The second and third echoes come from far and deep, and somehow far to the left, creating the illusion of an enormous expanse teeming with ghosts.
I suppress the impulse to call to him. Really, I should go and see how he’s doing. That would be the morally just thing to do. I have no idea how badly wounded he is. If he fell on the ice with both legs out, his shinbones will have gone right through his knee joints, same as Joe Simpson’s on the Siula Grande. But it could also be his back. In which case he’s paralyzed and will probably die during the night. If I traverse the ledge and venture to climb up several yards of slippery, vertical ice, I can assess the situation. But what difference will it make? There’s nothing I can do for him. The more time goes by, the more acceptable that idea seems.
Okay . . . but that’s not the real reason. You’re afraid of him. Admit it. Even now that you’ve had the time to observe the situation from a more detached point of view, you’re convinced it’s not Augustin who’s cackling there.
Unwilling to admit to this thought, I tend to my leg. When I unzip the side of my pants, I see the wound looks worse than it actually is. The axe’s spike has pierced my thigh and left an ugly, purple gash, but the cold has stanched the bleeding. I dress it with gauze and disinfectant from the first aid kit and wrap it a couple of times with a roller bandage, teeth clenched. By the time it’s done I can barely see the hole in the roof anymore. Night has fallen on the glacier like a blanket.
After a while, Augustin’s cackling turns into squealing.
I listen to it, beg it to stop. But it doesn’t.
I suddenly notice that the slack rope suspended between us is still attached to my harness. In the unfortunate event that Augustin falls, the ice screw will probably not be able to withstand the impact. Relieved to have something to distract me, I turn my second and last screw into the ice, a short distance from the first. I clip the rope into it. Now I can untie myself from the rope. If Augustin falls now and the screw doesn’t hold, at least I won’t be dragged with him into the void.
The excessive rope is still dangling from the screw, into the abyss. I start hauling it in, hand over hand. I look into the gaping depth, where even my Petzl’s beam can’t penetrate the subterranean darkness, and a halo of ghostly light reflects back at me.
The shadows are crawling again. A chilly gust of wind comes up with the rope, a deadly kiss from the depths. I start pulling it in faster, overcome by a sudden, irrational fear that something is staring back at me from the abyss.
Augustin’s screams have awakened something unnamable.
If it sees the dangling rope, it may come up with it.
The ice groans. Silence. With a dull thud, something breaks off in the distance. My face flinches, the hairs on my neck stand on end. Something ricochets off resonating walls, again and again, slowly dying away in the depths.
There’s something there.
I stare wide-eyed, deeper into the crevasse. I suddenly get the feeling that the darkness will reveal more if I don’t shine into it. I impulsively take off a glove with my teeth and switch off my headlamp with a bared finger.
In that one, inert second of total darkness, I feel the shadows coming at me from the crevasse, and I know with paralyzed certainty that they’re real, not just the play of light on the ice. I very consciously hear a click in my head: the floodgates of madness are open. The outside of my face under the windbreaker is a frozen, plastic mask. Inside are hot, living streams of sheer mortal fear. I reach for the Petzl, but—
I can’t turn it on.
I immediately let go of the rope. I hear it sway as it falls back into the abyss, and then the metallic yank as it jars to a sudden stop, suspended on the carabiner. Something is fluttering down there. With both hands, I tug on the headlamp, my fingers cramped like frozen steel. It’s the panic that is causing them to tremble, making it impossible for me to find the button at first. Then the beam bores through the crevasse. Like a child, I flail around me to fend off the mirages, but of course they’re only
(death birds)
mirages. There’s nothing there in the dark that can—
Augustin is gone.
I stare toward where his ice bridge had been, but it’s gone. Only emptiness and the rope disappearing into the distance, beyond the reach of my Petzl’s pale light. No, far away, a reflection of ice, the shape of the bridge, but it’s at least 100 feet away. Augustin’s cackling sounds thin and dismal, the distant call of a fallen climber. And the crevasse’s roof . . .
The walls rise up into infinity.
I slap myself in the face, pinch my cheeks, wildly shake my head.
Now the crevasse’s walls look all topsy-turvy.
I’m going crazy.
I dig and scrabble with limp limbs as far away from the edge as my belay permits. My hands sink into the snow, I stagger upright, I look around me, my heart thumping in my chest. I grab the aluminum space blanket out of my backpack’s pouch and snap it open, crawl under it, close it around my head and body, expecting something from out of the crevasse’s depths to wash over me at any moment—and that something, I know, is the mountain’s soul, the Maudit’s soul, and if I turn and face it, it will make me go immediately insane. The last thing I feel will be its frozen breath, and the last thing I see will be its dark, hollow eye sockets, deep inside of which something will be glowing, eye sockets like holes, and I will fall into those holes for eternity.
Leaning against the ice, I sit hugging my knees, looking at the silvery sparkle of bright light on taut foil. Outside my cocoon, the crevasse’s maniacal screaming and the shrieking of the death birds.
That night, I discover the true meaning of the abyss.
In the Hills, the Cities
Notes by Sam Avery And if it killed them, this monster, then at least they would have glimpsed a miracle, known this terrible majesty for a brief moment.
—Clive Barker
1
The stage was set. Brother and sister. Back in the mountains. Back in a cabin. Snowed in, a fire crackling in the fireplace. A ghost story between us. Half a ghost story—because no one ever, ever, ever told the whole story.
Somewhere, we took a wrong turn.
Somehow, we ended up back at square one.
After Louise Grevers’s call, I walked back into the room and saw Julia looking at me. Julia and me in Hill House and the only thing missing was the gentle, cozy ticking of Grandma’s knitting needles. The taste of Grandma’s blueberry waffles on our tongues. Grandpa’s oldster voice saying, Once upon a time, long ago . . .
And Julia looking at me, looking right through me with her blueberry-blue eyes, she says, “That wasn’t good news, huh?” Her Tumi travel pack between her slippers and Ramses purring on her lap, she says, “Wanna talk about it?”
I say, “I dunno.” Totally shaky, I really didn’t know. Sank down onto the couch’s armrest, missed the back of the couch when I made a grab for it to keep my balance.