Hot Ice

by Hot Ice(lit)

  'Son of a bitch!' I breathed. 'I was afraid of this!'

  I had heard Angekok calling it Tornaq.

  Monro groaned, his eyes popping as if he'd never close them again this side of sanity.

  I brought the rifle up and drew a bead on a tiny, obsidian-black eye.

  I was squinting along the barrel of my Winchester, straight into the face of animalistic madness. The tornaq was built like a bull, with the speed of a panther. Before I could draw a bead on it, it slashed open Monro's arm from wrist to elbow. Mose told me there'd be days like these -

  So I shot it three times for luck. Monro ran off after the first shot, screaming like a rabbit with its tail kicked. Three slugs into its ugly kisser should've told it not to get fresh on the first date.

  Sure, Mose had told me that there'd be days like this. Days when I'd be going up against a supernatural horror that shouldn't really exist outside of an opium dream. I was still waiting after the echoes of the third rifle-shot had stopped careering off the walls of the cavern to see whether the tornaq was going to play ball and fall down and die.

  For a long while it looked like it was going to stand there and just bleed on the cavern floor.

  Mose had told me, 'If it's flesh and blood, my boy, then it'll bleed just like any other son of a bitch! Of course, that's the theory, my boy!'

  Sure, Mose. That's the theory. Still, that's no reason why I can't take it on the lam and let the theory work out for itself whether it's gonna hold water or not.

  I turned and ran, hard on the heels of Monro, who was blundering through the darkness, tripping over rocks and picking himself up again and charging full-tilt into sharp turns.

  As I ran into him, Monro risked a glance backwards. 'Jesus, I don't believe it. You stopped that thing in its tracks.'

  I didn't think it was worth my while to tell him that Mose had researched the death medicine and medicine-marks I'd scratched on the casings of the bullets.

  'Just in case,' Mose had said at the time. If I had him here, I'd've kissed his round, bald head. With a noise like a small earthquake, the tornaq finally crashed to the ground.

  'How's that wound, Monro?'

  'It's just a flesh wound, but I can feel it stiffening up already. What was that thing?!'

  I looked him over, with my Winchester over one shoulder, mopping the sweat from my brow. 'How the hell should I know - hot in here, ain't it?'

  I pointed up along the tunnel. 'There must be hot springs or something up ahead. Let's find out.'

  We salvaged torches each and I led the way. Monro was still baffled by the rapid turn of events, and I suppose the shock of his wound was setting in. 'But, what's going on here - I don't understand.'

  'Seems to me that your faithful Eskimo sidekick was planning to winter over here - with us as a larder for his pets.'

  'But, that's preposterous!'

  'Preposterous? Maybe. So what do you call that thing I just scragged back there? That ain't preposterous, I suppose?'

  'But what's the point of killing us all - with polar bears, yet!'

  'Y'mean, what's the percentage in it? I guess not everybody balances things with dollars and cents.'

  Monro sounded genuinely put out as he muttered to himself: 'Gee, and I thought I was payin' that Eskimo top dollar rates too.'

  I stopped and lowered my torch. 'Hey, Monro, do you see a light up ahead?'

  Monro wasn't interested in what was up ahead, he jerked a glance over his shoulder, even though any night vision he had was destroyed by the torch he carried.

  * * * * *

  The Temple of Malsum. Just describing it ain't enough, because you have to realize the sense of isolation. It would be a different temple if you could just walk into it off Bourbon Street, in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It's the fact that it's out in a blizzard-benighted wilderness, five hundred miles from the nearest human outpost. The fact that it doesn't fit into any known scheme of human history.

  It had an atmosphere that was five thousand years in the making. The torches that burned in the walls burned using a substance that the human race had never been acquainted with. The gargoyle-creatures that held the torches had been carved from the living rock very probably by guys that looked just like them. Overlying every surface was the presence of gold. It hung in filigrees from the ceiling like Spanish moss in the Everglades.

  Monro exclaimed, 'I was right! I knew that map was on the money!'

  'So this is your gold mine, eh? Whose claim did you jump to get it?'

  Monro snarled at me. 'I own this place! I got all the deeds in my name straight and proper!'

  'Yeah! After you beat Captain Clarke to death to get to them!'

  Monro drew back, his eyes watchful, trying to re-assess me in the light of what I'd just blurted out. 'What do you know of Captain Clarke?'

  'I know plenty -'

  But before I could dazzle him with my wit, we both heard a growl behind us. I whirled and saw the tornaq again. Its blood, black and sticky, tracked down from the three holes where its heart should be.

  Monro yelped: 'Jesus Christ Almighty!'

  I groaned. 'What does it take to kill that thing!'

  The tornaq came rushing at us, barrel chest held low to the ground, its huge, ape-like arms spread wide to grapple with us. As I flung myself down and to one side, I shouted to Monro, 'Get out of the way!' But he just stood there, the torch in his hands all but useless.

  Monro was scooped up in those great arms like a baby and the torch went flying. Monro was past screaming as he found himself face to face with that monstrous tusk-lined maw.

  'Help me! Help me!'

  I brought the Winchester up for a head-shot and then I lowered it. Something half-heard behind me. I paused and looked over my shoulder. Some kind of chanting noise was emanating from the tunnel.

  'Aww, no! Don't tell me. The Eskimo's still alive!'

  That was when I knew that I could fill the tornaq with lead until he rattled but it would make no difference. To save my ammunition I reversed the rifle and slammed it into the face of the tornaq, who dropped Monro in pain and surprise.

  As Monro fell to the cavern floor, I shouted: 'Run for it! Keep as far away from him as you can!'

  I picked up the electric torch that Monro had dropped, pleased to see that it was still working. 'I'll be back in a minute - I gotta see a man about a dog!'

  As I ran up the tunnel, the beam of light dancing madly before me, I thought of Mose. How'd I let him talk me into this?

  I didn't have to run quite as far as the entrance of the cavern, for Angekok had crawled some distance. I found him on his stomach, fending off the beam of the torch from his eyes with one hand. In his other hand he had a knife.

  'You can't kill me, white man!' he groaned hoarsely.

  'Nope, but I can sure as hell give it a try!' I brought the Winchester up to aim it at his head. Behind me I could hear the shrieks of Monro as the bellows of the tornaq came rumbling down the tunnel. Angekok babbled on, his voice low and monotonous: 'I am a servant of Malsum, the Prowler in the Icy Wastes -'

  I found it difficult to aim, my hands shaking. 'Sure, sure. I didn't think you were Bela Lugosi.'

  Before I knew it, Angekok had crawled up to me and was within slashing distance with his knife. Rattled, I stepped back.

  Angekok hissed: 'This blade was made from metal from a star that fell to the ice. Malsum led me to it, taught me how to forge it into a demon-slayer.'

  'Whooops! - I believe you, bud.'

  A pistol shot sounded from behind me, where I guessed that Monro had got off a lucky shot. Angekok advanced again, and again I was forced back. He was the guy with the knife and I had the rifle, but he still had the upper hand, as he gasped out: 'You are like a skiff of snow to me, white man. I have seen mysteries -'

  The knife. It had a medicine bag tied to it. With feathers and snake-bones tied up in it. 'Look, don't take this personal, bud -'

  I dropped the rifle and grabbed at Angekok's wrist. The
Eskimo twisted, slippery as an eel, and the strength in his arm was more than I could handle. It was like wrestling with an alligator. Then I heard the knife plunge home into the Eskimo's throat. His face went from being a mask of hate to being a mask of pain and fear. And then, as the life ebbed out of him, it became simply a mask.

  Behind me another shot rang out. I had to get back to Monro while there was still something there to get back to.

  Even as I made it back to the torch-lit cavern, I realised that I needn't've bothered. Monro was lying on his back, having crawled to sanctuary between the feet of the wolf-headed idol on the jewelled-encrusted throne. Over him, like a shadow from the abyss, loomed the tornaq, and then, suddenly that's all it was - a shadow. A shadow that dwindled and turned to mist and was gone, with a phantom-like bellowing of rage and frustration echoing in my head.

  By the time I could get to him, Monro was crazy as a loon. Apart from the knife-wound in his arm, one of the tornaq's tusks had skewered him in the left leg, missing vital blood vessels - lucky for Monro.

  I fixed him up as best I could, cleaning his wound and patching the flow of blood, but he tossed and turned in a fever for something close to a fortnight. I wasn't exactly sure of the time since there was no way of measuring it in that place, but every time I slept I woke up and marked a place in the wall.

  The day after we arrived at the cavern, I risked an expedition to the campsite. It was bad. Half-eaten bodies lay like torn and butchered rag-dolls. Bear tracks were all over the place, but I saw no sign of the bears. My guess is that they were summoned there by Angekok and much preferred to have nothing to do with the area if it was left to them to decide.

  I cleaned up the camp just in case other, less savoury, carrion-eaters came nosing about. Angekok's body, along with all of the others, I tossed into a slowly flowing stream of lava that snaked around a nearby ridge. With the ground frozen there was no other way to bury them and I figured that liquid stone would harden into a grave site sooner or later. What stores I found I brought back to the cavern. With thirty in the expedition, the stores over the winter had been a problem. With only two to feed, the stores were adequate. The only things I didn't throw into the lava belonged to Angekok. I brought his knife with its medicine-bag back with me to the temple of Malsum.

  By the third day, I had the camp cleared as if there had never been any sign of a human. But I still hadn't faced my real problem:

  How was I going to cross a thousand miles of ice and snow - no guide, no transport, no provisions, and carrying a crazy man?

  During the next few days, I concentrated on trying to salvage enough scrap wood and gear to cobble together a sleigh. I figured on maybe man-hauling out of here with the sleigh holding enough provisions to make it to the coast. Monro would be a problem. Or maybe not. If he died, then I'd bury him: end of problem. If he lived and recovered from his fever, then we could man-haul out together.

  * * * * *

  I was sitting hugging my knees as I sat on the shore of the lake in the Temple. I wore only a loin cloth, for the heat from the springs made it too damn clammy for clothes. I was looking at the tunnel that emptied the lake water. I couldn't even follow the way that Captain Clarke took, because he stole the only kayak, and Angekok sure didn't replace it.

  Then I thought of the ropes in the stores that I'd salvaged. What if I followed in Captain Clarke's footsteps? The hot springs might keep the terrain warm enough to ease the hostile nature of the frozen wastes. Let's face it, if I could lose two hundred miles of frozen tundra, it would be worth it.

  I found one of the coils of rope and tied a loop of it to a rock in the cavern, then lowered myself down. I had no idea what lay below, but there was only one way to find out. My last shot of the cavern was of the wolf-headed idol, and as I descended, I could see a flash of light glinting in the eye of the image, as if an idea had just occurred to it.

  I had brought a light satchel with what I hoped would be essentials. A torch, a pistol with shells marked with death-medicine. For some reason I'd brought along with me the medicine bag and knife I'd taken from the dead Angekok.

  Some way down the cliff, I paused to catch my breath on a narrow ledge with the water roaring past me. While I waited, I wondered: How did Captain Clarke manage to survive a fall like this? I had come down easily a hundred feet and from the noise of the water falling below there was easily another hundred feet to go. Captain Clarke didn't go into all the ins and outs of his underground adventures, claiming shock-induced memory-loss. But the first step of his journey provoked questions. Questions that were hard to frame, never mind answer.

  While I caught my breath and rested my shaking limbs, I happened to catch sight of a strange mark on the ledge at my feet. My own prints had partly obliterated the tracks I found there, but the light of the electric torch illuminated one perfect print:

  It was a webbed foot. About eighteen inches from heel to toe, it had something like pad-marks on it, so it didn't suggest anything reptilian or frog-like. It brought to mind a giant otter, or beaver. That's all. Nothing else. For a moment as I knelt there in the roaring darkness beside the rushing water, I had to fight the urge to wipe out the print. I didn't want to see it. It had no right to be there. It made me feel as scared as hell. I thought of the gargoyle statues up in the Temple. What if some of those horrible little bastards were still around?

  I scanned the ledge with the torch and found more marks, semi-obliterated, that suggested the tracks led to a rock wall and ended there. I couldn't follow them, and verging on the edge of obsession. I was glad I didn't have to.

  I stood up and shone the torch down the waterfall. I was glad I wasn't desperate enough to have to go down there. All the same, how desperate do you need to be? Maybe I shouldn't've looked and just taken the plunge like the old Captain did.

  I tested the rope and couldn't bring myself to go down any further. I shuddered, sending the beam of the torch out across the abyss, but seeing nothing. The walls of this cavern were well beyond the strength of my light to touch them. The whole place gave me a serious case of the creeps.

  When I got back up to the cavern, I could see that Monro was up and moving about. Relief was the first feeling I got because I was getting such a bad feeling about the whole place. Maybe with Monro feeling better, there was a chance we could salvage enough wood for another sleigh.

  As I swam lazily across the warm lake, I could hear Monro talking to himself, but between the water in my ears and the slap of my arms pulling along, I couldn't pay him any mind. All I could think about was: Now, maybe we get the hell outta here!

  Then, as I pulled myself ashore, I heard him more clearly. He was bent from the waist and waving his arms about and his words came clearly to me across the shallows:

  'Tornaq ia - ia tornaq - uoiea uae yeee uia - tornaq ia -'

  'Hey, Monro! Glad to see you up and about!'

  My first reaction was that he couldn't hear me over the noise of the waters! Then it hit me. His words reminded me of some of the Eskimo's spell-casting cant. I saw Monro begin to straighten up, as if to glance over his shoulder. I plunged down underwater and stayed there until my breath gave out.

  I came up cautiously and even then just enough to clear my nostrils and get some air. Monro was screaming now, gesticulating and dancing about a spot in the ground in front of the wolf-headed idol:

  'Tornaq ia - ia tornaq - uoiea uae yeee uia - tornaq ia -'

  I could just barely hear him over the water, but that wasn't United States he was talking.

  And then I saw the cloud of vapour condense in the air above the knees of the wolf-idol. The clouds were like heat-hazes that had no right to be there, but as I watched I could see that they were taking on substance. The heat-hazes grew into three clouds of dark anvil-heads. It was like watching a dark supernatural foetus grow out of the placenta of Monro's brain. No less than three baby tornaqs began to build up and grow, thriving on the magic from their master. Monro was staggering and weaving now, his h
ead upthrust and his eyes closed so that only the whites were visible.

  'Tornaq ia - ia tornaq - uoiea uae yeee uia - tornaq ia -'

  I thought of the cavern with the waterfall and wondered if this was the kind of desperation I required to take the high jump down into the roaring darkness below. It would sure end it quick enough. It was madness, but not desperation that nibbled at the edges of my mind.

  On the other hand, as far as Monro was aware (if he was aware at all), I was still down the waterfall. I crawled out of the water on my hands and knees and crept along until I had circled the cavern behind me. Monro and his three demonic offspring were still oblivious to their surroundings. At the mouth of the cavern, where the tunnel twisted and twined its way through the living rock, I had my arctic clothes stashed. I picked them up in a bundle and tippie-toed out of there - just enough to give me the cover I required to pause to get dressed.

  As I dressed I thought of my options:

  1 a five hundred mile hike through ice and snow -

  2 go fifteen rounds with three walrus-faced bogey-men.

  My breath drew clouds of respiration on the chilly air of the tunnel. There was no contest.

  I had the sleigh and my provisions all packed and ready to leave at the mouth of the cave. They were hidden under a tarp and weighed down by rocks to keep scavengers out, but it would take me five minutes to get on my way.

  As I trudged down the tunnel, behind me I could hear the shrieking of Monro as his ceremony built to a climax. The voice was Monro's but the words belonged to Angekok. I recalled my last conversation with him, how he'd boasted that he could not be killed. I didn't believe it then, and I found it hard to believe it now. But back then I hadn't spent a month in a Temple warmed by hot springs in the last relics of a civilisation that should never have existed.

  It took me all of five minutes and more to clear my sleigh. I was fixing on my skis when I heard the rumbling approach of the tornaqs.