Black Mountain

TWENTY-EIGHT

Matt, Sarah and Charles stood hunched over, hands on their knees, at the start of the slip path, sucking in deep breaths and blowing huge plumes of steam out into the freezing air. Thomas walked cautiously ahead, then paused and looked from the slip path up at the scoured mountainside. He made a low rumbling sound of annoyance deep in his chest.

‘This is new. It can only have happened in the last few months. The cave mouth should not be exposed like this. This place was originally chosen because it was hidden, known only to our people.’

Matt noticed Thomas reach for the small leather pouch hanging around his neck. He rubbed it between his fingers as he gazed at the uneven new path that led around the side of the mountain, formed by the settling of the fallen rocks, soil and debris.

Sarah dropped her pack and leaned backwards, stretching her spine, then stared out over the edge of the path. ‘That is some view.’

Though they were up at the cloud line and surrounded by heavy mist, the lower peaks were visible, their greenish-black trees dusted with snow. At this height of about 6500 feet, at least 1000 feet above the next-highest point, the scenery was awe-inspiring.

Sarah motioned with her arm out over the misty panorama. ‘How’s that make you two city boys feel?’

Matt scoffed and walked closer to the edge. ‘City boys now, is it? Listen, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, for your information, I’ve climbed 15,000 feet to the Chachapoyas Ruins in the Andes Mountains — and they weren’t called the Cloud People for nothing, you know. Then there was the time I went below the ice in the Antarctic — that was no party either. Another time —’

‘Shut up,’ Thomas said, staring ahead along the path. ‘You all talk too much. Listen…’

Matt and his colleagues quietened immediately, their heads turning towards Thomas. They waited in silence while the old Indian turned his head first one way, then the other, his eyes closed, his head slightly cocked.

Matt watched the old man, marvelling at how he kept his body perfectly still, only his head slowly turning. He was like a greying stump of an old tree on the snow-covered path. At last, he shook his head and looked at them, his mouth turned down.

‘It’s gone now, but there was definitely something there.’

Matt frowned. ‘What was it? What did you hear?’

Thomas shrugged, his hand going again to the pouch around his neck. ‘Don’t know. Sounded a little like… music.’

Matt noticed that Sarah had her eyes closed, as if listening for something too. She opened them and frowned. ‘Yes, I thought there was something…’ She shook her head, as if the thought had evaporated.

Thomas stepped out onto the path, his feet making scrunching sounds in the fresh snow. He stayed close to the rock wall, clearly not trusting the stability of the edge. A few paces along, he paused to feel around with his foot, then kneeled and began pulling at something. He gave up and settled for clearing away some of the snow.

Matt plodded towards him as fast as he could, and hunched down beside him. Sarah and Charles quickly followed. Thomas shook his head and reached up to grip the small pouch again.

‘This is worse than I thought.’ He sighed. ‘I should have known better.’

He took off his pack and pulled out a pink bath towel, which he spread out on the snow. ‘Give me a hand.’

Matt helped the old man to heft several cinderblock-sized pieces of stone onto the towel, Thomas groaning from the effort. When they were done, he stood slowly and exhaled.

‘They must all be out,’ he said. ‘All the wall stones have been removed. I did not bring enough cement to replace this many.’

Sarah leaned forward to examine the stones. ‘They all look different.’

Matt pointed at one of the roughly square blocks. ‘This one’s fairly new — maybe a few hundred years old. But this one’s probably ten times that. And this one,’ he indicated a stone that was crumbling and black with age, ‘well, it’s probably the oldest representation of Paleo-Indian stonemasonry I’ve ever seen in my life.’ He placed his fingertips on the ancient stonework.

Thomas made a sound of confirmation in his throat. ‘It must be from the inner wall.’ He looked over his shoulder, before turning back to Matt. ‘According to the legend, there were three layers of wall — the first to contain the beast, the second to bind its spirit, and the third to keep us out.’ He ran a gnarled hand over the oldest stone’s rough edges. ‘The walls were mighty; they needed to be, considering what was being sealed inside. The inner layer of stone has never been seen since it was originally built by the First People.’ He sat back on his haunches and looked up into their faces. ‘I never expected…’ he shook his head. ‘It’s too much work. I can’t rebuild it.’

They all stood silently for a moment. Matt pushed the stone over, and over again. It was blank on all sides. ‘This doesn’t have the same carved warning as the outer stones.’

‘That’s odd,’ Thomas said. ‘Perhaps the ancient ones felt the warning wasn’t needed on the inner walls… or maybe the rest of the tale is in the cave itself.’

He looked up, and the three scientists followed his eyes. A triangular-shaped black maw was just visible in the side of the mountain, before the steep angle of the cliff swallowed it up.

Matt wiped his hands and stood up. ‘What now?’

Thomas got to his feet too. ‘Now… we’re fucked. Unless you brought some dynamite.’

He pulled a ten-pound bag of cement out of his pack and dropped it onto the path. It instantly sank into the snow. ‘We should get out of here.’

‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Charles said, holding up his hands. ‘Look, Mr Red Cloud, I’m still not totally convinced that the Gigantopithecus even came out of that hole. Seems unbelievable that something could survive for millennia walled up in a cave; and I doubt it’s been brought back to life somehow. These creatures were undoubtedly troglophiles, but I’m sure they weren’t fully troglobiont.’

Thomas blinked at Charles, then shook his head slowly. ‘Sonny,’ he said, as if talking to a child on the verge of a tantrum, ‘I don’t understand a word of what you just said. But the stones came out of that cave there, followed by something larger, which then went back in. Do you know what dried blood looks like, Mr Schroder?’

Charles’s head moved in a gesture that could have indicated yes, no or both.

‘Well, sonny, it looks like that.’ Thomas pointed to a large streak of rusty brown on the wall about twenty feet along the path. ‘Yep, just like that. I reckon something dragged fresh meat into that hole up there.’

Sarah put her hands on her hips. ‘Fresh meat. Great. That’s it — we’re leaving.’

Thomas nodded at her. ‘I agree, Ms Sommer. We need to make our way back down and work out what to bring with us next time. I was serious about the dynamite.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘We’ve only a few hours until we lose the light. This time of year, twilight comes around three o’clock.’

Charles looked from Sarah to Thomas, his face twisted into a mask of disbelief. ‘What? No! We’ve got nothing — no samples, no pictures, no proof. Matt, buddy, c’mon, back me on this. We need to take a look. For Chrissake, you’re the guy that freakin’ dragged me out here.’

Matt looked up at the rock wall, then back at his friend. He pulled off his knitted cap and scratched his head, thinking.

‘You want to go into the cave?’ Thomas said incredulously. ‘What exactly do you think you’ll find in there, Mr Schroder? Other than a lot of bones, maybe fresh bones… maybe soon your own bones.’

‘Sorry, Charles,’ Matt said. ‘He’s right. We’re not prepared to go into a cave — believe me, I’ve been caving before and you need a truckload more equipment than we’ve brought. Besides, I get the feeling that if we run across the Gigantopithecus, it isn’t exactly going to happily say hello in sign language, like Koko the ape.’

But Charles was furiously shaking his head. He looked up at the cave mouth, seeming to measure the angle, as though planning to try to run up the wall by himself.

‘For God’s sake, Charles — can’t you feel it?’ Sarah said. ‘Can’t you smell it? There’s a large carnivore in this area, maybe not a troglobiont but probably nocturnal. We aren’t ready to deal with it out in the open, in the light, let alone in the fucking dark. I thought we’d just be taking some long-distance photographs, collecting spore samples and maybe footprints. But climbing into its lair?’ She made a chopping motion with her hand. ‘No way!’

She turned and walked a few paces back towards the cliff wall, her arms wrapped around herself, then stopped and crouched down to the snow.

‘There’s something else here,’ she said. ‘I felt my foot press down on it.’

She dug around for a few seconds, then lifted her prize slowly, her face turning into a mask of horror. ‘Oh. Oh no… look.’ It was a small pink rubber boot. Sarah’s hand was shaking as she held it. ‘The Wilson girl — she was only about five, I think.’

She held the boot out to Thomas, who just looked away, muttering something. Sarah stood and looked up and down the path, holding the boot out as though offering it to its owner. ‘Emma,’ she called, then louder, ‘Emma!’

Thomas shook his head, put his hands over his ears and walked a few paces back along the path.

‘Foxes pick up junk, you know,’ Matt said. ‘Maybe one of them brought it up here.’

‘So do apes,’ Charles said.

‘No!’ Sarah yelled, her face turning red.

Both Matt and Charles froze as the echo bounced around them.

Matt turned to Charles. ‘Way to go, Charlie Brown. You didn’t need to say that bit about apes out loud, you know.’

‘Shut up, all of you.’ Thomas had turned back towards them. ‘I can hear that damned music again. Everyone, spread out along the path. Let’s see if we can determine where it’s coming from.’

Sarah’s eyes went wide for a moment, then she nodded vigorously and headed further up the path. Matt walked a few paces back the way they’d come, towards the edge of the drop-off. Charles did the same in the opposite direction, closer to the cave wall. Thomas stayed where he was in the centre of the newly formed track.

As Matt went to pull his boot from the snow to take another step, he heard something just above the low moan of the wind. He paused and listened, and heard it again — a tinkling sound that seemed to rise as the wind did. He slowly took the step, pulled the hood of his parka away from one ear and turned his head slightly — there it was again. He raised his hand. ‘I got it.’

Charles confirmed straight after that he also could hear a faint sound.

‘I can hear it now,’ Sarah said.

They all waited in silence, watching Thomas. He slowly turned his head back and forth, his eyes closed. He opened them and looked at each of the young scientists. ‘Point to where you think the sound is coming from.’

Matt, Charles and Sarah stayed silent for another moment, then each raised an arm, fingers pointing. At the same time, Thomas raised his own arm. He grunted as he saw that all four of them were pointing to the cave opening directly above them.

Bill Logan punched the harness release disc on his chest and the straps fell away, to be immediately drawn back up inside the helicopter. It had been a stomach-churning drop in the swirling and freezing air, powdery snow blowing ferociously around them. Rappelling down onto a slope of about forty-five degrees made finding your footing treacherous, and had presented problems to even his youngest officers.

Logan squinted up to see Colonel Jack Hammerson coming down fast and easy, as though he rappelled every day of his life. He shook his head; the man was obviously older than him, but about five times as fit, Logan guessed, and ten times as deadly. If Jack Hammerson was regular army, then he was Lucille Ball.

On the ground, Hammerson took a quick look around then gave the chopper a thumbs-up. The pilot returned the gesture, and the enormous machine slowly swung away. Logan noticed that the Franks woman had gone into some sort of well-rehearsed action plan. She went out to the right first, facing away from the group, holding a small scope up to her eye. Then she swung to the left to repeat the pattern.

Hammerson was gazing at the sky. Logan knew what he was looking at: the cloud cover was now slate-coloured and there were no more shadows. He reckoned they had less than an hour of light. It’d be cold and dark soon and they were a long way from home… and in the territory of something that he hoped Kearns and his friends had been damned wrong about.

Earning my pay today, he thought, as Hammerson made his way over.

‘Going to be dark soon, Chief. We should arrive at the track in about an hour. I’d like to suggest you wait here — secure the rear position. Maybe set up a safe area in the event we all need to spend the night here, or fall back in a hurry.’

Logan smiled. ‘And miss the party? No chance. Besides, I get a feeling that you’re tracking more than whatever’s been bothering my town and sent those three fools up to the Black Dome. Me and my men can make it a little further — you may need us.’

Hammerson nodded and stuck out his hand. ‘Okay, and good luck, Bill.’

Logan shook it. ‘Hope we don’t need it. But you too, Jack.’

The creature lifted its head and sniffed deeply. It could sense the small animals approaching — many scents from many different directions. Close by was the smell of fresh meat, slightly masked by the sweet odours of whatever they anointed their bodies with. Underlying them, the scent of fear, which excited it.

A heavy, unfamiliar vibration filled the air, along with the smell of metal. The vibration faded, leaving behind more animal smells.

Lastly, from another direction, came something else. A strange scent, with an edge of violence, rage and with a blood lust that rivalled its own.

The creature pulled further back into the deep caves.