by K. L. Denman
“You think you could do better?”
“Shit, man. The deer can do better.”
I can’t argue with that. I take another swallow of vodka and stare at the cliff. It’s the final test, isn’t it? The one we must pass in order to be worthy. I force myself to look methodically, moving my eyes in a careful grid pattern from side to side. And then I find it.
“Look. You see that?”
“What?”
I gesture with the vodka bottle, take a pull from it and gesture again. “Right there. That bluish rock sticking out on the left.”
“I can’t see it.”
I get to my feet and for a slow, strange moment the planet tilts. What the hell? I stare at the vodka bottle in my hand and it’s more than half empty. I blink, force my eyes to focus and point again. “There’s a shrub there. On the left. See? And just above that, there’s a rock.”
Ike laughs. “So?”
I take a step forward. “Dammit!” I roar. “Open your eyes! It’s right there! And if you look to the right of that, you can see a line.”
“See a line.”
“Ike. I’m trying to tell you, I found the trail. We can go.”
“Forget it. Right here is fine.”
Anger surges through me. I raise the vodka bottle and for one terrible second I’m tempted to smash it down on Ike’s head. I can’t do that. I drink instead and yell, “Right here is not fine. We have to go up!”
I start walking toward the cliff, and when I look down to check my footing, the snow is red. Blood red. The stain of red spreads around me, a jagged-edged spill of horror. I reel backward and fall. Someone died here! I can’t catch my breath. I keep trying to draw in air, gulping it even, but it won’t fill my lungs. I start crawling, scrabbling madly to free myself from this gruesome patch of hell, while my mind bucks and jigs, grappling for rationality.
I manage to choke out a single word. “Ike!”
He doesn’t answer.
God. What have I done? Did I hit him? Did I? I dare a glance at the snow beneath me and it’s white again, blessedly white, but I don’t see Ike. I look toward the sled, where I left him, and someone else is standing beside it.
“Kit? Hey. It’s me.”
“You! You can’t be here.”
He nods. His voice is soft when he says, “I’m glad I am.”
“Where’s Ike? Do you see him?”
“What?”
“My friend, Ike! He was just here, and now…We have to find him!” I climb to my feet and stagger in a loopy circle, looking all around, not finding him, not finding him anywhere.
“Kit, buddy, you want to give that bottle to me?”
“What? Why?”
Why does he want it? What’s he going to do? I gaze at the bottle and it’s fine, still whole, no smears of red on the glass. But when I dare a look at the ground toward the cliff…“Do you see that?”
“See what?”
He can’t see it?
“Kit? Come on. Let’s go home.”
I feel myself sway. I’m exhausted. Empty. Beaten. I sink down, into the snow. How did this happen? It shouldn’t end like this. I point toward the blood and croak, “I don’t know how that got there.”
SEVENTEEN
The world is ice. I am immersed in it, a body frozen in a berg that rides a cold, black ocean. I can’t move, can’t blink, and know with absolute certainty that this is how it ends. There is no pain, not anymore, no will to command one last futile effort from my limbs. There is only ebbing consciousness, thoughts trickling into darkness. I watch them, not because I’m curious, but because they’re all that’s left.
My thoughts drift to my village, to my people. Did my companion make it back to them? Is he seated comfortably, warm before the fire? Do they sing from afar, chant the words of farewell to carry me safely beyond? I listen, and yes, there is a distant beat, a slow steady rhythm of soft thuds, inhalations and exhalations of breath. He should have taken the ax.
From across the void that separates us, I hear his voice now too. He’s assuring me that all is well; he has come for me and will take me back. Take me back. Can it be possible? No, I must be dreaming. It is for me only, this task of…What is it I must do? I must go somewhere but the destination eludes me.
And then, at the base of the cliff, I see a magnificent white stag. For one long moment his dark liquid eyes hold mine, and then he tosses his head, gesturing sharply with his antlers. This way. He steps off with sure grace, and then he leaps, an astonishing float up onto the rock face.
He’s here to guide me! I rise to my feet and follow. I feel like a thing of cement compared to him, a clumsy mass of foreign parts, but as I press on, I lighten. I set a foot into his hoofprint and it’s as though he left a pool of energy there, a source of strength I can absorb through my soles. It flows into me and rises like the dawn, transmitting ripples of fur and wind, lightning, rock and alpine rivers. The force penetrates my veins, licks warm in my belly, snaps electric through my skin and into my hair. Joints are loosened, muscles strengthened, ligaments flexed.
My mind blazes and shimmers with a kaleidoscope of color, a vista of light streaming and expanding. I am young and green and strong. We climb, him leading, me following, and soon the sensation of effort leaves me. I can move with unbelievable ease, magical power. I have heard of this, the journey of the shaman, the flight between the worlds. Only once, in the manhood ritual, did I come close to this. It was a time of stinging pain when the indelible etching of black on skin marked me as one ready for the test, for my destiny. Is this stag my spirit totem? Where does he lead?
I hear music. The notes catch me, hold me. I mourn with the chanted lament. Go primal and pulsing with a drum. I shiver among rattles, slide high and low with voices rising and falling. When an electric guitar twangs in, I zing through a riff, until at last, dizzy and buzzing, I’m released on an echo.
It’s difficult to find my bearings. The stag disappeared into the music, and I sense that something else is coming to take his place. I must wait. I sink into a small grove and rest in pale purple, enter dusky dreams of imagined things. I float on currents of juice, drift through meadows thick with scent, sip golden liquid and spiral into darkness.
Someone is speaking. Through a crack in my eyelids I see the ground moving past. It streams by steadily for a time, an expanse of white, and then there is a tiny pause, a jerk, and the ground moves again. At once I understand. My companion has laid me on a travois for the journey back to our village. My eyes fall shut and I wonder again if I am dreaming. I was so certain of death, so ready to accept my fate. A flash of light cuts across my eyes, cuts through a swathe of thick curtain, and there, on the other side, I glimpse Fred.
I call out to him. “Hey! Over here.” He turns and looks at me. I see his mouth move, forming words, but I can’t hear them. And then the curtain falls back and he’s gone. It seems to me he wanted something. What? Was I supposed to get something?
Yes. I was to have gathered blackberries. I didn’t want to be reduced to the company of those who pluck berries. Such tasks fall only to the weak, to the damaged who cannot trek forth on the hunt. I was among the warriors once, a fearless participant in the tests of skill. I ran with the youth, wrested victory from my opponents, was admired by the women. The only remnant of that time now covers my head, the skin of a bear I once took when I was strong, when I was a man of courage and honor.
Is it too late for that now? Can I find what I must for Fred? For all the world, past and present? Future? I am apart from it now, isolated from them all. I hear their voices surrounding me, their whispers and murmurs rising and falling. They move in the light, pure and dazzling, and they are everywhere, part of everything. They bear messages and they are singing a song of oneness, of gossamer threads touching, joining each particle of the universe. They sing of layers, of finding the web spun like gold from eye to heart to hand, and none are separate, none overlooked. Each leaf, each child, deer, blade of grass, ocean, mountai
n, prisoner, puppy, breeze, monk— all are one.
Except for me. I am a ghost in their midst, suspended between the worlds. I need to know one last thing. I ask, “Am I dead?”
And a voice says, “You should rest now.”
EIGHTEEN
“Fred?”
“Hey, bud. How’re you doing?”
I try looking around, but it’s no good. The light hurts. “Where are we?”
“We’re in the hospital. The doctor says you’ve got to stay here for a bit. Mom and Dad are here too, but they’ve just been called away to talk to a… specialist.”
It’s like wading through sludge, making my brain comprehend this. “Why are we in the hospital?”
“You’ve got first-stage hypothermia. Not to mention you had a damn scary blood-alcohol count. Close to toxic.”
Alcohol? The sludge thins and I find a word lurking. Vodka. And blood. Yes, those two go together. But how? Blood, vodka.
Oh, God.
I lift my head and shoulders from the bed and look around, but all I can see are white curtains. “Where’s Ike?”
“Easy, buddy. You’re not supposed to get up yet. Who’s Ike?”
“Ike! My friend, Ike. Where is he?”
Fred looks away. “I don’t know, man. You want me to call him for you?”
Call him? Call him? I slump back. He means on the phone.
“I don’t have his number.”
“Oh.”
The sludge shifts, swirls, and this time I bolt fully upright. Bad move, because everything moves, and not the way it’s supposed to.
“Kit! Would you just take it easy?” Fred puts a hand on my chest and pushes until I’m lying back again. He yanks the blankets over me and growls, “Stay.”
I stare up at him, but my gut is making some funky moves and I can’t speak. I breathe and my gut sort of settles into gurgling, and I say, “How did we get here?”
“I figured out where you went from a map you left on your desk. I tracked you, we met up and then you passed out. So I brought you down the trail on the sled, put you in my car and, shazam, here we are.”
“But didn’t Ike come too? You saw him, right?”
He shakes his head. “No, man. It was just you.”
“God,” I moan. And the moan grows, rising and swelling, not as sound but as molten horror and guilt. I bite down on the pillow, dig my fingers into the bed, but tears and snot spew out of me. My entire body convulses.
“Oh, man! Little bro.” And Fred gets right beside me and wraps his arms tight around me, but it keeps heaving out, rolling and falling in hot, fat blobs.
I don’t recognize the voice that eventually speaks, but somehow I know it’s me whispering, “I killed him. I killed him.”
And Fred, I know his voice, he says, “No, Kit. Nobody got killed. There was just you, no one else, no other tracks. It was just you up there.”
He’s lying. I stiffen, go still, and he eases back.
Someone, a nurse or whatever, sticks her head through the opening in the curtains and says, “Is everything okay, here?”
Fred shakes his head. “I don’t know. I guess he’s upset. Can you do something for him?”
She eyeballs me and says, “I’m sorry. The doctor on duty has requested a psych exam, and we’d rather not give any meds until after that happens.” She purses her lips and adds, “His system needs to flush out the alcohol first anyway.”
She withdraws.
I look at Fred. “You don’t need to cover for me.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You don’t. They’ll find out sooner or later. And then you’ll be in trouble too. And I deserve whatever…”
“I’m not covering for you. I swear to God, you were alone up there.”
“Yeah? What about the blood in the snow? What about that?”
He frowns. “Blood?” And then his face clears and he actually grins. “You mean the algae bloom? Pretty weird, eh?”
“What?”
“You know, I’d heard about it, but that was the first time I’d seen it. There’s a certain type of algae that grows in snow in late winter or early spring and looks like blood.”
Again with the sludge, bogging down my brain. “Are you making that up?”
“Nope. I can prove it to you, soon as we’re home. It’s in one of my geography texts.”
I don’t think he’s lying. And the rush of relief makes me limp. “Wow.”
Fred nods.
“So you saw the red snow?”
He nods again.
“But you’re saying you didn’t see anyone else or any other tracks?”
Another nod.
“Yeah? Well, I can prove something too.”
“What’s that?”
“Where’s my jacket?”
He rolls his eyes. “We’re not leaving.”
“I just need to get something out of the pocket. Where is it?”
In reply, Fred stretches his arm over to the chair near the foot of the bed and holds my jacket aloft. “Which pocket?”
“The one on the inside. On the right, I think.”
He feels around in the pocket; his eyebrows rise when his hand closes around something and out comes the Blackberry. He whistles. “Nice. When did you get this baby?”
I feel heat in my face as I shake my head and reach for it. He places it in my palm and leans back, waiting. My hands tremble as my fingers try to locate the right buttons, but finally I get it figured out and tilt the small screen on the Blackberry toward Fred.
“Now watch. I’ll show you Ike.”
I select Play and a grainy image appears.
“What’s that?” Fred asks.
“It’s a video of the passenger seat in Mom’s car. See, there’s the side window. And there’s Ike’s burger wrapper. And…”
Something’s wrong. Where’s Ike?
“Didn’t you say I’d see Ike?” Fred asks.
“Yes. Shh. It’ll start any second now.”
We wait in silence, and then a voice on the video says, “Ike! ”
A few seconds later, we hear that again. “Ike!” More time ticks by and then there’s “Are you finished?”
And that’s all.
The horror I felt only minutes before pales beside what I feel now. I yank the Blackberry onto my chest and stare at it.
“Kit?”
“Wrong it something with.”
“Huh? You want to try that one again?”
“I again, yeah, try.”
“Kit, you’re mixing up…Never mind. Anyway, it seems like the sound worked okay. Maybe you should just rest.”
“No. Work didn’t. Just minute, wait. Fix it I have to.”
Fred stays quiet and I focus fiercely on how to replay the video. There used to be a rewind for everything. “Rewind everything,” I mutter.
“Okay,” says Fred.
The Blackberry emits a tiny chime and it should be ready, but now I can’t operate my fingers. “Bullshit, what!”
Fred holds out a hand. “You want me to try, bud?”
I drop the poisonous thing on the bed, and Fred picks it up. He says, “Okay. Looks fairly straightforward. You’ve got it set to play, right?”
I jerk a nod in his direction.
“Right. So have you got hours of video on here or what? Is the Ike shot near the beginning or the end?”
“Know don’t.”
He sighs. “No problem. I’ll just keep watching until I find it.” He selects Play and keeps his eyes glued to the screen. I keep my eyes glued to him.
But just a couple of minutes later, Fred shrugs. “It’s just got that same bit again, with the car seat and you saying ‘Ike’ a couple of times and…”
“Do videos of dead people disappear?”
“Say what?”
“If you die, are you erased?”
Fred blinks. “No, man. We’ve seen videos of old Aunt Annie, and our dog Harry, right? They didn’t disappear. And there are pl
enty of movies out there starring dead actors.”
“It’s impossible.”
He frowns, opens his mouth, looks like he does when he’s going to argue. But then he just slumps back and looks at the floor.
“Fred?”
“Yeah?”
“Ike was on that video. I was there with him and I filmed it.”
He nods. Then his face flushes deep red and his hand clenches, forms a fist that he uses to tap against his mouth. After a moment, the fist falls to the bed and he whispers, “Have I ever lied to you, Kit? Have I? Am I a liar?”
“What the hell?”
“’Cause I’m going to tell you something. And it’s the truth. And it’s this. There is no Ike! He’s not real. Can you get that, please? He’s just some sort of imaginary friend you’ve got, like some little kid thing in your head. Okay? There’s no Ike. ”
My lips feel numb, but I make them move anyway. “Why are you saying this?”
His fist uncurls and his hand lies there, palm up. His blue eyes shimmer with unshed tears and he croaks, “’Cause I love you, man. And I can’t stand seeing you like this anymore.”
And then the curtain slides back, and there’s Mom and Dad and this little woman wearing glasses who says, “Hello, Kit. I’m Dr. Hayes. I’m a psychiatrist and I’d like to chat with you for a bit.”
But I don’t hear what she says next because I’m watching Fred give the Blackberry to Dad, watching as he mutters something, watching as he leaves. He simply disappears beyond that curtain, and then, about two seconds later, there’s Ike saying, “Hey.”
I yell, “Fred! Come back. Ike’s here!”
Dr. Hayes says, “Who is here, Kit?”
Ike chuckles. “Looks like you blew it, dumbass.”
I close my eyes and nod. “Yeah. Guess I did.”
I hear my mother crying, my father murmuring softly and Dr. Hayes saying, “There are ways we can help.”
“Will you help me get up the mountain?” I ask.
“I’ll try.” She sits on the chair by the bed and says, “Can you tell me about it?”