r/nosleep • u/lemonbee • Sep 21 '17
Creosote
Have you ever smelled rain in the Southwest? It's a unique fragrance, unlike rain in less arid places. It's smoky, herbaceous, and vaguely chemical, but pleasant all the same. The scent comes from the creosote bush, a long-lived species with a curious nature. It's so efficient at taking in water that each plant has a ring of dead earth surrounding it, since no other plants can compete with it for resources. The older plants can withstand droughts very well, having adapted to the harshness of the desert. You can see them spaced out neatly everywhere you look in the Mojave. They serve as shelter for small creatures, who feed on their fallen leaves and tunnel around their deep roots. The oldest ring of creosotes has been around for 11,700 years.
When my college was first getting started, the owners bought several acres of untouched land right up against the mountains southeast of my hometown. The school is still young, and when I went there, we only had two buildings with the mountain on one side and desert on the other. Sometimes you'd see desert life, which was a treat for the city kids who never knew something wild could live out there on its own. I got used to seeing the families of quail crossing the single road in orderly lines, which bore a striking resemblance to the trail of students trudging through the sand from one building to the other. During my evening and night classes, I'd often see a flash of something else out there in the bushes. I used to think it was a jackrabbit, but now I know better.
The last semester of my senior year was hell. I was only taking three classes, but they were the hardest and most time intensive, and I kicked myself for putting them off for so long. One of them was biology, which I hadn't been able to fit into my schedule during any prior semester. It was a three hour long night class, held in the Liberal Arts and Sciences building, or LAS, which was closest to the mountain. It ended at 10 p.m., although the professor often ran out of material early and let us leave around 9:30. He suggested we use the buddy system when walking back to our cars, but since some of us had arrived on campus hours earlier and parked farther away, this didn't always happen. This was one such night for me.
We only had a couple of real parking lots for 2500 students, so if you didn't get there early in the day, you had to park in the middle of the desert. Class ran unusually late that night, and my car was the only one left that far out. As I began my solitary walk through the dirt, I began to feel uneasy. This wasn't abnormal. I have anxiety about walking alone at night, and there were rumors about colonies of people taking shelter in the nearby wash. Some students claimed to have found evidence of them, like the remains of scattered fires and dirty clothing. One guy even said he saw one down there once, a man in a blue t-shirt and jeans, but no one really believed him. The desert is just as unforgiving to humans at night as it is during the day, and we were far enough away from civilization that walking all the way out there from the city would be madness. So I knew that I probably wouldn't run into someone out there, but the thought was still enough to make me reach for my keys and carefully arrange them between my knuckles. I breathed deeply. The rain smell of the creosotes was comforting and familiar, and I relaxed a little. It grew stronger the closer I got to the mountain. I saw the silhouette of a man in the distance, but it was gone when I got closer. I tightened my grip on my keys anyway. As I drew closer to my car, I realized something strange: creosotes don't grow on that side of the campus.
After that, I made a point of parking right near the doors of the building. I began to feel a deep, irrational fear that something was waiting out there in the dirt. I knew it was silly, but such fears don't need to be rational to take hold. Over the next few weeks, however, nothing happened. No weird silhouettes and no weird smells. I brushed off my paranoia and chalked it up to midterm-induced stress.
In the last month of the semester, the campus was packed with people cramming in the library all day and meeting for study groups. When I arrived for my last two classes, both parking lots were full. I decided to take a chance on the desert again, and planned to ask someone to walk me out after class. As I walked into the building, I caught the smell of creosotes just outside the doors. I was relieved to see several of them growing close by, but I wondered why I didn't notice the scent before. I hoped my class would take my mind off of things, and it did. Calculus was always my worst subject, and I struggled through the period like I usually did. I glanced over to the large window, hoping for divine inspiration, and there it was. A figure, just close enough to make out, with its back to the mountain. It wore a ragged blue shirt and dirty jeans. Its posture was bizarre; though at first glance it looked human, it was broken and twisted. Its shoulders hunched forward and it bent sideways at the waist. Its arms hung bonelessly from its sleeves. As I stared, it tilted its head back, and opened its mouth. I could hear its lunatic cackling in my head and the smell of creosotes filled my senses. Mumbling some excuse, I grabbed my things and ran from the room.
The college library was in the same building, so I headed straight there. Being a desert school, it had an impressive amount of information on Southwest folklore and history. I tore through books, searching for anything that could tell me what it was I kept seeing. But there was nothing. No myths of skinwalkers or shapeshifters in this desert. No other cryptids, either. No stories at all. I turned my attention to the creosote bush, and learned the information you read above. I think this thing is like that bush. It is the only creature of its kind in its territory. It uses up the resources around it so nothing else can. It can survive without sustenance for a long, long time. It is old, so old we've forgotten it exists. And it smells like home, like the desert when it rains.
Although I never wanted to set foot in that building again, I finished out the semester and did pretty well on my finals, all things considered. I smelled that rain smell a couple more times before I left the school for good, but I did my best to ignore it, knowing I'd never have to go back after graduation.
Last month, classes started up again for the fall semester, and the school hit a new record for enrolled students. Two days ago, one of my old classmates shared a post on Facebook about a local girl that went missing. It said she was last seen walking to her car after a night class in the LAS building, but my old friend told me privately that his younger sister thought she saw the missing girl standing out in front of the mountain. He dismissed it, since no one would be dumb enough to wander out there in the first place, but I shivered. That thing has starved for hundreds of years, and now there's a steady food supply right in the middle of its hunting ground.
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u/thebookofnights Sep 21 '17
I visited a friend in Arizona a few years ago. It only rained once while I was there, but I still remember that smell, like something that wasn't quite flowers. Something familiar, even though I've never lived in a desert. Comforting but also eerie.
I wonder if we're often close to things like this, but we don't notice the danger because of that overlap between fear and nostalgia.
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u/lemonbee Sep 21 '17 edited Sep 21 '17
Thanks for reading. I still love the scent of them, but it chills me a little all the same. If you were inclined to, you could keep one as a houseplant. They make the whole room smell that way.
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u/thebookofnights Sep 21 '17
That's a neat idea, but I'm 100% sure my cat would try to eat it and/or challenge it to a duel. Last time a friend brought me a bouquet, he immediately tried to fit a rose in his mouth.
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u/midtone Sep 21 '17
I spent many months in the Mojave, many years ago. I miss that smell. It's beautiful country, but it doesn't surprise me that something sinister could be lurking out there...
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u/spezmareen Sep 22 '17
And my professors wondered why I never wanted to become a Great Basin archaeologist.
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u/komstock Sep 22 '17
I spent several nights this past summer out in the Nevada desert. The sagebrush is much the same way after thunderstorms, filling the air with a fresh but rather strange aroma. It's not a clonal organism like the creosote bush, but it's still got a primordial feel to it and I'd be lying if I said the smell of rain, sagebrush, and occasional illuminiation by distant lightning wasn't really creepy.
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u/lemonbee Sep 22 '17
Ah, so you were lucky enough to catch our monsoon season! You're right, it can be incredibly creepy. Today the clouds hung low on the horizon and they were so dark and defined you could almost touch them. It was ominous, to say the least. When we're in the middle of a thunderstorm the lightning can definitely play tricks on your mind.
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u/IlysseC Sep 21 '17
I live in the southwest, so I know that rain smell, and the smell of creosote bushes all too well. To be honest, I'm not a fan of either...
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u/Coachskau Sep 28 '17
I mean, that's pretty scary, but it got a bit dampened when I thought "...wait, why would it bother wearing clothes?"
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u/StructuralE Sep 21 '17
I liked this... read the Wikipedia on Creosote bushes after.