Dead Five's Pass (4 page)

“Hey there,” Carise said with a soft, even tone. “What do we call you?”

The girl didn’t respond.

“I’m Carise,” she tried again. “I’m here to help.”

A haunted whisper came from the girl. “It’s…too… late,” she said, still hiding behind her wounded legs.

“What’s too late? Do you mean your boyfriend?”

The girl began to laugh so quietly that at first Carise thought she was sobbing. And then the laugh grew louder, and higher in pitch until it splintered with pain and became a scream.

Jumping back and away from the girl, Carise put her hands to her ears, and then the girl’s voice broke so that the scream became a staccato roar.

Carise backed a step away, but the girl suddenly dropped her legs to the ground and launched herself forward, her arms outstretched and hands clawed like talons. She scratched at Carise’s face, forcing her back into the door with a heavy thud. The door handle stabbed Carise in the back.

“Too late! Too late!” the crazed girl kept saying.

Carise grabbed at the girl’s wrists, forced them back down on the bench, but despite her condition and weakened state, the girl fought back before letting herself go limp against the tiled wall.

“You will see it too…everyone will see it,” the girl whispered. Her bright blue eyes were wide now, and rimmed with red. Her lank hair covered her mouth, which frothed white and red spittle. She spat it clear and it landed on Carise’s jacket, marking it with a filthy red stain on the neon-yellow fabric.

“See what?” Carise asked, exasperated. Blood started to pour from the wounds on the girl’s legs and she slumped onto her side, muttering incoherently. Her lips moving like a fish’s out of water. A weird, guttural stream of vowels came from deep within her throat. Something black dripped from her mouth. The oily liquid pooled on the bench before falling to the tiled floor.

Carise stepped back away from it, reached for the door. Before she could turn the handle and leave the room, the girl turned her head and lifted it slightly up from the bench.

“He’s dead,” she said. “Ran away and died.” Her lips stretched wide and she exposed her stained teeth. Carise couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a grimace. She wanted to ask her the boyfriend’s name or location, but before she could get the words out, the girls eyes rolled back into her head, showing the whites of the eyeball, and she collapsed onto her side, jerking wildly.

Carise rushed out of the door. “I think she’s having a seizure, or passed out or something, she needs emergency medical help.”

“They’re already on their way, darlin’. Should be here soon.”

“They better be quick. I don’t think she’ll make it for much longer. The girl is clearly traumatized, and looks to have some kind of internal bleeding. She’s made a real mess in there.”

Frank looked over, his eyes half-closed and his skin grayer and more gaunt than she had ever seen him before. “What did she say to you, Frank?” Carise asked.

The old Mountie looked away for a second before glancing back at Carise’s stare. “Not much, something about the shapes…said she saw shapes and it was too late for us.”

“Well gosh darn it, that poor girl has had a real scare and trauma, but that don’t make any sense,” Marge said.

“She said something similar to me,” Carise said as she took a seat in the reception. “I don’t think I can get much else out of her.”

“Maybe this will be of help to you,” Frank said. “To find the boy.” He passed her his notebook. “It was her statement when I first picked her up on the side of the road. She was still freaked out but managed to get a few words out before going into her shell.”

Carise took it and read the note. It said:

Boyfriend discovered new cave, bad things in the pool. Shapes. Drowning, Jason ran, chased into the pass, shapes left. She escaped (didn’t want to give her name), fears he’s dead. Heard his screams and then nothing. It’s too late. She fears it’s too late. Won’t say what “it” is.

A feeling of dread consumed Carise as she imagined a scenario of panic, but it didn’t make sense. What could the shapes be? Could it have just been a wolf or a bear? In a dark cave, they could seem entirely different, what with the acoustics and unnatural light. The cuts on the girl’s legs were certainly clawlike, but maybe too precise. They seemed too straight, narrow like that of a scalpel. Then she thought of some crazy person camping in the pass armed with knives. Anything at this stage was a possibility. But what concerned her the most was this missing boyfriend.

“Frank,” Carise said, “did you travel to the stones to check for her boyfriend?”

He shook his head. “Well no, it would have taken too long and I wanted to make sure she got into a warm place as soon as possible. I’m sure you would have done the—”

Carise held up her hands. “It’s okay, I wasn’t judging, just asking.”

He lowered his head and wiped at his face. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It’s all just so weird, I’m way out of my comfort—”

A loud crash from the interview room cut him off. They all snapped their attention to the door. Another bang came from inside and the door shook with the force. Frank rushed over. As he touched the handle, the door flew open with such force he was thrown back onto his backside, where he slid across the linoleum floor until his head smashed into the side of Marge’s desk with a sickening thud. Marge jumped up from her chair, her eyes wide with surprise.

Carise rose from her chair and dashed over to Frank. A spot of blood smeared the desk but he was awake still, cursing and rubbing the back of his head. “Crazy bitch.”

Following the Mountie’s gaze, Carise turned her head to take in the scene. Her earlier dread grew into something else. Some feeling so dark and so primal that she felt weak and impotent at the significance of what she was seeing.

Bizarre patterns with no discernible meaning or recognizable form made with blood and feces covered the tiled walls. The markings were curved and jagged with odd angles and bizarre forms, almost as if it were some symbolic script.

The girl sat in the middle of the floor among the broken furniture. A jagged piece of wood, presumably from the table leg, stuck out of her thigh. Around it pooled a thick flow of blood. It was that blood that covered her hands and her face.

She rocked back and forth with her legs crossed, her mouth stretched wide in a pained grimace. That hideous, whispering laughter came from her again as she clawed at her wounds and transferred the blood onto the floor, creating yet more unidentifiable glyphs and markings.

Carise slammed the door shut, and tried to un-see those terrible and disturbing images, but like the girl said earlier, it was too late. They were in her brain now…she was in her brain, sitting there like some guru writing missives in the dirt.

“What…the…fuck,” was all she could say, as both Frank and Marge looked at her with the same expression of primal fear that she expected was on her own face.

* * *

Flashing blue and red lights sliced through the narrow windows of the station, turning the place into a fair ride. Carise stood on shaking legs and watched in slow motion as the paramedics entered and locked eyes with Marge, then Frank, and finally her. She pointed to the door and regretted it immediately; she tried to stop the two women in their bright red coats, carrying a gurney as they reached the interrogation room. She wasn’t quick enough, and the lead woman, with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and unusually extravagant makeup, pulled the door open before gasping and turning her head away in disgust.

Both paramedics dashed to the girl who now lay still on her side in the middle of that horrific pattern of shapes and angles.

Carise couldn’t look at those dread drawings any longer and just stared out of the window, focusing on the whirling emergency lights.

The paramedics stretchered the girl out of the room and into the back of the ambulance. Both Marge and Frank were standing now and moving out of the station, but Carise stood where she was, all the time trying to ignore that magneticlike pull of the room and its terrible new paint job. It was if it had some kind of power, some attraction, despite the unnatural angles and strokes. Snapping out of it, Carise ran to the door of the station before it closed and let the freezing air pull her back to the world.

It wouldn’t be her last experience of chaos that night; she was sure of it. And in the back of her mind, all she could really think of was Marcel. She had to get a message to him.

Against her better judgment and natural inclination to have nothing more to do with that room, Carise walked back into the station, and with her camera phone took a series of pictures. She knew Marcel had an Internet connection at his cabin; maybe he could help find out what it meant. She assumed that once the girl was taken care of, she’d be going out to the pass to confirm the whereabouts of her boyfriend, and she’d rather do it with Marcel’s company.

5

Michael stepped out from the back of the group of climbers and overtook both Mouse and Brick to join Nate at the front. The going was heavy now, with the freezing wind howling and the temperature dropping to twenty-five below. The previous climber’s tracks had so far been in line with Nate’s navigation to the new cave.

“How much farther, Nate?” Michael asked as he stepped beside his friend.

Nate pulled the map out of his jacket. “See that outcrop on the eastern side? The cave is underneath it and obscured by a curl of rock. Partly why it was never found until now.”

That didn’t sound right. Rock doesn’t so easily curl, and it’s an odd phenomenon to happen naturally, but then he wasn’t graduated or a professor yet, so he reminded himself he didn’t know all the answers, just like he had no answers for the standing stones in the pass. But whatever the answer was, he had a creeping suspicion it wasn’t normal. He struggled to get the image of the climber’s face lying in the snow next to his own skull out of his mind.

What irked him even more was how casual everyone now seemed. It had been less than thirty minutes ago, and there was Mouse joking and laughing with Brick as if this was just another regular climbing weekend. But there was nothing regular about any of it.

Nate kept the pace up and began to veer to the east—following the tracks all the way. It was clear to Michael now that the climber did come from the cave.

As they headed into the tree line, Michael thought he noticed something shift beneath the outcrop. “Guys, did you see that?”

Mouse and Brick were still laughing, but shut up when Michael stopped and they walked into the back of him. “Dude!” Mouse said, rubbing his face from the collision.

“Shut up and listen for a second,” Michael said, not even attempting to hide the irritation from his voice. “Up ahead under the outcrop. I saw something.”

Nate eventually stopped, but was now five meters in front of them. He turned round with a quizzical expression on his face and raised his shoulders as if asking what they were doing.

A tingling in Mike’s spine spread to his legs, and a great weight pinned him to the ground, the snow approaching his knees. Brick and Mouse didn’t say a word. Nate must have sensed their unease and turned slowly. All four of them remained silent, staring ahead.

From the trees, a whispered moan floated on the wind. At first Michael just thought it was usual noise wind made as it whipped through trees and branches, but there was an
otherness
about it. A sound so forlorn and ancient than Michael was sure it was an old man in pain.

“Maybe there’s someone else in the cave?” Mouse whispered.

“Maybe whoever mutilated the last guy,” Brick said.

Michael’s feet and hands were shivering now and a slick sweat broke out across his forehead and lower back. Despite the fear, he felt the need to get closer. “Come on, let’s just get in. Nate, is there a signal out here?” He knew the answer. Nate had been checking the cell signal religiously every minute. Nothing.

Together, they crept forward like burglars in the night. Nate with his flashlight broke the tree line first and, clambering down a set of boulders that acted like giant steps, approached a point under the outcrop, disappearing from sight.

Michael and the others quickened their pace to catch up. They followed Nate and soon found the gap in the rock. Nate’s voice called out, followed by a huge reverberating echo, “Guys, I found it!”

They joined Nate inside an initially small cavern. On the ground, dying embers glowed from a recent fire. Around it lay two sleeping bags and two flasks with their caps off.

“I think we found our poor victim’s camp,” Nate said as he poked a stick at the ashes and blew at the embers to reignite the fire. “Probably a good place for us to warm up and catch our breath before we chart the place. What do you think, Mike?”

“Sounds like a good plan. My feet are frozen.”

With that, the four of them hefted their heavy packs off their backs and placed them in a circle around the fire. While Nate and Brick were preparing some food, Mike inspected their surroundings.

The rock walls were smooth, almost as if they were man-made, but given the location and narrow entrance, they couldn’t have been; there’d be no way of getting any machinery in such a space, and why would anyone do that halfway up a mountain?