Ronald Malfi - The Ascent

“You’re a sick bastard,” I told him. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never know how a woman like Hannah befriended a creep like you.”

The hint of a grin seemed to play across Andrew’s face.

I lowered the lantern and receded into the dark cover of the tunnel, walking backward and staring at Andrew Trumbauer’s silhouette poised at the mouth of the cave. He looked like the fleeting remnants of a nightmare.

7

IN THE MORNING. ANDREW WAS GONE. HE’D LEFT

behind Hollinger’s electric lantern but took his gear as well as our petrol stove. I used the lantern to search the cave, but I found no sign of him. There didn’t appear to be any fresh footprints in the snow outside the cave, down along the pass beyond the hundred-yard drop. He’d simply vanished. As if he’d never existed.

Back in the Hall of Mirrors, Petras and Hollinger tried to force down a light breakfast. I had attempted the same moments ago, but my stomach refused to cooperate. I hadn’t kicked the fever like I thought I had, either; I could feel it asleep in the center of my body, hibernating but still very much alive.

Petras looked at me. “Anything?”

“He disappeared.”

Across the chamber, the bright blue tarpaulin was a constant reminder of all that had happened and what still lay beneath. It wasimpossible for my gaze not to drift in that direction every couple of minutes. Too much longer in this reflective chamber and I’d lose my mind. Glancing around, my beaten, filthy reflection stared at me from every wall.

“Have some cold tea,” Petras offered. “It tastes horrible but it’s something .“

I sat with them and held the tin cup of cold green tea between my hands but didn’t drink any. My stomach was incapable of keeping anything down. I looked at the panel of ice in the ceiling. Warmed by daylight, it dripped constant streams of water against the exposed rock until nighttime when it would freeze all over again.

“Do we wait around for him, or do we just leave?” Hollinger said finally.

Petras’s eyes briefly met mine.

“We wait until dark to leave,” I suggested. “If Andrew hasn’t returned by then, we go without him.”

Hollinger looked incredulous. “In the dark?”

“We’ve got nothing to make a fire, to make heat. Andrew’s got the lighter fluid, the petrol stove, the goddamn matches. We need to keep moving at night to keep our blood pumping and our bodies warm; otherwise we’ll freeze. We’ll rest during the day.”

Hollinger stared at the black maw of the cave. “Where do you think he went? Did he climb back down the fucking rock?”

Neither of us answered.

Hollinger turned his gaze on the sheet of tarpaulin. “Christ, I can still see him in my head, you know? And the way Andrew brought the goddamn ax down into his … into his head …” He shivered. “Any of you guys know much about him?”

“Chad? No,” I said.

“No,” echoed Petras.

“Like if the bloke had a family or someone waiting for him back home,” Hollinger went on.

“I have no fucking idea, Holly,” I said. It wasn’t his fault, but I was growing irritated by the sound of his voice. “What’s it matter?”

“Maybe we should go through his gear,” Hollinger said. “Maybe he’s got stuff in there that he wouldn’t want left behind in this place.”

“And where would we take it?” I barked. “We’re not exactly on the red-eye out of this place, either, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Petras placed a steadying hand on my knee. Cool it , his glare said.

“Fuck it.” Hollinger slid up the wall until he was standing and dusted the snow off his pants. “I need to piss.”

Without a word I handed him the electric lantern—the only one that still worked—and he switched it on. His head down, his feet dragging tracks in the snow, he shuffled across the antechamber until he crossed into the tunnel and vanished in the dark.

I eased my head down against my pack and folded my hands across my chest. I tried to shut my eyes, but they refused to cooperate. Instead, they focused on the blue tarpaulin at the other end of the chamber.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said quietly. “It’s sick, but Andrew was right. Chad wasn’t going to make it.”

“I know.”

“Anyone else could have done it, and it wouldn’t have been as bad. It’s worse that Andrew did it. Somehow that makes it worse.”

“We need to keep watch,” Petras said. “We need to take turns watching for him. We shouldn’t all fall asleep at the same time.”

I looked at him. “You think it’s … that serious?”

“Let’s just stay on the safer side of chance.”

“All right.”

He nodded. “All right.”

My gaze turned back to the blue slab of tarpaulin and trailed up the snow-packed boulder that leaned at an angle against the nearest ice wall. My eyelids felt stiff and heavy, my body sore from head to toe.

Beside me, Petras began snoring like a lumberjack, his nostrils flaring with each powerful exhalation.

I caught a glimpse of Hannah’s reflection in one of the mirrored walls of ice and sat up. Her image glided along the wall, undulating with the imperfections in the ice, and disappeared behind the solid white pylon of snow and ice that had crushed Chad.

I stood and walked across the chamber, passing under that circular spotlight of light, and over to the finger-shaped pylon that had shattered Chad Nando’s pelvis. I stopped walking when I heard an unnatural crumpling sound beneath my boots and realized, with sickening lucidity, that I’d stepped onto the tarpaulin.

Taking a step back, I walked around the tarpaulin to the other side of the massive pillar that canted against the ice wall. I ran one bare hand across it. It was solid ice underneath, coated in just a fine powder of snow, and the thing must have weighed as much as a Volkswagen. Jesus Christ . Toward the bottom it was splattered with blood.

Across the floor, Petras snorted and rolled over in his sleep, startling me.

I continued running my hand along the surface of the pylon, pausing only when I noticed what appeared to be the faint impression of a boot heel in the thin crust of snow. Above, the icicle-fanged ledge looked dangerous and foreboding, the narrow little ice cave against the wall hardly negotiable. But still …

Like a gymnast preparing to mount a pommel horse, I placed my hands against the bulk of the pylon and, lifting one leg over, pulled myself up. I didn’t budge, didn’t make a sound … although my overactive imagination heard the snapping of Chad’s bones, grinding them into powder. Don’t think about it , I told myself. Stop thinking about it .

I lifted my other leg and planted both feet flat against the pylon’s surface. I attempted to dig my fingernails into the ice, but it was no good. I slid one boot up the length of the incline, but the moment I put all my weight down on it in order to raise my other leg, I started to slide back down.

“Shit.”

I hopped down, rubbing my cold palms together. Pulverized stones and gravel lined the mouth of the cave. I collected two handfuls and carried them back to the pylon, showering the surface with grit for traction.

A second attempt at climbing the pylon proved successful; I managed to crawl all the way to the top, where the jagged teeth of broken ice protruded from its base and where the pylon lay against the ledge of the ice wall. Using the crisscrossing spires of ice as handholds, I lifted myself onto the ledge and noticed a number of the icicles had been busted away from the opening of the ice cave. There were more boot prints in the snow here as well.

Crouching, I peered into the narrow opening in the chamber wall. It was a tight squeeze for a man of average girth. Petras, I surmised, would have much difficulty crawling through. But I was much slimmer than John Petras. On my hands and knees, I crawled forward and poked my head into the ice cave.