Dead Five's Pass (6 page)

The surface of the lake began to ripple and rise in the center; its sloshed movements thick, like congealed mud. A shape stirred underneath in the gloom.

“Mouse…shitting hell, that’s Mouse,” Brick said, pointing at the form suspended in the liquid. Michael couldn’t imagine it as water anymore, it was too thick and strong to hold a body like that, because that’s what it looked like in that strange crimson light: an actual body, not so much floating, but held by some force.

“What…what…is this, Mike?” Brick said, with more than just a little panicked edge to his voice. “What the holy hell is it?”

Brick was losing his cool real fast, and Michael wasn’t far behind. He struggled to imagine that black and twisted facsimile of a person as his friend Mouse, but then it moved and suddenly he knew.

Michael tried to move away, but the scene pinned him. All the while the shape broke apart and melted into the liquid. Seconds later, the surface swelled on the lake as before, only the light that glowed from underneath was brighter, and redder.

Not only were the five stones at the lake’s edge glowing with weird glyphs, so too were the walls and ceiling now. They seemed to Michael to be like some kind of language, a cross between Hebrew and Egyptian, but altogether more ancient. How he knew that he couldn’t tell, but the angles appeared to defy nature, defy science. He approached the wall beside the lake to get a closer look, but a sense of terror started to break out in the corners of his mind. He had to look away, it was if…he didn’t know why, but he had a sense that things were too late. He’d seen too much.

“I can’t do this, Mike, this is fucking crazy. It’s all just nuts!” Brick said. He backed away slowly, as if scared that any fast movement would incite something…violent. Michael felt it too. The atmosphere was charged with malevolence and he felt himself being watched from all around as if those shapes and symbols on the walls were sentient.

He couldn’t be sure what was real or imaginary, things shifted in the gloom and he thought he saw robed beings circle the chamber, staying mostly hidden in the enveloping shadows.

From beyond the glowing lake, Michael heard Mouse’s voice call out, “Help! Help!” It sounded strained and far off, devoid of the familiar reverb or echo that you get in a cave. The screams were being transmitted right into their minds.

“Wait…how can…is that…” Brick stepped around the stones, past the lake and slowly towards the shadowy edges of the cavern. He suddenly looked back at Michael, eyes wide. “Mike, there’s a narrow access way down here, I think Mouse’s down there; I can hear him breathing. And I see a light. I think it’s his flashlight. That wasn’t him in the lake!”

If that’s Mouse…then who was in the water?

Against his better judgment, and perhaps because of that slight flicker of hope he saw in Brick’s eyes, he followed, moving beyond the cavern and through a narrow slip of rock, and all he could see on the ground were bones.

* * *

Carise sat in the reception area of the station, staring out into the dark of the night, watching the fat snowflakes fall and melt on the chopper. The pilot sat in the cockpit hidden behind the steam of a hot drink. Frank had called in the chopper and reported the situation to the nearest larger station. They couldn’t provide help at this time, they said, so it was down to Carise and Marcel to go up in the pass and search for the girl’s boyfriend.

“Tell me this is just a one-off thing, Marge. Tell me we’ll find the kid and it turns out that the girl was just suffering from some kind of trauma.”

“It’s the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen, Cari, but I’m sure you’re right. But you don’t have to do this on your own, Marcel will be here soon.”

“You know it’s the first time I’ve seen him since…”

“I know, dear. But you’ll be fine, he’s one of the good guys, eh?”

That was often the problem. He just wanted to help people. Make sure they were safe. Including her, but she pushed him away, scared that her grief would be too much.

The rumble of a V-8 engine, and the bright slice of light from headlights reflecting off the side of the chopper announced his arrival.

She stood and grabbed her pack of gear, placing the cup of coffee on Marge’s desk.

“Good luck, m’dear. Frank’ll be on his radio if you need anything from us.”

“Thanks, Marge.”

Carise took a deep breath and ventured out into the cold. Marcel had already got out of his truck and lifted his backpack from the truck bed. They stood close in front of each other. But it might as well have been a chasm; the words wouldn’t come and her throat tightened. There were so many things she could say, perhaps even
should
say, but in the end she just nodded and said, “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” Marcel said with a shy smile on his face.

“Well…” Carise scratched her face, looked at her shoes. “This is awkward.”

“And cold.”

“Want to get moving?”

Marcel stepped forward, patted her arm. “Sure.”

Carise looked over to Smith, the pilot, and whirled her hand in the air to indicate they were ready to go up. Marcel opened the cockpit door and helped Carise inside.

“I’ve got the GPS coordinates to the cave. I managed to speak to one of the kids up there,” he said as the rotors whined up and they strapped themselves in.

“How many are there?” Carise asked, wondering if the girl had got it wrong and there more than just her and her boyfriend there.

“Four boys,” Marcel said, “different group to your survivor. It seems the satellite images were shared on a forum. There was a race to find it first. The other group was your girl and her boyfriend Jason. But there’s…”

“What?” she asked, not liking the tightening of his face.

He closed his eyes for a second. “When I spoke to Nate, one of the group, he mentioned there was a…body by the standing stones.”

Carise’s hopes took a nose dive as the chopper lifted off. She shook her head, wishing the girl was wrong, because if she was right about him dying, then she might be right about the crazy stuff too.

She leaned forward and gave Smith directions to the stone outcropping at Dead Five’s Pass.

“We’ll check it out first on our way,” she said. Marcel nodded and passed her his laptop with the satellite images of the cave.

“It’s under the outcrop.” He had to shout as the chopper dipped its nose and headed for the mountain.

Carise knew the place well. She’d trained many times in that area; the outcrop was an especially good spot to test one’s climbing skill as it had few handholds and you needed great upper-body strength to get over it. There was also the great boulder staircase that made a good base camp. She did not remember ever seeing a cave.

“I don’t like this,” she confided to Marcel, “I’m…”

“I know.” He took her hand in his and she immediately felt the warmth through her cold skin.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

He smiled at her, and she felt a calmness spread throughout her body. It was the feeling that no matter what was going on, there was at least one person she could trust.

She just hoped that if it came to it, Marcel could trust her too.

7

Bones. Everywhere; snapped, mutated, bent. They reminded Michael of the bones of the climber back at the standing stones. After they’d slipped through the narrow rock, Michael and Brick had come through to a wide ledge that overlooked a blackened pit. Mouse’s flashlight was at the bottom and shining up. The light, however, didn’t reach the ceiling, stretching up into the darkness of the mountain. It seemed to Michael that the mountain was hollow, such was the height and spaciousness of the opening.

“Brick? What can you see?” Michael called out to his friend who had traveled farther out onto the ledge. They didn’t hear Mouse’s voice again, and despite what Brick said, Michael couldn’t hear any breathing except his own, which now came in short, fraught half-lungfuls.

“Just his flashlight,” Brick said, before bellowing down into the great, deep pit. “Mouse! Are you down there? Are you hurt?”

Nothing. Just that slow, forlorn echo as Brick’s deep voice bounced around the rock.

Brick slumped his head into his gloves and fell to his knees. He hung his head low and wept like a child. Michael shone his flashlight down into the pit.

“Brick,” Michael whispered while patting his friend on the back with his free hand. “Down there. I saw something.”

“What? Mouse?”

“I dunno. Just look and see if you can make it out.”

Sweeping the flashlight back and forth in long, slow movements, Michael seemed to catch something in the shadows. Not quite a reflection, but a dull shine like the sole of an old running shoe, rubbery and pliable—and quick.

They both gasped. “Shit, there’s something down there.”

And then Michael thought of the bones, and the ledge, and the height. If there was some creature, or some person down there, how did they get bones all the way up to the ledge?

Michael backed away, kept his flashlight lowered to the ground, not wanting to see what was lurking in the depths.

“What are you doing?” Brick said. “Mouse might still be down there.”

“Mouse isn’t down there. He’s dead…like the other guy was, like we’ll be if we don’t get out of here…right now, this very fucking minute.”

Brick darted forward and grabbed Michael by the lapels. “We can’t just leave him for fuck’s sake, he’s our friend!” Brick’s face contorted into twisted, ugly shapes and spittle shot from his mouth.

Michael managed to get his free arm up between them and push him back. The flashlight’s beam flickered widely around the massive opening, and with each swing, Michael saw shapes like great bats peel away from the walls and the shadows. They moved slickly and silently.

“I’ve got to get out of here, Brick, this place isn’t right. You know it too! You can feel it, see it...”

He turned his back on Brick and sprinted towards the narrow cleft of rock leading to the lake, Brick’s hand grabbed his hood, pulled him back with a heavy yank. He smashed to the floor, heaving all the air from his lungs, and then Brick was on him, straddling across his chest, forcing what little air he had from out of his lungs.

Brick’s hands tightened around Michael’s throat, cutting off his airway.

“We have to save him, man, it’s Mouse—my Mouse. I can’t…” The pressure was too much and Michael started to see thick blobs of color in his vision. Groping his arm around the ledge, he found a rock, and without thinking, brought it up and over and struck it hard into Brick’s temple.

The effect was instant: the big hockey player closed his eyes and slumped to the side, thudding into the detritus of broken bones and dust.

Michael sucked in a lungful of air, coughed hard as the disturbed dust filled him. And then he thought about what made the dust: crushed bones, and he rolled onto his front, lifted himself to his hands and knees and coughed it all up until blood came from this throat.

“Brick, I’m sorry. Get up, let’s go.”

Michael leaned down and pushed his friend, but he didn’t move. A wide arc of blood had pooled around his head, and when Michael put his ear to Brick’s mouth, he neither felt nor heard him breathing. He took off a glove and tried to find a pulse, but either there wasn’t one, or his hand was too cold to feel it.

* * *

Nate heard a scuffle and the raised voices of Brick and Michael from down the tunnel. Frustrated at losing the call and unable to reconnect, he switched on his flashlight and went after his friends to see what the problem was, but the frantic voice of Brick saying something about Mouse set his nerves on edge. He followed their footsteps through the tunnel and left at the branch point until he arrived at the lake. Awed and concerned at the red glow coming from the lake, he saw shapes move in the shadows up ahead.

He raised his flashlight and fluorescent markings glowed in the beam. It was one of them. “Hey!” he called, “is that you, Mike, Brick?”

No answer came. Only the backward-shuffling figure of…who was that? Nate edged forward, all the time holding his flashlight up, and then he saw the blonde hair and realized it was Michael. “Mike, what’s happened?” He remained hunched forward, his head bowed and still shuffling backward. Nate realized then that he was dragging something into the lake’s chamber.

Nate stood in confusion as Michael came closer. But as he drew nearer, he saw what Michael was dragging: Brick. A trail of dark blood followed behind.

Nate stepped closer, saw the ugly, wet cut on the side of Brick’s face. Half of his head was caved in and bone and hair were mixed together, matted with blood.

Nate’s legs were jelly and he ambled forward on his numb limbs. “Michael. Tell me what happened!” His voice breaking into a hysterical scream.

Michael dropped Brick’s legs to the ground and turned to face Nate. His eyes were wide and pale as if they had rolled all the way back in their sockets. A bloodied rock remained in his right hand and before Nate could understand, Michael rushed him, bringing the rock down hard against his skull.