The Ascent

Chapter 10

1

–OPEN YOUR EYES.

The acrid stench of burning fuel, of melting rubber … —Tim, she said. Open your eyes.

2

MY EYES OPEN TO A RAGING INFERNO. I CAN FEEL

the fire ravaging my flesh, charring me alive. I glance down and see that my hands are on fire. Through the flames I discern the suggestion of my bones, blackened and like tree limbs bound together by string. —Tim… The rasping voice—hardly a voice at all—summoning me. My eyelids disintegrate, and my skin sloughs like melting wax off my skull.

—Tim… Hannah’s body, twisted like a corkscrew, matted with dirt and blood, so much blood. She raises a mangled hand in my direction. Her legs are on fire.

I grab her hand, then her other hand, and pull her away from the burning vehicle. Her legs leave streaks of fire in the dry earth. Don’t die, I beg her. Don’t die on me, Hannah. Please.

She smiles. Her face is a black pit, a coconut smashed with a hammer and streaked with crimson gore. That mangled hand comes up again and touches my face. My skin slides off into her bloodied palm. Something hard and spiny rolls over in the pit of my stomach.

No, I plead. No, Hannah.

—Tim, she says. Open your eyes.

No—

—Open your eyes.

3

MY EYES OPENED TO INFINITE BLACKNESS. I WAS

on my back, my hands folded across my bare chest, breathing hard. I blinked. It took several seconds for me to realize where I was.

I eased up on my elbows, the sounds of collective snoring amplified in the canvas tent. Sweat matted my hair to my head; I could almost feel heat rising off my flesh. It was difficult to breathe, the air in the tent stale and motionless. I peeled the flap of my sleeping bag off my nude, sweaty body and pulled on a pair of clean sweatpants. I negotiated through the dark to the zippered tent flaps, which I opened as quietly as possible, and crept outside.

The air was bitterly cold. My nipples hardened instantly, and my sweat froze on my body. I shivered and rubbed my hands along my forearms while I felt my testicles retreat into the cavity of my abdomen. The rain had moved on across the valley, taking with it the angry-looking thunderheads that had hovered over our camp just hours ago.

Something moved in the darkness ahead of me: a flitting shape, large and alive, hardly visible through the trees.

“Hannah.” My voice was no louder than a harsh whisper.

The shape continued on through the trees.

Barefoot, I walked across the camp through freezing puddlesof mud and frost-stiffened reeds. My left eyelid began twitching. “Hannah …”

The shape crossed the veil of trees. It paused as the sound of my voice reached it. Then it proceeded up the gradual incline that was the ridge’s pinnacle. I watched the figure slip out into the open, lighted now by the soft glow of the moon. It wasn’t a human figure at all.

It was a wolf. Its pelt shimmered silver blue in the night. As its eyes turned toward me, curious of my presence, they glowed like floating, pearl-colored orbs. I watched it, my breath caught in my throat. I could feel its eyes boring into me. Then, with casual disinterest, it turned away from me and padded silently up the incline. I watched it until it disappeared over the ridge like a ghost.

“Tim.” It was a man’s voice.

I jerked my head around quick enough to crimp the tendons. A liquid hot pain spread across the side of my neck. Andrew stood behind me in a pair of faded chinos and a wiaafebeater. Half his face glowed with the light of a full moon.

Andrew raised both hands, palms facing me. “You okay, man?”

“You scared the shit out of me,” I uttered, finding my breath.

“You out here looking for someone?”

“Just collecting my thoughts.” Had he heard me calling Hannah’s name? “Did I wake you?”

“Wasn’t asleep.”

“Where were you?”

“The tent stinks like sweaty men,” he said with a smirk. “Just needed some fresh air.”

“No,” I said. “I meant, where were you earlier tonight when Chad almost bought the farm? We could have used the extra pair of hands.”

After the incident, we’d all gathered in the tent where we collectively stripped our clothes and washed the mud and filth off us with fresh rainwater. Andrew had appeared during the process, and

I’d fumed as he crossed into the tent and peeled off his own sopping clothes. I’d thought some of the others might start attacking him, bombarding him with questions, but that didn’t happen.

Chad had talked a mile a minute about how he’d almost died, grinning and clapping us on the back. He recounted what had happened to Andrew without seeming to realize Andrew had been missing. Only Petras noticed my unease with Andrew, but he didn’t say anything. Apparently I had been the only one to see Andrew watching all that had transpired from his perch on the ridge. I considered mentioning this to Petras but decided against it.

“I was taking a leak,” Andrew said now. “I didn’t even realize anything had happened.”

“Okay,” I said, my fists clenching. “Cut it the fuck out. Chad was on that ledge because he was looking for you. If I hadn’t followed him and grabbed his coat as he went over the side, we’d be scooping him up off the rocks down there and carrying him home in our canteens.”

One of Andrew’s shoulders rolled. “What would you like me to say? It’s a scary thing, but this isn’t exactly a trip to the zoo. We’re all grown men. We know what we’ve got ourselves into.”

“I saw you.” I took a step toward him. “I saw you sitting on that fucking ridge, watching the whole thing.”

“You’re wrong. Calm down.”

“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down. I saw you sitting there.”

Andrew sighed and raked a hand through his hair. He looked caught between a laugh and a sob. “I was taking a piss on the other side of the hill. When the rain hit and the mud started pouring down the side of the hill, it became too slippery to climb up. And when I did climb up, you guys had already pulled Chad over the ridge. It was all over before I could do anything.”

“So you just sat the fuck down and watched us?”

“I was exhausted from climbing through the mud.”

I glanced away from him in the direction the wolf had gone only moments before. “You were gone for a long goddamn time just to take a piss.”

“I told you. The rain and the mud—”

“Before that,” I said, glaring at him and taking another step closer. “You’d disappeared long before that. The rest of us were bullshitting by the fire, and you were off gallivanting.” My fists were shaking, and my vision began to blur. “What the fuck’s going on here?”

“Go to bed, Tim.”

“Answer me.”

“I said—”

“Who do you think you are?” I growled. “Don’t tell me what to do. I swear to God I’ll flatten you right here.”

“This was a mistake.” Andrew threw his hands up. “I thought you were ready for this. It’s my fault. The whole goddamn thing was a mistake. When the rest of us take off for the first pinnacle, you can go back to the valley with the Sherpas. They’ll take you to the roads that lead back into town. You can get a bus from—”

I hit him in the face. It was a poor, clumsy punch, but it hit with solidity, and I could feel Andrew’s jawbone through his cheek and against my knuckles.

Andrew stumbled backward seemingly more shocked than hurt, a hand up to his jaw. His eyebrows knitted together, creating a vertical divot between them, and he didn’t take his eyes off me.

“I told you not to tell me what to do,” I said quietly.

Andrew’s gaze shifted to the fist that had struck him, which was still balled at my side. His face was expressionless. “Okay, Tim. Okay. Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I’ve been distant and aloof and removed from the whole damn thing, keeping all you guys in the dark. So, yeah, maybe I deserve it. I’m sorry.”

I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up, but my body refused to cooperate. I sat on a large white stone and pulled my legs under me.

I kept my eyes locked on Andrew for fear that if I looked away he might vanish into the night.

“You said you’d left us in the dark,” I said finally. “What haven’t you told us? And no more games.”

Andrew took a deep breath and sat down beside me. “That maybe we shouldn’t be here.” He chuckled. “All right, you caught me. I wasn’t just taking a piss tonight.”

I stared at him.

“I was praying,” he said. “Meditating. Trying to lock into the power of the land. The power of the gods.”

“Meditating,” I repeated. “You don’t believe in that stuff.”

“That doesn’t matter here.”

“Why shouldn’t we be here?”

“Because there are a lot of people who think no one should climb the Godesh Ridge,” he said. “You can forget about the folklore, the campy stories, or even the facts—the men who’ve died trying. You can’t deny those things, but that’s not all of it. Fact is, we’re some big-time violators for coming here. The Godesh Ridge is sacred, a holy land, a temple not to be pursued, not even by the monks, the Yogis. No one. And the same holds true for the Canyon of Souls.”

I thought about Shomas, the hulking man who’d been waiting for me that night outside my cabin and whom I’d chased—or imagined I’d chased—through the streets of a rural village days later.

“A beyul,” I said, which seemed to catch Andrew’s interest.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Petras. You’re familiar with the term?”

“Sure.”

“Is that what this canyon is? A beyul? A hidden land not meant to be found?”

“I suppose.”

“That’s why the guides turned back after the bridge,” I said. “That’s why they wouldn’t lead us into the Valley of Walls.”

“The Valley of Walls is considered a gateway to the ridge and the first in many stops along the way to the Canyon of Souls. There are others, too—the Sanctuary of the Gods, the Hall of Mirrors—and many of the indigenous people of this area will not corrupt the land with their presence. Simultaneously they believe we’re corrupting it by being here. To them, we’re no different than a band of grave robbers.”

He gripped my shoulder and squeezed it. It was a gesture very unlike him. “I meditate to maintain a connection with the land and to show my respect. Please don’t let that weaken your trust in me to lead this mission. I haven’t lost my mind, and I haven’t dragged you all into something I can’t handle.”

“We shouldn’t be here.” I cast a wary glance at the sky. It was as clear as lucid thought. The moon hung fat and yellow, larger than I had ever seen it.

“You never struck me as the superstitious type, Overleigh.” He was back to using my last name, and I was helpless to remember the day we first met in San Juan. This caused me to think once again of Hannah …

“Has nothing to do with superstition,” I corrected him. “I know for a fact that we’ve pissed off at least one of the locals from Churia. I met him, and he didn’t seem too happy with our little crew.”

“Don’t let that bother you.”

“And then there’s Donald Shotsky.”

“What about him?”

“For one,” I said, “the fact that he’ll never make it. He’s been struggling already, and we haven’t even started to climb. The man’s never climbed anything more strenuous than a flight of stairs in his life.”

“We’ve already discussed Shotsky. I’ve explained it to you.”

“You’ve explained your deranged reason for wanting him out here, but that doesn’t make it right.”

Andrew chuckled and repeated the word deranged, as if it were the punch line to a joke.

“Make me a promise.”

“Yeah? What’s that?” Andrew said.

“Promise me you won’t break him. Promise me that if he can’t make it to the end, you’ll cut him loose.”

“I’m not holding a gun to the man’s—”

“So then promise me you’ll let him off the hook if he feels he can’t finish this.”

Andrew’s fingers drummed on his knees. “All right, if he feels he can’t finish …”

“And that you’ll give him the money.”

His eyebrows froze in twin arches above his eyes. He said nothing.

“The twenty grand,” I went on. “Promise me.”

His eyes narrowed, and he clasped his hands in his lap, staring at the blackened heap of carbon that had been our bonfire earlier this evening. “And if I don’t promise?” he said, not looking at me.

“Then I walk. Right here, right now—tonight. I’ll pack my shit and head back to the valley. You flexed your muscles a few minutes ago and told me to do just that, but I know that’s not what you want. You’re here to make us all better, to fix what you think is broken in us, just like you said. Despite what you said, you don’t want me to leave. You very much want me to stay.”

I was working off a hunch, not quite sure what Andrew wanted. For one moment, I thought he might actually tell me to pack my stuff and leave. But when he faced me, his eyes somber and ancient, I knew I had called his bluff. Relief washed through me.

“Twenty grand’s a lot of money,” he said offhandedly.

“Not for you. Won’t put a dent in your wallet.” I knew this was true; after all, he’d paid for the whole goddamn trip.

“Why do you care, anyway?”

“I guess I don’t want another death on my conscience.”

Andrew’s expression softened. “Been thinking about her tonight?”

“You mean Hannah,” I said. It was not a question. And he didn’t need to ask it. “I guess so. She’s been on my mind a lot lately.”

“Mine, too.” He smiled wearily. He looked like he could close his eyes and fall asleep right here. “She was something else.”

“Yes, she was.” I laughed nervously. My vision was starting to blur.

“Okay,” he said. “You’ve got a deal on this Shotsky thing. Against my better judgment, you’ve got a deal.”

“Good.” I shook my hair down in my eyes and pawed at my mouth with one hand. “Christ, I could use a fucking drink.”

“Then take one,” Andrew said and stood. He stretched his spine, the tendons popping in his neck and back. “Don’t stay out here too late, bro. Get some sleep.”

I said nothing more to him. He didn’t seem to care or even notice. He strutted back to the tent, pausing to urinate over the side of the ridge for what seemed like twenty minutes. For someone so concerned about being in touch with the land, it seemed a rather vulgar gesture.

4

ANDREW’S COMMENT DIDN’T REGISTER WITH ME

until I awoke maybe an hour later back in the tent, the tendrils of a passing dream still tickling my chest. I rolled over and blindly groped for my pack until I found what I was looking for.

It was the canteen Andrew had placed inside my cabin before departing on this trek. Sitting up on one arm, I unscrewed the cap and brought the canteen to my nose and inhaled.

Bourbon.

What the hell is going on here?

I was still pondering the meaning of it before I had time to consider what I was doing. Two swigs from the canteen and the bourbon seared my throat and exploded in the pit of my stomach like a car bomb, its warmth spreading through me like the serpentine tentacles of some nonspecific cancer.