Dead Five's Pass (2 page)

“No…no…” he screamed.

Like great snakes the limbs slithered around his legs and arms and pulled them to all points of the compass, breaking, twisting bones, stretching tendons.

The screams caught in his throat as hooks embedded in the limbs the color of obsidian shredded his winter clothes to remnants. The flaying continued until those razorlike claws thrashed at his skin.

He wished he never discovered that damned cave. He wished he never logged onto that damned climbing forum and saw those new satellite pictures.

But more than that, he wished for a quick and painless death.

He was only granted the first part of that last wish.

2

The weather was turning bad. Carise didn’t feel good at all about the whole situation. There were murmurings on the CB radio among two truckers about some girl covered in mud and snow, running by the side of the road. They called it in, but when Carise questioned them more about it, both of them disappeared off the line.

Whatever happened to the girl, they didn’t want to talk about it.

Allied with the ranger calling in the emergency request, it was shaping up to be a rough night.

She thought about the bottle of reserve whiskey in the storage room. Her hands trembled. But no, she’d make sure she was sober for whatever might occur. She couldn’t afford anymore slip-ups; especially after the last time.

It should have been a routine rescue, with her and her boyfriend at the time, Marcel, first on site. The cave was well-known to the both of them, and the boy, who was no more than eighteen years old, had got stuck in a common place: the dead-drop. A narrow tunnel that sunk twenty meters into a large, open cavern. The difficulty was that it tapered and twisted in the middle. It was easy for people to misjudge their alignment—and size—and get themselves stuck.

In the struggle, Carise didn’t check that he was secured to their ropes properly, and when she instructed him to twist his body and let the ropes take the weight, his backpack slid up and above his head and he dropped all the way to the rocky basin of the cavern.

He was dead the instant he hit the ground.

The rope that should have pulled him up floated uselessly in the darkness with Carise clutching the other end, shouting her throat hoarse with panic and desperation.

His body was eventually recovered and buried. She couldn’t bring herself to attend the service, the prying, accusing eyes of the villagers too much for her to bear.

Damn, that whiskey would be good right now
.

Her throat constricted and she swallowed the grief as she sunk to the battered sofa in her cabin’s lounge area. She still had the paper with the headlines of the accident on the coffee table. She refused to throw it away because she might start to forget his face, and she didn’t deserve to forget him.

Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision, and she dug her nails into her palms to try and stop herself from free-falling into grief and guilt. Her cell phone buzzed inside her pocket.

Choking back the tears and settling herself, she answered, “Carise.”

“Hey, darlin’. How’ya holding up?”

“Hi, Marge. I’m getting by, thanks. This about the kids stuck in the pass?”

“Huh. I wondered if you’d hear that. Still got the scanner, eh?”

“Yeah, you know me. I like to keep my ear to the ground, ya know. In case of… accidents.”

“Well, darlin’, we’ve got a peach for ya here. Ol’Frank called in an emergency, but they didn’t respond. You probably heard that. But here’s the thing: one of them was found. A girl. She’s in a real bad way. Says her boyfriend’s still up there.”

“Where exactly?”

“That’s the thing. She says there’s a newly discovered cave. Her story is…well, I can’t explain. Can you come to the station and hear her out? You might get more sense from her, and maybe figure out where her boyfriend got to.”

“Sure thing, Marge. Give me ten minutes.”

“Oh, and Carise?”

“Yeah?”

“Brace yourself, darlin’. She’s not in a good way.”

Carise switched the phone off, placed it in a protective breast pocket on the inside of her winter jacket. She stood from the sofa, her legs were weak beneath her slight weight and she became light-headed.

“Come on, girl! Get a grip, let’s do this.” Carise gripped her fists and closed her eyes before taking one last look at the paper and the smiling face of her rescue-gone-wrong victim and vowed she wouldn’t let it happen again. There were enough ghosts in life; she didn’t want to add another. And then she wondered: would Marcel get a call? Despite their split, he was still active in the volunteer rescue setup. The thought of facing him again filled her with almost as much dread as facing this rescue.

She gathered the last of her gear into a rescue pack: spare flashlights, carabiners, ice picks, extra rope, and two-way radio handsets and prepared to leave for the station.

The wind howled and battered at her modest cabin. With a gloved hand, she wiped away the ice forming on the inside of the window and peered out. It was snowing heavily now and the sun was minutes from setting. It was riskier in the dark, but if they could get the chopper in the air, there was a small chance they’d see something under the spotlight.

Regardless of the odds, they had to at least try. Without shelter, it was unlikely anyone lost in the pass would survive the night; especially given the weather warnings. Freezing rain and heavy snowfall predicted a bad night for all concerned.

Carise packed her gear into the back of her old, battered F-150 and settled into the driver’s seat. She started the engine and pulled away onto the dirt track, which thankfully wasn’t as bad as she first thought. A half-pint bottle of whiskey rolled around the passenger seat. She placed it into the glove box and hoped she wouldn’t need it.

* * *

“Brick! Hey, Brick. What’re you doing over there?” Michael called out to his fellow climber as he watched him leave the base camp tent and head over to the five standing stones with his flashlight. It was almost dark now, and the moonlight shone on the snow, creating a cool gray landscape. Dave, aka Brick on account of his muscular build, ignored Michael’s calls and continued shining his light on the ground as if he were looking for something.

Michael pulled his head back into the tent to regard his other two friends, James and Nate. “Guys, what the hell is Brick doing?”

James, living up to his nickname of Mouse, burrowed into his sleeping bag and shook his head. His pointed features and blonde, spiky hair only added to the rodent resemblance. “Who knows? But keep an eye on him, will ya, Mike.”

“Guys, chill out. He’s just gone to check for a GPS signal. He’s making sure we’re on the right path,” Nate said. “If you’re worried, go after him.”

“Yeah sure, let me take the responsibility—again, not like you two ain’t got anything better to do.” Michael sighed at the lack of help from his fellow climbers. They were all part of a local university climbing group and were out on winter break. They would have been at this new fabled cave by now if they hadn’t misread the map and got lost. And now Dave was off on a trek for no apparent reason.

Losing his patience with James and Nate, Michael left the tent and followed Dave’s footsteps. He stood unmoving just in front of the huge stones, and his massive frame and wild black hair whipped in the wind.

“What’s up, Brick?” Had he found something? Why wasn’t he moving? Michael pulled his fur-rimmed hood around his face and continued to tramp through the deep snow.

A high-pitched keening noise came from the still climber like a dog whining at the door for food. Michael reached out a hand and gripped Dave’s shoulder, pulling him round to face him. Tears streaked down his reddened face, which was twisted into a mask of sheer terror. Dave breathed in short, shallow breaths and pointed his hand beyond the stones. Michael had never seen Brick break down like that. He was the enforcer on the university’s ice hockey team. He didn’t cry easily.

Michael followed the direction and shone his flashlight.

He wished he didn’t.

Bile rose in his throat and he fell to his knees, retching his early meal of campfire beans and sausages onto the snow. Beyond the stones was a gory mess of skin, bones and blood. It was like a scene from a slaughterhouse. The bones were broken; their ends pointed and sharp. The face was no longer on the skull, but lay next to it, twisted and deformed as if it were in pain.

“Wha…what the fucking hell…” Michael’s words came out in a stuttering fashion between ragged breaths. Dave just stared into the distance, shaking his head. Silent.

“Bears…it’s gotta be,” Michael said.

“That ain’t no bear.” Nate’s voice came from behind him. He stood gripping his ice axe in one hand and a flashlight in the other. “Bears don’t skin their victims. And those bones, snapped like that? That takes way more force.”

Michael knew Nate was right. Nate was a medical student, after all. He’d know about this kind of thing. But that didn’t make it any better. It made it worse.

Michael turned to Dave and Nate. “We can’t camp here tonight. Not with that…thing…or whatever it is on the loose. We’ve got to carry on and find that cave. It’s far closer than the truck. These are the stones that were on those satellite images.” Michael was referring to the images that were shared that morning on their private climbers online group. They, along with another pair, were competing to discover it first.

“Guys, you don’t think…this is one of the other climbers?” Michael said.

Dave shook his head, but the expression on his face remained of abject terror: his eyes wide and his mouth stretched into a tight grimace.

Nate circled the five stones and disappeared beyond the left side. His flashlight beam flickered between those ancient fangs and danced across the blood. Where once it just looked like dark brown dirt, or maybe oil, now it was wet, glistening crimson. It didn’t belong here on the virgin snow. But neither did this tableau of gore. Michael’s mind raced at the various horrors lurking in the dark: wolves, bears, axe murderers.

Nate came back around from the stones and pulled Michael from his terror, but didn’t make it any better.

“He’s a climber.” Nate held a fragment of a neon-yellow winter jacket.

“Was,” Dave said, his voice low and solemn, devoid of emotion, or too much.

All three of them just stood there and stared at each other. Dumb fear.

From the distance within the tent, Mouse called out, “What’s happening?”

They all turned around in sync and headed back to the tent.

“We’re getting out of here, that’s what’s happening. And we’re calling this in,” Michael said, trying to hold the panic back, and mostly failing.

3

Marcel switched off the CB radio and froze. He was hoping this weekend would mark the end of climbing season. He wanted to leave the country for a week, take Janis, his fiancée, away on a fishing trip in Florida, catch some sun and marlin—make some attempts at repairing their relationship. But if what those two truckers were saying was true, then something terrible had happened.

He couldn’t leave now, not if there were still people out there in the pass. It’d also mean he’d have to see Carise again.

The thought of her still hurt like an iron spike to the chest. There was so much unresolved grief there: the loss of their child, the accident, her descent into alcoholism—and worse: his abandonment. But it was mutually destructive, them staying together. Her blaming herself for the miscarriage, and him trying to ignore it even happened.

It was all circular.

Marcel swallowed his mug of lukewarm tea, walked out of his cramped study and into the cabin’s kitchen.

“You heard then?” he said to Janis, referring to the trucker’s conversation about the girl.

She kept her back to him, arms propped up on the countertop, her back hunched with tension. He could almost feel the words before they came out of her mouth.

“You can’t go to her. Not after all this time. I won’t have it,” Janis said.

“No discussion, no—”

She spun, her eyes were wide and her mouth curled into a sneer.

“You will not see that…bitch.” She spat that last word like it was poison.

“It’s Carise, it wouldn’t hurt you to use her name.”

“If you go, that’s it,” she said.

This scenario had played out hundreds of times in his head all the while waiting for a call from Marge, or Frank, waiting for the time when he would have to go out together with Carise again. Janis had wanted him to quit the rescue team months ago, but there was no one else in this godforsaken community willing to help. And none that knew the pass better than he. He’d lived here all his life, which of course made the gossip on the CB about a newly discovered cave all the more surprising.

“Why does it have to be so final with you all the time?” he said. “I can’t ignore my responsibilities. If there’s kids out there—”