Ronald Malfi - The Ascent

“Son of a bitch,” I uttered and twisted the door handle. I popped the trunk and grabbed my tire iron, feeling its heft in my hands. A malicious grin spread across my face. I marched over to the motorcar and stared down at the front grille.

“Fucking bastard,” I murmured and smashed out one of the headlamps. It exploded in a shower of powdered glass. “Asshole.” And I smashed the second headlamp, swinging like Babe fucking Ruth, taking the son of a bitch over the wall. “Home run,” I said, grinning. “That one’s outta here.”

“Tim!” Hannah shouted from one of David’s upstairs windows. “Goddamn it. We’re calling the police!”

“This one’s out of the park,” I informed her and swung the tire iron into the motorcar’s windshield, shattering it. I brought it down again and again until the interior upholstery was blanketed in triangular shards of glass. Exhausted, I dropped the tire iron in the street and held my hands up in mock surrender.

Hannah poked her head through the window, and I could see David pacing behind her.

“Go home!” Hannah yelled. “Go home!”

“You go home,” I told her. It wasn’t about me; it was about her, all about her. “You go home.”

The window slammed shut and the light went off.

A car full of college kids cruised by, hollering at me from the windows.

I kicked the tire iron at them—it rebounded off the car’s rear bumper, a good kick—and got back into my car. I cranked the ignition, and as luck would have it, the goddamn car wouldn’t start. I tried it again to no avail. A third time, though, and it kicked over, the engine just as angry with me as my wife.

What the hell happened here tonight? I wondered. Car horns blared at me as I pulled out into the street and cut drivers off. Will someone tell me what the hell just happened?

I sped home, the steering wheel greasy with my sweat. In fact, I ran my hands along the steering wheel, surprised at the amount of perspiration. It wasn’t until I stopped at a traffic light that I realized it wasn’t perspiration but blood. I held my hand up in the glow of the traffic light. It was covered in blood, the bandage completely gone, having unraveled at some point during the evening’s events.

Behind me, car horns honked. I looked up and saw the light had turned green. Gunning the engine, the tires squealing, I raced home, caught somewhere between an agonized laugh and a child’s lost cry.

5

“FIVE.” SAID ANDREW. “FOUR … THREE … TWO … ONE.”

Amazingly, the hail stopped. Not exactly at one but within thirty seconds of it. It was a curious enough feat for Chad and Hollinger to glance over at Andrew.

“It’s done,” Andrew said, climbing out of the tent. “Let’s go.”

We packed the gear and headed north along the pass. In no time we came to a flattened wall of rock that rose into the heavens, its peak obscured by cumulus clouds. No less than one hundred yards above us, visible like an eye socket in the face of the mountain, a cave yawned black against the whitish gray stone. Icicles the length of jousting poles hung from the ceiling of the cave, and a grayish tongue of ice lolled out from the floor of the opening.

“That’s it,” Andrew said. “The entrance to the Hall of Mirrors.”

Beside me, Hollinger’s teeth chattered. I asked him if he was okay, but he didn’t answer. He’d been in his own world since Curtis’s death.

“Come on.” Andrew began scaling the face of the mountain.

It was more difficult than it looked. It was a sheer vertical climb, dependent on anchors and lines rather than hands and feet. Cleared of my fever, I was overcome by newfound strength, but it was still a strenuous, tedious task.

Surprisingly, Chad struggled. Halfway up the face, he dangled by one hand and gaped at me as I passed him. I saw a mixture of fear and defeat in his eyes.

“I’m beat,” he said simply, his voice impossibly small. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“We’re almost there. Follow me.”

He groaned but swung his free hand back against the rock. “Okay,” he said, shuddering. “Lead the way, Shakes.”

Together we climbed through the mouth of the cave, our final anchors planted firmly in the tongue of ice spilling from the opening. Dragging myself up, I felt Chad clasp my ankle. “Shakes,” he croaked. I reached down and grabbed his wrist, then hoisted him up. I’d never seen his face so empty before.

It was only a cave—dark, narrow, full of echo. We got out our electric lanterns, but only Hollinger’s worked. He was hesitant to lead the way, so Andrew intercepted the lantern from him and movedfarther down the throat of the cave. The opening had been fairly wide—a truck could probably drive through it with little difficulty—but just a few yards in, the walls seemed to come in and suffocate us. After a dozen or so steps, I could touch the ceiling. It was covered in ice; snow fell into my face.

“I can’t see a damn thing,” Andrew said, which was bad because he was the one with the lantern.

It was true; all I could see was the yellow glow of the lantern in Andrew’s hands, but beyond that, the walls were virtually invisible. Yet I could feel them closing closer and closer around us like a great bear hug choking the life out of us all …

“Keep the lantern close to the ground, Andrew,” Petras said from somewhere behind me. “Let’s not fall down any cracks in the rock.”

Andrew lowered the light. “Good idea.”

“This can’t be right,” Chad whispered. I hadn’t realized he was so close to me until he spoke. “Stop.” He gripped the waistband of my pants. “Let’s tie on together.”

We ran a line between the two of us. When Petras passed, I asked if he wanted in.

“I’m bigger’n the two of you put together and multiplied by three,” he grumbled, moving past us in the dark, barely visible. “I’ll do you more harm tying on if I happen to fall down a hole. I’m good on my own, guys. But thanks.”

“This is fucked up,” Chad said, expelling breath in my face. He couldn’t have been more than three inches from me, but I couldn’t see him. His hands snaked around my waist, clipping his line to the clasps at my belt. Up ahead, Andrew’s lantern was diminishing.

“Let’s keep up,” I suggested.

We walked until the opening of the cave was nothing more than a pinpoint of gray daylight behind us. Our footfalls echoed loudly, and our voices were even louder. I didn’t even have to fully extend my arms to touch the walls on either side. They had narrowed considerably.

“I see light,” Andrew said. It was a whisper, but in the confines of the cave, it boomed back to us. “Up ahead.”

A moment later, I could see it, too: a pale aquamarine light seeming to emanate from the opposite end of the cave. As we drew closer, the light appeared to be funneling down, like a balcony spotlight shining down on a stage.

Andrew dimmed the electric lantern. “Careful crossing over.” He paused, and his legs hinged with exaggerated pantomime over a jagged ridge of stalagmites. “It’s sharp.”

Blind, I stepped in a pool of cold water, which immediately soaked through my boot and layers of socks. “Shit.” My toes went numb instantly.

Chad’s fingers pressed into my forearm, but he didn’t say anything. I could just barely make out a ghostly blue hint of his profile as we neared the mysterious light issuing from above.

We crossed into the antechamber and stopped.

“Holy Christ,” Chad marveled.

I, on the other hand, was speechless.

It was a banquet hall–sized antechamber, the ceiling mostly comprised of crystalline spires and illuminated stalactites, except for the very center that appeared to be a perfect circle cut through the stone to the outside world, but on closer review, it was covered by several inches of solid ice. The result was a sort of ice-paned moonroof in the ceiling of the cave, the moonlight segregated into variously colored beams of light. The rainbow-colored light cast independent spheres of colored light on the frozen cave floor.