Dead Five's Pass

by Colin F. Barnes

  Fear teased and pinched at Michael’s psyche. He focused on one step, then another, all the time trying to ignore the feeling of doom that sat within his guts. He looked at the others, but they didn’t seem as bothered: Nate was talking with Brick about some trivial hockey thing, and Mouse was humming along to his iPod.

  Michael said a silent prayer to himself, all the while trying to get the image of walking to his grave out of his mind.

  * * *

  The stench of rotting meat assailed Carise’s nostrils. The interview room was thick with it, sweet and putrefying. It caught in the back of her throat, stuck there like the aftertaste of curdled milk. Carise blinked away the tears in her eyes, focused on the girl.

  She sat huddled in the corner, her arms wrapped around her raised knees, her face buried against her thighs. Her wet black hair, tangled with twigs and dirt, hung down the front of her legs.

  Her trousers were shredded lengthways. Between the sliced fabric were the signs of flesh wounds: black and red strips, mostly dry and clotted now.

  The room was well-lit by a series of overhead tube lights. Those tubes, along with the white tiled walls and stark furniture—just a pine-wood bench and table with a single chair—gave the place the feel of a psychiatric clinic. Carise tried not to dwell on that memory too much, despite how much it reminded her of her grief counseling sessions.

  “Hey there,” Carise said with a soft, even tone. “What do we call you?”

  The girl didn’t respond.

  “I’m Carise,” she tried again. “I’m here to help.”

  A haunted whisper came from the girl. “It’s…too… late,” she said, still hiding behind her wounded legs.

  “What’s too late? Do you mean your boyfriend?”

  The girl began to laugh so quietly that at first Carise thought she was sobbing. And then the laugh grew louder, and higher in pitch until it splintered with pain and became a scream.

  Jumping back and away from the girl, Carise put her hands to her ears, and then the girl’s voice broke so that the scream became a staccato roar.

  Carise backed a step away, but the girl suddenly dropped her legs to the ground and launched herself forward, her arms outstretched and hands clawed like talons. She scratched at Carise’s face, forcing her back into the door with a heavy thud. The door handle stabbed Carise in the back.

  “Too late! Too late!” the crazed girl kept saying.

  Carise grabbed at the girl’s wrists, forced them back down on the bench, but despite her condition and weakened state, the girl fought back before letting herself go limp against the tiled wall.

  “You will see it too…everyone will see it,” the girl whispered. Her bright blue eyes were wide now, and rimmed with red. Her lank hair covered her mouth, which frothed white and red spittle. She spat it clear and it landed on Carise’s jacket, marking it with a filthy red stain on the neon-yellow fabric.

  “See what?” Carise asked, exasperated. Blood started to pour from the wounds on the girl’s legs and she slumped onto her side, muttering incoherently. Her lips moving like a fish’s out of water. A weird, guttural stream of vowels came from deep within her throat. Something black dripped from her mouth. The oily liquid pooled on the bench before falling to the tiled floor.

  Carise stepped back away from it, reached for the door. Before she could turn the handle and leave the room, the girl turned her head and lifted it slightly up from the bench.

  “He’s dead,” she said. “Ran away and died.” Her lips stretched wide and she exposed her stained teeth. Carise couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a grimace. She wanted to ask her the boyfriend’s name or location, but before she could get the words out, the girls eyes rolled back into her head, showing the whites of the eyeball, and she collapsed onto her side, jerking wildly.

  Carise rushed out of the door. “I think she’s having a seizure, or passed out or something, she needs emergency medical help.”

  “They’re already on their way, darlin’. Should be here soon.”

  “They better be quick. I don’t think she’ll make it for much longer. The girl is clearly traumatized, and looks to have some kind of internal bleeding. She’s made a real mess in there.”

  Frank looked over, his eyes half-closed and his skin grayer and more gaunt than she had ever seen him before. “What did she say to you, Frank?” Carise asked.

  The old Mountie looked away for a second before glancing back at Carise’s stare. “Not much, something about the shapes…said she saw shapes and it was too late for us.”

  “Well gosh darn it, that poor girl has had a real scare and trauma, but that don’t make any sense,” Marge said.

  “She said something similar to me,” Carise said as she took a seat in the reception. “I don’t think I can get much else out of her.”

  “Maybe this will be of help to you,” Frank said. “To find the boy.” He passed her his notebook. “It was her statement when I first picked her up on the side of the road. She was still freaked out but managed to get a few words out before going into her shell.”

  Carise took it and read the note. It said:

  Boyfriend discovered new cave, bad things in the pool. Shapes. Drowning, Jason ran, chased into the pass, shapes left. She escaped (didn’t want to give her name), fears he’s dead. Heard his screams and then nothing. It’s too late. She fears it’s too late. Won’t say what “it” is.

  A feeling of dread consumed Carise as she imagined a scenario of panic, but it didn’t make sense. What could the shapes be? Could it have just been a wolf or a bear? In a dark cave, they could seem entirely different, what with the acoustics and unnatural light. The cuts on the girl’s legs were certainly clawlike, but maybe too precise. They seemed too straight, narrow like that of a scalpel. Then she thought of some crazy person camping in the pass armed with knives. Anything at this stage was a possibility. But what concerned her the most was this missing boyfriend.

  “Frank,” Carise said, “did you travel to the stones to check for her boyfriend?”

  He shook his head. “Well no, it would have taken too long and I wanted to make sure she got into a warm place as soon as possible. I’m sure you would have done the—”

  Carise held up her hands. “It’s okay, I wasn’t judging, just asking.”

  He lowered his head and wiped at his face. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It’s all just so weird, I’m way out of my comfort—”

  A loud crash from the interview room cut him off. They all snapped their attention to the door. Another bang came from inside and the door shook with the force. Frank rushed over. As he touched the handle, the door flew open with such force he was thrown back onto his backside, where he slid across the linoleum floor until his head smashed into the side of Marge’s desk with a sickening thud. Marge jumped up from her chair, her eyes wide with surprise.

  Carise rose from her chair and dashed over to Frank. A spot of blood smeared the desk but he was awake still, cursing and rubbing the back of his head. “Crazy bitch.”

  Following the Mountie’s gaze, Carise turned her head to take in the scene. Her earlier dread grew into something else. Some feeling so dark and so primal that she felt weak and impotent at the significance of what she was seeing.

  Bizarre patterns with no discernible meaning or recognizable form made with blood and feces covered the tiled walls. The markings were curved and jagged with odd angles and bizarre forms, almost as if it were some symbolic script.

  The girl sat in the middle of the floor among the broken furniture. A jagged piece of wood, presumably from the table leg, stuck out of her thigh. Around it pooled a thick flow of blood. It was that blood that covered her hands and her face.

  She rocked back and forth with her legs crossed, her mouth stretched wide in a pained grimace. That hideous, whispering laughter came from her again as she clawed at her wounds and transferred the blood onto the floor, creating yet more unidentifiable glyphs and markings.

  Carise slammed the door shut, and t
ried to un-see those terrible and disturbing images, but like the girl said earlier, it was too late. They were in her brain now…she was in her brain, sitting there like some guru writing missives in the dirt.

  “What…the…fuck,” was all she could say, as both Frank and Marge looked at her with the same expression of primal fear that she expected was on her own face.

  * * *

  Flashing blue and red lights sliced through the narrow windows of the station, turning the place into a fair ride. Carise stood on shaking legs and watched in slow motion as the paramedics entered and locked eyes with Marge, then Frank, and finally her. She pointed to the door and regretted it immediately; she tried to stop the two women in their bright red coats, carrying a gurney as they reached the interrogation room. She wasn’t quick enough, and the lead woman, with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and unusually extravagant makeup, pulled the door open before gasping and turning her head away in disgust.

  Both paramedics dashed to the girl who now lay still on her side in the middle of that horrific pattern of shapes and angles.

  Carise couldn’t look at those dread drawings any longer and just stared out of the window, focusing on the whirling emergency lights.

  The paramedics stretchered the girl out of the room and into the back of the ambulance. Both Marge and Frank were standing now and moving out of the station, but Carise stood where she was, all the time trying to ignore that magneticlike pull of the room and its terrible new paint job. It was if it had some kind of power, some attraction, despite the unnatural angles and strokes. Snapping out of it, Carise ran to the door of the station before it closed and let the freezing air pull her back to the world.

  It wouldn’t be her last experience of chaos that night; she was sure of it. And in the back of her mind, all she could really think of was Marcel. She had to get a message to him.

  Against her better judgment and natural inclination to have nothing more to do with that room, Carise walked back into the station, and with her camera phone took a series of pictures. She knew Marcel had an Internet connection at his cabin; maybe he could help find out what it meant. She assumed that once the girl was taken care of, she’d be going out to the pass to confirm the whereabouts of her boyfriend, and she’d rather do it with Marcel’s company.

  5

  Michael stepped out from the back of the group of climbers and overtook both Mouse and Brick to join Nate at the front. The going was heavy now, with the freezing wind howling and the temperature dropping to twenty-five below. The previous climber’s tracks had so far been in line with Nate’s navigation to the new cave.

  “How much farther, Nate?” Michael asked as he stepped beside his friend.

  Nate pulled the map out of his jacket. “See that outcrop on the eastern side? The cave is underneath it and obscured by a curl of rock. Partly why it was never found until now.”

  That didn’t sound right. Rock doesn’t so easily curl, and it’s an odd phenomenon to happen naturally, but then he wasn’t graduated or a professor yet, so he reminded himself he didn’t know all the answers, just like he had no answers for the standing stones in the pass. But whatever the answer was, he had a creeping suspicion it wasn’t normal. He struggled to get the image of the climber’s face lying in the snow next to his own skull out of his mind.

  What irked him even more was how casual everyone now seemed. It had been less than thirty minutes ago, and there was Mouse joking and laughing with Brick as if this was just another regular climbing weekend. But there was nothing regular about any of it.

  Nate kept the pace up and began to veer to the east—following the tracks all the way. It was clear to Michael now that the climber did come from the cave.

  As they headed into the tree line, Michael thought he noticed something shift beneath the outcrop. “Guys, did you see that?”

  Mouse and Brick were still laughing, but shut up when Michael stopped and they walked into the back of him. “Dude!” Mouse said, rubbing his face from the collision.

  “Shut up and listen for a second,” Michael said, not even attempting to hide the irritation from his voice. “Up ahead under the outcrop. I saw something.”

  Nate eventually stopped, but was now five meters in front of them. He turned round with a quizzical expression on his face and raised his shoulders as if asking what they were doing.

  A tingling in Mike’s spine spread to his legs, and a great weight pinned him to the ground, the snow approaching his knees. Brick and Mouse didn’t say a word. Nate must have sensed their unease and turned slowly. All four of them remained silent, staring ahead.

  From the trees, a whispered moan floated on the wind. At first Michael just thought it was usual noise wind made as it whipped through trees and branches, but there was an otherness about it. A sound so forlorn and ancient than Michael was sure it was an old man in pain.

  “Maybe there’s someone else in the cave?” Mouse whispered.

  “Maybe whoever mutilated the last guy,” Brick said.

  Michael’s feet and hands were shivering now and a slick sweat broke out across his forehead and lower back. Despite the fear, he felt the need to get closer. “Come on, let’s just get in. Nate, is there a signal out here?” He knew the answer. Nate had been checking the cell signal religiously every minute. Nothing.

  Together, they crept forward like burglars in the night. Nate with his flashlight broke the tree line first and, clambering down a set of boulders that acted like giant steps, approached a point under the outcrop, disappearing from sight.

  Michael and the others quickened their pace to catch up. They followed Nate and soon found the gap in the rock. Nate’s voice called out, followed by a huge reverberating echo, “Guys, I found it!”

  They joined Nate inside an initially small cavern. On the ground, dying embers glowed from a recent fire. Around it lay two sleeping bags and two flasks with their caps off.

  “I think we found our poor victim’s camp,” Nate said as he poked a stick at the ashes and blew at the embers to reignite the fire. “Probably a good place for us to warm up and catch our breath before we chart the place. What do you think, Mike?”

  “Sounds like a good plan. My feet are frozen.”

  With that, the four of them hefted their heavy packs off their backs and placed them in a circle around the fire. While Nate and Brick were preparing some food, Mike inspected their surroundings.

  The rock walls were smooth, almost as if they were man-made, but given the location and narrow entrance, they couldn’t have been; there’d be no way of getting any machinery in such a space, and why would anyone do that halfway up a mountain?

  Like the entire night, it just didn’t seem natural.

  “I’m gonna check farther in, make sure there’s no crazy axe murderer waiting round the corner,” Mouse said.

  “Ain’t funny, dude,” Brick said, slapping Mouse, who was almost half his size, around the head.

  “Want some time alone, you two?” Nate said as he piled more twigs on the fire.

  “Seriously though, I think I can hear something down there. Like a rumble or something…”

  “Probably just water; there’s gotta be quite a lot running through the mountain this time of year with all the run-off and snow,” Michael said, more to calm his nerves than anything else.

  “Maybe,” Mouse said, “but I’ll just have a quick look while fat boy sorts the food.”

  “Stay within shouting distance, eh?” Nate said.

  Mouse gave him a mock salute, accompanied by his stupid grin. “Sure thing, Cap’n!”

  “It’s always the funny ones that die first,” Brick said. Michael couldn’t tell if he was joking, but he tended to agree. His nerves seemed to stretch and an acidic anxiety bubbled away in his gut.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” he said, sitting down next to Nate. Even the fire didn’t seem to warm the chill that wrapped its icy fingers around him.

  Not for the first time that night, he questioned wh
at the hell he was doing there as he watched Mouse walk into the gloom and round a curve in the tunnel. A few seconds later, his flashlight grew dim and disappeared altogether.

  “This ain’t right,” Michael said. “Someone should go after—”

  A sudden, piercing scream interrupted his sentence.

  * * *

  The sound of Janis slamming doors permeated Marcel’s snug hideaway study. He took a deep slug of the ice-cold lager and enjoyed the sensation as it filled his guts. He sunk back into his well-worn chair and realized he’d probably spent more time in his study, alone, going through the old newspaper stories of him and Carise, researching caves and the newest gear online, and numerous other pointless activities, than he did with his fiancée. She’d always said she liked her time alone for her hobbies, but Marcel was always at a loss as to what they were exactly—beyond thinking up arguments to assail him with.

  He took another slug, pulled the laptop from the desk onto his lap and flipped the lid. Might as well do something constructive while he waited for a rescue call—if it was coming. Perhaps Frank had sorted it out on his route, or maybe Carise was handling it on her own, he thought. That latter thought didn’t fill him with a sense of comfort.

  It was coming to something when he considered spending the night in the freezing temperatures in a wet and murky cave with his ex as a better prospect than a night in with Janis. And as if talking of the devil, a bell chimed from his computer to indicate a new email message. His heart skipped a beat when he saw it was from Carise. It had an attachment and read:

  From: Carise Culey

  To: Marcel DesMonet

  Subject: Please. I need your help. Urgent.

  Hey, Marc.

  Sorry it’s been so long. How are you? Look, I normally wouldn’t disturb you, what with Janis the…way she is. But something weird’s going down. I’ve attached some photos (don’t look if you’re eating or drinking). The girlfriend of a boy who called in an emergency from up in Dead Five’s Pass did this when Frank found her and brought her back. The girl was beyond traumatized. I’ve never seen anything like it. Apparently, they found a cave up there. Her boyfriend Jason is missing. She said he’s dead, but I don’t know, he could still be out there. But the thing I wanted to know is, could you look up the symbols? Do they mean anything? The girl kept saying stuff about “it’s too late,” and “we’ll all see.”