Let me begin by stating that you’re not supposed to know any of this. That’s not to say you’ll get in trouble for reading it. They can’t make that many people disappear without being noticed. Me? I’m a different case. I’ll probably go missing soon if they find the posts I’m about to publish.
With that out of the way, I’ll get straight to the point. I was hired as a guard for an underground facility located inside an undocumented Alaskan mountain. I will keep the hiring process a secret, because I don’t want anyone trying to find it and getting themselves killed.
The mountain is undocumented in every sense of the word. It doesn’t show up on any map or GPS, and even compasses malfunction near it. Notably, compasses always point in the exact opposite direction of the mountain, as if warning you to leave.
The facility itself was mostly underground. However, it did have an outer wall and some watchtowers that were on the surface. Patrolling these locations was despised by fellow guards, which might sound surprising. Hours of staring at the endless expanse of snow in the dark really made the dread creep in.
Most people will recognize what I’m about to say as a clear red flag, but I personally don’t see it that way. We weren’t told what exactly we were guarding. We knew the facility was there. Hell, we lived in it. But we had no idea what its purpose was. To be honest, I preferred it that way. It’s isolated from the world and guarded so heavily for a reason. A reason I’m better off not knowing.
The locals called it “Corvus Mountain,” which translates to “Crow Mountain” or “Raven Mountain.” The name confused me at first since in my entire time there I didn’t see a single bird. In fact, I didn’t really see anything alive outside the facility.
We were given some very specific rules. At first I didn’t take them seriously. They sounded… childish. I soon realized how important it was to follow them.
There were six in total. The first rule simply stated the following:
“If you hear knocking on windows, evacuate the room and lock the doors behind you. Do not re-enter until the knocking stops. We’re underground, we have no windows.”
This didn’t strike me as alarming. If anything, I found it strange. I mean, we obviously wouldn’t hear knocking on glass while underground. I didn’t understand why they had to specify such a thing.
That changed two weeks ago.
While in our dorm with my roommate, we were getting ready for night patrol. That was when I first heard it. Knocking. The sound came from the wall behind me. It was solid concrete. I couldn’t even begin to explain why it sounded like knocking on glass.
“Do you hear that?” I asked reluctantly.
”Hear what?” he replied, confused.
I pressed my ear against the wall, holding my breath. It sounded like… knuckles. Knuckles softly knocking on the glass. When I first received the rules, I considered not reading them. To this day, I thank myself for at least glancing over them, because I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t.
“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” I said, determined, just remembering rule one.
“Let me get dressed first,” he countered, irritated.
I reached the door and looked back at him. He wasn’t moving.
“Dude, the rules we were given said that if we hear knocking on glass…”
”… we leave the room and lock the door, yeah, whatever. And you seriously believe that?” he interrupted.
“Well I clearly hear the fucking knocking…” I insisted.
“Alright then, I’ll prove it to you. Leave and lock the door.”
In all honesty, if he wasn’t acting like an asshole I’d argue more, but I just accepted his challenge and did exactly that.
A few seconds passed.
“See? Ain’t shit happening,” he noted from inside the room. The doors and walls were thick for extra security, so the sound was a bit muffled.
In an instant, the sound got louder. It wasn’t knocking anymore, it was aggressive banging. I could hear it from outside the room.
“That’s weird… I can hear it too now. Probably a water pipe though,” he attempted to explain it logically, but I could hear the slight trembling in his voice.
“Why the fuck is there a window here…” was the last thing he said before letting out guttural screams.
I froze, staring at the reinforced door. I could hear sounds of struggle inside, like he was fighting someone in there. Shots were fired, interrupting his screams of pure terror. It felt as if I’d swallowed powdered concrete and it was finally starting to harden in my stomach.
For a moment, I thought of opening the door.
“Don’t,” said a deep voice.
I turned around to see another guard standing behind me. He was wearing his helmet, but his voice painted a picture of his face in my head. He sounded old, and far more experienced than I was.
“Let it happen,” he added, his voice cracking a bit.
Tears rolled down my face as his screams grew wetter and quieter.
Then silence.
Not relief, just silence, far more petrifying than the commotion ever was. More guards had gathered outside the dorm, all waiting for something, anything to happen.
“Hello?” I heard a voice from inside the room. “Open the door, man.”
It was my roommate’s voice. I let out a sigh of relief and grabbed the key-card from my pocket, eager to see my friend again. The old man grabbed me by the arm. It felt desperate. Aggressive.
”I’m gonna teach you something very important, so pay close attention,” he whispered. “Put your ear against the door.”
I did, not understanding the use of any of this.
”Why would we open the door for you?” the guard asked.
“It’s me, man. Open the door,” my roommate replied.
“Did you hear it?” he whispered to me.
“Hear what?” I replied, confused and tired of this situation.
He exhaled deeply. “Pay close attention this time.”
“We won’t open the door,” he continued.
“Why? That’s stupid. Open the damn door, I’m starting to - CLICK - freak out.”
What the fuck… I thought. It was an unnatural clicking sound, like marbles hitting each other. What the hell was that?
“You heard it now?”
”Ye… yeah I did. So what?”
“Everyone step back. That’s not your roommate.”
I instinctively followed his instructions. He got just a breath away from the sealed door, and said: “Begone, you body-stealing fuck. You’re not welcome here.”
The room erupted. Something was banging on the door from the inside, strong enough to bend the reinforced metal door. The phrase “open the door” was repeated again and again, accompanied by unnatural high-pitched screams that made every hair on my body stand up.
“It’s me! It’s me! Open the damn door!”
That wasn’t Jake’s voice. It was off in the most terrifying way possible. It alternated between low and high notes, as if trying to get it right but failing in its feat of rage.
To our disbelief, the banging stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The guard waited for a few seconds, then nodded at me to open the door. As I did, I unholstered my firearm. I didn’t know what I’d stumble upon inside, and I surely didn’t want to take my chances.
The site didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t gruesome. No brain matter splattered across any surface. No window on the wall. No deformed body… nothing. Not only was my roommate missing, as if earth itself swallowed him, but everything he owned was missing too. The bunk bed was now a single. His clothes, his equipment, his bags… everything was gone.
What was left behind was a clean room, and a single black feather.
I still can’t wrap my head around that. How did a single black feather end up in the sealed room? I was too absorbed by Jake’s disappearance to question it back then, and only now do I recognize its strangeness.
I don’t have much time, so I’ll move on to rule three:
”If you hear any sound that doesn’t belong here, ignore it. Do not investigate it. Do not acknowledge it.”
It’s true that strange sounds that didn’t belong in an underground facility almost always accompanied me. I got used to it fairly quickly because I refused to acknowledge how frightening it was.
By far the scariest sound I’ve heard was two days before the Jake incident. I was lying on the top bunk, and I was awakened by the sound of someone snoring lightly right next to me. In my drowsiness, I didn’t pay it any mind, until I realized what I’d heard. I quickly turned my head to be greeted by a wall.
“Psst! Over here!”
It came from outside the room. It was my sister’s voice.
“Come! Over here!”
As I mentioned, I hadn’t really paid attention to the rules at that point, but I thought logically. There was no way my sister was down there with me. I brushed it off and turned around, ignoring the marathon my heart was running and the cold sweat on my forehead.
It must have been around an hour later, when we heard the sound of a ship’s horn. It was so deafening that Jake and I practically jumped from the beds and grabbed our firearms. We later found out that the entire living facilities had heard it.
My night patrol is starting soon, and I’m still shaken by last week, so being stationed outside doesn’t really help.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer. I’ll post more experiences when I have the time.