The first time Goran saw it, he was out hiking in a group of five friends, variously aged between twenty-three and thirty-five. It was a clear, moderately warm afternoon in early August, and they were scrambling over the rough, rocky terrain of one of the lower mountains, dodging around live pine trees and negotiating their way over fallen ones. Half-fallen trees, hung up on their green neighbors, creaked and groaned eerily whenever a gust of wind passed through.
“Listen- the trees are talking to each other,” Manoja laughed on one such occasion.
“If they are, it’s the dead ones are singing their own funeral,” Carol rejoined.
“Why do you always have to be so morbid, Carol?” Goran groused.
“I mean, she is right- it’s the dead ones making the noise ‘cause they’re hung up….” Lashay pointed out.
The group pressed on, Jake a little ahead of the rest, pursuing their amiable argument as they explored. The general area was not precisely new territory for them, but they had never hiked across this particular section. They had been assured there was nothing of interest to be seen there, but sometimes people just have to see that for themselves.
“Ho-ly SHIT! Guys, come here!!!”
At Jake’s summons, the other four burst into a run- or the nearest thing they could manage, what with backpacks and the tough going underfoot. Jake had gotten further ahead than they had thought; the first indication of what had prompted his astounded shout was a terrible smell, like half-boiled, rotten eggs. Exclaiming in disgust, they stumbled unexpectedly out of the trees and into a barren clearing.
“What. The.” Lashay more or less spoke for them all as they stood staring at the spectacle before them.
The ground was white, blasted-ash white, bare of trees or any other obviously living thing. Unwholesome-looking pits, fissures, and pools riddled the ground sporadically. Under the noise of their erratic breathing, they could hear a symphony of weird sounds: gurgles, plops, hisses, a steady bubbling like a simmering pot of thick stew, and a rumbling barely over the threshold of human hearing. Just then, one of the fissures exploded into a column of hissing steam, unleashing a chorus of yelps and shrieks from the group of hikers.
Goran alone moved closer to the noxious geyser, staring a little wildly. “Goran, what the hell?” Jake called, and he snapped back to reality, stopping in his tracks.
He glanced at his friends. “Don’t you- did you see-…?” he trailed off as, looking back, he was confronted with nothing but the geyser’s eruption.
Carol laughed a little nervously. “Well, back in the day, they used to say the devil lived in these mountains. I guess now we know why.”
“Yes, nowadays we happen to call the devil hydrothermal activity,” Lashay stated blandly.
“Absolutely incredible. I had no idea this sort of thing was out here. The nearest stuff I know of is three hundred miles away from us,” Manoja babbled, setting off an excited exploration of the several features in evidence, which included a burbling mudpot, its contents reluctantly plopping in its shallow, smelly pit.
At last their curiosity was satisfied- or, at least, it was overpowered by their protesting noses. Manoja edged back toward Goran, who trailed behind as they headed back to their cars. “So what did you think you saw back there, anyways?”
“Nothing. Just the steam and fumes,” he replied stubbornly. His vision of the bleached-white goat standing in the steam and jets of superheated water, its eyes lit with a strange yellow fire, had vanished the moment after he saw it.
The discovery of geothermal features kept the nearby small town chattering for weeks. Numerous parties of hikers went out to see them. Not until someone slipped and came back with third-degree burns did anyone think to alert any authority above the sheriff. The closest city’s newspaper ran a brief story, the fun police sensibly declared the area off limits, warning signs were posted at the turn-off on the dirt road nearest the attraction, and, gradually, the discovery faded under the surface of everyone’s thoughts… everyone’s, that is, except Goran’s.
The experience that had merely thrilled his friends and made them minor celebrities for a few weeks disturbed him greatly. He knew what he had seen in that eruption, but he also realized it had to be a figment of his imagination. No one else had seen anything remotely resembling a goat, he was sure of that. He felt the slightest bit off- the vision had seemed so real. Obviously, he had just been affected by the fumes or dehydration, but he could not shake his unsettled feelings.
Once the danger of the place became apparent, and, more to the point, everyone who wanted to see it had already trekked out to it, the area received few visitors- except Goran. More and more, he found himself returning to it. He was unsure if he wanted to confirm what he had seen; he could not decide whether it would be worse to see the apparition again and know for certain he was insane, or to continue not seeing it and have the memory fester. Unwilling to admit where he was going or with what frequency, he hiked alone, only vaguely describing where he went when someone pressed.
Goran returned there for months. It took a while for him to realize it, but, over the course time, his reaction to the smell of those fissures and pits gradually changed. At first, it had choked him, making him so nauseated he would choose to fast before hiking out. Gradually, though, he became accustomed to it; it grew less sickening, then familiar, and then welcome, almost pleasant- he arrived and breathed it in eagerly. Something similar happened with the appearance of the place, too, and its noises. What had looked loathsome and awful on first sight slowly transformed into a weird kind of beauty; he saw complex patterns in the mineral deposits, and mesmerizing, strange worlds in the bottomless depths of the quiescent pools. The disquieting noises became something his ears strained for as he hiked toward them; rather than horrifying him, they soothed him.
Without realizing it, Goran withdrew from his other pastimes, until all he did was go to work and hike to this place- and he was distracted at work. Goran had yet to see another geyser erupt over the months, though other hikers had reported seeing them, and that was what he used to justify his frequent returns. If he could just see it again- the same one, any one- and confirm or deny the existence of that bizarre apparition, he insisted to himself that his life would return to normal.
Fall was only just holding off winter, the festive color drained out of the deciduous trees’ leaves; they had fallen and withered to a vanquished shade of brown. Goran hiked out to the spot for the fourth time that week. He knew every short cut and the easiest routes, but, even so, the hike took hours, he tarried there longer every time, and the days had gotten shorter. Right when he was about to reluctantly head back- he already risked reaching his car after dusk- the noises, to which he was now carefully attuned, changed. There was a deep rumbling under all the other sounds. Goran stood stock still, hardly breathing, until he could orient himself in its direction. There! His heart skipped at least one beat- the noise was coming from the same geyser he had seen erupt when he and his friends discovered the place.
With less caution than was advisable, Goran edged closer. The geyser’s pool of surface water trembled and bubbled. Then, with a dim roar, the geyser exploded, sending great gouts of water and steam jetting into the air.
Goran gasped. There, on the edge of the hissing steam, stood the goat. Its gleaming white body was twisted at an odd angle; its head was turned almost one hundred eighty degrees on its neck, parallel to its back, so that its face was to him. This time, it did not disappear after an instant, but stood with its infernal yellow eyes locked on him.
Involuntarily, Goran took another step closer. “What are you? Who are you?” he whispered, his mouth dry.
The goat’s lips parted, and somehow the bleat that issued forth formed distinct syllables. “I am Aries.”
“Aries,” he repeated, unconsciously taking yet another step closer to it, and another. “Ar-IES-YAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!”
It was already too late when Goran realized the goat had lured him into the pool’s boiling water. His utterance of its name transformed into a horrible scream of agony as he slipped in deeper, cut off only when he was submerged, plummeting toward the bowels of the earth through that superheated abyss.