Chapter Text
[Author's Note: This story was originally posted on my Fanfiction.net account Spacewheat76. This story has had quite a bit of traction. Let me know if you love it as much as I do. Cheers!]
It was a Tuesday morning in early September and Isabella Swan was sitting at her desk in Firewatch Post 515, having her morning coffee. The horizon was hazy with dreary Washington rain, but even blurred by precipitation, Olympic National Park and its endless sea of trees was breathtakingly beautiful. Sometimes Bella couldn’t believe her luck at landing the ultimate dream job. When Bucky Parsons had retired from the Firewatch post the previous winter, the ONP service committee had struggled to find someone to take his place. It was Bella’s best friend Leah Clearwater that had suggested it to her.
Of course, initially, Bella had said no. She’d just graduated college with a degree in classic literature and had hoped to get a job part time at the local library. Plus she knew practically nothing about nature and wildlife. But Leah had been insistent that the job was made for her . It was an all year round position that provided room and board, unlimited canned food, and the kind of peace and quiet an avid reader like Bella Swan was sure to consider heaven. There was a fourteen week program to become certified but afterwards, life would be cake. A Firewatch tower attendant in the rainiest climate in the continental US had almost nothing to do but relax .
But Leah was, unfortunately, the only person in Bella’s life that was actually happy she’d taken the job. Her mother Renee, who lived in a cushy suburban house in Southern Florida with her second husband, had been appalled at the fact that there was no running water. Her father Charlie, who was the Fork’s Chief of Police, had been worried about bears and wolves and whatever else lurked in the forest. Her friend Angela and Angela’s boyfriend Eric had taken turns trying to talk her out of it. Their main argument was the fact that for the majority of the year, she’d be alone. How about her love life? How about her future? Her excuse was that she’d never had much luck with relationships anyways.
Besides, she wasn’t completely alone. She had a walkie talkie that connected her to the closest ranger station, who was manned on weekdays by none other than Leah Clearwater. And once a month, she hiked the full fourteen hours to the ranger station to meet Charlie and Leah for lunch. So with all of that and the bundle of letters that came in every weekly supply bundle, Bella was more than socially fulfilled. She thought often, Who cares if I never find love if I can spend all my time reading the greatest works of romantic fiction ever written? Currently she was half way through Anna Karenina and loving every moment of it.
So after breakfast, Ranger Swan got dressed in her hunter green park ranger uniform, complete with a wide brimmed hat, thick waterproof boots and a hunting rifle slung over her shoulder, and she climbed down all four flights of stairs to the forest floor to make her daily rounds. She took with her, a journal of field notes and an ink pen to record whatever it was she came across. In addition to rainfall and temperature and things like that, Bella also liked to write down wildlife sightings and descriptions of interesting flora she found. She submitted the journal once a month to the ranger station, mostly as proof of her presence in and around the watchtower. It didn’t have to be detailed, but she liked writing. So she was kneeling by a rock, describing an interesting looking blue flower with red thorns when a startling sound caught her attention. She stood, put her things in her day pack and took the rifle from her shoulder. She’d been trained to use it, but had never actually had to .
Bella wasn’t sure exactly what she’d heard, but assumed it was the cry of some type of animal in pain, maybe a deer or an elk. She’d been in the position for nearly three months and had seen a handful of bears, though never at a close enough range to actually feel threatened. She wasn’t that keen on meeting one close up either, but felt as though it was her job to investigate. If there was a big grizzly poking around on the trails, she needed to warn the ranger station. So as she crept along the path towards the origin of the sound, she stayed as quiet as she possibly could. She’d been pretty clumsy growing up but had taken a few yoga classes as a teenager and young adult in order to curb that personality trait. She’d learned that the trick to being steady on her feet was to go slow and take nice even breaths. In and out, in and out .
Bella headed South. She’d taken these trails dozens of times and was beginning to memorize them. She knew that about a hundred yards ahead of her was a clearing by the water where deer often gathered to drink. She’d sat and watched them graze on the nearby vegetation more than once. As she tiptoed closer and closer, she finally began to see the lull in the trees where the thicket gave way to a smooth bed of grass, dirt and underbrush. She knelt at the border and with one hand wrapped around her gun, the other on the dirt beneath her feet to steady herself, she peered into the clearing. Many things happened simultaneously. First, as her eyes scanned her surroundings, she felt almost certain that she saw a blur of something indiscernible, as it sped away from the fallen deer and out of sight. Second, her gaze fell on the creature that must have cried out in pain, for it was now laying by the water. And third, and most importantly, she heard a cacophony of sound as what seemed like twelve dozen birds took off from the trees above her, all sounding their own alarms.
Bella remained frozen in place for several moments, until her curiosity got the better of her. Her pulse was racing and she knew that whatever it was that had attacked the animal had to have been nearby, but the eerie silence had her interest peaked. She held the gun out in front of her and swept it left and right, searching for the predator hidden in the trees. She saw nothing, heard nothing, and so she went forward to the deer and crouched by its body. It was a beautiful creature- a female with a while neck and chest and tawny fur along its back, speckled with brown. Its eyes were frozen open in horror and its mouth hung slightly agape. Bella frowned and lay her gun on the forest floor, moving closer to get a better look. She placed one hand on the fawn’s shoulder, which was still warm to the touch, and she said, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to help you.” Then she got her walkie off her hip and said into the speaker, “ Leah? Come in Leah?”
“ Swan ,” Leah returned in her usual gruff tone. “What’s up?”
“I have a fallen deer here about three miles south of 515.”
“Okay. Deer are a natural prey here, Bells.”
“ I know that ,” Bella replied, still inspecting the creature. “But it’s weird because I don’t know what killed it. I was thinking a bear at first but-” She glanced around her again, feeling an unshakable anxiety looming above her head.
“Look for injuries,” Leah prompted. “If there aren’t any, it might’ve gotten into something poisonous.”
Bella couldn’t see any injuries. At least not at first. She got to her feet and walked a circle around its body looking for blood. She was beginning to think it must have been poisoned when she finally noticed the shimmering crimson on its neck. She got onto her knees and held the walkie to her lips as she inspected it. “I think I found the source of the injury,” she said, placing her fingertips to the fur surrounding the blood, “it’s bleeding from a wound on its neck.” She peered closer. “Actually two wounds. Two small puncture holes.”
“ Puncture holes ?” Leah asked her, seemingly just as perplexed as her friend. “From what ?”
Bella didn’t respond, instead choosing to turn down the device and clip it back on her belt. The wind pushed through the clearing then and she shivered involuntarily. Suddenly she didn’t want to be in that clearing anymore. Suddenly she didn't want to be out in the wilderness by herself. Anxiety had reached a boiling point inside of her and was spilling out over the edges. She could have sworn that something or someone was watching her. She got her rifle and held it in shaking hands as she spun around without direction, checking for dangers. She nervously inspected the forest floor, the lake, and then, on sudden impulse, the trees above her. And then she saw them, high up in a tree where no known predator could perch- a pair of brilliantly golden eyes staring back at her. They were there, maybe only for a fraction of a second, and then they were gone. Her heart began to pound as she fought desperately to understand what it was that she’d just seen, what she’d just stumbled upon. She was trying her best to be rational. It was the middle of the day and she was in a national park in Washington state but.. Behind her lay a deer with a wound on its neck that Bella had read about before.
“Bella?” Leah’s muffled voice called from her waist, “You okay?”
The brunette park ranger took a deep breath to calm herself and then she got her walkie and told Leah, “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Did you figure out what got that deer?” Leah asked her, “Do you think it could’ve been a snake bite?”
“A snake bite,” she repeated in a kind of daze, trying to make herself believe, “ yes, I’m sure that’s what it was. A snake bite.”
She’d read about the wound before, yes. The only thing was, it hadn’t been in a park ranger manual.. It had been in a book written in the 1890s by a man named Bram Stoker. A book called Dracula .
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