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Beware the Field

She arrives on campus simultaneously excited and apprehensive. The summer air is humid, her new classmates range from boisterous to uncomfortable, and she is away from home, for the very first time. Yes, she has heard the rumors about this place, rumors that seem far to fantastical to pay any heed to, but they still color her deepest impressions of the place. A mix of buildings, old and new, pockets of lush greenery that hold an air of mystique, but situated near the glass-and-iron creations of the modern world. A hill beneath their feet that always feels…different. When her classes start, she knows that she is in the right place. Finally, a place where she can dump all of her passion and energy into studying that thing she loves most: the natural world. And though she is loathe to admit it outright, maybe the supernatural world, too.

Her second month of freshman year, she gets a job in her dream lab, doing field and lab work on the biodiversity of local marshes and bogs. She starts off with organizing samples the more senior students bring in from their time in the field. Pinning insects, pressing plants, organizing data on sightings of birds, herps, and mammals, she soon learns all of the tricks needed to succeed in this work. In her youthful naivety, she thinks she’s learned everything she needs to about lab work.

Until, that is, the day when she runs out of pins, and in her desperate search for more (the grad students had left early that afternoon, and she had sworn she would finish the coleoptera today) she finds a cupboard that she swears she’s never seen before. It’s in a back corner, away from the lab benches. It creaks as she opens it, and there, dusty, and sitting alone, is a single box of pins. Not a lot, but enough for her to finish the job. She reaches for them, and as she does so, she hears a scuffle, in the deep shadow at the back of the cupboard. Crouching down, she uses her phone’s flashlight to peer into the dusty darkness and sees two eyes shining back at her, over a small face. She blinks, and it is gone. She shoots to her feet, clutching the box of pins to her chest. The task at hand momentarily forgotten, she drifts back to the lab bench. Her jaw is clenched and she feels a strange sense of deja vu. Dropping the pins at her work station, she grabs her laptop and after reading through a few documents, she is sure. That night, after finishing her work, she leaves out a small bowl of milk and some bits of candied insect next to the far cupboard. Then, she locks up and leaves.

The next day, the dishes are empty and clean, lying face down in the drying rack by the lab sink.

From then on out, she always makes sure to leave out a snack near the cupboard. At first, the other students give her odd looks. Soon, however, they all realize that the lab is never out of any materials, no matter how rare or expensive they might be. Where once there was rot among their older specimens and field equipment was constantly in need of repair, now everything is in tip-top shape. Soon, they are all leaving offerings, and their collective research reaches new heights.

And so it goes for her freshman year. She quickly becomes the best technician the lab has seen in quite some time. When anyone comments on this, though, she just smirks and shakes her head, and says, “Don’t give me brownie points for that. I have a lot of help.” And so she may, but in less than a year she has mastered not only the specimen preparation techniques but also the most finicky pieces of equipment. And so, as the end of the year approaches, Dr. Ronan approaches her with the offer of a fieldwork position over the summer. Of course, she enthusiastically says yes, and that night, she makes sure to leave out a particularly large piece of peanut brittle.

Her first day in the field. They are up early, so early that the sun has not yet risen. Birds rise early, so to observe them at their most active, she must rise even earlier. The site is owned by the university, has been owned by them for a very long time. With her is the most experienced grad student, Mariana. As they leave the truck and don their field equipment (she can already tell that her hip waders are going to be miserable when the sun and temperature rises), Mariana, previously a tad too chipper for the early hour, grown quiet. Mariana watches her as she puts on sunscreen, and then says, extremely seriously, “Focus on the task at hand: note what birds you see and hear at each survey point. Be done by 11am. Meet me back here. Don’t wander, and ignore the lights. And whatever you do, do not follow me.”

With that, she strides off to her fieldsite, leaving her alone next to a truck that is already covered in dew.

The marsh is misty. She glances down at her GPS to confirm that she is at the first survey point. And then she stands, letting the sounds of the world waking up flow over her. So many intertwining and clashing songs and calls. Birds, insects, frogs. It’s almost hypnotic. She shakes her head. The birds, they are what she’s here for. 2, 4, 8 species in this spot alone! She notes them all down on her data sheet, and then moves on to the next point. As she wades through the knee-deep, murky water, she thinks she hears something else. A soft, musical giggling in the distance, very different from the buzzing cicadas or the trilling wrens. Remembering what Mariana said, she ignores it, and carries on.

10 survey points at this site. It is 10:45 by the time she finishes, and she hurries back to the truck, to Mariana, dogged by that chime-like giggling.

A month into the field season, and she is feeling the strain. Her eyes are heavy, and she finds it harder and harder to focus on her assigned tasks. She now hears the giggles at every survey point, and has begun to see flashes and shimmers in her peripheral vision. As much as she wants to ignore them, it is becoming more difficult. Mariana, too, is different. Jumpy and nervous, she talks less and less. Soon, they both sit in silence in the truck during their drive to the site. And then, one day, Mariana doesn’t come back to the truck.

She waits for ten minutes, unable to get any signal on her phone and unable to call her on the walkie. She paces, torn between the warnings that Mariana had given on the very first day, and her need to help. Finally, she grabs a tire iron from the back of the truck and heads in the direction Mariana had gone that morning. It takes surprisingly little time to find her. She is waist deep in the muck, unmoving. Staring into the dark trees that line the edge of the marsh.

“Mariana!” She calls, running right up to the edge of the reed bed. Mariana says nothing.

“Mariana, what-,” She cuts herself short, noticing the object of Mariana’s observation: a ball of light, hanging perfectly motionless at the edge of the woods. It pulses in time with the light, melodic laughter. She is almost transfixed. Almost. As she feels her eyes begin to glaze, she feels the tire iron in her grasp, heavy and cold. So cold it feels like it’s burning. She tears her eyes from the glowing ball, and focuses on Mariana.

“Look away from it!” She yells, wading out into the water, sending small waves rolling in front of her. Mariana twitches, as if waking from a deep slumber, “Look away, Mariana! You told me not to follow the lights, remember? Remember??”

Mariana twitches again, and finally turns. She stops in her tracks, instinctively raising the tire iron in front of her. Marianas eyes are black. As if her pupils had grown and swallowed the rest of her eyes. Black, shining holes stare back at her. A faint smile plays on Mariana’s lips.

“It’s easier to listen, to let the light in,” she whispers, and then begins to turn back. Lunging forward, she grabs Marianas arm and pulls her back. In the corner of her eye, she sees the ball of light drifting forward, sees beams of light playing out on the surface of the black water, coming closer. Desperately, she keeps tugging on Marianas arm, but the grad student is stuck fast in the mud, and if she isn’t careful, she will be as well. With another giant heave, she pulls backward, sending herself stumbling, and letting water into her waders. But it worked: Mariana’s legs are now free, though she is still staring at the light. Not daring to look back, she drags Mariana to the shore, and then back to the truck, firmly staring ahead, ignoring the giggling that surrounds them, that drowns out everything else. She gets them both back, and after strapping Mariana into the truck, she drives away. She thinks that she sees a flash of light in one of her mirrors as the marsh fades into the background. Mariana’s eyes seem to clear the farther away they drive. She breathes shallowly and quickly. She should feel fear, but doesn’t. More…a rightness. Like she belonged back there, in the mud. She shakes her head.

After bringing her back to her apartment, she never sees Mariana again.

For the rest of the field season, she is joined by Sumeet, one of the other grad students. She wonders whether she should tell him about what happened, but when she mentions Mariana, he just shakes his head.

“She knew what she was getting into. Even those of us who’ve gotten a degree in the Forbidden Major are always at risk. Best thing to do is just keep your head down, stay on track, and–”

“Don’t follow the light?”

A wry smile, “Yeah.”

They make a good team, she thinks, and they talk more than she and Mariana had. She still hears the laughter off and on, and sees flashes of light in her periphery every day, but she knows now, knows what will happen if she ever gives in and follows. And so she continues with her surveys of the birds, and even helps Sumeet with his work occasionally, assisting in measuring and photographing the various frogs, newts, and snakes he is monitoring.

Two weeks before school is set to start, Sumeet calls in sick, and asks if she can check the fall traps he set up a couple of days before. She readily agrees to, and when she has finished with her usual work, she heads to the other side of the field site to check the fall traps. It is closer to the woods than she likes, and the laughter and lights seem closer than they have in a long time.

The traps are empty. Or so she thinks at first, not noticing the tiny, frail body that is lodged between a stick and some dead leaves. But as she turns to leave, a glimmer catches her eye, and she takes a closer look. It is extremely delicate, like a being spun out of glass, nearly transparent, shimmering with a miasma of different colors. Like an oil sheen, but far more alluring and beautiful. A tiny face, eyes closed, lips parted over impossibly tiny, sharp teeth. Wings like the biggest wasp she’s ever seen. She feels a thrill of familiarity. She quickly and carefully extracts it from the trap and deposits it in a specimen jar. Clearly Sumeet is also studying things other than reptiles and amphibians.

As she walks back to the truck, she briefly turns back to look at the edge of the woods. At first, she thinks the ball of light is back. But no, there are two lights, but smaller, hovering at the same level, 12 feet off the ground. They shift and she realizes this is not what lured Mariana. This is something else. Huge antlers rise above the eyes, and its body is shadowed by the surrounding trees. It stares at her, and she stares back, unblinking. After a minute, it backs into the forest, and she is left covered in goosebumps and sweating profusely.

When she gives Sumeet the specimen she collected, he seems surprised, but quickly hides it. “Didn’t think that the fall traps would work for these,” he says thoughtfully, “You didn’t have any trouble?” She hesitates, “Well, not with checking the traps, or getting that into a jar, but…”

He raises an eyebrow, egging her on.

She shrugs, “There was something I hadn’t seen before, in the woods. It was really tall, eyes like those, uh–,” “Like the wisps?” He asks sharply.

“Yeah, like them. Do you know what it was?” He sighs, “I’ve heard stories, nothing more. The Horned One. Be careful.”

She laughs, “Aren’t I always?”

It is the start of her sophomore year, and she is dreaming. Ever since her encounter with the Horned One, she has been dreaming. Her waking life, classes, work in the lab, is fading into the background. Oh sure, she regails the returning students with tales of the trials and tribulations of fieldwork (the specimen she collected for Sumeet now sits in a place of honor on the middle lab bench, embalmed for eternity in formaldehyde), and she continues to do well in her classes. She even starts seeing someone regularly (she finally recognized that that sweet girl, Tamika, from Physiology, was flirting with her). But all of that starts to bleed together, becoming part of the background, while her dreams begin to fill her reality. Sometimes they are just recreations of that day, when she saw that gigantic horned figure. Sometimes they are dark and violent, images of prone human figures offering bloody sacrifice to an idol of bone, antler, and grass. And sometimes it is just the eyes, staring at her, only the vaguest outlines of a face around it. The eyes, swallowing her.

People start to notice that something is up. Tamika is the first to notice, and the first to respond to it; she says that things are not working out, that she needs some space. And so Tamika leaves her life. The next person to notice is Sumeet.

“Things have changed,” he says, regarding her closely.

She shrugs, focused on the survey data she’s organizing. He sits on a stool next to her.

“It started pretty soon after that day I was sick, didn’t it,” He does not ask this, but states it. He already knows, or at the very least suspects.

“Maybe,” she says, shrugging again. She just needs to get through the next few hours, and then she can sleep again. “You can’t let it in. First it’s dreams, then it’s–,”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says coldly, and then moves to a different bench.

Sumeet remains where he is, looking at his hands.

That night, the dreams are different, sharper. She is walking through the marsh, the reeds and muddy waters parting around her, not touching her bare skin. She reaches the edge of the forest. She looks up, and it is there. Towering. Staring impassively down. It leans forward, bringing its massive, antlered head closer to her’s. It’s huge white eyes, sunk into a skull-like visage, illuminate her face. Plumes of vapor erupt from its nostrils, and she smells chewed cud and fresh blood.

“Return,” it rumbles, although its mouth does not move. She nods, and then wakes up.

She dresses quickly, forgetting socks in her haste. She slips on boots over bare feet, and slips out of her room. In a few minutes, she is in her car, peeling out of the parking lot and heading towards the field site. Her focus is total. She stares at the road ahead of her, unblinking. When she arrives, she all about falls out of the car, and does not lock it as she hurries towards the edge of the wood. She wades into the marsh, getting deeper and deeper, the water soaking into her sweatpants and light jacket, yet still she pushes forward. At its deepest, the water reaches to the bottom of her chin. She emerges at the treeline, soaked to the bone, covered in mud and dead vegetation, beginning to shiver. She stands there, shaking, waiting. Minutes pass.

And then. A rustle of leaves, the creak of branches parting. And it is there, regarding her with its inscrutable gaze. She stares up at it, and just like in her dream, it leans down. It’s entire being is indescribable. She is filled with fear and excitement, the thrill of confronting something that is so entirely alien. It’s skull-like head and long, matted hair are shadowed under its looming antlers. Once again, it speaks through an unmoving mouth.

“You answered the call. You are the first to do so in a long, long time. Why is this?” Her voice catches in her throat, “I’m not sure. I no longer know what I’m doing.”

It cocks its head, “You seek guidance, then?”

She responds so quickly it comes out as a snap, “No! I-I know what I want, I don’t need advice. I’m just…drifting right now.”

It rears up, opening its mouth, fangs dripping with some foul liquid. A gurgling sound, laughter, flows forth.

“Drifting? You are thus because I made it thus. I put the hunger in you.”

She stamps her foot. It is unwise, she thinks, vaguely, to be acting like this in front of a god, but she is angered, “You didn’t put anything in me. I came because I had to know, not because you drew me hear. You’re old, older than I can really conceive, and that means you’ve seen things, yes?” “I’ve seen many things, but–,” “No, let me finish. I know your name, and you will tell me what I want to know, Cernunnos.”

It bares its fangs at that, “You dare to call me that? Here, in my element?” She smirks, “My element too, big guy.”

She pulls back her hair, revealing her ears. Ears which seems to elongate in the moonlight. She grins, her mouth full of teeth sharper and more numerous than any human’s. The Horned One draws a breath.

“Tell me,” she says, “What do you know of changelings?”

x

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