Everland

by Rebecca Hunt

  Having spent the second day devising a route, the three men had risen early to pack up the camp. Napps couldn’t stop his mind circling down to the same ugly conclusion as they prepared for the march. The truth was that they needed a fourth well man, or they needed one less ill man. Because to haul the food and fuel required for three when only one of the team wasn’t badly crocked amounted to an equation which wouldn’t ever balance.

  Dinners stood trembling in his harness. ‘We shouldn’t go,’ he whined to Napps. He’d come up with countless reasons to abort the march. He said he wasn’t strong enough today. His feet hurt. His legs hurt very badly. And for every problem Napps dismissed, Dinners created a hundred more.

  ‘Just try a few steps,’ Napps said.

  Dinners tottered unsteadily with his sledge. Since it was impossible for the large sledge to transport all their supplies, he was charged with drawing five of the six cans of oil and his sleeping bag on the smaller sledge. Yet even this minimal load seemed unworkable.

  ‘You know what to do, though, Dinners,’ Napps said brightly to mask the worry in his voice. ‘You’ll follow us, won’t you? It’s easy, isn’t it, Millet-Bass?’

  ‘Faster,’ Millet-Bass said. ‘Get him going or let him stay behind.’

  The larger sledge was packed with an enormous weight of food and equipment, including the leaden frost-rimed tent. Despite the burden he’d given himself, Napps had still wasted hours trying to pare Dinners’s load down further. He’d experimented to see if he could add Dinners’s sleeping bag to their cargo, which he couldn’t, no matter how he tied it on. He’d managed to transfer one single can of oil to his own load, despite a long, frustrating battle to take more, or at least two. He’d ferried oilcans away from Dinners’s sledge and then put them back in a combination of different failures. He’d agonized over the knapsacks, emptying and refilling them, before finally deciding to shoulder Dinners’s knapsack himself. To free all available room, he removed the non-essential items from the bags and filled Dinners’s coat pockets.

  ‘Twenty feet of visibility,’ Napps said as he stuffed their three diaries and a box of matches into one of Dinners’s pockets. ‘Understand me? You’ll lose sight of us if you allow the distance to lapse.’ He put some chocolate and Dinners’s crumpled sledging flag in the other pocket. ‘For luck,’ he said, hanging Dinners’s small drawstring pouch of rocks around Dinners’s neck.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Millet-Bass said. ‘We planned to be gone by noon.’

  ‘Hard pounding this, gentlemen,’ Napps said quietly to Dinners. ‘Let’s see who will pound longest.’

  Dinners thought of the photograph of Elizabeth he’d given to Napps, and the quote he’d written. ‘You read it.’

  ‘It’s in my knapsack,’ Napps said. ‘It’s your oath to me, remember? You promised you wouldn’t let me down. So trust that I won’t let you down in return. We’ll both be brave, won’t we?’

  The men established a rhythm once marching. Millet-Bass and Napps maintained a solid plod at the front, Napps carrying an oil lamp, while Dinners trailed behind them, chanting to himself in a high, strained whine. Their pace held until the optical illusions surrounding Dinners grew too vivid for him to ignore. His path was obstructed by phantom boot prints which elevated off the snow to disrupt him. The lines of writhing black ribbons left by the runners of Napps’s sledge wanted to knot around his legs. Dinners needed to be prudent and dodge these impediments and also march quickly, except striving to do both jobs cancelled either. He tried and failed and tried and couldn’t do it, and gradually dropped thirty feet from sight range, now forty. Now fifty feet from sight, now sixty.

  ‘Wait for me, will you wait,’ he’d bleat, forcing Napps and Millet-Bass to stop until he stumbled up out of the blackness.

  He’d pant his apologies, receive harried instructions, and then the tedious process would repeat.

  When the ground began to revolve under Dinners, he smiled conspiratorially. This was another ploy to sabotage him. It meant his efforts to walk at a good pace as Napps wanted him to were useless. He was walking to remain at the same point, and if he didn’t walk he’d reel backwards. Then it became obvious that the speed was wrong. The ground was moving too fast. With epiphany-like clarity, Dinners understood that the sense of accelerated motion was a trick caused by all these things fleeing in the opposite direction.

  ‘Napps?’ he said very cautiously in case Millet-Bass overheard.

  Fissures in the ice were twisting past him, as mobile as swimming snakes. Armies of stones were evacuating across the beach, whole embankments contracting and expanding in propulsion. Even the cliffs were in retreat with a folding concertinaed gait. And what Dinners should do was report it to Napps immediately. He should call to Napps and ask why inanimate objects were roused and running. Hadn’t he noticed? Everything was in migration, and it was of crucial importance that Napps consider what the objects were migrating from. Dinners couldn’t say anything though, because he was scared of Millet-Bass. If he mentioned it Millet-Bass would yell again about atmospheric pressure and threaten him.

  Napps stared back. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He was there a moment ago,’ Millet-Bass replied, sick beyond endurance of fucking Dinners. ‘Napps, just because we can’t hear him doesn’t mean he’s not close. Maybe he’s stopped chanting.’

  ‘He never stops chanting,’ Napps said, unbuckling his sledging harness.

  The real dilemma, Dinners now saw clearly, was that they were being watched by something devious. It lurked outside the boundary of his limited vision, but it was certainly near enough to sense. And he’d caught glimpses of movement, yes he had. There’d been definite sightings he could not in any way convince himself were imagined. So whenever Millet-Bass was out of earshot, Dinners would veer towards Napps and hiss snippets of information. Baffled at Napps’s lack of response, he’d swerve closer and mutter his updates in louder, more agitated tones. Occasionally, if he wasn’t mindful, Dinners would accidentally overtake Napps. When that happened, he’d have to loiter on his own until Napps caught up.

  Dinners nodded craftily. ‘I thought it was upon us then.’

  Napps was hurting him. He’d gripped Dinners by the arm to make him trot alongside. And he didn’t sound particularly interested as he said, ‘What was?’

  Dinners tutted at Napps’s coyness. ‘I keep telling you and you don’t answer.’

  Napps slowed to a halt. ‘Dinners, how could I? You were nowhere near us.’

  ‘I was beside you and you didn’t answer!’

  ‘Beside?’ Napps’s expression confused Dinners. He seemed dismayed. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. You’re doing well. But we’ll hurry now, won’t we?’

  The cove’s huge columnar stones were haloed with moonlight. Its unusual lustre removed sharpness and altered texture. The granular surface of rock looked like bark, as though the men had entered a petrified forest. Boulders appeared quilted, almost spongy. Whilst areas of shadow were so black as to appear void, large expanses of snow were an unearthly chemical blue. Further down towards the shoreline, the dinghy was identifiable by its smooth shape among the angular debris. Napps spotted the dinghy and then forgot it, sloughing on. Although this was the last time he’d see the Joseph Evelyn, it produced nothing beyond a twitch of recognition. No sadness, no regret, no sentiment whatsoever. To feel any way about the dinghy would require Napps to emote with that distant moment when they first arrived on Everland, which was impossible, because it concerned three other men, and some other life, and no longer applied to him. If Millet-Bass was aware they were passing the dinghy, he didn’t even turn his head.

  A rubble slope at the northernmost edge of the cove led down on to the sea ice, the hiss and crash of spray replaced by a flat, deadened tundra. Millet-Bass objected when Napps interrupted their march to rally Dinners, who lagged behind. They needed to set up the tent, he said to Napps, sl
eet beginning to speckle against them as a thunderhead rolled across the sky. Anxious about the loose, pulpy shoreline floes, Millet-Bass implored they get further out on to the more solid ice.

  ‘Head down the slope, Dinners. Do you see it?’ Napps said.

  No answer. ‘We don’t have time for this,’ Millet-Bass said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Dinners?’ Napps shouted into the dark. ‘Answer me, Dinners.’

  Once, faintly, the wind carried the sound of a shrill, wraithlike voice incanting, ‘Yes I will, yes I will, yes I will.’

  47

  December 2012

  As if tolerating the scrape of cutlery against porcelain, or the grating of metal chair legs across concrete, Decker locked his head at an angle. His migraines had various triggers. Red wine was one of them, so was caffeine. Low atmospheric pressure was another. Too much salt caused lightning to spark behind his eyes. Whatever acid saturated his brain during these attacks also caused multi-coloured shapes to float around in his vision. It meant he couldn’t be absolutely sure whether the blue thing on the ground in the distance ahead of him was imagined or a real three-dimensional object.

  Snow had begun to fall for the first time in days, the powdery flakes sticking like wet ash to clothing and skin. Decker ambled along the empty channel between the glacier and the moraine ridge. He could have clambered up on to the glacier’s mounded surface if he’d wanted. It wasn’t much above two metres high, and the glacier’s edges were a smashed, easily climbable incline of debris. But his headache had developed a metallic frequency, and the length of his five-minute jaunt was now closer to fifteen.

  The blue object hadn’t moved from its position. It was still at the end of the channel where the moraine ridge opened out on to the beach. As he approached, Decker identified it as Jess’s rucksack. Neither she nor Brix were anywhere in sight. The bag had seemingly been dumped by its owner, and this kind of negligence would have usually bothered Decker. Except he wasn’t thinking about Jess’s irresponsibility in leaving her bag, he was thinking instead of the medicines she always carried. A few sweetened glucose tablets and a rehydration sachet mixed with water might help him. Aspirin would definitely work. Decker picked up the bag, unzipped the main compartment, and thought he heard his name being called as he poked through the bag’s contents. There, buried among the usual junk she lugged around with her, shining at him like a little yellow plastic sunrise, was Jess’s first-aid kit.

  A grittier sleet had replaced the fine snow. Once outside the shelter of the gorge, the wind was noticeably stronger and several degrees colder. With an arm looped through one of the rucksack’s shoulder straps, Decker opened the first-aid kit and pressed a couple of aspirins out of the blister pack, swallowing them dry. Hearing his name again, he stopped and listened. The rattling sleet confused the direction of her voice.

  Her next call was more insistent. ‘Brix?’ he said.

  The glacial rubble obstructed Decker’s view of the beach. It sounded as though she was shouting from somewhere to the left. Stuffing Jess’s medical kit into his pocket, he broke into a jog, wet silt flecking his trousers as he splashed through ankle-deep streams.

  The fractionally more distant volume of Brix’s next shout revealed his error a minute later. In turning left, he’d just gone fifty metres the wrong way. He’d started to jog back when he caught sight of something which brought him to an abrupt halt. Framed between two huge segments of ice was a panorama of the ocean. What he’d diagnosed as a pressure headache had manifested into a billowing white mass which obscured the horizon. With the slow, automatic movements of a man transfixed, Decker let the rucksack drop beside his feet, and stood watching the storm move towards Everland at such a speed the advance was visible.

  48

  April 1913

  Head down the slope, Dinners. You see it?’ Napps shouted from the sea ice.

  Yes I will, yes I will, yes I will!

  Dinners would not disappoint Napps. No, he’d ignore any distractions.

  Except the distractions were invidious and plentiful. Despite his efforts, he kept hearing things. Such as the wet, pulmonary grunts of a monster. And he kept seeing things. He saw something larger than a man come loping behind him, its heavy head sawing from side to side. He ran and steps came hammering after him. When he ran faster, his pace was matched. So he broke into a wild gallop and the runners of his sledge skewed wildly and shovelled under the snow. With an abrupt wrenching halt, the sledge jammed and Dinners was thrown over on to his side.

  ‘Stay away,’ he shrieked, crawling around to untangle the harness and shove free his sledge. ‘Don’t come near me,’ he said, fists raised to defend himself from an empty windswept beach.

  Dinners sobbed and beat his hands against his skull, terrified of being mad.

  The distant voice of Millet-Bass said, ‘We don’t have time for this.’

  Listening to Millet-Bass and Napps talk gave Dinners the courage to make his way across the cove. The shadows were insulating and safe, and he skulked from one boulder to the next. He pressed into the dark, embracing its natural protectiveness as he neared the island’s border.

  Dinners could see the amber disc of lamplight, and was less than thirty yards away from Napps, when he stopped. Another few steps would have taken him on to the slope which led down to the sea ice, but he stood perfectly still. Some things are just known. It was a physical certainty rather than a conscious one, and Dinners understood that he was not to let himself be seen. An instinctive apprehension demanded that he stay concealed and silent.

  ‘Dinners? Answer me, Dinners.’

  Dinners pushed himself further back into shadows. He wasn’t able to answer Napps until he’d completed his surveys. He didn’t trust the jagged banks of rock which edged the shoreline. They were blackly stencilled against the plutonium blue of the sea ice, and Dinners wasn’t fooled into considering them harmless. A danger resided there, a cunning but non-specific thing, which had underestimated its opponent. Because Dinners would outmanoeuvre the threat, he was vigilant. He remained in the shadows as one minute became three minutes and Napps shouted that they didn’t have long. He said they needed to put up the tent.

  Dinners cupped his gloves over his mouth and whispered into them to contain the sound. ‘It’s a trap,’ he warned Napps. Four minutes became six.

  ‘Dinners, please answer me,’ Napps said.

  Because it was not possible for him to reply, Dinners put his face against the stone and wept for Napps. The situation was reaching a climactic point and Napps hadn’t understood any of the signals. Unlike Dinners, he didn’t have an innate precautionary system to inform him of hazards which eyes and ears weren’t sensitive enough to perceive. In order to survive the suspense, Dinners swayed from one foot to the other as he watched the rocks. Seven minutes became ten and he began to make a low keening noise.

  None of his preparations readied him. The oilcans clanged together as Dinners yanked at his sledge, stumbling in his haste to reverse away from the sea ice. He ran, fleeing back into Everland with Napps’s defeated voice still calling for him.

  ‘Dinners? Please don’t do this.’

  But too late, it was done. Dinners had seen it hidden among the rocks. It had waited for him. A creature with a huge, misshapen body. And then, unable to wait, it had turned its head.

  49

  December 2012

  Jess, can you walk?’

  She didn’t need to reply. Decker could see the answer in her face. Despite his efforts to remain unaware, and therefore keep alive the dream of being wrong, there was nothing about the situation Decker hadn’t known immediately from the moment he saw Jess on the snow, Brix kneeling beside her.

  ‘Jess, can you even stand?’ Decker asked anyway, because he couldn’t stop hoping that his rational mind was deceiving him. Jess obviously couldn’t stand, there was no possibility of her being able to walk. She’d have
to be carried, he’d have to carry her, and this meant recalculating the situation to include the additional weight and time and risk. But to accept those truths meant accepting that their predicament was more disastrous than he could bear to consider.

  Decker estimated they had less than half an hour before the storm hit. He said he didn’t have to tell them what would happen if they were caught in it. To outrun the blizzard they’d have to get to the quads, get to the camp, and then get inside the tent.

  So all they had to do was follow this straightforward plan, Decker said, thinking it sounded as naïve and neglectful as a lecture on how best to survive a head-on car crash. He listened to himself say, ‘Very clear strategy, very easy,’ and heard the evangelical pitch of the hopelessly self-deluded. Brix was making him frantic. She wouldn’t maintain eye contact or concentrate in the way he wanted her to.

  ‘Get ready. This is going to hurt,’ Decker said, hoisting Jess up off the ground.

  Brix didn’t know what she was trying to find. She looked searchingly across the beach, agitated by the sense that something was missing which disconnected their plan. Not just compromised it, but derailed it terminally. From a soft powder, falling vertically, the snow had changed to a thicker slush which blew at fiercer, more horizontal angles. When Decker set off to the cove, hoisting Jess along with him, Brix was unable to surrender her search. She stayed there and kept looking as Decker and Jess got forty metres ahead, then fifty, then sixty metres, and she was finally forced to run after them. They were midway to the cove when she remembered what they’d left behind.