The Ascent

Chapter 14

1

DEATH ON AN EXPEDITION SUCH AS OURS WAS NOT

uncommon. Thousands of people climb Everest every year, and people labor under the misconception that it’s become as safe as skydiving or running a marathon. They believe that the sheer magnitude of mountains must have diminished in the wake of man’s ever-evolving scientific prowess and technical savvy. Yet people still die climbing Everest and its neighboring peaks, and some people, like Curtis Booker, will never be found.

Mountaineering is quite possibly the last remaining extreme sport. Like Andrew had once told me many years ago, “If you jump out of a plane and your friend’s parachute doesn’t open, you sure as hell can’t fly back up into the plane and call it quits.”

For the next two days, we were a trail of zombies plodding through a world erased by snow. We climbed the remaining peaks in silence, all joviality gone from us, and descended into bowl-shaped valleys with grim expressions on our bearded, windswept faces. It had become taxing. Not just the climbing but being around one another, like coal miners about to go stir-crazy.

Petras and Andrew stopped speaking to each other completely,though whether this was a conscious decision or not, I had no idea. Likewise, Chad’s usual jokes at our expense had ceased altogether. He kicked up tufts of snow as he walked, occasionally humming under his breath while listening to his iPod. When his iPod froze, he chucked it off the side of the mountain, then offered a military salute as it shattered on the biting rocks below.

Michael Hollinger looked the worst. His lips were cracked and bleeding from the cold, dry wind, and I doubted he would physically be able to talk even if he wanted to. With each passing hour, his eyes narrowed more and more until they were nothing more than eyeless slits beneath his brow. He hardly ate, and his clothes began to grow too big for him, like he was swimming in them. Several times while trekking along a straightaway, Hollinger had to stop and catch his breath, though I did not think this had anything to do with physical exhaustion. It was a sure sign of an atrophied spirit.

My own temperament fluctuated with the various positions of the sun. My fever had worsened, and my insides alternated between boiling like stew and freezing to a hard lump of coal in my stomach. I sweated profusely during the warmest parts of the day—so much so that the collar of my shirt and nylon anorak became discolored with sweat. When night came, I would quake and rattle beneath both my own sleeping bag and Curtis’s.

I wrapped extra pairs of socks over my hands while my gloves dried by the fire—a fire for which we had difficulty finding fodder to burn. In the end, we ripped pages out of my George Mallory book, crinkled them into loose balls, and set them ablaze.

Since that strange night before crossing the arch, Hannah’s ghostly image had not returned. Even at night, when my mind seemed most active, she refused to come. In dark solitude I wondered about Petras’s mythical dakini, the female spirit of Tibetan lore. I thought of Hannah’s quicksilver flesh and the flash of her eyes as she crossed from behind mountainous lees into haunting

moonlight. A shiver accompanied each new thought.

Though Hannah’s ghost remained elusive, I did hallucinate … or at least I managed to convince myself that it was all a hallucination. Because surely there was no one else up here. Surely …

But climbing the outer rim of the Godesh Ridge on that second day, I paused to tighten the laces on my boots and happened to glance down to the snow-laden, black rock valley below. A man—or what appeared to be a man—stood within the shadow of a massive snowbound overhang halfway up the valley. It was a place we’d crossed earlier that morning, and I could still see the fresh snow punctuated by our footprints. I stared at the shape, recalling how I’d seen a mysterious figure following Andrew up the slope of the pass after Shotsky had died. Was this the same man? Was it a man at all?

I raised my hand in a wave, but the figure did not respond. At this distance, it was impossible to make out any details, but there was no movement, no acknowledgment of my greeting.

It was then that I realized I was sweating through my clothes. I peeled my collar away from my throat, and a waft of warm body heat exited. All of a sudden, I was breathing in great whooping gasps, my heart rumbling like a freight train.

Something wasn’t right. This was more than just the fever I’d been fighting the past couple of days. My clothes started suffocating me, my helmet squeezing my cranium. It was as if I were growing to twice my size in a matter of seconds.

Unsnapping the buckle of my helmet strap, I pulled it off my head and tossed it aside. I dropped my pack and fumbled with the zipper on my parka. Then I took my parka off, whipped it into the snowbank, and lifted my anorak over my head. My flannel shirt and thermals were drenched with sweat. Wasting no time with the buttons, I tore the flannel shirt from my torso, the buttons popping loose and soaring through the air, then sloughed off the sopping wet thermal beneath it.

Petras closed one hand around my wrist. “What the hell are

you doing?”

“Gotta … get out of these clothes …” My voice was breathless, struggling. “Claustrophobic …”

“You’re not.” Petras grabbed my other wrist. I struggled to get free, but his grip was too tight. “It’s onset hypothermia. You’re actually freezing to death and dehydrated, but you feel like your body is on fire.”

“My heart,” I gasped. “Jesus … help …”

My eyelids fluttered, and the world tilted to one side, knocking my legs out from under me. I collapsed into the snowbank, the world grainy and distant before my eyes. My heart was like a jackhammer trying to drill through the wall of my chest. I actually placed one hand over my heart to steady it and could feel its reverberations against my palm.

“Hey!” Petras shouted to the others. “Man down! Some help here!” Strangely his voice was laden with echo. It took me several seconds to realize I was also hearing it come through the walkie-talkie affixed to my backpack, two feet away from me in the snow.

“I think … think I’m having a … a heart attack …”

Petras’s hand fell on my chest. “Be cool,” he said in his big bear’s voice. “Relax.”

I forced my eyelids open. They were gummy, and my vision was blurred. Once it cleared, I could make out the wind-chapped skin stretched taut over Petras’s high cheekbones and the flecks of snow caught in his auburn beard.

Suddenly I was a child in bed with a fever, and John Petras was my father, who incidentally was also named John. My father mopped my brow and smiled warmly down to me and told me to relax and stay warm. He told me of the birds roosting in the fig trees in the yard and how the limestone wall by the shore was becoming infested—absolutely infested—with lichen. It was nothing to worry about now, but I would have to scrub the wall clean once I was better, scrub that

moss and lichen and green slime right off.

And what I wound up doing was chiseling away sections of the wall, carving faces and hands so that it looked like people inside the wall pushing against it and trying to get out. My father was angry and sent me to my room for three days, though by the end of the three days, he came to my room and told me I shouldn’t have carved up the wall but that my carvings were very good and that he was impressed that they were very good …

I was lifted off the ground, my head cradled in someone’s hands, and my shoulders and legs were carried by others. I was wrapped quickly in a warm sleeping bag, while Andrew and Chad created a lean-to to keep the freezing winds at bay.

“You’ll be all right,” Petras said very close to my face. I could smell his sour breath and feel its warmth along the side of my face and down my neck. “Drink some water.”

I sipped water from a bottle. It seared my throat on the way down to my guts. My body was quaking, my teeth chattering. I thought I had gone blind until I realized I had my eyes shut.

Yet when I opened them, it was dark. A small fire burned outside the lean-to. My body had ceased quaking, and my heart had resumed its normal pace. I was alone beneath the lean-to. When I peeked out past the fire, I could see no one.

I pulled on a sweatshirt and edged out into the night. Petras was crouched low to the ground, filling water bottles with snow.

“Where are the others?” I croaked, my throat raw and abrasive.

“Making an advance up the east ridge. Andrew said the Hall of Mirrors is right over the next pass, which is the doorway to the Canyon of Souls.” He looked me over, his eyes like black pits in the firelight. “You look better.”

“I think my fever broke.”

“Gave us all quite a scare earlier.” He returned to his work.

“It was no picnic on my end, either. Need help?”

“I’m just about finished here.”

“It was like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. I’ve never heard of hypothermia causing a heart to race. In fact, it does the opposite, doesn’t it?”

“You were also sick as a dog,” Petras added. “Let’s not forget that.” “Still …”

“Still what?”

“Forget it. My head’s been funny lately.” What had Hollinger said? My head’s playing funny games. I can’t think straight.

Petras gathered a number of the water bottles in his arms. “Give me a hand with these, will you?”

I helped him load the bottles into our various packs. While we worked, I said, “You want to hear something crazy?”

“What’s that?”

“Earlier today I thought I saw a man down in the valley below the ridge. Just before I had my little, uh … attack, I guess.”

“A man?”

“He was too far away to see very clearly, but I was certain of it.”

“Are you certain of it now or just certain of it then?”

“I don’t know. Hard to say.”

“It could have been a hallucination. You were babbling when I got to you and when we carried you away from the ridge. A couple of times you even called me dad.” Petras smiled warmly.

“Strange thing is, I thought I saw someone following Andrew up the pass after Shotsky died.”

Petras froze. I didn’t realize what I’d said until he very slowly turned to face me. Then it all rushed back, and I felt like hiding my head in the snow.

“Fuck,” I groaned.

“Shotsky’s dead?”

I sighed. “Yes. The end of the first day taking him back to base camp. Heart attack. We tried to revive him, but it was quick.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Andrew and I agreed it would be best not to tell anyone. Morale reasons or whatever. I don’t know. It made sense at the time, but now … well, shit, everything’s fucked up now.”

Petras’s eyes bored into me, heavy on my soul. I told him I was sorry for deceiving him and the others.

“I guess it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t bring Shotsky back.”

“No,” I admitted, “it doesn’t.”

“And there’s no good reason to tell Mike and Chad now. Especially after what happened with Curtis. This whole thing’s turned into a fuck-a-row.” He handed me one of the fresh bottles. The snow inside had already melted. “Here. Drink this. Stay hydrated.”

I gulped down half the bottle, wiping my mouth on the sleeve of my sweatshirt once I’d finished. Out in the snow, I refilled the bottle, while Petras, in contemplative silence, rearranged some of the items in his pack. When he swiveled in my direction, his expression was telling.

“What’s the matter?” I said after the silence had become overwhelmingly obvious. “What are you thinking?”

Petras chewed at his lower lip. “Not quite sure yet. Working over some things in my head but nothing that’s—”

He stopped as voices floated down to us from the top of the pass. A moment later, three darkened figures sauntered toward the lean-to.

“I’ll tell you later,” Petras promised and zipped up his backpack.

“Look who’s decided to join us again,” Chad said, his heavy boots kicking up clouds of snow dust as he approached the fire. “You were babbling like Linda Blair for a while there, Shakes. Was waiting for your head to spin around and pea soup to come spewing out of your mouth.”

“Lousy company will make people do strange things,” I retorted, although since the incident on the arch where he’d saved my life, I no longer felt any genuine disdain for Chad Nando. It was all playful shtick now.

“Well?” Petras said. “What’d you guys find?”

Andrew sat on a roll of tarpaulin near the fire and unfolded a map in his lap. “The entrance to the Hall of Mirrors is just where the Sherpas predicted it to be. It’s a cave—a mouth—right in the center of the mountain. Maybe fifty yards up the pass.”

“The opening’s maybe a hundred yards from the ground,” Chad added. “We’ll have to do a short climb to reach it, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Do we know what to expect once we’re inside the cave?” I asked.

“Legend says it’s just a straight tunnel that empties into an antechamber called the Hall of Mirrors,” Andrew said.

I asked him why it was called the Hall of Mirrors.

Andrew snickered and rubbed two fingers across his creased forehead. “Honestly, I have no idea.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Then from there?”

Andrew continued to rub his brow. “There’s supposed to be an opening, a doorway of sorts, somewhere in the Hall of Mirrors. It leads directly to the Canyon of Souls.”

“But no one’s ever seen the canyon,” I said. “Right?”

“Well, no … but so far everything has been verified—the Valley of Walls, the Sanctuary of the Gods, the stone arch and the icefall, and now the opening to the Hall of Mirrors.”

“How wide is this canyon supposed to be?” Petras asked.

Andrew shrugged. “No clue. Two feet wide … or two thousand. No one knows for sure.”

“Someone must have been there,” I suggested, “to know it exists.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Andrew agreed, “but it’s never been officially documented. Could be stories passed down from bands of monks or Sherpas or Yogis. Could be campfire tales told by ancient yak herders who once lived in the valleys around these mountains. Christ, for all we know, it could be the equivalent of the stories from the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth, water into wine, and all that. How do any of these talessurvive from one generation to the next? I don’t know.”

It didn’t comfort me any to hear Andrew relate the Canyon of Souls to the stories of the Bible. To think Donald Shotsky and Curtis Booker died chasing some fairy tale did not sit well with me.

Andrew looked at me. His eyes gleamed in the firelight. His face was gaunt, nearly skeletal. “Will you be ready to climb tomorrow morning?” I said I would.

2

THERE WERE NO DREAMS AT THIS ALTITUDE.

3

IN THE MORNING. BLADES OF ICE SLASHED INTO THE

canvas tent and stuck like spears into the smoldering remains of our campfire. Hail came down like bullets, boring tunnels several inches deep into the packed snow.

We drank cold coffee, and I ate the rest of the stale bread I’d rationed from Shotsky’s pack after he died while we watched the hail through the opening in the tent. Chad and Hollinger busied themselves with a deck of cards, and Petras thumbed through the remaining pages of the George Mallory book.

Andrew sat by the tent’s open flaps watching the hailstones. “Looks like it’s letting up. I’ll give it ten seconds. Ten … nine … eight …”

I sat at the rear of the tent, my legs resting on my pack, dragging the blade of Petras’s hunting knife across a softball-sized stone. “Seven … six …”

I slipped and drove the edge of the knife into the soft mound of flesh just below my thumb. It didn’t hurt, but blood surfaced almost instantaneously, running in a single stream down my wrist and soaking the cuff of my flannel shirt. I grabbed one of my socks and—

1

—WRAPPED MY INJURED HAND IN A BANDAGE.

Splotches of blood lay like asterisks on the linoleum floor of my studio, and there were two drops on the half-finished sculpture. Out along M Street, the lampposts radiated an incandescent blue, and the traffic was becoming heavy.

At the sink, I washed the blood off my chisel, which had carelessly jumped from the stone and bit into the tender flesh of my palm. However, the chisel might not have been as careless if its handler hadn’t had so many scotch and sodas throughout the afternoon. Tightening the bandage around my hand, I removed my smock and turned the lights off in the studio before locking up for the evening.

Thirty minutes later, I arrived home to our split-level along the waterfront, the house dark in the deepening twilight. I kicked my shoes off in the front hallway and called Hannah’s name up the stairs. In the kitchen, I prepared a pot of coffee and set it on the stove, then climbed the creaking stairwell to the second floor.

The house was empty. The bed in the master bedroom hadn’t been made this morning, which was unusual, and the towel from my morning shower was still draped over the shower curtain rod. My dirty underwear was still in a ball next to the toilet. “Hannah?”

I stood inside the bedroom doorway while my mind strummed. The closet doors stood open, and after a second or two, I noticed Hannah’s large floral suitcase—the one she took on our honeymoon to Puerto Rico—was missing.

Frantic, I drove back into the city and cruised past Hannah’s gallery. There was a Closed sign in the window, but there were lights on inside. I double-parked the car, bounded to the door, and knocked.

Kristy Lynn, Hannah’s twenty-two-year-old assistant, answered

the door. “Hey, Mr. Overleigh. What’s up?”

“I’m looking for my wife.”

“Oh. Well, she isn’t here.”

“No?”

“Nope. Sorry.” Kristy Lynn curled a length of her dyed black hair. Her dark blue fingernail polish made the tips of her fingers look like those of a corpse. “Hasn’t been in all day.”

I looked over Kristy Lynn’s shoulder as if expecting to find Hannah hidden behind a desk or a chair or something. “And you didn’t hear from her?”

“Not all day.” Kristy Lynn sounded instantly bored. “What happened to your hand?”

“Huh?” I’d forgotten about it. Blood had soaked through the gauze bandage.

“You need a clean bandage.”

“All right. Good night.”

“Later, skater,” she intoned and shut the door in my face.

I drove to the houses of our mutual friends, but no one was home.

It was nearly nine when I arrived back home. The house was still dark; there was no indication Hannah had returned in my absence. An acrid, burning smell filled my nose as I crossed the foyer. Swearing under my breath, I realized I’d left the fucking coffeepot on the fucking stove. It had boiled over, coughing up brown sludge from the spout and onto the stove. Thankful the whole house hadn’t gone up in flames, I shut off the burner and wrapped my hand in a dish towel, then lifted the pot off the stove, and dumped the whole damn thing in the kitchen sink.

The phone rang. I sprinted to it and gathered it up in my wounded, bandaged hand. “Hannah?”

“I’m leaving you, Tim,” she said. Her voice sounded distant. I could tell she had been crying.

“Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. Did you hear what I said? I’m leaving. I have to leave you.”

“Hannah, please—”

“I’ll talk to you in a couple of days. I just need some time to myself, some time to cool off. You need that time, too.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Where are you? I’ll come get you. We should talk.”

“Not tonight.” It sounded like she was struggling very hard to stay calm. “Give it a couple of days.”

“Like hell.” My face was burning, my hands shaking. My toes were curling in my shoes. “Tell me where you are. This is bullshit. What’s going on?”

Her defenses fell. She started sobbing. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“Live like we’ve been living. I’m second best to your obsession.”

“What obsession?”

She paused, then said, “Yourself. You’re obsessed with yourself. I can’t keep doing this. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Good-bye.”

“Hannah—”

“Good-bye.” She hung up.

Injured and furious, I threw the phone on the floor and kicked it clear across the kitchen. I grabbed the next closest thing—a kitchen chair—and swung it against the wall. One of the legs splintered off, and I chucked the rest of it down the hallway. Then I collapsed on the floor, sobbing like a child, the bandage having come undone and trailing from my hand like a party streamer. When I stood ten minutes later, there was blood all over my shirt and pants and a widening puddle of it on the tile floor.

Then something on the kitchen table caught my eye. It was a hardcover book, one Hannah had been lugging around with her for the past several weeks, titled Foreign Words: The Art and Heart of Language.

I didn’t need to examine the author photo on the back of the dust jacket to know it was written by David Moore, my wife’s biggest fan.

David made steady appearances at Hannah’s gallery throughout the week, and in the past two months, Hannah had heard him speak at Georgetown University three times. They were evening lectures, and she had invited me to the first one, which I declined in order to meet certain project deadlines, but the subsequent two she hadn’t even mentioned to me until after she’d gone to them.

We’d even attended an intimate dinner party at his brownstone last month in celebration of the release of his newest book. He’d had my sculpture on prominent display in his living room, and I’d gotten drunk on expensive whiskey.

I turned the book over anyway and stared at his grinning, handsome face. The pretentious ass, he wore glasses only in his author photos and never in real life. In a fit of rage, I tore the dust jacket from the book and shredded it. When I couldn’t tear it up any more, I seized the book itself and relieved it of its pages.

At ten o’clock, I parked outside David Moore’s brownstone. It was in a collegiate Georgetown subsection, just one block away from the house where The Exorcist had been filmed decades ago. I’d had enough time to sober up and was running on full adrenaline now as I jumped out of the car and mounted the steps to his front door. I didn’t even knock until I tried the doorknob and found that it was locked. I heard shuffling and voices on the other side of the door. A light came on in one of the upstairs windows, and I thought I saw the silhouette of a head peeking out.

“Come on!” I yelled, banging on the door.

It opened partway, David’s face appearing in the vertical, three-inch sliver. He wore a bathrobe, and his dark hair, gray at the temples, was wet from what I assumed was a recent shower. For whatever reason, this sent me into a rage.

“Tim—,” he began.

I pushed the door open and barreled into the house. “Where is she?”

“Calm down. Take a breath and—”

I slugged him across the jaw. It was a good punch, forcing him to stumble backward and lean for support on an end table. The look of shock and fear in his eyes was fuel to my fire. I was cuffing my sleeves when Hannah appeared at the end of the hallway, wearing a pair of blue sweatpants and her old Kappa Delta sorority T-shirt. The sight of her weakened me. I froze in the entranceway.

“Jesus, Tim.” David righted himself against the wall, massaging his jaw. “That’s assault.”

Something snapped inside me. I pounced on the son of a bitch, swinging my fists and pummeling him until Hannah grabbed me from behind and attempted to pull me off him. The feel of her at my back caused the fight to flee right out of me.

David curled into a fetal position against the wall, an arm over his face, one pointy elbow facing me.

“Fucking coward,” I spat.

Hannah’s fingernails dug into my forearms. When I whirled around to her, she shoved me against the wall. Her hair had fallen in her face, her eyes livid. “Get out.”

“Hannah, I—”

“Get out of here.”

“You’re coming home with me.”

David scrambled up the wall, straightening his bathrobe as he rose.

I caught a glimpse of his genitals through the part in the robe, which caused me to lash out at him again. I swung at his eyes and cheekbones—anything my fists could reach—until a sudden strike against my left leg sent me crumpling to the floor. An instant later, white-hot pain raced up my thigh.

Hannah stood over me with a golf club poised like a baseball bat, ready to take a second swing. Reflexively I covered my face.

“Jesus Christ,” David groaned. “He’s out of his goddamn mind.”

My eyes locked with David’s. “I’m going to kill you,” I growled.

“You’re not,” Hannah said. She was shaking, her arms like pipe cleaners jutting from her sleeves. I had no doubt she would bring the golf club down on my skull if it came to that. “You’re going to get up and get out of here. I told you on the phone that I need a couple of days to get my head together. You’ve got no right coming here.”

“I’m calling the police,” David said. He staggered to the kitchen and grabbed a portable phone.

“Hannah,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear it. Get up. Goddamn you. Get the hell up.”

“Please …”

“This is assault,” the son of a bitch said from the kitchen. “This is breaking and entering and assault.”

“Come in here, you fucking weasel, and I’ll show you assault,” I said, standing. David did not respond, and I looked at Hannah. It killed me to see my wife standing in front of me, a golf club over her shoulder. What killed me even more was she was dressed for bed … in this fucker’s house. “Come home with me. Please. We’ll talk things out. I love you. You know that, don’t you? I love you.”

Tears streamed down her face. “Get the fuck out.”

“Sweet—”

“I can’t do this right now. You’re attacking me when I’m weakest. That’s unfair.”

“Your leaving me is unfair!” I shouted. “I come home to an empty goddamn house—that’s what’s unfair! Goddamn it. Come home with me!”

“I can’t do this. Please, Tim. If you love me, you’ll leave.”

David walked in, wielding the portable phone like a handgun.

I wasn’t going to win this—the realization fell on me like a piano down a flight of stairs. My face burned; my pride burned. Breathing heavy, I straightened my shirt and shot a glare at David.

He took a step backward into the kitchen, holding up the telephone

to prove he was serious about calling the cops.

“Fuck you, dude,” I said. I turned to Hannah and my soul softened. “One last time. Please come home with me.”

“No,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I can’t.”

“All right.” I went to the door, paused with my hand on the knob, then pulled it open and stomped onto the concrete porch. I left the door open behind me, but the second I stepped out, Hannah slammed it. A moment later, I heard the lock click into place.

My head was filled with butterflies. My vision was as clear as it had ever been—I felt I could see for miles without restriction—and my veins were pumping full of lighter fluid.

I climbed into the driver’s seat of my car and sat for what could have been an hour, watching traffic slide up and down the block and tourists dip in and out of bars. Parked in front of me was an old 1928 Mercedes motorcar convertible, with running floorboards and a spare tire on the trunk. It had a vanity license plate—4N WORDS.

“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.

Only in the center of the floor, where a section of each circle of light overlapped all the others and focused like sunlight through a magnifying glass, a perfect beam of white light melted the frozen snow from the cave floor, creating a star-shaped opening in the ice that revealed the blackened rock beneath.

It was this display that initially captivated our attention. Together,we all walked slow circles around the shaft of light. Andrew doused the lantern and set it down, his gaze trained on the spotlight of white light in the center of the floor.

Chad gripped my forearm and stopped walking. “Look around,” he said, his voice filled with awe. “Jesus Christ, Shakes, look around.”

I looked.

It was called the Hall of Mirrors because that was exactly what it was: an antechamber whose walls were existent only in the form of pure ice, perhaps fifteen inches thick, like great blocks of glass encapsulating the entire room. Light refracted off every wall of ice, a constant lamp, keeping the ice from being coated with frost and causing it to melt and refreeze, melt and refreeze, creating a mirrorlike finish to the walls of ice.

“Holy crap,” I muttered, stepping into the center of the antechamber. I walked toward one of the walls, my reflection facing me, as perfect as it would be in a bathroom mirror. I reached out to my image’s hand. Our fingers touched.

I looked up at my reflection and into my own eyes. Fear shook me. Cadaverous, sunken eyes, lipless mouth, a dark, patchy beard corrupting the lower half of my face—I was a ghost of the man I’d once been, a hint of the soul I’d once carried within me.

Andrew’s reflection floated up behind mine. I felt his hand on my shoulder while watching his reflection place it there. “It’s who we really are,” his reflection said. “We may not like what we see, but the mirrors don’t lie. It’s who we are. And we have to accept that.”

I dropped my hand away from the mirrored ice.

“Can you believe this place?” Chad howled, a skeletal grin etched across his face. He scanned his own reflection in every wall, every mirror. “It’s like something out of a goddamn fairy tale. It’s amazing!”

Before me, my reflection briefly blurred. I turned and tugged on the rope at my hip. I was still attached to Chad; he felt the tug and paused, staring down at the line, then in my direction. He looked at

me with wide eyes and a creased brow.

“Keep your voice down,” I warned him.

“I’m just saying,” he went on, ignoring me. “This place is fucking outstanding!”

I wound the rope around my hand, pulling him a few inches in my direction. When I spoke, it was no louder than a whisper. “I said keep your voice down. In case you haven’t noticed, the fucking walls are vibrating with every sound that comes out of your big mouth.”

“The spires in the ceiling, too,” Petras added, looking up. His voice was hardly louder than my own.

Unbuckling Chad’s line from my karabiners, I tossed it at his feet and said, “Admire the place in silence.”

He called me a dickhead, then wound his rope and slid it to his shoulder. “Place is as solid as a Diebold safe.” He tapped one of the glasslike walls.

“It’s not a safe. It’s a tank,” Hollinger said quietly, walking around the circumference of the room. “I used to keep piranha in a ten-gallon tank when I was a kid. Real piranha. Used to feed ‘em goldfish once a day, and those buggers would tear them apart in seconds. Less than a minute after I’d drop the goldfish into the tank, there’d be nothing but a jagged little backbone at the bottom of the tank.” He paused to examine one of the walls up close, grazing the icy surface with his fingers. A plume of vapor blossomed from his chapped lips. “That’s what we’re in right now. A tank. A fish tank.”

“But are we the piranha or the goldfish?” Petras asked, his question holding more weight than perhaps he intended.

“Well,” Chad said, unsnapping his helmet and tossing it on the ground, “it’s a badass place, but it’s also a dead end.” He ran two fingers along the reflective surface of one of the glass walls. “We must have missed something.”

“No.” Petras pointed across the antechamber to the farthest panel of ice. “Look above it.”

The ice wall itself was maybe twenty feet high, the snow-encrusted ceiling coming down low to meet it, enormous icicles hanging over the upper part of the ice wall like fangs. However, it was possible to make out an opening between the ice walls and the ceiling of the cave, wider and more obvious in some places, crisscrossed by a network of interlocking spires of ice. The place Petras had pointed out appeared to be the widest opening along the shelf beyond which a natural ice cave recessed into the wall.

“I see it,” I said.

“It’s the only doorway out of this room,” Petras said. “That’s got to be it.”

“It goes up,” Hollinger said.

I turned to Andrew, but he was no longer standing behind me. He’d migrated to the center of the room and sat cross-legged in the snow directly beneath the skylight of ice. His eyes closed, his hands on his knees, he meditated. His entire body seemed to glow in the magnified light.

“I feel like Neil fucking Armstrong.” Chad dropped to his knees and rifled through his backpack. “We should have brought a goddamn American flag.”

“There’s this,” Hollinger said, pulling his Australian flag from his backpack like a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve. “Same colors.”

Chad stood, a pickax in his hand, and grimaced at Hollinger. “That’s blasphemy. Put the goddamn thing away.”

A meager grin broke out across Michael Hollinger’s bearded face. It was the first semblance of a smile he’d sported in days. “‘Australians all let us rejoice,’“ he sang in a low voice, “‘for we are young and free! We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil, our home is girt by sea!’“

Chad groaned and said, “The hell is ‘girt’?”

As he sang, Hollinger flapped the flag like a matador would flap his cape and set it down unfurled on the ground. He saluted it and continued singing, while Petras and I chuckled.

Then Petras joined Hollinger, both of them grinning like fiends, and I sidled up between them, saluting. Not knowing the words to the Australian national anthem, Petras and I hummed quietly along to Hollinger’s off-key, low-pitched singing.

“Yeah, sure, you guys play your games while I make history.” Chad hefted the pickax and dragged it across the snow to the ice wall, staring up at the ledge and the partially hidden ice cave above it. “Guess we’ll see how easy these walls are to climb,” he said, raising the pickax over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. You fools keep singing.”

He swung the pickax into the mirrored wall of ice. The sound was like a gunshot going off in close quarters, reverberating throughout the antechamber.

From his spot on the ground, Andrew opened his eyes.

A sound like splitting wood came from above.

The three of us stopped singing and gaped upward in time to see a jagged boulder of packed snow and ice roughly the size of a love seat drop from the ceiling. It whistled like a missile as it fell.

Chad screamed, bringing his hands up, not quick enough to jump out of its path. It pounded him to the ground in a spray of ice particles, the sound like two automobiles colliding on the highway. The entire antechamber vibrated—the vibrations raced up my legs and rattled my lungs—and Chad bucked once beneath the weight of the boulder. A gout of blood erupted from his mouth and instantly sprayed the snow around him. His head slammed against the ground as the boulder, driven vertical into the ground, leaned back with a deafening creak and slammed against the ice wall, coming to rest at an angle.

The force of it hitting the ice wall caused a minor avalanche of smaller boulders, and spears of ice planted themselves all around us, upright in the snow.

I tripped over my feet rushing to Chad’s side. Unbelievably, he was still alive. His eyes had a distant look to them, and his lips were frothed with blood. He tried to raise his head and speak as I knelt over him.

“Don’t talk,” I said.

The boulder had landed on his pelvis, no doubt shattering the bone and driving him straight into the frozen ground. There was surprisingly little blood … but as I sat there gripping his hand, a deepening red stain spread from beneath him and soaked into the snow.

Petras appeared at Chad’s other side. He placed one hand against the boulder. We’d never be able to move it in a million years. And even if we could …

“Jesus,” Hollinger muttered from across the cave. He was still standing beside his flag. “Jesus, oh, Jesus … Jesus …”

“Hurts,” Chad managed. A fresh gout of blood burped from his mouth, dribbled down his neck, and pooled at the base of his throat.

“Shhh,” I told him. “Don’t fucking talk, Chad. Don’t talk.”

“ … urrrr …,” he gurgled.

Petras’s eyes locked with mine. There was no denying what he was thinking.

“Jesus,” Hollinger whimpered. “Oh … oh … Christ …”

“ … urrrrrr …”

I could hear the wet gurgle of blood at the back of Chad’s throat—

Andrew stood and negotiated around the fallen chunks of ice to arrive behind me. He said nothing as he stared at Chad. One of his hands rested on my shoulder in a gesture I initially mistook as camaraderie. But then he pushed me aside.

I scrambled backward on my ass, the seat of my pants soaking in Chad’s blood. I glanced down at my hands and saw my palms were sticky and red.

“ … urrrrrr …”

Without expression, Andrew grabbed the pickax Chad had dropped only two seconds before the boulder pinned him to the ground. He raised it above his head—

“No!” Hollinger shouted.

—and drove the spiked end into Chad’s head.

Chad’s fingers dug into the snow, and one of his legs kicked. Blood sprayed across Petras’s face, but he looked too stunned to flinch.

Coming to one knee, Andrew steadied what remained of Chad’s skull with one hand and pried out the pickax with the other. There was a wet, sucking sound as the spike pulled free of Chad’s head. It was a sound I feared would haunt me until my dying day.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Hollinger screamed. “Are you a fucking animal?”

Andrew stood and tossed the dripping pickax into the snow. He was frighteningly calm. There was a faint constellation of blood across the front of his coat.

“What did you do?”

Andrew slowly turned his head in Hollinger’s direction. “Keep your voice down.”

“You’re fucking mad!” Hollinger cried. “You hear me, Trumbauer? You’re fucking mad!”

“I said keep your voice down. The last thing we want is more shit to fall from the ceiling.”

“Jesus!” Hollinger bellowed, throwing his hands into the air. His eyes locked on Andrew, he backed against the wall, hugging himself.

Andrew went to his backpack and unsnapped the roll of tarpaulin from a set of straps. He unraveled the tarpaulin and carried it to what remained of Chad Nando and draped it over the corpse. Only Chad’s legs and boots protruded from the other side of the boulder, twisted at awkward, unnatural angles. It reminded me of Dorothy’s house falling on the witch in The Wizard of Oz. I half expected Chad’s feet to curl up like deflated party favors at any moment.

Sick to my stomach, I rolled over and spat into the snow. I wanted to vomit but couldn’t; there was nothing of substance in my stomach. A frothy string of mucus drooled from my lower lip and froze on the ice.

“You killed him,” Petras said. He’d scooted back against one of the ice walls after being sprayed in the face with Chad’s blood.

“It had to be done,” Andrew responded calmly. “You think he was going to walk out of here? You think he would have lasted more than ten minutes like that? And let’s not forget the pain—”

“It’s murder,” Petras said.

“And I’d hope any of you would do the same for me if it came down to it.”

Righting myself against a mound of snow, I grabbed fistfuls of snow and rubbed my hands together, desperate to get Chad’s blood off me.

Andrew threw his pack down at the mouth of the cave, mostly hidden in shadows, and unrolled his sleeping bag. He spoke to no one the rest of the night, which was fine by us.

6

“WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?” HOLLINGER WAIS-

pered in the dark. The only suggestion of light spilled from the window of ice above our heads—the milky, dreamlike glow of moonlight.

I hadn’t been asleep, but Hollinger’s voice startled me nonetheless. Staring at the disc of translucent ice above my head, I said, “We’re all going mad. Slowly but surely. All of us.”

Andrew was asleep on the other side of the antechamber; his snores echoed off the walls. Petras, Hollinger, and I had bedded down as far away from him as we could get. We huddled together like three rabbits caught in a snare.

“I keep seeing him bring it down into Chad’s head,” Hollinger went on. “I keep hearing the sound it made when he pulled it out. It was like that last bit of water gurgling down a tub drain.”

I closed my eyes. “Stop it.”

“Did you hear it?”

“Cut it out.”

“He’s lost his mind. Things are all fucked up.”

“Go to sleep,” I told him.

“All fucked up.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Go to hell.”

I grabbed Hollinger’s electric lantern and headed for the mouth of the tunnel. Andrew was sleeping at the foot of the entrance. I stepped over him and continued down the corridor, the lantern casting very little light beyond the small halo around itself. After a gradual bend in the tunnel, I could see the moonlight cast along the frozen tongue of ice that clung to the bottom lip of the cave’s opening. I set the lantern down and sighed, unzipping my fly and urinating into the wind. My stream seemed to freeze midway down the mountainside; I heard it shatter like glass on the rocks below.

Shaking off, I zipped up my pants and grabbed the lantern. I nearly ran into Andrew when I turned around, his face ghost white, his eyes colorless and void of feeling. I skidded on the tongue of ice and almost dropped the lantern.

“Boo,” he said quietly.

“Jesus Christ.” I brushed past him, knocking his shoulder with mine (though this wasn’t on purpose) and holding the lantern up to guide my way. “Tim.”

I paused, unsure if I wanted to turn around and look at him again.

“It had to be done,” he said to the back of my head.

“We’re through. Doesn’t matter how close we are, doesn’t matter what you want. We’re turning back tomorrow. With or without you.”

Andrew didn’t respond. We both stood there in the shimmer of a pale moon, half hidden in the darkness of the cave for several seconds without moving, without speaking another word.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Andrew said, “Do you blame yourself?”

I turned around, holding the lantern in his direction. His face was a mask of shadows. “Chad’s death was an accident, a horrible accident.

You were right—he was going to die anyway. I don’t blame anyone. Not even you.”

“I wasn’t talking about Chad,” he said.

I stared at him. There was a hot rumble in my guts. I knew what he was talking about. I knew it wasn’t Chad.

“Because I want you to blame yourself, Tim,” he said. “I want you to blame yourself.”

“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.

I expected to find a womblike niche punched in the snow … but what it turned out to be was a winding wormhole that gradually went up through the center of the mountain. The snow inside was ribbed and made for easy handholds. I climbed through the throat of the snow tunnel, pausing in the crook of its turn to see just how far up it went. It was impossible to tell due to a second bend farther in the tunnel, but I thought I saw faint daylight reflected along the wall.

I continued climbing while the wormhole continued to tighten around me. The impossibility of this tunnel’s existence was not lost on me: this was a man-made structure, as things this perfectly symmetrical do not exist in the natural world—and a recently man-made structure at that. Where had it come from? Who’d been here before us to dig it?

Halfway up, I got stuck. Arms pinned in front of my face like those of a praying mantis, I found I couldn’t budge, couldn’t struggle and work myself free. My breath made the air stale. Suddenly I was dying in the dark, lost and alone in a cave somewhere in the Midwest.

If I closed my eyes, I was certain I’d smell the moss and dampness of rank soil and stagnant pools of fungal cave water. If I closed my eyes—

8

— I COULD CONVINCE MYSELF IT WAS ALL A NIGHT-

mare. But when I opened them again, I was alone in our bed, the achy shades of twilight blues and purples filtering through the bedroom windows.

Downstairs, I heard the front door squeal open.

“Hey,” I said, appearing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Jesus, Tim,” Hannah said. “You scared the hell out of me. Why aren’t you at the studio?”

It had been three days since the incident at David Moore’s house and three days since I’d last seen or spoken to my wife. Standing before me now, she looked better than I thought she had any right to look.

“You cut your hair,” I said. “It’s so short. I like it.”

She turned away from me, a hand going to her mouth. “I didn’t want to do this with you here.”

“Do what? You said we’d talk.”

“I know what I said.”

“So let’s talk.”

“We can’t.”

“We never talk, Hannah.”

“I can’t do this.”

“So why’d you come back?”

She had her floral suitcase with her; the reason was apparent.

“We had our time to talk,” she said. “We had our time to try and fix things. But some things can’t be fixed.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not true.”

“You’re a good man and a talented artist. You care about what you do. I love that about you, but I need someone who puts me first.

You don’t do that. I’ve never felt like you’ve put me first.”

“Don’t say that. It’s not true. You’ve always been first. Always.”

“You say it, but you don’t show it. You say it, but then you get drunk, and you forget about me and what’s important to me. Your art makes you drink, and your drinking makes you put me in second place.” She shook her head, tears rolling down her face. Her hair did look beautiful. “I’m tired of being second place.”

“Hannah—”

“No.” She carried her suitcase toward the front door. “Never mind. I don’t need to pack anything. I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Let’s have dinner tonight.” It sounded petty, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.

“No—”

“Then tomorrow night.”

“No, I can’t.”

“I don’t see why—”

“I’m leaving tonight,” she said. The way she said it was like a confession, and I knew that it hadn’t been her initial intention to tell me. “I’m going to Europe. There’s a collector there who’s interested in a few pieces from the gallery. I thought it would be good to take some time to myself away from this place.”

“Are you going with him?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Just answer the question. Are you?”

“It doesn’t change what’s happened between you and me.”

“Do you love him?” I asked.

“Tim—”

“Do you love me? Did you ever?”

Her tears had stopped, and there was a look of disappointment on her face now. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“I’m not,” I said. “You’re doing it to me.”

“That’s unfair.”

“It’s true.”

“No, it’s not. That’s just more proof of how you don’t understand me. You don’t understand any of this.”

“Then explain it to me,” I said calmly. I felt myself going numb right there in front of her.

“There’s nothing to explain,” Hannah said, “and I don’t have the patience anymore.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Can I see you when you get back?”

She closed her eyes. I could almost hear her thinking from across the room. Finally she said, “Yes. Okay. When I get back.”

I stepped aside and leaned against the wall. “You can get some of your things. I’ll stay out of your way.”

“No. It doesn’t matter.”

“I love you, Hannah.”

“I know you do.”

“Be careful.”

She left without a response. And since her funeral was closed casket, it was technically the last time I saw her.

9

I WAS JARRED BACK TO REALITY WHEN THE TUN-

nel loosened and I slid down several inches. The heat from my body had widened the opening while I hung there, daydreaming. Reaching above my head, I worked my fingers around one of the ribbed corrugations in the snow. My feet pushed off the ribs below me, and I continued ascending the tunnel.

When I reached the bend, I climbed around it and froze when the tunnel opened to dazzling daylight no more than five feet in front of me.

“Here we go,” I said, my breath whistling through my restrictivethroat, and began crawling toward the opening.

10

THE TUNNEL OPENED UP IN THE WALL OF A CAN-

yon—the Canyon of Souls. I crawled from the opening onto a narrow ledge of black stone. Above me, the walls of the canyon yawned to a gunmetal sky. Below, they ran on forever, the canyon’s bottom nonexistent, my eyes surrendering to the optical illusion. The other side of the canyon was a tremendous distance away. I’d hiked the Grand Canyon a number of times, and this was no less impressive.

Pebbles pushed against my fingertips. I flicked a few over the edge. They fell but seemed to float, never landing, as if gravity had no authority here. It seemed to take whole minutes before they disappeared into the abyss below.

The ledge I was on ran the length of the canyon, both to my right and my left. It went on farther than my eyes could follow, and the ledge never seemed to get any wider. An attempt to walk its length on foot would be nothing short of suicide, as foolish as walking along the windowsills of a skyscraper.

Something shimmered behind the ice along the opposite wall. I winced, staring hard at it, and saw colors swirling behind the ice like oil on water. They moved as if alive, spiraling and intertwining with one another, these living snakes of uncataloged hues, commingling and bleeding together only to separate again.

It was then that I realized the entire canyon wall was alive with these streaks of color, pulsing like blood through veins and arteries, colors that went straight to the heart of this sacred land. The colors themselves were nostalgic, like they were solely associated with specific events from my past. Looking at one would cause me to weep; looking at another would cause me to laugh; yet another projected a soul-rattling melancholia I associated with childhood …

Two red splotches of blood fell on the back of my left hand. I touched my nose and found it was bleeding again. My headache was back, too, and my respiration had grown increasingly labored.

“The Canyon of Souls,” I whispered. Even under my breath, my voice carried over the arroyo and hung there suspended like a cadre of angels taking flight.

11

BACK IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS, PETRAS’S SNORING

was like the idling of a pickup truck. I clambered down the icy pylon and strode across the chamber, my spirits still lifted from the sight of the canyon. Andrew’s intention was to cross it. Crossing it, I knew, was impossible. But moreover, something like that was not meant to be crossed, was not meant to be overcome. It was just what Petras had said—some hidden lands, some beyuls, were not meant to be found and conquered. Quite often they only revealed themselves to those pure enough to see them.

I crawled into my sleeping bag, my eyes slamming shut, my body racked with exhaustion. Then I realized something and sat bolt upright, my eyes flipping open.

Hollinger was still gone.

I leaned over and poked Petras on the shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Hmm …”

“Hollinger never came back from taking a leak.”

Petras’s eyes fluttered open. He coughed into one fist, clearing his throat, and sat up against a large stone. We exchanged a glance; the look in his eyes did not make me feel any better.

“How long has it been since he left?”

“Maybe forty minutes,” I guessed.

“Come on,” Petras said, standing.

We crossed the chamber toward the mouth of the tunnel, passingbeneath the pastel light sliding down through the eyelet above our heads. We passed the massive finger of packed snow that sat at an angle against one of the mirrored walls, the crinkly blue tarpaulin spread out at its base. Chad’s blood had spread and frozen into the cracks in the ice.

Together we paused before the mouth of the tunnel. Midway through, it banked at an angle so it was impossible to see the opening at the other end. Petras cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted Hollinger’s name into the tunnel. The echo seemed to go on forever.

Hollinger did not answer.

Entering the tunnel, I extended both hands to feel my way along the wall. My shins barked against calcified spires of stone rising in various angles from the ground. Petras followed close behind me, the sound of his respiration like sandpaper against concrete. Only a dozen steps into the tunnel and we were in absolute darkness. I held my hand just an inch in front of my face and wiggled my fingers. I couldn’t see a damn thing.

“He could have—,” I began but cut myself off as my right foot struck something loose and metallic. I froze.

“The hell was that?” Petras whispered.

Crouching, I patted the ground like a blind man. Whatever it was I’d kicked it somewhere ahead of me. I crawled, hearing the knees of my cargo pants chafe against the stone and the distant sound of cave water dripping from rocky overhangs. Finally my hands fell upon the object, causing my breath to catch in my throat. I knew what it was without picking it up. “It’s Hollinger’s lantern.”

Petras said nothing.

“Hollinger!” I yelled. “Michael Hollinger!”

“He’s not in here.”

“He could have fallen, knocked himself out.” I cranked the switch on the lantern, but the light wouldn’t come on. “He could

have struck his head on something and—” “He’s not in here.” “And—”

“Tim, he’s not here.”

I knew he was right. I stood, leaving the broken lantern on the ground, and continued down the tunnel. As I turned the corner, I could see the fading light of day spilling in through the opening of the cave. The tongue of ice glittered on the floor of the cave as I approached. “Mike? Hollinger?” My voice was insignificant. “Tim,” Petras said, far behind me. “Careful …” I crept to the edge of the cave, heedful not to slip on the icy tongue. Gripping a protruding rock from the wall of the cave, I peered down the hundred-yard drop to the valley below. “Oh, Jesus, fuck,” I groaned. “What is it?”

“Hollinger,” I said. “He’s dead.”

Petras shuffled toward me through the darkness. He stopped behind me, and I could feel his breath along the sweaty nape of my neck.

Hollinger’s body was shattered on the rocks below. He’d taken his helmet off, and his head had split open like a cantaloupe. “Christ,” I stammered. “Jesus Christ, man …” Petras dug his fingers into my shoulder. “Come on.” “He’s dead. He’s fuckin’ dead.” Those fingers pressed harder. “Let’s go.”

12

I MUST HAVE DOZED OFF. BECAUSE WHEN I OPENED

my eyes, the quality of the light coming through the hole in the ceiling had changed. I felt groggy and dry mouthed, and a chill rippled through my body. My eyes stung so I closed them again, shivering.

13

PETRAS SHOOK MY SHOULDER. “WAKE UP.”

My eyes fluttered. My head was stuffed with cotton. “What happened?”

“We found Hollinger at the bottom of the cliff,” he said, and it all came rushing back. “You threw up, then passed out.”

Shakily, I sat up. We were still in the Hall of Mirrors, my body sweating beneath a stack of sleeping bags.

“He didn’t fall,” I said. “Hollinger didn’t fall, man.”

Petras sighed and said, “I want to show you something.” He withdrew a bundle of black rope from his backpack, cinched in a bow by a metal clasp. “It’s the line that snapped when Curtis died.” He held up the frayed end. It was the first I’d seen of it. I could see that not all of it was frayed—just a bit. Petras must have noticed the realization in my eyes. “You see it, right?”

I sat up farther on my elbows. “It’s—”

“It’s been cut,” Petras said. “It’s a kernmantle line made of nylon and polyethylene. These lines don’t break.” He paused. “Just like titanium camming devices don’t break.”

“I know what you’re getting at,” I muttered.

“It’s awfully suspicious.”

Again I turned my gaze on the tarpaulin. The snow had soaked up much of Chad’s blood.

“Maybe it’s a game,” Petras went on. “Maybe it’s for some other reason. You said Andrew was going to give Shotsky twenty thousand dollars to come here, that he wanted to help him be a better man or some such shit. But what does that really mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“What better way to get rid of six people without suspicion than to bring them out here?”

I stared at the rope in Petras’s hands. The partially frayed end appeared to have been cut too perfectly, halfway through the line, just to weaken it enough …

“But there are easier ways to do it,” I suggested. “It’s tedious and dangerous cutting ropes and breaking cams. Why not take a gun out here and blow our brains out? Or poison our food, for Christ’s sake?”

Petras’s eyebrows arched. “The missing food. The food we were convinced we left back in the valley, remember?”

“Yes …”

“Maybe he’d planned to do just that. He gets up in the middle of the night and collects our food, poisons it, puts it back. Only he didn’t get a chance to put it back—”

“Because Shotsky interrupted him. Shotsky woke up early that morning, wanted to go back to base camp.”

“So maybe Andrew ditches the food, tosses it down a ravine or something. Pretends we left it in the valley.”

“Jesus Christ.” Something had just occurred to me. A tacky sweat broke out along my forehead.

“What is it?”

“Maybe he only had enough time to put something in just some of the food.” I added, “Shotsky died of a heart attack.”

“Yeah …?”

“What happened to me the other day—my heart racing, sweating and delirious …”

“What about it?”

Swallowing a hard lump in my throat, I said, “After Shotsky died, we went through his gear, and I took some of his food. I’ve been eating his food.”

Petras exhaled sour breath. His lips were peeling, and his cheeks were flaking with dried skin. He wound the rope back up and stowed it inside his backpack. “Given all this,” he said after a moment, “the question is—why would Andrew do it?”

“I know why,” I said. I thought of what Andrew had said to me last night when I’d gone to take a piss and he’d startled me by sneaking up on me in the tunnel. Because I want you to blame yourself, Tim, he’d said. I want you to blame yourself.

“Tell me,” Petras said.

“Because we’ve all done something to hurt him,” I said. “We’ve all done something he feels we need to be punished for.”

Petras could only stare at me. Looking at him for too long, I got dizzy.

“You ready for more bad news?” Petras said.

“What’s that?”

“The rest of our food,” he said. “It’s gone.” “Shit.”

“Could have happened while we slept, could have happened when we were stumbling through the cave looking for Hollinger.” He rolled his big shoulders. “Doesn’t much matter when it happened. Outcome’s the same.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“It’s okay.” I kicked the sleeping bags off me. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

“Your fever’s back.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“You’re going to have to sound more convincing than that.”

I managed a weak, spiritless smile … which quickly faded as the reality of our predicament settled around me. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. What the hell are we gonna do, man?”