The Ascent: A Novel of Survival (Thriller Suspense) Read online

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” she said, a harsh finality to her voice.

  “You can’t break up with me,” I told her. “We aren’t even dating.”

  “I can’t keep seeing you like this. It’s breaking my heart, and you won’t do anything to fix the problem.”

  “So what do you recommend I do?”

  “Get the fuck out of this apartment and start living again.” She gestured toward the statue in progress. “This … thing … isn’t living. You’re stunting yourself. I never met Hannah and don’t know a damn thing about her, but if you’re going to—”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “What happened to her? Tell me what happened.”

  “No.”

  “Well, whatever it was, you need to get over it. Unless you want to die in this apartment.” She shook her head. “You need to let go.”

  “Stop,” I said again, though there was little force in my voice.

  “You stop,” she said, softening, and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “You stop. Okay? Or you’ll die, too.”

  As she reached for the doorknob, I said, “It’s my fault she died. We were married, and I was too caught up in my career to give her what she needed. I felt the marriage breaking apart, but for whatever reason I didn’t try to stop it. So she left. She met a linguistics professor named David Moore, and they went to Italy. Then their car drove off the road and crashed. They were both killed.” The words had come from my mouth like a locomotive; I hardly took a breath.

  Marta’s hand never left the doorknob. Finally she turned toward me. There was concern in her eyes, and her eyebrows were stitched together. She looked like she wanted to cry, but she was too strong for that. It suddenly occurred to me that I was the weak one. “That is not your fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you say. You can’t change how I feel.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

  After she left, I tore the kitchenette apart looking for alcohol, but there was none to be found. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shape move, but when I turned to look at it, there was nothing there except the refrigerator.

  I stepped into the living room, where the hunk of granite stood, chunks of stone littering the floor, while powdered debris coated every available surface. I took a deep breath, inhaling the stone-dust particles that floated like motes in the air, and studied the unfinished sculpture.

  The body was recognizable as female, but the face looked nothing like Hannah’s. The cheekbones were too high, too sharp, andthe brow was too dramatic and severe, almost Cro-Magnon. I’d spent the entire winter hammering and chiseling away at the stone, whittling it down to the framework of some unidentifiable woman. Looking at it, I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach. There had been a time when in a single afternoon I could have taken a hammer and chisel to a lump of rock and carved fucking Mount Rushmore.

  But it wasn’t just the sculpture. It was Hannah, too. Because lately I saw her everywhere. It had become so constant that I started to doubt my sanity. Once, hustling down the stairwell of my apartment building, I thought I heard her laugh. I paused and stared up through the spiral mesh of stairs and caught a glimpse of someone retreating over the balustrade—a woman, no doubt. Hannah.

  She was also in my apartment, and there was no getting around that. At night I would wake up to the sensation of her arm slipping around my waist or the feeling of her warm breath against the nape of my neck. These things were enough to drive a man crazy.

  Maybe I was going crazy …

  A poor diet and a constant urge to jog through the streets of Annapolis caused me to lose considerable weight. And while I felt stronger and healthier than I had in a long time, I could simultaneously sense something rotting away inside me. I couldn’t blame Marta’s reluctance to hang around; I had become a shadow of myself.

  Disgusted by the sculpture, I laced on some tennis shoes and went downstairs to the lobby to retrieve my mail. I rifled through the stack of standard bills, advertisements, and requests for donations. Only one letter stood out—in a plain white business envelope, the return address somewhere in Australia. It was from Andrew Trumbauer. The envelope was weathered and scuffed. Someone had stamped his boot across its front; the impression of the sole was clear, a formulaic matrix of clovers and wavy lines.

  Just seeing Andrew’s name with the return address was enough to cause something small and wet to roll over in my stomach.

  I carried the mail over to the Filibuster, where I ordered a glass of scotch and occupied the same booth Andrew and I had sat in eight months earlier. I drank the scotch, getting up to go to the bathroom three times before the drink was finished, my hands shaking, my face flush with fever. My reflection in the spotty bathroom mirror was gaunt and terminal, and I thought about a book I’d once read about a man waking up on a city bus with no memory. Suddenly I prayed for no memory, but I couldn’t stop picturing that old motorcar driving off the cliff, David behind the wheel, Hannah in the passenger seat …

  I had two more drinks before I opened Andrew’s letter. It was written in the same childlike handwriting he had used in the note that had accompanied the hunk of granite months earlier.

  Stop fighting old ghosts, Tim. Please come.

  —-A. T.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

  Included with the letter was an airplane ticket to Kathmandu.

  PART TWO

  THE GHOSTS WE LEAVE BEHIND

  Chapter 5

  1

  THE AIRPLANE TOUCHED DOWN AT TRIBHUVAN

  International Airport in Kathmandu after a connecting flight in London followed by several hours of nauseating turbulence. I tried to sleep, but it was useless. I’d only accomplished the type of half-sleep that recalled my days of falling asleep at my desk in high school, where every sound around me was incorporated into my dreams and boiled down to nonsense.

  After the plane had landed and I gathered my bags, I hopped on a tram that climbed through brown villages. From every direction, I could see the mountains, enormous and capped in bluish snow. It was early November, and the villages were celebrating the Hindu versions of Christmas—Dashain and Tihar, according to the magazine article I read on the plane. We passed through Kathmandu, and I was slightly disappointed to learn it was a small city just like most small cities around the world, corrupted by industry and modernization. There didn’t appear to be anything magical or spiritual about it.

  I hadn’t spoken with Andrew since our chance meeting at the Filibuster. However, approximately one month after I’d received the airline ticket, another letter bearing Andrew’s name appeared in the mail.

  This time the return address was from Miami, and the letter itself was more detailed. Andrew outlined the items I was to bring and included a few hand-drawn maps of the surrounding villages and the name of the lodge where I’d be staying. He had already booked my room.

  At first, his presumption provoked in me a childish stubbornness, and I quickly became resolute—I would not go on the damn trip. I couldn’t just pick up and leave everything behind on a whim, could I? Yet despite this determination, I never threw away the airline ticket or the follow-up letter.

  By midsummer, the apartment was suffocating me. I couldn’t finish the sculpture, and Hannah’s ghost had become unrelenting. The first week in August, I couldn’t get the smell of Hannah’s perfume out of the place. I even had it fumigated, which seemed to do the trick for two days … until that aromatic lilac smell crept through the walls and soaked into the furniture. By that time, Marta was long gone; her refusal to set foot in my apartment was steadfast, although I would meet her occasionally for lunch at the City Dock Café. I told her about the smells and how it was becoming hard to breathe in the apartment. I told her, too, about Andrew Trumbauer and the airline ticket to Nepal.

  “Is there any doubt what you should do?” she told me one afternoon. We were at the café, eating club sandwiches and knocking back mimosa
after mimosa. “You once lived for this sort of thing.”

  “My leg,” I offered.

  “Is healed. It’s been over a year. And you’re out running five, six miles a day. Physically you’re in good shape. Mentally, though …” She rolled her shoulders, and her small, pink tongue darted out to nab the teardrop of mayonnaise at the corner of her mouth.

  She was right, of course. That hollowness continued to spread through me. At the end of each visit with Marta, I found myself fearful to return to my apartment. And I hated myself all over again for being such a coward.

  As the tram bumped along, I leaned over to the man next to me—an Indian fellow with streamers of white hair sprouting from his large, brown ears—and asked him if he had ever heard of the Canyon of Souls.

  He responded, but in his language it meant nothing to me.

  2

  FORTY MINUTES LATER. THE TRAM LET ME OFF AT

  the lodge. It was cool, not cold, and I slid the zipper of my jacket down. The air smelled smoky. The sky was dense and gray to the east, but the west was a vibrant blue, uncorrupted by clouds, and the sunlight glittered like fire on the frozen peaks of the distant mountains. Down the valley stood the monsoon forests, heavily green and like a canopy over the land.

  My room was small but adequate, furnished in alpine furniture and with a full wall of windows that faced a stand of evergreens and a dilapidated shed. Two young men helped carry my bags to the room, and I paid them in rupee I’d exchanged at the airport. I proceeded to unpack with the lethargy of someone submerged in water. Exhaustion weakened my muscles and brought my eyelids lower and lower. Finally I succumbed and climbed onto the bed where I napped for a few hours.

  When I awoke, the wall of windows was black. I took a long shower, then dressed in a pair of cargo pants and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. I grabbed the book on George Mallory I’d brought, then crept out into the night.

  The lodge was comprised of one main building and several smaller four-bedroom units scattered in no discernible fashion about the property. The buildings looked run-down and forgotten, but I could tell they weren’t cheap. This trip must have cost Andrew a fortune.

  I entered the main building and crossed the lobby to an iron stairwell that wound down to a subbasement. It wasn’t a bar per sebut a small eatery, poorly lighted, with a bar along one wall and large wooden tables and chairs spaced out along the floor. At the far end of the room, a fire blazed in a stone hearth.

  There was no alcohol at the bar. A dark-skinned woman with horrible teeth served me a mug of hot tea, which I carried over to the fire. Situating myself in one of the sturdy wooden chairs, I thumbed through my book while sipping the tea. It was scalding hot and tasted like pine needles. My mouth watered for some liquor.

  As I read, a few people shuffled in and out of the room. They whispered in a language I couldn’t comprehend. A few times I craned my neck to see them; their shadows, amplified by the proximity of the fire, danced along the stone walls.

  I returned to my book, skipping all the way to the final chapter, which described Mallory’s demise on Everest’s north face. I felt a twinge of claustrophobia, and I couldn’t help but recall that night nearly two years ago when I’d almost died in that cave in the Midwest.

  Andrew’s voice popped into my head—What were you doing in that cave by yourself?—and it was simultaneously Marta’s voice as well. A good question.

  Someone appeared behind me. When he spoke, his voice startled me, and I sloshed some hot tea into my lap.

  “It’s a good book,” the man said. He had a low, meaty voice.

  I looked up and found he was less bulky than his voice had me believe but in good shape. His face was sunburned and creased with ancient gray eyes, though he looked about my age.

  “Course, you skip to the end like that and you miss all the details.”

  “How’d you know I skipped to the end?”

  He sat in one of the empty chairs and held his hands up to the fire. “You were on the tram with me from the airport this afternoon. I noticed by your bookmark you were only about halfway through the book. Unless you’re a speed-reader …”

  I closed the book. “No, not a speed-reader. Just a cheater.

  Caught red-handed.”

  “I’m John Petras,” he said, extending his hand. “But just call me Petras. No one save for my mama calls me John.”

  I shook his hand. It was a firm grip. “Tim Overleigh.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Maryland.”

  “Wisconsin, myself,” said Petras. “Land of cheese.” “Are you here with a tour?”

  “Nope, no tour. I’m here for the same reason you are.” I grinned, thinking he was putting me on. “And what’s that?” Petras returned my grin and said, “Because Andrew Trumbauer told me to come.”

  3

  MY EXPRESSION CAUSED PETRAS TO CHUCKLE. IT

  was a rumbling sound, reminiscent of an eighteen-wheeler barreling down an empty desert highway.

  “How do you know Andrew?” I said.

  “Ice climbing. Canadian Rockies. We were in the same group. There were about fifteen of us. Spent a good two weeks in the hills, then spent another week getting drunk in Nova Scotia.” I was still confused. “I mean, how’d you know …?” Still grinning, Petras said, “I heard you ask the man on the tram about the Canyon of Souls.” He scratched behind a large, sun-reddened ear with one massive hand. “Ain’t many folks come out here searching for the Canyon of Souls. Hell, most have never heard of it.” “I’ve never even heard of it myself.”

  “See, this place, it’s practically Disney World for mountaineers, climbers, the whole lot. Even the amateurs come in their guided tours to say they’ve set foot on Everest or took a piss on the Khumbu Icefall and watched it freeze. I know this because I’m usually the guyguiding the tours. These people don’t care about making it to the top of anything. Most of them wouldn’t know a crampon from a tampon.” He pointed to the book in my lap. “There are very few George Mallorys left in the world. What’s become important to folks is being able to say they’ve done something. The doing it part … well, that’s just what has to happen in order to tell their friends. There’s no heart in it, no spirit. And these people sure as hell ain’t here to cross the Canyon of Souls.”

  “So why are you here? What’s so special about the Canyon of Souls for you? Or is it just because Andrew Trumbauer mailed you a plane ticket?”

  Petras’s gaze flicked toward the fire in the hearth. After a moment, he said, “I guess it’s because it’s never been done before. No one’s ever crossed it. Few that I know of have even bothered to try. The place, it’s not in any of the guidebooks or maps. Few care. Forgive me for cribbing Sir Edmund Hillary, but I’m doing it because the damn thing is there to be done.”

  “That’s a good answer,” I said.

  “So how about you? What made you drop everything and run the hell out here?”

  “Unfortunately my reasons are a bit more complicated.”

  “I hope I don’t look stupid to you,” Petras said without any emphasis or insult. I could tell it was only his way of imploring me to open up.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know. But you see, you and I are getting ready to trust each other with our lives. This little adventure ain’t gonna be no walk in the park. So before I put my life in the hands of another man, I like to know why that man’s putting his life in mine. I find comfort in what makes a man tick, and I sure as hell like to know why someone would do such a crazy thing.” He smiled warmly and his eyes twinkled. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, but there was something fatherly in that smile. “I just want to know we’re not dealing with a death wish or something here is what I guess I’m saying.”

  I ran my thumb along the rim of my teacup, then set it on a small table beside my chair. “I used to be an artist, but my talent died along with my wife. So I’m here because I’m hoping to find something that’ll get my life
back on track. It’s no death wish coming out here. The death wish would have been to stay home.”

  Petras nodded. “Fair enough. It’s as good a reason as any I’ve ever heard. Better than most, probably.” His eyes narrowed. “You know, you look awfully familiar. Any chance we’ve met before?”

  “Doubt it. I’m pretty good at remembering faces. I’ve been on a couple of magazine covers a few years ago. Did several sculptures for some important people.”

  “Well, then,” Petras said. “You were more than just an artist. You were successful.“

  I shrugged. “Depends on your definition of success.”

  “And,” he added, grinning, “your definition of art.”

  Smiling, I rubbed my upper lip with one finger. “What is it about him?” I asked in a quiet voice, as if I were talking to myself. And perhaps I was. “What is it about Andrew Trumbauer that gets us all jumping just because he tells us to?”

  “I’ll admit I don’t know him that well,” said Petras. “In fact, I was pretty surprised he asked me to come out here. In truth, we didn’t particularly like each other near the end of our expedition together.”

  “He’s a tough guy to understand.”

  “We’re all tough to understand. Especially to ourselves. That’s why we do stupid stuff like this. Didn’t you figure that out yet?”

  I leaned back in my chair and watched the fire dance in the hearth. “There’s quite a bit I haven’t figured out about myself yet,” I said, and it was like an admission.

  4

  THE TEMPERATURE HAD DROPPED CONSIDERABLY

  while Petras and I talked in the lounge. Walking across the wooded clearing toward my cabin, my hands stuffed into the pockets of my cargo pants for warmth, I could smell the smoke from nearby chimneys and the alpine scent of the wilderness around me. I’ve never seen a darker night, I thought, pausing to stare at the blanket of stars. There were full clusters of them, too many to count.