System Test

Hello all,

I am rather new to blogging, so this is my attempt to see if I can actually make this happen. I've included the text of a short story I wrote in high school just to get an idea of how long posts lay out. Hopefully this works.

The Mountain

                Wind screamed around them all, a howling blizzard pouring down the mountainside. Dr. Landers kept his head down, fighting through the storm. Behind him, Terrence Williams struggled to match the Doctor’s rugged pace. Behind him, Dr. Caldwell was growing nervous. For three hours they’d been fighting their way up Mt. McKinley through ice, snow and ravaging wind. He was growing worried about the grad student roped in between him and Dr. Landers. The kid was barely into his twenties, and smart as he was, just wasn’t prepared for this kind of punishment.

                Not to say that he was faring much better. Caldwell was an outdoorsman at heart, and had weathered fierce storms, but this was ridiculous. Visibility was down to a matter of feet, and it was all he could do to stay standing. He checked the watch on his wrist, then the thermometer. The temperature was plunging fast, and the short night was coming on soon. They needed to get to shelter, and fast, or they would freeze to death in the storm. Caldwell grasped the braided nylon rope and pulled sharply three times, signaling Terrence to stop. Soon, all three members of the NOAA/NASA research expedition were huddled together, heads pressed together to hear each other over the storm.

                “James, we need to stop!” shouted Caldwell, trying to be heard over the force of the storm.

                “But Richard, it’s only another mile to the site!”

                “If we go another mile, we’re gonna lose the kid.” Terrence was breathing heavily, swaying as he stood. What skin showed was bright red. Caldwell wished he could see Terrence’s eyes. The eyes are the best way to judge the true fatigue of an individual.

                “I’m game,” croaked Terrence. His voice betrayed that he truly was not.

                “James, I’m exhausted. This storm is only getting worse, and it’ll be dark in an hour. If we try and make the ridge, we’ll all be dead. We need to stop.”

                “Richard, this is important. If we stop now---“

                “If we stop now, we might get to walk down this mountain. If we keep going, we’re as good as committing suicide.”

                “But the research! The grant!”

                “No grant is worth my life, James. Or yours. Or the kid’s. We stop here, make as best a shelter as we can, then move on when the weather clears.”

                Terrence looked wearily back and forth between the two older men. The wind continued to tear at the little group, piling snow against their legs even as they stood.

                “Fine,” Landers sounded thoroughly pissed, almost desperate, “We’ll camp here. We move out first thing in the morning. But dammit, Richard, if we lose the grant, it’s on your head!”

                The three men set about setting up their shelter for the night: a single dome tent, staked as best it could be and weighed down by their gear. The wind made it nearly impossible to erect, and at several points threatened to tear the whole contraption off the side of the mountain and down into the abyss. But they got it done. Half an hour later, they were all in out of the cold sipping hot chocolate heated over a heat brick, and eating energy bars. With his mask off, Dr. Caldwell could immediately see that stopping had been the right choice. Terrence was sheet white where he wasn’t red from the wind. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, and his movements were lethargic, his speech slurred. Caldwell recognized the symptoms of both hypothermia and exhaustion, a dangerous and often lethal combination on a mountain at any time, but especially in a storm like this.

                “Here, eat this,” said Caldwell, passing Terrence a piece of his energy bar. It was homemade, and contained slightly more than the store-bought brands could give. Terrence accepted the morsel silently, munching absentmindedly. Caldwell was growing seriously concerned about the graduate student. He’d started the climb in good shape, but by the time they’d reached their first camp, he’d been coughing and breathing heavily. When Caldwell offered oxygen, Terrence had flatly denied him, and Landers had backed him up.

                “He’s healthy as a horse, Richard, why would he need oxygen at this altitude? Let the boy live a little.”

                Caldwell had relented, reluctantly. Now he wasn’t so sure. Oxygen deprivation and altitude sickness added to hypothermia and fatigue would kill the grad student as sure as a bullet. Or, he’d catch pneumonia and they’d get to watch him die as they descended the mountain. Like the Frenchman that he and Landers had climbed with back in ’87.

                Landers. There was a problem. He’d always been the more reckless of the two, the more headstrong. Caldwell had known him since near birth, and they’d been fast friends for almost that length of time. Landers had been Caldwell’s best man when he married Geneva. Caldwell had always wanted to return the favor, but Landers viewed women as something to be conquered, not loved and cherished. Thus, he’d never settled down, and Caldwell was starting to think he never would.

                In Antarctica, when a windstorm had forced him and Caldwell to camp on the ice for nearly a week in conditions much like this, it had been Landers determination that had saved the men. And again in Borneo when the locals had gotten pissed. But as he got older, it seemed that his reason started to leave him. Case in point, the Frenchman they’d left dead on the snow not a half a mile from base camp on Everest. Landers had refused to turn back when the Frenchman, Andre was his name, had developed a nasty cough and complained of fatigue. They’d summited a day later, and by noon the following day, the Frenchman could barely stand. They’d raced down the mountain as fast as they could, Caldwell carrying Andre with one of the other team members, Landers walking ahead grimly, saying little, just pushing on in silence. Caldwell had wanted to scream at him, call him out in his recklessness that was going to kill the man he carried, but he had held his tongue.

                They hadn’t climbed for two decades following the tragedy on Everest. They hadn’t done much of anything, really, outside of their typical teaching and research. But then Landers got it in his head they should try again, something daring but not as daring as Everest. He submitted a proposal to the NOAA and NASA about high-altitude climate research, dealing both with pollutants in the jet stream (the NOAA) and human endurance in extreme conditions (NASA).  Caldwell had reluctantly agreed, mostly because he knew Landers would go whether or not he did, and the thought of the man trying to take the mountain without him mortified him. Heavens knew what trouble he’d get in without Caldwell to talk him down. Like today. Landers would have kept walking until he or the kid dropped from fatigue or hypothermia.

                Even now, Landers lay opposite Caldwell, sipping hot chocolate and staring into space with an expression intense enough to cut steel. He was removed from the situation, and rapidly losing touch with reality. All that mattered to him were the grants, and proving that at fifty seven, he still could climb mountains. His recklessness had pushed them past the point of intelligence and out into the margin where people got killed, and quickly. Three days up and three days down had been the plan. They were now almost a day ahead of schedule, against Caldwell’s better judgment, and it was turning into Everest all over again.                   

                “James, we need to start thinking about our descent.”

                “This storm will pass. We’ll wait it out. We’re ahead of schedule.”

                “Terrence isn’t going to wait it out. He’s sick, and getting sicker.”

                “He’s just tired from the climb. He’s fine.”

                “Dammit, James, look at him,” Caldwell felt terrible, talking about the kid in this way with him sitting right there. His eyes were big, red-rimmed, scared. He was failing, and he knew it. But he idolized Landers, would do anything for the charismatic professor. And that’s what scared Caldwell.

                Landers finally turned to Terrence, his stony visage showing a crack at the grad student’s exhaustion painted so clearly on his face.

                “Really, Dr. Landers, I’ll be fine,” Terrence’s voice was barely audible over the wind. Caldwell felt like he was watching the kid fall apart before his very eyes. Landers gave a half-hearted smile to Terrence, then turned back to Caldwell, his eyes moist.

                “What have I done, Richard?” All color was draining from his face, “It’s Everest all over again. Richard, why didn’t I listen?”

                Caldwell didn’t know what to make of this one-eighty in attitude. Either Landers was trying to manipulate him, or the man was cracking up. Caldwell favored the latter theory. The tent lapsed into silence, Caldwell looking from the thin body of Terrence, and his haggard face, to the thick, muscular form of his closest friend, who refused to meet his eyes. Caldwell was afraid. He was trapped on the side of a mountain, in a snowstorm, with a deteriorating sick man and another who was slowly losing his sanity.

                “I think we all better just get some rest. You might be right, James, maybe this will all have stopped in the morning.”

                But it hadn’t. Dawn broke sometime after four AM, the cold light piercing the shivering tent. The wind still howled down the mountain, and peeking outside, Caldwell could see treacherous drifts against rocks, and even the tent. The temperature was well below zero.

                Things in the tent were bleak, at best. Landers was barely speaking, muttering to himself on and off. Terrence appeared to have gotten even worse in the night. The boy was shivering with chills, sheet-white. Caldwell didn’t know if the kid would be able to make it back. He shook his head, angry with himself for not forcing Landers to turn back earlier. Now this… And the kid had that girl back at CalTech, that beautiful blonde he wanted to marry.

                Landers surprised Caldwell by breaking the relative silence as the men packed.

                “I had a nightmare last night.” Caldwell didn’t know what to say. Landers had never talked about his dreams before, as far as Caldwell knew.

                “We were back on Everest, in ’87. It was the second day, when---when--- you know. Except instead of you carrying Andre, it was me. And he talked to me all the way. When we reached that point, where he---he---“

                Caldwell remembered it well. His shoulders burning under the strain of the stretcher, having jury-rigged and finagled and brute-forced his way down the mountain for thirty-six hours straight, he was almost relieved when the burden was relieved. Then he realized what had happened. He turned back to see Andre sprawled in the snow. It was a beautiful day, and the Frenchman’s eyes were on the summit of the mountain, clearly visible from their position.

                “C’est belle, le fin de tous…” He’d whispered, The end of all… Then he had turned to Landers, his voice barely a whisper, coughs wracking his thin body, drowning on his own mucous.

                “My business is not finished with you, folle,” and then he’d died. Caldwell remembered checking his pulse, starting CPR, feeling Michael Williams, the other scientist on the trip, pulling him gently off the dead Fenchman. He remembered punching Landers, shouting. But he never remembered the actual descent into base camp, the last half-mile into the warmth at the knees of the greatest mountain on Earth.

                “Anyways,” continued Landers, “He said it again. And then I woke up. And… and…” Landers’s face was the color of ash. Caldwell’s nervousness increased tenfold.

                “And then I heard him outside our tent. Walking. Waiting. Oh, God! It was terrible! I heard him out there, crunching in the storm!” Landers lapsed into silence, shuddering. Terrence looked to Caldwell, his eyes a portrait of pure misery.

                “Landers, I don’t know what you heard, but it wasn’t Andre. There’s no one up here but us. The storm does---“

                “James, you idiot, I know what a storm sounds like and this wasn’t it!” Landers was suddenly beet-red, furious. Caldwell frowned. Now sudden emotional shifts, delusions, hallucinations. James looked to Terrence, and felt like he was staring into the eyes of death. Terrence knew. Caldwell would be lucky to make it off the mountain alive. If Landers did, too, it would be a certifiable miracle. But without Landers and Caldwell together, the sick graduate had no hope. He was doomed. Caldwell felt like crying for the poor boy.

                They got going just after eleven, five hours later than the previous two days. The wind was fierce, visibility limited, but the temperature started climbing again. Caldwell prayed that the storm was breaking, and fast. However, the higher temperatures were a blessing and a curse: while they made living easier, they greatly increased the chance of avalanche.

                The three staggered through the morning, Caldwell leading, Landers at the rear. Terrence was barely mobile, plodding along through the storm, every now and then crying out in pain or frustration. Caldwell figured that he was losing touch with reality, becoming delusional. Landers remained quiet, any mutterings he made were instantly torn from his mouth by the fierce wind, and they never reached Caldwell.

                Caldwell himself admitted that his shape was poor, and growing poorer. He was tired, sucking oxygen at an alarming rate, and bitterly cold even through his layers. He was not too far behind Terrence. Even his mentality was going. Several times he could swear that he saw a shadowy figure through the snow, just ahead or just to his side. Every time he shook his head, and the image was gone. But it was beginning to unnerve him. Especially after Landers’s rant about the Frenchman. Caldwell checked his GPS, they only had about thirteen miles back to their base camp, only six of which were going to be descending the dangerous parts of this godforsaken mountain.

                Noon came, and lunch. The storm hovered on the mountainside, but the wind was abating. Landers seemed back to normal, gruff and businesslike. He forced Terrence to start taking antibiotics, and gave most of his meal to the sock undergrad. He chose to lead for the next leg, and Calwell let him, foolishly hoping that the man was feeling better now that they’d started their descent, foolishly hoping they’d be able to get Terrence down.

                The walk that afternoon was strange. Caldwell was rear guard, the last man on the rope, and Terrence swam in and out of visibility with the wind-driven snow, sometimes leaving Caldwell completely alone. Caldwell acknowledged that traveling in such conditions was about as foolish as could be imagined, but he saw no other options. If they took shelter, Terrence would certainly die, Caldwell wouldn’t follow far behind, and Landers would be left alone with his thoughts. Caldwell didn’t fool himself: they’d all be dead a day later if they stopped now. And then there was the “fifth man on the rope,” a sensation described by mountain and rock climbers pushing their limits, a character that was usually a hallucination brought on by fatigue or hypothermia. This figure always appeared in times of need, sometimes in the form of someone the climber knew, sometimes not. Sometimes this figment would help, sometimes it would hinder. Caldwell had long scoffed at this, sure he’d experienced hallucinations climbing mountains, it was unavoidable, but a real person?

                Now Caldwell wasn’t so sure. Every now and then he felt a tug at his waist, not Terrence but backwards, as if someone were tied on the line behind him. Every time he looked back, and nothing was there but the swirling snow. Other times, he could swear he heard voices on the wind, sometimes shouting his name, sometimes screaming, sometimes just whispering in his ear. Caldwell tried to pass it off as fatigue, but as the climb wore on, he grew increasingly distraught.

                Night fell again, they were almost out of the danger zone and the storm had all but stopped. Inside the tent, the tension was palpable. Terrence had collapsed shortly after erecting the structure and was nonresponsive. Landers and Caldwell had bundled him in his sleeping bag, and then tried to force some water into him. It didn’t work. The boy’s pulse was fast and erratic, his forehead not just hot but burning. He was pale beneath two burning points of red on each cheek.

                “We can’t move him,” it was Landers, his voice relatively even, “He’ll die. You go down, get help. I’ll stay here, keep watch. You’ll move faster.”

                “Don’t be absurd, James, if I leave you up here, you’re both dead.”

                Landers gave a small smile, “I don’t think there’s much you can do about that now, Richard. I’m… I’m cracking up, I know it. I’ll just slow us down.”

                “But you were great today.”

                “It was a last gasp. I’m more tired than I realize. And…” He gazed off, his body shuddering involuntarily.

                “And what?”

                “Andre,” the name was a whisper, Landers turned terrified eyes to Caldwell, “Richard, I’m so scared. When I was in back, I kept feeling him on the rope. I heard his voice on the wind.”

                It was Caldwell’s turn to be uneasy. He’d experienced that very same thing, only he hadn’t attached Andre’s identity to it.

                “He’s coming for me, I know he is. He always said that he would.”

                “James, that’s ridiculous. Andre’s dead. It was a terrible accident---“

                Landers fixed Caldwell with a haunted gaze, “I could have turned us back. I was the expedition leader. When he got sick, I could have turned us back, but I chose not to.”

                “James, I didn’t stop you either, I’m as much to blame---“

                “But you tried to, Richard, you tried. And all the way down you refused to talk to me. You blamed me for his death. It’s never been the same since, more than twenty years later.”

                “James, I…” But Caldwell had no words. He wanted forgive James, to let him know he didn’t hold it against him, that it was okay, but he couldn’t. Not a day had gone by that he hadn’t thought about that afternoon high in the Himalayas. He loved Landers like a brother, but his own guilt, his own pride, denied him the ability to forgive him. He could have forced James to turn back, could have forced the expedition around. But the unspoken truth was that he’d wanted the summit as badly as Landers. He was willing to turn a blind eye to the Frenchman, whom he barely knew, to reach a life goal. And he’d sacrificed a life to do it.

                Instead of saying what needed to be said, Caldwell turned over in his sleeping bag and refused to speak to Landers. He hated himself for it, hated himself all the more when he heard his friend shaking with quiet sobs on the other side of the tent, punctuated by throaty, wet coughs from Terrence. Caldwell finally fell asleep, and didn’t dream.

                He awoke three hours later in pitch black. Landers was screaming.

                “He’s here! He’s here! Richard, he’s back!”

                “James, quiet, get a grip on yourself!” shouted Caldwell, rising from his sleeping bag, grabbing the big man and shaking him.

                “Andre is dead! Because of us, maybe. But he’s dead, and dead on a mountain ten thousand miles from here.” Landers continued to shake. Caldwell flipped on a flashlight, pointing the beam into the frightened man’s face.

                “James, listen. Andre. Is. Dead. End of story. He is not on this mountain, and he surely is not hunting you.”

                “But the rope, yesterday in the storm, I felt him Richard, he was back there.”

                Caldwell had no easy answer to this. He had felt him, too, felt the phantom jerk, heard the voices. He tried to shrug it off as hallucination, but it hadn’t felt like one.

                “And just now, oh Richard, just now I heard him outside the tent. He was walking around and around. I could hear him whispering. He wants me, he wants revenge! Richard, I’m scared.”

                “I am, too, James,” and it was the truth. Landers had always been big and strong, showing no or little emotion. This new Landers, this mewling puppy, scared Caldwell on a base level. Scared him almost as badly as this deal about the Frenchman. Caldwell held Landers until the big man fell back asleep,then quietly got up and unzipped the tent flap. Outside the wind still howled, though its fury was considerably less than it had been for the past two days. Caldwell shined his light around, but there were no tracks. He shone his light farther away, and his heart stopped. Barely visible in the driven snow, maybe eight feet from the tent opening was a set of tracks, nearly filled by the drifting snow, but visible nonetheless. Caldwell stifled a scream. There was no one else on this mountain, he knew the records, had confirmed it all with the Alaskan department of the interior. They were utterly alone. And yet… There was proof. The prints clearly did not match their own, those had already been erased by the storm. Terrence was too sick to have gone outside, and Caldwell would have heard Landers, since the big man would have had to climb over him to get out of the tent.

                Slowly, very slowly, Caldwell eased back into the tent. He zipped the flap shut, and lay for a long time, his mind turning this over and over. They needed to get off this mountain, and they needed to do it now.

                The next morning, Terrence couldn’t be aroused and Landers was barely coherent. Somehow, Caldwell got both men dressed and suited up. He wasn’t leaving either on the mountainside. Somehow he rigged a stretcher for Terrence and got Landers to help him for it. Somehow. Caldwell’s condition was deteriorating faster than he cared to admit to himself. He was moving in a daze, more on autopilot than on conscious thought. He was feverish, and hallucinating again, but he had to push on.

                The day passed in a blur. At about noon (or so Caldwell thought) the sun came out, pushing aside the grey clouds. Then it had disappeared sometime later, but the team was below the danger line, and only a mile or two above the treeline.

                They hit the forest at nightfall, assembling shelter in the dark. Snow drifted peacefully between the dark pines, the wind deadened by the closeness of the trees. Caldwell fell into a heavy, almost drugged sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

                Dawn woke him, and he felt better. His fever had broken sometime in the night, amidst wild dreams of Everest and Landers and snowstorms. Snatches of the previous day came back to him, bits and pieces tossed almost haphazardly into his consciousness. He remembered the sun. He remembered the tug of the rope at his back all day, even though he’d been tail-end-Charlie for the whole climb. He remembered flashes of figures glimpsed in swirls of snow, and in pools where sunlight met shadow. Caldwell shook his head to clear it, and sat up. He immediately noticed two things: Terrence looked better and Landers was gone. Quietly, so as not to wake the boy prematurely, Caldwell slipped from the tent. Outside, he found that the snow had stopped and the sky hung leaden and cold high overhead. He immediately found Landers’s tracks, and followed them into the woods.

                The farther he went the more confused Caldwell became. What had Landers been thinking? What was he doing? He became worried, the big man had been really unstable the previous night and yesterday, and Caldwell had been too sick to really appreciate that. Landers was probably no longer following reason.

                After about a six hundred feet, a second set of tracks joined Landers, and the Landers tracks elongated. He’d started running. Caldwell followed the chase, seeing places where Landers had slipped and fallen, through thickets and pine boughs. He finally came to a clearing, both sets of tracks leading out into the middle. Caldwell ran out then, throwing caution to the winds, shouting Landers’s name. He arrived in the center of the clearing and stopped short. There was blood, a lot of it. The snow was churned all around, and there were other signs of struggle, torn clothing, body prints in the snow where the attacker had forced his assailant (though who the attacker was and who the assailant was, Caldwell’s brain couldn’t somehow seem to process). Caldwell walked all around the mashed snow, finally finding a set of tracks leading away. They were smaller than Landers’s boots, maybe a size ten, Andre was a ten. The thought came, unbidden, and Caldwell found himself very afraid. He followed the tracks into the forest for a few hundred feet, where they stopped. Not wiped out, not petering out onto rock, just stopped, as if whoever made them had been lifted into the air without a trace. Caldwell frantically searched all around for where the tracks continued, but couldn’t find any. He ran back to where the tracks had joined Landers before the clearing, and the same thing. The tracks simply began in the woods: nothing around them, no other tracks besides those of Landers, and Caldwell’s own. And then there was the blood in the clearing… Caldwell ran all the way back to the tent, not stopping to think. Because if he did, he feared he’d go mad.