The Call of Mount Sumeru

by Elyse Salpeter

  Chapter 15

  Kelsey and Ari argued late into the night after Kelsey finally returned to the cabin. She’d had to listen to his chastising tirade about her going after the Yeti without him and then he’d been incensed about her near confrontation with Sitaula. After everything he’d told her and what they were learning about Yetis, he felt she was being too rash and impetuous. In typical fashion, she ignored him.

  How quickly you fall back into your habit of being overbearing and controlling, brother. I guess some things will never change.

  What really concerned both of them, though, was the ash and fragments Kelsey had collected and brought back. Ari picked through them with a plastic spoon. “Kelsey, look at the shards and what appear to be bone fragments. Look at the coloring. I’m positive this is human.” He glanced at the shredded yellow down jacket Kelsey had brought back as well. “You know he killed that missing kid and cremated him, don’t you?”

  Kelsey clicked her tongue. “We know no such thing. Maybe the Yeti killed him and Sitaula had nothing to do with it. The jacket was shredded as if someone had raked long nails against it. Sitaula’s nails are trimmed and short. And for that matter, where would Sitaula be able to cremate a little boy in one day while he spent all that time with us searching in the mountains?”

  Ari had no answer, but in the morning, he was determined to confront Sitaula about it. They got up early, but when they went to the temple, Rajiv was already gone. A lone practitioner sat on a cushioned pillow and studied from a prayer book. The woman paused for a moment to tell them Sitaula had gone to town to take care of Flora, who had fallen and hurt her leg.

  They thanked her and headed to town.

  #

  In downtown Skagway people were talking heatedly about the missing boy. There were discussions about taking a hunting party into the woods to track the Yeti and kill him, while others claimed that Kushtaka could not be caught. Still, a second search party had gone out looking for the boy, and a contingent from the town of Haines had arrived across the Taiya Inlet just that morning and had already gone into the terrain.

  Kelsey pulled Ari aside as everyone assembled to move out into the Alaskan wilderness for a second day. “Ari, come with me. I want to check something out.”

  Kelsey pulled out a business card from her wallet, made a call, and less than fifteen minutes later the driver that she’d spoken to when she first came to Skagway arrived. She leaned into the cab.

  “Hey there, Charlie. How you doing today?”

  He chewed his cheek and she could see the stress lines between his eyes. “You hear anything about the little boy?”

  Kelsey shook her head.

  “That’s what I mean about people going missing in Alaska. It’s a dangerous land. You need me to drive you somewhere?”

  “Yes. I want to see a place I took a walk to last night that’s a good way’s north of the Noble Path Retreat.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “You did what? You took a walk in the woods? At night? Didn’t I tell you to stay inside? You could have gotten yourself killed, just like that young boy!” He hyperventilated and she could see he was getting upset.

  Kelsey smiled one of her brilliant smiles and cocked her head. She leaned towards Charlie and batted her baby blues. For a few seconds, Charlie froze and she heard Ari inwardly groan and roll his eyes.

  “This is so damn easy for you, isn’t it,” he muttered quietly under his breath.

  She ignored him.

  “I was being careful, Charlie. I had my flashlight with me.”

  “Well,” the man blinked a few times. “I guess if you were being careful.” He seemed to come back to himself. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Can you tell me what is north of the retreat? About ten miles north?”

  “Oh, that’s got to be the town of Dyea I told you about.”

  “The abandoned gold rush town we were chatting about yesterday? Would you take us there?”

  “Sure thing. It’s a little early and cold for the tours, but I can take you both around myself. Not much to see any more though. Just a few abandoned buildings. You’ll be safe enough during the day if you don’t walk off any of the cliffs.”

  Kelsey jumped into the front seat and Ari begrudgingly took the back. Charlie drove down Broadway and then turned north. On the road towards Dyea he regaled them with the history of the now abandoned town.

  “Dyea was just a little trading post in the early days, but because it was located at the beginning of the Chilkhoot trail, it became a major port after people learned there was Klondike gold to be found. There is no end to greed and people were so desperate to make their fortune, it became a boomtown. Thousands and thousands of stampeders came to find gold. Restaurants, saloons and hotels rose quickly to accommodate the hordes of people that arrived, and soon it was a thriving area.”

  “So what happened to it?” Ari asked. “They run out of gold?”

  Charlie shrugged, not getting the joke. “Same thing that happens to all towns that erupt for greed and with no reason to be a real town in the first place. Or people who have no reason to be there in the first place. Dyea had strikes against it from the beginning and they just kept piling up and getting worse. Finally, like a set of dominoes, it all came crashing down. First, Dyea always had a poor harbor. That’s a death sentence for a town because you couldn’t get goods to it easily. You always had to worry about tides coming in and wiping out entire shipments if the people couldn’t unload it in time. You see, there were no docking facilities, so cargo was unloaded right on the beaches. Well, if the tide came in too quickly and you didn’t get your goods off the beach, you lost everything. That happened to countless miners who lost everything when it happened. Can you imagine spending your entire life’s fortune, equipping yourself with every tool and supply you’ll need, actually surviving the dangerous trek up here, and then watching all your efforts wash out into the river?”

  “Second, it didn’t get a railway and a town without a railroad is nothing. Skagway got one first and that was a crushing blow to Dyea. Third, and final, there was the snowslide of April 3, 1898. It killed so many stampeders.”

  “Stampeders? You’ve said that word a few times now. Are those the people that came to seek gold?” Kelsey asked.

  Charlie honked his horn and saluted the driver in a passing car. Then he spoke to her again. “That would be correct. Like I said, most of them didn’t know a thing about what they were doing. Heard about the glory of gold, got their supplies down south and came on up, trying to get their equipment up the Chilkhoot pass. That was no easy task. We call that the “golden staircase.” It rises over one thousand feet during the last half mile and there are fifteen hundred steps made out of snow and ice. You have to use those to get to the top of the pass and it’s too steep for any horses or mules.”

  “Could they get there another way?” Ari asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “Sure, they could try the White Pass trail, but it was even more dangerous. We call that trail “the dead horse trail” for how many animals died trying to make the trip up there.

  “After the great series of avalanches, basically the town began to die off after that. By 1902 the post office closed down, and by 1906 only one resident remained. A man named E.A. Klatt who ended up abandoning the town after he burnt down most of the buildings.”

  “Why did he do that?” Kelsey asked, amazed. So much history, just gone in a puff of smoke.

  “Oh, it’s not as bad as you’re thinking. He wanted to build a farm, if my memory is correct. If you’re all by yourself, it’s a whole lot easier to burn down the buildings than take them apart one by one. Illegal, but who was going to stop him? Problem is, the guy didn’t realize that farming in Alaska is different than farming in Wisconsin, where he supposedly came from. Just like everything here, Alaska isn’t forgiving for those not prepared. But word has it, the man worked hard and was relatively successful. Story goes, he was supposed to go back to Wisconsin and marry a widow
he fancied. Turned out he left Dyea and never returned. I reckon his new wife might not have been too keen on relocating. The Alaska frontier is not for everyone.”

  “Nowadays Dyea is known for a scant few buildings, the beautiful scenery, and the two cemeteries there. You should definitely check out Slide Cemetery. That’s where the victims of the Palm Sunday Avalanche were all buried.”

  “How many people died in the avalanche?” Kelsey asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “No one really knows for certain. There’s fifty-two markers there, but we guess more people died, maybe upwards of seventy-five. There are other historians who think the number is a lot higher. If you have time, you should check out the smaller cemetery, too. Those house the remains of the bodies that were moved when the Taiya River started to take claim of the land and rose up. It threatened to destroy the original Dyea cemetery so they up and relocated all the bodies. That dang river is always shifting and it washed so many of the old buildings right into the sea.”

  They rounded a corner in the trees and the road opened. “Ah, here we are. Don’t get too excited. There’s little here except for part of one building and piles of debris. But it’s a beautiful place to hike. Oh, and if you want to know where Main Street used to be, look for two rows of trees. They stand out in the forest that covers most of the town, but those two rows were planted along the original main street and show where the thoroughfare used to be. If it is okay with the two of you, I’m going to stay until you’re ready to leave. With all the tumult of Bobby’s kidnapping, there may not be another person to take you back, and I have the time.”

  “Thanks, Charlie,” Kelsey said. “That would be great.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  Kelsey faced away from Ari and gave Charlie a conspiring look. “It’s fifty dollars roundtrip. Right, Charlie?”

  He seemed confused and Kelsey raised her brows. “Remember when I asked you yesterday how much it would cost me to find someone to take me up to Dyea? You said it was going to run me at least twenty-five dollars each way, and I should use your services because other people would rip me off, but you’d give me a deal?”

  He made an “o” with his mouth and nodded. “Oh, yes, I do remember that conversation. I’m sorry, but it’s actually going to be seventy-five round trip because I’ll have to keep the heat running with this weather, you know. It’s not good for my old bones to sit here in the cold.” His eyes glinted with amusement.

  Kelsey craned her neck towards Ari in the back seat. “You heard him. Pay the man.” With that she got out of the car, just in time to hear her brother suck in an exasperated breath and take out his wallet.

  #

  Charlie watched them go with dread in his heart. That crazy, beautiful girl was going to get herself killed. At least she had that guy with her. He looked like he was tough enough to handle himself in a fight. Hopefully, he’d be able to protect her.

  Charlie took out his notebook and rifled through it. Very few people knew he was a cryptozoologist at heart, and ever since he was a boy, he’d been investigating the story of Kushtaka. He’d felt no need to disclose this to Kelsey. Strangers outside the clan just didn’t understand.

  But he did. Kushtaka was real, and of that, he was sure. As a teen, he’d seen one of the Yetis everyone described. He’d slipped out of the house one night to go meet a girl, and as he passed by his family’s barn, he’d spied a massive creature taking off with one of his family’s goats. He’d hollered and grabbed a piece of wood, pounding it against the barn to frighten it. At first he thought it was just a bear, but when he got a better look, he realized it was no bear. The creature had turned to him, and it was its steely, intelligent gaze that made Charlie hightail it back to his bedroom, the girl long forgotten. In the morning, with the goat now missing, he’d come clean and told his pa what he’d seen. Of course, no one believed him, thinking he’d been just a scared kid. Instead, his father had taken a stick to his behind for sneaking out, and he’d been lucky to even be able to sit for the next week. So much for telling the truth.

  But, that experience had shaped him. He knew what he saw. These creatures were real. As real as life.

  Charlie reviewed his notes about Bobby’s attack. Something didn’t add up. Oh, on paper everything seemed fine. A little boy slips off into the woods. Kushtaka comes out and grabs him and makes off with him. Hair and fur found at the scene.

  But Charlie knew something was fishy. Too many disappearances were suddenly happening in his part of Alaska and too many were being blamed on Kushtaka. He knew that legends and lore were often used as covers and excuses for crimes that had no supernatural element. He’d done the very same thing with Kelsey. Trying to scare her into staying inside and not walking in the woods at night by using the story of Kushtaka to put fear into her heart. Obviously, that didn’t work.

  That girl was far from fearful and it was going to get her killed. Charlie wasn’t convinced Kushtaka had kidnapped Bobby, regardless of what he’d said to Kelsey and regardless of what the townfolk thought. He was nearly certain something else was involved. Something much more human.

  He removed a clear plastic bag from his pocket and stared at the thin brown fibers inside. They came from an evidence sample from a missing toddler case that happened in July. A little girl had gone missing from her grandmother’s backyard in Juneau and they’d found some fibers at the scene. One of the members of the police force there was a fellow Bigfoot hunter and had filched some threads for him. Charlie had traveled down to Seattle to get them tested, and the lab confirmed they had not come from a living thing. They were man-made synthetic fibers, and he knew the case of missing Evie Thornton had nothing to do with Kushtaka, though the papers spent weeks blaming it on the creature.

  He eased himself out of the cab, strolled towards the water’s edge, and sat down on a decaying log. He could see Kelsey and her friend disappearing into the forest, making their way through the woods towards the center of Dyea township. They’d be gone for at least a few hours. He took out his notebook and began writing.

  #

  They spent the better part of the next two hours hiking around the remains of Dyea. A set of old pilings from the wharf stood before them on the empty floor bed of the Taiya River. Kelsey and Ari strolled along the western cliffs, discovered a series of caves nearly hidden within the rock faces, saw a great view of Windy Arm and found the paired set of trees Charlie had spoken about. The town of Dyea itself was long gone.

  They sat on the beach and Kelsey tossed the gold nugget back and forth in her hands. “Why did the Yeti give me this? He obviously wanted to tell me something.”

  “Maybe he’s paying you back for helping him. Maybe he knows that it’s worth something in this world. It has to be valued in the thousands.”

  Kelsey wrinkled her nose. “That can’t be it. Maybe it’s that his existence is somehow related to the Gold Rush?”

  Ari raised his brows. “Or he’s trying to tell you something entirely different. He did specifically take you to Dyea when you followed him in the woods. Right where Sitaula was performing his lame excuse for prayers. Somehow I don’t think the Yeti bringing you there at that time was a coincidence. Maybe he was trying to show you what Sitaula has been doing, giving you clues as to what atrocities this man has been committing all along.”

  Kelsey considered this. “But, why? What does he think I can possibly do all by myself?”

  Ari eyed her. “Kelsey, you said he’s familiar. Legend says Yetis can live for hundreds of years. He must have met you in one of your different lifetimes. If that’s the case, maybe there’s something else he knows about you, too.”

  She snorted and widened her eyes. “How much more do you think I can do, Ari? What? You think I’m suddenly going to be able to sprout wings and fly? I’m not a superhero.”

  At this, Ari remained quiet.

  She squinted her eyes. “Okay, so my spiritual father was the Buddhist devil, Mara, my physical grandfather was descended fro
m an Egyptian sky god, and I can take myself to Xanadu. But that doesn’t mean I’m Wonder Woman.”

  He paused. “It kind of does, Kelsey.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. But let’s get one thing straight. Right now, I’m just a human girl. That’s it.” She eyed her brother. “You keep saying Sitaula is dirty. Just what do you think he is doing with these children?”

  Ari shrugged. “It could be anything. Maybe he’s killing them for some sort of dark magic ritual for his own warped view of eternal enlightenment and power, or maybe to hide some sort of other heinous activity. Have you looked at the guy? He’s in his mid-fifties, but he looks younger than when I first met him seven years ago. What if he’s sacrificing them for some sort of supernatural eternal youth?”

  Kelsey sighed. “Ari, this is Earth. You can’t simply turn back time. You’re stretching the facts to make things fit. He could look younger because he’s out of the corporate world and he’s been eating simply. Maybe he did have surgery. I’m sure there is a rational answer. The supernatural does not happen here in this realm every single moment.”

  This time he did answer. “Oh, really? You just proved it a few minutes ago. You really need to have more self-reflection about your abilities, Kelsey, and look in the mirror not to just put your makeup on. You’re certifiably the most supernatural creature on the entire planet. And what about your boyfriend who now can vanish into thin air with his twin sister?”

  Kelsey squinted. “Who told you that’s what happened? You shouldn’t even know this since we weren’t even on speaking terms. Was it Julia?”

  He made a face. “Who else do you think told me what’s been going on? Come on, if you weren’t going to speak to me, I had to find out what happened to you. There’s a lot of really crazy, supernatural things going on that don’t make sense in the real world. Desmond can now disappear into thin air, along with a sister that’s been in some kind of stasis for how many years? What about the monks who can influence your dreams by astrally projecting themselves across the globe while you sleep? What about Ustha coming down from the heavens to screw with me? For God’s sake, you’ve had Decans and Devas come down from the heavens to speak to you. Kelsey, the supernatural is all around us. All around you. Yetis are living and breathing right in front of us. You can travel to the mystical world of Xanadu, the place where souls go to choose their next incarnation. All of you are jumping through the different planes of existence and riding on mystical creatures. Don’t sit here and tell me magic doesn’t exist.”