Day 6/ Marie

We passed the death apple tree that we found the other day. Then another, and another. Blane lifted the collar of his shirt over his face and motioned for me to do the same. It's a good thing he did, because soon the air was thick with whatever diseased pollen the trees produced, and we were surrounded. Every tree was a lumbering omen of death with a red X painted on each. The further we moved, the more fear built up in my veins. I couldn't help but think that those Xs could be painted in blood.

An owl sat on a branch as if the trees didn't bother it. Its eyes followed us from the moment we came across it until we were well out of the tree line behind it. Before us was a clearing, but no light broke through the flakes of diseased bark floating in the air.

A row of gardens before a row of stone huts became visible through the speckled fog. The plants shrank into the ground as we approached. Some even scurried about in the darkness a meer sidwalks-length away. The huts were built like igloos of rock, and we followed the dirt roads leading past three rows of huts before reaching a landing made with a stone border. On the landing was another row of gardens full of living plants.

We passed another three rows of huts and climbed the steps to another landing with even more gardens and huts. Each time, the plants seemed larger and less afraid. We did this a few times before realizing we had climbed halfway up a temple. A structure reminisce of Mayan architecture built into the natural hillside right up until the central pyramid. The stone steps were thick with moss, but we managed the climb without slipping.

At the top was a sacrificial slab of stone surrounded by etched walls on three sides.

"This is how far I made it yesterday. These glyphs seem like they could mean something, but it's just a little too off for me. Plus, we shouldn'tstay here past dark, there's no telling what's in these woods."

"Well, thanks for bringing me."

"Anytime."

The thought of running through this unnatural place all of the way back to the camp from that thing was unsettling and somewhat unbelievable. As if he read my thoughts and finally decided to confort me, Blain added, "we could hide in those stone huts if we have to."

"That was almost reassuring, but it kinda fell short. Why exactly did you wander this deep into a forest of death apple trees, anyway? You know these would not make good firewood."

"There were a dozen people gathering wood. I was following the trail of civilization. Every tree's been marked, every single tree. At some point, you give up on living in this part of the woods and move on to edible fruit trees."

"So, what could they have been building here that was so important?"

"Exactly, and why not build it somewhere easier to get to, unless they didn't want it found?"

That's when I noticed the skeleton laying mostly eaten behind the stone slab. We shared a glance, and both bent to grab something. I picked up a journal with only a page left unmolested, and Blain picked up the man's skull.

I gave him a befuddled look, something I would be getting used to, as he gave the eye socket a piercing gaze with one eye. Then he turned it upside down and shook it. A piece of stone rattled around inside until the spearhead fell into Blain's hand.

"I'm starting to think our civilization might not be very friendly. What did you find?"

"Well, mostly, these should be depictions of seasons," I guestured at the back wall with five glyphs. "we should have crashed near the equator, but this..." I pointed from the book to one of the glyphs.

"Shows a winter," Blain finished.

"A catastrophic winter."

"Is volcano a season?"

"I guess it is if you have a seasonal volcano."

Aside from a relief of a volcano, each stone had a tree, a sun, and a moon, but that's where the similarities end. I ran one hand across scratched images. The texture of tiny stone leaves lay dead at the bottom of one circle and covered the tree in another. I pressed on the stone like a button, and it sank into the stone around it. Then I pressed on a relief of a palm tree, then the button for fall.

"Okay, so, there's only really one 'legible' page in this guy's journal. Djibrine Diendonne, head archeologist at the University of Chad."

"Heh, Chad."

"That's the name that... nevermind. You're a child."

"One hundred percent."

"Anyway, here it goes:

We witnessed the volcano erupt today, from only a few miles away. We should be dead. We saw lava shooting in the sky five miles high and felt the volcanic ash rain down all around us. It was harmless as long as you brushed it off quickly and didn't breathe any in, of course, but the torrents of lava never came. It all just spilled out over the side of the volcano and vanished at the base.

After my team came to terms with the fact that we were still alive, I decided to approach the oddity. I was not disappointed.

Around the bottom rim of the volcano is a chasm. A pit like a medieval moat. The volcano doesn't pour out over the land, it spills straight into the Earth! The cave system must be massive!

On top of all of this, I now have a theory about why winter comes right after the volcano. It is still farfetched, but so is winter on the equator. I think the island sits on a glacier. The volcano melting the ice could cause a flash winter, in theory."

"So, volcano season, then winter?"

"Right," I pressed the stone button of a volcano and tried to press the one of a leafless tree, but Blain had to smash it with the backend of his spear to get it to budge.

The sacrifice altar made the sounds of gears grinding and stone scraping against an unkempt slide mechanism. The sound grew violent and ceased almost at once. The stone had barely slid a foot, but we pushed it the rest of the way. Blain did most of it, even if he disagrees. We were finally looking at a dark staircase leading straight down into the Earth. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

Blain flicked his lighter on, and I managed to get a waterlogged flashlight to work. The inside was dusty and full of strange smells that I wasn't ready to identify. There was only one room, a hallway filled with tapestries hanging on the walls and glyphs carved onto the empty spaces between.

The tapestries were made from colored twine. It's hard to believe that blankets made with the consistency of hay could be so well preserved, but they looked as good as new.

"Is it... Egyptian?"

The look I gave him must have matched how stupid I thought that question was, judging by the taken aback expression he gave me.

"If it was Egyptian, we would be a little closer to Egypt. I've never seen carvings like this, but again, I study fishlife, not rocks."

"Right. I guess interpreting it is out of the question. Unless you think bird carving means bird?"

"I'm not sure, but the words look like Greek mixed with something tribal maybe, but they are written up and down like some caligraphy."

"Okay, Miss Marine biologist, I didn't know fish studied Greek."

For a still second, we looked at the thing he called a bird. It had wings, sure, but that was as far as the similarities went. The wall was covered in similar depictions of creatures just shy of normal. Four legged animals that had six legs instead, reptiles with fur, a turtleshell with a canine head peeking out, things that walked upright on tentacles as if they were legs.

There were depictions of battles and hunts waged between these creatures and some kind of humanoid tribe. Either they were short in stature, or the creatures were quite large. Despite the many battles won and lost, there was always some hint of failure. It's hard to explain why on paper, but from the images I saw, they could rarely hunt anything they could eat.

This theme continued onto the tapestries of their civilized life. There was an image of a birth carved into one wall. The mother had five children, but they took the firstborn and the mother away. Both were sacrificed on an altar in the next relief. The third carving showed the way they were roasted over a pit for the rest of the tribe to eat.

The implications are horrid, but the art ended only halfway into the hall. Right where the mold stopped and the 'other' smell started. I still couldn't fully identify it. Almost the smell of death?

Steams of broken light entered through cracks in the walls so that something could be made out where the hall ended. On a raised platform sits a long stone sarcophagus. Layed out atop the stone is the presevered corpse of something not quite human.

The length of its body matched the sarcophagus perfectly. It measured at least ten feet tall with a wing span of twice that. Not that it had wings, thank God. It did have horns. A twelve point rack of horns on a human sized skull that couldn't possibly hold their weight.

For a moment, Blain's lighter illuminated his gaping mouth and pale face. He whispered one word, "wendigo."

"What?"

"The cannibal spirit that possesses frozen wanders. It's Native American folklore."

"Native American folklore?"

"I'm a quarter Ojibwe."

"What's it doing this far south?"

"I don't know, the horns don't match the old tales, either. They were only added when cryptids became popular. It doesn't matter. We need to leave. Now!"

At Blain's beckoning, my fear finally outweighed my curiosity, and we left, nearly ran, out of the temple. I don't know where this puts our survival plan. Finding the natives may not be such a good idea anymore. On top of that, now Blain is getting superstitious. There were more owls on the way back. Blain told me not to meet their eyes.

I wish I had listened. It reminded me of the humanoid in the temple. The way its eyes bulge and the lines of its face disappear in the shadows of the canapy made it seem gaunt, starved.

The Ojibwe believe owls foretell death, not the Raven. I used to like owls, but I found myself jumping at every hoot and coo. They sound like voices when they call together. Like my brother telling me I'm a fool. Telling me I'm food. Saying he wished he'd taken the ship to get his prize, and I don't deserve the recognition for finding his endangered purple clown fish.

Well, the jokes on him and he can have his stupid prize because this island is my legacy! I'll walk away with more evidence for evolution than Darwin!

(Scratched out text)

I'm sorry. That was the grief talking. My brother would never say those things, and he's gone now. The sooner I come to terms with that, the better.