These Nameless Things

by Shawn Smucker

  “Dan,” she asked, doubt in her voice, “did you see Lucia?”

  “No.” My jaw clenched. My heart raced.

  Silence. They both stared at me.

  “We have to go,” I said. “Can’t you feel this place? It’s coming for us. Something here is coming for us.”

  That part I was not making up. They could sense it too. I stood up, walked over to the ledge, and started inching my way up, pressed along the wall. Enough. I would leave, even if that meant leaving alone.

  “C’mon, Adam,” I said. “You next. Stay close.”

  When he started up the ledge behind me, he was so shaky I couldn’t imagine him ever making it all the way to the top. But with one sliding step in front of the other, up we went.

  I looked at Miho now fifteen feet below me. “C’mon, Miho,” I said, trying to speak in a steady voice. “We have to go.”

  She sighed, stared back over the bog. The clouds were so low now that my head was nearly in them. I thought that was probably helpful—none of us would have to worry about a fear of heights if we could barely see down past our feet.

  Miho walked over to the ledge and started up behind Adam. Our backs were to the cliff wall. She took a few sliding steps up, stopped, and held her face in her hands. She cried again, softly, and I thought I knew why: she knew I was lying. She knew we were leaving Lucia behind. But she didn’t have the strength to go back and find her.

  26 Up

  WE INCHED OUR way up the ledge, small pebbles falling in front of us and disappearing into the fog. Soon we were so high up we couldn’t hear them hit the ground. Every so often I stopped and waited for Adam and Miho to catch up—Miho always looked calm, sometimes closing her eyes, taking centering breaths. But Adam grew less steady the higher we went. His legs trembled from exhaustion and fear.

  I thought about the view we would have if it wasn’t for this impenetrable cloud we were climbing through. The short, dusty space between the cliff and the bog. The long brown water that Lucia and I had crossed together, and the thread of a canyon that led to the final, frozen river and the island of rock where Adam had knelt. Could we see it all from here if the clouds cleared?

  I doubted it. There was something about this place that seemed to operate outside of reality, as if the journey into the abyss was actually taking place inside of me, in a place you couldn’t see from far away. I thought that if the clouds cleared, we would probably see a long emptiness, a dreary landscape, and maybe a small brown puddle.

  But the clouds never cleared. Adam constantly wiped his hands on his torn pants. He licked his dry lips quickly, like a reptile. I could count the ribs in his side. He looked up the ledge at me, his eyes wild, before looking at Miho. Sometimes the mist was so thick I couldn’t even see her.

  There was a particularly narrow section of the ledge, and after I shuffled my way through it, I waited to make sure Adam would be okay. He came sliding along, his feet scraping the stone, and small bits of dust and tiny pebbles bounded off the edge. At the space where the ledge was less than the length of his feet, he balked. Trembled. Swayed out but somehow caught his balance by bracing himself against the cliff face.

  He froze.

  “Adam!” I moved back down toward him, but the change in direction threw me off for a moment, and I nearly fell. “Miho!”

  She came up, a calm look on her face. “You’re fine, Adam.” Her voice sounded like a gentle breeze moving through the mist.

  “I can’t,” Adam said, the words coming in short bursts, his lips pursed. “I can’t.”

  She reached up and took his hand. He looked so shocked by her touch that it nearly sent him over. “We can do this together.”

  If she wanted to kill him, I thought, this was when it would happen.

  But she didn’t. She spoke quiet words to him, so smooth and low I couldn’t hear them, the way a trainer speaks to a spooked racehorse. He nodded, seemed to find himself, and shuffled one side step, another side step.

  “Take his other hand,” she told me.

  I hesitated, because if he fell, I didn’t want him dragging me over the edge with him. But I thought of all those years, all that time I spent waiting for him in that stone house. This was my brother, my long-lost brother, and if I returned without him, what was the point?

  I took his hand, and his fingers felt the same as mine. I had the strangest feeling, almost like vertigo, that he was me, that it wasn’t him we were leading out of the abyss, but me. I took my eyes off the ledge and looked over at him as we moved along, and I wondered why I wasn’t happier in that moment. I had waited so long for him. And now we were leaving, escaping the abyss, both of us alive. But I couldn’t shake this deep sadness, so heavy it nearly pulled me off the ledge. It turned every breath into a sigh, every thought into a spiral.

  Miho held his other hand. Our eyes met, and it felt like the first time we had really seen each other in that place. She was sad, I could see that, and disappointed. I couldn’t help but feel that it was there on the narrow ledge that all of my lies finally ended whatever it was we had been so close to having.

  That was how we made our way along the narrow ledge, sliding up until we reached the place where the path widened. We fell to the ground with exhaustion and relief, sitting side by side once again, our backs to the cliff. I reached into the knapsack and took out the water container. It was nearly empty. I handed it first to Miho, and she took a small sip, the tiniest of draws. She licked her lips, trying to spread the moisture around, and handed it to Adam. He took a large gulp, and I could see his throat lurching. I closed my eyes and imagined the coolness of the water, the smoothness of it running over my tongue, silk on the sides of my throat.

  Adam handed it to me, but I knew before raising it to my mouth that it was gone. I sighed and pretended to drink, because I didn’t want Miho feeling sorry for me. But nothing came out, not even a trickle. I held it up for an extra moment, then put it slowly back into the knapsack. I glanced over at Adam. The smallest drop rolled down from the corner of his mouth, but I could not tell if it was water, sweat, or the buildup of moisture in the air. It was now on his skin, drifting down. It was like a globe, like a small world to me. He reached up and wiped it away.

  Without saying a word, we stood and trudged upward, the abyss now to our right, the clouds thinning as we climbed, until all at once we were in clear air again. Clearer air than I had seen at any point inside the mountain. I could nearly see to the far side of the round abyss. Once again, the clouds filled the abyss like drifts of snow.

  A realization snapped into my mind like lightning. “Miho,” I asked, “are they waiting for us?”

  “Who?” she said, her voice cracking. I didn’t think it was from lack of water.

  “The rest of the group. Abe. Kathy.”

  “Why would they wait?”

  “You said the rest of them went east, but do you believe that? Or are they waiting for Adam?”

  “Why would they wait for Adam?”

  I stopped walking and turned on her. “Can’t you answer a simple question?” I demanded. “Why do you keep asking me questions in return? Are they waiting for Adam? For revenge?”

  She shook her head, but her words were less assuring. “Maybe, Dan. I don’t know. They said they were leaving.”

  “But they wouldn’t have gone far unless they forgave him. They wouldn’t have left the town behind unless they were free of that.”

  Adam glanced back and forth between us. We were talking about him as if he wasn’t there. “It’s okay,” he said in something like a whisper. “It’s okay. I’m getting out—that’s all that matters. I remember now. Remember it all. What can they do to me that’s worse than this place?”

  Miho and I stared at each other for quite some time, as if we were feeling each other out again, trying to decipher where each of us stood, whose side we were on, and who we should be concerned about. But Adam seemed genuinely unaffected by the conversation.

  Up we went, up and up and
up, and finally there was the top, way ahead of us on the curving path, up above us like the lid of an eye. The roaring of the river became audible in the still air, a kind of fearful rumbling. I had tried not to think about how we would cross.

  Once we scaled the path and stood at the top of the great abyss, we all looked down over the ledge, the clouds far below us, nearly invisible in the shadows. Lucia came to mind, little Lucia with her soft face and quiet eyes. I had to turn away.

  We followed Miho toward the Acheron. She walked straight to the river, made a sharp right at the bank, and kept moving. Up ahead, I saw Karon’s boat.

  “How?” I began, not knowing what else to say.

  “I found this boat on the far side when I came in after you,” she said, shrugging.

  “Did you see Karon?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “The man who belongs to the boat. Or the woman who was with him?”

  “I didn’t see anyone,” she said. “Help me turn it around.”

  The three of us grabbed the smooth wooden sides, and in our weakness it took a great effort to drag it, turn it, hold it. There was Karon’s one small oar, the bench where I had sat at the front, the bottom of the boat where I had passed out. Across the river, above the foaming white rapids, I could see the far bank, the trees.

  “Didn’t you go to the house?” I asked Miho.

  She shook her head. “There was no way I was going in there. Are you kidding?”

  “Sarah lived there,” I said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”

  As usual, Adam watched us, his eyes taking us in, his long black hair swaying like a pendulum.

  I felt a sort of numbness as we climbed into the boat. I imagined it was the same feeling someone might have before they take their own life, knowing the end of all things is only moments away. I couldn’t see us surviving this river.

  We all shifted our weight together as best we could, and the boat lurched once, twice, three times, four times. Finally we were in deep enough to drift, and already the current yanked us downstream. Adam and I sat in the front and Miho perched in the back, small yet strong with the oar, thrusting it in and pulling, pulling, pulling against the current.

  The white water was rough and choppy. I noticed then—and it seemed a strange time to see such small things—that the wood of the boat was smooth, and the metal sheath that held the bow together was burnished from so many crossings, bearing dents and scrapes from collisions with rock. The bottom of the boat was slick with a kind of black-green algae, like moss, and slippery as ice.

  On the far side, in the direction Miho fought to take us, I thought I saw Kathy waiting.

  I stood to get a better look. I slipped, striking my head again, and darkness took me under.

  27 Forgiveness

  MY EYES OPENED, and everything was silent. I was in an uncomfortable bed in a drab room, staring up at a yellowing ceiling. The only light came in from a window along the wall behind me and a bit to the left, and through it fell tan, dusty rays. My vision went blurry and I blinked to correct it, and with that blink a searing pain radiated from the side of my head, down and out my arm. A few realizations settled on me like birds returning to a wire after being frightened off.

  I was in Sarah and Karon’s house.

  I was in Sarah and Karon’s house alone.

  Miho and Adam had left me.

  I deserved it.

  I was hot, so hot, and I pushed the blankets down off my fevered body, but as soon as I did, I realized how cold it was in the room. How had I not noticed this before, not seen my breath rising like the clouds in the abyss? My body trembled, and I pulled the covers back up. The cold had followed us all the way from the icy lake, the stone island, and had caught up to me here.

  I felt an absurd relief at my pain, my loneliness, my confusion, because finally this place inside the mountain had become what I always remembered it to be: a place of horror, of ongoing dread and sickness and lack. I was somehow relieved to know I hadn’t made up that part in my mind. This was a horrible place, and I was back in it, and I would never be able to leave.

  Lucia walked into the room, her skin a whitish blue. “It’s your fault,” she said. “It always has been. Your brother. The accident. Me falling in. It’s your fault.”

  I knew it wasn’t her. I knew it was a vision handed to me by the mountain, but I still wept and trembled. I pulled the covers up over my face before plunging into a feverish sleep.

  I WOKE AGAIN, and this time it was dark except for a weak, trembling light that came in through the doorway. A candle? A fire? I no longer cared. The pain in my head was a constant companion, a worm working its way deeper into my mind. I scratched at my scalp to try to find it, dig it out. I scratched until I bled.

  I heard the sound of footsteps on the creaking floor, and I went from a state of fevered numbness to sharp fear. Who was coming for me? Was it Lucia again, to torment me? A shadow stretched across the dim light, a firm shadow of utter blackness, and fear eclipsed the pain.

  Kathy.

  I knew it. She would pick me up and carry me to the boat, throw me into the abyss, drag me through the gate, and lock it with the key I had in the knapsack.

  The key! What had happened to the key! I groaned in despair. She came across the room, lifted her hand, and again everything went black.

  I STOOD FROM the bed and walked outside, walked through the cold, and there among the trees was the large building my brother and I had used for our airplane hangar. Where is the runway? I kept thinking. Where did all of these trees come from?

  I walked through the oversized garage door into the barn where we parked the plane, and there was a bright light in the back corner over the door that led to the room where my brother used to sleep. I stopped outside the room, my hand on the knob, frightened of what I might find.

  The door eased open silently, and I looked inside. He was there, passed out. His eyes opened. He tried to talk, but his tongue slurred all the words. He stopped, shook his head, and tried again.

  “I cannnn’t do it todaaaaaay. Not nowwwww. Leave meeeeee alonnnne.”

  But I picked him up, surprising myself. Wasn’t I sick? Wasn’t I weak? I carried him to the plane and stuffed him in, not finding the sudden appearance of the plane remarkable in the least. His arms and legs were limp and refused to comply.

  “You have to!” I screamed. “You don’t have a choice!”

  Then the plane was taking off, and I realized what I had done. I chased it through the trees, but he was gone, flying away, disappearing into the sky.

  I OPENED MY eyes, wincing at the light that came through the window. It wasn’t exactly bright, but my eyes weren’t used to it. I blinked again and again.

  I heard someone pushing a chair in under the table in the dining room, and the sound had a particular quality of realness to it, the untidy feel of concrete reality. This was not a dream. I was still in Sarah and Karon’s house, but I was not alone.

  I sat up slowly, trying to remain silent, but the bed creaked slightly. I froze. I didn’t think the sound was loud enough to alert whoever was in the kitchen, but I waited to see. As I came up from under the blanket, I realized just how cold the air was. I looked over at the window to see if I could open it, if it was low enough for me to crawl through. I would make my getaway, escape before my captor knew what had happened.

  I became convinced that Miho and Adam had left me behind, which was no surprise after my never-ending lies and refusal to own up to what I had done. Kathy had come back. I was sure of it. In a strange reversal of roles, she was in the kitchen and I was in the bed; she would tend to me while I recovered, as I had tended to her. But I didn’t want to see her again.

  The cold air would have been refreshing if it wasn’t so dusty, and when I pushed the blanket down off my legs, it was the cold that woke me completely. The pain in my head still throbbed. My fingers explored sensitive, deep cuts from where I had scratc
hed too hard in my dreams, trying to get to the pain in the middle of my head. The gashes down my cheek from when we had fought with Miho were dried out, but they burned when I touched them.

  I moved my legs around and gingerly put my feet on the floor beside the bed. I waited again. The person in the kitchen took a few more steps, the floor giving them away, but the sound moved to the front door. I heard it open. I heard them go out onto the front porch. I tried to stand, but my legs turned to jelly and gave out under me. A rush of blood to the head and I fell to my knees. I felt disoriented and dizzy. I hoped I hadn’t made too much noise, but I heard footsteps coming quickly through the house.

  Tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t know why—desperation? regret? sadness?—and I tried to claw my way up, pulling on the windowsill. But my arms were hopelessly weak, and I fell to the dusty floor again. Sobs wracked my body. The footsteps stopped inside the bedroom door. I didn’t even want to look. But I did.

  Miho stood there with Adam. They stared at me, and I didn’t know what to think or what they were thinking or why they had stayed behind.

  “Why are you here?” I asked quietly.

  “You’re hurt,” Adam said.

  “We couldn’t leave you behind, but we’re too weak to carry you,” Miho explained. “We tried.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if you knew me, if you knew what I did,” I said, not daring to look at them any longer.

  “We know,” Miho whispered.

  “No, you don’t,” I said.

  “We do,” Adam said. “You practically told us your life history while you were sleeping. Your dreams, your nightmares, you talked about it all.”

  Shame dropped me farther to the floor, if that was even possible. They knew it had all been my fault from the beginning.

  “Lucia?” I asked, staring hard at the floor.

  “We know,” Miho whispered again.

  “So why didn’t you leave?” I asked, my voice barely strong enough to muster the words. “You should have left me.”