The Return to Nature (Abridged)

One

Inspector Emil Mayer sat at his desk, scrolling through an email report of a Narcotics task force in the suburbs outside Bucharest, Romania. Phones took turns ringing around him. 

Four months ago, Emil was assigned to desk duty, which was usually a punishment. But, in this case, it was an act of charity. Emil needed to take a step back after a catastrophic event for the Anti-Drug Trafficking Taskforce. 

“Mayer!” called Lieutenant Avram from his office door. 

“Yes?” responded Mayer.

“Come in. Have a seat.” said Avram

Emil sat in a chair in front of Lt. Avram’s desk. The room was spare. 

“I have another special assignment. Investigations said they keep getting calls about elders that show up dead on the streets up north.” Avram turned his computer monitor around for Mayer to see. “The red dots are the towns that reported these dead elders. I looked up some numbers and this isn’t common in the area. Do you see any patterns with the red dots?”

“Yea”, answered Mayer. “They surround the Hoia Forest.”

“Right”, said Avram. “These elders are found dirty. And not dirty like they’ve been in the streets. Dirty like they’ve been sleeping in the dirt.”

Mayer sat back. “Has this happened before? People living in the forest?”

“Drifters. That sort of thing. But never anything in these numbers.”

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Mayer.

“I need you to travel up there with Dragan. Ask around a bit and see if we can put anything together. A Deputy from that area is raising concerns in Parliament. The Prime Minister spoke with our Commander,” explained Avram. “We need to come back with some sort of progress for the Commander to report back to the politicians.”

Two

It’s over a 6 hour drive north on E81 from Bucharest to Cluj-Napoca, the city outside the Hoia Baciu (pronounced HOYA BAA-CHEW) Forrest. Mayer and Inspector Dragan drove most of the trip flipping through radio stations without speaking. It’s beautiful through much of the drive, but during a particularly bland stretch of scenery, Mayer asked, “How do you like being an inspector?”

“I wanted to make inspector since I was in secondary school. I love it.”, said Dragan. “I’m excited to learn some tricks from you. Our instructors at the Academy always talked about you. I must have heard a dozen of your cases.”

“Oh. Great.” Mayer wasn’t much for talking about himself. He started regretting the small talk. He changed directions with the conversation.

“What do you make of this? Thirteen dead elders. Homeless.” said Mayer.

“Well, they say anything can happen in the Forest. Could be a drifter poisoning old people.”, responded Dragan. “What do you figure?”

“We don’t know yet,” said Mayer. He developed a wry smile while looking out the front windshield. “You’re going to spend the next 25 years of your career not knowing, young man,” said Mayer. 

Dragan paused thoughtfully for a few beats.

“See, I like that. Not knowing. It doesn’t make me feel uneasy to not know. It pumps me up. I used to run the 800 meter in secondary school. I was always slow on the first 400 meters. My breathing was heavy the first 400 from my asthma; my muscles warmed up slow. I’d be last place sometimes. I wouldn’t get that extra gear until I knew how far I needed to catch up. Catching that guy in the front, I loved that. You don’t know if you’re going to catch him, but step-by-step you get closer. Each step feels like a win. I wouldn’t even care if I lost the race. Catching up was enough of a rush.” said Dragan.

“I like that, kid. I still get the rush sometimes. But remember: the older you get, the more races you lose and the slower you get.”

The inspectors arrived in Cluj-Napoca around mid-day. They called the mortuary to get permission to see the bodies. After signing in, the inspectors walked back with the attendant.

“Has anyone sorted through their personal effects, yet?,” Mayer asked the attendant..

“The local police checked the personal effects when they identified the bodies. But they were told to leave any objects here with the bodies until you arrived,” said the mortuary attendant. He showed the inspectors the personal items in bins at the feet of each body.

Mayer started to sort through the first bin. “What did the medical examiner say? Cause of death?” he asked.

“It’s been cold up here the past two months. He said most died of hypothermia. One died from a circulation issue resulting in heart failure.” 

As Mayer sifted through the personal items in each bin, he noticed a few of the elders had a ring or necklace charm with the same image of the sun with flowing water underneath. Mayer called the attendant over.

“This image of the sun. Do you recognize it?” asked Mayer.

“It’s the image of the Spiritual Naturalists. They’ve hosted a lot of events in this area recently.” said the attendant.

“Pagans?” asked Dragan.

“I don’t know. They seem to have a lot of beliefs about the natural world. Some people believe they’re like a cult. Very difficult to join them,” said the attendant.

“Where could we talk to these folks?,” asked Mayer.

“They’ll have a table at the football match this weekend. It’s a big match.” 

Three

Mayer and Dragan were unable to find any information on the internet or various police databases about “Spiritual Naturalists” in Romania. The inspectors were able to eventually locate members of the group at the football match that weekend, which led them to a contact number for the group’s leader, Maria Balan. Balan was summoned to the police department the next day. 

Mayer and Dragan met Maria Balan there early the next morning. A local officer sat in with them as well. The inspectors presented a cold demeanor since, so far, Maria Balan was the closest thing to a person of interest.

“Ms. Balan, as you know, nearby towns have found thirteen elders dead outside in the cold. It appears at least seven are affiliated with your community group. Why have the local police not heard from you yet?” asked Mayer. He sat across from Balan. Dragan stood in the corner.

“Yes. I know. Let me say first, Inspector, that I feel directly responsible for these tragic deaths.”

Well, Mayer thought, this was the fastest case he’d ever closed.

“I hadn’t talked to anyone yet because I was scared,” Balan continued. “I didn’t know whether there is culpability for the kind of thing that happened with our group. You have to understand, I didn’t realize this might be connected to our group until they identified one of the names yesterday.”

“You were concerned about culpability, Ms. Balan?” asked Dragan.

“There is a tradition in our group. It’s called ‘The Return to Nature’. We believe that old age is a beautiful time of preparing for our return to the basic elements of the Earth. There have even been some fringe ideas that elders should stop consuming any natural resources. The leaders of the group, including myself, have rejected this concept multiple times. We’ve instructed our group that The Return to Nature is a spiritual process, not a physical process. We encourage elders to spend more time walking in nature, spending time with reflection, reminiscing on their contributions to the world and their relationship with nature. We hold some retreats with elders where we facilitate some of this reflection. We have beautiful discussions about regret and pride.

“There was never any indication that elders in our group were considering the fringe interpretation. But after hearing about the condition of the identified member, and then the conditions of the other cases, I realized they may have starved themselves in the elements.”

“Would you be willing to identify whether the deceased elders were in your group?” asked Mayer. He already started to lay out pictures of the deceased before Balan answered.

“Yes.” She watched as the pictures were laid onto the table. Her eyes kept falling with each picture, and she started to nod her head gently. “They’re all members.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “My God.”

“We’re sorry, Ms. Balan,” said Mayer.

“Do you suspect that any members would have been involved in this?” asked Dragan. “Can you name the members that had more extreme views?”

“I wasn’t present for all of these conversations. But I can track some of this information down. I can’t imagine any of our members would have organized or encouraged this effort. It should be harmless to talk to those folks,” said Balan.

Four

That afternoon and the next day, Mayer and Dragan connected with other members of the group, including the members that held more extreme views on The Return to Nature. No one appeared involved in any way. Most members could track their whereabouts in and around Cluj; not in the forest or in the other cities and towns. Foul play was becoming less and less likely.

The inspectors ended their fourth day in Cluj with more questions than answers. But there was no smoking gun or evidence pointing toward foul play. The question that still bothered Mayer most was why all of these elders had returned to a city or town. Was there a desperate final effort to survive? Were they disoriented in their final days? He also struggled with the question of whether there were other elders that had taken this venture. Was there still a group of elders dying out in the woods? 

Mayer and Dragan briefed the Commander of the National Police, their Lieutenant and the local police department later that day. Their Commander decided their work was done and closed the national investigation given the lack of foul play. The local police and Missing Persons Department would handle it from there.

Mayer had investigated plenty of cold cases and inspections that ended without foul-play with unanswered questions, but he’d never concluded an investigation with such a suspicious feel to it, and so many loose ends. But they had their orders. The inspectors headed back to the hotel.

Five

While packing their bags, the inspectors continued to talk through the unanswered questions. The trail to determine if other elders were in the woods was cold at this point. The next step would have to have been a search party.

“I’m wondering if we should spend some extra time here to search the woods,” said Mayer.

“We have our orders. We’re done here.” 

“Well, we’d have to take some time off. It would be off-duty,” said Mayer.

“But, what are we trying to find here? If there are more elders, are we trying to talk these people into coming home? They’re not breaking any laws. These people chose to die out there, right?”.

“I have a feeling these people were manipulated somehow. I feel like there is some factor here beyond the naturalist group. The group tried to talk them out of this crazy idea, right? So, what happened from there?”

“But, so what? Unless you take some kind of wild leap – like the old people were drugged or kidnapped – this is still a free decision by these elders,” said Dragan.

“But, if they decided to do this, why have so many come back into town?”, asked Mayer.

“Emil, we don’t know and it’s not the sort of thing we do. I hear you. This has a bad feeling. But doesn’t this happen all the time in our work? Aren’t you supposed to be the guy that’s hardened against this stuff?” said Dragan.

“That’s the thing. I’ve let dozens of unsolved cases go. This one bothers me. Something’s not right.”

“Is it possible you’re gun-shy after the incident in Bucharest?” asked Dragan. He didn’t pull punches.

“I’ve thought about that. Maybe it had an effect. But is it bad to check on a group of people that might be in trouble and might feel they made a bad decision?” asked Mayer.

Dragan stopped for a few more beats.

“Listen, I’ve always wanted to explore the Hoia Forest. There’s plenty of stories about the place and I’m a sucker for a ghost story. If you need to see this out, I’ll go with you,” said Dragan.

“Let’s ask around about hiking the forest. If it’s possible to do a good search in two or three days, we give it a shot.”

Six

The Hoia Baciu Forest has the title of the most haunted forest in the world among paranormal enthusiasts. The forest is 729 acres, making it slightly smaller than Central Park in New York City. There are many legends that have contributed to the haunted legacy of the woods. People in the area reported that, decades ago, a shepherd disappeared with a large flock of sheep after entering the forest, never to be seen again. Another popular story tells of a young girl that disappeared in the forest and returned 5 years later, not having aged a day since her disappearance. 

Additionally, people who explore the Hoia Forest report feeling disoriented and anxious at times, as if an invisible energy is acting on them. Investigators have taken pictures that they say capture UFOs, strange lights, and strange forms in the woods. Many people report feeling like they’re being followed by dark shadows. Most interestingly, archeologists have found artifacts in Hoia Baciu from a farming community from 6500 BC, called the Stacevo-Koros-Cris culture. Some assume there is an ancient curse on the land from the demise of that culture. 

Mayer and Dragan devised a plan to explore the woods in two days, with one night of camping in the forest. They also connected with a local parks representative, named Adi, that knew the woods. 

Mayer, Dragan, and Adi set out on a Friday morning. It was unseasonably warm for mid-October. They decided to start at the section of the forest where an elder was seen wandering out of the woods.

After a cab ride midway up the hill leading to the woods, the men strapped on their backpacks and began the trek to the entrance of the forest. As they walked, Mayer asked Dragan, “What’s your take on the kind of supernatural stories you hear from these woods?”

“I’ve always been intrigued by that kind of thing. To tell the truth, I’ve always loved ghost stories and the supernatural around Halloween,” said Dragan.

“But do you seriously believe the stories about this place? Supernatural energies and shadows? Disappearances?” asked Mayer.

“I don’t know. Is it possible we leave some sort of energy behind when we die? Maybe. Are their dark energies that exist in the world? Of course. We see all sorts of dark shit and depraved human behavior in our line of work. Why wouldn’t we believe that?” said Dragan.

“I’m a religious man. I believe people can be influenced by evil and can seek comfort in their Creator. But why do these kinds of events only occur when only one person or a small group of people are looking? If these forces are so powerful – powerful enough to disappear a kid for 5 years – why wouldn’t they be universally experienced and believed?” said Mayer.

As the men walked into the woods, the light decreased significantly. The light inside the forest, between the leaves and trees, was a strange grey color. Not the typical bright, splendid sunshine you’d expect in the woods.

“Did you notice that?” asked Dragan. Neither Adi nor Mayer answered. “The sound of the city. How does the forest block the sound of the city so well? I can’t hear anything.”

The forest growth in Hoia Baciu is unique. The trees grow at strange angles. Most trees are thin and bunched closely together. It has the look of a group of skeletal people standing together. Or a narrow, claustrophobic maze. 

“What should we be looking for, Adi?” asked Dragan.

“If there is a group of elders in the woods, they’ve chosen an area of the forest well hidden from the runners, bikers and hikers that typically come through the woods.” 

Unfortunately, Mayer was increasingly discouraged throughout the morning. They zigzagged back and forth through the middle section of the woods. There were no suspicious sounds or hidden areas of the forest. People traveling through the woods would have been able to recognize a group of people for hundreds of yards around them. 

As they reached mid-afternoon, the men took a break on the north side of the forest on the wider perimeter trail. Adi suggested they start walking through the trees toward the camping area for the night. They’d need some daylight to set camp.

Seven

The Poiana Rotunda in the southwest section of the Hoia forest is a very popular camping site. It is also the subject of various supernatural/extraterrestrial sightings in the woods. After setting camp, the men built a fire. They each unpacked a sandwich from their backpack and sat and ate. The last light in the sky could be seen through the trees behind them. The city down the hill started to light up in the trees in front of them.

After eating, the men took out two thermoses, one with coffee and one with hot water for tea. They also took out a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey. The evening quickly became cool. In fact, the temperature was dropping rapidly. The men could already see their breath in the moonlight. The conversation turned to memories for a while. Adi talked about growing up in Cluj. He had explored the woods many times in his life and described a few mild supernatural experiences he experienced. He believed there were, in fact, some negative energies in the woods. Dragan asked Mayer to recount some of his most famous cases. 

Later in the night, Adi decided to go to bed first. Right before he entered his tent, Mayer asked Adi,

“Was it supposed to be this cold tonight?”

“No”, said Adi. “It was supposed to be mild weather tonight. The Baciu is talking to us.”

Adi didn’t wait to see their reaction to his statement. He climbed right into his tent. Mayer and Dragan were left sitting with a concerned look on their faces.

After Adi had settled into bed, Dragan asked Mayer, “What happened on that last case with Narcotics? I know a gang opened fire downtown and civilians were killed. I know there was a family in a car. Where were you during that whole thing?”

Mayer sat and looked at his cup for a while. He was watching the fire light bounce off his tin cup. “The drug gangs…there comes a point in Narcotics where you see kids from the same neighborhoods ending up in the same gangs. They grow up. They become hardened. They run drugs or girls. They die or go to prison or disappear. 

“I was working with a teenage boy a few years ago. He’d provide some information and I helped him go forward in school. He started playing sports and became a big athlete on the high school football team. He was talking to universities. Then, in the span of a month, his older brother was killed in a gang shooting and he was badly injured on the football pitch.

“He dropped out of school and I lost track of him. I figured he joined a gang. Then, I discovered he was one of the shooters in the downtown incident. He and his cousin opened fire on members of the gang that killed his brother. He had killed a 2-year-old child in a car seat, in the crossfire. I was off-duty during the shooting, so I came to the scene late. The first body I saw was my guy, lying face-down in a pool of blood on the street. Half his head had been blown off by a high-caliber police assault rifle.

“What good are you supposed to see in the world after something like that? What hope is there for these kids?”

Mayer and Dragan sat for a few more beats. Dragan had been present and attentive. But he let the weight of the story settle in the air for a bit.

“Fuck, man. That sucks.”, Dragan finally said. “You have kids?”

“I have a daughter in college from my first marriage”, said Mayer. “I didn’t watch her much as she was growing up. I put most of my time into Narcotics. I spend more time with her now.”

“It’s tough. Bringing kids into this world.”, said Dragan. 

And the men let the idea hang on the cool night air. Soon, they both went to bed in their tents.

Eight

The second day search was more of the same. There was no evidence of any suitable living areas or items left that would suggest the elders living there. It was time to head back and conclude that there was nothing more to be found in this case. 

“There is one more area to investigate,” said Adi. “Outside the northern part of the woods, there is a nature preserve called ‘Cheile Baciului’. This land is where the ancient artifacts were found. We should look at this area.”

Mayer and Dragan looked at each other in disbelief.

“Yea. We should look at that. Maybe we should have started with that,” said Dragan irritably.

The men walked north to the outer trail and followed a road that passed the nature preserve. Cheile Baciului featured a series of cliffs on the side of a hill beyond the field. The cliff face was composed of loose rocks, sand, and dirt. You could also see that there were small, cavernous depressions in the cliff face at various points. 

“There is a small cave in this direction”, said Adi as he pointed farther down the cliff face.

Mayer was overwhelmed with a strong feeling that told him this is where the elders gathered and lived during their trip into the woods.The men reached a small opening in the cliff face at the base of the hill. Adi reached into his backpack and took out a flashlight. He led the slow, careful walk into the cave. 

The ceiling of the cave was low and the men had to bend over quite a bit. They seemed to be squeezing through a small corridor between loose rocks. A few steps further into the cave, they reached an opening that took them to a taller, wider space. They stepped down onto solid rock that had a stream of water in the middle. 

Mayer and Dragan began walking toward the walls of this space to look for any evidence of people living there in the recent past. They noticed some circles on the rock floor drawn there in bright colors. It looked like a circular seating area around the center of the room, with colorful circles marking each person’s sitting space.

As Mayer walked toward the outer wall, he put his hand onto the smooth rockface. Suddenly, his feet slipped out from under him. He fell backward and then slid down a wet, smooth area of the cave floor into a separate cavern. The drop was only about five or six feet. He landed sitting up on a hard, wet surface. He could hear the men above him calling:

“Emil! Are you okay?”

“Inspector Mayer!?!”

The light from the flashlight flickered in and out of the space Mayer was in. He had landed on a piece of rock not much larger than himself. There wasn’t much room to move.

“I’m okay!”, said Mayer. They weren’t talking too far from each other now. “I should be able to climb back up. Can you hold the flashlight steady? Right down into this space?”

Mayer looked around to get his bearings and to start to look for some footing he could step onto. While looking around, Mayer found a carving in the rock to his right. It was the symbol for the Spiritual Naturalists.

“Emil! You on your way up?”, asked Dragan.

“You’re not gonna believe what I found, Andrei”, said Mayer. “I’m going to start climbing up.”

Mayer looked again at the wallface that he had slid down. Much of the rock was smooth, but there were a few jagged footholds toward the side of the opening. Mayer stretched his leg up to the first foothold and set his footing. He stretched his next leg to another foothold and, as he went to grab for a piece of rock above, his feet slid out from under him again. Mayer fell backward onto the floor of the small space. He hit his head hard on the rock floor. He was looking up toward the opening in the small cavern and his vision started to fade. He could hear his companions yelling for him in a muffled, slow yell. Then he heard a scream from above. Suddenly, Mayer saw a tall, lean shadow bending over him, as darkness closed around his vision until he was unconscious.

Nine

Mayer woke in a vast space without walls. He was standing instead of laying on his back. There was some sort of fog surrounding him, illuminated by an unidentifiable light source. He reached for the back of his head. It no longer hurt and he wasn’t bleeding. 

“Hello?,” he called out. The reverberation of his voice carried for a few seconds. 

A few yards ahead of him, Mayer noticed a movement in the fog. A tall, older woman in a long flowing gown slowly, gracefully walked toward him. When she reached him, the woman tried to hand Mayer a book. Mayer hesitated to take it. The woman kept looking back and forth from Mayer’s eyes to his hands. Suddenly, Mayer had the feeling that a big crowd had gathered around them. 

Mayer reached out and took the book. He opened it and looked back at the woman’s face. She was staring at the book’s pages with an intense look on her face. Mayer couldn’t read the text in the book but he knew he was immediately absorbing the words. The information he was absorbing registered clearly in his mind:

The relationship between human beings and nature is presently in major conflict. There was a time when human beings were a new species on Earth and they used natural resources sustainably. But, a turning point occurred with increasing population and industrialization. As a result, a smaller group of human beings have preternaturally decided to take a “Return to Nature”. The book in the cave is a record of all the people who have returned to nature. These people experienced an unavoidable urge to live in the natural world.

The Stacevo-Koros-Cris culture were the last group of people to live responsibly in nature in the Cluj, Romania area. They were eventually conquered by a barbarian group but, before they were conquered, they blessed the land with an energy that called some people to the Return to Nature.

The Return to Nature is a hard experience for those that are called. Many people fail to survive for very long and some leave the Return to Nature after a brief period of struggle and return to their modern lifestyle.

During the Return to Nature, people could become so attuned to the natural world that they would enter into different dimensions of existence, no longer seen by modern people. Sometimes, a person’s physical body never returned to the physical world. The person would return to the elements metaphysically and their spirit would live in the natural world eternally. 

After absorbing this information, the woman turned and gracefully walked back into the fog. The space around Mayer became fuzzy and slowly disappeared. Mayer woke, on his back, in a hospital bed. 

Ten

When Mayer woke in the hospital, he met with doctors and his lieutenant was eventually called in. He told Avram everything. He explained that he wasn’t sure if the encounter with the woman was some sort of dream while he was unconscious, but said it seemed to explain the evidence of the deceased elders. Then, Avram updated the events since Mayer lost consciousness in the cave. 

Avram said that Dragan had undergone some kind of breakdown in the cave. He was recovered on the floor of the cave barely conscious and disoriented. He was being treated in the psychiatric unit and had been sitting in a bed, catatonic. He had not spoken since being recovered. Also, Adi was missing. He was not found in the cave during the recovery. 

Mayer sat stunned with all of this information. He grieved Dragan. He somehow knew Dragan would never recover. He also somehow knew Adi would never be found. 

Afterward

Mayer never sought a Return to Nature himself, and he never returned to Cluj. Mayer spent more time with his daughter after the trip to Cluj. The violent incident in Bucharest with the Narcotics Taskforce had left him with a sense of purposelessness, and somehow the trip to Cluj helped him find purpose in his relationship with his daughter. Despite not taking the Return, Mayer did embrace a more natural lifestyle. 

More and more elders were found returning from the woods, near death, in Cluj over the following decades. Mayer searched other news reports around the world and discovered that similar patterns were occurring in other cities as well. Interestingly, these areas had a reputation for heavy paranormal energies.

Mayer visited Dragan often. He’d read books and the newspaper out loud to him. They never had any meaningful interaction. But, Dragan would often mutter single words again and again. Early in their visits, Mayer was able to make out some of the words. Dragan was muttering again and again, one after the other: “Old woman. Adi. Old woman. Adi. Old woman. Adi. Old woman. Adi. Old woman. Adi.”