Dead Five's Pass (5 page)

Like the entire night, it just didn’t seem natural.

“I’m gonna check farther in, make sure there’s no crazy axe murderer waiting round the corner,” Mouse said.

“Ain’t funny, dude,” Brick said, slapping Mouse, who was almost half his size, around the head.

“Want some time alone, you two?” Nate said as he piled more twigs on the fire.

“Seriously though, I think I can hear something down there. Like a rumble or something…”

“Probably just water; there’s gotta be quite a lot running through the mountain this time of year with all the run-off and snow,” Michael said, more to calm his nerves than anything else.

“Maybe,” Mouse said, “but I’ll just have a quick look while fat boy sorts the food.”

“Stay within shouting distance, eh?” Nate said.

Mouse gave him a mock salute, accompanied by his stupid grin. “Sure thing, Cap’n!”

“It’s always the funny ones that die first,” Brick said. Michael couldn’t tell if he was joking, but he tended to agree. His nerves seemed to stretch and an acidic anxiety bubbled away in his gut.

“This place gives me the creeps,” he said, sitting down next to Nate. Even the fire didn’t seem to warm the chill that wrapped its icy fingers around him.

Not for the first time that night, he questioned what the hell he was doing there as he watched Mouse walk into the gloom and round a curve in the tunnel. A few seconds later, his flashlight grew dim and disappeared altogether.

“This ain’t right,” Michael said. “Someone should go after—”

A sudden, piercing scream interrupted his sentence.

* * *

The sound of Janis slamming doors permeated Marcel’s snug hideaway study. He took a deep slug of the ice-cold lager and enjoyed the sensation as it filled his guts. He sunk back into his well-worn chair and realized he’d probably spent more time in his study, alone, going through the old newspaper stories of him and Carise, researching caves and the newest gear online, and numerous other pointless activities, than he did with his fiancée. She’d always said she liked her time alone for her hobbies, but Marcel was always at a loss as to what they were exactly—beyond thinking up arguments to assail him with.

He took another slug, pulled the laptop from the desk onto his lap and flipped the lid. Might as well do something constructive while he waited for a rescue call—if it was coming.
Perhaps Frank had sorted it out on his route, or maybe Carise was handling it on her own
, he thought. That latter thought didn’t fill him with a sense of comfort.

It was coming to something when he considered spending the night in the freezing temperatures in a wet and murky cave with his ex as a better prospect than a night in with Janis. And as if talking of the devil, a bell chimed from his computer to indicate a new email message. His heart skipped a beat when he saw it was from Carise. It had an attachment and read:

From: Carise Culey

To: Marcel DesMonet

Subject: Please. I need your help. Urgent.

Hey, Marc.

Sorry it’s been so long. How are you? Look, I normally wouldn’t disturb you, what with Janis the…way she is. But something weird’s going down. I’ve attached some photos (don’t look if you’re eating or drinking). The girlfriend of a boy who called in an emergency from up in Dead Five’s Pass did this when Frank found her and brought her back. The girl was beyond traumatized. I’ve never seen anything like it. Apparently, they found a cave up there. Her boyfriend Jason is missing. She said he’s dead, but I don’t know, he could still be out there. But the thing I wanted to know is, could you look up the symbols? Do they mean anything? The girl kept saying stuff about “it’s too late,” and “we’ll all see.”

I noticed there was some numbers in among all that freak shit. Might mean something? Also, I was hoping you might know someone involved with private climbing groups, maybe a forum or an email list or something. These kids found it via some satellite photos. If they found it, I’m wondering if they shared it with anyone else. We can’t let anyone just go up there in these conditions.

Thanks, Marc. Sorry to bother you, but this just doesn’t feel right…there’s something really odd about it all. And well, if you’re at a loose end, and Janis ain’t busting your balls too much, I could use an extra pair of hands and eyes…

Marcel clicked on the attachment, placed the photos in a slideshow. The images burned into his brain; the symbols with their hideous forms and unnatural angles and curves cut right through his buzz, setting its own buzz…a deep, insidious foreboding.

He couldn’t tell exactly why they made him feel that way. It wasn’t just the blood and feces the girl had used, but something more fundamental, as if he were looking at things beyond his comprehension, something entirely ancient and unknowable.

He shut the laptop, placing it back onto the desk with a thud. Closing his eyes, he tried to slow his racing heart. And not just from the effects of those images, but hearing from Carise again. She sounded so fragile and scared. Damn her! He slammed a fist on the arm of the chair, stood up and wiped a hand across his face, almost to see if he was still corporeal. Those images had shifted his sense of reality. If there was one thing that woman had over him, it was his inextinguishable desire to look out for her. He just couldn’t let her go.

Looking through his contact list, he found the name of the son of one of his old work colleagues. Nate was his name. The kid was now some hot-shot medical student and used to train with Marcel on the climbing wall. Marcel remembered he was a member of some secret and elite climbing group. All part of some ridiculous competitive thing with other groups at the university. Usual teenage bullshit; trying to one up each other.

He clicked the call button and waited. It disconnected even before it rang. He checked his phone; just half a bar. He moved out into the lounge area to see if he could get a better signal.

Janis was slumped on the sofa, wrapped in a flannel tracksuit watching the TV. She didn’t even look at him when he moved into the room.
Whatever
.

He got three bars on his phone and tried again.

It rang, then cut out.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath and tried again.

Janis looked up at him. “You calling that bitch?”

Marcel shook his head in resignation and turned his back, waiting for the call to connect. It rang again. This time it continued to ring when finally a panicked voice came through.

“Marc…that…you?”

“Yeah, that you Nate? Everything okay?”

“Christ alive, am I glad to hear you. Look, you’ve got to help us, we found a new cave, some dude’s been butchered, Mouse has fucked off. It’s pandemonium here. I don’t know what’s—”

The call signal dropped again, and this time Marcel kicked a footstool across the room. “Fuck!”

Moving out into the kitchen, he held his phone up as if he were willing the signals down from heaven. And then his phone rang again. Nate.

“Nate, where are you? What’s this about a new cave?”

“It’s all on the forum, check the private area…the satellite pictures. We’re under the eastern outcrop and the top of the pass…there’s a dead climber down at the stones…we had to bury him. There’s something here…I…we…hur—”

Before the line dropped for the final time, Marcel heard a deep roar like thunder, but with more of an edge to it, followed by a chorus of shouts from some other kids.

Marcel rushed through into his study and flipped the lid on the laptop. The forum Nate mentioned was one that he used to frequent and give advice to some of the kids at the university, but hadn’t been on there for a while. He fired up his browser and navigated to the Web address. Luckily it remembered his login details and a popup window indicated that there were new messages in the private zone of the forum.

Nate was right; there in a message thread were some satellite images and GPS coordinates. He downloaded them, packed up his laptop and headed out of his study just as the house phone rung.

Both he and Janis stared at it. She stared at him with a face that said, “Don’t you dare answer it,” for they both knew who it would be. Then Janis stood from the sofa and moved to the handset on the wall. Marcel dashed forward from the kitchen area and grabbed it first.

“Hello?”

“Marc? It’s Carise.”

“I got your email, I’m on my way.”

“Did you find anything on the symbols?”

“No, but I’m looking into it… Listen, there’s a bunch of kids up in that cave you mentioned. I know how to find it. Hold the chopper for me. I’ll be ten minutes max.”

He slammed the phone down, pushed his way past Janis, who was now screeching at him. “It’s not your responsibility. Let it go, Marc. I want you here. That bitch has stolen enough of your life.”

Grabbing his laptop from the study, he ignored Janis and headed out to his truck. All the time she screamed and yelled at him.

“I’m telling you now, Marc. If you go to her, we’re done! You get it? Over.”

He took one look at her face, all twisted and snarling like a rabid dog.

“Fine by me,” he said as he climbed into the cab of his truck and fired the ignition.

He slammed the throttle and sent her flying away back into their cabin as the truck lurched out into the night and snow. All he cared about right now was finding those kids and bringing them—and Carise—back safely. And yet, something inside him squirmed. It wasn’t the butterflies of a usual rescue, or the stress of Janis, but a sick feeling that permeated every cell of his being. It was a like a great and powerful darkness had entered his world and was eating him from the inside out. And still white-hot in his mind were those hellish symbols. What crazed mind could think up such things? He was damn sure he didn’t want to know, but had the certainty that he would. Like the email said, “We’ll all see.” He saw all right, and didn’t like it one bit.

6

Brick and Michael left Nate back at the fire after hearing a call come through. They headed off down the dark tunnel after Mouse’s screams. As they chased after him, Michael noticed—under flashlight— that the wall swam with myriad colors on the surface like petrol and it was warm to the touch.

The tunnel itself remained smooth as if machined.
Or melted, like a superheated meteor crashed through the mountainside,
he thought.

The distance between Brick and Michael extended; it was obvious Brick was the athlete of the two, and despite his bulk managed to move swiftly and surely, even on the slippery surface. He saw Brick turn into a tunnel on his left.

“Mouse! Mouse! Can you hear me?” Brick shouted. A terrible, high-pitched gurgle answered his call, followed be a frenzied splashing.
Maybe there was a subterranean lake
, he thought. Michael sucked in a deep breath to try and ease his burning lungs and carried on after Brick.

Beyond the left branch of the tunnel, the cave opened up into a wider chamber. A lambent red glow radiated outwards and into the tunnel.

Michael continued on, slower now, cautious.

Inside the chamber, a series of square stones sat at the edge of a cave lake that was almost perfectly round and at least twenty meters in diameter. There were no other sources of water dripping from the domed ceiling above the lake. Like the walls, the ceiling was also smooth.

As Michael approached, he noted that the stones, much like the walls, didn’t seem natural—the surface was too precise: sharp angles and straight lines. Fascinated, Michael seemed to forget why they were there and knelt at the stones. There were five of them lined up around the edge of the lake. From within that murky water—he assumed it was water—a bioluminescent crimson glimmer shone.

To the left-hand side of these stones, he found a series of flat slipperlike shoes and black cloth robes. They were neatly folded, robes on top of slippers, each lined up one beside the other. Five in total.
Fuck, we’re not alone…

The colored light bounced off the stones. On their flat tops, this light picked out a pattern of relief shadows—a set of carved symbols. “Brick, look at this,” Michael said as he shone his flashlight down on them, but when the beam hit the surface, the symbols disappeared. It was as if they were only visible in a certain spectrum of light.

Brick’s eyes grew narrow and he shook his head, unable to comprehend the significance. He moved past the flat stones to peer farther into the water. “He must be in there…” he said.

Mouse could have drowned!

Michael took off his glove and tentatively tested the lake’s surface; it wobbled and undulated as if the surface had a thick skin.

Brick grabbed his wrist, pulled him away. “What if it’s poisonous?”

“Then Mouse is fucked, but we’ve got to at least try something…”

Brick let go, stepped back, turned his head. “Wait…what’s that?”

A strange, low drone broke the silence within the chamber. It resonated around the room, coming from no single discernible direction.