Illustration by Andy Paciorek
The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
HONORABLE MENTION, FALL 2019
BY ROBERT WALTON
She smiled at me for the first time in many years. Then she took off her skirt and lay down in the sand. I lay down near her but did not touch her.
Cold awakens me. I sit upright. Nylon hisses irritatingly against nylon. Cold pierces me, pierces me through and through as I remember where I am.
Camp Four.
Everest, Camp Four, 26,000 feet. Alone. I fumble deep in my bag, find my headlamp, switch it on. Fractured rays of light split the cold. I look at my watch. Almost dawn. Almost. Up or down? Down. Up.
Wait. Wait a bit. Too soon for that question. Check the weather. Is the wind up today? Usually it is. Have a brew. Eat. Eat and drink. Drink, drink, drink. Drink to live up here. Or at least to defer death for a day, for an hour.
Why did I dream of Lynn? How did she come here, so far in time, so high?
I burrow back into my bag. Frost cuts like a blade. My nose, my left little finger, both going, or gone. What are the words to that song?
A body oozin’ life . . . round the corner . . . it’s Mac the Knife
So I’m not alone. Mac is with me. Faceless Mac. Mac is back in town. Silence screams at me, pulls my face out of my bag’s near warmth. It’s still out. No wind.
Up.
Got to go up.
A simple decision—but the act is hours from now. Put on the down and nylon armor. Light the stove. First grope for the lighter. It’s keeping warm down by my crotch. Light the stove. Blue flames flutter like new butterfly wings. The special gaz mixture finally catches. Brew. Drink. Brew. Drink. Crampons, twelve points of steel on each, my ice claws. However did Mallory manage with leather straps? Up here. How many tears of rage fell on frozen straps? And froze. No straps now. Somehow, the spring-loaded clamps are not reassuring.
Dawn. It’s here. The tedious, never-ending hours of preparation have flown. It’s later than I think. Always on this mountain, it’s later than I think. Out.
Out. A giant, mottled hand of cold rock, cold snow, cold blue-black sky slaps me to my knees. I gasp, I sob, I take a step upwards. Another. Another.
The moon rose, a desert moon, full and swelled by the clarity of truly dry air. The curve of her right hip glistened with moon-silver. She looked over her shoulder at me, took my hand.
Mimosa scent and silk dark hair drifted over my face. Her lips brushed my forehead, came to rest on the pulse at my right temple. Her fingers trailed up from my chest, stroked beneath the line of my jaw. Then her strong fingers gripped and squeezed.
Gasping, choking, I awaken. Cheyne-Stokes breathing; it’s happened before. A rest has become unconsciousness.
I ponder this. I ponder the winds, curiously light, batting at the hood of my parka with kittens’ paws. I ponder the light, gone dim and somehow tinted with silver. It’s past noon. I’m above the South Summit. The true summit is—not near, but within reach. All I must do now is reach the Hillary Step. All I must do now is climb.
Yet it seems important to connect frayed strands of thought. Lynn came to me again. Do random memories visit before evaporating into the thin, thin air? Or does love breathe still, uninformed of its own demise?
The summit. Right there. What does it mean to me, a solo ascent of Everest? I’ve been to many summits. They are mundane, so terribly ordinary, scruffy patches of blasted rock and snow. Is Everest different? Is it great and mystical? Will it signal the end of my struggle with life? Will it give me peace with Lynn? Am I determined enough? Am I strong enough? How am I?
How am I indeed? Good question. Heart . . . pounding. Lungs . . . laboring, but clear.
Throat . . . sore, as usual. Head . . . the normal needle of pain between my eyes. Left hand, okay. Right hand? Fingers – fingers?
Mac, you’re back; Smirking behind the serac
I push the overmitt between my left arm and armpit and pull it off. I peel back the liner with my teeth. Snow White fingers, pale as the worms dwarves find far underground. Who gave me the poisoned apple? I’m not the fairest of all.
I fumble, poke and finally lodge the dead fingers between my legs. I wait. I wait and peer at the summit. It’s not far. I know it’s not far. Only on another planet, in a far galaxy, in an age of primal forces long before or after this brief impertinence called life.
Fingers? Anybody home?
I’m not going to make it today. I lift the wooden fingers out of my crotch. I struggle with the mitt, get it back on for whatever good it will do.
I look up one more time. The summit is.
“Excuse me, I am Doctor Palomares.”
I look up and see a slender man, not tall, wearing black, plastic-framed glasses. “Doctor, how is she?”
He ignores my question. “The helicóptero rescued you and your partner a thousand meters below Chimborazo’s summit.”
“She collapsed. I think she has HAPE.”
“Yes, high altitude pulmonary edema—the lungs fill with fluid. We were able to mitigate that, but . . .”
“But what?”
“She suffers also from cerebral edema. Her brain is swollen.”
“Will she recover consciousness soon?”
There is a picture of the great mountain on the visitors’ room wall behind me. Doctor Palomares stares at it. “No. Her brain is dead.”
I sink back in my chair.
“The respirator and cardio machine will keep her technically alive for some time, but she cannot recover.”
Chimborazo was to have been a stroll, a practice climb for Everest, a romp together. Lynn. Brain dead.
“You are her climbing partner. Does she have family we may contact to make arrangements? Sir?”
Steep ice. I realize I’ve gone wrong. I don’t have the strength to retrace my steps, to go back up. Bitterness washes through me. Mac’s cut me—and no summit. No summit and I’m off route. I’m bitter and tired and angry. The mountain doesn’t care. One way or the other, it doesn’t care.
This is no way to climb steep ice.
Focus. Plant the axe left-handed. Place your crampons carefully—right points in, left points in. Balance. Take out the axe. Do it again. And again. I feel only the slightest tingle from the ten thousand feet of air below my boots. My bitterness almost bubbles into laughter. I’m climbing. I’m enjoying myself, enjoying the movement, even here, even now.
Right foot in. Left foot – something snaps down around my left foot. My left crampon drops, skitters off an ice bulge and disappears.
It’s so stupid to die. It’s always something small that breaks, some detail missed and usually your own fault, especially on this mountain. Why do human beings think it’s possible to live and move up here? Sometime in the very near future, I’m going to fall ten thousand feet. And die.
My conscious thoughts are not helpful. At a deeper, more practical level, my brain scrambles for survival. An odd thought surfaces. I never met Dougal Haston, the great Scottish climber, but I know his climbs. Something like this happened to Dougal once. On the Eiger.
He made a tension traverse. Perhaps ten feet from and slightly above my useless right hand is the beginning of a section of fixed rope. If I can reach that rope, I may live. What gear have I got? An ice screw, several lengths of nylon webbing, a couple of carabiners. What must I do first? Balance with all my weight on my right foot for as long as it takes to make a contrivance.
I do. My right calf knots and begins to scream. I make a chain of webbing slings and clip it to my axe. I clip the other end of the chain to my harness. I grip the slings with my left hand and ease my weight onto the axe. Will it hold? I planted it solidly—pick deep in good ice—but solidly enough for what I plan to do? I’ll find out.
Alternating between my left hand and my right crampon, I edge down until I reach the end of my chain. I’m gasping now. My vision goes black. I hang from the chain and try to recover.
My sight becomes less dim, only gray around the edges, and I judge I have strength enough to continue. I grip the screw with my left hand, reach across my body and stab it into the ice beyond my right shoulder. I lean against the axe, now eight feet above, pull up, plant my crampon. The second time, it’s harder. The third time, it’s almost impossible. I must repeat the move one more time.
The axe is holding and is still taking some of my weight. That will stop during this next move. The ice screw used as a dagger will now be tested to its limits. So will I.
The fixed rope is still several feet away and slightly above my head. I reach across and plant the screw as far up as I can. I begin my fourth one-armed, left-handed pull-up at above 26,000 feet. My biceps contract, my eyes bulge, my body rises. Sparks of white non-light flash before my eyes. My heart thrashes within my chest like a dying trout. I jab my right arm at the fixed rope. Almost. Muscles tear. I note the damage from within the remote island my concentration and hypoxia has created. This will be the best move of my life, or my last. My pull-up rips every fiber of muscle in my left shoulder. I can hold it for a second, no more. I stab my right arm behind the fixed rope.
I hang gasping, unseeing, from my crooked elbow. Not done. Not yet. Clip the fixed rope. Force the tortured left arm to complete one more task.
Clipped.
Safe.
Some time later—minutes surely, perhaps many of them—relief, reaction and adrenaline all carry me down easy ground—relatively easy ground— toward the South Col. Down, down, no axe, frozen fingers, one crampon, no problem. Because I’m no longer alone.
Lynn is a bit in front of me. Her hair is a raven’s wing against the snow. She’s not looking at me, but she’s smiling—a half-smile, really. She seems in a quiet mood, self-contained, gentle. I’ll catch her. We’ll walk together, at ease, just as we did on Chimborazo.
We must go down, all the way down to Camp One if I am to survive. We must reach the fixed ropes on the Lhotse face. We descend.
We descend into rising storm. I knew it was coming. The tinted sky and sickly winds told me it was coming. I pretended not to know because the summit was so close. What games we play with ourselves for summits.
Gray arms of snow and cloud embrace us. Lynn looks over her shoulder at me and disappears behind a blown scarf of snow.
“Lynn!”
Wind breathes snow on me, great bursts of snow. I must catch her. I’m above the Col’s shoulder and dimly remember the correct route. It is to the side of a wide couloir. But I can see nothing. The rocks that guided me on the way up are invisible. The slope to my right is ready to avalanche. I can do nothing about that. Loose waves of snow flow away from my thighs. I stagger down. She must be just ahead. Gravity, at long last, is my friend. It keeps me moving.
A miracle occurs. I stagger onto the end of the fixed ropes, the fixed ropes that lead all the way to Camp One. I cannot lose my way now. The storm’s violence seems less threatening. Does the mere fact of this line stretching away to other humans affect me so? And I’m sure Lynn must be on the ropes ahead of me.
I clip my descender, give my weight to the rope and begin an infinite abseil. Time ceases. I experience no distance, no progress, only blown snow.
The abseil ends with a large, frozen knot jammed against my descender. I stare at the knot stupidly, stunned by the cessation of motion. I swing to my right and flop into deep, loose snow.
I am half-lying, half-sitting on the slope, supported by the fixed rope. Fatigue crashes through me. I yield to it. I relax, close my eyes. I am safe here. I cannot fall. It comes to me that I am halfway down. There was a gap, a small gap, in the fixed ropes. I’ve reached it. Only a few feet away, the line to Camp One begins again. It is a small matter to unjam my descender, work my way down, and clip in again. I shall rest first.
I shall rest. Rest is the most voluptuous luxury. I feel at peace, completely at peace. The lost summit? It does not matter. Lynn’s death? It is bearable now. My fingers? They are but fingers. I feel confident that I will deal with all these things. I will descend to Camp One and live.
After my rest.
Mimosa enfolds me. Lynn kisses the ends of my fingers, suckles on them, each in turn. Then she lifts my hand and rises. I rise with her. We walk away, up a shining dune.
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Robert Walton’s novel, Dawn Drums was awarded first place in the 2014 Arizona Authors Association’s literary contest and also won the 2014 Tony Hillerman Best Fiction Award. With Barry Malzburg, Walton wrote The Man Who Murdered Mozart, published by Fantasy & SF in 2011. Most recently, his story, “Do you feel lucky, Punk?” received a prize in the Bartleby Snopes Dialog Only Contest. Robert is a retired middle school teacher and a lifelong mountaineer with many ascents in the Sierras and Pinnacles National Park. He lives in King City, California.