A Darkness Within
by D. Allen Crowley
Published by D. Allen Crowley and
Dark Autumn Multimedia and Publishing
Smashwords Edition
© 2011 by D. Allen Crowley
=
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living dead, OR UNDEAD is purely coincidental.
To Rich, Phil, Jason, and Rich; you’re my best friends and brothers. Thanks for tolerating and sharing my geek-like and never ending obsession with things like horror movies, the end of the world, and the search for the perfect pint of Guinness. It’s been said that friends help you move… but true friends help you move bodies.
That’s never been truer than with us.
So, I’ll bring the shovel.
Who’s got the garbage bags and the duct tape?
-d-
****
The Kiss
Come on, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me
Your tongue is like poison
So swollen it fills up my mouth
Just love me, love me, love me
You nail me to the floor
And push my guts out inside
Just get it out, get it out, get it out
Get your fucking voice
Out of my head
Oh I never wanted this
I never wanted any of this
I wish you were dead
I wish you were dead
The Cure
Chapter One
Sully and Laura
Pikes Peak, September 10th
Laura and I came over a crest on the trail and the Glen Cove Inn came into view. A log cabin style structure, the Glen Cove Inn was the last stop before you reached the summit on the nineteen mile long Pikes Peak Highway. The Inn was anything but an actual inn. It was actually just a small gift shop that had a smaller snack shop attached. Besides bumper stickers, pins, and t-shirts; visitors to the mountain could also get ice cream, hot dogs, water, soda, and fudge there.
A few hundred yards above the shop, the gate at the park service kiosk was lowered - preventing automobiles from going any higher up the road. I had expected this. It was the middle of September and, that late in the season, there was already quite a bit of snow on the peak. This meant that the road beyond the shop was impassable.
I looked towards the peak, which you could see from the Inn and smiled, although my smile didn’t last long.
Something didn’t feel right.
I stopped and looked at the shop a little more closely. Laura noticed my hesitation and stopped also.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as she too stopped. She took the opportunity to adjust her backpack and reach for her water bottle.
“I don’t know. Something’s off.”
I looked again and saw that there were no cars parked in front of the gift shop. That in itself was really odd. At this time of the year, Glen Cove should have been jam-packed with tourists. In fact, in all the years I’d been coming here, I had never been on Pikes Peak and not run into at least a dozen other hikers. Pikes is just too close to Colorado Springs to not get at least some locals out to enjoy the last warmth of the early autumn weather. It also occurred to me that, since we had started hiking up the mountain, we hadn’t seen a single soul in the last day and a half.
I frowned as I considered this. At the base of the mountain the temperature had been about seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit. This close to the peak, and at this altitude, the temperature was hovering in the twenty-five degree range. In addition, there was only a few inches of snow under foot. So, it wasn’t cold enough - nor was there enough snow - to close the highway even farther down than where we were.
“It’s kind of creepy, Sully,” Laura observed, breaking into my reverie.
“I was thinking the same thing, Laura,” I said, as we began slowly walking towards the small gift shop. As we went, I explained my misgivings to her.
“You’re not reassuring me, honey,” she said, trying to keep things light.
I tried to shrug my unease off, “I’m just being stupid, it’s probably just…”
My voice trailed off as we came around the corner of the building. I saw an empty green Jeep Cherokee that bore the logo of the National Park Service on its side. Its door stood ajar.
It was parked at an angle in front of the shop in such a way that we hadn’t seen it as we had come up the trail behind the gift shop.
Upon seeing it though, I felt a nasty chill run up my spine.
The snow around the Jeep was churned up and stained a bright and awful red; stained with what looked to be gallons of blood
“All right, now my spider sense is really tingling, Sully,” Laura said, looking at the carnage before us.
“Mine too, Laura,” I said.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said.
“Me, too,” I replied.
I shucked off the straps of my pack and knelt, setting it on the ground in front of me. I unlashed my ice axe from the webbing on the pack and stood, leaving my pack on the ground. Laura saw me do this and followed suit.
“Stay here, Laura,” I said, “I’m going to get a closer look.”
“Like hell you are,” she said, “First rule of horror movie survival; never separate. That’s how the bad things happen.”
I looked at her and saw immediately that no amount of arguing was going to dissuade her. I sighed and nodded as I began walking the rest of the way towards the Glen Cove Inn.
Our boots crunched loudly in the snow as we turned towards the Jeep. The sound seemed to be almost overwhelmingly loud in the thin atmosphere and, as I neared within ten feet of the Jeep, I motioned for Laura to stay where she was. She complied with no argument ,and I sneaked closer to the Jeep.
The first thing I noticed was the unmistakably coppery smell that confirmed that the red was definitely blood. The gore was bright red in the clear, cold air and it was sprayed all about the side of the truck as well. I looked inside and saw that some of the carnage had saturated the floor and carpet. Here and there were more solid red bits that could only have been chunks of flesh.
“This is not good,” I said quietly.
“What do you see?” Laura stage whispered as she leaned towards me expectantly.
“It looks like a charnel house,” I said, slowly moving around to the rear or the Jeep. There was nobody inside or behind it.
I returned to Laura’s side and we had a hurried, whispered conference.
“I’m wondering if maybe it was a bear attack,” I said, not really believing it.
“Black bear don’t normally attack people, do they?” Laura said, as though she had read my mind.
“Mama bears do. But, what worries me is that,” I pointed to the front of the Jeep. There was a single track of bloody footprints leading up the shoveled path, over the small porch, and into the Inn.
“Why does it worry you?” Laura asked. I could tell by her expression that she really didn’t want to know, but had to ask anyway.
“No bear in the Jeep, so it wasn’t a road kill or a shot bear. No bear tracks, so it didn’t attack whoever was in the Jeep here. And there are no drag marks, which there would be if the bear attacked here. There’s just too damned much blood for the attack to not have happened here.”
“Shit,” Laura said.
“I need to go inside and see if someone’s been hurt. Do you want to stay here?” I asked her.
“No way. We’re a team. If you go, I go.” Laura said tightening her grip on her own ice axe.
I looked back at the Glen Cove Inn and saw that it was dark. The carnage in and about the Jeep was disturbing enough, but I still couldn’t get past the idea that this place should have been crawling with tourists dressed too lightly for the cold and gasping for breath in the thin air like fish in an empty bucket.
I twisted my neck and cracked the vertebrae there. Reluctantly, we made our way towards the darkened gift shop.
I tried looking through the windows in the door, but the interior was too dark for me to see anything. Laura tried the other one and shook her head, indicating that she had had no better luck. I nodded and hefted my ice axe. With my other hand, I slowly turned the doorknob until I felt it unlatch. I then gave the door a nudge with the toe of my boot, grabbing the handle of my heavy aluminum ice axe. The axe felt good in my hand. It had just the right weight to it and it was topped with a twelve-inch blade that tapered to a satisfyingly sharp point. I had slipped my wrist into the loop at the end of the handle to prevent my dropping it if things went downhill fast.
The door creaked open slowly and I was immediately struck by a smell that I remembered from my youth. I had grown up in Ohio and, like many Ohioans, had gone deer hunting every winter. I no longer hunted, but I remember my first deer kill like it was yesterday. The worst part about killing a deer is gutting it afterwards. I still shudder to think of how hot the inside of a freshly killed deer is when you plunge your hands into it. Worse than that is the smell that rises from the open carcass. It’s a hot, earthy, pungent smell that is redolent with the penny-like smell of blood, and bile, and piss, and fecal matter.
That’s the smell that emitted from inside now. This smell, though, had a different quality to it. I couldn’t explain what it was, but my stomach rolled greasily as I realized that what I smelled was what a gutted human would smell like.
Before I lost my nerve, I kicked the door the rest of the way open.
I saw that the bloody footprints continued across the plank floor and into the darkness at the back of the store. I slowly stepped into the gloom and listened for any sound.
I knew the floor plan of the store and knew that, inside the door, the gift shop was right in front of me. At the rear of the shop was a small hallway that led to the bathrooms. To my immediate right was an archway that led to the snack shop. All of the shades were drawn, so I could see no further than the light thrown from the open door. I peered at the nearby walls for a light switch, but didn’t see one. I was about to reach for one of the shades when Laura slid in beside me.
As I glanced towards her, I heard a wet, phlegmatic sound near the bathrooms. It was like someone had sucked in his or her breath in shock, or excitement; someone with a mouth full of mucus. Laura and I both heard it and snapped our heads in the sound’s direction.
Just then, whatever was hiding back there emitted a low, throaty growl.
It wasn’t a human sound. And it wasn’t an animal sound, either. I suddenly realized that entering the shop might not have been the best idea.
I took a step backward towards Laura to herd her outside when I heard a furtive shuffling sound moving towards us.
“Laura!” I started, “Get out of…”
I never finished my sentence.
Before I could react, a creature came scurrying explosively out of the darkness like some twisted nightmare. Its red, glistening body would have been more at home in a Bosch triptych then in a Colorado snack shop. I saw with horror that it looked as though its entire head was made of pointy, sharp teeth.
The monster let loose a primal, horrifying scream and I had only a second to realize that it was wearing the bloody, stained remnants of a Park Ranger’s uniform and a look of pure, unadulterated, human-like hate.
As it sprung at us, I fell back into Laura and knocked her backwards onto the porch. I kept my footing, but only just barely. I pulled my ice axe back as the creature rushed at me with a jerky, almost insect like scurrying. I could smell decay on its body, and a fetid effluvia coming from its open mouth. Acting with terrified instinct, I brought the ice axe down just as it reached me.
The axe sunk squarely into the top of its head with a meaty thwack.
The creature’s forward motioned carried it the rest of the way into me and I staggered; it was like I had been struck by a bus at a crosswalk.
Both it and I fell backwards, over Laura, and into the snow outside.
I had a little freak out then.
I pushed its bulk off of me and rolled away, screaming in horror. I was brought up short by the loop of my axe ice where it was wrapped around my wrist. I jerked to a stop and then began pulling and pushing at the cord in a mad, panicked attempt to get free from the axe and the Lovecraftian ghoul lying bleeding beside me.
I don’t know how long I struggled there, screaming and pulling at my arm. It was Laura, though, who brought me back. After a few moments of madness, I felt her hands on my shoulders, and heard her voice.
“It’s dead, Sully. It’s okay. Sully! SULLY!” she screamed.
I looked up at her in shock and horror.
“It’s dead, Sully,” she murmured, her hand coming up and stroking my face gently, calmingly.
I let out a snort of air and grabbed the front of her parka with my free hand, “Are you all right, Laura?”
“I’ve been better,” she said.
I looked back at the monster lying next to me and shuddered. I slowly rolled over and lifted myself up to a knee. After another deep breath, I grabbed the handle of my ice axe and gave it a pull. The creature, which had been lying face down, rolled over.
It was no less grotesque in the day light.
“What in the hell is it?” Laura breathed. She was kneeling behind me on a slight rise and looking over my shoulder. I felt reassured that she was there. It just felt somehow better to know that someone else was sharing in my horror and repulsion. As it was, I was barely holding on to my sanity.
I looked back at Laura where she kneeled. She looked so beautiful, a surreal and angelic counterpoint to the horror I’d just seen. I couldn’t believe that I’d only known her for a month. How in the hell did we end up in this situation?
When I look back on the trip, I knew that I didn’t feel entirely comfortable taking Laura to the mountains. Even if I’d known the world was going to end, I would have probably still felt uneasy about going to the mountains with someone as beautiful as her.
Dear God, the horrors we saw…
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As I was saying, I felt uncomfortable taking a beautiful, young, single woman to the mountains; and I told my wife so. My wife Katiey, however, had absolutely insisted on it. She said it would be a great idea for our company. Now I know that you’re thinking that my wife’s insistence that I take a beautiful woman camping – alone - was strange. Believe me, I agree. What was even stranger was that Katie even went so far as to say she had absolutely no problem with it.
I should explain that Laura, the woman who I was taking backpacking, alone, who wasn’t my wife; was also voted one of the world’s most beautiful female athletes by both People Magazine and Sports Illustrated. I believe Sports Illustrated wrote that she was “what you’d have if Anna Kournikova or Picabo Street had a sexier, hotter younger sister…”
Needless to say, most guys would have given their left arm to be in the position I found myself in. They would have been downright ecstatic, in fact.
I, on the other hand, had dreaded it from the moment I had mentioned it.
You see, my wife and I were very lucky in life. Ten years earlier, we had founded a small outdoor and extreme sport clothing company out of the garage in our small suburban ranch. What had started out as a humble idea of making just a few thousand more dollars a year doing something I loved, had grown and turned into a multimillion dollar a year business. I’m not even really sure how it happened. I just woke up one day and I was rich.
And as for Katie; although I still thought of her as my wife, she had really been only a business partner for the better part of two years. While some couples stay together because of the kids, we stayed together solely because of the business. But even that reason had stopped being a good enough excuse.
Anyway, as our company grew, so did our market share. We went public a few years later and I suddenly found myself having to answer to shareholders. And as my public relations and marketing people said, we needed to increase our visibility and corporate brand image. We had to develop an “identity that would appeal to the target demographics in the world of extreme sports.” Whatever the hell that meant. All I know is that I found myself meeting with all kinds of sports celebrities in a strange quest to find a spokesperson and the public “face” of the company.
So, in a long and convoluted way, that’s how I found myself on Pikes Peak in Colorado, in a tent, as the world ended, next to Laura Hergemeyer. Yes, that Laura Hergemeyer.
Four time national climbing champion Laura Hergemeyer; the current female world record holder for fastest, unassisted solo climb of El Capitan; and the only woman to summit each of the famed Seven Summits without supplemental oxygen; and all of this before her twenty-eighth birthday.
That we’d managed to land this unbelievably talented sports superstar as the potential face of our products was a coup.
Did I mention that she was voted one of the most beautiful women in the world in a few magazines?
It was a strange course of events that had lead me to where I found myself. Only a month earlier, I met her for the first time in a board room. We were at opposite ends of a long table. Between us, my people and her people were discussing boring legal stuff. It was an initial meeting to test the waters and see if she would be interested in becoming the face of my company, the Miskatonic Trader Outdoor Company. At one point, I casually mentioned that I was going to be spending a few days in Colorado.
Hearing this, Laura looked up from her place at the end of the very long conference table and smiled. And it was a smile that would have laid waste to an army of men. She had seemed bored and disinterested in the conversation until this point, but she perked right up upon hearing about Colorado.
“Colorado?” she asked.
It took me a second or two to find my voice, which was damn good considering I had to recover from that smile she had given me. “Yes. I’m meeting some suppliers in Denver and Colorado Springs.”
“Doing any outdoor stuff?” she asked. I found myself suddenly the focus of every eye in the room.
“Not much. I’ll probably take a few days to climb Pikes Peak.”
“Pikes Peak?”
“Yes.” I smiled, “Pikes is a mole hill compared with what you’re used to, Ms. Hergemeyer.”
“Why do you say that, Mr. Sullivan? And call me Laura. Please.”
“And please call me Sully, Laura,” I said, perplexed at this strange man who was speaking with my mouth. I am generally not what one would call a smooth talker; or a very good talker at all, for that matter.
At that point one of her lawyers attempted to interject and she waved him silent. For a second I saw the confident, self assured woman who had single handedly carried an injured fellow climber off of Denali in the middle of a blizzard. She looked at me expectantly.
I smiled back, but I was a little unsure of myself, “I simply meant it’s not quite Everest, or K2, or even Denali for that matter. Not in your league, is what I mean…”
“No, it’s not,” she said, good-naturedly, “Why Pikes Peak?”
“You’ll think it’s silly, but it’s the first real mountain I ever went up. I grew up here in the eastern United States and the only hiking I did while growing up was in the Appalachians. I didn’t make it out west until I was almost twenty years old. And Pikes Peak was the first fourteener I had the chance to go up. So now, any time I’m in Colorado, I try to spend three or four days on her. It’s nostalgia, I guess. I think of Pikes like I think of an old friend.”
I shrugged, hoping she would understand. She smiled that beautiful smile again, a smile that could make a man think that all was right in the world, and I knew she understood completely.
She winked at me, “I feel the same way about Spencer’s Butte back in Eugene, Oregon. It’s only two thousand feet in elevation, but I grew up climbing it and it feels like home.”
The meeting went on after that without incident as Laura and I sat, letting the suits do their thing.
To say I thought no more of this exchange would be a lie; but I didn’t really think about the words as much as the smiles.
What can I say, I’m human.
Katie and I had a cocktail party a week or so later. We invited Laura at the behest of the attorneys. It was all part of the intricate and tangled web of wooing we were doing as a company. I wasn’t even sure if she would come.
So that’s how I found myself standing in a corner, being my usually quiet and antisocial self. Truth be told, I hate parties and I hate crowds. I’m a very simple man and I know that I’m more comfortable outdoors, hiking some quiet desolate backcountry trail. I’ve never been one for other people, and I had no illusions otherwise.
When I think back to that party, I remember hearing my wife Katie’s laugh from another room. It was a tinkling waterfall of notes that I’d always found so lovely. She was, no doubt, laughing at something some boring client had said. She was so much better at that sort of thing then I was. I really believe that she was the reason we had been so successful in business. She had all of the networking and schmoozing skills, while I was the muscle who understood how our products worked in the real wild.
I was standing there, listening to the hum of the party and Katie’s occasional laugh, when Laura floated up.
She smiled at me with that same remarkably perfect smile I’d thought of quite a bit in the last week or so. She wore a simple, sleeveless, black cocktail dress that showed off every perfect, toned piece of her body. I noticed that she had a tattooed armband, a delicate circle of Celtic knots that encircled her bicep. She strode up to me and brushed a lock of hair out of her hazel, almost grey eyes. Her dark hair was streaked with two blond locks that framed her perfect face. I gulped as she approached, tried to hide it, failed miserably, and then gulped again.
“I hate these things, Sully,” she said, placing a hand on my arm. As she stood there I was amazed at how tiny she was. She was just barely over five feet tall and, although she was muscular, she could not be described as anything but petite.
“I hear what you’re saying, Laura,” I agreed.
“Where can I get one of those?” she asked, motioning towards my beer.
“No wine or champagne for you?”
“I don’t think so,” she snorted, “you’ll find that I’m not a complicated girl, Sully. What kind is it?”
I motioned to one of the waiters, holding up two fingers and pointing at my bottle, “It’s a local microbrew from back in Cleveland. That’s where I’m from originally. The beer’s called Great Lakes Brewery Nosferatu. It’s a nice, blood red ale that they release every fall for Halloween. I have it shipped here to New York.”
Laura nodded, reaching for my beer. She took it from me and put it to her lips, sipping the heavy microbrew. She did this unselfconsciously, as though we were old friends. She tasted the beer and smiled again, “Tasty. I like it.”
Funny thing that. I’ve said many times in my life that there was nothing sexier than a woman drinking beer straight from a bottle. Laura took the act to a whole other level of sexiness entirely.
We stood in companionable silence until the waiter returned with two more beers. I gave him my now empty bottle as she took hers and drank heavily from it.
“Easy, there,” I warned, “It has a strong alcohol content.”
“Don’t worry about me, Sully,” she laughed. She then switched topics of conversation so quickly that I almost lost track of what she was saying, “So what’s up with you and Kate?”
I
grimaced, “You mean you haven’t heard?”
“I’ve heard the
rumors; I wanted to hear from the source.”
“We’re in the process of a lengthy, but not necessarily acrimonious divorce.”
“You sound bitter.”
“I’m only bitter in that I still love my wife. The divorce was her idea.”
“And what about Miskatonic Outfitters?” she asked. I suspected she was asking me about this because she was concerned about the effects my divorce would have on the products she was considering endorsing.
“Like I said, it’s not a bad divorce,” I sighed, running a hand through my hair, “Katie and I were college friends who became more. We realized a year or two ago that we were better friends than spouses. We still work together and we still share control and ownership of Miskatonic Outfitters. We just don’t share a house or bed anymore.”
“And that’s not your choice, is it?”
“No. When I say ‘we decided to split’, I mean she decided to split. I love her too much to not give her what she wants.”
“That’s noble.”
“It’s something,” I said, not hiding the bitterness in my voice.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said, “I’m delving into your personal life.”
“Not a problem at all,” I countered, “Besides, it seems to me you have a vested interest in the situation.”
“Yeah, a little,” she said, laughing. Suddenly, I found her laugh as charming as Katie’s.
What was I thinking? Laura was an honest to goodness celebrity and I was just some average Joe who happened to be a little luckier than others.
“Well, at least you’re young and you’ve got your looks, Sully,” she said, her eyes looking at me. I saw that they now looked almost green.
“And if none of that works, I’m rich,” I added. I found myself wanted to make her laugh again. It worked.
“So, are you still planning on going to Pikes Peak?” she asked.
“Yes. In two weeks. And believe me when I say that I could really use the break.”
“You know, I was thinking about it and was wondering if you would you be up for some company?”
“I….” I stammered, caught completely by surprise. I was finding that this very fascinating woman was very adept at catching me off guard.
“You think I’m rude,” she said, misreading my confusion. I saw a glimpse of disappointment cross her face and I suddenly felt like an ass.
“No! It’s fine. You just kind of snuck up on me there. I’m…I’m just kind of shocked you’d want to go with me.”
“You don’t mind? Really?” she asked, smiling again. It was like the sun shining from behind thunderclouds, “I was just thinking I could use a little vacation myself. And it sounded like such a great idea to go see Pikes Peak. I haven’t been to Colorado in years. You really don’t mind?”
“Of course not, I’d be happy to have you go. Are you sure?”
“You’re young, right?” she asked, her eyes playful again, “You’re about my age. Is it so hard to believe that a beautiful woman would want to spend some time with you?”
“I…uh…um…” I said, in a suave way.
“Relax, Sully. I’m just giving you a hard time. I just kind of wanted to get away and it sounded like fun.”
She smiled, tilted her beer, and melted into the crowd without another word.
That was the point where the dread set in.
When I told Katie about my conversation with Laura, she was ecstatic. I, of course, left out all of my observations on Laura’s smile, and laugh, and the dizziness-inducing way her dress fit on her lithe, athletic body. I may be divorcing Katie, but I still had that survival instinct that marriage gives men. Besides, I felt kind of silly thinking the way I did about Laura. Who the hell was I to think that her inviting herself was anything but a combination of business and her own self-gratification?
Katie thought it was a blessing. She immediately insisted I take Laura camping, saying it was the best possible news we could have gotten. She was certain I could close the endorsement deal, despite my own misgivings.
I balked at the idea, but she raised a hand at my stammered objections, silencing me.
“Liam Michael Sullivan, don’t give me any of this nonsense about your not having a head for business! We built this business together and I can guarantee you it wasn’t all because of me. You are a different man when you’re out in the godforsaken bush, or backwoods, or whatever it is you call it. Go! Kill bears, build fires, and woo the X-Games girl. But don’t come back without the contract or I promise I’ll kill you myself.”
She grinned and, as she shooed me out of her office and I realized right then why our marriage would have never worked.
I was an outdoorsman. I had gone to college, gotten a degree in English Literature, and graduated. The day after I graduated I was on a plane to Belize to hike the Amazonian Rainforest. I returned three months later, twenty pounds lighter from malaria, and promptly married Katie.
The thing is, I had spent my entire adult life living for hiking, climbing, and finding the most secluded and far away wildernesses. In all that time though, Kate had only gone camping with me once.
The way a couple looks at vacations is a telling sign of compatibility. While I saw a vacation as a chance to kayak the New River, or hike the Sierra Madres; Katie’s idea of vacation always included a beach and room service. Her idea of roughing it was the sheer misfortune of not having a cabana boy nearby enough to refill her sangria. And, although I loved her more than my own life, I realized why we had to divorce.
That and the fact that she had begun sleeping with a tax attorney she had met a few days after we had decided to separate. Maybe her enthusiasm for my taking Laura to Pikes Peak was to assuage her own guilt. I never asked her, I just sighed and left her office, dreading the trip now more than ever.
I suppose that I felt a little jealous of Katie and her new lover. I also suppose I felt a little guilty about feeling the way I did about Laura. I still saw myself as a married man and it wasn’t right that a married man should have that butterfly-in-the-stomach, quivery, anticipatory feeling that you gets when you meet a new potential lover. Hell, I hadn’t felt that feeling since I met Katie back in college when I sat next to her in freshman English class. And here I was feeling it for a woman who was probably not the slightest bit interested in me.
And I had to spend three or four days alone with her.
Did I mention she was voted one of the most beautiful women in the world by a couple magazines?
I received a call the very next day from Laura’s assistant and we made the arrangements.
Chapter Two
Sully and Laura
Colorado, September 15th
I flew into Denver on September 15th. I had business the first part of the week, but I was done with it by Wednesday. As agreed, I picked Laura up at the Denver airport on Wednesday evening. We stayed the night at a hotel in Colorado Springs with a plan of driving up Highway 24, through Manitou Springs, to the Garden of the Gods. I had several trails I preferred, but all of them were done at a leisurely pace that involved a few days of steady uphill climb from Manitou Springs to the Pikes Peak Highway. I thought we would decide which way to go once we got there.
I should say that I remember seeing a report on CNN as I passed through the hotel lobby the night before. I thought nothing of it at the time, other than to note that there was a rash of quarantines around the country to try and control a virulent outbreak of rabies. I thought it strange, but not more so than the other strangeness that happens every day. That’s what cable news is for; to report on the weird in a flashy, pretty, sound bite-laden way. Truthfully, I was in vacation mode. I was looking forward to hiking Pikes Peak, getting away from the drudgery of running the company, and – most importantly – spending time with one of the hottest women I’d ever met.
In retrospect, I should have paid better attention to the news.
I met Laura in the parking lot where she stood expectantly, drinking a coffee from the Caribou Coffee shop across the road and leaning against her back pack. After exchanging good mornings, we climbed into my rental car and headed out.
“I had the hardest time at the airport last night,” she said as I pulled onto the interstate.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“There were all kinds of airport closings and flight cancellations. Nobody had a good reason why, like weather. Anyway, it was crazy at LAX and even crazier when I got to Boulder. People stranded, flights coming in late. The guy on the plane next to me said that he’d heard that there was an outbreak of bird flu or something.”
“I saw something about that last night,” I said, suddenly remembering the newscast I’d seen, “Something about rabies. I didn’t really watch it closely though. I was on my way out to grab some dinner.”
“Weird, huh?” she said, before reaching for the radio and turning it up, “Do you mind if I look for Opie and Anthony? Are they even on in Colorado?”
“I’m not sure. I’m a big fan, though.” I said, meaning it.
“I was on their show a few months back,” she said, launching into a story about the two New York shock jocks that had us both laughing as I drove south.
We found ourselves at the Garden of the Gods Visitor Center an hour later, where I parked my rental car. Standing in the early morning haze on September 20th, it’s hard to believe that things were already falling apart in the real world. Instead, I was pulling on my pack and Laura smiled at me as she adjusted her own.
“Well, Sherpa,” she joked, “it’s your mountain. Lead on! Mush!”
We spent most of the day hiking from The Garden of the Gods to the Pikes Peak Highway, stopping frequently and just enjoying the sights of Colorado’s Front Range. My biggest concern was that she would feel like we were plodding along. She was, after all, a world-class mountain climber. But, despite my misgivings, she was happy to move at a slower pace as we took our time, enjoying the late summer flower blooms and the occasional mule deer sighting. Later that afternoon, as we stopped to set up camp at the base of the mountain, I found that I was enjoying myself and said as much to Laura.
“I am too, Sully. It’s nice to just take your time and hike. When you’re doing big peaks, it’s always about the weather, and the timing, and the rush for the summit. It’s a good change. Thank you again for taking me along.” She said, truly grateful.
I thought about this as I crawled out of my sleeping bag the next morning and unzipped my tent. It was just after daybreak and the air was cold. We had reached the base of the mountain and I expected we’d end up just shy of the peak by that afternoon. We would set up camp once again, hike to the peak the next morning, enjoy the sights, and return to our previous night’s camp. Then we would begin the walk back to civilization.
I sniffed the sharp, dry air and squinted up the trail. I couldn’t see the peak, but I knew there would be snow. I yawned cavernously, struggled into my boots, and fell out of my tent. I stood, stretching and enjoying the pop of various joints as I yawned again. I shook off the stretch and stood still, listening to the silence of the mountain. I was surprised to hear snoring from Laura’s tent and chuckled. If I hadn’t known better, I might have suspected that some lost and burly truck driver had snuck into her tent during the night.
Standing there in the early morning light, I realized that, although I had only spent a day or two with Laura, I regretted that we would be done within a few more days. I found I enjoyed her company.
I shrugged and stretched again.
Deciding it was cooler than I had initially thought; I reached back into my tent and grabbed another fleece jacket and my fleece hat. Slipping them on, I made my way down the trail a little ways from camp and took a healthy, shiver inducing piss. Done with that, I returned to camp and began making breakfast.
I was just about finished when I heard Laura moving around in her tent. After a few moments, she poked her head out, rubbed an eye blearily, and squinted at me.
“Morning, Laura,” I said, returning to the breakfast burritos I was cooking over my Apex stove.
Laura replied with an unintelligible grunt and crawled out of her tent.
“What time is it, Sully?” she asked.
“It’s a little after seven.”
“A little early, isn’t it?”
“You can go back to bed,” I offered, surprised that she was complaining about getting up. I half thought she would have beaten me out of bed. I decided right then and there that I would try to stop making assumptions about her based on how I thought a world class athlete should act.
“And miss that heavenly breakfast I smell?” she said, “Besides, I may make you stop this afternoon so I can take a nap.”
I laughed, “You are so not what I expected, Ms. Hergemeyer.”
She grabbed a small toiletry bag from her tent and looked at me, still bleary-eyed, “You’ll find that I’m a surprise in general, Sully. Now, enough of your incessant early-morning chatter; I have to find the little girl’s room and partake in my morning ablutions.”
“I believe your bidet waits down yonder trail, your highness.”
She headed down the trail with a stumble. As she passed she gave me a mock stern look, “You are still talking! Less talking and more cooking from you.”
“Aye, aye, Captain Bligh,” I said.
As she disappeared from sight, I couldn’t help but think that even with bed hair and her face puffy from sleep, Laura was still one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.
We broke camp an hour later and began the hike upwards towards the peak. We walked in amiable silence for a half hour when Laura looked at me. We were walking side by side up a relatively steep slope.
“So, what’s your story, Sullivan?” she asked.
“There’s not much there, really. I grew up in Cleveland Ohio. I have two brothers; an older one who’s an accountant, and another younger one who’s majoring in getting drunk at college. I had the usual upbringing. My mom and dad loved us, encouraged us, and I was your typical product of the seventies and eighties. I went to college and got a degree in English Lit and lucked into my job.”
“Boy, that’s a thrilling account, Sullivan!” she said. I noticed I was breathing a lot harder in the thinner air than she was. That made me a little envious.
“That’s my life. It could never be described as thrilling. The only thing I really care about is what we’re doing right now. What about you?”
She shrugged.
“That won’t do, Laura. I just gave you some juicy, intimate details of my sordid past,” I joked, “I can’t let you get away with a shrug.
“Truthfully? You really want to know what my life’s like?”
“Absolutely,” I said, genuinely interested.
“Well, I grew up in Eugene Oregon. My dad left when I was eight, and my mom spent the next eight years of my life getting drunk and beaten up by whoever she picked up at the local bar. When I was twelve, we got a new neighbor who happened to be an ex-guide for Outward Bound. I kind of latched on to him and he took me and a couple of the other neighborhood kids hiking and climbing on a regular basis. That’s how I figured out how to get out of the trailer with my mother and her boyfriends, who discovered me about the same time. I was an early bloomer, Sully, and there’s nothing creepier than the leering looks or grabbing hands of your mom’s boyfriend. So, to get away, I began competing in rock climbing contests when I was fourteen. I won some local and regional comps, and turned pro at sixteen. From there it was only a matter of time before I began the alpine mountain climbing thing. So, some fifteen or so years later, I find myself on Pikes Peak with a whole lot of money; none of which will ever go to my bitch of a mother.”
I was silent for a minute, and then said, simply, “Wow.”
What else could I say?
She smiled at me again with that perfect smile. After a moment, she said, “I know, too much information, right?
“No,” I said, too quickly, “It’s just… wow.”
“I don’t know why I told you all of that,” she said, shrugging again.
“I’m glad you did.”
“You know, nobody knows about that stuff. The molestation, I mean. I don’t know why I told you about that.”
I was silent as she stopped moving and looked over the side of the trail. Below us, about a quarter of a mile away, three ravens landed on some rocks and began raucously cawing at one another. I stopped also and noticed that she had tears in her eyes.
“I’m glad you did,” I said after a long moment, meaning it. I placed a hand on her shoulder and she reached up, placing her own hand over mine.
“I just feel like I can talk to you,” she said as she wiped at her eyes, “There’s something about you, Liam Sullivan, that I find somehow discomforting and comforting - all at the same time.”
I was flattered and said as much.
“Look at me!” she laughed, brightening up again, “I’m blubbering for no damn reason, just like some flighty high school girl. If I keep this up, you’re never going to take me hiking again!”
“I expect so,” I quipped, “I’ve half a mind now to leave you behind. The last thing I need is to drag some crying girl up this mountain!”
She arched an eyebrow at me, and I got another glimpse of the strong, competitive Laura Hergemeyer, “My, aren’t we the cocky one? Don’t doubt for a minute I couldn’t beat you to the top of this mountain.”
“Only if I gave you a head start and I took both of our backpacks.”
“Ooh!” she laughed, “you are so going to regret that!”
She punched me lightly in the arm and gave me a mock glare. I smiled at her and she quickly broke down, laughing loudly.
Below us, the ravens burst from the clearing with a rush of black feathers and indignant croaks at Laura’s laughter.
She readjusted her pack and resumed walking uphill. Even though it had all been good-natured joking, I couldn’t help but notice she was setting a fierce pace that would leave me very tired by lunchtime.
That didn’t really bother me, though. I was fixated on what she had said about my taking her on other hiking trips. The fact that she might want to filled me with a giddy excitement.
Just as she’d said earlier, we stopped for a nap after lunch. We hadn’t planned on it, but it just kind of happened. We had sat down on a slope with a gorgeous view of the Rockies to the west to eat and, after we’d finished, Laura had laid back. She encouraged me to do the same and we spend a half hour talking and cloud gazing. Somewhere in there, Laura fell asleep and, as the afternoon sun radiated warmth on us, I dozed off myself. I woke a few hours later to find Laura cuddled up against my side, still asleep.
Her lying against my side, snoring, felt really natural.
I looked at her as she slept, stunned by how beautiful she was in the late afternoon sun. Much too soon, I shook her awake.
“Shit!” she gasped, rubbing an eye and glancing at her watch with the other, “I’m so sorry, Sully! I’ve been asleep for hours.”
“Don’t worry about it, Laura,” I said, “I dozed off too.”
“This is the most relaxing trip I’ve been on in years,” she admitted, “I’m becoming such a slack-ass. You must think I’m so lazy!”
“Not at all, Laura! I’m having just as much fun. Besides, what’s the point of being outdoors and on a beautiful mountain if you can’t take the time to fall asleep without the sound of cars or sirens or jackhammers you’d hear in the city?”
“But you’ve only got so much time before you’ve got to get back to the real world, right?”
“Believe me when I say that the real world will wait. I’m the boss, Laura. Besides, Kate and everybody else at the office are used to what they consider my ‘unreasonable need to be outside’. God forbid that the owner of an outdoor equipment company should actually want to spend time outdoors!”
“That’s a scandalous thought, Sully! How do you ever expect to become a pudgy and soft CEO unless you spend at least twelve hours a day sitting behind a big desk in a huge office?” she laughed.
“I make no apologies, Laura. Down with The Man!”
“I hate to break it to you, muscles, but despite your outdoor pedigree, you’re still The Man.”
“Don’t I know it.” I acquiesced.
We got up and hiked a little further up the mountain where we set up camp.
Although I am normally a strict adherent to Leave No Trace principals, the camp site had a fire ring. As a clear night broke overhead, we built a small fire and enjoyed each others company. We stayed awake until about midnight, talking and sharing a pint of Irish whiskey I’d brought along for “medicinal purposes”.
We got up late the next morning and headed up the mountain again, enjoying the coolth of the morning and each other’s companionship. I don’t know what Laura was thinking at that time, but I realized that I’d spent more time camping with Laura in the last four days than I had in the entire twelve years I’d been married to Kate. It was so refreshing to be with a woman who enjoyed the things I did, and understood the peace and tranquility that being out and about in nature brought.
At one point she’d even smiled at me and quoted from one of my favorite books. I’d been giving her a good-natured razzing about needing to take another nap when she responded with, “Thoreau said in Walden, ‘To be awake is to be alive’, Sully. That means no more naps for you today!”
The English Literature major in me felt a geeky sort of thrill that would have only been surpassed by her judicious use of a Star Wars quote.
‘Oh man, Sully,’ I remember thinking, ‘You’ve gone and found your soul mate … and she’s completely famous and unattainable.’
Later, as we sat in the shade of a large granite boulder, Laura asked me where we were at on the mountain.
“We’re most of the way there now,” I replied, “Another mile or so up the trail will bring us out by the Glen Cove Inn. It’s not really an inn though; it’s more just a snack shop. They have some great ice cream and we can get some bottled water. We’ll set up camp near there. From where I want to camp, it’s just a short hike to the summit.”
“Sounds good to me,” she enthused, “Although I’m sure that some of my serious climbing friends would never let me hear the end of it if I told them it took me the better part of two days to hike twenty-eight or thirty miles at a mere fourteen thousand feet.”
“You can blame me if they ever find out,” I said, standing and brushing snow off of the back of my pant, “Of course; there will probably have to be some blackmail money paid on your part to keep me from giving some of them a call and telling them about it.”
“You jerk,” she laughed.
Chapter Three
Sully and Laura
On Pikes Peak, September 22nd
I thought of all of this as I looked at her barely a half hour later; marveling at how beautiful she was even as the monster I’d just killed lay still and bleeding at my feet.
“What is it, Sully?” she asked again, “What the hell is that thing?”
“I have no idea, but I hope it’s definitely dead.” I said. With a pull and a grunt, I pulled my ice axe from the top of its demon-like head. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was a Park Service Ranger.”
Laura stood, and so did I. We just stood there, staring down upon it like the alien being that it was. It still wore a green Park Service uniform, but it no longer fit properly. The Ranger had no skin and his musculature stood out, glistening and wet. Its limbs were longer, almost simian-like, and its face was stretched and elongated as well. The facial deformities, the lack of skin, and some other sort of physiological change were what had made its teeth seem so long and sharp.
‘…All the better to eat you with,’ I thought.
After a few moments, Laura spoke: “It looks like something I once saw at the Mutter Museum in Boston. It was a corpse that had been flayed and sealed in Plasticene. But I couldn’t imagine how someone would be able to walk around without their skin, much less attack us. How bad must it hurt to have no skin?”
“I have no idea, Laura,” I said, realizing she had come to the same conclusion I had. What was lying in a bloody, oozing mess in front of us most certainly had started out human. My mind rebelled at the idea, but it was the only explanation.
We left the monster lying where it had fallen in the snow. And, after cleaning myself of with some water from a Nalgene bottle, we decided to check out the gift shop for anybody else. It was something neither of us wanted to do, but we had to. At the very least, we needed to try and find a phone to call down the mountain and get some help.
We entered the gift shop again, even more slowly and cautiously than previously, if that was possible. Once inside the door, I immediately moved right and reached down, drawing the shade to the front window. The gift shop was flooded with light and we saw that there was no further immediate threat. Quickly, we cleared the rest of the building, our ice axes held high and ready, but we found that they were unnecessary.
After lifting all of the shades, we saw that the Ranger had made a mess of the gift shop. Near the back hall, in the women’s bathroom, it had taken sweatshirts and t-shirts and made a nest of some sort. The room was smeared with blood and smelled of excrement and other bodily secretions. I pulled the door shut.
“I need to pee - but I think I’ll be using the men’s room, if you don’t mind,” Laura quipped.
“No problem,” I replied as Laura opened the men’s room door with a kick. The room was empty.
I turned to head back down the hall, but stopped when she called my name.
“Please stay!” she pleaded, “Don’t leave me alone.”
I nodded and turned, looking down the short hallway at a door that looked out at some tall pine trees. She left the door open and did what she had to do.
“You can turn around,” she said after a minute or two, “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.”
Not at all,” I replied. “It’s natural.”
We went back into the gift shop and she laid her parka and backpack on the counter of the register. I did the same, but decided to keep my axe. I felt safer with it close at hand.
We both walked to the front of the shop and through the archway into the snack shop. Laura helped herself to a bottle of water from the cooler and I sat at a table. Through the window I could see the Jeep and its former occupant where he lay near the front door, a bright red shape in the white snow.