I noticed there was some numbers in among all that freak shit. Might mean something? Also, I was hoping you might know someone involved with private climbing groups, maybe a forum or an email list or something. These kids found it via some satellite photos. If they found it, I’m wondering if they shared it with anyone else. We can’t let anyone just go up there in these conditions.
Thanks, Marc. Sorry to bother you, but this just doesn’t feel right…there’s something really odd about it all. And well, if you’re at a loose end, and Janis ain’t busting your balls too much, I could use an extra pair of hands and eyes…
Marcel clicked on the attachment, placed the photos in a slideshow. The images burned into his brain; the symbols with their hideous forms and unnatural angles and curves cut right through his buzz, setting its own buzz…a deep, insidious foreboding.
He couldn’t tell exactly why they made him feel that way. It wasn’t just the blood and feces the girl had used, but something more fundamental, as if he were looking at things beyond his comprehension, something entirely ancient and unknowable.
He shut the laptop, placing it back onto the desk with a thud. Closing his eyes, he tried to slow his racing heart. And not just from the effects of those images, but hearing from Carise again. She sounded so fragile and scared. Damn her! He slammed a fist on the arm of the chair, stood up and wiped a hand across his face, almost to see if he was still corporeal. Those images had shifted his sense of reality. If there was one thing that woman had over him, it was his inextinguishable desire to look out for her. He just couldn’t let her go.
Looking through his contact list, he found the name of the son of one of his old work colleagues. Nate was his name. The kid was now some hot-shot medical student and used to train with Marcel on the climbing wall. Marcel remembered he was a member of some secret and elite climbing group. All part of some ridiculous competitive thing with other groups at the university. Usual teenage bullshit; trying to one up each other.
He clicked the call button and waited. It disconnected even before it rang. He checked his phone; just half a bar. He moved out into the lounge area to see if he could get a better signal.
Janis was slumped on the sofa, wrapped in a flannel tracksuit watching the TV. She didn’t even look at him when he moved into the room. Whatever.
He got three bars on his phone and tried again.
It rang, then cut out.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath and tried again.
Janis looked up at him. “You calling that bitch?”
Marcel shook his head in resignation and turned his back, waiting for the call to connect. It rang again. This time it continued to ring when finally a panicked voice came through.
“Marc…that…you?”
“Yeah, that you Nate? Everything okay?”
“Christ alive, am I glad to hear you. Look, you’ve got to help us, we found a new cave, some dude’s been butchered, Mouse has fucked off. It’s pandemonium here. I don’t know what’s—”
The call signal dropped again, and this time Marcel kicked a footstool across the room. “Fuck!”
Moving out into the kitchen, he held his phone up as if he were willing the signals down from heaven. And then his phone rang again. Nate.
“Nate, where are you? What’s this about a new cave?”
“It’s all on the forum, check the private area…the satellite pictures. We’re under the eastern outcrop and the top of the pass…there’s a dead climber down at the stones…we had to bury him. There’s something here…I…we…hur—”
Before the line dropped for the final time, Marcel heard a deep roar like thunder, but with more of an edge to it, followed by a chorus of shouts from some other kids.
Marcel rushed through into his study and flipped the lid on the laptop. The forum Nate mentioned was one that he used to frequent and give advice to some of the kids at the university, but hadn’t been on there for a while. He fired up his browser and navigated to the Web address. Luckily it remembered his login details and a popup window indicated that there were new messages in the private zone of the forum.
Nate was right; there in a message thread were some satellite images and GPS coordinates. He downloaded them, packed up his laptop and headed out of his study just as the house phone rung.
Both he and Janis stared at it. She stared at him with a face that said, “Don’t you dare answer it,” for they both knew who it would be. Then Janis stood from the sofa and moved to the handset on the wall. Marcel dashed forward from the kitchen area and grabbed it first.
“Hello?”
“Marc? It’s Carise.”
“I got your email, I’m on my way.”
“Did you find anything on the symbols?”
“No, but I’m looking into it… Listen, there’s a bunch of kids up in that cave you mentioned. I know how to find it. Hold the chopper for me. I’ll be ten minutes max.”
He slammed the phone down, pushed his way past Janis, who was now screeching at him. “It’s not your responsibility. Let it go, Marc. I want you here. That bitch has stolen enough of your life.”
Grabbing his laptop from the study, he ignored Janis and headed out to his truck. All the time she screamed and yelled at him.
“I’m telling you now, Marc. If you go to her, we’re done! You get it? Over.”
He took one look at her face, all twisted and snarling like a rabid dog.
“Fine by me,” he said as he climbed into the cab of his truck and fired the ignition.
He slammed the throttle and sent her flying away back into their cabin as the truck lurched out into the night and snow. All he cared about right now was finding those kids and bringing them—and Carise—back safely. And yet, something inside him squirmed. It wasn’t the butterflies of a usual rescue, or the stress of Janis, but a sick feeling that permeated every cell of his being. It was a like a great and powerful darkness had entered his world and was eating him from the inside out. And still white-hot in his mind were those hellish symbols. What crazed mind could think up such things? He was damn sure he didn’t want to know, but had the certainty that he would. Like the email said, “We’ll all see.” He saw all right, and didn’t like it one bit.
6
Brick and Michael left Nate back at the fire after hearing a call come through. They headed off down the dark tunnel after Mouse’s screams. As they chased after him, Michael noticed—under flashlight— that the wall swam with myriad colors on the surface like petrol and it was warm to the touch.
The tunnel itself remained smooth as if machined. Or melted, like a superheated meteor crashed through the mountainside, he thought.
The distance between Brick and Michael extended; it was obvious Brick was the athlete of the two, and despite his bulk managed to move swiftly and surely, even on the slippery surface. He saw Brick turn into a tunnel on his left.
“Mouse! Mouse! Can you hear me?” Brick shouted. A terrible, high-pitched gurgle answered his call, followed be a frenzied splashing. Maybe there was a subterranean lake, he thought. Michael sucked in a deep breath to try and ease his burning lungs and carried on after Brick.
Beyond the left branch of the tunnel, the cave opened up into a wider chamber. A lambent red glow radiated outwards and into the tunnel.
Michael continued on, slower now, cautious.
Inside the chamber, a series of square stones sat at the edge of a cave lake that was almost perfectly round and at least twenty meters in diameter. There were no other sources of water dripping from the domed ceiling above the lake. Like the walls, the ceiling was also smooth.
As Michael approached, he noted that the stones, much like the walls, didn’t seem natural—the surface was too precise: sharp angles and straight lines. Fascinated, Michael seemed to forget why they were there and knelt at the stones. There were five of them lined up around the edge of the lake. From within that murky water—he assumed it was water—a bioluminescent crimson glimmer shone.
To the left-hand side of these stones, he found a series of flat slipperlike shoes and black cloth robes. They were neatly folded, robes on top of slippers, each lined up one beside the other. Five in total. Fuck, we’re not alone…
The colored light bounced off the stones. On their flat tops, this light picked out a pattern of relief shadows—a set of carved symbols. “Brick, look at this,” Michael said as he shone his flashlight down on them, but when the beam hit the surface, the symbols disappeared. It was as if they were only visible in a certain spectrum of light.
Brick’s eyes grew narrow and he shook his head, unable to comprehend the significance. He moved past the flat stones to peer farther into the water. “He must be in there…” he said.
Mouse could have drowned!
Michael took off his glove and tentatively tested the lake’s surface; it wobbled and undulated as if the surface had a thick skin.
Brick grabbed his wrist, pulled him away. “What if it’s poisonous?”
“Then Mouse is fucked, but we’ve got to at least try something…”
Brick let go, stepped back, turned his head. “Wait…what’s that?”
A strange, low drone broke the silence within the chamber. It resonated around the room, coming from no single discernible direction.
The surface of the lake began to ripple and rise in the center; its sloshed movements thick, like congealed mud. A shape stirred underneath in the gloom.
“Mouse…shitting hell, that’s Mouse,” Brick said, pointing at the form suspended in the liquid. Michael couldn’t imagine it as water anymore, it was too thick and strong to hold a body like that, because that’s what it looked like in that strange crimson light: an actual body, not so much floating, but held by some force.
“What…what…is this, Mike?” Brick said, with more than just a little panicked edge to his voice. “What the holy hell is it?”
Brick was losing his cool real fast, and Michael wasn’t far behind. He struggled to imagine that black and twisted facsimile of a person as his friend Mouse, but then it moved and suddenly he knew.
Michael tried to move away, but the scene pinned him. All the while the shape broke apart and melted into the liquid. Seconds later, the surface swelled on the lake as before, only the light that glowed from underneath was brighter, and redder.
Not only were the five stones at the lake’s edge glowing with weird glyphs, so too were the walls and ceiling now. They seemed to Michael to be like some kind of language, a cross between Hebrew and Egyptian, but altogether more ancient. How he knew that he couldn’t tell, but the angles appeared to defy nature, defy science. He approached the wall beside the lake to get a closer look, but a sense of terror started to break out in the corners of his mind. He had to look away, it was if…he didn’t know why, but he had a sense that things were too late. He’d seen too much.
“I can’t do this, Mike, this is fucking crazy. It’s all just nuts!” Brick said. He backed away slowly, as if scared that any fast movement would incite something…violent. Michael felt it too. The atmosphere was charged with malevolence and he felt himself being watched from all around as if those shapes and symbols on the walls were sentient.
He couldn’t be sure what was real or imaginary, things shifted in the gloom and he thought he saw robed beings circle the chamber, staying mostly hidden in the enveloping shadows.
From beyond the glowing lake, Michael heard Mouse’s voice call out, “Help! Help!” It sounded strained and far off, devoid of the familiar reverb or echo that you get in a cave. The screams were being transmitted right into their minds.
“Wait…how can…is that…” Brick stepped around the stones, past the lake and slowly towards the shadowy edges of the cavern. He suddenly looked back at Michael, eyes wide. “Mike, there’s a narrow access way down here, I think Mouse’s down there; I can hear him breathing. And I see a light. I think it’s his flashlight. That wasn’t him in the lake!”
If that’s Mouse…then who was in the water?
Against his better judgment, and perhaps because of that slight flicker of hope he saw in Brick’s eyes, he followed, moving beyond the cavern and through a narrow slip of rock, and all he could see on the ground were bones.
* * *
Carise sat in the reception area of the station, staring out into the dark of the night, watching the fat snowflakes fall and melt on the chopper. The pilot sat in the cockpit hidden behind the steam of a hot drink. Frank had called in the chopper and reported the situation to the nearest larger station. They couldn’t provide help at this time, they said, so it was down to Carise and Marcel to go up in the pass and search for the girl’s boyfriend.
“Tell me this is just a one-off thing, Marge. Tell me we’ll find the kid and it turns out that the girl was just suffering from some kind of trauma.”
“It’s the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen, Cari, but I’m sure you’re right. But you don’t have to do this on your own, Marcel will be here soon.”
“You know it’s the first time I’ve seen him since…”
“I know, dear. But you’ll be fine, he’s one of the good guys, eh?”
That was often the problem. He just wanted to help people. Make sure they were safe. Including her, but she pushed him away, scared that her grief would be too much.
The rumble of a V-8 engine, and the bright slice of light from headlights reflecting off the side of the chopper announced his arrival.
She stood and grabbed her pack of gear, placing the cup of coffee on Marge’s desk.
“Good luck, m’dear. Frank’ll be on his radio if you need anything from us.”
“Thanks, Marge.”
Carise took a deep breath and ventured out into the cold. Marcel had already got out of his truck and lifted his backpack from the truck bed. They stood close in front of each other. But it might as well have been a chasm; the words wouldn’t come and her throat tightened. There were so many things she could say, perhaps even should say, but in the end she just nodded and said, “Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” Marcel said with a shy smile on his face.
“Well…” Carise scratched her face, looked at her shoes. “This is awkward.”
“And cold.”
“Want to get moving?”
Marcel stepped forward, patted her arm. “Sure.”
Carise looked over to Smith, the pilot, and whirled her hand in the air to indicate they were ready to go up. Marcel opened the cockpit door and helped Carise inside.
“I’ve got the GPS coordinates to the cave. I managed to speak to one of the kids up there,” he said as the rotors whined up and they strapped themselves in.
“How many are there?” Carise asked, wondering if the girl had got it wrong and there more than just her and her boyfriend there.
“Four boys,” Marcel said, “different group to your survivor. It seems the satellite images were shared on a forum. There was a race to find it first. The other group was your girl and her boyfriend Jason. But there’s…”
“What?” she asked, not liking the tightening of his face.
He closed his eyes for a second. “When I spoke to Nate, one of the group, he mentioned there was a…body by the standing stones.”
Carise’s hopes took a nose dive as the chopper lifted off. She shook her head, wishing the girl was wrong, because if she was right about him dying, then she might be right about the crazy stuff too.
She leaned forward and gave Smith directions to the stone outcropping at Dead Five’s Pass.
“We’ll check it out first on our way,” she said. Marcel nodded and passed her his laptop with the satellite images of the cave.
“It’s under the outcrop.” He had to shout as the chopper dipped its nose and headed for the mountain.
Carise knew the place well. She’d trained many times in that area; the outcrop was an especially good spot to test one’s climbing skill as it had few handholds and you needed great upper-body strength to get over it. There was also the great boulder stai
rcase that made a good base camp. She did not remember ever seeing a cave.
“I don’t like this,” she confided to Marcel, “I’m…”
“I know.” He took her hand in his and she immediately felt the warmth through her cold skin.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
He smiled at her, and she felt a calmness spread throughout her body. It was the feeling that no matter what was going on, there was at least one person she could trust.
She just hoped that if it came to it, Marcel could trust her too.
7
Bones. Everywhere; snapped, mutated, bent. They reminded Michael of the bones of the climber back at the standing stones. After they’d slipped through the narrow rock, Michael and Brick had come through to a wide ledge that overlooked a blackened pit. Mouse’s flashlight was at the bottom and shining up. The light, however, didn’t reach the ceiling, stretching up into the darkness of the mountain. It seemed to Michael that the mountain was hollow, such was the height and spaciousness of the opening.
“Brick? What can you see?” Michael called out to his friend who had traveled farther out onto the ledge. They didn’t hear Mouse’s voice again, and despite what Brick said, Michael couldn’t hear any breathing except his own, which now came in short, fraught half-lungfuls.
“Just his flashlight,” Brick said, before bellowing down into the great, deep pit. “Mouse! Are you down there? Are you hurt?”
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