Morning came gray and silent. No birdsong. No wind. The forest below looked still, drained of its usual noise. I sat up on the cot, stiff from another half-slept night, and listened. Just the hum of the generator and my own heartbeat.
I tried to shake the heaviness off, but something in the air felt wrong. Thicker. Denser. Like the forest was waiting for me to notice something.
I brewed coffee — the last of it, thin and bitter — and forced myself to check the tower's perimeter. I didn't want to, but ignoring it wouldn't make it disappear.
When I stepped out onto the platform and looked down, I saw them.
At first, I thought it was just debris. Wind-scattered branches, maybe a dead bird. But as I climbed halfway down the ladder and squinted, the shapes came into focus.
Small bones. Arranged in a spiral. Feathers, stiff with dried blood, stuck into the dirt like pins. And at the center — a rabbit. Or what was left of one.
The carcass was fresh, still glistening. Blood soaked into the soil in a rough circle.
My stomach turned. I swallowed bile and forced myself to study it without panicking. The bones weren't random. The spiral pattern was deliberate — too clean, too neat. It wasn't animal behavior. It was human. Or close to it.
Someone had been here. Again. Close enough to touch the base of the tower.
I scanned the treeline through the binoculars — nothing. Just trees. Dense shadows. No movement. But I could feel eyes on me.
I climbed back up, my pulse pounding. The air inside the tower felt tight, suffocating. I locked the hatch, shoved the desk against it for good measure, and sat down, breathing hard.
The radio sat silent on the shelf. I switched it on, static hissing through the speakers.
"Carter, you there? This is Evan, tower nineteen. I'm requesting response."
Nothing. Just that endless, dull static.
I tried again, cycling through frequencies, even the emergency band.
"Anyone reading this, this is Tower Nineteen, requesting contact."
Still nothing. The static rose and fell, a faint pulse like breathing. Once or twice, I thought I heard something behind it — a faint voice, maybe, or a word — but every time I stopped and listened, it dissolved into noise.
"Come on, Carter. Just… anything."
Silence.
I shut it off before it drove me insane.
I spent most of the day watching the valley, waiting for movement. The sun barely showed through the haze. I tried eating, but I couldn't get more than two bites down. Everything tasted like metal.
I wrote in the log just to keep my hands busy:
Day Thirteen. Discovered ritual markings at tower base. Small bones, feathers, rabbit carcass. Arranged deliberately. Radio unresponsive on all frequencies. Visual contact with figures pending. Emotional state: deteriorating. Anxiety high. Sleep deprivation noted.
By late afternoon, fog started to gather again, rolling in slow from the valley floor. I kept scanning the treeline, switching between binoculars and naked eye, but the mist blurred everything. It felt like the world was closing in, layer by layer.
I tried the radio again around dusk. Nothing. The static almost sounded like a whisper this time, like a voice forming behind the noise. My thumb hovered over the dial for a long time, but I didn't answer it.
The forest dimmed into black.
At 9:12 p.m., I saw them.
Six shapes. Emerging through the fog. Forming up in the clearing at the base of the slope.
They moved differently tonight — slower, more deliberate. Not wandering, not random. Their arms hung low, their bodies swaying together like reeds in wind.
I watched through the binoculars until I realized what they were doing. They weren't forming a circle this time. They were forming a half-circle. Facing the tower.
My throat went dry.
They stood there, motionless, spaced evenly apart, all facing upward — toward me.
I could see faint glints in their hands. Metal? Knives? Reflective surfaces? I couldn't tell. The fog made everything shimmer faintly.
The chanting started again, faint and pulsing. It wasn't random noise anymore. There was rhythm to it, a pattern. It wasn't words, but it wasn't meaningless either. It was directed — coordinated — aimed upward.
I switched on my camcorder and recorded, trying to keep my breathing steady. The screen flickered with distortion, static crawling across the frame. The lens caught brief, stuttering flashes of movement — arms rising in unison, heads tilting. The sound came through muffled, almost mechanical.
Then, without warning, one of them stepped forward. Just a few feet, but enough to break the formation. The others adjusted automatically, filling the gap.
It was organized. Like a ritual.
I lowered the camera. My hands were slick with sweat. I could barely hold onto it.
I kept watching, unwilling to blink. My eyes stung from staring.
They stayed like that for nearly an hour. Just standing, swaying, facing the tower. Then, slowly, they turned — one by one — and melted back into the fog. No fire tonight. No light. Just the mist swallowing them whole.
I didn't realize how tense I'd been until they were gone. My shoulders ached. My jaw throbbed. I'd been clenching it for so long I could taste blood where I'd bitten my tongue.
I backed away from the window and collapsed into the chair. My flashlight lay on the table beside me, batteries low but still functional. I kept it on anyway. The small beam cut a weak circle of light across the floor, enough to make the shadows seem manageable.
I checked the hatch one more time — still locked, still barricaded. The generator hummed quietly outside, a thin lifeline of noise. I thought about turning it off to save fuel, but the silence terrified me more than the dark.
When I finally crawled back onto the cot, I couldn't close my eyes. Every time I tried, I saw the half-circle again. The shapes, the rhythm, their heads lifting toward me in perfect unison.
I turned on my side and watched the flashlight beam tremble across the wall.
Sleep came in short bursts, interrupted by imagined sounds — footsteps on the ladder, a whisper outside, the scrape of metal on siding. I kept jerking awake, heart hammering, only to realize nothing was there.
But I couldn't shake the feeling that the tower wasn't alone anymore.
That whatever they were doing out there — it wasn't random anymore.
It was for me.
And tomorrow, they'd come closer.