Thin Air

by Michelle Paver

  He’s already climbing, his boots sending shards of ice spattering on to my face. And on top of the Crag, not one of the others remonstrates with him, or shouts, ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’

  I try to cry out – to scream and howl – but I only manage a groan. You bastards. Leaving me alone in the cold and the dark. Leaving me to die …

  With a cry, I jerk awake. My shirt sleeve hangs limply from the ‘window’. The breath of the void chills my face.

  I try not to think of it, but my thoughts keep circling back. I feel dizzy and sick. I can’t let myself go to sleep again. I don’t dare.

  Christ, it’s quiet in here. How I miss Nima’s flute and Pasang’s tuneless singing; Cedric snuffling about, Kits whistling between his teeth …

  They’re all gone. Even that gorak has abandoned me. It’s as if they planned it.

  From my pocket, I pull Nima’s ribbon. I remember his expression when he gave it to me: the pity in his brown eyes.

  Or was it apology? Did he know I was going to be left on my own?

  And why didn’t he give Lobsang the rucksack to take down to Base? Did Lobsang refuse? Or was Nima so worried about Cotterell that he forgot? Or did he leave it here on purpose?

  If they did abandon me deliberately, I think I can guess why. Being haunted isn’t only a portent of your own death. The harm spreads further, like a stain. A haunted man is a danger to others. Is that why Nima and Pasang left? And Cedric?

  Did they all know?

  * * *

  Smearing on the burnt cork has taken ages, but it’s worth it to prove my rationality. My gloved hands are now black with soot. I found my wrist watch, too, under the sack of sago. Heaven knows how it got there.

  Every breath is a struggle in this thin, dead air. I can feel every thud of my labouring heart. It’s an effort to keep my eyes open, but I refuse to give in. I lie watching the flame twisting in its little mica house. I clutch my talismans to my chest: match-tin, wrist watch, Nima’s ribbon.

  Time is elastic. The minutes stretch like hours, the hours snap by in moments. I find the little luminous dials on my watch reassuring. They show me time neatly cut into even pieces.

  The ceiling of my cave isn’t as close to my face as I’d thought. In fact, it’s not a ceiling, I’m lying on top of the Crag, staring up at a black sky thick with fast-falling snow.

  I’m still clutching Nima’s ribbon, but my wrist watch is gone – and where’s the match-tin?

  It’s here beside me. I must not let go of it again.

  A few yards off, a man in old-fashioned climbing gear sits slumped on his side. His balaclava and windproofs are crusted with ice. Something is wrong with his leg.

  I am that man. I am clutching the match-tin in rigid fingers. I must not let go.

  My eyelids are frozen open, I can’t even blink. Snow scours my eyeballs like ground glass, but I can’t brush it away. A jagged point of bone juts through the leg of my climbing suit. I need to push it back in, but I can’t move. I’m imprisoned in an icy carapace of frozen windproofs.

  The snow rips apart, and down below, I make out a camp with tents. I see men moving in the yellow beams of lanterns. Hope glimmers. I shout for help. My lips are too stiff to shape the words, and the wind snatches away my wheezy cries.

  Above me, the stars turn. The moon and the sun wheel across the sky – and always the wind and the snow attack. With an awkward, agonising jolt that grinds my shattered bone into my flesh, I bring the match-tin to my mouth, and drag it under my teeth, to mark the day. Pain stabs my brain. A tooth has snapped off. Blood pours from my mouth, freezing in a heartbeat.

  Down in camp, a man’s head pokes out of one of the tents. It’s Tennant. I recognise his helmet.

  Now he’s trudging towards the foot of the Crag. He’s seen me!

  With his mitten, he wipes his snow glasses. He raises his field glasses. I try to shout. I thud my frozen fists together. Help me!

  He has seen me. He is staring straight at me. His face doesn’t move and he makes no sound. Slowly, he lowers the field glasses. He turns and trudges back to the tent and disappears inside.

  He doesn’t come again. He only came to look. I am not a man, I am a lump of meat. He has left me alone in the cold and the howling darkness. Forever alone. Blood seeping from my shattered thigh, snow like ground glass filling my nose and mouth, scouring my eyeballs—

  I wake with a gasp.

  The darkness is absolute. The candle is dead. The wind is sucking the door in and out.

  I lie panting and shuddering, willing the nightmare to fade. I was trapped in that carapace of ice, but appallingly alive, appallingly aware …

  Gradually, the nightmare recedes, and my breath slows. The sweater that forms my pillow is scratchy beneath my cheek. Beyond my feet, I make out a faint grey glimmer around the mouth of the cave. I lie watching the stuff-sack sucking silently in and out. With a sigh, I turn over and bury my face in my pillow …

  —it isn’t my sweater. My face presses into something crumpled and cold. I inhale the dank smell of mouldy canvas. With a scream I recoil, falling back against the empty bunk. The rucksack is in here with me; it’s inside my sleeping bag.

  And the other bunk isn’t empty. Behind me I hear the stiff rustle of frozen windproofs. In the grey gloom, the darkness moves, and I make out a dim, humped form.

  Terror washes my mind white: for a heartbeat, I can’t see, can’t hear. I scramble for the door, but the sleeping bag is twisted round my legs, and my feet are tangled in the muffler and the hot-water tubing. The thing on the bunk heaves and comes after me. I squirm on my belly towards the cave mouth, kicking free of the bindings and the sleeping bag. One foot sinks into something that rustles and wraps around my ankle. Mewing, I thrash, clawing ice, hauling myself forwards – I burst out of the cave.

  The wind is a knife in my lungs as I lurch to my feet and stagger into the grey twilight. Over my shoulder, the cave mouth is utterly black, but at any moment, a dim hunched form will emerge and come after me.

  Now I’m at the edge of the crevasse. How did I get here?

  I’m swaying and clutching the rucksack in one hand. ‘No more,’ I gasp. ‘No more!’

  Yelling, I fling the rucksack into the crevasse.

  ‘There now,’ I pant. ‘Finished. No more.’

  * * *

  Behind me, ice clatters glassily down the cliff.

  I’m standing by the Sherpas’ Altar, although I’ve no memory of having staggered back from the crevasse. I’m not wearing my boots or my windproofs, I’m in gloves without mittens, and stockinged feet; but I’m still clutching my ribbon and my wrist watch.

  It’s twenty to five. Thank God. Not long till dawn.

  Somewhere above me, a voice shouts: ‘Below!’

  My heart stops. I thought it was over. I thought when I chucked the rucksack into the crevasse, that would be the end.

  ‘Below!’ The voice echoes from peak to peak.

  A snowball thuds into my chest – and there is Kits at the foot of the defile. ‘Hulloa, Bodge! Coming to meet us?’ And behind him are Garrard and Tenrit, Angdawa, Dorjit and Pasang, grinning as they make their way towards me down the porters’ highway.

  20

  ‘Good Lord, Bodge, where are your boots?’

  Kits is no longer grinning, and neither is Garrard. The Sherpas are staring at me open-mouthed.

  ‘Th-thank God you’re here!’ I stammer as I stumble towards them. ‘If we leave now, we can make it back to Base—’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ cries Kits.

  ‘I’ll take him inside,’ mutters Garrard. ‘Get him warmed up.’

  ‘Listen to me—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Bodge, what is this nonsense? It’ll be dark in an hour!’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I shout. ‘It’s five in the morning, it’s just getting light!’

  There’s silence.

  ‘Stephen,’ says Kits in an altered voice. ‘It’s five in the afternoon.
Now shut up and come inside.’

  * * *

  I don’t understand how it happened. While I was in that cave, I lost a whole day. And now the night has been and gone, and I’m still here at Camp Three.

  I flatly refused to re-enter my own ice cave, so Garrard took me to his. He stayed with me while Pasang fetched my things, then he warmed me up and saw to my feet.

  Some time later, a newly recovered Cherma arrived from Camp Two with a note from Cotterell, which Garrard read aloud: ‘Improving by leaps and bounds, fighting fit in a day or so …’ I’d forgotten about Cotterell. So much for my duty as a physician. Although I didn’t even feel guilty. I was too dazed.

  At dinner, I devoured four mugs of tea, a packet of Ginger Snaps, and a saucepanful of tapioca smothered in Golden Syrup. Normality returned – except that it didn’t, not for me. I told myself I was safe with all these people; that with the rucksack gone, there was nothing to fear. The rucksack was what drew it, so now it couldn’t come after me. But I didn’t believe it. I felt cut off from the others. I felt like the ghost at the feast. Ha ha ha.

  Garrard was unusually subdued, but Kits was in high spirits, going on about a possible route to the summit, and how splendid it had felt to be the first man ever to set foot on the Great Shelf; this with a pitying glance at me, the younger brother who’d lost his nerve and worked himself into a funk.

  If only Kits knew how profoundly I no longer care about the summit. While he was talking, I kept thinking: he doesn’t know. None of them knows.

  Then I became aware that he and Garrard were hatching plans to climb back to Camp Four in the morning. ‘You can’t do that,’ I said in a low voice.

  They exchanged glances.

  ‘I can’t explain now,’ I said, ‘and you wouldn’t believe me if I did, but there’s something terribly wrong with this place. We have to get the hell off this mountain as fast as we can, or something dreadful will happen.’

  Garrard sat pulling his nose and avoiding my eyes. Kits blew out a long breath. ‘Listen, old chap. It was rotten luck that you were here on your own, and you had a few bad dreams, but it’s over.’

  ‘I don’t care what you think, as long as we leave.’

  His eyes turned hard. ‘Do you have any idea of the state you were in?’

  ‘That doesn’t—’

  ‘Filthy with soot? Waving your arms like a madman? No boots, no windproofs—’

  ‘I’m not mad,’ I said between my teeth.

  ‘I didn’t say you were. But I am not about to scupper this entire expedition because you say so. According to the Sherpas, we’ve a few days’ good weather at best. That’s why we came down. I need every available man carrying supplies to Camp Four, so that we can make the push for the summit—’

  ‘To hell with the summit!’ I exploded.

  Kits continued as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘—and with Cotterell still hors de combat, I believe I have seniority. We leave at four thirty. As for you, Stephen, you do what you bloody well like.’

  There was no arguing with him, and soon afterwards, we turned in, Kits pigging it with Pasang in my ice cave, and me with Garrard in his. Just before he snuffed out the candle-lantern, Garrard asked what I meant by ‘wrong’. But I couldn’t talk about it in the dark, so I brushed him off. And I’d already taken a Veramon, to knock myself out.

  Next thing I knew, it was four fifteen and we were fastening our crampons. The ice cave was loud with breath and the rustle of windproofs. I got out of there as fast as I could.

  Now it’s the grey twilight before dawn. And this time it really is dawn: bitterly cold, but not much wind. The sky is heavy with snow, and the clouds are tinged with green. The Sherpas stand waiting in clouds of frosty breath.

  As we head across the Plateau, it begins to snow, a light, insidious pattering on my hood. I can just make out the red flags of the porters’ highway, snaking up the defile to the right of the ice cliff.

  Our headlamps are pinpricks of yellow, swallowed by the gloom. Kits is in the lead. I’m next, with Garrard behind me, followed by the Sherpas. We’re unroped, and it occurs to me to wonder if this is wise; but the ice steps don’t become steep until we reach the whale-back ridge.

  And I have to climb with them to Camp Four because I’m not brave enough to descend to Base on my own. Although in fact I doubt whether I’ll be allowed to escape from Camp Three. I tried before, and things conspired to bring me back. Why should it be different now?

  We pass the Sherpas’ Altar, and I stop to knock the packed snow from under my crampons with the butt of my axe. It’s not easy; my hands are hurting again. I can’t even feel my feet. They’re probably frostbitten. I no longer care.

  I hear the crunch of Garrard coming up behind me. His beard is white with frost. With his fist, he rubs his snow glasses clear. ‘What did you mean last night,’ he pants, ‘when you said something’s wrong?’

  ‘Not now, Beak.’

  ‘D’you think – there’s something here? Something bad?’

  Something bad … A jittery laugh bubbles up in my throat. Then, through his snow glasses, I see the terror in his eyes. I feel as if I’m falling. ‘You’ve seen it too.’

  He glances over his shoulder to check that the Sherpas are out of earshot. ‘Don’t tell Kits, he’ll think I’m—’

  ‘When? What did you see?’

  ‘Yesterday. On the ridge, just before we reached the defile.’ He licks his lips. ‘It was following. Broad daylight … Unspeakable.’

  ‘Come on, you lot!’ calls Kits, up ahead.

  ‘Don’t tell him,’ Garrard mutters fiercely.

  I stare at the Sherpas’ Altar, my thoughts in a whirl. A few days ago, we sat here chatting in the sun, on the afternoon they found the rucksack. Did I bring it inside the ice cave without knowing? I must have. And it must have been smeared with soot when I threw it down the crevasse. But I can’t remember.

  Besides, what does that matter now? Garrard has seen what I’ve seen. It isn’t only me.

  The steps of the porters’ highway are glassy and uneven. We haven’t climbed far up the defile when suddenly the snow is coming down much thicker and faster. Within moments, it’s a white-out, cutting us off from each other. I can hardly see Kits’ headlamp. I’m shut in with the snow, my breath loud in my ears, my windproofs caked and stiff.

  We struggle on, but it’s impossible. Garrard’s voice drifts up from below: ‘This is hopeless, we have to turn back!’

  Above me, Kits is almost out of sight, still doggedly climbing.

  ‘Kits!’ I yell. ‘We have to turn back!’

  His headlamp blinks out. Then I hear him. ‘Agreed! Everyone back to camp!’

  ‘Back to camp!’ I shout down to Garrard and the Sherpas.

  So ends my second attempt at escaping Camp Three.

  Climbing down the defile is harder, as I can’t see the steps. I jump the last four feet on to the Plateau. Snow up to my knees, whiteness whirling around me. For a moment, I don’t know where I am.

  I manage a few steps, and the Sherpas’ Altar looms into sight. I slump against it. I make out Garrard struggling towards the caves. Somewhere above, I hear Kits: ‘Stephen! Where are you?’

  ‘At the Sherpas’ Altar!’ I shout back. ‘I’ll wait here till you’re safely down!’

  ‘Right-ho!’

  He doesn’t appear, and I’m beginning to worry when I glimpse him, feeling his way with his axe down the last of the steps.

  Garrard has tired of waiting by the caves and is trudging back towards us with his head down.

  ‘I’m waiting for Kits,’ I pant as he approaches. ‘You stay here at the Altar! I’ll go and meet him—’

  It isn’t Garrard.

  Silence like a white wall, shutting me in. No crunch of footsteps, no rustle of frozen windproofs. It is hooded and faceless and crusted with ice. Its rage blasts me to my knees.

  With the slowness of a dream, I flounder to escape. Kits is calling my name. I open my mouth, but I can�
��t make a sound. It’s nearly upon me. I slip and fall. Can’t get up. The snow has balled beneath my crampons.

  It is so close I could reach out and touch it. If it comes another step nearer, my heart will burst.

  With a convulsive heave, I fling myself sideways. Over my shoulder, through swift-falling snow, I see it pass. I see the rucksack on its back.

  ‘Stephen, where are you!’ yells Garrard – the real Garrard, labouring towards me.

  Again Kits shouts, ‘All right, Stephen, I can see you now!’

  But I can’t see him. Where is he?

  Then the billowing whiteness rips apart – and there he is. He has passed the Sherpas’ Altar without seeing it, and instead of making for the caves, he’s heading in the other direction, trudging towards the ice-rimed figure that stands waiting. I open my mouth to scream a warning, but what comes out is a nightmare wheeze. It’s Garrard who screams, a dreadful animal shriek: ‘Kits turn back, you’re going the wrong way! You’re too near the edge!’ But Kits doesn’t hear, and as he reaches the thing he’s mistaken for me, there’s a deafening boom and a vast slab of ice breaks beneath him—

  —and he isn’t there any more.

  Kits is gone.

  21

  People don’t cry out when they fall. Kits didn’t. He made no sound at all.

  I stood with the snow pattering on my hood, random thoughts tumbling through my mind. Who’s going to tell his wife? Thank God Aunt Ruth will never know. How can he be gone?

  Then Garrard was screaming and staggering straight for the edge. ‘Oh God Kits no no no!’ I was pulling him down and he was lashing out at me, and the Sherpas were coming and we were dragging him back to the caves. We had to tie him up, and I gave him a sedative and held him while he cried great wrenching sobs. I didn’t cry, not then. I couldn’t believe that Kits was gone.

  We found out later that McLellan had watched the whole thing through his field glasses from Base. He’d seen what we couldn’t: that the edge of the Plateau was one vast overhanging cornice, which had broken off and taken Kits with it.