Touching the Void (14 page)

I couldn’t stop myself. Pain in my knee jolted through me, demanding movement. I had to get my weight off it. I moved, and slipped. Every muscle gripped down at the snow—DON’T MOVE. The movement slowed, then stopped. I gasped, having held my breath for too long. Reaching out again I felt my hand touch the hard ice wall. Then I groped for the ice hammer attached to a lanyard of thin cord clipped to my harness. Fumbling in the dark, I found the cord running tightly away from me and pulled it, bringing the hammer up out of the drop in front of me. I had to hammer an ice screw into the wall without pushing myself off the ledge I was perched on.

It proved harder than I expected. Once I had found the last remaining screw attached to my harness I had to twist round and face the wall. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Starlight and the moon glimmering through my entry hole in the roof above gave enough light for me to see the abysses on either side of me. I could see grey-shadowed ice walls and the stark blackness of the drops, too deep for the light to penetrate. As I began to hammer the screw into the ice I tried to ignore the black space beyond my shoulder. The hammer blows echoed around the ice walls, and from deep below me, from the depths of blackness at my shoulder, I heard second and third echoes drift up. I shuddered. The black space held untold horrors. I hit the screw, and felt my body slide sideways with each blow. When it was driven in to its hilt I clipped a karabiner through the eye and hurriedly searched for the rope at my waist. The black spaces menaced and my stomach knotted in empty squeezing clenches.

I hauled myself into a half-sitting position close to the wall, facing the drop on my left. My legs kept slipping on the snow so that I had constantly to shuffle back to the wall. I dared not let go of the ice screw for more than a few seconds, but my fingers needed a lot longer to tie the knot. I swore bitterly each time I made a mess of the knot and feverishly tried again. I couldn’t see the rope, and although normally I could tie the knot blindfold, I was now hampered by frozen hands. I couldn’t feel the rope well enough to thread it back on itself and form the knot. After six attempts I was at the point of tears. I dropped the rope. Reaching for it I slipped forward towards the drop and lunged back scrabbling at the wall for the screw. My mitt slipped across the wall, and I began to fall backwards. I clawed at the ice trying to get my fingers to grip through the mitts, and then felt the screw hit my hand. My ringers locked round it, and the fall stopped. I stayed motionless, staring at the black hole in front of me.

After several abortive attempts suddenly I found that I had tied a knot of sorts. I held it close to my face and looked up through it at the dim light shining through the entry hole in the roof above. I could see the bulge of the knot, and above it the loop I had been struggling to tie. I chuckled excitedly, feeling ridiculously pleased with myself, and clipped it to the ice screw, smiling foolishly into the darkness. I was safe from the black spaces.

I relaxed against the comforting tightness of the rope and looked up at the small hole in the roof, where the sky was cloudless, packed with stars, and moonlight was adding its glow to their bright sparkle. The screwed-up tension in my stomach flowed away, and for the first time in many hours I began to order my mind into normal thoughts. I’m only, what…fifty feet down this crevasse. It’s sheltered. I can get out in the morning if I wait for Simon…

‘SIMON!?’

I spoke his name aloud in a startled voice. The word echoed softly back. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might be dead, and as I thought about what had happened the enormity of it struck me. Dead? I couldn’t conceive of him dead, not now, not after I’ve survived. The chill silence of the crevasse came over me; the feel of tombs, of space for the lifeless, coldly impersonal. No one had ever been here. Simon, dead? Can’t be! I’d have heard him, seen him come over the cliff. He would have come on to the rope, or down here. I began to giggle again. Despite my efforts I couldn’t prevent it, and the echoes bounced back at me from the ice walls, sounding cracked and manic. It became so that I couldn’t work out whether I was laughing or sobbing. The noises that returned from the darkness were distorted and inhuman, cackling echoes rolling up and around me. I giggled more, listened and giggled again, and for a moment forgot Simon, and the crevasse, and even my leg. I sat, hunched against the ice wall, laughing convulsively, and shivering. It was the cold. Part of me recognised this; a calm rational voice in my head told me it was the cold and the shock. The rest of me went quietly mad while this calm voice told me what was happening and left me feeling as if I were split in two—one half laughing, and the other looking on with unemotional objectivity. After a time I realised it had all stopped, and I was whole again. I had shivered some warmth back, and the adrenalin from the fall had gone.

I searched in my rucksack for the spare torch battery I knew was there. When I had fitted it, I switched on the beam and looked into the black space by my side. The bright new beam cut down through the blackness and lit ice walls that danced away down into depths my torch couldn’t reach. The ice caught the light, so that it gleamed in blue, silver and green reflections, and I could see small rocks frozen into the surface dotted the walls at regular intervals. They glistened wetly as I swept the beam down the smooth scalloped dimples. I swallowed nervously. By the light I could see down into 100 feet of space. The walls, twenty feet apart, showed no sign of narrowing. I could only guess at how many hundreds of feet the blackness beyond my torch was hiding. In front of me the opposite wall of the crevasse reared up in a tangle of broken ice blocks and fifty feet above me they arched over to form a roof. The slope to my right fell away steeply for about thirty feet, after which it disappeared. Beyond it lay a drop into darkness.

The darkness beyond the light gripped my attention. I could guess what it hid, and I was filled with dread. I felt trapped, and looked quickly around me for some break in the walls. There was none. Ice flashed light back from hard blank walls, or else the beam was swallowed by the impenetrable blackness of the holes on either side. The roof covered the crevasse to my right and fell down in frozen chaos to my left, blocking the open end of the crevasse from my view. I was in a huge cavern of snow and ice. Only the small black hole above, winking starlights at me, gave any view of another world, and unless I climbed the blocks it was as unreachable as the stars.

I turned the torch off to save the batteries. The darkness seemed more oppressive than ever. Discovering what I had fallen into hadn’t cleared my mind. I was alone. The silent emptiness, and the dark, and the star-filled hole above, mocked my thoughts of escape. I could only think of Simon. He was the only chance of escape, but somehow I was convinced that if he was not dead, then he would think that I was. I shouted his name as loud as I could, and the sound jumped back at me, and then faded in dying echoes in the holes below me. The sound would never be heard through the walls of snow and ice. The roof was fifty feet above me. On the rope I had hung at least fifty feet above the roof. Simon would see the huge open side of the crevasse, and the cliff, and he would know at once that I was dead. You can’t fall that far and survive. That’s what he would think. I knew it. I would think the same if I were in his place. He would see the endless black hole and know that I had died in it. The irony of falling 100 feet and surviving unscathed was almost unbearable.

I swore bitterly, and the echoes from the darkness made it a futile gesture. I swore again, and kept swearing, filling the chamber with angry obscenities which cursed me back in echoes. I screamed frustration and anger until my throat dried, and I could shout no more. When I was silent I tried to think of what would happen. If he looks in he will see me. He might even hear me. Maybe he heard me just then? He won’t leave unless he’s sure. How do you know he’s not dead already? Did he fall with me? Find out…pull the rope!

I tugged on the loose rope. It moved easily. When I turned my torch on I noticed it hanging down from the hole in the roof. It hung in a slack curve. I pulled again and soft snow flurried on to me. I pulled steadily, and as I did so I became excited. This was a chance to escape. I waited for the rope to come tight. I wanted it to come tight. It kept moving easily. It was strange to want the weight of Simon’s body to come on to the rope. I had instantly found a way to get out, and it meant only that. When Simon had fallen he would have swept out and clear of the crevasse. So he must have hit the slope and stopped. He would be dead. He must be after that fall.

When the rope comes tight I can Prussik up it. His body will anchor it solidly. Yes. That’s it…I saw the rope flick down, and my hopes sank. I drew the slack rope to me, and stared at the frayed end. Cut! I couldn’t take my eyes from it. White and pink nylon filaments sprayed out from the end. I suppose I had known all along. It was a madness. Crazy to have believed in it, but everything was getting that way. I wasn’t meant to get out of here. Damn it! I shouldn’t even have got this far. He should have left me on the ridge. It would have saved so much…I’ll die here after all that. Why bother trying?

I turned off the torch and sobbed quietly in the dark, feeling overwhelmed. I cried in bursts, and between them listened to the childlike sounds fade beneath me, then cried again. It was cold when I awoke. I came up slowly from a long emptiness and wondered where I was. Sleep had taken me unawares, and I was startled. The cold had woken me. That was a good sign. It could as easily have taken me. I felt calm. It was going to end in the crevasse. Perhaps I had always known it would end this way. I felt pleased to be able to accept it calmly. All that sobbing and shouting had been too much. Acceptance seemed better. There was no trauma this way. I was certain then that Simon would leave me for dead. It didn’t surprise me. Indeed it made things easier. There was one less thing to worry about. I thought it might take me a few days to die. In the end I decided that three days would pass. It was sheltered in the crevasse, and with my sleeping bag I could survive a good few days. I imagined how long it would seem; a long long period of twilight, and darkness, drifting from exhausted sleep into half-consciousness. Maybe the last half would be dreamless sleeping, ebbing away quietly. I thought carefully of the end. It wasn’t how I had ever imagined it. It seemed pretty sordid. I hadn’t expected a blaze of glory when it came, nor had I thought it would be like this slow pathetic fade into nothing. I didn’t want it to be like that. I sat up and turned on the torch. Looking at the wall above the ice screw, I thought it might be possible to climb out. Deep inside I knew it would be impossible, but I urged the faint hope on, deciding that if I fell then at least it would be swift. My resolve failed me when I looked at the black void on either side of me. The ice bridge suddenly seemed to be desperately precarious. I fastened a Prussik knot to the rope above the screw. I would climb while still attached to the screw. I could let slack rope out through the Prussik but if I fell the Prussik might stop me. I knew it would probably snap but I couldn’t summon enough nerve to climb unroped.

An hour later I gave up trying. I had made four attempts to climb the vertical ice wall. Only once had I managed to get myself clear of the ledge. I had planted both axes above me, and hauled myself up. When I had kicked the crampons on my left boot into the wall, I reached up again with an axe. Before I could swing at the ice above, my crampon points broke free, and I slipped heavily on to my ice hammer. It ripped from the ice, and I fell back to the bridge, my injured leg folding agonisingly beneath me. I screamed, and twisted to free it. Then I lay still, waiting for the pain to ease. I would not try again.

I sat on my sack, turned off the torch, and slumped on to the rope which I had retied to the ice screw. I could see my legs in the gloom. There was a delay before I realised the significance of being able to see them. I glanced up to the patch of dim light in the roof and checked my watch. It was five o’clock. It would be fully light in an hour, and Simon would be coming down the cliff as soon as it was light. I had been alone in the dark for seven hours, and until then I hadn’t realised how demoralising the lack of light had been. I shouted Simon’s name, loudly. It echoed round me, and I shouted again. I would shout regularly until he heard me, or until I was certain he had gone. A long time later I stopped shouting. He had gone. I knew he would, and I knew he wouldn’t return. I was dead. There would be nothing for him to come back for. I took my mitts and inner gloves off, and examined my fingers. Two blackened fingers on each hand, and one bluish thumb. I curled them into fists and tried to squeeze hard but couldn’t feel the pressure. It wasn’t as bad as I had thought. Sunlight streamed through the hole in the roof. I glanced at the hole to my left. I could see deeper into it, but there was no sign of it closing up. It just faded into dark shadows a long way down. To my right the slope angled away to the drop I had seen the previous night. Far away to the right of this sunlight sprayed against the back wall of the crevasse.

I picked absently at the frayed end of the rope, trying to come to a decision. I already knew that I wasn’t prepared to spend another night on the ledge. I wasn’t going through that madness again, but I cringed from doing the only thing left to me. I wasn’t ready for such a choice. Without deciding I took some coils in hand, and then threw the rope down to the right. It flew clean out into space, and curled over the drop before falling out of sight. The rope jerked tight. I clipped my figure-of-eight to the rope, and lay on my side.

I hesitated, looking at the ice screw buried in the wall. It wouldn’t pull free under my weight. The Prussik knot hung unused just below the ice screw. I thought that I should take it with me. If there was empty space at the end of the rope I would be unable to regain the ledge without it. I let myself slide off the ledge and watched the Prussik get smaller as I abseiled down the slope to the drop. If there was nothing there I didn’t want to come back.