ridge, barely missing the tops of pine trees. And, then, before he could grasp what he was seeing, a monstrous, insect-like thing on thin legs appeared out of a fog bank.

He swerved the plane barely avoiding a collision and hurriedly pulled back on the yoke as the plane skidded down onto the surface of the lake. There was a crackling sound, as ice broke under the impact. A wheel caught in a fissure; the plane nosed over, twisting the props and snapping off the left wing, as it spun around and came to a shuddering halt.

Ted shook his head, unable to quite believe he was uninjured. A gurgling sound was coming from the ruptured wing, and he realized he would have to act quickly. He unstrapped himself from his harness and climbed out. Sure enough, as he feared, gasoline was pouring onto the surface of the ice and flowing toward the ultra-hot engine. With only seconds to spare, he yanked open the luggage compartment and pulled out his backpack and began a hasty withdrawal from the plane. He had gone no more than fifty feet when there was a loud WOOSH and the plane burst into flames. Black smoke full of orange plumes rose into the morbid sky. Billows of steam shot up with loud hissings as the ice parted and the plane slowly sank into the abyss.

After slipping on his parka, Ted made his way toward the edge of the lake. Above, on the ridge, he could see that what had appeared to him as a huge, insect-like creature was in reality a fire watch tower appearing and disappearing at intervals above the tops of the pine trees in a wispy fog.

Angry, purple clouds were building over the rugged peaks, the wind was picking up, and Ted knew that as night approached the temperature would drop drastically. That meant he had to find shelter; so he began a long trek up the ridge, hoping to find it at the tower.

After struggling up a steep slope for several hours, he came to the remains of an overgrown donkey trail cut long ago through the pines, and in another hour, he arrived at the base of an abandoned fire 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.