by Rio Youers
No mistakes.
His determination revitalized, Oliver got to his feet. Falling asleep had frightened him. Such a huge mistake, and so easy to do. The fear sent a wave of adrenaline crashing through him, which in turn brought strength and focus. He lifted Matthew onto his shoulders again and limped onward. The most difficult part of the journey was still ahead of him: climbing the mountain. He’d done it several times with a child in his arms, but this time, the final time—injured, exhausted, carrying not a child but an adult—would be the most demanding of all.
———
He staggered, then rested. He climbed, cursed, and bled. His right sneaker was soaked with blood. The skin on his shoulders chafed and frayed. One blessing was that the sun dropped westward and the air cooled, but everything else was stacked against him. Not just stacked but pushing—trying to make him fail. Even the mountain seemed to mock him: You can’t do it, Oliver. You have never been able to do it. It boomed laughter and trembled beneath his feet. All these years and still trying. Still failing. He cried out and pressed on. One quivering step at a time. When it got too dark to see, he set Matthew down and grabbed a flashlight from the knapsack. A ten-minute rest, holding his head and weeping. I’m so close, he thought, trying to muster strength. So close now. He stooped to pick up Matthew. The flashlight passed over his bloodied face. His eyes were open. Oliver staggered back, surprised, then grabbed the pistol from the knapsack and pointed it at him.
“Gzzzz,” Matthew said. Something like that. Not a word. His eyes squinted in the flashlight’s glare. He touched the bridge of his nose, perhaps feeling for his glasses.
“Can you walk?” Oliver asked.
“Gzzzz.”
“Try to get up. Slowly.”
Matthew lowered his hand. That was all.
“I said—”
“No,” Matthew said, shaking his head to emphasize.
Oliver pressed the muzzle against Matthew’s forehead, printing a white circle in the glaze of red.
Matthew said something unintelligible. His eyes rolled up, as if looking at the gun, then his mouth dropped open and he was gone again.
Oliver lifted him onto his shoulders and carried on.
———
He saw Leander Bird in the flashlight’s beam, flickering on the mountainside. His eyes were tiny suns. His arms were like a crow’s wings. Oliver drew a stuttering breath. The flashlight trembled. Leander laughed and disappeared, only to reappear moments later, poised on a boulder. His darkness meshed with the night and his fishhook mouth hung open, spewing black flames.
Are you real? Oliver asked.
I’ve always been real. Always been here.
I think you’re a hallucination.
Leander reached for him. I touch you.
A chill wind stirred, moaning between the rocks and fissures. Leander vanished again. Hallucinating, Oliver thought. Exhausted. Seeing things. Everything thumped and ached but he limped on. The flashlight illuminated the mountain’s upward path. Leander Bird came and went. Sometimes near. Sometimes far. Always burning.
-----------
Oliver collapsed a short time later. Matthew toppled from his shoulders and fell hard. He groaned, but didn’t wake. More blood leaked from the gash in his head and half-painted a rock. Oliver curled up beside him and dragged in breaths that made his chest hurt. He didn’t know how close he was to the cave—to the end—and was too tired to think about it. It was dark and he was disoriented. He needed rest.
The night sky was beautiful. Perfect starlight everywhere. Oliver bled beside Matthew, feeling the slight movement of his body. He flicked off the flashlight and drifted. Leander Bird’s orange eyes blazed from atop a nearby boulder. His flaming body crackled.
You’re so close, he said. His voice was as calm as the starlight, yet the mountain raged. Oliver wished it would split open and swallow him whole.
Give me a moment. I need to rest.
But you’re nearly there.
Oliver closed his eyes and may have slept for a while but when he looked at the sky the starlight was the same. Leander Bird was nowhere to be seen or heard. Oliver got to his knees, flicked on the flashlight, and directed the beam along the mountain’s crippled path. You’re so close, Leander had said to him, but Oliver wasn’t sure he could manage even a single step, and certainly not with Matthew slung across his shoulders. He considered the .45. Maybe he could shoot Matthew here and leave him to rot on the mountainside. Maybe that would suffice.
Orange eyes flared in the darkness. Oliver smelled smoke, and felt evil. An ash cloud of anger.
No. The mountain wanted him. Inside. It wanted to drink freshly spilled blood and add his skeleton to the collection. It wanted to feel him die.
Bring him to me, Leander said.
Oliver did.
———
He couldn’t carry Matthew, though, so dragged him, the crooks of his elbows tucked beneath Matthew’s armpits, hands linked across his chest. Slowly—slowly—up the mountain, moving backward, in the dark, without a free hand to hold the flashlight. He rested every twenty feet or so, dripping with sweat, ignoring the sharp pain in his lower back and the roaring in his head. He used the flashlight to illuminate the route ahead, then flicked it off, tucked it into his belt, grabbed hold of Matthew, and moved on, feeling his way around the rocks and dead trees. One inch at a time. Getting closer.
Closer, the hallucination echoed.
Until at last he was there. The opening, camouflaged with rocks, gleamed in the flashlight. A doorway to relief—to peace. Oliver shouted at the starlight, triumphantly, even though his work was far from complete. Infused with a sense of finality, he brushed aside the smaller rocks with ease, but struggled with the heavier ones and was forced to rest. He shone the flashlight on Matthew, who whimpered, his eyes fluttering but not opening.
The ghost flickered, moth-like, urging him on.
He worked, his hands ravaged and bleeding, his body screaming, removing the larger rocks one by one until the opening gaped, crooked, like Leander Bird’s smile. Another triumphant scream at the stars. Another long rest, licking his wounds like a dog.
Matthew woke. He blinked in the flashlight, confused. His left hand trembled—all the movement he could manage, but enough to spur Oliver on. He dragged Matthew through the opening and into the cave, where children wept and silence waited.
Chapter Fifteen
Here: a handful of darkness, pulled from between stars. Stained air, broken sound, and dust as thick as skin.
Now: the moment he falls.
“I brought him to you,” he heard Oliver say. His voice was as brittle as the bones that littered the floor. “Now leave me alone.”
Matthew crawled, spitting dust, blinking cloud-coloured tears. He knew where he was, despite the concussion, and even before the flashlight shone upon small skulls and bones wrapped in rags. Unconscious, he had sailed a blue sea. An infinite ocean. There had been no pain, no fear. It was just him. Even now, crawling through this nightmare, it was still just him. The world had closed its eyes. He was helpless, and alone.
I escaped before, he thought. His hands scraped through bones and splashed in shallow pools. Maybe I can . . . But he was too weak to finish the thought. Blood ran into his eye. He faded. Came back.
“Please let this be the end.”
Faded.
Now: the moment he dies.
The flashlight illuminated speleothems formed like protective hands. Matthew opened his eyes—came back—and saw, cupped within them, two children. A ghost-faced girl with red hair, who Matthew, even amid the hurt and confusion, recognized immediately, and, in her arms, a boy, barely moving.
The girl held out her hand.
No, he wasn’t alone.
His wounded heart reached for the children.
Now: the moment he fights.
Courtney cradled the boy, listened to his rasping breaths, and wondered when they would stop. She had soaked her T-shirt in a pool and squeezed drops onto his dry lips, praying some small amount would go down his throat. His eyes flickered. He spoke her name every now and then, and asked if she was his friend. Courtney said yes of course and stroked his face. She felt the hollows of his cheeks, the tiny veins thumping in his eyelids.
She decided to show strength for as long as the boy (Ethan—his name was Ethan, but it kept slipping her mind, along with so many other things) was alive. Hope was nonexistent in this terrible place, but she wouldn’t let him see that. Her touch was always caring, her words always soothing. Courage was an act that trembled and threatened to separate. She held the fragments together. As soon as Ethan died, she could stop pretending.
She had learned the cave’s formation within the first few days. She knew where the freshest water was, and where she could climb to feel daylight on her face, even if it was out of reach. She knew the way out, also—had found the twisting tunnel and pushed fruitlessly against the heavy boulders that blocked the way. When Ethan had been stronger, they had pushed together. Courtney had even lifted him onto her shoulders so he could reach the smaller rocks higher up. But they were lodged in place and wouldn’t move at all.
She knew the places where she could pray, and cry, crouched in alcoves, among bones, where Ethan couldn’t hear her.
“We’ll get out of here,” she told him, so often, and he would smile and nod. She would hold him and touch his face, using her closeness to apologize for making promises she could never keep.
But now hope glimmered. It breathed. The man—the monster—who had brought them here had returned, and had brought a grownup with him. Courtney could see that he was hurt and bleeding, but she held her hand out anyway.
He looked at her. His eyes were wide and frightened.
Please, she said, speaking with her hand, fingers extended.
An imperceptible nod, and Courtney wept, clutched Ethan closer, dared to hope.
———
Everything hurt. His foot, his back, his eyes, his soul. Oliver would be a long time convalescing after this was over.
And still the mountain boomed.
“I brought him to you,” he said. “Now leave me alone.”
But bringing Matthew was not enough. Had he expected Leander Bird to swoop from the darkness and burn him where he lay? A brief and beautiful swirl of flame, and then . . . peace? He had hoped, certainly, but knew better.
The mountain had told him to bring the knife for a reason.
Just like 1984, Oliver thought, watching Matthew crawl through the bones. He removed the knapsack (his T-shirt was stiff with blood, plastered to his shoulders where the straps had been), and took out the knife. This would be . . . different. Oliver felt it in his soul, a stark and sickening pressure, like clamped nerve endings. He had brought eight children here to die. He was also responsible for Bobby Alexander’s death. No use trying to candy-coat it, he’d done bad things for the mountain (although Bobby, the big chump, only had himself to blame). But he had never killed anybody. Not directly. Holding the knife and limping toward Matthew, that was about to change.
Do it quickly. Don’t even think about it.
Oliver’s fingers tightened around the handle. The flashlight trembled, its light covering Matthew as he crawled and cried, too big among such small skeletons.
“Please let this be the end,” Oliver said, moving closer.
———
The girl tried to cry out but managed only a rush of broken air. Matthew—even without his glasses—saw the alarm in her eyes. He flipped onto his back and saw Oliver stumbling toward him, flashlight in one hand, knife in the other. The similarity to 1984 was absolute. He even remembered what had broken his paralysis and helped him escape: his mother’s face, shimmering in his mind, a vision of love and safety. He thought of her now, twenty-six years older, still beautiful. Again, it gave him a burst of strength and he pushed himself to one knee.
“Mountain . . . always . . .” Oliver limped closer. His lame foot was tangled in an item of clothing and he tugged it along, spilling bones. “Always . . .”
Matthew was dazed. He had lost blood and his body felt like something that could be carried on the wind. But Oliver was weak, too. The knife trembled in his hand and his breathing was laboured. Matthew thought that if he attacked first, and surprised Oliver, he might gain the upper hand. It was his only hope—the children’s only hope.
He steadied himself, still on one knee, waiting for Oliver to get closer. Dull pain in his head, in his heart.
Two shambling steps from Oliver. The knife flashed, too big.
“Always gets what it wants.”
Matthew held his breath. He remembered the little girl’s hand reaching . . . reaching.
Another step. Oliver’s left foot came down on a small skull and cracked it into three pieces. His ankle rolled. He wobbled, momentarily off balance.
Matthew attacked.
———
Oliver saw Matthew spring toward him and tried to react but couldn’t. Matthew came low and hard, his face a red blur in the flashlight. Oliver had time to raise the knife, meaning to plunge it between Matthew’s shoulder blades, but was driven backward. He hit the floor with a crunch that sucked the air from his lungs. Matthew fell on top of him and the flashlight leapt from his hand. It spun in the darkness, throwing its glow, settling on two skeletons that had crumbled into one, their skulls conjoined by a patina of calcite.
Oliver still had the knife in his hand. He raised it, his arm trembling as Matthew’s hands closed around his throat.
———
Matthew felt Oliver’s body fold in half and crumple. Adrenaline rippled through him, bringing a flicker of hope, but he knew that any advantage was thin and wouldn’t last. He reached for Oliver’s throat and squeezed, his shoulders hunched, using his body weight. Blood dripped from his head and he imagined it splashing into Oliver’s face. Maybe into his wide eyes or open mouth. One of many wild images to burn through his brain during that desperate moment. He considered the darkness, too. The darkness in his soul, which had infected him and stained his dreams. He channelled it now, replaying every terrible fantasy. It was surprisingly—ironically—bright, this darkness, and seductive.
He squeezed, feeling the tips of his thumbs sink into Oliver’s throat, finding his windpipe and crushing it.
Oliver gasped . . . flailed. He still had energy and, judging from the way he struggled, disconcerting strength. He knocked Matthew off balance and struck with the knife—a clumsy attack, but Matthew felt the blade slice across his upper arm. He let go of Oliver’s throat and rolled to one side. Confusion in the darkness. Blood and ragged breaths. Matthew scraped through bones and pushed himself to his feet. The flashlight was less than ten feet away and he wanted it. Light, in this dank and dreadful place, was too great an advantage.
Matthew heard the whoosh of the blade, too close to his throat. He stumbled backward and hit the floor with a thud, then flipped onto his hands and knees and lunged for the flashlight. His fingertips brushed over the barrel . . . about to close around it when Oliver surged forward and stumbled over him. They crashed into a cluster of skeletons that came apart like dry straw.
“It wants you,” Oliver said. His breath smelled of dust and heat. “There’s no getting away.”
Matthew screamed and reached again for the flashlight, but it was too far away. Oliver pinned him to the floor, readying the knife to swipe downward, using his left hand to feel Matthew’s body in the darkness, to pinpoint his heart.
———
An idea flashed in Courtney’s mind: the heavy rocks sealing the cave’s opening would have been removed—had to have been for the men to get in here. She could run for it now, escape, and find
help for Ethan. Her heart jumped with the possibility and she started to slide Ethan from her arms, but then stopped. Was it really the best idea? What if the bad man hurt Ethan—killed him—while she was gone? What if he came after her? She was weak and wouldn’t be able to run very fast. He’d catch her easily. He had a flashlight. And a knife.
The flashlight. She could see it, spilling a puddle of light on the cave floor. She knew where the men were by the sound of their fighting, and was sure she could skirt around them and get to the flashlight quickly. Another idea formed, threaded with hope: turn off the flashlight so that the bad man couldn’t see her, then move through the darkness she knew so well, to the opening, and then away. Once she had gone far enough, she could flick the light back on. The bad man, stumbling through the darkness, wouldn’t be able to follow her.
Courtney’s heart jumped again, and with an urgency that caused a wistful sound to escape her. She nodded, still not sure it was the right thing to do, but knowing it was more dangerous—more hopeless—to sit and pray for the other man to come to their rescue.
She remembered his face, covered in blood. His hurting eyes.
She had to do something.
Courtney detached herself from the boy and eased him to the ground. He curled into a ball, his lips making small sounds. She leaned close to him.
“We’ll get out of here,” she whispered, as she had so many times, still not knowing if they ever would.
She touched his face, made her move.
———
Matthew reached up and clasped Oliver’s wrist, using what little strength he had to keep him from pushing downward. But Oliver had every advantage. He was stronger, heavier, crazier. Matthew cried into the darkness. The mountain always gets what it wants, he thought, and felt the point of the knife against his chest—felt his skin break and bleed.
