In which a foe disappears; a hero is missing; help arrives.
Ted felt like he was floating in the inky blackness of his subconscious. There was nothing here. Nothing at all. No sounds, no smells, no pain. Peaceful, beautiful solitude. He could not feel the weight of his own body. He was set adrift on memory bliss.
Subtly, like the lies of a manipulative girlfriend that seem innocent enough at first but soon build up into a giant rage monster, his body gained mass. He started to feel himself fall, ever so gently. The sensation of falling started to build.
He was floating lower.
He was starting to sink.
He was being dragged down.
Panic set in.
The sensation became overwhelming as he was sucked down through the black to an unknown fate.
Suddenly he hit bottom and lay motionless. His body, just moments ago feeling weightless, now felt heavier than lead.
He could not move.
The darkness began to lighten. Dark grey at first, then brighter. A bright light appeared above him, getting brighter, hurting his eyes. He squeezed his eyes tight, but it was not enough. The searing bright light burned into him.
He heard a faint noise off in the distance. It repeated, a little louder this time. It sounded like a man screaming in pain and fear. The volume quickly built until it was a deafeningly loud constant droning scream, completely over extending his consciousness.
He wondered who was making that awful racket, then he realized the horrible truth. It was him.
He opened his eyes with a start and sat up quickly. He stopped screaming, but his head began to swim. He tried to fight it off and look around as best he could.
There was no sign of Angus Dawson.
He closed his eyes and tried to make the dizziness stop. When he opened them again he felt more stable.
It was now daylight. The sun was peaking over the tree tops. The weather was cool, but dry. If it wasn’t for the aches and pains he felt he would have said the morning was actually quite pleasant.
“OK, Ted”, he said to himself, “What’s the plan now?” He mentally went through the survival checklist.
“Check for injuries. Get some food and water. Plan your escape.”
Ted did a check. He was sitting, so likely his back wasn’t broken. He could move his legs, turn his head. He had a lot of scrapes and bruises, but nothing that seemed life threatening.
Slowly he got to his feet, and leaned against the rock wall. He looked around some more - still no sign of Angus. He closed his eyes and listened intently. Nothing but birds.
He thought bird song was a good sign. He relaxed a little bit.
He shrugged his pack off his shoulders, and rummaged around for some water and snacks. He didn’t realize how thirsty he was until he started drinking from his water bottle, and ended up downing the whole litre in a few desperate gulps. He did the same thing with a couple granola bars.
Feeling better since taking in nourishment, his next thought was calling for help. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. It wasn’t there!
It took a moment before he recalled the events of the night before.
“I was standing up there on those rocks, and I had the phone in my hand,” Ted recounted the tale to himself, more for the company than anything else. “I was tackled, and dropped it… so where would it be?”
Ted look around for a while. Finally he spotted it lying on the ground about 10 feet from where he woke up. He picked up the phone and looked at the screen. Cracked. Very cracked. He hit the power switch to wake it up. Nothing. He tried hitting other buttons, and pressing the touch screen. The phone must have died.
Maintaining enough power to keep their devices charged while on the trail is a very common problem for geocachers. Many cachers kept extra batteries in their packs for just such an occasion. Ted was no exception.
He pulled a USB battery pack from his backpack. This model had a USB cable moulded into the plastic, so he was able to plug it directly into the USB port on the phone.
He waited a few minutes to let the battery charge up a bit, then he tried the power button again. Nothing.
Ted set the phone down and waited. He knew that some small electronic devices would not turn on if the batteries were completely drained. They needed a little charge at least before they would allow themselves to boot.
Ted ate some jerky, and looked around the area some more. He spotted a blood splatter on the ground near where he woke up. He checked, and it didn’t seem to be his. It must belong to Angus. Wherever he is, he is injured. Injured animals can be the most dangerous.
He did a survey of the surrounding area, but saw no further signs of Angus. However he saw no sign of Billy either.
Ted started getting worried.
When 20 minutes had passed, Ted tried to turn on his phone again. This time the screen lit up, and the phone started to boot up.
“Yes!” Ted exclaimed with excitement. It was short lived however, as the screen started to flash an error message.
“Crap!”
Ted finally decided that he had to keep moving and seek help if he was going to help his brother. He packed up his gear, located his hiking stick and then started walking down the trail.
He hiked all the way back to the covered bridge where he and his brother first met Angus, going as fast as his bruised and battered body would allow. He nervously crossed the bridge, fearful that if Angus Dawson was going to ambush him, it would be here.
However he crossed without issue. He made it all the way back to the trail junction with the Mountains-To-Sea trail when he heard someone coming down the trail in front of him.
His heart sank and fear overtook him. He looked around frantically for the best place to hide, when the person came into view.
It was a park ranger.
Right behind him were a half dozen more rangers.
“Am I glad to see you!” Ted exclaimed, walking towards them.
“Are you Billy or Ted Bishop?” The lead ranger asked. Ted recognized him as the ranger he spoke with at the trailhead yesterday.
“I’m Ted.” he confirmed. “I am so glad to see you! Have you seen my brother?”
“No, you’re the first hiker I’ve seen today”, the ranger said. “We have been looking for you. Where have you been, son?”
“Listen, my brother is missing. We were attacked last night by a crazy old man - the one I called you about, remember?”
The ranger nodded in confirmation. “Can you tell me what happened, son?” He put a reassuring hand on Ted’s shoulder to comfort him.
Ted tried to remain calm, but his emotions and concern for his brother started to overwhelm him, and the story started to gush out.
“We were going for a geocache, and he attacked us. Angus Dawson, he said his name was. We managed to fight him off for a while, but he followed us, and attacked us again. My brother must have gotten knocked out in the struggle. I lost him in the dark. I tried to call for help, but I couldn’t get a signal. I headed back to Cockney’s Knob, the place where I called you last time, cause I knew there was signal there. Angus started to follow him, so I ran as fast as I could. I got to the Knob, started to dial, and he tackled me. We fell off a rocky cliff about 7 feet, and I blacked out. When I came to this morning, there was no sign of Angus Dawson. My phone is busted, so I started hiking out to get help and thats when I met you fellas.”
Ted closed his eyes, and took a series of deep breaths, trying to regain his composure. The ranger waited patiently for him for a few minutes. “Listen, son, we really need you to fill in a few details so we can narrow down the search areas for your brother. “
“Sure,” said Ted. “How did you know to come looking for us, anyway?”
“We got a 911 call last night. No one was on the other line. The dispatcher did a location trace, and when she realized the coordinates were in this forest, she called us in. I remembered that you boys were up in this area, and we spotted your jeep still parked at the trailhead. We’ve been conducting a search and rescue ever since. We hiked the trail last night, and went to the coordinates 911 dispatch gave us, but we didn’t find anyone. It was too dark to do a proper search, so we called it off until daylight. We were just resuming the search now when we ran into you.”
“Wait a minute, “ exclaimed Ted suddenly, “Why didn’t you find me last night? My phone was 10ft from where I fell. You had my coordinates. It should have brought you right to me.”
“Not sure, son”, The ranger said, puzzled. He pulled out a paper map of the area. “The coordinates put us right here.” he pointed at the map.
The area he was pointing at was just up the trail from Brysons Bridge about 300 feet into the woods.
“Wow, thats over a half mile off.” Ted said, puzzled, pointing at the map “I was here, at the top of Cockney’s Knob, behind a rock wall.”
Ted thought deeply for a moment, a desire to solve tech problems briefly overcoming him. Suddenly he smiled. “I bet the phone didn’t have time to make a sat lock, and was using cell tower triangulation!”
“What’s that again?” the ranger asked. Ted explained that cell phones get their location in two ways, one is by using GPS satellites. The other is by using the signals from various cell towers to triangulate the position. If the towers are far apart, like they would be in the mountains, cell tower triangulation can be highly inaccurate - off by up to a mile or more. This is why phones like to use GPS signals for location. However to save power when the phone is not in use, the phone only uses GPS signals when the phone is awake. It can take several seconds to several minutes for the phone to lock onto the satellite signals and start reporting its position via GPS once it awakens. Since Ted only had the phone awake for a few seconds before it was knocked from his hand, the report given to the 911 operator was likely the highly inaccurate cell tower triangulation method.
Having solved that puzzle, Ted started pointing out on the map everywhere that the boys had been, and where he had last seen Billy.
“Listen, son. We’re going to go look for your brother, starting at the last place you saw him. I know you’re banged up, and been through a heck of a lot, but we could use your help. Since you were there, you may pick up details we may miss.”
Ted nodded. “Sir, you couldn’t keep me away.”
The group started walking once again down Brysons Bridge Trail.
“Hey, was there any sign of Angus Dawson?” Ted asked, suddenly remembering his nemesis from the night before.
“Now that you mention it, “ The ranger said, “Yes there was. We have him in custody.”
“Oh thank God!” Ted exclaimed, relieved to know that danger was over.
The ranger explained that another ranger had spotted an old beat up blue truck on the side of the road. He witnessed an old man, which resembled the description that Ted had called in, approach the vehicle. The ranger pulled in behind the truck, and could see that the old man was scraped up, and was bleeding from a head wound. The ranger called the State Police for backup, and then called out “Angus Dawson, is that you?”
The old man looked startled, then he jumped into his truck and sped away. The ranger gave chase. The State Troopers, already approaching the area in response to the 911 call, soon joined in the chase. Angus led them on what seemed like a wild goose chase, down old mountain roads, but soon he skidded off the road and into a ditch. The cops surrounded him, and placed him under arrest.
The search party, led by Ted and the head ranger, arrived at the bridge. Knowing Angus was in custody, and anxious to find his brother, Ted had no problems crossing over to the far side.
Just as he stepped into daylight on the far side, he looked up the trail and saw a familiar figure off in the distance. There, stumbling towards him in the distance, was the battered form of his brother,
“Billy!” Ted cried out, breaking into a run towards his brother.
“Ted! Am I glad to see you!” Billy called out in a frail voice. He was leaning heavily on his hiking stick, and hobbling towards him as fast as he could.
When Ted reached his brother, he gave him a huge hug. Shortly afterwards the rangers arrived. The lead ranger looked at Billy’s ankle. “Looks like a sprain. We better get you both to a hospital and get you checked out.”
A pair of rangers walked on either side of Billy to help support him, as they all headed back to the parking lot. Billy and Ted hopped into the back of one of the rangers pick-up trucks, and a ranger hopped behind the wheel of the Jeep.
They headed back to Brysonville, and went directly to the emergency room.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Copyright 2015 by Dave DeBaeremaeker. All Rights Reserved.
