Christopher Golden - Ararat

Walker heard his heart thumping in his ears and he gave a shout of triumph and fury. Kim and Father Cornelius were shouting at Polly from below. Shouting at Walker to make sure he was all right. Every part of him told him to keep climbing, to get away from the demon, but when he looked back up he saw Wyn trying to scrabble away, clawing at the snow, clinging to the mountain.

Polly dragged her back. Steam came from her mouth and began to mist up from her eyes, as if the demon brought its own inferno and that hell burned now inside of her.

Below, Father Cornelius had begun to pray loudly. Walker could barely see him through the blowing snow, but the old man’s rasp turned into a bellow now that he was praying, and Polly winced as if the words hurt her.

“Leave her!” Walker shouted, climbing toward them again. “In the name of God—”

The thing inside Polly did not wince this time. It laughed. “When have you ever believed in God?”

Wyn screamed, her face briefly visible as Polly wrapped an arm around her neck. The demon glanced back toward Walker, the gleaming embers of its eyes pinpricks of color in the white, churning sea of the storm.

“You have no faith, Benjamin,” it said with Polly’s lips, from behind that balaclava.

Then she wrenched Wyn’s head to one side and the whimpering ceased. The struggling halted.

“No!” Walker cried.

Polly shook her head as if in disappointment, a parent schooling a recalcitrant child. “You don’t believe in anything.”

She kicked away from the mountain face, arms wrapped tightly around Wyn’s lifeless body. Inhuman strength carried them out fifteen feet or more, and then they began to arc downward, plummeting through the storm. The other climbers screamed, watching it happen. Like a spider enshrouding its prey, Polly wrapped herself around Wyn for a moment… then sprang away from her, limbs pinwheeling as she reached for a handhold.

Polly struck, slid, rolled, and slammed into the jagged ridge of a crevice.

Wyn’s body dropped out of sight, lost in the whistling swirl of white. Walker listened, but the storm had taken them so completely that he did not even hear the impact. Nearby, someone was choking back sobs. For a moment he thought it might be Kim, but then he saw her put a hand on Father Cornelius’s back and he knew it was the priest who had begun to cry.

From above, he heard Meryam and Adam shouting at them to keep going, and he knew they had no choice.

“Keep moving,” he said icily, making sure Kim and the priest heard him. “Go.”

They started to climb, silent and resigned.

And then they heard the screaming from below.

Walker dug his ax into the mountain and leaned out as far as he dared, peering through the white. It took him a moment before he saw movement where no movement should have been.

Polly’s body had struck that jutting stone ridge. Bones would have shattered. Blood would be everywhere. But still she was moving, crawling back up the mountain with one hand, humping up a few feet at a time, unnatural and inexorable.

“Kill her!” Walker roared down at those below. “You’ve gotta kill her!”

Something broke inside him as he said the words. He felt smaller, diminished, and farther away from his little boy than he had been before, even up inside the ark.

Olivieri clung to the mountainside, lost in despair that swallowed him more completely than the storm. The climb had gotten easier in the past few minutes, the angle lessening as they moved toward the cleft below. The first group—one guide and two archaeology students—had already passed the cleft and continued onward.

Then the bodies had begun to fall.

“Who was that?” he asked. “Did anyone see?”

He craned out farther to try to get a look, but it was no use. The blizzard swept around them in a blur of white that seemed to turn them all into ghosts, as if each climber were a spirit, already dead, wandering the slopes of Ararat forever.

“No idea who fell first,” Errick said, “but I think there were two just now, both women. I saw green hair. Had to be—”

“Polly,” Olivieri said numbly, dry lips cracking. He let go of his grip on his climbing ax, almost unconscious of the urge to give in completely, to just fall with the others. The strap on his climbing ax tugged against his wrist but he did not grip it again.

Mr. Avci shifted downward, boots digging into the snow. The wind gusted so hard that his jacket rippled with it and his body rocked slightly leftward.

“We must continue,” Avci said. “We’ll stop at the crevasse below. Just a few minutes of rest before we—”

Errick swore loudly.

Olivieri looked down and could barely take in the hideous white nightmare unfolding there. Through the veil of snow he saw Polly Bennett’s green hair, a splash of color against the ghostly white world. Her left arm hung loose at her side, useless, and she dragged one leg behind her as she used her right arm and left leg to climb, leaving a smear of bright blood on the snow. Polly grinned so wide that her mouth had torn at the edges and blood flowed from her cheeks. Her eyes glinted like tiny flames as she scrambled upward, inhumanly fast.

Mr. Avci screamed. Errick let himself slide down toward Polly, by accident or in their defense, Olivieri didn’t know, but suddenly he felt himself doing the same. He tugged his ax from the ice, moving, desperate to do something to fight back against the terror inside him, against the evil that he felt stained his heart and soul. Polly clawed at Errick’s leg. He cocked back a boot and kicked her in the face, the claws of the crampon tearing her cheek even further open.

Errick lost his balance and his grip. Skidding farther down, he found himself first parallel to Polly and then slightly below.

Olivieri forgot his age. He forgot the extra inches around his middle and the years since he had last done any regular exercise. He pulled his hands and feet away from the snow and began to slide. Snow went up inside his coat and sweater and inside the cuffs of his pants and for a flicker of a moment he wondered if he would be able to stop.

He slid right into Polly. Snow flew up into her bloody, pale features, but those orange eyes blazed through the mask of white. Her green hair blew wild. A flap of skin from her torn cheek quivered in the roaring wind. Something gray jutted out through a tear in the sleeve of her coat, a jagged edge of broken bone that had burst violently from inside her arm as she fell.

Her one good hand closed on his jacket. Together, they began to slide again. Olivieri dug into the mountain with his boots and one hand as she thrust her face toward him. Her breath had the reek of rancid meat and though her lips did not move, he was certain he heard a chorus of voices whispering and laughing from the darkness at the back of her throat.

For a moment he had thought he could fight this, thought he could face evil and stand fast. Instead he began to weep and to bat at her with his free hand, wishing he had never come here, that he had never been so foolish as to think he could protect anyone. She grabbed his head and smashed his face against the mountain. The snow saved him, soft and yielding.

Other voices shouted. One belonged to Errick. He felt Polly tug away from him and forced himself to look, saw her fighting with Errick… saw her plunge her fingers into his left eye socket and pluck out something wet and squirming. Saw her dig in deeper, and when she pulled her hands away again, Errick began to skid away and then to roll, now that the slope was not so drastic. He tumbled into the cleft and came to rest against a ridge of rock, snow dancing around him.

Polly came for Olivieri again.

The others nearby were climbing away, desperate to escape, no delusions of heroism for them.