Jon Evans - Dark Places

A few other stragglers were hurrying to get on the trail. I had overheard in Manang that there was a bed shortage in Thorung Phedi and Thorung High Camp, the next stops after Letdar and last before the Thorung La, and the last few to leave Letdar each day would likely have to turn back and try again the next day. I was almost relieved to be going the other way. The appeal of trekking lay largely in its Zen-like contemplative pace. The idea of having to rush to beat the crowds was just fundamentally wrong.

I ate a breakfast of tasty tsampa porridge and lemon tea, stifled a groan as I shouldered my pack, and started out back down the trail, back towards Manang. I felt wonderful. My altitude sickness had vanished. It was good to be going downhill. The air was crisp and clean, and the mountains loomed around me like glorious visions of some faraway fantasy land, like a Tolkien landscape. Yesterday's clouds had vanished, and there seemed to be more snow cover on the peaks. I wondered if the Thorung La was open. If it shut down for more than a day or two there would be a backlog of trekkers occupying every bed within miles, and it might take all season to clear the bottleneck.

I had left my watch back in the city of Pokhara, but I guessed it was about two hours back to Gunsang, and another two to Manang. Back there by noon then, mission accomplished, Stanley Goebel's name acquired. I walked and wondered what had happened to his pack. His killer had presumably taken his passport, wallet, and watch, but his pack? That would make sense, if the killer was Nepali; he could sell the pack and many of its contents back in Pokhara or Kathmandu. But I didn't think so. I thought the killer was one of us, a fellow-trekker, and that Stanley Goebel's pack had been flung over the edge of the cliff near where he had died. It would have fallen a long way, well out of sight. I wondered if it would ever be discovered.

If I was right, and the murderer was a Westerner, then he had probably spent last night in either Letdar or Manang. Nepali merchants clad in jeans and flip-flops took but a single day to go from Manang over the Thorung La to Muktinath, but only an extremely fit and well-acclimatized Westerner could do the same, it was at least three days' journey for most trekkers. Manang or Letdar, then. And Manang had an airstrip and regular dawn flights, weather permitting, back to Pokhara. That made sense. The killer was probably back in Pokhara's balmy climate. Hell, he could be halfway to India by now, or in Kathmandu waiting for a flight out of the country.

I gave up on contemplation and focused on walking. It was easy to turn my mind off up here, to reduce the entire universe to the placement of one foot in front of the other. I was going downhill, but the wind was in my face, numbing my skin. I pulled my hat down low on my brow to mitigate this and trudged onwards, mind empty, happy simply to walk.

I don't know what it was that alarmed me. Maybe I caught a sideways glimpse as I turned a corner. Maybe I heard something. Maybe it was that sixth sense that tells you when someone is watching you. Whatever it was, it made me stop and turn around and look down the trail behind me. About a thousand feet away the trail rounded a bend in the red stone slope it followed, and there I saw a single human figure, following my path.

Nothing unusual in that. Someone with bad altitude sickness who had decided to descend in order to recover. Or one of those rare hardy souls who had gone clockwise around the Circuit, a much more difficult route because there were no lodges for a long way on the other side of the Thorung La. Or a Nepali porter heading back to Manang for another load. I kept walking.

But after about a minute I could no longer deny the alarm bells ringing in my head, even though I did not know what had cued them. I turned around again and squinted at the figure. It stopped, and a moment passed when we looked at each other across a distance. Then the figure resumed its travel towards me, moving at a quick walk. And I realized that he or she was not carrying a pack.

Everyone carries packs up on the trail. Trekkers carry their backpacks, or are joined by Nepali porters who carry them in their place. Other Nepalese either ride horses, if rich, or carry wood or stone in one direction and empty Coke bottles in the other, if poor.

I paused for a moment. I felt very cold all of a sudden, and I wanted to turn and run. Instead I dropped my pack to the ground for a moment, spent a moment rooting through its top pocket for my binoculars, and raised them to my eyes. I'd hardly used them at all on this trip, had kicked myself a couple of times for bringing them with me. Now I was very glad of them.

The figure was tall, male, wearing sneakers, gray slacks, a green jacket… and a ski mask. He looked big and fit, and he was moving with purpose, and he was looking right at me as he walked.

Lots of people had ski masks, you could rent or buy them in Pokhara or Kathmandu, for the subzero temperatures and high winds on the day you crossed the Thorung La. And it was cold today, and windy. But not that cold and windy.

And I was all alone on this remote trail, fourteen thousand feet high, in the back end of nowhere, half a world away from home, amid mountains so rugged and wild they were barely claimed by any country. The kind of place where people can vanish without a trace.

I stared through the binoculars, the pit of my stomach beginning to tighten into a cold knot, and as I stared, he waved. A jaunty, how-ya-doing wave of his hand. He grinned at me from beneath the ski mask. I shivered. I didn't like that grin at all. He was moving even faster, now. There was something about his body language, the tilt of his head, the angle of his torso. He didn't look like he was walking aimlessly down the trail. He looked like he was very specifically walking towards me.

I replaced the binoculars and hoisted my pack automatically and resumed my journey down the trail. This is ridiculous, I told myself. You're not being chased by a killer. That doesn't happen to people. Not in real life.

Oh yeah? I shot back. I bet that's what Stanley Goebel thought.

It seemed insane. The notion that it was not a trekker coming towards me (with no pack and a ski mask on) but a murderer bent on doing me harm. I told myself that I couldn't really take the idea seriously. But I was walking much faster now, as fast as I could without turning it into a jog, and the pit of my stomach had tightened into a cold slippery knot. I glanced over my shoulder. He was gaining on me.

It does happen, I realized. It happens every day all over the world that people are killed by other people. And I think it's beginning to happen to me right now. I think the man behind me is here to hunt me down and kill me.

I didn't know what to do. I tried to think of something, anything, and failed. I just kept walking, too mentally paralyzed to do anything else. I could feel myself beginning to sweat like a pig despite the cold. I desperately forced my mind into some kind of rational order, made myself think of some kind of alternative to walking like an automaton.

Stand my ground and fight? I hadn't seen any weapon. I looked over my shoulder again, as if expecting to see the figure brandishing a sword. He was even closer now, maybe five hundred feet. I picked up my pace to a near-trot but knew that unburdened by a pack he could easily catch up to me. Whatever had crushed Stanley Goebel's skull hadn't been at the murder scene. No bloody rocks lying around. Maybe the figure had an iron pipe tucked inside of his jacket. An iron pipe and a pair of Swiss Army knives. My heart was pounding like a machine gun now.

Drop my pack and run? That was the sensible thing to do but I didn't want to do it. I felt like I would be starting something. He would run to catch me. I could no longer pretend then that it might be a harmless encounter with a harmless man. I wanted to put that moment off and keep some hope of denial as long as possible. And he would probably catch me. He was wearing sneakers, not hiking boots, and he was in better shape than I was, I could tell that much.