I can remember distinctly how I felt when I checked my phone on that cold January morning. *1 missed call from Addison Fagan* It was surprising, having been called by one of my best friends from first to tenth grade, but it seemed so menial at the time. Somehow, by some cruel act of fate, my mind embedded the memory of that notification deep into my brain, marking it and underlining it as highly important before I had any reason to believe it to be so. I remember pocketing my phone, legs slung out of the doorway of the trainer aircraft I was in, gaze out towards the sun rising in the east, glowing red and peeking over the precipice of Mt. Rainier. It was the same beautiful sight that greeted me after every early morning flight lesson, but this time it was different, more surreal. I noticed everything, the Tacoma Narrows to my left, the sunrise and the mountains to my right, the frost on the wings of parked airplanes and the needles of pine trees, the dark tint of the sky, and the cold tingling breeze. It was like an omen.
When I got back to my apartment that morning, I reconnected with Addison. She was propped up in some fancy private arts school passing into Junior year. After that, she went off to attend Central Washington University, an easy pick for her, her mother was a professor there. We had not spoken since the start of college, but it took us no time to make up for our two years of separation. I told her about where I was in my flying career and about me placing first in a national three-gun competition. She told me first about her college life, that she was in good health, and that she was majoring in film and writing. She went on to mention that she had some big documentary planned. She spoke of researching American folklore, voodoo demons and Native American monsters, wendigos, skin walkers mysterious deaths and occurrences, everything under the sun that had to do with the supernatural in the United States. She wanted me to pedal her and her equipment all around the west in my plane to get personal accounts. At first, I laughed at this proposal. She was always a bit eccentric, but what she was saying sounded crazy to me. Besides, I had never undertaken an adventure quite like the one she was proposing in my little GA plane. I told her maybe, and that her idea was interesting, but that I had to carry on with my day. Over the course of the next five months, her tone grew more serious, and I, bored with my day to day obligations, started to become more and more privy to her plan. She went on in great detail. We'd go to the Navajo Nation, get personal accounts of skin walkers and the like and move on to somewhere like Louisiana and document modern voodoo practitioners. Of course I believed in none of it, but her documentary was a great excuse to leave Tacoma for some time and explore the world a little from the cockpit of my personal aircraft.
Our plan came to a head on the morning of May first. I woke well before the sun rose to check the weather on my laptop. Thunderstorms were expected later in the day over the mountains between me and Central Washington University, but deep thick fog would prevail over my destination for the next couple hours. I decided I had to leave early in the morning before the thunderstorms developed and became problematic. Should I be pushed too far by the thick fog over Ellensburg Airport, I could simply fly into Yakima instead, a mere 30 minute drive from the university. Not too long later, I was driving through the gates of Tacoma Narrows Airport and towards the hangars. I parked my car in front of my old ATP flight school, and not before my foot was off the clutch, my old instructor was out to greet me. Mukabe was a jolly Ugandan man in his late forties, and despite having lived in the US for fifteen years, never lost his strong accent. "My man, what are you doing up so early?" he asked with an ear to ear smile.
"Not much, just about to head over to Ellensburg to pick up a friend." I responded, pulling my flight bag out of my passenger seat and through the driver's door. At that comment, Mukabe's face turned sour.
"Sean my man, have you seen the weather over at Ellensburg, I just spoke to a student of mine about flying there today, and we decided to cancel."
"I've seen it, and I have a good alternate picked out, I can just land at Yakima if the going gets tough. Besides, we've had some sketchy flights in low clouds before, and you know I'm a god at instrument approaches." He and I burst into laughter at my feigned confidence, the same feigned confidence I used countless times before while learning how to fly by just looking at the airplane instruments with no reference to the outside world. He wished me luck, and I wished him a good day in return. I retrieved my luggage from my trunk and walked out to my plane sitting in its spot on the ramp.
The plane was a 1979 Mooney M20K, an aircraft of modest power and moderate complexity. I received it from my grandfather upon his death, as I was the only pilot in the family. It was a trustworthy beast, white and gold painted, fast, maneuverable, seated for four plus room for a sizable amount of luggage. Thirty minutes after arriving at the airport, my wheels were off the runway. I took a long drawn out breath as the landing gear retracted and locked with a loud clunk.