The Mad and the MacAbre

by Jeff Strand

  Only a crackle of static responded.

  “We’re almost to our destination now,” Cavenaugh finally said. “Maura, how far out are you guys?”

  “We’ve got to be close. We can’t see anything yet, but we can definitely smell it.”

  “Excellent. Report back as soon as you’re there,” Cavenaugh said. “Jess. You and Gabriel hold your position until we both check back in, and be ready to move in either direction should we find anything. Out.”

  Jess sighed and shoved the walkie-talkie into the backpack again. She looked out over the distant stream a moment longer before turning to face Gabriel. A gust of wind blew a sheet of snow between them.

  “Looks like the storm’s getting—” Gabriel started, but Jess silenced him with a sharp look.

  Their eyes locked and she steered his gaze to his right. She whispered the word “Slowly.”

  He nodded his understanding and unhurriedly turned around. At first he saw nothing but the cloud of steam rising from the spring, until the wind shifted and he momentarily had a clear view of the water and the far bank beyond. Heavily-needled pines shivered loose a shower of snow, which descended as sparkling bits of glitter onto the shrubs beneath. And there, under the cover of a juniper, was a small orange shape with green eyes and one pricked ear.

  “Toss me one of those granola bars,” he whispered, fearing even the slightest movement would send Oscar hurtling into the underbrush. He heard the rustling sound of Jess rummaging through the bag, and then the soft tap of something hitting the ground at his feet.

  Gabriel never allowed his eyes to stray from the cat’s as he crouched and grabbed the bar. He had to glance down at the wrapper to tear it open. When he looked back at the forest, Oscar was gone.

  He cursed under his breath and watched the tree line a while longer before returning to Jess, who must have read the expression of disappointment on his face.

  “He followed us this far,” she said. “You’ll get your chance sooner or later.”

  He smiled at the sincerity of her words and squeezed her hand. She smiled back, and he caught a glint of what might have been mischief in her eyes.

  “Don’t look now,” she said, “but I think our furry friend’s overcoming his shyness.”

  Gabriel turned to his left, and there was the orange tabby, standing right at the edge of the forest, thick winter coat spotted with clumps of snow.

  Oscar sat on his haunches, cocked his lopsided head, and let out a meow.

  ***

  The cat cautiously crossed the icy rock ledge to where Gabriel knelt with a chunk of granola held as far away from his body as he could manage. Jess crouched beside him with another piece of the broken bar at the ready. As Oscar drew near, his haunches trembled, but he pressed on. Once he was within three feet, he paused, then darted in, took the granola, and scampered back out of range. Only this time, he didn’t disappear into the woods. He dropped his meal onto the ground and positioned himself so he could watch them while he ate.

  After he crunched down the last morsel, he inspected Gabriel, who was already offering another bite.

  A burst of static from the walkie-talkie, and Oscar was gone.

  “Shoot,” Gabriel said.

  “It’s progress,” Jess said as she produced the communications device from the backpack.

  The buzzing sound continued until she walked away from the thicker canopy toward the valley slope where the trees thinned significantly.

  “…here now.” Cavenaugh’s voice took form from the white noise. “It’s roughly the size of a swimming pool, but I can’t tell how deep it is. The water’s fairly cloudy. I can maybe see the tops of some rocks…and they’re red. We definitely have confirmation of the bacteria.”

  “We’re here now too,” Maura said. “This one is much smaller. Roughly ten feet in diameter, but it looks really deep. There are all kinds of tiny bubbles, like the water’s carbonated or something. I just…can’t see the bottom. There’s a lot of red stuff though. There’s a ring on the rocks all around the spring. It looks like some kind of sludge. Even the water has a pinkish tint to it.”

  Gabriel looked at the spring behind him and then back at Jess. A knot of tension tightened in his gut.

  “They’re only on the other side of the mountain,” Jess said. “Why would there be so much more bacterial growth?”

  “Did you say pink?” Cavenaugh asked. “We’re getting a lot of feedback on our end. There are only a couple rocks with that stuff growing on them here. Do you see anything else, Maura?”

  “It’s too deep to tell. Will broke a branch off a tree and tried to reach the bottom, but just ended up losing the stick. The spring itself is recessed into what almost looks like a crater. There are fairly steep, slick rock walls all around it. We’re surrounded by a ring of pine trees so large their branches nearly touch across the water.”

  “Do you see any bones, Maura? Any sign that they might have been there?”

  “No. Nothing. Wait…”

  Gabriel heard the muffled sound of Will’s voice, too far from the microphone to be intelligible, a click, and then dead air. He looked at Jess, whose eyes reflected the anxiety that rose within him.

  “Maura?” Cavenaugh called, his voice taut.

  “Will found something,” Maura said. “Give me just a minute. It’s covered with this red slime. I’m scraping it off as fast as I…Jesus.”

  “What?” Cavenaugh nearly screamed. “What is it?”

  “It’s a bone,” she whispered. “Rounded and smooth on one end. Blunted and widened on the other. About the length of an upper arm.”

  “Where did you find it?” Jess asked. “Are there more?”

  “Will found it right at the edge. Just under the water, wedged between some rocks. He was looking for another stick to test the depth…”

  There was a crackle of static.

  “Maura?” Cavenaugh asked. “Maura!”

  Jess’s face paled and she hurriedly donned the backpack.

  “Jess,” Cavenaugh said. “You guys are the closest. Get moving!”

  “There are more,” Maura said. The tremor in her voice was evident even over the underlying fuzz of white noise. “Dear God. There are so many more. Will’s pulling them out of the water one after another. More long bones. What are those? Jesus. Ribs. A spine. Is all of that still connected?”

  “Maura,” Cavenaugh said. “Leave everything where it is. Stop pulling it out and wait for us to get there. Do you copy, Maura?”

  “Yes. Don’t touch the bones. Now that Will’s pulled the ones with all the sludge on them off the top, we can see a whole pile of them. We’ll leave them where they are until you get here. What do you want us to do in the mean—?”

  “Maura?”

  “Shh.” Her voice was so soft it could have been static. “Did you hear that?”

  “Maura, I can barely hear you.”

  “Shh. There it was again.”

  “Get out of there!” Cavenaugh shouted. “Now!”

  Gabriel sprinted to the north, away from the spring, leaping over boulders and slaloming between tree trunks. He slipped, hit the ground, and propelled himself to his feet again.

  “Please,” Maura whispered. “You have to be quiet. There’s somebody—”

  She screamed so loudly through the walkie-talkie that it echoed off into the forest.

  There was a clattering sound, a burst of static, then a dying hiss that bled away into nothingness.

  ***

  Gabriel’s legs burned and the altitude had stolen his breath, causing him to double over as he walked. He was panting, trying to steal enough oxygen to prepare himself to run again. His head was light, disconnected. Maura’s scream played over and over within on a continuous loop.

  “Maura? Will?” Cavenaugh’s voice called from the walkie-talkie Jess held in her fist. His words were ragged, his breathing fast and haggard. “Do you read me?”

  There was a crashing sound behind Gabriel and he turned to see
Jess crumpled in the snow amidst a scattering of broken branches. By the time he reached her, she had already pushed herself to all fours. Her shoulders shuddered, and when she looked up at him, tears streamed down her red, chafed cheeks. She reached into her jacket pocket and removed the emergency transceiver, scanned through channels of static, and screamed in frustration.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said, helping her stand. “They probably just saw a mountain lion and dropped the walkie-talkie in their hurry to find cover.”

  “Maura said she heard ‘somebody.’”

  “Who else could possibly be up there?”

  The answer hung in the silence between them.

  “We need to keep moving,” Jess said. She shoved the transceiver back into her coat and stumbled away from him through the calf-deep accumulation. The wind rose with a howl, shaking the upper canopy and dumping clouds of snow all around them. They remained partially shielded by the dense forestation, but the wind that managed to find them lanced right through their gear.

  “How close are you?” Cavenaugh panted.

  “I don’t know,” Jess said. The panic sharpened her voice.

  “Don’t go in without us. You wait for us before you get to the spring. Am I clear? You wait for us. Copy?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  A steep valley opened before them, a vertical scar formed by centuries of spring runoff from the exposed summit. The descent wasn’t sheer, though neither was it graceful. They were going to have to carefully choose their route to navigate the clusters of pines and limestone cliffs. Progress would be slow, but on the other side of the canyon the forest bent to the right, following the western slope of the peak as it gradually became the northern.

  And somewhere, just out of sight over the jagged horizon and beneath the seemingly impenetrable masses of trees, was a steaming cauldron full of human bones.

  ***

  They ascended from the forest onto a windswept slope of bare granite. The ground was uneven with sharp boulders as though the mountaintop were in a perpetual state of decay, sending large chunks of rock tumbling down to meet the resistance of the trees. There was no longer anything to save them from the wind, which battered them with fists of snow and bitter cold. They had hoped to be able to see the steam from the spring from this higher vantage point, but the worsening storm choked visibility down to fifty yards at best, and even then they could only look for so long before the snow that pelted them in the face forced them to turn away.

  How much time had passed since Maura’s communication had been abruptly terminated by her scream? Two hours? Three? Time had lost all meaning. There was only the mountain and the elements, which warred against each other with stone and ice, creating a treacherous battlefield to cross.

  Gabriel tried to tell himself that Maura had just been startled by an animal and had dropped the walkie-talkie, which had broken on the rocks surrounding the spring and short-circuited in the warm water. He imagined that even now she and Will were pacing nervously, waiting for the rest of them to arrive so they could apologize for worrying them and explain away Maura’s clumsiness, but deep down, Gabriel knew that wasn’t the case. There was something in the air, something callous and unfeeling, a deadness that seemed to radiate from the earth beneath their feet and whisper promises of suffering on the breeze.

  Jess brushed the snow off of a boulder in the lee of another larger stone and sat down. She brought the emergency transceiver to life with a squawk of feedback. The only response was static, but it changed in quality as she scanned through the bandwidths. Rather than a harsh crackle, it produced a more subdued buzz.

  “Is someone there?” she asked. “Can anybody hear me?”

  She fine-tuned the knobs and elicited more feedback. When it faded, there was something else beneath it. A voice.

  “…you copy?” a man’s voice asked from a million miles away. “I repeat: This is Alpine Ranger Station. Do you copy?”

  “Oh my God,” Jess blurted. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The voice sounded bored, distracted, as though the ranger had been stolen away from a good book and a fresh mug of coffee. “Is everything all right?”

  “This is an emergency. We’ve lost contact with two members of our group on the northern face of Mount Isolation.”

  “What the hell are you guys doing up there in this storm? We’re under a winter storm warning and all roads up the mountain are closed. How in the world did you get up there anyway?”

  “We’re staying in the old cabins on County Road 432. We started hiking—”

  “I didn’t receive notification that anyone would be staying there. Standard protocol dictates that the owner or leasing agency contact us regarding all off-season rentals, and no one ever—”

  “There’s no time to argue,” Jess snapped. “Our friends might be in big trouble up here.”

  “There’s no way anyone can reach them until the storm breaks. Even with four-wheel drives, we can only get as far as the main road. You’re talking about hiking for miles up into the mountains in this weather. We’re better served waiting it out and sending up a Search & Rescue chopper—”

  “We found human remains.”

  “Please repeat,” the ranger said, now all business.

  “We found human remains. Do I have your attention now?”

  “Are you certain?”

  “They’re in the hot spring on the northern slope of the mountain. Our friends had just discovered them when communications were cut off.”

  “Where are you now? State your position.”

  “Maybe a quarter to a half mile southwest of the spring.”

  “Are you in any immediate danger?”

  “No, but our friends—”

  “Stay on this channel,” he said. Gabriel could hear the ranger talking away from the radio, but was unable to make out his words. “I’m patching you through to the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department.”

  The wind erupted with a scream and a new siege of snowflakes commenced, isolating them even from the rocks surrounding them. Gabriel had to duck his head and walk closer to Jess just to keep her in sight.

  “We need to keep moving,” he said. “Maura and Will might need our help.”

  Jess held up a finger to signify that she only needed another minute. The transceiver crackled. Jess brought it right next to her ear in order to hear over the wind and static. There was a loud squeal and a faint voice emerged in bursts from the overpowering fuzz.

  “…Deputy Ross, Morgan County…Department. What is…on the way…twenty-four hours…”

  The static silenced the voice like the closing of a coffin lid.

  “Are you still there?” Jess shouted. “Can you hear me?”

  “We can try again when the storm dies down,” Gabriel said. He took her by the hand and guided her down off the rock.

  Jess screamed in frustration, but the blizzard swallowed the sound before it could echo.

  They hurried back into the relative protection of the trees and again continued east along the northern face of the peak. The wind tore right through the forest, bringing with it the assault of flakes and the reinforcements from the accumulation in the branches above. Visibility was fading fast. All either of them could see was the thickening sheet of white underfoot and the dark silhouettes of tree trunks.

  Even the sweat under Gabriel’s clothing had chilled to the point that his skin positively ached with goosebumps. They were going to have to seek shelter from the elements soon before their body temperature began to plummet.

  Jess walked with one of the communication devices in either hand. The grainy buzz from both in stereo and the churning white dots of snow lent the impression of walking through television static.

  “Cavenaugh,” Jess said into the smaller of the two units. “Do you read me?”

  She depressed the button and waited for a response.

  There was nothing but dead air.

  ***

  Gabr
iel knew how quickly the weather in Colorado could turn, but he had still been caught off-guard. Down along the Front Range of the Rockies, six inches could accumulate in mere hours from formerly blue skies. Traffic would slow to a crawl. Businesses and schools would close early or not open at all. People would hunker down in their houses with central heat and fireplaces, enjoy hot cocoa and freshly baked cookies, and watch the forecast on their big screen TVs while dreading the prospect of brushing the snow off the satellite dish or shoveling the walk. But this…this was something different entirely.

  This was survival.

  It had taken him until now to recognize that simple truth. The only fireplaces were nearly a four-mile blind hike over a nightmare terrain of ice, where every tree looked just like the last and the only directions not masked by the blizzard were up and down. There was the very real possibility that if they didn’t find somewhere to ride out the storm, they could end up walking to their deaths. He had read in the newspaper about hikers vanishing a couple times every year for as long as he could remember, but he had never realized just how easy it could be. If they didn’t find the others soon—

  And then he smelled it, the faint hint of salty marsh.

  He turned around and looked at Jess, who had taken to walking in his boot prints from sheer fatigue. Her entire face was chafed and red, the skin cracking on her cheekbones and peeling in strands from her lips. She acknowledged that she had noticed the scent with a nod.

  Cavenaugh had told them not to approach the spring until he arrived, but they couldn’t just hang out in the woods waiting from him. They needed to make sure that Maura and Will were all right, and then they needed to seek shelter. The plan was to come upon the site slowly, cautiously, to study it from the anonymity of the trees to ensure that everything was fine. Once they determined it was safe to do so, then they were just going to walk right down there and figure out what they were going to do. Cavenaugh could kiss their asses if he thought they were going to stand around in this blizzard waiting for him to announce his grand arrival.

  It was snowing so hard that Gabriel didn’t notice the steam through the flakes, or perhaps the wind was blowing so hard that it simply dissipated. He barely saw the iced granite rim of the crater in time to keep from stumbling out into the open. Crouching behind the wide trunk of a ponderosa pine, he motioned for Jess to do the same. He wanted to call out for Maura and Will, but something prevented him from doing so. It wasn’t as though he had expected to find them standing right there at the edge of the spring, but he had hoped to find some sign of them. He could only shake his head at the seemingly irrational thoughts and fears.