The Essence of Darkness Page 3

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  Perched on the black wings of a huge nocturnal bird, Cooper circled in the sky above the valleys. The icy night was freezing the forests. Far below, he could see fireplaces glowing through the treetops, small islands of light in an ocean of shadows. Children’s silhouettes danced around them. He could hear their songs and laughter rising and then dispersing into the sky. But when the giant bird swooped down toward the children, their songs stopped, and the fireplaces went out one by one before he could reach them. The children melted into the night before he could make out their faces. One by one, they disappeared.

  At seven a.m., his watch’s vibration alarm pulled him out of this hypnotic dream. He rubbed his neck for a long time and noticed that someone had stuffed the mattress on which he had slept with dried hay and then sewn it back together. Through the dormer window, he saw bluish glimmers of dawn already enveloping the woods. He got out of bed, splashed cool water on his face to wake up, dressed quickly, and strapped on his backpack. He set off for a reconnaissance loop of the area, a first contact with his surveillance zone.

  The sun was now shining brightly, but its rays couldn’t penetrate the canopy. Shadows plunged the forest into a dusky halo where they danced, mocking the daylight. The deeper he went into the woods, the more ominous grew the feeling he had felt since the beginning of his mission.

  A kind of emptiness was forming inside him.

  It seemed as if the flame of his life were refraining from shining, to protect him from some unseen breath.

  Something was watching him.

  He was almost sure of it. He took the time to analyze this impression; he knew that an external, very real cause always triggered the “watched” feeling. He then understood what was behind this feeling: since he’d left the cabin, he hadn’t heard any bird songs, animal cries, or grunts. All life seemed to be missing from the woods, as if death itself held these places in the palm of its hand and was blowing this macabre silence from its withered mouth. Cooper was a seasoned agent, but at that moment, he felt the cold bite of fear. A primal fear. From the depths of his being, his instinct warned him of an unspeakable danger.

  He came to an old railroad viaduct overlooking a gorge. At the very bottom, a small stream was raging. The steel structure was no longer in use, judging from the grass growing on the tracks. The rusty old beams and moldy boards didn’t deter him from crossing the gorge.

  Once he reached the other side, he left the abandoned railroad tracks and climbed the hillside. At the top, he took out his binoculars and meticulously scanned the landscape before him. The extremely clear weather that usually followed a storm was an unexpected bonus: visibility was perfect. The ocean of greenery was clearly visible through the binoculars. He didn’t see anything that would suggest human activity on this side of the hill. He climbed higher up the bluff and directed his gaze toward the expanses in the opposite direction.

  A small valley suddenly drew his attention. The morning mist seemed to be lingering there, even though it was almost ten o’clock. It could be a microclimate or simply a network of underground caves from which colder air emanated. Once again, he felt the weight of the silence that permeated the area. As far as he could see with his binoculars, there wasn’t a single bird flying, not even the smallest insect. He tried to find a rational explanation, telling himself that fall wasn’t the time for life to flourish; it was quite the contrary.

  But this absence was unusual if not downright abnormal.

  He turned his attention to the misty valley. Now that he thought about it, it could just as easily be smoke from a fire as fog. He decided to take a long break on this hill and got a little something to eat out of his backpack. While chewing a bacon-flavored energy bar, he lit his stove to heat up a mug of soup. He waited patiently for two hours, sitting in the shade of a spruce tree. When he picked up his binoculars to look at the valley again, the carpet of what seemed to be fog was still hanging over the woods.

  He marked the spot on his map.

  He would go there the next day to investigate the phenomenon.

  Now he had to return to the cabin to get what he needed to spend one or two nights on the hill. He got up and headed back, taking the same route he’d taken on the way there. This saved precious time, and he covered the ten miles to the cabin at a run, leaping on the rocks, silent as a Native American hunter tracking an animal. Even if the clue to this misty valley was meaningless, he was now onto something. He picked up the pace without thinking, as if to get out of this silence or avoid looking for possible causes for it; in any case, he wouldn’t find any. He was now running completely irrationally. He was almost lost in it. He clung to the vision of his dream: the faces of the children played and danced around the flames. But again the darkness swallowed them up and swallowed him too, leaving him floundering in uncertainty. Every second counted. He was running faster and faster, gasping like a runaway horse. He had become the prey; an invisible predator was hovering above him, around him. Of course, all of this was surely an illusion; some situations could give birth to the most absurd mental constructions.

  But the silence and inactivity in these woods was very real.

  And it remained perfectly inexplicable.

  As soon as he reached the cabin, he quickly gathered everything he would need to be self-sufficient for several days. He planned generously because he didn’t know how long this excursion to the valley with its strange mists would take him.

  In addition to his usual revolver, a Glock 21, he equipped himself with a sniper rifle perfect for hunting—in the unlikely event that he would find game. But this weapon would be indispensable if the kind of beast he had come to hunt in these woods made the mistake of coming out of the shadows. Cooper had authorization to kill if necessary.

  He noted in his report the improbable facts he had observed with a simple sentence: “Significant lack of forest wildlife activity in the area.” He quickly devoured another energy bar and set off again.

  The night was as black as ink, but the moon would soon rise. He noticed that he had almost grown used to the silence.

  And he wasn’t happy about that at all.

  The day had faded into the twilight and gradually surrendered what rightfully belonged to the sovereign night. The night that, every evening, slowly clothed the woods with its sumptuous robe of darkness.

  Now, shadowy, teeming things could wander freely, and all fears found their reason for being. Men and beasts could hide in their lairs, huddling feverishly together to preserve the pale glow of their lives. There was no longer an answer to any question. The darkness shattered reason, letting doubt and ignorance prevail. Since the dawn of time, humans had told the most terrible stories around the fire. Sometimes, they were true. Evil took root and spread in the night.

  The moon rose majestically above the woods.

  Cooper sat for a moment contemplating the crescent of pale light. He sometimes expressed his feelings about such moments in words—simple and efficient prose, like him. During these moments, he always felt a deep inconsistency in his life. Far from being a poet, he was almost no different from the beasts he hunted.

  He dispelled his thoughts and focused again on his mission.

  The moon now gave off only a faint glow, but it was enough for him to advance safely along the path. He wasn’t using any kind of direct light because it could betray his presence. From a practical perspective, the night was an effective tool. He stood up and continued his journey. Less than an hour later, he was close to his target and set up his camp a few hundred yards higher on a slope. He decided to wait until the next day to begin his investigation in the misty valley.

  *

  The same dream disturbed his sleep that night. He was once again on that bird. Its immense wings beat the darkness in a muffled rustle. Down below, winds swept the woods, making them look like an ocean of shifting shadows. He tried to see the glow of the bonfires around which the children danced, but there were only the dark waves of the forests came an
d went with the winds. He felt the bird rise sharply and saw the black ocean receding rapidly below. The beast was climbing higher and higher into the starless skies, flying faster and faster. Suddenly, he fell into the void.

  He woke up with a start, gasping.

  His watch read 5:30. He unzipped his tent and slipped out quietly. He pulled on his boots and drank a few sips of water. The moon had disappeared behind the hills, but the dawn that replaced it was beginning to filter through the woods. He made a few moves to get the blood flowing; he stretched like a cat, bending and extending. Then he climbed on a rock to observe the valley that lay about two hundred yards below. There was no sign of human presence, and still no evidence of animal life anywhere. He checked the magazine of his handgun, slung his sniper rifle on his back, and began to climb the rocks to the top of the bluff.

  He took his time climbing, placing his hands in solid, rough holds, his senses alert. As he climbed, the night dissipated, making way for the first diaphanous light. When he reached the top, the autumn sun was beginning to pour down on the red and bronze foliage.

  He had a clear view of the terrain in the valley where the mysterious mists persisted. From where he stood, they looked like puffs of smoke emerging from the ground in the most unlikely way. He slipped his hand into his back pocket and took out his camera to take precise pictures of the phenomenon. Suddenly, a shriek echoed through the valley. He looked up at the sky and saw a huge bird of prey circling above him. He captured the moment with several skillful photos. It was a magnificent osprey with a wingspan of more than six feet. It had probably been looking for food for hours, and having found no prey, it was beginning to take a serious interest in him.

  “You haven’t found anything to eat, poor thing, but I won’t be your lunch,” Cooper said.

  For a few seconds, the bird of prey brought back thoughts of his enigmatic dream. He looked for a vaguely premonitory meaning in it. When he looked up at the sky to see the osprey again, it had disappeared into the distance. He heard its cry echoing one last time in the next valley, and then the deathly silence settled back over the woods.

  He brought all his attention back to the blanket of mist. Incredibly, it seemed to keep spreading slowly as the day dawned. He took more pictures and filmed the progression carefully for a good five minutes. At the bottom of the valley, under the puffs of mist, he could make out a circular mound that rose above the undergrowth. Huge boulders were piled up in a strange way, protruding from the layer of mist. He put the camera away and decided to go down the steep slope to explore the area.

  He rappelled down the face of the rock and carefully penetrated the blanket of fog. The temperature here was noticeably colder. Swirls of mist curled around him as he passed and then clung to his legs, strangely wrapping around him as if endowed with life. He climbed up the side of the mound and arrived in the clearing where the huge boulders he had seen from above stood. They were arranged in an organized manner, surely the remains of a building he judged to be very old. The structure was enormous. The ruins formed a number of concentric circles made of massive megaliths, most of which were still standing up, pointing toward the sky. The tallest of these structures was at least thirty feet high. His detection equipment still didn’t indicate any activity. He entered the misty maze formed by the stone blocks. He took several photos and then, keeping his camera in his hand, he wandered around for several long minutes before arriving in an open area at the center of these ruins. He jumped onto one of the rocks lying flat and pulled out his voice recorder. He sat down to start a report.

  “After spotting a small valley where persistent mist suggested a human presence, I went to the site. Like all the territory I’ve covered so far, the area shows no sign of life. I’ve just entered a structure located on a mound at the bottom of the valley. It looks to me like an ancient ruin. The temperature is abnormally cold. I have not yet found any rational explanation for this phenomenon or for the lack of animal life in these forests. Even if these facts raise questions in my mind, they are outside the scope of the investigation. I will still continue my research in this area and spend two nights here.”

  For a long time, he strode through the corridors of the ruins without finding a single clue; then he went back to his camp to eat. After downing some potato soup, he made himself some coffee.

  Sitting with his back against a stone, he studied the immobile layer of mist. A thought suddenly crossed his mind. He grabbed his voice recorder and turned it on.

  “Although I have no expertise in archaeology, I should mention that these ruins seem extraordinarily old to me. The question that arises is the origin of these structures. On the American continent, this type of construction seems improbable at the very least. Some of the megaliths I’ve observed are clearly sunk quite deeply into the ground. The arrangement of the structure, at least the one visible on the surface of the mound, evokes that of a sacred place, such as Stonehenge in Europe. Except that here, the boulders are more numerous and much larger in size and volume.”

  He stared into the ruins and, for a few seconds, tried to imagine which indigenous people could have created them. The powerful Native American Shawnee, Mohican, and Susquehannock tribes, who had remained independent of the English and French, certainly had very ancient origins, but this rock looked truly primordial. He fed his thoughts with a sip of coffee but eventually pulled himself together.

  He was getting sidetracked.

  He chugged down the rest of his coffee. He had already wasted too much time with these questions. An archaeologist would have to answer them, not him. He prepared his bag to get moving again. His movements were quick and focused, but his hands trembled. Thoughts of the dream of the children dancing and laughing around the flames had returned.

  Someone was holding them captive somewhere in the vicinity. Maybe some of them were suffering atrocities at that very moment; maybe they were already dead.

  He wrapped his climbing rope around his shoulder and went back down to the ruins. Once he reached the foot of one of the largest boulders, he threw the grappling hook, which immediately found a grip, pulled the rope taut with a sharp tug, and climbed up the side. At the top, he set up a camera that would film the scene continuously; then he did the same thing on another boulder. He could control the entire monitoring system remotely from the forest rangers’ cabin. It would instantly notify him of the slightest detected activity, whether human or animal. Spending another two nights here would slow down the mission, but oddly enough, he felt a need to stay.

  These ruins exercised a pull on him that he couldn’t explain.

  He hesitated.

  One more night seemed like a good compromise.

  He went back to the tent to look for a tool that would enable him to take rock samples. A small hammer would do the trick. First, he had to break the weathered outer layer that covered the original stone. He started by hitting it as hard as he could. Fragments of brittle stone flew in all directions. He continued pounding the rock for what seemed an interminable time; his forearms were like two burning torches. Why did he keep hammering? Shouldn’t he have left this work to a specialist? When he broke through the layer, he had cut through about eight inches of rock. He was sweating and panting like an animal.

  The last rays of sunlight no longer penetrated the thick fog that bathed the maze. He put on his headlamp and pointed the beam of light at the circular gap he had managed to carve out. The mineral now visible was an intense black, as dark as the darkest night. The lamp’s light shone in an incomprehensible way: the stone seemed to be absorbing the light from the LEDs. It was as if the darkness of the unknown rock were swallowing the light. He tapped his headlamp several times, but it was working just fine. He took it off his head to get a closer look at the incredible phenomenon. The strange rock shone under the weakened glow of the lamp and seemed to capture its energy in successive waves. The unfathomable mineral surface seemed to be consuming the light field. Stunned, he watched as the LEDs blinked and dimmed
with each surge of light until he saw the lamp go out completely, one last time, for good. He was going to have to make do without a light.

  He raised the hammer and brought it down on the jet-black surface. The sound of the sharp blow shattered the silence. Despite the force of the impact, he could tell that the stone had remained intact. He tried again, using even greater strength, but again the tool bounced off without damaging the rock face. He raised the hammer again and slammed it down with all his might, letting out a yell. Nothing. Not a single chip broke away from the rock.

  Cooper took a deep breath to calm the emotion that overtaken him. Discouragement had replaced curiosity. He took some time to think. Analyzing this mineral wouldn’t help the investigation, at least not at the moment.

  The children had resumed their macabre dance in his head.

  He tapped his headlamp again, but it remained dark. He studied the alignments of immobile megaliths in the night. He suddenly felt tiny before this immensity in the eye of infinity. He had a feeling that that these ruins contained a secret as ancient as the cosmos.

  He put the hammer away and took out his voice recorder.

  “October 4. Day Three of the mission.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “9:08 p.m. This investigation is starting to take an improbable turn. As I noted earlier, I have so far observed no form of life in these woods—no bird songs, no animal cries, except that of a hungry osprey circling above me. Even the streams seem to rein in their flow. And now these ruins sit enshrouded in an inexplicable fog that lingers night and day. I just tried to collect rock samples from one of the megaliths that form a maze in the center of the ruins. The material this stone is composed of . . .”