What in God’s name am I doing out here at this time of night? As if in answer to his unspoken query, Steve felt the formless compulsion that had come and gone all day. He stood deathly still, listening to the rustling in the scrub growth.

The terror that had possessed him twelve hours earlier was back, reawakened by the specter of a mountain lion foraging in the darkness. No, he wasn’t going to get sucked in by fear. He tried to believe it was just a jackrabbit. Breathing in the alkaline scent of bone-dry brush cooling from the heat of the day, he waited for his heart to shift out of overdrive.

Again he sensed the gentle pull, and with it, a new smell at the edge of his awareness: subtle, sweet, enticing, alluring, growing in intensity, wrestling with his fright and nearly defeating it, only to be undone by thoughts of rattlesnakes lurking in the dark. These were the Rockies, after all, not the benign western slopes of the Cascades, where he’d grown up.

He knew 13,000 feet was too high for rattlers, but no matter, he turned to high-tail it back up the trail, stopping when something glinting in the moonlight caught his eye. The throbbing in his temples made him moan softly as he expelled the breath he’d been holding. He tried to spot the gleam again. There. An object in the lake far below, close to the shore nearest him. Truncated as it was by the moonshadow of a large boulder, he could see only part of it in the dim light. It looks like the tail of a small plane sticking up out of the water. Why didn’t I notice it from up on the ledge?

“What the…” An intense red beam, like a laser trace, shot from the object, rising into the sky at a steep angle, it’s equally sudden disappearance silencing his exclamation before he’d fully formed it. A shape lurched from the water into the shadows, and he heard sounds like someone dropping heavy objects and dragging them on the rough ground. Oh my god, it really is a plane. That must have been the pilot. The laser was probably a signal aimed at a satellite.

Steve wanted to cry out, to shout into the darkness, but he could no more pierce the stillness than he could have sprouted wings and flown. With the lake tranquil again, he realized he was shaking, doubting the evidence of his senses. And why not? Wasn’t he there only because his earlier hallucinations panicked him into running away?

Again, he caught the scent of wildflowers. It calmed him, transforming his anxiety into a keen sense of anticipation. Somehow, he knew, an extraordinary chain of events over which he had no control was approaching a cusp, as though a storm that had been gathering for hours was about to break. He shook himself. Damn it, I know what I saw! Thinking of his phone, back in the Jeep, and the flashlight in his survival kit, he retraced his steps up to the ledge, around the spire of granite that was the top of the mountain, and down the drop-off to the road. Time might be critical, but he measured his pace, knowing he risked hypoxia if he pushed himself too hard.

Breathless from the exertion, he tossed the phone down in disgust when the “no signal” message appeared, and reached for the Walther semi-automatic Phil had convinced him to carry on trips. With his head spinning, he rummaged through flares and blankets, deciding to leave everything but the light and the first aid kit behind.

The trail appeared different with his flash lighting the way. His mind raced, his thoughts overshadowing the ghostly feeling that something had been drawing him here. He should have planted a flare behind the Jeep, or at least left a note on the windshield, but there was no way he was going back again. Distracted, he wrenched his back on a patch of ice, nearly tumbling down the steep path. He breathed deep, trying to gauge how far it was to the lake, knowing sound carried differently, and distances could be deceptive in clear mountain air. Even so, he reached the lake shore sooner than he expected, not quite ready to face what lay ahead.