Ray stood there, motionless in the soundless room. His body was a heavy, alien weight and he had left something on that altar: himself. Dimmest light now prison; walls pulsed faintly and tethered to him like chains unseen. Breath drawn to the lungs was ever heavier, mountainous, as if peaks filled his lungs.
"Sam?" he yelled, his voice echoing back to him, lost among the cavern's silence. No reply came. He compelled himself to take one slow step forward, but unnatural resistance seemed to hold him back.
Reality hit him; the weight of it came crushing down so he hardly stood. He had saved Eleanor, freed her from a family curse that ran through them for generations. But in doing that, he took on her role. And if Eleanor, captured by this darkness, was helpless to battle her way free of it, what were his chances?
Something raged up inside of him. There had to be a way. He couldn't be the first man on earth to have ever made any deal with the Watcher, for gods' sake. Ray made himself push past the creeping dread, kept himself fixed on one thing: if he'd gotten himself into this, he could get himself out.
"Show me," he whispered, voice steady. "If there is a way, show me."
And at first, there was nothing but the stillness. Then, a low vibration started to inch its way up out of the cavern and off against the walls, like some whispering of an old thing. He felt a presence stirring at the fringes of his view, drifting round him like smoke. Each beat brought the shapes into sharper relief as they coalesced into faint, ghostly outlines.
Figures began to blur, like photographs captured in starlight flicker. Ray stood frozen in awe and terror as scenes unfolded around him-blurred moments of people who'd walked the mountain before him, each one in a fragment of time and with faces etched in expressions of fear, regret, and longing. Then he saw her.
She was a ghostly figure who in life was the first of Ray's flames, still and silent now beside the altar, face drawn and pale, eyes wide with the same terror Ray now felt. She opened her lips, but no sound came out. He approached, always reaching out, but his hand went through her image, like mist.
" Eleanor?" he whispered, though he knew she didn't hear him.
Her face twisted into some grim resolve, and she turned away, her eyes fastened on something far more deeply into the darkness. Ray followed her gaze and saw the faint outline of a tunnel, nearly invisible against the cavern walls. It seemed to lead downward into a darker, colder place within the mountain.
The moment he realized that, though, Eleanor's image faded, and he was again alone. But the faint glow of the passage stayed on, almost like a beckoning-or a challenge.
Ray took a steadying breath, then moved toward the passageway. Every instinct in his body screamed for him to turn back, to get out of this accursed mountain while he still could, but he pushed on. Whatever he needed to learn, whatever the Watcher held over him, the answer was down there.
He descended into darkness once again, but the faint heartbeat pulsing around him grew stronger with every step. Walls changed as he walked: ancient carvings appeared within the stone in forms twisted and curling like living things. Symbols marked the way ahead, similar to those Eleanor had drawn into her journal, but much older and far more complex.
A faint shiver ran down Ray's spine as he ran his fingers down, along the carvings. He felt rough grooves beneath his fingertips - as if the symbols were pulsing with their own faint glow, whispering to him as if urging him onward.
He finally came to the end of the passage, which opened into a somewhat smaller, more confined chamber. The air was cold here, sharp with the scent of damp earth and stone. Centering the chamber stood a large stone statue, shaped like a figure with hollow eyes and an outstretched hand. Its face was a grotesque mixture of human and beast, features carved in exaggerated, predatory detail.
Ray's breath caught in his throat. Must be the Watcher—it had a frozen statue image, yet somehow, in some un-understandable manner, alive, looking at him with those hollow eyes, which had never blinked.
He stepped closer to the statue, staring intensely at the hand stretched out as if reaching for something. It was shaped to hold something: its fingers were curved like claws. At its base, there was an inscription carved into the stone in faded script, written in that same incomprehensible language he'd seen in Eleanor's journal.
Ray knelt to read the inscription, tracing the worn letters. As he ran his hand over the stone, visions flooded his mind of people offering tokens, artifacts, even their own blood to the Watcher in exchange for safety, protection, and power. Each vision seemed sharper, more urgent, as if the mountain itself was revealing its secrets to him, urging him to understand.
And so the last picture clings: an aged crone in a long, yellowed robe, her fingers shaking as she arranges a handful of flower petals in the armpit of the statue, the flowers wilting to dry brown spots as she melts into the mist.
A voice-that-echoes low, it seems, an ancient voice speaking but the single word clear, terrible: "Sacrifice".
Ray stepped back, the image chilling him. The Watcher wanted something in return for his freedom over Eleanor-but it didn't have to be a life. It needed something meaningful, something symbolic. His fingers rooted around in his jacket, and he came up with one thing that was left: Eleanor's journal.
He flipped through the tattered pages, scanning down. This had been the last connection that remained between her and this mystery, the record of her descent into the unknown, the sacrifice she made to find answers. If anything would satisfy Watcher's demand, it would be this journal.
Ray steadied himself and placed the journal in the statue's hand. There was silence for a moment. Then, the earth beneath him was shaking, a great rumble advancing into a roar. The eyes in the statue began to glow, casting a bright, burning light that impelled Ray to cover his face.
The mountain's heart beat in him, a plodding rhythm that beat in time with his own. The light intensified and in that blinding blaze, something shifted, like shackles unsnapping.
Then it was gone. The shivering stopped and the silence returned, deep and complete.
Ray opens his eyes to a room which is empty. The journal is gone, and again the statue remains hand-less. He gulps for air in a nervous inhalation, knowing that the weight pressed down upon him no longer exists, that finally the mountain has let him go.
But as he walked back through the passage, he knew that the Watcher wasn't done with him. He had probably just bought himself some time maybe even his freedom but there was something lurking beneath the surface, a dark presence yet to reveal itself fully.
When he emerged into the fresh mountain air, the first light of dawn casting a pale gloom over the mountain, he found Sam waiting for him. His friend's face was all concern, but Ray managed a weak grin.
"Did it work?" Sam asked, his voice taut.
Ray nodded, yet a lingering unease still gnawed at him. "For now. I think the Watcher accepted the offering… but I don't know if it's over."
Sam's eyes were shining with something like hope, fear too, however: "So what happens next?
Ray cast his eye back up at the mountain; its summit lay hidden in the shroud of mist, weighing his own secrets among the unknowns darkening its peaks. He had liberated Eleanor, but the Watcher's hold extended far deeper, into the soul of the town and its people themselves, and deep within, he knew this journey with the Watcher hadn't even begun to be close to over.
---
What is still hiding in the mountain, and will Ray really be out of the Watcher's clutches? Or is he just another sacrifice in the never-ending chains of sacrifice that Whispering Pines never forgets?