Name's Buck. AM 1470 WMLH, and the fella who runs the wire lets me read the station logs.
Second field report. Everything below came off the logs for the last seven days. Twenty-four of you walked the island across thirty-two expeditions, better than ten hours of dark between you, and twenty-one of you went and opened a brand new island to do it on. Twenty-nine photographs came back confirmed. One hundred and sixteen came back nothing. We will get to the nothing.
THE SERPENT
That is the lake. That is not a log.
Hunter Natasha, Sunday afternoon, four photographs inside the same minute. She caught it from the shore in the rain and then she stayed put and caught it three more times.
I want to be careful here, because I have been doing this a long time and I do not say things like this on an open frequency without checking first. I checked. In the whole history of these logs — every expedition, every island, every hunter who ever pinned a photograph to that corkboard — nobody had ever gotten her before. Not once. Four in a row on a wet Sunday.
Congratulations. Also, kindly stay in the boat next time.
HE WALKED PAST A CAMERA
The trail cameras went out to the island this week. Twenty-eight of them got strapped to trees. They fired thirty-three times.
Thirty of those thirty-three were hunters photographing each other.
One of them was a squirrel.
And then there was this one.
Twenty-two meters. Seven forty-one in the evening. Nobody standing there, nobody breathing on the lens, nobody to see it happen. He came out of the dark, stood square in front of it like he was reading the label, and went on.
That is what he does when he believes the woods are empty. Strap them higher, and check them at the bench.
THE OFFICIALS CAME TO THE DOOR
Forty minutes after the serpent, a car came down Ford Road for Natasha.
She photographed him. Then she photographed him again. Then she went over and had a conversation with him, which I would not have done, and which I am told went about how those go.
For the record: the station has no comment on the officials, the station has never had a comment on the officials, and if anybody from the station is ever asked about the officials, the answer is that we are a music station.
DALE HAD A WEEK
Seven hunters went down out there. Every single one of them to the same fella. Not one of you laid a finger on each other.
Tuesday night was the bad one. H5 and Znackz went down four seconds apart. Four seconds. They picked themselves up, walked back out, and five minutes later he had them both again.
Znackz kept shooting the whole time. Three exposures of a man in a hood, taken while that man was actively coming for him.
And on the morning end of it, hunter HUNTER_91 put a certified photograph of HIM on the board from twenty-nine meters out, bent down, picked up a branch, and was on the ground thirty seconds later.
Twenty-nine meters is beautiful work. Thirty seconds is the part I want you thinking about. When you have got the shot, the shot is got. Go home.
KNOCKING
Seventy-eight of you knocked on a trunk this week the way the Rule says.
Twenty-two of you got an answer.
Natasha ran four answered knocks in a row, which is the longest honest streak in the log.
Now here is the part the Rule does not print on the poster, so I will: he counts. Three answers inside two minutes and he stops answering and starts walking. That is not folklore, that is arithmetic. Knock twice and go find something else to do with your hands.
THE EIGHTH
Somebody found the rise above the pond. Two of you photographed what is up there. Natasha pinned hers and labeled it THE EIGHTH, which is the correct label, and which tells me she read the notice board in town.
The paper never printed the part about the rope.
AND THE PART THAT IS STILL OPEN
Sunday, quarter to three in the afternoon, Natasha came up out of the ground carrying the bar.
The bar is still in her pack. The inner door is still shut. Nobody — not on her island, not on anybody's island, not once since the day that door was put in — has ever opened it.
Also still standing after all this time: not one living soul has photographed a grey. Fifteen photographs of the officials, forty-three of the craft, and zero of what rides in it.
Somebody go get me a grey.
HOUSEKEEPING
Ten trout came off the water, two of them with something in the belly that was not fish. The rowboat left Dale's dock eight times and came back eight times, which is a better record than it usually runs.
And the suggestion box on the cabin wall received, in full, "ew1" and "wddddde". Thank you. Those have been forwarded to management, and management has read them out loud.
One hundred and sixteen exposures came back nothing this week. The lab tells you why now — too far, or he was not in the frame. Take that as mercy. The alternative is a lab that tells you he WAS in the frame, and then you have got to live in the room with that.
The door's open. AM 1470. NIGHTWATCH.
— Buck
Every number in this report is real activity off the server logs for the past week. The photographs are real corkboard pins taken by real hunters, unedited.
