The Ascent Read online

  Once again, Andrew spoke with the guides. It had become his custom to pull them aside and speak in hushed tones whenever the spirit struck. This hadn’t bothered me at first, and it wasn’t until I heard one of the guides say something to Hollinger in crude but understandable English that I began to feel uneasy about their discussions in Tibetan. I thought of Petras’s story about the beyul and how some secret places were never meant to be disturbed. This, coupled with the fresh memory of Shomas and how my room had been ransacked, did not sit well with me. It seemed none of us knew much about the Canyon of Souls. It wouldn’t be unlike Andrew to lead us into danger.

  “We cross here,” Andrew said.

  The guides were already securing lines to the moss-slicked rope handholds. The bridge wobbled unsteadily as they did so.

  “They’re sure this bridge will hold?” Curtis said. He eyed the wobbling bridge as dubiously as I had.

  “It’ll hold. Besides, we’ll lose too much time climbing down and trying to cross the river.”

  “He’s playing loose and fast,” Curtis muttered as we secured our gear.

  “But he’s right about losing time if we had to climb down and cross the river,” Hollinger said.

  “That bridge don’t hold,” Curtis said, “we all might be in that river, anyway.”

  One of the guides went first. He traversed the slotted wooden planks with seemingly no difficulty, the palms of his small hands just grazing the ropes at waist height.

  “Thirty-three seconds,” Shotsky commented, staring at his watch. “From one end to the other.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but he moved damn fast.”

  “Thirty-three,” he repeated, ignoring me. “What’s thirty-three seconds?”

  Chad laced up his boots at the edge of the cliff. “Don’t tell me you’re actually afraid of heights, Donald.”

  Shotsky scanned the length of the suspended bridge. “What can I say?” His voice was small, and I could hear the dryness in his mouth when his throat clicked. “I needed the job.”

  Andrew crossed second. He moved confidently and without concern. At the midpoint, he paused and called to the rest of us, “It’s a sturdy bridge.” Twice he stomped his boot against the planks; both times we all winced collectively. “We don’t need to go one at a time. Space it out, leave about ten or fifteen feet between each of you. It’s strong enough.”

  “Strong, strong,” echoed the guide who’d remained on our sideof the bridge. He pulled at one of the ropes to bolster his authority. Judging by his urgency, I assumed this had been the guides’ suggestion from the beginning and was most likely the essence of their discussion with Andrew.

  “Later, mates,” Hollinger said, moving up from the back of the queue. He proceeded to cross, both hands gripping the ropes. His steps weren’t as certain as Andrew’s, but he moved at a decent pace.

  Moments later Chad stepped onto the planks. “I’m next.”

  “Wait a couple seconds,” I told him. “Give Hollinger more space.”

  “He’s got enough,” Chad said, seizing the ropes. He tested their bounce by shaking them, which caused the guide to scowl and wave his hands.

  “Hold up.” Petras dropped a hand on Chad’s shoulder. The force must have been harder than it looked, because Chad swung his head around, his eyes wide as saucers. “Tim’s right. Wait a second.”

  Chad slipped on his mirrored sunglasses and wisely kept his mouth shut.

  “Okay,” Petras said once Hollinger had covered a sizable distance. “Go.”

  Chad moved onto the bridge.

  I glanced over at Shotsky. He was watching every step Chad took with mounting distress. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. I gripped a fistful of his parka. “You okay?”

  His gaze bounced from me to the bridge, me to the bridge. “Doesn’t look too safe. I’m maybe the heaviest guy …”

  “Here,” I said, setting my pack on the ground. I unwound a spool of line and ran it through one of the grappling hooks at my hip. I extended the line, latched it onto one of Shotsky’s hooks, and tied it off in a figure eight. I tugged on it and it was strong.

  Shotsky laughed nervously. “So this means if I fall, you’ll fall, too, huh? Kill the both of us instead of just me, right?”

  “You can go back,” I said, my voice low. “You don’t have to be

  out here if you don’t want to do this.”

  “Yes,” he said dryly, “I do.”

  I was about to ask what he meant when Petras clapped my shoulder. As I turned, he intercepted the line from my hands and ran it through two hooks on his harness.

  “Thanks,” I said, but Petras had already turned away.

  Curtis followed Chad. We waited for Curtis to go beyond the bridge’s midpoint before Petras stepped onto the bridge. Shotsky may have been the most overweight of the bunch, but John Petras, with his massive frame and shoulder span, was by far the heaviest.

  From where I stood, I could hear the planks creaking beneath Petras’s boots. There wasn’t enough rope length between us to provide the requisite fifteen feet, so as the slack on my rope picked up, I moved onto the bridge. I glanced at Shotsky over my shoulder and said, “Thirty-three.”

  “Thirty-three,” he echoed and audibly swallowed a lump in his throat.

  Beneath me, the bridge seemed to swing from one side to the other; I had to maintain white-knuckled grips on the ropes to prevent this, and I could feel my fingernails digging into the meat of my palms after only five steps. The groaning planks beneath Petras’s feet less than two yards ahead of me did not help settle my unease.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the rushing water below, the sound of the wind rustling the palm fronds and the rhododendron leaves. Last night’s sleep was hard and dreamless: I dreamed now, imagining I was floating high above the earth, no bridge beneath my feet, just the air and the babbling river, white and frothing, and the swaying fronds that were so big they looked prehistoric—

  The line at my back went taut. My eyes flipped open, and I told Petras to slow down as I glanced behind me. Shotsky, taking up the rear, was moving too slow.

  “You gotta step it up a notch, man,” I called to him.

  “This pace feels about right,” he said. I did not like the quakingin his voice.

  “Shotsky, the slower you move, the longer you’ll be on this bridge. Do you understand?” I turned to look at him.

  He nodded but did not increase his speed.

  “Shotsky,” I said again, and that was when the plank beneath my foot snapped.

  The world blurred as I rushed downward, feeling the jagged edge of the busted plank tear my cargo pants. Reflex caused my hands to spear out; I grabbed one of the vertical ropes, which briefly arrested my fall yet caused the bridge to pitch on its side. I heard Shotsky moan and saw John Petras bound toward me. The busted plank was at eye level. What looked like blood seeped into the wood. My blood? I had no idea.

  “Hang on!” Petras shouted.

  The rope was slick with moss; I lost my grip and felt the world pull me toward its center.

  With all this gear on my back, I’m going to drown, I thought. A second later, I felt the concussion of striking the surface of the water. My bones rattled in my skin. For a moment, I thought I had somehow missed the river completely and hit the embankment, and I was now splayed out and broken on the jagged white rocks covered by a mat of fronds.

  But then I felt the icy waters claim me, seeping into my clothes and attacking my flesh, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was fucking blind, and I was drowning, blind and drowning.

  2

  I AWOKE BESIDE THE RIVER. PETRA’S FACE IN MY

  own. He had one thumb holding up my eyelid. I blinked, and he let go and took a step back.

  Behind him, Donald Shotsky stood with his hands fumblingover one another, his eyes bugging out. “On his neck.” His voice sounded like it was issuing from the far end of a long, corrugated tunnel. “See it? What is it?”

  “Leech. Bi
g sucker, too.” Petras peeled it from my neck and briefly examined it between his fingers. It was the size of a man’s index finger. He chucked it into the underbrush.

  Then the shakes started—the cold had permeated my clothes, freezing them to my body, the water causing them to cling like flesh.

  “Can you hear me?” Petras asked.

  I nodded.

  To Shotsky, Petras said, “We need to get him out of these clothes.”

  I passed out.

  3

  LATER. THE SKY A MISTY GARY AND THE SUN

  veiled by long streamers of clouds, I sat before a blazing fire. I was dressed in Michael Hollinger’s clothes, which weren’t exactly a perfect fit, and my teeth chattered in my skull. We still had several hours of daylight left, and Andrew had wanted to put them to good use. He was irritated and anxious at the mishap on the bridge, and I watched him pace back and forth along the brush, oblivious to the rest of us.

  Petras brought me some tsampa—roasted barley ground to sticky flecks—and hot tea.

  “The hell happened, anyway?” I said, grasping the tin cup of hot tea in both hands, savoring its warmth.

  “You must have hit a weak board in just the right way.”

  “And I didn’t pull you two down?”

  “I reached the other side and secured the line around a post just before you fell.”

  “And Shotsky?”

  Petras grinned wearily. “Lucky bastard got his foot tangled inone of the bridge’s suspension cables. Just like that story he told about the crabbing boat when Andrew saved his life.”

  “Pudgy bastard’s got a flare for that,” I commented but with no disdain. “He’s okay?”

  “He’s fine. How about you?”

  “Never better.”

  “Your head still hurt?”

  I frowned. “My head?”

  “Gashed it pretty good.”

  I suddenly became aware of a dull throb at the center of my forehead. When I touched the spot, I felt the split in the flesh and the sting of my fingers upon it. “Nice,” I muttered.

  Petras shrugged. “You were an ugly bastard before. Doesn’t change much.”

  I nodded in Andrew’s direction. “He pissed?”

  “Says we’re close to the Valley of Walls. If we don’t lose too much time here, we can reach it by nightfall.”

  I rose with some difficulty. My body was sore and unsure of itself. “Then let’s go.”

  “You should give yourself some more time. Fuck Andrew Trumbauer.”

  “He’s not my type.”

  Petras didn’t protest further.

  I carried empty bottles down to the river with Hollinger and Curtis and filled them with water, adding drops of iodine for purification. Back at the fire, someone had opened my gear and laid out my belongings to dry. I repacked it all and was ready to set off again in under an hour. The guides killed the fire, and we climbed a ravine to the next plateau in silence.

  At the crest of the plateau, the land far below was dotted with tiny pagodas. Tendrils of smoke drifted lazily from huts pressed against the foothills. Yak herders watched us as we descended the other side.

  In oncoming dusk, we dipped through a stone channel and foundourselves staring at the Himalayas, ghostly and blue and seeming to hover off the ground, in the distance. The range was spectacular in its grandness, its solidity, forcing even the most atheistic of mankind to pause and contemplate the existence of the divine.

  At the end of the valley, foothills rose to touch the faint stars. The fields gave way to sand and crushed rock. At the front of the line, the guides once again spoke to Andrew in their native tongue. Like the other conversations, this one started out like a conspiracy in hushed tones and subtle gestures, but as it progressed, it was evident Andrew was becoming agitated. His voice rose. The guides adjusted their packs and began walking in the direction of the village we’d passed only an hour or so ago.

  “What’s going on?” Curtis wanted to know.

  “They’re leaving,” said Andrew. “This is as far as they’ll go.”

  “I thought you said we were close to the Valley of Walls,” said Hollinger. “You said we would reach it by nightfall.”

  “It’s just beyond these hills,” Andrew said, surveying the terrain ahead.

  “Then why did they leave?” Hollinger pressed.

  “Because they’re superstitious,” Andrew said calmly, his voice once again quiet and restrained.

  Under my breath I asked Petras if he had understood any of what the two guides had said.

  He considered for a moment, then turned his head away from the others and said, “They believe the Valley of Walls to be one of the levels of the beyul, the outer level to the Canyon of Souls. They won’t set foot in the valley.”

  “Why not? It’s not just superstition, is it?”

  “Not to them,” said Petras.

  Andrew slung his gear over his shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. I know where I am from here.”

  “Great.” Hollinger scowled.

  “The Sherpas will already have camp set up,” Andrew continued.

  “They’ll take us to the Godesh base in the morning.”

  “Do you blokes get the feeling he’s making this up as he goes?” Hollinger said to Petras and me, then walked away before we could answer. I rolled my eyes and Petras shrugged.

  We continued through the pass, the foothills looming on either side, as the twilight faded to a deep, resonant blackness.

  Chapter 9

  1

  THE VALLEY OF WALLS WAS JUST AS IT PRO-

  claimed to be: a narrow tract of land flanked by the gradual slopes of jungle and the sheer stone of the foothills rising high above the trees.

  The entranceway into the valley was defined by a rising crest of rock on either side of the stone path, like sphinxes bowing together to form an archway. The floor was comprised of busted shale slats and powdery white rock between which tall, spindly weeds sprouted. Immense boulders had come to rest at random, wreathed now in age-old moss and dressed in fallen garland, and what looked liked tombstones jutted up periodically from the earth. The valley itself had once been a river fed by a mountaintop glacier, but that had been many years ago before the glacier disappeared and the riverbed dried up.

  We lit electric lanterns and followed Andrew. The walls seemed to narrow and close in on us until we were hiking single file down a sloping flume. As I passed one of the tombstone-like edifices, I swept my lantern across its face. Monastic prayers were carved into the stone.

  “It’s a spiritual place,” Andrew said, his tone hushed and reverent. Somehow I’d found myself beside him at the front of the line. “The Yogis say there is always the scent of roasted barley.”

  I inhaled deeply but could smell nothing except the alpine scent of the distant trees.

  Ahead, the prayer stones grew increasingly large, positioned at seemingly intentional angles. Soon it was like traversing through a maze. In the light of our lanterns, our shadows grew to hideous size on the stone walls. I pressed my hand to one of the prayer stones—it towered several feet above my head and must have been about fifteen inches thick—and traced the intricate carvings. I’d first thought the “walls” were the rising foothills on either side of the valley. I realized now that I’d been wrong.

  “It’s amazing,” I breathed.

  “Few have been this far,” Andrew said. “I can only imagine what else is in store for us on this trip.”

  “The guides,” I said. “They were afraid to come here.”

  “Bad juju. Nothing to worry about. They saw your little accident at the bridge as an omen.”

  “What if it was?”

  Andrew merely glanced at me and kept moving.

  In the distance, firelight flickered in the darkness. It was the Sherpas. They’d come from the neighboring village, hired by Andrew to set up camp in advance. As we approached, the frying electric smell of our lanterns was overpowered by the scents of stewed meats and boi
led tea leaves. The four Sherpas were dressed in heavy maroon robes, their faces white and ageless in the firelight.

  “It’s like the pilgrims meeting the Indians for the first time,” Chad mumbled and received Hollinger’s elbow in his ribs.

  The Sherpas said nothing for the entire evening, though they made us very comfortable and brought us more food than we were prepared to eat. Exhausted, I set my gear down between Shotsky and Petras and peeled my sodden boots from my feet with relish. Rubbing the feeling back into my toes before the crackling fire, I could feel the events of the day already begin to drain from me.

  Shotsky appeared with a steaming cup of tea and some bread. He folded himself neatly onto a straw mat and tore into the bread with vengeance.

  “You doing all right?” I asked him.

  “Sure. How about you? You almost bought the farm today. Good thing you thought about tying us all together like that.”

  I winced, working a particularly painful knot out of the bottom of my foot. “Good thing you were nervous about crossing.”

  Donald Shotsky smiled and nodded, his eyes reflecting the bonfire.

  “You said something about needing this job,” I said after a few moments of silence. Around us, the stone walls laden with scripture cast rectangular shadows on the valley floor. “Back at the bridge. Remember?”

  “I guess.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “I mean, I needed the money.” He tore at another piece of bread and washed it down with tea. “You think I’d be here otherwise?”

  “Hold on. You’re getting paid to be here?”

  Shotsky sensed my change in tone. He shot me a sideways glance. “Of course. Isn’t he paying you?”

  “Andrew?”

  “Who else?”

  “How much?”

  Shotsky seemed to consider whether or not this information should be shared. After too many drawn-out seconds, it looked like he was ready to self-combust. He said, “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Motherfucker,” I whispered.

  “Why else would I come? For the goddamn scenery?” Shotsky said. Then added, “Why would you come?”