Ararat

by Christopher Golden

  All fell silent again. Meryam had said all she intended to say.

  She glanced around, wondering why Adam hadn’t intervened. She didn’t need her man to stand up for her, to speak for her, but she wouldn’t have minded some backup.

  Then she spotted him, standing far off to her left, near the outside of the cave with his camera in his hands, filming the whole thing. Off to her right and at the back, just beyond Hakan, she saw Calliope, also getting the whole ugly business on camera. The disloyalty and the violence, the disdain for her gender and her leadership, the ignorance and fear. If they used this in the documentary, it would make her look like a fool with a bad temper and even worse leadership skills.

  What the hell are you thinking? She stared at Adam.

  Only his camera stared back.

  * * *

  Hours after dark, Kim moved quietly through the frigid space of the ark’s topmost level. Her jacket and thick garments provided as much warmth as she could have hoped for, but still she felt colder than she had ever imagined possible. She walked quietly, as though only she and the ark itself were still awake, and she did not want to disturb the others who had taken up temporary residence within. Though she knew very well there were others awake, working late or standing guard or, like herself, unable to drift off after the events of the day, exhaustion notwithstanding.

  Madness notwithstanding.

  Her teeth chattered a bit and she sipped at the plastic mug of tea she had been given in the kitchen area. The cook, a Kurdish man whom she gathered was related to the site manager, Hakan, had taken pity on her. Too late for coffee, he’d managed to tell her in English, but he could heat water for tea. Kim had been—still was—so grateful. The tea had an earthy flavor and rich, herbal aromas, but it warmed her a little, and tonight a little would be enough.

  Despite the lighting and the generators, there were long stretches of profound darkness on her way back to what they were calling their quarters. She didn’t like those shadows, the way they seemed to grow deeper as she approached and closed in behind her when she passed. They made her think of the tented enclosure on the bottom level, of the black sarcophagus down there and the withered husk that lay inside it. She didn’t want to think about the cadaver, or the way her mind had just slipped away and her heart had started its raucous tantrum in her chest. Liquid pools of black and red had coalesced at the edges of her eyes—of her mind—and then she’d felt as if she were drowning in shadows, and those shadows were full of slithering things that were reaching out for her, and if they managed to touch her …

  The screams had come then. And she’d run.

  What am I doing here? she wondered, not for the first time.

  The wind slid along the floor, turning once in a lazy circle that swept up a skittering of grit and carried it away. Kim passed the stall Walker and Father Cornelius shared, and spotted Walker standing just outside their tent, knocking a couple of pills back with a chug from a reusable water bottle. When he noticed her, he shot her a guilty glance, as if she’d caught him doing something he feared she’d frown upon.

  “Headache?” she asked.

  “Long day,” he replied, which wasn’t an answer. His expression implied a certain gratitude for the out she’d provided. To Kim, it was as good as an admission that the pills he had just taken were not for a headache at all.

  She wondered, of course, but she felt reluctant to inquire further. If Walker seemed to be distracted from his work by a reliance on some prescription medication or another, then it would become her business. If that never happened, she would not bring it up again.

  Yet he seemed on edge, now, even a bit twitchy, and having seen what could not now be unseen, she could not help feeling a flicker of doubt about him. She had been assigned only to observe—what Walker did by way of research was not her concern. Still, she wondered.

  And she wondered about herself, too.

  She had to.

  “You all right?” he asked, when the silence between them had become awkward.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she said, raising her travel cup. “The cook made me some special Kurdish tea.”

  Walker cocked his head, smiling almost in spite of himself, as if the hour had grown too late and the night too cold for him to remember the tension between them.

  “You know tea has caffeine, right? If you’re having trouble sleeping—”

  “It soothes me,” Kim said. “And I wanted something warm.”

  “That much I definitely understand.”

  They stood there a few seconds more, until it grew awkward again, and then she smiled and said good night.

  “Sleep well,” Walker said, but he showed no interest in returning to his tent.

  Kim slipped back into hers and sat on her backpack, sipping her tea and listening to the wind moving through the ancient structure. It sounded as if the ark had fallen asleep and was breathing, in and out, a whispering of enormous lungs. Inhale. Exhale.

  Inhale. Exhale.

  She sipped her tea.

  In her mind, she saw the cadaver’s face again, heard the echo of her own lunatic screams, and she knew she would not be getting any sleep at all tonight.

  She had never felt so far from home.

  * * *

  Arjen had drawn second watch tonight, standing sentry from two a.m. until dawn broke over the ridge of the earth. At twenty years of age, Arjen still loved his sleep, and so every time his turn in the guard duty rotation came around, he would spend those dark, frigid hours full of resentment toward his uncle Hakan. Life on the mountain had changed so much in the time since the landslide and Arjen’s fondest wish was that it all go back to the way it had been before. But as he stood just a few feet from the windswept edge of the cave, with the treacherous snow-laden rockfall stretching out below him and the blanket of blustery night all around, he knew the past would remain the past. When he had been living that life—up hours before dawn, helping foreigners trek to Ararat’s peak, making camp and breaking camp, teaching most of them what ought to have been rudimentary climbing skills—Arjen had wished for a different life.

  Now he cursed that wish.

  There had been funerals after the landslide. Cousins, mostly. In the aftermath, Uncle Hakan and his cousin, Baris, had vied for control over the business. Their extended family had been guiding tourists on the mountain for generations and now a new generation had to take the reins. Being a part of the team that discovered the ark—and being able to hire many of his family members as workers on the project—had solidified Hakan’s position as head of the family, and the business. Arjen needed to stay in his good graces, but with every day that had passed his own resentment grew. He knew himself well enough to realize this was due in part to his natural laziness, but his indolence did not prevent him from forming an opinion of his uncle Hakan. The man had always been arrogant and cruel, even brutal at times, and this recent elevation had only exacerbated those traits. Fortunately, Arjen had Feyiz. Their mothers were sisters and Arjen had admired his older cousin growing up. Feyiz indulged him. Tolerated his laziness. Defended him to Hakan, as long as Arjen put in some effort.

  Now something had changed. From the first day Arjen had been hired onto the Karga-Holzer Ark Project, Hakan and Feyiz had butted heads over Hakan’s treatment of the workers and the constant, muttered insinuations about Meryam and Adam. His disdain had seeped into the attitudes of some of the others. Arjen had seen it in them, and been entirely unsurprised. His uncle had set the tone for the other members of the family who worked under him. They would provide whatever manual labor the project required, including bringing supplies to and from the ark, but they could not respect their employers. Not if Hakan had anything to say about it.

  Only Feyiz and Arjen felt differently. But even Arjen had begun to view Meryam and Adam differently after tonight. Meryam seemed frayed at the edges, on the verge of unraveling, and the tension among the workers and students and professors hung thick and heavy in the cave. The box had done
that. The horned, dead thing. How could they not have anticipated the damage the whispers would do, the fear that would infect the entire project? Arjen had not had much schooling and had never been more than twenty miles from his home, but he knew that much. Meryam should have seen it coming.

  Tonight, at last, she had tried to reason with them all, and he knew that some had listened. But the fear remained, and Uncle Hakan had not helped. The look in Feyiz’s eyes then had been worrisome. Arjen just wanted to stay out of it. Tonight, for the first time, he had not minded at all when his uncle had told him he would have the second watch. The more he thought about it, Arjen wondered if Hakan would let him do second watch every night, just take that shift as his main job. He could sleep most of the day, and most of his waking hours would pass while the rest of the crew were sleeping.

  It’s peaceful, he thought, staring out at the light, swirling snow and the indigo depths of night. In these small hours, it seemed like dawn would never come. He almost liked the thought of that, the idea that the rest of them would sleep forever. The tension had finally eased from his neck and shoulders and he could think of the meal his mother would cook for him the next time he came down off the mountain, and the way his second cousin Navbahar smiled at him when she thought nobody else might be looking. Like music, he had said once, the words whispered to the mountain wind, never to be shared. He’d chided himself for such fanciful thoughts, that bit of poetry, but her smile really did make him think of music. Or make him feel the way music made him feel.

  Arjen sighed and turned away from the ledge. The sentries were supposed to walk the outer edge of the cave, not because Hakan really thought some journalist or religious fanatic or terrorist might sneak up the mountain in the middle of the night—although there had certainly been terrorist threats. No, the sentries were mostly there to reassure Meryam, Adam, and the archaeologists that nothing would happen to their artifacts, samples, and dusty bones while they were sleeping. Arjen supposed it was possible that a member of the team might attempt sabotage out of religious fervor or fear or because someone paid them to do it, or might take unauthorized photos or video and sell them. But in the ten nights he had stood second watch, he had heard nothing more than the mutterings and cries of people suffering nightmares and the grunts and moans of those who’d found warmth and comfort in each other’s arms. Nobody got up and walked around in the night unless they were sick or shaking off bad dreams. Sometimes they would smoke cigarettes, breaking Meryam’s rules, but Arjen didn’t see the harm there at the edge of the cave, where the ashes weren’t going to ignite the old timbers. The butts would be flicked over the edge, into the snow.

  The wind kicked up, howling around him, so strong that it bumped him back a step. Arjen blinked in surprise, his heart racing, and moved a few feet farther away from the edge. With the wind so strong, only a fool would take chances. He shivered and reached up to readjust the cowl he wore around the lower half of his face. The years had made him used to the brutal cold the winter wind could bring to Ararat and he knew how to endure it, what precautions to take. But nothing could keep the icy air from penetrating down to his bones when he had to stay out in it, unsheltered, for so long.

  Coffee would help. Something warm around which he could warm his hands. Something to heat him, down inside. Yes, a cup of coffee. Or Navbahar. The thought of her made him smile, though not without a certain guilt.

  A cigarette, then. Now that he’d thought of the nights he’d caught Dr. Dwyer or Mr. Avci out here smoking, he craved the warm, curling smoke in his lungs. Surely just a few puffs on a freezing cold night would not give him cancer.

  Another gust of wind and he frowned, then smiled under his cowl. Had he caught the scent of cigarette smoke on the air, or was his craving so strong that he had imagined it? Arjen glanced up, wondering if someone on level two might be smoking, despite Meryam’s explicit warnings.

  Then he heard a small cry in the dark, off to his left. The wind rushed at him as if to drive him away, but Arjen stood rigid, listening as he peered along the outer edge of the cave. Was that another human sound, some kind of grunt? And a scuffle in the inch of newly fallen snow, a thump against the stone beneath it?

  Arjen felt his throat go dry. He wanted to shout, but stopped himself. This was the point of being on sentry duty, after all. Someone had been out there smoking and stumbled, that was all. He’d smelled the smoke, craved a cigarette.

  He started in that direction, striving against the wind that tried to push him back. The icy chill buffeted him, but he straightened up, unwilling to be cowed by it. His thoughts were often full of silent griping, but in his heart he felt strong. His family had given him that strength. His heritage. If Arjen could not withstand the cold winds that scoured the face of Mount Ararat, he might as well never have been born.

  The snow picked up, obscuring his vision, and he tugged his goggles down so that he could see better.

  There.

  Thirty feet farther along the ledge, a shape lay heaped on the snowy ledge. The cave loomed to one side, mostly shadows while everyone slept, and ahead the night and the storm breathed darkness. He caught another whiff of cigarette smoke and wondered if the cigarette had fallen into the snow.

  The heap on the ground began to groan.

  Arjen swore. Wary of the wind and the ledge, he knelt and dragged the heap toward him, away from the perilous edge. Even in the dark, the black spill of blood on the snow stood out in stark relief. He turned the heap over and tried to make out the face below him, tilted the man’s head toward what little illumination came from the interior of the cave. He had not bothered to get to know the students working the Ark Project. If not for the argument at dinner, Arjen would never have recognized Kemal, but he knew him now.

  “Hey,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”

  A stupid question. He knew the answer, but he couldn’t understand what had happened here. Had Kemal tripped and struck his head, or had he had some kind of seizure? Was he ill? The archaeology student lolled his head to one side and moaned in pain and confusion. His lips moved but formed no words, and his eyes searched the gusting snow and the darkness, unfocused but full of a primal dread that filled Arjen with an icy chill no storm ever could.

  He stared at the black spill of blood on the snow and forgot to breathe. What if Kemal hadn’t fallen at all?

  Arjen drew back from him, knees whispering against the snow. As he glanced over his shoulder there was a lull in the wind, and he heard the hitching breath of the shadow even before he saw it rushing at him. A glint of light from the cave shone upon the curve of the ice ax and it whistled as it sliced the wind and lodged just below his heart, struck so hard it pierced every layer of his clothing, tore flesh and muscle, and punched between ribs.

  He tried to scream as he stared down at the tool jutting from his chest, but instead drew in a gasp of frigid air. Pain flooded through him and he managed a high, keening wail that merged with the howl of the wind, torn from his lips and lost in the night sky.

  His knees began to give out, but the shadow grabbed hold of him. He felt a flicker of hope that it had been some kind of misunderstanding, that he had stepped into a fight that was not his own, that he would see Navbahar again and would cast aside any guilt about her being his second cousin and profess his love to her. That smile. It lived in his heart.

  Those hands danced him backward and over the edge, and then he felt himself falling. The wind whipped past him and he hit the snow and the loose rockfall, bounced, and kept falling. Sorrow swallowed him whole, and then his head struck a rocky outcropping as he fell, and Navbahar would never know his love.

  Kemal tumbled from the ledge a moment later, cast farther out from the cave, hurtling faster, striking harder, tumbling over and over as his bones snapped and his limbs twisted grotesquely.

  In time both dead men came to rest more than a thousand meters below the cave.

  The snow kept falling, lightly but steadily. By morning, it would have obs
cured any trace of Arjen and Kemal.

  And the real storm had not yet arrived.

  NINE

  Adam wakes from a nightmare in the guest room at his grandmother’s house. He can hear a ticking from the baseboard heating and the occasional pop from the hardwood floor. He doesn’t remember the nightmare, but his heart is still drumming hard and so he lies awake for a while, listening to the heat and the house and breathing in the powdery sweet sachet smells of his grandmother’s house. He stays with Gramma Evie every couple of weeks and he loves being here, but he doesn’t like being awake at night. Not when Gramma Evie’s sleeping. And he especially does not like to get out of bed when the house is so quiet. But now he has to pee and though he tries to forget—thinking that if he doesn’t focus on it, the feeling might go away—it’s too late. If he doesn’t get up, he’ll wet the bed.

  Sighing, he pulls back the covers and slips his legs out from under the covers. His toes are reluctant to touch the braided rug but he forces himself to get up, and then—once committed—he moves quickly, practically scurrying out of the room and down the short hallway. He passes Gramma Evie’s room. She should be snoring in there. He can see her in bed, lying on her side like always, but without her usual snoring she looks almost …

  No. He won’t think that.

  The noises of the house seem to hush now, as he arrives at the bathroom door. He reaches inside, fingers searching for the light switch, and he can hear his heart beating.

  No. That’s not his heart.

  Adam glances to the left. At the end of the little hallway, just at the edge of the living room, is the grandfather clock. He blinks, because something isn’t right.

  It isn’t right at all.

  The clock is facing him, turned so that he can see the face of it from the hall. It should be facing into the living room and this doesn’t make sense at all. Gramma Evie wouldn’t have turned it like that. Heck, she couldn’t have turned it like that, not without help from him. She calls him her big, strapping boy, and this is why he knows she has not turned the clock by herself.