The Yeti

by Mike Miller

  As their leader eventually vanished into the mix of porters and passengers in the bustling train station, Conrad finally broke into a laugh and playfully slapped at Baxter. Baxter grimly lowered his salute to glower over at his guffawing compatriot.

  “Good thing we only need to deal with that nitwit for another few hours, eh?” Conrad said.

  “Did you see who that was?” Baxter asked in astonishment.

  “Um, certainly, that was Colonel--”

  “No, the woman,” he clarified.

  “From this morning? Sure. And what of her?” Conrad asked.

  “You-- We--” Baxter sighed deeply. “She was a nun.”

  “Her?” At first Conrad chuckled. Then he erupted in outright laughter. “Hardly! She did, thought and smoked things that no god would approve of. Believe you me, that one was no saint.”

  “This is no good,” Baxter said quietly while nodding his head. “We crossed a sacred and holy woman. I knew we’d gone too far, knew it! The chicanery has to stop. I could feel it last night, and now…” Baxter’s voice was lost in thought.

  Conrad could tell his friend’s very piety was rattled. He wanted to tell his friend that his beloved devotion was a nasty habit he never should have undertaken, that the whole system was another ploy to subjugate him.

  But Conrad knew the discussion would not change Baxter’s fundamental beliefs. So he casually dismissed the transgression. “She’s fine. We’re fine.”

  An anguished groan billowed from Baxter. “Could there be a worse omen? Our sins have finally cursed us!” As he looked to Conrad for comfort, his expression became frantic with worry.

  Conrad was tempted to explode, to destroy Baxter’s objections with brash yelling, the way any seasoned veteran would rally an unfastened novice in the field. But they were seasoned warriors as well as good friends. “Would you relax?” Conrad playfully patted Baxter’s chest. “We’ve done this all so many times before, man. We’ve made it this far, right? Everything’s going to be just fine, just as it always has.”

  But Baxter did not relax. He instead began to pray, a quiet inner voice gently pleading for everything to indeed be fine upon this trip.

  Chapter IV

  The Making of the Map

  Trudging through the thick snow, Private Collins wondered what exactly he was doing. Not in the customary sense of what his current actions were, he understood full well that he was on patrol for the secluded English outpost at the base of the Indian Himalayas, in the remote outskirts between nothing and nowhere. But in an existential manner, Collins pondered his current station in life, specifically within Her Royal Majesty’s armed services. As a plucky youth a whole year ago, he had enlisted with fanciful dreams of daring swashbuckling and globe-trotting adventure. He had often envisioned himself being a true force of good and righteousness in the world, not to mention reaping the rewards of fame, fortune and females.

  Yet in this current fourth hour of the midnight watch, Collins’ only contribution to the Empire was the widening of the trail he continuously ploughed in his repetitive stomp around the dark, stone barracks. He was supposedly guarding the base from attack. Yet the lone offender he’d spotted in the past month was just a sickly squirrel who immediately vanished in fright at the sight of him. Despite the countless times he had retraced the same route, the boy still awkwardly ambled over the beaten path, his thin gait encumbered by the heavy layers of warm clothing.

  He tripped and fell to the ground, his gloves sinking past his wrists into the snow. Kneeling on all fours was an awful reminder that his lot was a job best fit for a starving mongrel hound, a shame which gnawed at him like said hound as he stood back upon his feet.

  Then on the periphery of his gaze, he saw a shadow shift.

  Between the dim glow of the torchlight and the night’s breezy snowfall, it was difficult to discern if he had actually seen anything. Oftentimes the snow would bunch awkwardly upon the walls and roofs like a drunken bird, where the tiniest flake could cause the unbalanced section to topple over in a billowy crash. Yet a more common occurrence than even that mundane phenomenon was Private Collins’ bored mind straining to invent the slightest modicum of action to enchant his dreary reality.

  Eager for any excuse for excitement, Collins ventured off his well-tread route to investigate the commotion. The watchman raised his rifle’s bayonet up from the waist, advancing point-first as his training had informed him to do. With a thirsty gulp of sweat, his mind imagined a wild beast or crazed assassin lurking in the shadows. His body worked to quicken his pulse to befit the circumstances. But the foreboding blackness between the supply house and barrier wall did little to excite the youth, having already been disappointed by this same imaginary adventure on countless occasions previous.

  Just as Collins had expected, there was indeed a small pile of snow scattered about on the ground in tiny mounds. What he hadn’t expected was a pair of dark boots standing in the centre of the snowfall.

  As his eyes traced up the body of the legs filling those shoes, a black glove clamped tightly over Collins’ mouth before it could make any cry of alarm. A little flash twinkled disarmingly close to his startled face. Whether the tiny sparkle was from a pair of mischievous pupils or from the flashing blade sinking into his throat, Collins was unsure.

  Now paralysed in the final throes of death, Collins studied his killer’s face with great interest. It was the last and only thing he could do under the circumstances. The first impression of the murderer was that of a grizzled scarecrow wrapped in the body of a black bear. With dirty blonde hair peeking out from beneath an even dirtier wide-brimmed hat, the man’s lean face protruded into a pointed nose. The murderer’s eyes had dark hazel pupils, though the right one was bloodshot to the extent that it erased all the white, encircling the iris in a veined web of crimson and pink. Despite the demonic eye, the most remarkable feature of the man’s face was his wretched skin. A rough patch of unshaven beard almost lent some consistency to an otherwise wild hodgepodge of mutilated scars and welts. While a few scattered areas were clean and normal - the man’s left cheek, a swath of forehead, his right jaw - the remainder of the face was not. It was as if the few fresh spots of skin were like holes in a beaten and decaying mask. Perhaps the crowning mark was a broad slash that threaded down the right side of the man’s face. The wound crossed over the red eye, travelling from the brim of his scalp like a wrinkled waterfall. The face seemed stitched together like a quilt from several different visages.

  At first frightened by the gruesome countenance, Collins soon became comfortably entranced with it. The man resembled the boy despite the age and wear of the executioner’s countenance. As the snow seemed to thicken on the outskirts of Collins’ gaze into a growing shroud of white, the private became quite happy with the notion that he had been killed by a future version of himself that never was. This was a man who had obviously survived his fair share of violent intrepidness while Collins had failed miserably in his very first encounter with the wild world. Perhaps it was best that he should die now rather than become so worn and hackneyed by the evils of life. At this point, it was hard to say.

  So as the blood quickly ebbed from his brain and his soul slowly exited through his mouth in a muted scream, the final moment in Private Collins’ otherwise undutiful life was spent being content with the knowledge that he had finally experienced some adventure, albeit with dire results.

  The murderer gently lowered his victim to the ground like the finale of a graceful waltz. After wiping the blood from the blade off on his victim’s coat, Douglas stood up and studied the boy’s peaceful expression of bliss.

  Killing people was something Douglas enjoyed. However, the clean and pretty face of this lad filled him simultaneously with nostalgia and envy. The boy was probably fresh from academy, so in some ways he was lucky to have been spared a lifetime of unappreciated servitude. To be so affected and touched by just another murder made Douglas feel weak and old.

  First, the kille
r lugged the corpse into the darkness of a nearby corner. After stowing the evidence, he then began to slink forward through the quiet premises. He became one of the shadows, cloaked within them as he advanced. If he were ever exposed in the dim light of the moon or a torch, it was only for the briefest of seconds as he crossed from one dark space to another.

  Reflecting on the most recent murder, Douglas wanted to excuse his discovery as an accident, freakish bad luck. But he had been sloppy and couldn’t afford to be. Or maybe he was just a tad bored and wanted to kill somebody, the bloodlust being another kind of mistake he should not have made but was addicted to committing.

  After a short scouring of the premises, he found only one other sentry, another young lad who was dutifully asleep at his post in the farthest corner of the compound. As the boy’s throat heaved with soft snoring, Douglas salivated at such fresh, unsuspecting prey. The exposed skin of the neck just above the scarf was like an overripe piece of fruit begging to be plucked. But even his homicidal impulses were not strong enough to overpower the wily urgency of his mission’s purpose. So he let the lad be and scurried quietly back over to his objective.

  As he found the infirmary unlocked, he slid through the heavy wooden doors to discover the place deserted and silent but for the distant coughs of the sick, which mingled with an occasional yelp from some poor soul’s night terrors. Some windows permitted a scant hue to enter from the night’s light outside, but the broad waiting room only revealed its design upon Douglas’ lighting of a lantern.

  Strolling over to the orderly’s front desk, he leafed through a massive log book. Once the blank pages became inscribed with dense notes, it was only a moment to find the information for which he sought. He closed the tome with a hushed thud and journeyed into the depths of the building.

  When he passed an open doorway, a flicker of light illuminated empty beds. As if populated with invisible spectres, he could still hear faint groans rattle through the stone hallway from unknown sources.

  Like the necks of a hydra, the hospital’s hallways branched apart in myriad offshoots the farther he ventured through the complex. But Douglas keenly studied the various signage he encountered at each intersection before he arrived at a placard announcing his destination. “Critical 1” the door read, and he pushed it open with ease while extinguishing his lantern’s light.

  From the moonlight filtering through above windows, the vague figures and shapes came into focus to Douglas’ adept night vision. The room had rows of beds, but only two were occupied.

  In the nearest bed lay an older man heavily bandaged in white cloths stained red. His eyes and face were wrapped blind like an Egyptian mummy. Patches of reddish-brown hair peeked through the top of his wrappings, but the light hair was caked in dirty blood. The patient’s chest rose and fell with a rhythmic set of wheezes.

  And beside the first man was a second, younger fellow. He too was wrapped in bandages, but not to the degree of his roommate. His face was fully exposed to display a gaunt and scruffy face only slightly marked with bruises. Propped up in his bed with his head awkwardly bent down, the patient sat upright like a child’s play doll.

  When the door’s latch clicked close to seal Douglas into the room with the two injured soldiers, the younger one groaned and stirred at the tiny commotion. A relit lamp successfully roused Private MacDonald from his slumber, who groggily raised his head to discern the identity of the midnight visitor.

  A pair of abrupt slaps struck the dazed scout across the cheek, reopening a gash of blood from the violence. “Wake up and shut up,” said Douglas in a thick brogue.

  On the periphery of the lantern’s bright aura, Douglas’ pointy chin and brimmed hat almost made him look like a dark devil. The scout panicked at the vision, but a hand clamped over his mouth to stifle the scream. “Listen quick or die quicker, you buffoon.”

  The boy studied Douglas’ fierce eyes and disfigured face, then knowingly nodded with understanding. Douglas’ palm released its grip, and he scooted backwards to hang the lantern by its handle from a hook in the wall. As the fear further materialised across the young man’s face, Douglas was content to have the lad’s complete attention.

  Douglas retrieved the charts at the base of MacDonald’s bed to read the top sheet. “MacDonald, eh? Pleasure.” When the intruder smiled, he showed rotten, missing teeth.

  Douglas slid over to the foot of the first comatose man’s bed and read the medical records. He nodded in feigned concern while tsking his tongue. “Doesn’t look like old Captain Fitzsimmons is doing so well now, is he?” MacDonald remained frozen with wide-eyed fright. “But he’s probably a prick anyhow, what with him being a captain and all.” Douglas shifted to the side of Fitzsimmons’ bed to stand between the two wounded patients. The boy noticed that this stranger moved with an almost unearthly smoothness, his silent footfalls and grace trained from a lifetime of stealth and deception.

  Douglas drew the captain’s blankets back and then tugged aside the man’s gown to expose a wretchedly torn stomach, a pattern of purple lines and bumps etched into the abdomen. Douglas crooked his neck to study the bruises from a different angle.

  “Hm,” he grunted to himself. Turning to the aghast boy, he asked, “Do you see it too?”

  Unsure of to what the madman was referring, MacDonald answered honestly with a negative nod.

  “You don’t?” Douglas said, sliding a long blade out from a holster on his waist. The scout nodded no again, praying that honesty would prove a correct answer.

  “I do,” said Douglas, “but I suppose that’s because I’ve always had vision.” He winked his bloodshot eye at the boy as he placed the tip of his dagger onto Captain Fitzsimmons’ stomach. The scout began to yelp, even raising his hand in protest. Douglas quickly flipped the blade back up to menacingly threaten the scout back into obedient silence. A finger placed over Douglas’ lips was a simple pantomime to reinforce the message.

  “See, these three scars here at the top are the infamous range. The ‘cloud mountains’ as the natives call them.” With the patient stroke of a surgeon, Douglas carved a line in the soft skin of the unconscious Fitzsimmons’ belly which verged upon the ribcage. “Because they’re so tall and white under proper circumstances.” Though Fitzsimmons’ gut was being slashed, the man might have been an inanimate mannequin by its lack of reaction.

  Douglas looked up with a satisfied smile of artistic creation. “Now do you see?”

  The boy tried to retch, but his empty stomach offered nothing. “Please,” he moaned.

  “And up over here,” Douglas said calmly, placing the blade back into Fitzsimmons in the upper left corner of the stomach just beneath the nipple, “is the famed Mount Everest, dubbed by white man’s tongue, the tallest mountain on Earth.” Now the maniac carved a sharp curve into the skin, almost like the point of a sword, which connected to his previous work.

  “Please stop, sir,” pleaded the frightened scout.

  “Oh, I will,” Douglas smiled. He wiped the bloody tip of his dagger on Fitzsimmons’ oblivious forehead. “If you’ll help me.”

  MacDonald was afraid to ask, “What do you want, sir?”

  Douglas snorted with contempt. “Well, I’m getting to that now, ain’t I?”

  He returned the blade back down so that the tip carefully sat centred beneath the waist. “So you two gentlemen, and a bevy of Britain’s best, ventured up to cross these mountains into the mystical realm of the Orient.” He began slowly drawing the knife up the stomach as if dissecting Fitzsimmons in a macabre autopsy. “But you didn’t venture through the Rigandi Pass, or else my mates would have ambushed you. Am I right?” Douglas withdrew the knife and tapped a thumbnail-sized welt on the knife.

  The scout gulped down the pooling saliva in his mouth, a vile-tasting liquid compounded with sweat and blood. He felt like he should lie, but was too afraid to do so. MacDonald nodded in agreement, which made Douglas happy to be right.

  “To me, looks like you strayed west at th
e base of the Sumiratra. But I couldn’t find no trail after that, so… here we are.”

  The scout gulped down any lingering nervousness. “The western route was too narrow for our carts, so one of our guides recommended an alternate that the horses could still handle. And the captain concurred.” MacDonald timidly recited the directions their expedition’s leader had improvised, which were now being carved back into the man himself with every turn of the path. Douglas delicately etched every tiny instruction into his surgically-rendered map, even pausing to lightly label certain key milestones along the way.

  “How far along the Cabu Ridge would you say you ventured?” Douglas inquired after inscribing a large X into the final destination near the top of Fitzsimmons’ sternum.

  “A few hours,” the scout said, nervously watching Douglas dab away the light trickles of blood with a rag cloth. “We had rounded a bend and were stopped in the middle of a long straightaway.”

  Douglas’ light cuts across Fitzsimmons had all nearly dried. “You made it so far, but still the mountain got you.”

  MacDonald said nothing in response as he just felt a little happy.

  Douglas continued, “But if your cargo is still upon that mountain, you may rest assured that I’ll find it and take fine care of it.”

  Suddenly he plunged the knife deep into the unconscious Fitzsimmons’ waistline, which made the boy instinctively wince aloud in concern. Douglas scowled at the outburst when the captain groggily groaned, as if suffering from a nightmare. The intruder chuckled at the weak whimper.

  “The captain’s a good man.” MacDonald rustled in his seat helplessly. “Without him, I wouldn’t be alive here today. Please.”

  “Oh, no doubt he’s the best,” Douglas said, concentrating his focus on his carving. “Look at the crackerjack job he did with all of you.”