Around me is a barren world. The summit ridge is jagged, snow-covered, and so narrow that it would be impossible for two people to pass each other. There’s no stoneman to prove anyone has ever been here before. The snowstorm bulges over the crest like a living creature and shrouds everything in a gray, horizontally shifting blur, but it’s clear there’s no place to go up anymore; from here on, it’s only downhill.
I don’t feel the liberation or the fulfillment I normally do when I reach a summit. Only a terrible, rudimentary awareness of where I am: in a claustrophobic realm where death is silently hunting me. After the intense charge of before, it now feels like I’m inside a waiting vacuum, an echoless hollow that is holding its breath.
Behind me, where my footprints lead back into a gaping abyss, I can see the ice field that splits the horned summit in two, shimmering between rips in the clouds. I remember that when we saw it last night, it was shining like a bloodred eye. Its dimensions are beyond comprehension. My god, did I traverse that thing all by myself? And am I actually standing on top of this mountain? The concept is so frightening that it staggers my mind.
What kind of power was it that drove you to come up here? And what the hell gave Augustin the power to hoist you up so easily, as if you were a sack of potatoes?
But I know the answer: it’s the Maudit. The mountain is a living organism that has infected us like a virus.
I force the thought out of my head and with numb fingers put the Maudit’s summit away in my inner pocket. I put the gloves back on and try to rub my hands warm. Christ, it’s cold. Hunched against the lashing wind, I stumble to the westerly end of the summit ridge, looking for a possible way down. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably die here, but it doesn’t seem appealing to me to just sit and wait, half crazed with loneliness, till the cold and the exhaustion take their toll. If it has to happen, then let it be in an attempt to go down.
Only right before I get there do I see that the hump on the rim isn’t a boulder but Augustin. He’s still here! And he’s alive!
At the edge of my consciousness, a wave of piercing anger rises—What gives him the right to have arrived here ahead of me?—and all of a sudden, I am deeply alarmed. But it’s only an echo. It disappears immediately. I lick my chapped lips and taste fear.
What if it isn’t finished with me yet?
We have to get out of here. Right now.
I have to scream to be heard above the storm. “Augustin . . . how are you doing?”
His dull eyes don’t react, and his mumblings are carried away by the wind. I instantly see that it’s all wrong. Nothing is left of Augustin’s earlier rapture. He looks muddled and apathetic, like someone who just woke up and doesn’t understand where he is.
Hypothermia, it flashes through me. I assess the situation in an instant: critical. He’s a much faster climber than me. God knows how long he’s been sitting here on the summit, exposed to a windchill that could stop a heartbeat. His face is waxen and withdrawn. Snow has accumulated on his collar and in his fluttering hair. If I can’t speed up his sluggish circulation, he won’t survive.
I stare past him into the void. Fifty to sixty yards below, at the foot of the summit bastion, the west ridge starts its steep decline into the clouds. It doesn’t look inviting, but it’s also not as menacing as the ice field on the east side. I switch to pragmatic mode.
This is a challenge I’m up to, a problem I can handle.
I turn to Augustin, pull the hood over his head, and tighten the cord. I shake him by the shoulders and shout the words into his face: “Augustin, we have to go down, do you understand me?”
“Yes,” he mumbles. His voice is barely audible, but it’s at least something.
“You’ve been sitting here too long. If you stay here any longer you’ll freeze to death. You have to move your body, do you understand that, too?”
“Yes. Down.” He nods absently and sticks his hands under his armpits, setting off a shudder.
“Stronger, dude,” I say. I shake his arm up and down by the elbow.
Like an echo, he starts moving it by himself.
“I want to try going down the west ridge, okay? I think it’s better than back over the ice field.”
“Okay.”
“Do you think you can rappel?”
“Okay.”
I gaze at him indecisively. This isn’t working. “Know what? I’m going to lower you on the rope, a whole pitch. That should get you on the ridge. Then I’ll join you in two rappels. But listen: you gotta make an anchor at the bottom and untie yourself from the rope, okay? So that it’s free for me to rappel.”
He looks at me as if it’s all Greek to him. This is impossible. So I just go ahead and start preparing the rappelling station, hoping the familiarity of the rope work will reawaken part of the old Augustin. I find a good, solid rock, sacrifice a Prusik cord, and coil the main rope. My hands start warming up, my fingers come back to life, and I enjoy the sense of retrieved control. Every small victory counts. Augustin is on his feet now and gaping past me at things only he can see. I click a carabiner to the loop on his harness and attach him to the rope. When I’ve got him locked, I take all his climbing gear. It feels safer to have it with me . . . in case something happens to him.
I tie a sling onto his harness and put the carabiner at the end of it into his hand. “Okay, this is your belay for when you get down. Get off the rope and hang the sling on a rock. Then I’ll come down. Capisce?”
He nods and clicks the biner absentmindedly onto his gear loop. That’s good—a simple, familiar routine that gives me some confidence. But it’s still a leap of faith. My nightmare scenario is that he’ll fall back into his reverie and forget to get off the rope. In which case I’ll be stuck.
Suddenly Augustin gives me an unusually fierce look. “You want to get me out of here, don’t you?”
It takes a while for it to sink in. “What did you say?”
“You want to go down.”
“Yes. I’m going to lower you down, and when you’re there, you’re going to get off the rope so I can rappel. Like I just explained.”
“I’m not going.”
“What?”
“I’m staying here!”
Words can’t knock you down, yet it happens, and if I hadn’t secured myself to the anchor, I would have permanently disappeared into the south face. For a second, I have the dizzying and nauseating feeling that I’m actually falling and frantically flailing my arms, searching for a grip that isn’t there. Then I understand it’s an illusion. Rattled, I haul myself up with both hands, my crampons scraping the slippery rock.
When I feel able to speak again, I start, “Augustin, we have to, otherwise we’ll—”
But my words die on my lips. Something passes over from Augustin to me. A biting, cold rush of air. And it’s that moment when I know that it’s not Augustin in front of me but the mountain itself.
A chasm of loneliness opens up before me. Frozen in time, I feel myself in the midst of it, still, immutable, an apathetic sense of being. Trapped in rock and ice for as long as the mountain will exist. It’s awful. I understand that if I fight Augustin—fight the Maudit—this is what will happen.