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The Outcast Hours

Page 34

by Mahvesh Murad


  We paused before entering the trees, slowly looking back and forth from the radiant sky to its drowned twin trapped in the waters at our feet.

  Neither of us spoke. You either feel it stronger than you feel anything else, or you don’t understand what it even is to feel. Some of us are just born for the night.

  The band of wood was quieter than I expected, silent other than the creak of the ever-present mountain draughts through the pine boughs. The breeze wasn’t exactly balmy, but summer still lingered here in Tyrol, even after dark. We followed the shadow-smudged trail up the wide face of the mountain, the cool air refreshing against my flushed skin. We weren’t in the trees for long, not tall ones, anyway, ascending through stubby brush that made it a bit easier to find the path.

  Veteran hikers don’t put a lot of conscious thought into where they step most of the time, their eyes and feet long accustomed to working in tandem without bothering the brain with every niggling detail. That all changes in difficult terrain, and there’s no terrain more difficult than that which you cannot see. Night hiking forces you to be in the moment, paying close attention to every step through a maze of starlit leaves. Up and up we went, until our switchbacking led us above the stunted shrubs and into the proper alpine environment of exposed grasses, wildflowers, and scattered rocks and boulders. We still had a stern climb ahead of us to reach the ridgeline, but with the trail plain and open at our boots we were able to make far better time.

  “What’s the name of it again?” I asked when the wind died down. My voice was hushed, as if my parents might overhear us here on this desolate mountain high in the Alps.

  “The Breitspitze.” Caleb paused and took a pull on his Nalgene bottle. The stars were so bright I could see the sweat shining on his face.

  “Don’t tell me that’s our warm-up,” I said, pointing to the peak that jutted up from the eastern end of the ridge to dominate the horizon. We’d been making good progress and I felt more invigorated than I had in ages, but no amount of summit fever could make that jagged, ice-rimmed monster seem attainable. Not our first night out, anyway.

  “Hell no!” Caleb laughed. “We go right at the top and just follow the ridge from there. It ends in a cliff, so hard to get lost. Gotta be halfway there already.”

  “Yeah?” I looked back the way we’d come. The silver and ebon landscape shimmered like the surface of the reservoir as the wind brushed its invisible palm across the mountain’s face. A sapling at the edge of the treeline swayed more than its brothers or sisters in the breeze, the waving of its stubby boughs making my heart skip a beat…it then cleared half a dozen more, as the silhouette detached itself from the pines, stepping out into the starlight. It was like something from a nightmare.

  At some point I listened to a podcast where the host said if you’re ever unsure whether or not you’re dreaming you just need to read something, look away, and then reread it. Our sleeping brains can do a pretty slick job at convincing us what we’re experiencing is real, but one thing they can’t do is keep text consistent in the middle of a dream. Even something as basic as a street sign will lose its cohesion if you turn away and then refocus on it.

  Ever since I learned that trick I constantly find myself double-checking everything from emails to cereal boxes in the grocery store, but so far I’ve only ever confirmed I was awake.

  This was all part of a dream I had, weeks ago. The irony makes me smile—the dreamer dreaming of ways to test whether he is dreaming but never employing them, instead calling up memories where the tests failed. This was where my sleeping mind wandered even as my sleeping feet carried me purposefully up the ghostlit trail, away from that teeming ivory city that I forever seemed to be leaving behind in pursuit of new adventures. I had an apartment high in one of the crooked spires, a curio-cluttered garret where my shadow friends and I plotted our treks over black maps whose inconstant golden paths slithered like snakes, but not once in all my life had I ever dreamed of homecoming, only ever departure. Lying in bed the following morning with tears streaming down my cheeks I wondered what that said about me…but in the night, in the moment, I was simply giddy to be off gallivanting again, accompanied by dozens of my nocturnal peers. They were my people, I knew this in my heart even if I could never quite make out their faces, but the high dark places we journeyed, and those star-kissed summits…

  Considering how majestically my dreams towered over the low, dull range of my life it might seem odd that I never told anyone about them beyond the broadest strokes, not even Caleb. He also dreamed about night hiking, but from the one time he broached the subject I gathered his were not nearly so pleasant as mine and so I quickly changed the topic. The heart of the matter is that while I don’t consider myself superstitious in general, on some bone-deep level I feared that if I talked about the visions it would amount to flinching away from them, that doing so would somehow change the dreams, or put a stop to them altogether. Never take your eyes off that which you love, even for a moment, or suffer the consequences.

  I squinted, willing the black shape I had spied down the mountainside to bleed back into the shadows, a trick of my night-strained eyes. But the shape defied me, coming into sharper relief as it left the thicket. An animal, the thought sharing the shape of a prayer, but the persistent starlight disavowed me of that impression. The figure was still a long way off down the slope, but it was without question another night hiker, climbing the trail after us. They were making good time, too.

  Over the years we had encountered other night hikers, of course. Most were either stargazing tourists or locals in hot climates who preferred to travel in the cooler hours. It always gave you a start, though, to run into a fellow traveler deep in the night, where you presumed you had the run of the world. I turned to point out our comrade to Caleb but he had already started hiking again. Hurrying after him, I considered how odd it was that here, in the high country, where even distant headlights should have commanded our attention, neither Caleb nor I had noticed another car threading its way along the reservoir. Then again, it was at our backs…

  I’m not a competitive person, I don’t think, but whenever I’m hiking and notice someone coming up the trail behind me I pick up my pace to try and stay ahead of them. It’s one of those instinctive responses that’s so deeply wired that it took me ages to even notice I was doing it. Most of the time it’s a lost cause—if someone is making good enough time to catch up to you on a long hike, chances are they simply have a stronger stride and will inevitably overtake you. But knowing all this doesn’t make it any easier to tame that impulse, and I climbed as quickly as I could up the gritty trail.

  My closing the distance on Caleb must have triggered his own, similar instincts, because he too began moving more quickly, until we were both nearly trotting up the steep track. Sweat burned my eyes, the Milky Way bouncing atop the crooked spine of the ridge. At the back of my burning lungs thrummed the exultation that I had first experienced as a child, walking through the night with my only friend. A thrilling cocktail: the faceless fear that comes from being out after dark when anything might be creeping and the delight one feels at being the creeping thing. Many a high beam had glided over our hiding places, many a sudden porchlight had glanced off the soles of our fleeing shoes, but in all our many nights we had never been caught, and we would not be caught now.

  Caleb’s boot skidded out from under him as he rounded a switchback. His arms pinwheeled and he crashed down onto his side. The boulder-strewn slope wasn’t terribly steep at this stretch, and instead of rolling down to the reservoir in a broken heap he just lay there panting in the grass. I caught up with him, trying to smother the grin that our jog up the mountainside had conjured. In the starlight his skin looked as pale as the moon-hued flowers he had crushed.

  “You all right, man?” I asked, extending a hand to help him up. “Guess there’s a reason night running never had quite the same—”

  “Shhhh!” He grabbed my hand and jerked himself to his feet. He wasn’t lo
oking at me, or even the rip in the flank of his cargo pants, but back down the mountain.

  I followed his gaze and my heart jumped another little hurdle when I made out the dark silhouette of the other hiker. I’d forgotten all about them when Caleb took his tumble, but now it was impossible to tear my eyes away—there was something about the figure’s swift gait that was almost hypnotizing. It was hard to tell, but they must have been extraordinarily tall… and as I stared they abruptly stopped, twin white sparks flashing in the blank lump of their head. Starlight reflecting off their eyes, or more likely, I supposed, glasses. The hairs rose on my neck as I had the distinct impression the night hiker was looking straight at us…

  —why shouldn’t they be staring at us just as we stared at them? And like all childish fears, acting like an adult would easily vanquish it. I began to lift my hand in greeting to our fellow pilgrim, but Caleb seized my elbow so fiercely I felt his fingernails through my wicking layers. He looked even more upset than before; I wondered if he’d really injured himself.

  “Move,” he hissed, pushing me ahead of him up the trail. “And don’t look back.”

  On a day hike this strange behavior would have demanded an immediate accounting—at the very least, I would have made sure Caleb hadn’t banged his head. But alone on the flank of the Breitspitze, save for the glittering stars and the dull black figure below, I did as Caleb bid.

  We finally crested the ridge, great slabs of limestone rising up around us like armored plates along the crooked spine of the mountain. After stumbling through the shadows of a flinty hillock, our trail joined the track that ran from east to west along the ridgeline. The wind picked up, piping through chinks in the giant’s cairns—during our climb the crest had looked relatively uniform, but up here we could see it was both wide and rolling, the trail snaking off in either direction around, and sometimes over, the lichen-coated outcroppings. My legs ached almost as badly as my chest, my head spinning, but when I tried to sit on a rock Caleb prodded me forward.

  “We’re not there yet,” he wheezed, passing me and hurrying ahead. He was limping a little. “Fast as you can.”

  “What gives? You think that’s Magnus, chief of the night hiking police?” I glanced back down the trail, but we’d come too far in on the wide ridge to catch a glimpse of our pursuer on the slope below. At least that meant he wasn’t right on top of us.

  “I’ll tell you if you hurry up—I told you not to look back!” Caleb was at the top of the little rise, outlined against the stars. I’d worked up a lather on our pell-mell climb, but shivered at the uncanny sight of him perched there above me, rendered as blank and black by the angle as the night hikers I passed in my dreams. The sensation wasn’t quite déjà vu but something tangential, and only intensified when I caught up to him, and saw how the trail led us down beside a shallow pool that caught the stars in its glassy web. The next line of mountains to the south seemed far more remote than either the stars blazing above or those captured in the water below…

  “Seriously, man, talk to me!” I called after Caleb as he began sliding his way down the rugged trail to the bank of the starry pool.

  “You don’t have to believe me…” Caleb’s insistence on not raising his voice beyond a clandestine rasp ensured I matched his unsafe pace, splashing through puddles. The trail grew harder to follow down in these little dips. “You just have to humor me. No matter what. Agreed?”

  “Sure,” I said, nearly twisting my ankle on the unseen path.

  “Have you ever had dreams come true?” he asked. “I mean literally. You dream something, then later, maybe much later, it happens?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, wondering if maybe Caleb had eaten a pot brownie or something and failed to mention it to his hiking buddy. Under normal circumstances I would’ve been highly interested in such a subject, but everything was already too eerie. “I…I don’t always remember all the details, when I’m dreaming.”

  “But you told me…that time on the High Lonesome trail…you told me you dream about night hiking…too,” he panted as we scrambled up out of the bowl. “You’ve never dreamed this place?”

  “Yeah, those…” I humored him, squinting to make out the otherworldly terrain of the ridgeline. I wanted there to be some memory or scrap of dream I could jog loose, so that I could be right there beside Caleb, sharing the burden of whatever was freaking him out. Instead, he had it all to himself, and his panic was freaking me out—after all these years of thinking I was the one with an unhealthy preoccupation with his dreams it turned out my best friend had it way worse. “I don’t think so, man. They’re not real places, in my dreams. Just… amalgamations, probably? Platonic ideals of mountains.”

  “Yeah, well, not mine,” said Caleb, plunging right over the crest of the next rise. From behind it looked like he’d stepped off the edge of the world. I followed him, trusting the trail to materialize beneath my feet. A tide of clouds had begun to roll in across the sea of stars, and like it or not we had to move slower as the night deepened around us, the trail fading into the well-tromped grass. “I’m not great at remembering them either. My dreams, I mean. But a couple of times they have come true, and then I remember I dreamed it. And right now, I’m remembering this nightmare I’ve had, for years and years. Us, being up here, of this happening.”

  “Of what happening?” I asked, a chill penetrating my jacket and my heart pounding from more than our pace. The clouds choked off more of our light, wraiths of mist trailing us along the undulating ridge. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder, keeping my eyes on the dim trail.

  “It’ll be okay,” Caleb breathed, his voice so low I didn’t know if he was trying to reassure me or himself. “Just remember: when it catches us, pretend it isn’t there. Don’t look at it. Don’t acknowledge it at all. Definitely don’t run. No matter what. Keep your eyes on the trail, keep moving, keep silent. Do that until we can touch the cross and we’ll be okay. I think. Just don’t look at it.”

  “What?” Now I had to look behind me, I had to, but, as if sensing my intentions Caleb stopped short and turned and grabbed the sleeve of my Marmot. I nearly walked into him on the narrow trail. Even chest to chest and up on an exposed scarp it had grown too overcast to make out more than the pale blob of his face, the whiter shine of his teeth as he grimaced.

  “No. Matter. What. Please.” He sounded on the verge of tears. “Humor me, and we’ll laugh about it later.”

  “Sure, man, sure,” I said, hoping to hell if I could calm him down it would calm me down in the bargain. “Anything you say.”

  “Don’t say anything,” he whispered, then laughed, a strangled birdcall of a sound. “Claudia’s pregnant.”

  The way he said it made it sound like I should offer condolences instead of congratulations. Everything just felt so strange and terrible, and I went to put my arms around my tortured friend when the clouds lifted enough for me to see his watery eyes widen. He spun around on his heel and began marching slowly and carefully down the trail with none of his former franticness. From behind me came the faint clattering of displaced pebbles sliding down a mountain path. I froze, the struggle to keep my neck fixed forward instead of reflexively looking back over my shoulder so intense it commandeered every other muscle in my body. The mountain wind died down to nothing, and coming up the trail just behind me I made out the distinct sound of ponderous, snuffling breath.

  It was all I could do not to ignore that cardinal rule of night hiking and break into a run. Instead, I took a deep breath and briskly picked my way down the trail after the dark silhouette of my friend. Caleb reached the bank of another shining pool, the trail winding between it and a wall of moss-striped limestone. Heavy footfalls were so close at my heel I expected to be tripped up any moment. The air had gone stagnant, but I saw the wildflowers and grasses all along the shore bend near to breaking, as if a gale ripped through the still hollow.

  I stole a glance at the pool of bobbing stars, but as I did the waters churned, t
he reflection distorted into an inky wave that slapped against the far bank. I stumbled but caught myself. I had never felt so scared, or so alive.

  Caleb’s backpack hopped around on his shoulders, his whole body hunching as he staggered forward. I think he was probably crying, but he never looked back so I couldn’t be sure. The path was too narrow for two to walk abreast without bumping into one another, but still I sensed my new companion striding beside me every step of the way, looming impossibly tall and impossibly thin, luminous eyes twinkling in time with the stars overhead. The inexorable pull to look at my fellow night hiker grew and grew, that dread compulsion that makes you want to leap off the sides of bridges, into the path of oncoming trains. I had always felt that night hiking was like entering a waking dream, and now that I was inhabiting Caleb’s nightmare it was obvious I must fulfill its expectations.

  I pretended we were back in the misty cowfields beside the Co-op, or scaling the moonscape of the sand dunes at Cape San Blas. Tried to tell myself that we were alone and this was a dream.

  It didn’t work.

  Caleb gasped. Looking up from the phantasmal path at my feet I saw he had broken his own rule, stopping in the middle of the trail and looking back. Not at me, but beside me, at that which no night hiker should ever behold. Not those who want to find their way home, anyway.

  Behind Caleb the ridge fell away on all sides, an enormous wooden cross rising from the end of our peninsula amidst the stars. How the Austrians mark their summits, apparently. Caleb was only a dozen yards ahead of me and the cross was no more than another twenty behind him. All we had to do was touch it, he’d said, but as hard as I willed him to start moving again his legs buckled underneath him and he collapsed to his knees.

  The black figures cavorting around the cross all ceased their gambol, eyes like blazing stars turning toward the newest arrivals. One dangled from the arm of the cross and another perched atop it, limned against the night sky. It wasn’t their eyes that sparkled like stars, but their teeth.

 

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