by Molly Tanzer
At that sight, though I might rationally have assumed myself rescued and safe, my fear redoubled. I managed one more step, before all the strength left my body at once.
I pitched forward. The blackness took me, and—God help me—I was grateful.
I woke by stages.
For some immeasurable period, I’d been aware of sensations—motion, and later, the cool of water on my brow—but had lacked any understanding of what those feelings meant or how they came to be. I was oblivious to the passage of time. Regardless of whether my eyes were open or closed, they were met by the same ruddy gloom. I was afraid, but in an indistinct way, as one might fear the concept of dying more than the prospect itself. I’ve no doubt that my fever was still raging, for I remember phases of awful cold and enormous heat.
Eventually, I examined my surroundings with something like clarity. I was muddled, the effort of moving my neck made it ache cruelly, and my inner clothes were moist with sweat, but I was lucid enough for curiosity. However, the room I was in was very plain. I lay on a low, hard bed, and the only other furnishings were a stool in the opposite corner, a small table beside me, and a narrow brazier. I thought it might be a cell, though there was no indication of a lock on the door. Then I remembered the building I’d seen, and how I’d thought it must be a monastery. The chamber was plain enough to be a monk’s.
Yet that was strange in itself. If Crowley had been correct then we’d reached to around twenty-five thousand feet; even a conservative estimate placed us at well above twenty-thousand. Such a height was tremendously isolating, far too much so for any regular supply or communication from the outside world.
I thought back to the research I’d done before I’d joined with Bergenssen. There’d been one sect in particular who considered Kangchenjunga sacred, and who might very well have built a monastery high amongst its peaks. What were they called? The Kirati, that was it—descendants of an ancient local people, practitioners of a religion rife with shamanism and ancestor-worship. If I remembered rightly, their god was “Tagera Ningwaphuma,” called the Supreme Knowledge. Perhaps here, high upon the mountain, I had come upon one of their extreme outposts.
Then I remembered the pentagram above the door. Maybe it wasn’t the Kirati after all—or if it was, some even more obscure offshoot cut off from the rest. Five points, I thought, five points for five peaks, and something in the notion made me shudder.
I climbed unsteadily to my feet. The effort made my head spin, and only a hand outstretched to the wall kept me standing. After a minute, however, the dizziness began to pass. I crossed the stone floor by small steps and tested the door. Sure enough, there was no lock. It swung open freely.
The man who waited outside, who turned at the sound of the door’s opening, was swathed in robes of deep crimson. He looked like any other priest of the region, except for two details: his robe was hooded and the hood drawn up, so that I could see only a crude hint of features, and in his hand he gripped a wooden staff which he clearly didn’t require for support.
He moved to bar my way. He was smaller than I was, but agile. He said something I didn’t understand; it didn’t sound like any dialect of Tibetan I’d heard. Something in the words and in his stance made me nervous.
“I’m grateful for your hospitality,” I said, “but I won’t impose any further.” I don’t know if I really expected him to understand English. When he evidently didn’t, I added in broken Tibetan something to the effect of, “Now I must go.”
He pressed closer, with the staff upraised, as if herding me back into my cell. He spoke again, this time more abruptly.
“No,” I said, reverting to English, “my friends . . . on the mountain . . .” I’d suddenly thought of Bergenssen, and the previously unconsidered possibility that someone might have survived. “Thank you, I must be leaving.”
This time he spoke loudly, and waved one hand close to my face as though swatting at an insect.
Suddenly, I felt terribly afraid. I pushed him away. At that, he looked as though he’d shout along the passage for help. In panic, I grabbed for his staff, and had it away from him before he even realised what was happening. He took a swift step back. I swung clumsily. The blow caught his shoulder. In a crouch, he backed off again, and I knew he was preparing to run. I struck again. This time, he slipped backward and his balance went. His head struck the wall with a ghastly slap.
I stood panting for a while, staring down in uncomprehending horror. Finally, I realised the dark trickle pooling between the cobbles was blood. Was he dead? I dared not check. But he wasn’t moving, and I could hear no sound of breathing.
It had been an accident.
Or had it?
In either case, how could I explain it?
I’d committed an abominable deed. I had killed a man on the most tenuous of grounds. Yet all I felt was fear, so profound that it swallowed every other sensation or possibility, morality included.
I decided I must hide the body. That might forestall any suspicion until I could get out of there. Setting the staff down, I grasped under his shoulders and, with much clumsy effort, managed to manoeuvre him into the room where I’d awoken.
I tried to drag him onto the bed, but it was too difficult. I let him flop to the floor instead. As I did so, his hood fell back, and I finally saw his face. He was slim-featured, quite young, and unexceptional—except for the scar on his cheek.
It was a perfect pentagram of whitened skin.
I shuddered with a feeling far worse than fever. Something was terribly wrong here, and in that moment, the fact I’d killed a man didn’t seem the worst of it. What had I stumbled onto here, high upon Kangchenjunga?
If I was under threat and had no means to reason with my captors, if I was already responsible for the death of one of their number, there could be no question but that I’d be safer even in the tempest outside. I returned to the corridor and considered it properly. It was very plain, and so long that I thought it might stretch the entire length of the building. Spaced along its length were other rooms or cells at roughly even intervals. At the far ends were double doors, each pair like those I’d observed from the outside.
It seemed a safe assumption that one set led out to the valley from whence I’d arrived. But which?
I settled on the nearest. In the interest of covertness, and also because its tip was sodden with blood, I abandoned the staff, choosing to support myself against the wall instead. I moved softly, on the very border of panic, convinced I’d be discovered at any instant.
In fact, I reached the doors without incident. After much nervous hesitation, I pushed one slightly open. Only blackness lay beyond. I pushed harder. Crouched low, I eased through the gap.
I was aware of a large space, then of light at its centre, and finally of figures standing within the illumination. Cockroach-like, I scurried through the shadows, hoping for some intense dark to conceal me. I was sure I’d be seen. Yet when I paused to look, the figures were still absorbed.
That calmed me fractionally—enough that I could take in the scene about me. I crouched at the edge of a large, circular chamber cleanly split into halves. The inner portion, where I knelt, was bordered only by plain stone walls. The other, however, presented a series of arches to the most astonishing vista. Evidently we were perched on the very edge of the mountainside, because the view was horizonless and dizzying.
At the centre of the room, directly above the point where the figures were gathered, a narrow well in the domed ceiling let in a beam of scintillating moonlight. Beneath, borne on a low pedestal, sat a large, pentangular dish of crystalline filigree, so delicate and translucent that it might have been carved from ice. So much did it glow and its surface ripple that it seemed to have been filled by the rays shining from on high.
I could make no sense of it all, except to find it strange and frightening. Nor had I time to consider. Suddenly the figures, who previously had appeared sunken in reverie, began to mill about and to converse in that clipped to
ngue the monk had employed. I feared I’d been discovered, and tensed instinctively. But none of them were looking in my direction.
It occurred to me they must be wondering after their missing companion, and this was confirmed when a delegation hurried out through the double doors. A minute later came shouts, and a second party followed the first. For a while, there was much activity. I was sure that at any instant one of them would penetrate the shadows and discover me. Yet, though they had time to scour the place, not one seemed to consider that I might have penetrated their sanctum. Eventually they reconvened, and I allowed myself the faintest release of held breath.
My relief was premature—and hopelessly misjudged.
The gathering split into two factions. Five of the monks surrounded the pentangular dish, whilst the others retreated to form a crescent round it, with the open side in the direction of the doors. Immediately they set up a chant, in a language just as unfamiliar but quite different from the one they’d employed before.
The words played havoc on my nerves, and brought incomprehensible images into my mind—as though I was perceiving something I couldn’t rationally grasp. As the chant heightened, raising towards crescendo, so the slant of moonlight seemed to brighten, and then, to pulse. At last, it was as though a column of brilliant, throbbing whiteness fell through the centre of the room. Though it scorched my eyes, it never occurred to me to look away. The dish seemed full almost to overflowing, as though brimming with fluid light.
The five monks assigned to its pentagonal tips, who so far had played no part, lurched abruptly to life as if galvanised. Each grasped his respective point and heaved with all his might. Slowly, the bowl began to tip.
As impossible as I knew it to be, I expected its contents to run out, to splash like mercury over the floor. Instead, just as impossibly, they were projected—in a manner that bore no resemblance to the projection of light. The flow seemed to crawl and seethe through the air. It fell upon the door, where it splashed like thrown paint.
When it settled, a glimmering pentagram hung upon the boards.
I’d barely registered all this when the chant adopted a new tone, shifting register without any loss of intensity. My attention was focused entirely on the doors. They looked soft and unreal under the stamp of fluid moonlight.
They seemed to shudder—once, twice, and a third, most violent, time.
With a force that made wood shiver like paper, they sprang open.
I fell backwards. I think I even cried out. If I did, it drew no attention. All thought was devoted to that hideous mantra—which seemed now like a wail of condensed experience, of horrible knowing borne by unfathomable words.
All eyes hung on the open doorway.
I couldn’t help but look.
My first thought was of a mirror, so similar was the scene beyond. There was the circular chamber, there the arches opening onto inconceivable space, the pedestal, the figures clustered about it.
Yet almost straight away, I perceived a difference. The view through the distant arcade was not the one behind me. Those stark grey pinnacles were unlike any on Earth.
Then it struck me. They weren’t of Earth at all.
If they were, what could explain the blue-green orb hung in the sky behind? I knew with absolute certainty that I looked upon a world not my own. More, I felt sure it was our moon, the very same that cast its rays through the ceiling—whose radiation had somehow riven a path through untraversable space.
But if that was true, who were those unshapely forms, robed like their earthly brethren, who turned towards us? They were not men; too tall, too long in limb. A faint and bluish glow ebbed from within their cowls. As they moved towards the door, the shadows flickered jarringly around them. The swish of an arm revealed . . . what? Not a hand.
They lurched closer, and my heart contracted. I knew that something wholly, inimically inhuman approached. They were almost upon the doorway, and I was frozen. I could only watch—as the foremost reached the brink, tilted its head, as I caught a glimpse of what lay beneath that updrawn hood . . .
With a cry of horror, I threw myself forward. All I could think to do was hurl myself upon the pentangular dish. I struck it with all my strength. It moved a little, and the moonbeam wavered.
Every one of the creatures turned its stare upon me. Together, they hissed in fury.
I heaved. I thought my bones would break before that dish moved, and still I drove against it. For something so seemingly light, it felt like lead set in concrete. I pushed, without hope, too desperately afraid to stop. At any moment, one of the monks—or, unimaginably worse, one of the moon-beings—would pry me away. I pushed harder, though I thought my tendons must snap. When finally it shifted, it was by hardly an inch. I could do no more; I fell back, panting, my back and arms slick with sweat. I’d given my all, and still I’d failed.
Yet somehow, that minute jilt was enough. Free of its axis, the disk tilted, rocked—and fell.
As it shattered, it was like ice cascading over the cobbled floor.
Looking back to the entrance, I saw the doors still stood open—but upon that familiar passage I’d arrived by. I sank to my knees, no longer concerned for my safety. Let the monks tear me to pieces if they would. I’d saved my world from something appalling. Even in death, I could take comfort in that.
No hand fell. No blow was struck.
When I eventually dared look up, I understood why. Dust was showering from the ceiling, as though the building were in the grip of a minor earth tremor. An instant later, I felt it, a pulse travelling up through the floor tiles. The pulse became an unrhythmic throb. A block tore loose from the roof and shattered, showering us in fragments. One of the monks screamed and stumbled.
Though I hardly glanced back, I’m sure I was the only one who tried to flee. The monks merely stood, resigned, as their blasphemous temple ruptured around them. Only I ran—darting amongst the falling rubble, certain that at any instant I’d be pulverised. I forgot my weakened state, forgot everything except the hope of night air on my face.
Reaching the second set of double doors, I found them already mangled and half off their hinges. I pressed through the gap, and still I didn’t stop. I kept going until the last rumbling subsided—until the night was utterly still. Only then did I pause to look back.
There was nothing to see but a vast bank of snow, pierced here and there with hints of shattered masonry.
The monastery had been utterly erased.
You may wonder how I survived to write this record.
I wonder too. I walked, or staggered rather, for some time—hours, days, I can’t say. I don’t remember how I discovered the remnants of camp four. I came to myself huddled in a tent, with only fragmentary recollections of the intervening time.
I suppose I’d been uncommonly lucky. What had happened, I later discovered, was this: five men died that day on the way to camp six—Bergenssen, our three mountaineering companions, and one of the Sherpas. The rest of the porters turned back immediately, found me gone from camp five and so backtracked to four. Meeting with the party stationed there, they had democratically decided to forget the whole sorry mess and return home. From either idleness or some vestigial loyalty, they’d left both the tents and the supplies.
Thus, I found shelter, food, and medicine enough to nurse myself back to health. Eventually I felt capable of attempting the downward climb. It was slow progress, but I was in no hurry. In Sandakphu, I learned the truth regarding Bergenssen and the others. It came as no surprise. I carried on, deeper into India. I had some money with me, and access to more. I felt dimly that I could not go home.
I write now from a location I choose not to disclose. I will send this tale to a number of reputable journals, in the hope that one may see fit to print it, whether they believe it or no.
No one should think to seek me out. They won’t find me. I’ve come to realise I have too many unanswered questions weighing on my mind. What had been that impossible passage in the
moonlight? What those gangling, unearthly figures? The monastery had been destroyed, its tenants crushed and buried; yet dare I hope that there were no other temples, no other routes between worlds, no acolytes so destitute in soul that they might open them?
And thinking upon that last, one more inescapable question came to my mind: what part in this monstrous affair was played by Aleister Crowley, so-called “wickedest man in Britain.” Could that wickedness extend to the betrayal of all mankind to something malicious and inhuman?
I have my suspicions.
Now, too, I have a little knowledge; hints to dark and sordid truths, the corrupted fruits of my research. In the course of my search, I have made allies . . . a very few. The one thing I lack now is proof. When the time should come that I have it, only then will I return—and there shall be a reckoning for the horrors of Kangchenjunga.
© 2013 by David Tallerman.
David Tallerman is the author of the novels Giant Thief and Crown Thief, both published by Angry Robot. He’s also written around a hundred short stories, comic and film scripts, poems, and countless reviews and articles. Many of these have been released in one form or another, and others are on their way over the next few months. Most of his remaining time is eaten up by his regular employment as an itinerant IT Technician, and whatever's left he spends reading books, watching films, hiking, drinking wine, and renovating his house. To learn more, visit davidtallerman.net.
Jetsam
Livia Llewellyn
“The part of a ship, its equipment, or its cargo that is cast overboard to lighten the load in time of distress, and that sinks or is washed ashore.”
I’m writing this down because I’m starting to forget. I may need to remember some day. The chemical air is already kissing my mind, biting my memory away. Something terrible happened at work today. Beyond imagining . . .
Jay stops reading the worn fragment of paper, and looks up. “I don’t remember writing this. Where did you find this, again?” She speaks to the young man behind the counter, who’s examining the creases of a jacket flap. His glasses slide down his nose as he stops to pull a book out of the thick stack on the counter.
