Parallax Pines

‘Hey guys! Mike here, with the Survival Mike Channel.

‘Hey guys! Mike here, with the Survival Mike Channel.

Today, we’re in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness. My car’s about a four-mile hike south of me, and uh, I’m really very much alone here along the edge of these woods.’

I swing my camera away from my grinning face, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach. Raindrops tap and ping on my raincoat and camera. I pan over thick forest and a cluster of large, glistening rocks. Something felt off about these woods since I entered them. But the show must go on. I’m not missing this week’s posting schedule.

‘Today we’re covering fundamental survival skills, starting with fire-starting in damp conditions. That’s if we can even get a fire going in this.’

I spend the next twenty minutes setting up my two cameras and demonstrating fire-starting using my basic toolset. Smoke eventually billows from a pile of sticks and a steady fire has caught. I’d been in these woods many times, and this was the first time I’d felt such a pervasive feeling of being watched. Maybe I was getting old. Or was it something I ate? My eyes dart to the treeline more than once. The looming pines suddenly seem angrier and more sentient.

‘Remember, guys, in survival situations, your mind can be your own worst enemy,’ I say, suddenly stony-faced, like what I was saying wasn’t true because it felt like I really was losing it.

As the sun drops behind the tops of the trees, I switch out camera 1’s memory card. Force of habit makes me review the footage then and there.

Ice runs up my arms and neck. I see myself talking to the camera. In the background, merely metres away, stands a concrete tower, perhaps five stories high, where the trees should be.

I spin around. There’s nothing but a darkening forest.

‘What the f…?’ I murmur, rewatching the clip. The tower remains behind me in the footage, ominous as I continue talking to the camera. My fingers tremble as I raise the camera to my face. ‘Guys, you won’t believe this, but…’

I trail off, suddenly not sure. Was this real, or was I really losing it?

‘Let’s, uh, let’s keep going, set up camp and see if we can get ourselves some fresh water.’

Over the next two hours, I set up my tent and demo how to purify water from a stream. I feel out of my depth, but more so because my mind wasn’t there. It was with the strange footage and concerns for my own sanity. I discover weird anomalies every time I check over new clips. Plants I’d filmed shimmered like they were emitting their own faint blue light. The stream I’d scooped water from is a dry, blue scar in chalky earth when I observe replayed footage. I interact with the stream as I film, oblivious to it appears in the film.

My commentary becomes more frantic and less coherent. ‘Are you seeing this?’ I speak directly to my camera. My voice cracks. ‘Tell me you are seeing this.’

In the gloomy forest, I feel claustrophobic. I suck water from my hydration tube and unpack the drone. I launch it for some perspective. If I was looking for some sense of relief, this was a mistake. The aerial footage shows massive treeless spaces in the forest. Clearly, unnatural formations were carved into the woods, which should have been untouched wilderness. Black, circular pockmarks in an undulating tundra.

I hold camera 2 on the selfie stick, narrating my next moves, as I prepare for evening. But my arms feel weak. The camera shakes. ‘Gotta say guys, there’s something about this place. It’s creeping me out.’ I make an effort to maintain a calm face, but I’m screaming inside.

Twilight falls, and I set up for a time-lapse shot to show the arc of the stars and the moon against the silhouette of the trees. It is a technique I’ve used a hundred times before, but nothing prepares me for what the footage reveals.

After sitting by the fire for an hour, I shut off the time-lapse and check to see what it shows. There is something immediately odd about how the trees moved in the film. I wasn’t expecting any more motion than the regular shakes and ripples in a windless evening. But, sped up over time, these trees appear to be dancing. There is a distinct rhythm to the movement, their motions almost human in their fluidity. It reminds me of Disney's stop motion from the thirties. I tap the screen to test for a malfunction. Nothing changes. My breath comes in short gasps. I just can’t understand this.

With hands trembling, I turn the camera on myself one last time. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ I say, my voice hoarse, barely a whisper. ‘It’s like the camera’s seeing a different version of —’

I break off, my eyes wide. I see myself in the camera's viewfinder - but not as my face appears now. The other Mike on-screen interacts with shadowy figures, waving his arms around. His mouth moves in silent conversation with something off-camera.

The camera slips from my wet, unfurled hand, clattering to a floor of needles and stone.

For a while I just stand there, my mind reeling. Then, slowly, I crouch to retrieve the camera.

‘I’m going to film myself watching the playback,’ I said, hardly recognising my own voice.

‘Maybe there’s a way…by watching both…there’s a way for this to make some damn sense.’

With camera 1 set up to film me reviewing the playback from the last few hours, I talk through what I see on film on camera 2. As I narrate, the world around me begins to shift.

Trees begin to dance, and empty spaces appear where, seconds ago, there had been only dense forest. The tower flickers into being, appearing solemnly behind me.

I lower the camera and look all around me. I’m in a forest that was once familiar but now utterly alien. More towers rise in the distance against a purple sky. The boundary between what I could see in my films and what now seems very real has dissolved completely.

I feel like I am lost in space, but, like an astronaut glimpsing the full expanse of space before him, I am overcome by awe.

I flick the camera on again and take a breath. ‘This is Mike, signing off.’ The usual sign-off, etched into my brain, is now a desperate prayer. To whom? As reality and fiction blur all around me, I realise a frightening truth: though I had set out today to make a film, the film was making me. Moulding me. Turning me into someone else.

I stand there, the rain pouring now, lost in a forest that defies reality. I clutch a camera that seems more curse than companion. A part of me wants to smash it and to run out of here screaming. To grit my teeth and leave this all behind. But I know this is impossible now.

Whatever is happening, whatever the hell I’d stumbled into, there is no returning. I am part of this now, and I sense looking for the reason is futile. Maybe if I keep filming and keep pushing forward, I’d find answers.

Or maybe I’d lose myself completely.

Perhaps this is what I’d been looking for when I started my channel? The thrill of adventure, or was it escape? Well, I certainly had that now.

I wipe the rain from my face and raise the camera once more. ‘Hey survivalists,’ I say, my voice steadier than I feel inside. ‘Looks like we’re in for one hell of a ride. Stay posted.’

The red light blinks as I pan the lens across the scene in front. The trees and plants shimmer blue, alive, bending and shifting at the foot of a tower now shrouded in mist. The night sky isn’t the night sky I knew. And, somewhere in the twisted forest that had become my new reality, I hear a muffled scream.

. . .

Thank you for reading.

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Alex