Her Mountain
Luke lost more than blood when those steel teeth clamped around his ankle—he lost significance.
Gone were his hopes and dreams and his place in the world. Gone was his ego. Gone was his fight. There was nothing left of him but pain. He hadn’t graduated with an MFA from New York University last year. He wasn’t the nature documentarian he had been thirty seconds ago. He didn’t give one shit about this mountain or its snowy beauty or the recognition he thought it would bring him. For Christ’s sake, he didn’t even know where his camera was anymore. He’d dropped it when… when…
Shit—think. It was before the bear trap snapped on his foot. If he’d dropped it here, it’d be lying in the snow somewhere close by—it was too bulky to be completely covered. Had he even been holding it before the trap, when he was running? He didn’t think so. That means it must be…
At the cabin! Shit. Shit. He must have dropped it right outside of her fucking cabin. It was probably lying beneath the window, the red light still blinking, picking up those horrible screams from inside. Those cries for mercy.
“No!” The man had been blubbering when Luke peeked through the window with the camera. “No no no! Please someone fucking help me!”
He had been naked, bound to a wooden chair by his ankles and wrists. The woman was standing over him, equally nude, her body saggy and hunched and deformed by both age and genetics. Thin strands of gray hair fell over her lumpy forehead as she chanted something from an open book in her left hand. In her right, there was a blade; long and grooved with teeth fit to bite through bone and metal. The dancing light from the compact fireplace glimmered in the silver of the blade and in that light, Luke saw his future.
He saw himself bound to that same chair, helpless to whatever unnatural sin she had planned for him. He saw the jagged blade sawing through his throat and from somewhere far away from his own body, he witnessed her spreading his blood over her wrinkled skin in absolute ecstasy. He saw her mouth open in a sexual moan and in that mouth he saw strings of red flesh stuck between her rotten, pointed teeth. They were not the teeth of a human, but of an animal. Of something primal that has spent centuries scraping and clawing for its food. He saw all of this and he knew that it was more than some hellish fantasy: it was a premonition. It was what would happen to him if he didn’t turn and run, if he didn’t leave the cabin and the mountain altogether. Even then, he might not have been safe. The only solace was that she hadn’t seen him. She had been so busy with her prey that he was able to slip away, hopefully undetected.
There had been no time for second guessing. There had been no time for guilt over leaving a man to die. And there damn sure had been no time to get caught in a bear trap. Yet here he was: hopeless and helpless. Alone in the forest of a snowy mountain that was growing darker by the minute.
But he wasn’t really alone, was he? She was back there somewhere, and she’d find him soon enough if he didn’t disarm the trap and get moving.
He put his hand on the steel and the fiery pain that shot through his body was fierce enough for the corners of his vision to go black. For a moment, he thought he would faint and that would be the end of everything. Either the woman from the cabin would find him and tie him to her chair or a bear would stomp by and discover a free meal. Luke wasn’t sure which was worse, so he did his damnedest to stay conscious and avoid them both.
He placed a hand gingerly atop each of the springs and started to push them down, but the pain was there and it was angry. It moved through his bones and settled like a flame in his stomach. The tip of that flame licked his esophagus and before he could stop it, it was moving up his throat and out of his mouth. The skin tightened around his eyes and made them feel as if they were bulging out of his skull while he retched sizzling yellow acid into the snow.
“Fuck!” he cried, praying that the great roar of frigid winter wind had swept away his momentary lapse in judgement.
I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t do this.
And that’s when he heard it.
Somewhere in that blasting wind, there was laughter.
He was sure of it.
Laughter like a cawing crow.
And it was growing closer.
He fumbled with the trap, the pain bringing fresh tears that might have warmed his cheeks if they hadn’t so quickly become part of his icy terrain. He placed a hand on top of each spring and he couldn’t think about how much it hurt because he knew she was on her way. He could feel her back there, her hunched body slick with blood, clumps of skin in her teeth. She was coming and she was dancing every step of the way; dancing and laughing as the snow kissed her skin. She welcomed the winter and the bitter cold because this was her mountain and this was her home. The other man had trespassed and he’d paid the ultimate price for that, and now Luke was next in line.
He knew, somewhere deep down in a place where logic doesn’t exist, from the moment he saw those bird bones hanging from tree limbs around the cabin, what he was up against. But he had to see, didn’t he? He had to catch a glimpse of her on camera. There was no better selling point for his documentary than that. And now he was here, pushing down on those springs as hard as he could, consciousness threatening to abandon him while he groaned and grunted and pleaded for the trap to please fucking release him before the wit—
Stop, the voice commanded: a whisper that floated on the wind, that slithered inside his ear canal like a snake wrapping itself around his panicked brain. It tickled the inside of his cranium and he longed to reach into his eye sockets and pull his own skull apart to rid himself of the itch. He knew that he shouldn’t listen to the voice, that he should be… should be doing something… should be…
Why was he sitting in the snow? He couldn’t remember. But it sure was pretty, wasn’t it? The sun and moon were equals in the sky but they wouldn’t be that way for long, would they? If only he had his camera. What a shot that would be. And hey, look at all those critters watching him from the trees. Foxes, squirrels, a herd of deer—all frozen, eyes fixed on him, wide and staring like statues in his grandmother’s garden. This is what he’d come here for. This is the side of nature he’d hoped to capture on his…
Where was his camera when he needed it? Here, camera camera. Olly olly oxen free. He needed to get up and find it. Why was he still sitting in the snow? And why did his ankle hurt so badly? Had he twisted it in the woods? He needed to be more careful. The critters were laughing at him. Laughing and brushing against the back of his neck. But how had they snuck up on him without moving?
And why were their hands so cold?