November 10, 2023 • 23 mins
In the first part of this bone-chilling saga, 'Campfire Creatures' takes you to a remote Himalayan village in 1920, engulfed by a merciless blizzard. The arrival of Ewan Calder, a war-weary foreigner, marks the beginning of a spine-tingling journey into the supernatural. As the village grapples with ominous portents and ghastly occurrences, Calder finds himself enmeshed in a web of ancient traditions and dark folklore. From the eerie silence of the mountains to the gruesome discovery of a mutilated yak, each chapter builds a tapestry of dread and suspense. Amidst this icy landscape, Calder and the villagers confront not only the elemental fury of nature but also an unseen, malevolent presence that threatens their very existence. Join us in this harrowing narrative where each step into the snow is a step into the abyss of fear.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:30):
Hey everyone.
This is Greg.
Your host at campfire creatures.
Today we are at episode 10.
Looks like people are listening.
So.
I'll keep going.
This is a two-parter.
Yeti apex of shadows.
I really hope you enjoy this.
(00:51):
I'd really appreciate it.
If you could like the show.
Give it a little thumbs up.
Download the episode,wherever you listen to it.
Apple podcasts, Amazon music, Spotify.
It would mean a lot.
I'd greatly appreciate it.
(01:11):
Let's me know that people are listeningand Hey, I'll keep going with this.
In any case without furtherado, let's get to the show.
So sit back.
Relax.
Do you, whatever it is you're doing.
And enjoy the show.
Chapter 1 (01:38):
The Return
The Himalayan mountainside village hadweathered many storms, but none like this.
This was a blizzard with teeth,that bit into flesh and bone.
The year was nineteen twenty, and theworld was changing, though you wouldn't
know it, buy looking at the e huddledstone huts, the prayer flags now stiff
(02:01):
with ice, the smoke curling up fromchimneys as if trying to escape the earth.
Ewan Calder's arrival was marked bya solitary line of footprints, soon
to be devoured by the ravenous white.
He stood at the edge of the village,a foreign specter framed by the
snow, his body weary, but eyes alert.
(02:22):
Those eyes had seen the mustardgas and the mud of No Man's Land,
had watched friends reduced tocrimson smears on blasted earth.
Now, they sought something lost—peace,forgiveness, a respite from memories
that clawed at him in the night.
The village seemed to hold itsbreath as he entered, the quiet
unsettled by the crunch of his boots.
(02:48):
He didn't belong here; his pale skin andthe sharp angles of his face marked him
as an outsider, as did the Lee-Enfieldrifle slung across his back—a relic of his
soldier days, and a comforting old friend.
The village elder, Tenzin, emergedfrom the largest of the huts.
(03:10):
He was a small man, bent from a life bowedbefore the mountain gods, but his eyes
held a force that belied his stature.
He studied Calder, as if seeing not justthe man, but the shadow that trailed him.
You bring the storm with you, sahib.
Tenzin said, his voice rough withthe smoke of countless fires.
(03:33):
Calder shook his head, snowfalling from the brim of his hat.
"I'm running from it, same as you."
"A man cannot outrun his shadow," Tenzinreplied, turning his gaze to the mountain,
hidden now by the curtain of snow.
"Nor can he outrun the darknessof the mountain once it awakes."
(03:56):
The mention of the mountain stirred amemory in Calder—a myth his Scottish
grandmother had once told him of adark creature that walked on frozen
nights, leaving despair in its wake.
He had dismissed it as a child's tale,but here, where the earth touched
the sky, such tales felt as realas the ice that clung to his beard.
(04:18):
Tenzin led Calder to ahut, offering him shelter.
Inside, the air was thick with thescent of yak butter and something
else, a subtle hint of decay thatseemed to come from the earth itself.
As Calder warmed himself by thefire, Tenzin spoke of the recent
troubles—a darkness, he said,had settled over the village.
(04:40):
Livestock had been found eviscerated,their entrails spread out like offerings.
Shadows moved in the night, andwhispers—no, not whispers, for they
were just memories of a language lostto the storm—spoke of a hunger unsated.
Calder listened, the soldier inhim cataloging the details, the
hunter curious despite himself.
(05:03):
Something ancient and primal hadbeen stirred by the storm, or perhaps
it was the storm itself that hadwoken something ancient and primal
within the men of this village.
That night, as Calder lay in abed too small, wrapped in blankets
that smelled of mothballs andtime, he dreamt of the trenches.
(05:24):
But when the ground shook and theair filled with the sound of thunder,
it wasn't bombs that came to mind,but the mountain, shaking off its
slumber, ready to consume them all.
Chapter 2 (05:35):
The Maimed Earth
Amara's hands, once delicate andsteady, trembled as she sorted
the dried herbs in her modest hut.
Outside, the wind shrieked like a bansheemourning the dead, but the villagers
whispered—no, not whispered; they spokein hushed tones laden with dread—of
(05:56):
worse things than the biting cold.
Her love, a sturdy yak herder namedSonam, had vanished three nights prior.
He was last seen heading towards themountain, a silhouette against the
twilight, and then he was simply gone,swallowed by the burgeoning night.
No trace, no tracks, just thevoid where a man once stood.
(06:20):
The locals had warned Sonam of themountain's curse, muted utterances of
an old terror that coursed down itsslopes like an invisible avalanche.
But Sonam was a pragmatist; he didnot hold truck with such tales.
Amara feared his disbeliefhad led him into the maw of
something ancient and malevolent.
(06:42):
Calder, still a stranger but lessof a specter now, walked with a
measured tread through the villageeach day, his eyes scanning the
horizon, as if he could divineSonam's fate from the lay of the land.
His gaze had a weight to it,and when it fell upon Amara, she
felt both exposed and understood.
(07:03):
On the morning that followed aparticularly vicious storm, Calder came
upon her while she gathered ice-bittenjuniper berries near the village's edge.
His footfalls crunched in thefresh snow, the sound oddly
reassuring in the muffled world.
(07:31):
"The earth is wounded," he said, gesturingtowards the open space beyond the village,
where the snow lay disturbed, churned upin great swaths as if by a giant's hand.
Amara followed his gaze.
"It's the mountain," she murmured, hervoice laced with fear and resignation.
(07:52):
"It's waking up."
Together they found the yak—a creaturethat had once been a mighty beast
of burden—now rendered into ruin.
Its eyes, glazed in death, staredaccusingly at the heavens as if
questioning the gods' silence.
The snow around it was a canvas ofcrimson and gore, painted with a savagery
(08:14):
that bespoke not of hunger but of rage.
"The beast did not eat," Calder noted,his voice devoid of emotion, a detachment
honed on the battlefields of a war thathad ended but never truly finished.
"It kills because it can,because it enjoys the act."
Amara felt a chill that hadnothing to do with the wind.
(08:38):
She saw in Calder's eyes a reflectionof the same darkness that now seemed to
seep from the very bones of the earth.
He was a man who had seen too much,who had been hollowed out by the sights
and left with a cavernous space within,filled now by the frigid Himalayan air
and the mysteries of these cursed peaks.
(08:59):
The villagers gathered, theirfaces drawn, their eyes hollow
with a growing realization thatthey were prey in their own land.
Tenzin, the elder, declared that theyak's desecration was a portent, a sign
of the mountain's claim upon their souls.
Calder turned from the grizzly scene,his mind already racing, strategizing.
(09:22):
In the trenches, he had learnedthat to fight an unseen enemy,
you must first understand it,learn its habits, its desires.
The mountain, it seemed, wasnot just a mass of rock and
ice—it was a living entity, withdesires and appetites of its own.
That night, as Amara lay awake,listening to the howl of the wind,
(09:45):
she thought of Sonam and wonderedif the mountain had consumed him or
if he wandered still, a lost spiritin the land of shadows over snow.
She didn't notice the figure ofCalder, standing like a sentinel at the
village's edge, watching the darknesswhere the snow met the sky, waiting
for the land to reveal its secrets.
(10:06):
--- Chapter 3: A Trail of Crimson
The Himalayan dawn broke with a reluctanttrickle of light, seeping through the
clouds like blood through a bandage.
It revealed a landscape drapedin an uneasy silence, as if the
mountain itself held its breath.
Tesering, the youngest of the village'sable men, stood on the threshold of
(10:30):
adulthood, yearning for meaning ina world that had offered him none.
His gaze often followed Calder, thestranger who embodied the allure and
mystery of the Western world—a worldthat felt as distant as the stars above.
On this morning, as the sun struggledto assert itself, Tesering found
(10:51):
a crimson trail in the snow, starkagainst the white, an aberration
in the pure morning light.
It began at the edge of thevillage, weaving a path of dread
into the wilderness beyond.
When Calder saw the blood, asilent curse passed his lips.
Tesering looked to him, his eyeswide, searching for assurance
(11:13):
where there was none to be found.
"We follow it," Calder said, his voicea low rumble of contained urgency.
"We find out what beastspills such blood."
Together, they set out, the village fadingbehind them, becoming nothing more than
a memory etched against the frozen waste.
(11:35):
The trail was like a wound in theearth, a cut that seemed to never end.
It meandered through the starktrees, stripped bare by the cold,
and up the slopes, where thesnow lay thick and treacherous.
Calder moved with a purposethat belied his inner turmoil.
The blood-soaked ground spoke tohim of battles past, of life's
(11:57):
fragility, and the earth'sindifference to the suffering of men.
Tesering, meanwhile, was fuelled bya desperate need to prove himself—to
the village, to Calder, to the shadowof his father, who had once walked
these mountains and never returned.
Hours passed, the sun climbed,and the trail of blood and mystery
(12:19):
led them to a clearing where thesnow was disturbed, trampled by a
struggle that had ended in silence.
And there, half-buried in thewhite, they found what remained of
a man—or what once had been a man.
The corpse was torn asunder, itsparts scattered, a grim jigsaw
discarded by a capricious child.
(12:40):
The face was gone, the identity erased,but the clothes were recognizable,
tattered remnants of a villager's attire.
Tesering retched, turning away,the bile in his throat a bitter
testament to his naivety.
Calder knelt by the remains, his handssteady as he examined the carnage.
(13:01):
The violence of it was familiar,akin to the butchery of war.
But there was something else, adeliberateness to the dismemberment,
a message written in flesh and blood.
Tesering composed himself, his youthshattering around him like glass.
"Why?"
he asked, his voice a fragile thing.
(13:23):
"Why would a creature do this?"
Calder stood, his eyes hauntedpools reflecting a war-torn past.
"Sometimes," he said, his voicebearing the weight of knowledge too
heavy to bear, "there is no why.
Sometimes there is only the act, theneed to destroy, to prove that we can,
(13:44):
to remind ourselves that we still feel,that we are still gods in our own hell."
As they made their way back to thevillage, the bloodied snow behind them and
a growing horror ahead, Calder's thoughtswere a turmoil of strategy and survival.
He knew they were nolonger facing just a beast.
(14:05):
They were facing a darkness thatgripped both the mountain and the
heart of man, intertwining them in adance as old as time itself—a dance
that left only shadows over snow.
Chapter 4 (14:16):
Echoes of War
The mountain’s shadow stretched long asthe evening approached, a dark shroud
over the snow-blanketed village thattrembled not just with cold, but fear.
Inside his borrowed room, Calder’shands shook—not from the chill, but
from the surge of memories that theday’s gruesome discovery had unearthed.
(14:40):
Calder had known death; he hadbeen its agent and its witness.
The trenches of the Great War had beena crucible of horror that burned away
the chaff of his humanity, leavingbehind a core of scarred steel.
In the no-man’s-land, he had crawledthrough mud and blood, the air thick
with the stench of decay, the soundsof dying men scoring his soul.
(15:05):
Now, as he sat with his back againstthe wall, his rifle within reach,
the mountain seemed to press uponhim with an almost sentient force.
It was as if the peak itself pulsed withthe echoes of those long-dead soldiers,
that lingered in the recesses of his mind.
(15:33):
The night brought no peace, only a seriesof half-dreams where the battlefield
morphed into the frozen wastes, and theenemies wore the faces of the villagers.
Each time he jerked awake, hehalf-expected to find himself in a
dugout, the roar of artillery in his ears.
But it was always the mountain, itssilence as oppressive as any cannonade.
(15:57):
Calder’s eyes would then searchthe dark, finding the dim outline
of the village elder, Tenzin, whohad insisted on sharing his watch.
The old man sat huddled in acorner, his prayer wheel silent
between his palms, his eyes fixedon the ember glow of the hearth.
His presence was both a comfort anda reminder—a reminder that Calder
(16:21):
was not alone in his haunted vigil.
Tenzin had seen many winters, hisface a map of grooves carved by
the wind and sun, his eyes deep-setpools reflecting a lifetime of loss.
He spoke little of his own past,but his silence was as full
of stories as any bard’s tale.
(16:42):
It was during these long nights thatCalder’s struggle was most acute.
He fought against the memoriesthat clamored for his attention,
that dragged him back to theblood-soaked fields of Europe.
The faces of his fallen comradeswould rise in his mind’s eye, their
gazes accusing, questioning—why him?
(17:02):
Why had he survived when theylay moldering in foreign soil?
With the cold seeping into his bones,Calder would push these thoughts
aside, focusing instead on thepracticalities of the hunt to come.
The beast that stalked the mountainwas a different kind of enemy, but it
was an enemy nonetheless, and one hecould confront, one he could fight.
(17:25):
And yet, the fear remained—a primal,pervasive dread that whispered of
a foe that was more than just fleshand blood, that was steeped in the
land’s ancient and unknowable malice.
It was in these moments that Calderrealized the mountain was waging its
own war, not of nations and ideals, butof existence, of survival, of the stark
(17:48):
and brutal assertion of life over death.
(18:09):
As the first light of dawn filteredthrough the small window, it found
Calder awake, his body a tableau ofexhaustion, his mind a battleground where
past and present waged a ceaseless war.
But the new day brought with it a resolvethat was as sharp as the mountain air.
He would face the beast.
(18:30):
He would face the mountain.
And he would face the echoesof war that resounded in the
hollow places of his soul.
For in this desolate place, among thesepeople who looked to him with a hope
they themselves did not understand, hehad found a cause that might just fill
the void that war had left within him.
Chapter 5 (18:51):
Eyes in the Darkness
As the relentless black of night ensconcedthe Himalayan village, a thick tension
clung to the air, as palpable as the mistthat rolled down from the peaks above.
Calder, wrapped in a wornblanket, sat motionless, his gaze
penetrating the darkness thatpressed against the flickering
(19:13):
circle of light cast by the fire.
The first watch was always theworst, a test of endurance as
the mind played tricks, conjuringphantoms in every shadow.
The villagers, huddled in theirhomes, entrusted their safety
to the ex-soldier's vigilance.
Calder felt the weight of thistrust, heavy as the rifle across his
(19:35):
lap, its metal cold and unyielding.
Nora, the outsider, chose that uncannyhour to appear from the veil of night,
(19:59):
her steps silent, her presence sudden.
She was like a wraith, her eyesreflecting the fire’s light, a
stark contrast to the darkness thatclung to her like a second skin.
Her story was a patchwork of sorrow andloss, her family taken by the mountain's
insatiable hunger, her life a testament tothe stark endurance of the human spirit.
(20:23):
Calder could feel the textureof her voice, not soothing, but
abrasive, scraping against his rawnerves as she recounted her tale.
Her child, bright-eyed and full oflaughter, had wandered too far, lured
by the siren call of adventure, orperhaps by something more sinister.
Nora had searched, her cries swallowed bythe mountain's vast silence, only to find
(20:48):
a small, lifeless hand protruding from thesnow, the rest of her child claimed by the
insatiable appetite of the unseen beast.
Sitting beside Calder, she seemedto shrink against the magnitude
of the night, yet her eyes neverwavered, never showed a flicker of
the fear that surely gripped her.
(21:08):
In them, Calder recognized a kindredspirit, someone who had looked into the
abyss and seen it gaze hungrily back.
As the night dragged on, a sound,foreign and chilling, sliced through
the silence—a creature's call, ahowl that was neither wolf nor wind,
(21:30):
but something else, something ancientand filled with a terrible longing.
It reverberated through the valley,shaking the very air, leaving behind
a silence that was suffocating.
Calder and Nora exchanged a look, anunspoken agreement passing between them.
They would stand guard over thisbeleaguered hamlet, facing not only the
(21:53):
physical threat that prowled the frigidwilderness but the psychological specter
that loomed over them, as oppressiveas the mountain that towered above.
The night wore on, an enduranceof soul as much as of body, each
creak and whisper of the dark areminder of their vulnerability, of
the fragility of life against thetimeless dominion of the mountain.
(22:17):
But within the circle of firelight,two humans sat defiant, the
warmth between them a small beaconagainst the encroaching chill.
As dawn approached with its palelight, it revealed two figures
still vigilant, still waiting.
For the night may have its eyes, but sotoo did those who had seen too much, who
(22:39):
had lost too much—eyes that now watchedthe darkness, unblinking and unafraid.
To be continued.
Thanks for listeningto Campfire Creatures.
If you enjoyed this episode andyou'd like to help support and
grow our channel, please subscribeand leave a rating and review.
(23:00):
To stay up to date with Campfirecreatures and get more content,
check out campfire creatures.com.
And remember, keep the fire lit.
Hey everyone.
This is Greg.
Your host at campfire creatures.
Today we are at episode 10.
Looks like people are listening.
So.
I'll keep going.
This is a two-parter.
Yeti apex of shadows.
I really hope you enjoy this.
(00:51):
I'd really appreciate it.
If you could like the show.
Give it a little thumbs up.
Download the episode,wherever you listen to it.
Apple podcasts, Amazon music, Spotify.
It would mean a lot.
I'd greatly appreciate it.
(01:11):
Let's me know that people are listeningand Hey, I'll keep going with this.
In any case without furtherado, let's get to the show.
So sit back.
Relax.
Do you, whatever it is you're doing.
And enjoy the show.
Chapter 1 (01:38):
The Return
The Himalayan mountainside village hadweathered many storms, but none like this.
This was a blizzard with teeth,that bit into flesh and bone.
The year was nineteen twenty, and theworld was changing, though you wouldn't
know it, buy looking at the e huddledstone huts, the prayer flags now stiff
(02:01):
with ice, the smoke curling up fromchimneys as if trying to escape the earth.
Ewan Calder's arrival was marked bya solitary line of footprints, soon
to be devoured by the ravenous white.
He stood at the edge of the village,a foreign specter framed by the
snow, his body weary, but eyes alert.
(02:22):
Those eyes had seen the mustardgas and the mud of No Man's Land,
had watched friends reduced tocrimson smears on blasted earth.
Now, they sought something lost—peace,forgiveness, a respite from memories
that clawed at him in the night.
The village seemed to hold itsbreath as he entered, the quiet
unsettled by the crunch of his boots.
(02:48):
He didn't belong here; his pale skin andthe sharp angles of his face marked him
as an outsider, as did the Lee-Enfieldrifle slung across his back—a relic of his
soldier days, and a comforting old friend.
The village elder, Tenzin, emergedfrom the largest of the huts.
(03:10):
He was a small man, bent from a life bowedbefore the mountain gods, but his eyes
held a force that belied his stature.
He studied Calder, as if seeing not justthe man, but the shadow that trailed him.
You bring the storm with you, sahib.
Tenzin said, his voice rough withthe smoke of countless fires.
(03:33):
Calder shook his head, snowfalling from the brim of his hat.
"I'm running from it, same as you."
"A man cannot outrun his shadow," Tenzinreplied, turning his gaze to the mountain,
hidden now by the curtain of snow.
"Nor can he outrun the darknessof the mountain once it awakes."
(03:56):
The mention of the mountain stirred amemory in Calder—a myth his Scottish
grandmother had once told him of adark creature that walked on frozen
nights, leaving despair in its wake.
He had dismissed it as a child's tale,but here, where the earth touched
the sky, such tales felt as realas the ice that clung to his beard.
(04:18):
Tenzin led Calder to ahut, offering him shelter.
Inside, the air was thick with thescent of yak butter and something
else, a subtle hint of decay thatseemed to come from the earth itself.
As Calder warmed himself by thefire, Tenzin spoke of the recent
troubles—a darkness, he said,had settled over the village.
(04:40):
Livestock had been found eviscerated,their entrails spread out like offerings.
Shadows moved in the night, andwhispers—no, not whispers, for they
were just memories of a language lostto the storm—spoke of a hunger unsated.
Calder listened, the soldier inhim cataloging the details, the
hunter curious despite himself.
(05:03):
Something ancient and primal hadbeen stirred by the storm, or perhaps
it was the storm itself that hadwoken something ancient and primal
within the men of this village.
That night, as Calder lay in abed too small, wrapped in blankets
that smelled of mothballs andtime, he dreamt of the trenches.
(05:24):
But when the ground shook and theair filled with the sound of thunder,
it wasn't bombs that came to mind,but the mountain, shaking off its
slumber, ready to consume them all.
Chapter 2 (05:35):
The Maimed Earth
Amara's hands, once delicate andsteady, trembled as she sorted
the dried herbs in her modest hut.
Outside, the wind shrieked like a bansheemourning the dead, but the villagers
whispered—no, not whispered; they spokein hushed tones laden with dread—of
(05:56):
worse things than the biting cold.
Her love, a sturdy yak herder namedSonam, had vanished three nights prior.
He was last seen heading towards themountain, a silhouette against the
twilight, and then he was simply gone,swallowed by the burgeoning night.
No trace, no tracks, just thevoid where a man once stood.
(06:20):
The locals had warned Sonam of themountain's curse, muted utterances of
an old terror that coursed down itsslopes like an invisible avalanche.
But Sonam was a pragmatist; he didnot hold truck with such tales.
Amara feared his disbeliefhad led him into the maw of
something ancient and malevolent.
(06:42):
Calder, still a stranger but lessof a specter now, walked with a
measured tread through the villageeach day, his eyes scanning the
horizon, as if he could divineSonam's fate from the lay of the land.
His gaze had a weight to it,and when it fell upon Amara, she
felt both exposed and understood.
(07:03):
On the morning that followed aparticularly vicious storm, Calder came
upon her while she gathered ice-bittenjuniper berries near the village's edge.
His footfalls crunched in thefresh snow, the sound oddly
reassuring in the muffled world.
(07:31):
"The earth is wounded," he said, gesturingtowards the open space beyond the village,
where the snow lay disturbed, churned upin great swaths as if by a giant's hand.
Amara followed his gaze.
"It's the mountain," she murmured, hervoice laced with fear and resignation.
(07:52):
"It's waking up."
Together they found the yak—a creaturethat had once been a mighty beast
of burden—now rendered into ruin.
Its eyes, glazed in death, staredaccusingly at the heavens as if
questioning the gods' silence.
The snow around it was a canvas ofcrimson and gore, painted with a savagery
(08:14):
that bespoke not of hunger but of rage.
"The beast did not eat," Calder noted,his voice devoid of emotion, a detachment
honed on the battlefields of a war thathad ended but never truly finished.
"It kills because it can,because it enjoys the act."
Amara felt a chill that hadnothing to do with the wind.
(08:38):
She saw in Calder's eyes a reflectionof the same darkness that now seemed to
seep from the very bones of the earth.
He was a man who had seen too much,who had been hollowed out by the sights
and left with a cavernous space within,filled now by the frigid Himalayan air
and the mysteries of these cursed peaks.
(08:59):
The villagers gathered, theirfaces drawn, their eyes hollow
with a growing realization thatthey were prey in their own land.
Tenzin, the elder, declared that theyak's desecration was a portent, a sign
of the mountain's claim upon their souls.
Calder turned from the grizzly scene,his mind already racing, strategizing.
(09:22):
In the trenches, he had learnedthat to fight an unseen enemy,
you must first understand it,learn its habits, its desires.
The mountain, it seemed, wasnot just a mass of rock and
ice—it was a living entity, withdesires and appetites of its own.
That night, as Amara lay awake,listening to the howl of the wind,
(09:45):
she thought of Sonam and wonderedif the mountain had consumed him or
if he wandered still, a lost spiritin the land of shadows over snow.
She didn't notice the figure ofCalder, standing like a sentinel at the
village's edge, watching the darknesswhere the snow met the sky, waiting
for the land to reveal its secrets.
(10:06):
--- Chapter 3: A Trail of Crimson
The Himalayan dawn broke with a reluctanttrickle of light, seeping through the
clouds like blood through a bandage.
It revealed a landscape drapedin an uneasy silence, as if the
mountain itself held its breath.
Tesering, the youngest of the village'sable men, stood on the threshold of
(10:30):
adulthood, yearning for meaning ina world that had offered him none.
His gaze often followed Calder, thestranger who embodied the allure and
mystery of the Western world—a worldthat felt as distant as the stars above.
On this morning, as the sun struggledto assert itself, Tesering found
(10:51):
a crimson trail in the snow, starkagainst the white, an aberration
in the pure morning light.
It began at the edge of thevillage, weaving a path of dread
into the wilderness beyond.
When Calder saw the blood, asilent curse passed his lips.
Tesering looked to him, his eyeswide, searching for assurance
(11:13):
where there was none to be found.
"We follow it," Calder said, his voicea low rumble of contained urgency.
"We find out what beastspills such blood."
Together, they set out, the village fadingbehind them, becoming nothing more than
a memory etched against the frozen waste.
(11:35):
The trail was like a wound in theearth, a cut that seemed to never end.
It meandered through the starktrees, stripped bare by the cold,
and up the slopes, where thesnow lay thick and treacherous.
Calder moved with a purposethat belied his inner turmoil.
The blood-soaked ground spoke tohim of battles past, of life's
(11:57):
fragility, and the earth'sindifference to the suffering of men.
Tesering, meanwhile, was fuelled bya desperate need to prove himself—to
the village, to Calder, to the shadowof his father, who had once walked
these mountains and never returned.
Hours passed, the sun climbed,and the trail of blood and mystery
(12:19):
led them to a clearing where thesnow was disturbed, trampled by a
struggle that had ended in silence.
And there, half-buried in thewhite, they found what remained of
a man—or what once had been a man.
The corpse was torn asunder, itsparts scattered, a grim jigsaw
discarded by a capricious child.
(12:40):
The face was gone, the identity erased,but the clothes were recognizable,
tattered remnants of a villager's attire.
Tesering retched, turning away,the bile in his throat a bitter
testament to his naivety.
Calder knelt by the remains, his handssteady as he examined the carnage.
(13:01):
The violence of it was familiar,akin to the butchery of war.
But there was something else, adeliberateness to the dismemberment,
a message written in flesh and blood.
Tesering composed himself, his youthshattering around him like glass.
"Why?"
he asked, his voice a fragile thing.
(13:23):
"Why would a creature do this?"
Calder stood, his eyes hauntedpools reflecting a war-torn past.
"Sometimes," he said, his voicebearing the weight of knowledge too
heavy to bear, "there is no why.
Sometimes there is only the act, theneed to destroy, to prove that we can,
(13:44):
to remind ourselves that we still feel,that we are still gods in our own hell."
As they made their way back to thevillage, the bloodied snow behind them and
a growing horror ahead, Calder's thoughtswere a turmoil of strategy and survival.
He knew they were nolonger facing just a beast.
(14:05):
They were facing a darkness thatgripped both the mountain and the
heart of man, intertwining them in adance as old as time itself—a dance
that left only shadows over snow.
Chapter 4 (14:16):
Echoes of War
The mountain’s shadow stretched long asthe evening approached, a dark shroud
over the snow-blanketed village thattrembled not just with cold, but fear.
Inside his borrowed room, Calder’shands shook—not from the chill, but
from the surge of memories that theday’s gruesome discovery had unearthed.
(14:40):
Calder had known death; he hadbeen its agent and its witness.
The trenches of the Great War had beena crucible of horror that burned away
the chaff of his humanity, leavingbehind a core of scarred steel.
In the no-man’s-land, he had crawledthrough mud and blood, the air thick
with the stench of decay, the soundsof dying men scoring his soul.
(15:05):
Now, as he sat with his back againstthe wall, his rifle within reach,
the mountain seemed to press uponhim with an almost sentient force.
It was as if the peak itself pulsed withthe echoes of those long-dead soldiers,
that lingered in the recesses of his mind.
(15:33):
The night brought no peace, only a seriesof half-dreams where the battlefield
morphed into the frozen wastes, and theenemies wore the faces of the villagers.
Each time he jerked awake, hehalf-expected to find himself in a
dugout, the roar of artillery in his ears.
But it was always the mountain, itssilence as oppressive as any cannonade.
(15:57):
Calder’s eyes would then searchthe dark, finding the dim outline
of the village elder, Tenzin, whohad insisted on sharing his watch.
The old man sat huddled in acorner, his prayer wheel silent
between his palms, his eyes fixedon the ember glow of the hearth.
His presence was both a comfort anda reminder—a reminder that Calder
(16:21):
was not alone in his haunted vigil.
Tenzin had seen many winters, hisface a map of grooves carved by
the wind and sun, his eyes deep-setpools reflecting a lifetime of loss.
He spoke little of his own past,but his silence was as full
of stories as any bard’s tale.
(16:42):
It was during these long nights thatCalder’s struggle was most acute.
He fought against the memoriesthat clamored for his attention,
that dragged him back to theblood-soaked fields of Europe.
The faces of his fallen comradeswould rise in his mind’s eye, their
gazes accusing, questioning—why him?
(17:02):
Why had he survived when theylay moldering in foreign soil?
With the cold seeping into his bones,Calder would push these thoughts
aside, focusing instead on thepracticalities of the hunt to come.
The beast that stalked the mountainwas a different kind of enemy, but it
was an enemy nonetheless, and one hecould confront, one he could fight.
(17:25):
And yet, the fear remained—a primal,pervasive dread that whispered of
a foe that was more than just fleshand blood, that was steeped in the
land’s ancient and unknowable malice.
It was in these moments that Calderrealized the mountain was waging its
own war, not of nations and ideals, butof existence, of survival, of the stark
(17:48):
and brutal assertion of life over death.
(18:09):
As the first light of dawn filteredthrough the small window, it found
Calder awake, his body a tableau ofexhaustion, his mind a battleground where
past and present waged a ceaseless war.
But the new day brought with it a resolvethat was as sharp as the mountain air.
He would face the beast.
(18:30):
He would face the mountain.
And he would face the echoesof war that resounded in the
hollow places of his soul.
For in this desolate place, among thesepeople who looked to him with a hope
they themselves did not understand, hehad found a cause that might just fill
the void that war had left within him.
Chapter 5 (18:51):
Eyes in the Darkness
As the relentless black of night ensconcedthe Himalayan village, a thick tension
clung to the air, as palpable as the mistthat rolled down from the peaks above.
Calder, wrapped in a wornblanket, sat motionless, his gaze
penetrating the darkness thatpressed against the flickering
(19:13):
circle of light cast by the fire.
The first watch was always theworst, a test of endurance as
the mind played tricks, conjuringphantoms in every shadow.
The villagers, huddled in theirhomes, entrusted their safety
to the ex-soldier's vigilance.
Calder felt the weight of thistrust, heavy as the rifle across his
(19:35):
lap, its metal cold and unyielding.
Nora, the outsider, chose that uncannyhour to appear from the veil of night,
(19:59):
her steps silent, her presence sudden.
She was like a wraith, her eyesreflecting the fire’s light, a
stark contrast to the darkness thatclung to her like a second skin.
Her story was a patchwork of sorrow andloss, her family taken by the mountain's
insatiable hunger, her life a testament tothe stark endurance of the human spirit.
(20:23):
Calder could feel the textureof her voice, not soothing, but
abrasive, scraping against his rawnerves as she recounted her tale.
Her child, bright-eyed and full oflaughter, had wandered too far, lured
by the siren call of adventure, orperhaps by something more sinister.
Nora had searched, her cries swallowed bythe mountain's vast silence, only to find
(20:48):
a small, lifeless hand protruding from thesnow, the rest of her child claimed by the
insatiable appetite of the unseen beast.
Sitting beside Calder, she seemedto shrink against the magnitude
of the night, yet her eyes neverwavered, never showed a flicker of
the fear that surely gripped her.
(21:08):
In them, Calder recognized a kindredspirit, someone who had looked into the
abyss and seen it gaze hungrily back.
As the night dragged on, a sound,foreign and chilling, sliced through
the silence—a creature's call, ahowl that was neither wolf nor wind,
(21:30):
but something else, something ancientand filled with a terrible longing.
It reverberated through the valley,shaking the very air, leaving behind
a silence that was suffocating.
Calder and Nora exchanged a look, anunspoken agreement passing between them.
They would stand guard over thisbeleaguered hamlet, facing not only the
(21:53):
physical threat that prowled the frigidwilderness but the psychological specter
that loomed over them, as oppressiveas the mountain that towered above.
The night wore on, an enduranceof soul as much as of body, each
creak and whisper of the dark areminder of their vulnerability, of
the fragility of life against thetimeless dominion of the mountain.
(22:17):
But within the circle of firelight,two humans sat defiant, the
warmth between them a small beaconagainst the encroaching chill.
As dawn approached with its palelight, it revealed two figures
still vigilant, still waiting.
For the night may have its eyes, but sotoo did those who had seen too much, who
(22:39):
had lost too much—eyes that now watchedthe darkness, unblinking and unafraid.
To be continued.
Thanks for listeningto Campfire Creatures.
If you enjoyed this episode andyou'd like to help support and
grow our channel, please subscribeand leave a rating and review.
(23:00):
To stay up to date with Campfirecreatures and get more content,
check out campfire creatures.com.
And remember, keep the fire lit.
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