nosleep

Due to some circumstances out of my control, I need to live in constant motion. If I remain in one spot for too long, well, unpleasant things tend to happen. To avoid this, I took up a nomad lift style of living out my car or in motels. Being a truck driver is out of the question because I would be requested to have certain routes. I can’t even stick to a certain routine for very long. I think this life may be hard on others, but I found myself perfectly content with always travelling. The only real downside is my bank account suffered.

In order to stay warm and fed, I took jobs most people aren’t even aware of through a Corporation regular folks should never find out about. Some of these jobs were simple. Go to one place and see if anything weird is afoot and report back. The Corporation always needed eyes on the ground and I didn’t need to solve the problem. Just confirm if there is one. I received a request to go speak with a forest ranger in a fire watch station a few days drive from my location. The job’s payment was to cover at least a month of gas so I accepted it right away.

Sometimes I got lucky and could knock a few small jobs off at once, but this time I only had the interview request. I went directly to the listed forest and checked in with the ranger’s station. The ones on duty gave me a side eye wondering why I wanted to talk to one of their rangers on duty. He hadn’t told them about anything strange going on, and people tended to not want to hike all the way to the fire watch tower to give some news. I lied saying I was a distant relative and told them some family issues came up that the ranger needed to hear about in person. I didn’t want to ruin his reputation mentioning my real purpose for being there. They offered for me to talk to him over the radio but I was adamant on walking over. They looked at my polished, yet well-worn shoes and dress shirt. I may live on the road but I dressed like and office worker when I took jobs. Nothing said I needed to dress sloppy just because I didn’t have a real home.

They waved me through asking to sign out whenever I came back. The hike wasn’t pleasant and the heat made me unbutton my shirt a little by the time I could see the tower through the tree tops. My shoes hurt my feet and I cursed myself for being so stubborn on looking formal. I was getting paid for this so I refused to complain to anyone but myself.

I arrived at the base of the tower to see a man pacing waiting for me. They sent him a radio message a head of time saying I would be on my way and he assumed the real reason why anyone would come to see him in the middle of the forest. I raised a hand to greet him when we got closer.

He was taller than myself with a long beard. His eyes dark and sunken in his face and his clothing hanging loosely from his frame as if he lost a lot of weight recently. His hand shook at his side clearly showing he wanted some sort of vice but didn’t have whatever his body craved.

“Are you Barry?” I asked not bothering with a last name.

“That’s me. You’re the one they sent? The uh... You know? The company that deals with this sort of thing? Mr...” He trailed off clearly forgetting my name.

“Adelaide.” I said quickly and got right down to why I arrived. “You said you’ve been seeing things in the woods? What sort of things? Since a few hikers have gone missing The Corporation wanted to gather information to see if they could figure out the cause.” I explained sounding as positive as possible.

Barry gave a distrustful look. He appeared to be the type of person who didn’t believe in anything that lurked in the woods besides hungry bears. That was, until he experienced something strange himself. He acted reluctant to speak about it even after I came all this way. He needed to accept that no matter what he said I wouldn’t dismiss him outright. Finally, the ranger cracked saying what he doubted anyone would take seriously.