When the fog loosened he tilted his head back and looked at the inverted horizon, at the clouds amassing beneath it. He saw what they were, their purple hue, the weight of them. Even without the fall, those clouds were a threat. If he’d made it to the summit, and immediately headed back towards the bothy, would he have completed his return before the snow started to fall? For it would fall, there was no doubt about it. It would come up the side of the mountain, blowing and scudding, and it would bury him. He had to pray that the man who had been closing in on him all morning was almost to the ridge, that somehow he would discover him there.
It was much later when Morris thought he heard the steady crump and clack of boots on rock. He looked up at the ridge, hoping to catch a sight of the man in the ebbing mist. For a time there was nothing, just the grey shroud and the sound of the footfalls crushing the shale, but then a shape appeared on the edge of the ridge. A hunched form, the shadow of a man’s body angled against the slope.
Morris called out. “Hello!”
The figure continued up the ridge.
Morris called again, mustering what little strength he had. “HELLO!”
Pain exploded from his ribs.
Did the figure check his stride for an instant? Did he look about himself? Or was he just drawing breath before heaving himself on again?
“Down here. I need help,” gasped Morris, but his voice was weak and feeble now.
The man was almost to the point where Morris had fallen. In another few seconds he’d pass by. Morris reached for a rock, fighting the burning, agonised protests of his broken ribs and flung it in the direction of the man’s feet. It came up short and bounced away down the mountainside. Morris made to shout one last time, but because of what his eyes beheld, the words never escaped his lips. Instead, he shrieked, his broken body reverberating in pain.
“Gnnnnrrrrr.”
The thing appeared to him through a momentary thinning of the mist. It stood there perched on the escarpment above. He noticed the man’s clothing, its age; the sheep skin jacket, the heavy boots, the threadbare ropes around the man’s middle. And when the man turned to look at the congealing clouds Morris caught a brief sight of the face inside the hood.
Neither the cutting wind, nor the wet mist were what caused his weakening body to shudder.
The gaunt face, dried out and mummified, its skin stretched tight, its eye sockets empty, the lips drawn back, revealing sparse teeth loosely held at odd angles by gums that looked like petrified rubber. The nostrils spread wide, where the skin had stretched and torn them open…
The thing that had once been a man turned and shuffled onward along the ridge. It scaled the shale another few meters. And then something happened. Its boots dislodged a rock, which tumbled away and down the mountain. Morris’s follower, the thing that had haunted him since the previous afternoon, tumbled after it. With the fall came a high-pitched scream, one that contained more than the fear of falling, and a sound far beyond a mortal cry of terror. There was desperation and frustration in the cry, which could only come after years of torment, of having something coveted within one’s grasp but letting it slip. The dark shape dropped past him over the ledge, down the mountain and out of sight, to be replaced by an even more terrifying entity.
Silence.
Morris closed his eyes. He tried to tell himself he’d imagined all that had occurred, that he was losing his senses, going into shock. He tried to tell himself he was hallucinating. But he knew he wasn’t suffering from any of those things.
Not yet.
Night fell quickly on the mountain. The angry clouds brought their snow. Trapped on the ledge, unable to move, Morris scraped away at the rocks beneath his shattered legs and rolled himself into the indentation. He tucked himself up in a ball in that place and tried not to think about the freezing wind. But it was futile. The gusts whistled through the cuts of rock and came at him from all angles. He felt parts of himself, exposed extremities, turning numb.
He dragged his rucksack from underneath him and took out the flask of tea. There wasn’t much left. He remembered tipping a good three mouthfuls away during his rest stop, and he wondered how many hours three mouthfuls of cold tea might add to a man’s life in a crisis such as this. Well, he’d wasted those hours as he’d wasted almost all of his life, achieving nothing, going nowhere. At least if he were to die here on the mountain he would be remembered for it. In some perverted way he found solace in that. He imagined the message boards brimming with life as the news broke, the furious conversation, the sympathetic obituaries, the “I told you so” admonishments.
Morris meandered through the eventualities, his mind playing tricks. He saw images in the mist, curious forms approaching from beyond the ledge, things floating there and fading again, things without faces, things that were not human.
For a while he was in the bothy again, lying in the darkness, his jacket hanging off the top bunk, creating the wall he hid behind. But he wasn’t alone. There was something in the bothy with him. The sound of scraping and shuffling on the floorboards, the sound of laboured breathing, the acrid smell of tobacco, the clink of a brandy glass, the rustle of a map, a cough. Even in his mesmerised state, Morris felt the blood run cold in his veins at those sounds.
The pain came in waves. He was free of it one moment and then ravaged by it the next. It was all-encompassing. He screamed against the mountain, agony echoing through his broken body as his voice echoed off the surrounding walls. When the pain gave him respite, he tried to close his mind to his fears, to remember where he was and think of a future spent in a place other than this. But all he could think of were mountains, bigger and bigger mountains with higher and higher peaks.
He wasn’t ready to die.
He woke intermittently throughout the night, once to see the clouds had moved away, and the night full of stars. He felt as though he could reach out and touch them. Later, he roused to see the sun rising from behind the mountain. He turned to look along the ridge and there they were, all of them, each and every member of the climbing forum. They had come to save him. Ahead of them, striding purposefully towards him, was the mountain rescue team, the lead climber making his way steadily along the precarious section of ridge, turning to look in his direction, but changing form, losing colour, becoming an eyeless man in one hundred-year-old clothing, stopping above Morris, exposing that drawn, taut face, walking on, stumbling, falling off the side of the mountain to indeterminable depths.
Again and again and again.
For a century.
Forever.
IV.
Morris couldn’t feel his legs at all. His fingers were useless appendages. Clarity was cracked and splintered ice. Pain ebbed and flowed, emanating from his ribs. As he succumbed to it, he tried to cling to the knowledge that he’d be remembered, that his name would live on. It was all he had left, the hope of leaving a legacy.
He grinned at the thought, imagining a photograph of himself to accompany the dedications on the message boards: one knee raised, his boot planted on a rock, his hands on his hips, the vista of a mountain range behind, sunglasses, bronzed skin…a confident, life affirming smile. He was Steven Morris, a legend in his own right, the first man to complete the ‘Fifty Peak Challenge’ in a single season.
Almost.
It was only at the end, as he slipped towards unconsciousness for the last time, that Morris endured the final realisation. The thought crashed into his mind like a dislodged boulder.
He didn’t know his follower.
Then came the terrifying understanding. Perhaps they would never find him. There would be no epitaph, no shrine to remember him by. He was a faceless name on an impersonal message board. He would be forgotten as his follower had surely been forgotten, plunged into damnation, forced to clamber up Fell’s Edge in freezing November mists while a man from the past pursued a similar folly behind him, forced to endure this fate day after day, for all eternity.
Danny Rhodes is the writer of the con
temporary novels Asboville and Soldier Boy. His most recent short fiction has found a home in Rustblind and Silverbright (Eibonvale Press), Crimewave 12 (TTA Press) and The Christmas Ghost Story Annual 2013 (Spectral Press). He lives and writes in Kent, UK where he also masquerades as the children’s writer Dan Street. His latest title for children is the mystery novel Storm Flight (Little Devil Books). He is always on the lookout for new writing opportunities and invitations to submit to short story anthologies. Visit his websites at www.dannyrhodes.net or www.danstreetwriter.com.
-Catacombs
by Kristin Dearborn
Rachel tried to get her bearings, but she didn’t know this place. The black-and-white checkered curbs all looked the same, the statues of men she didn’t recognize, the palm trees swaying in the night wind. She saw the same billboards and storefronts for mobile phones, but that didn’t help–companies put up signs everywhere. The curfew was seven pm, and roadblocks turned this place into a warren, the bus backtracking and stopping. Armored cars, tanks and soldiers pointed guns at the bus windows, and Rachel felt it was best to close her eyes and doze again. Was this the same checkpoint a hundred times? A thousand?
Once she opened her eyes because a passenger shouted at the driver in Arabic. She recognized the word for bus, but that was all. A burst of cold, dusty air flooded the cabin when the driver opened the door. Though she didn’t understand Arabic well, she could tell that the driver didn’t want the man to go.
The driver closed the door behind him, and the few passengers craned to watch him trudge down the dusty street. Some on Rachel’s side of the bus stood to watch. The dirty windows bled any color from the scene, and the man became nothing more than a shape before the soldiers overtook him. It was best, she supposed, to stay on the bus.
At the next checkpoint, the soldiers weren’t satisfied with deflecting the bus, turning it around and sending it off in a new direction. Rachel could make out the shape of another tank. As the soldiers and a small mob of concerned citizens loomed closer to the windows, they came into focus. Soldiers she could understand; this place was in turmoil, there were no police any more, and the military was in charge. The checkpoints were here to keep the people safe–the people and any tourists who were foolish enough to venture into this strange land. The soldiers all seemed so young. But next to these soldiers were enthusiastic citizens. A man with white plastic-rimmed glasses and an imported Gap sweatshirt (most likely a knock off) carried an axe handle and wore a smug expression on his face. Another man leaned against his pickup truck, cradling a gun. Rachel didn’t know anything about firearms, had never even fired a gun before, but she knew, from the distinctive shape, the man held a Kalashnikov.
Nayyirah came awake, rubbing her eyes. She ran her fingers through henna-red hair. She was a Christian, and didn’t wear a hijab. She looked around, and stretched. Rachel wouldn’t let herself worry unless Nayyirah worried.
The soldier who stepped onto the bus looked barely older than Rachel’s little brother. Eric would be starting eleventh grade in the fall, and she couldn’t picture him with a rifle like the one slung across this boy’s back. She wondered what he would look like out of his fatigues, wearing a lacrosse uniform like what Eric probably had on today.
He barked something at them in Arabic, and all around her the passengers pulled out their papers. Rachel did the same. Nayyirah smiled and rolled her eyes. The hoops they had to jump through. The underage soldier and the driver exchanged more cross words. Around her, people began to stand, to collect their bags.
“Off the bus, let’s go,” Nayyirah said. “This should be the last checkpoint.” Rachel wondered how she knew that.
Being on the bus carried an illusion of safety. Rachel didn’t want to leave her seat. But she did, picking up her bag and falling into line behind a veiled mother who cradled a sleeping child to her chest. Someday that little girl would fall under the curtain of a veil as well. Rachel fixed the scarf around her neck, making sure she was well covered in drapes of colorful fabric.
The baggage compartments under the bus hung open, and luggage lay scattered on the street like entrails. People went to their bags and made a line on the sidewalk, and Rachel did the same. Nayyirah collected her small bag. She packed so light. The man with the Gap sweatshirt watched her. In the low light, the three white letters “G-A-P” stood out like beacons. His eyes, like the ones of the soldiers, glittered with power. She wasn’t from here, and she reminded herself that this economy needed her tourist dollars. An international affair wouldn’t help anyone’s cause. The driver killed the engine, and the night became oppressively quiet. The passengers didn’t speak–even the few children had the sense to stay quiet, leaning into their parents’ legs. Rachel picked up her suitcase, which seemed, for the first time, unreasonably large, and fell into line next to the mother and daughter. Dust and light pollution blotted out the stars above them. Neon signs for a Koshary restaurant and a coffee shop cast a red and green glow over the pavement. No other cars rolled through the night.
This was just like the checkpoint earlier in the day, before they passed under the Suez Canal. The thought was meant to be soothing, but Rachel knew the city well enough to know there wasn’t a security risk here, nothing as sensitive as the canal. She knew people, and she knew that these man-children were intoxicated with their power. Best to accommodate them. Agree with them.
The soldier who looked like Eric stopped in front of her. He took her passport and examined her picture. A cigarette jutted from the corner of his mouth like an extra appendage.
“What is your name?” His English was surprisingly good.
“Rachel Lawes.”
“Where are you from?”
“America,” she said.
He smiled at her, handed back the passport. “Welcome to our country. Enjoy your stay.”
She took her papers and forced a smile. Just like at the canal. A routine check. He passed over Nayyirah with a brief exchange in Arabic. The man made his way down the line, opening a bag here, asking more questions there. Rachel’s drowsiness flooded back. The soldier joked with a businessman. When all the papers had been checked, the soldier conferred with his companions, and after deliberation, they waved over the man in the Gap sweatshirt. They talked so fast, words ricocheting back and forth like bullets from the Kalashnikov. There was much pointing–one jabbing finger seemed to be pointed at Rachel–and as the conversation nearly accelerated into shouting, one of the soldiers put a hand on Gap Man’s arm. The one who resembled Eric hung back, focused now on lighting a fresh smoke from the dying ember of his last.
Gap Man pointed at Rachel. She hated him–from the way his hips were cocked, and the casual way he let the axe handle lean against his shoulder. She stood her ground. Did they want money? Rachel willed her feet to be rooted to the spot. She turned to Nayyirah, who took her hand and squeezed it.
Gap Man pointed again. Barked something in Arabic. “What did he say?” she whispered to Nayyirah.
“He wants you to go.”
“Go where?” She wouldn’t go with him. No way.
“Just to answer questions, he says. It’s best to not argue.”
“Does he know I’m American?” she whispered.
Another soldier came over and put a hand on her shoulder. She thrust her US Passport in his face and said “No.” The soldier turned to Gap Man, who shrugged. They pulled her from the line, from the safe place of conformity. The woman hugged her daughter into her skirts.
“Take me instead,” said Nayyirah.
Soldier looked to Gap Man.
“It’s only questioning. I’ll be at work tomorrow, as if nothing happened.”
Gap Man used his axe handle to point at Nayyirah. She went willingly, no need to manhandle her. Maybe Rachel had been acting childish. The bus driver turned the engine on, and Rachel was thankful for the din. The passengers replaced suitcases and backpacks in the bowels of the bus, then trundled aboard. Rachel peered into the night, over her shoulder to see w
here Nayyirah went, but couldn’t see.
Rachel dropped into her seat, hoping they were close to the station. It was only a block from there to her rented flat and her bed. They should have arrived just past eleven, and now it was almost three o’clock in the morning. As Rachel put her laptop case in the overhead compartment, she kept glancing at Nayyirah’s empty seat. Routine questioning. Rachel squinted through the dirty window. A streetlight illuminated the smears on the glass, making it nearly impossible to see. But it looked like her friend now sat in the cab of a pickup truck, nestled between the man with the Kalashnikov, who was driving, and Gap Man, who leaned out the passenger window, talking to the soldiers. The one who looked like Eric, who welcomed her so warmly, hung off to one side, still smoking and staring at his boots.
With a groan, the bus rolled off into the night.
* * *
They were not delayed again. Rachel took the next day off, lounging around her flat, chatting with friends in America over Skype. She hoped Nayyirah would call, but her phone stayed silent. On Tuesday, Rachel went to work at her NGO where she helped Egyptian women, offering them microloans to start small businesses, not dependent on men. Nayyirah wasn’t there. Rachel explained what had happened to Rihem, the woman who started the organization. Rihem made some calls, but couldn’t tell her anything. The days passed. Was Nayyirah unhappy with her job? Did she have a man out there who didn’t want her working? Or had something truly dark and awful happened to her? Rachel shoved her guilt away.
One day, Rachel went to the market for some fish and tomatoes. She pored over dusty produce. One had to wash it carefully, but it was fresher and more flavorful than anything in an American supermarket. While she hefted the firm, ripe fruits in her hand and used her few words to barter for a half kilo, she caught the dingy red of henna hair from the corner of her eye. It couldn’t be. Rachel let the fruit man win; normally she would have made him drop another pound from the price. She carried her shopping bags over to where the woman sat on the sidewalk, knees drawn to her chest, mouth opening and closing. She’d almost decided it couldn’t be Nayyirah, when the woman peered up at her. Her eyes were haunted and dark, but unmistakably they were Nayyirah’s eyes.
Horror Library, Volume 5 Page 32