“Jack, come on man, Barry’s out 2k now for this stupid joke, that isn’t fair to him.” I said to our group’s defacto leader when we met in his basement the following evening. Shaking his head, Jack pointed to a stack of papers he had laid out on the scratched coffee-table. There were directions, a trip itinerary, a comprehensive cost breakdown. He had even estimated the relative weight of supplies we would each need to carry based on body-weight and caloric expenditure. I was honestly impressed. I told him so, but surely that story about finding some lost tomb was nonsense, right? If he needed an excuse to plan a hiking trip with friends, he could have just asked! Right then, the upstairs door swung shut, announcing the arrival of the final expedition member: Bonnie.
Bonnie floated down the stairs, wearing a particularly “witchey” dress, with a nest of accessories in her tangled curls. Jack told Bonnie to show me the book, and she moved toward the coffee table with an airy grace. Bonnie was always a bit odd, but she seemed to do wonders for Jack’s temper – so I liked having her around. When she pulled a huge book bound in cracked leather from her tiny purse and dropped it onto the coffee table with a thud, I started to reconsider my feelings. She pulled me in close, I could smell her perfume, and she pointed at text on the yellowing pages. The book was titled “biography of the prophet Zoroaster”, a name which tickled the back of my mind. She flipped through the pages quickly, stopping at the section about his death and burial. It said the ruler was buried with thirty-seven other bodies, which had been his servants and ministers in life. Each was buried with necklaces and ceremonial swords. There were gemstones, urns filled with silver coins, solid gold statues of bull’s heads, and more. Bonnie looked at me wide-eyed. She said “how strange it is to die now and take non of your treasure with you?”
I was still confused, what did the burial practices of some ancient king have to do with us? “What part of the world did this guy even live in?” I said aloud, prompting Barry to call from the other side of the room – “India I think”, which sounded about right. Then, Bonnie pulled my arm again, pointing with intensity at the page of the book. Jack inserted himself between Bonnie and I, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder we read the words “In 2023, radiocarbon dating pinpointed the location of Zoroaster’s tomb to within the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Some experts suggest it is near the mountain called ‘The Helmet’, but this is still a hotly debated issue.”
“Bonnie, where did you get this book?” I asked incredulously. The book was clearly a hoax. Maybe a whole-cloth fabrication, or maybe Frankensteined together from cherry-picked sources to appear historical. Bonnie replied with an innocent voice. “The university library. Professor Janik told me about it.” I shook my head, and made to walk out of the room. I felt Jack grabbing my arm, and when I couldn’t shake him loose I turned for the confrontation. Before I could say anything, he told me to calm down and consider things.
“I already spoke to Janik” he said “at first I thought it was a hoax too, but that lady knows what she is talking about. Think about it this way: if we score – we can live comfortably forever. If we miss, we get to enjoy a weekend hiking trip.” I asked him how he could believe any of this. The ancient tomb of a dead Asian King is in the Canadian Rockies? There’s an ocean between those places! And the old-looking book which talks about radio dating from five years ago, from some so-called professor? None of this makes any sense. All I needed to hear from him was how he was going to pay Barry back for the supplies - because I knew Jack didn’t have the cash.
Before anyone else could speak, Barry’s voice came from the other side of the basement. He had been studiously packing four large hiking backpacks with supplies. “I’m pretty sure the Zarathustra guy was from Egypt. Anyway, Jack, just show him the ruby already.”
Jack breathed a deep, overly-performative sigh, but I sensed some genuine relief in it. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the largest gemstone I have ever seen. It was blood-red, glistening in the dim basement light. Jack turned it slowly under my gaze, a wry smile caressing his face. I stammered to say something, but Jack was quicker. “I had it appraised, that’s six thousand right there.” I asked where he had found such a ruby. He rolled his eyes. Bonnie told him to spit it out. Finally he said “okay, so we have a deal with Janik. She went there and got some stuff, but she said there’s too much to carry. If we can go with multiple people, we can bring a lot back. We’re gonna split 80-20 with her, this is down-payment.”
I stared at him, but at this point, the story was too unbelievable not to be a little bit true. That weekend, we loaded the hiking backpacks and gear into the back of Bonnie’s van, and hit the road. The drive was about 5 hours. At first we tried to pass the time with idle conversation, in-jokes and music. After a couple hours, I finally breached the topic. “So, what are we going to do with the money, if this is real?”
Barry said he would be able to help out his mum. She had been through a nasty divorce with his dad a couple years back, and the legal fees had eaten through what was left of her savings. Everyone nodded, agreeing that would be a great thing to do. Then, Jack said it was his turn. At first, he mused about finally getting out of debt. Then he looked at Bonnie, and began speaking wistfully of how he would buy them a house where they could make love and raise children. Bonnie turned her head to meet his gaze with an impassive face, said nothing, and then pulled her attention back to the road. After a moment of painful silence, Barry interjected to ask for my thoughts on what I would do with the money.
I considered it carefully, because it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that the treasure could be real. Thinking aloud, I figured with all the gems and gold, I could probably buy at least a one-hundred gallon fish-tank. I could even do a full saltwater setup, maybe get some corals and anemone. Oh, that wouldn’t fit in my apartment though, since they were usually at least ten feet long. I wondered if we could bring back enough riches to buy a house. Surely if everyone pooled their portion, we could even get a really nice house? Jack interrupted my train of thought suddenly, saying “we’d better not discuss these details until we have the gold in hand, right everyone?” After that, the conversation petered out.
Eventually the van turned off the quiet mountain road onto a gravel path which led to the trail-head. Jack said, according to Professor Janik, we would take the normal trail for about ten kilometres before we would need to go off-trail to find the entrance. It was mid-morning when we started hiking. We stopped for a rest and lunch at noon. Then again at supper time. By the time we got to the place we would leave the main trail, everyone was exhausted. The sun was beginning to set, so we set up camp in a flat area just beyond.
That night was bitter cold. I huddled close with the others in the small tent. The only sounds were whistling wind and chattering teeth. That morning, we wasted over an hour walking in circles. The ground and sky were both a blinding white, so we couldn’t get oriented properly. We hiked all day, looking for the spot that the professor spoke about. “It’ll be this one” Jack said before every outcropping of stone. After the third time it wasn’t, I started having thoughts about pushing Jack off the nearby ridge. I dismissed them right away. During dinner, Bonnie started to sing a song that no-one else knew. It was slow and melodious, with a haunting feeling to it. I found myself enchanted, only snapping out of the trance to finish my soup. It had gone cold. After a while she stopped.
That night, I stared up at the tent above me while listening to Jack try to crawl into Bonnie’s sleeping bag. Bonnie was barely awake, and kept muttering something that I couldn’t quite hear from out of the vagueness of sleep. The rustling of sleeping backs intensified. The tone of her muttering grew urgent. Suddenly, I felt an impact nearby, accompanied by a yelp. Barry’s voice came out in a low whisper. A harsh sound cutting through the stifled moans of pain. I didn’t hear what he said, but after that, all was still.
The next morning, I woke up to the sounds of raised voices. Barry and Jack were arguing outside the tent. Barry said he had counted the rations, and they would need to turn back first thing tomorrow or sooner. Jack argued they had one extra day‘s worth, and they must be close to the treasure now. Bonnie stood apart from them, staring off into the snowy sky past the ridge. I stepped in to mediate, suggesting we could do a half-day, have a light dinner, and then go back some time tomorrow with enough rations to spare. Barry nodded slowly, and after a minute Jack begrudgingly agreed.
The party naturally split in two. Barry and Jack leading, and Bonnie and I trailing behind. We passed ridge after ridge, with no sign of the purported cave entrance. Bonnie kept glancing at me, then looking away. When I finally caught her gaze I saw something sparkling in her eyes, but she looked away so quickly that I couldn’t be sure. When it was nearing lunch, I suggested we set up the camp now, and then we would have most of the hard work done before tonight.
While Jack and Barry argued about where the tent should be put, Bonnie and I looked around the nearby curve in the ridge. Unsurprisingly, it was just stone. I began to walk back to the tent. After a moment, I realized Bonnie was not with me, and turned back to see her staring at the side of the mountain. Following her gaze to the side of the mountain, I looked at the stone. It was covered in snow, with the roots of alpine trees pushing through cracks in the rock. I looked to Bonnie. After a moment, she spoke in her quiet voice: “right there”. I told her there was nothing. She didn’t reply. I said it was getting cold, so we need to head back to the tent. She looked at me with a completely blank expression, and said “you don’t want to see.” Then she turned away and began to march back toward the tent.
I arrived back to find Barry and Jack engaged in a sort of protracted argument. They would linger in tense silence for some minutes, then one of them would say a few words and the other’s face would tighten. A few minutes later, he would say his own words. I tried to understand what they were arguing about, but it didn’t make any sense. I figured it was too removed from context for me to know. Bonnie was even more silent than usual. After dinner, with the sun setting, Jack and Barry’s exchange had reduced to single words, and Bonnie had still not spoken. In this state of affairs we all climbed into the tent.
That night was long. I spent time counting how many seconds passed between each harsh whisper that Barry or Jack uttered. There was snowfall, but little wind. As the hours grew long, Barry, then Jack joined Bonnie in the realm of sleep. I tried to follow them but my mind kept returning to a strange feeling. Something just felt off about this whole thing. It wasn’t right, like I was missing something obvious, but the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced it was a deeper issue than I could puzzle out.
I suddenly awoke with a clear mind. I must have been sleeping, but I was not sure what time it was. The others were still asleep, and I gently slid free from my sleeping bag. I dressed, and did my best to quieten the zipper as I climbed out of the tent. The moon was full, and the air was still. It was brutally cold, but strangely, I barely felt it. I began to walk along the ridge of the mountain. When I got to the bend, I thought I saw something from the corner of my eye. The pale form of a woman, sliding across the snow. When I looked again, she was gone.
Beneath a tangle of roots, there was a narrow hole into the rock face. I remembered looking in that spot before, I could swear it was solid stone. I got on my hands and knees and crawled into the hole. The stone was hard and cold, and I could feel sharp pebbles scraping me. The tunnel went deeper, and I followed. Suddenly, it opened up into a space.
There was barely enough moonlight seeping from a crack in the ceiling to see. I was in a long chamber, which had large stone boxes lined along the sides. There were pillars surrounding the central point of the chamber. On a circular stone dias there lay a pile. I approached it, and the pile shimmered in the dim light. I saw it was metals, gemstones, coins and chalices. I scarcely breathed. This was it.
I jerked around to face the sudden scraping noise from behind me. Bonnie crawled through the entrance tunnel. I could barely tell it was her beneath the thick layers of gear. She approached slowly, and began to pull back her hood. I saw she had her hair down, and looked paler than usual. After her hood, she began to unzip her jacket. “Bonnie, it’s too cold” I stayed to say, but she was shedding layers like a snake. Soon she was on top of me, pushing me backwards with a hand on my throat. I tried to resist but she was too strong. She pushed me down over the pile of wealth, and I cried out in pain as my back smashed into the cold metal.
I looked up to see her removing her clothing. I struggled but she was heavy. Strangely heavy. It felt like her legs were growing wider, pinning me beneath the weight. I tried to say anything, but couldn’t make more than choking sounds. She began to change. Her body melted like wax, seeping onto and around me. Rolls of thick flesh began to spill forth onto the floor. I could barely breathe. The air was hot and filled with an indescribable stench. Steam began to fill the chamber, and the sound of dripping came from all around. I twisted and was able to free my right arm, and I yanked to break the fibrous tendrils which surrounded it. I saw the tendrils were spreading over my torso and neck. I yanked something hard from the pile and began to strike at the mass which covered me. I felt sudden surges of hot, wet fluid pouring onto me. It burned intensely as the fluid poured between my legs. In a final twist, I was able to pull myself free and fall down the other side of the treasure pile, scattering gems and artifacts over the wet stone.
Righting myself, I gasped and pulled for oxygen. The room was filled with an acrid steam, through which I saw the silhouette of the formless mass. It slowly moved toward me, flowing over the gold and gems. I turned to face the beast, which stood between me and the exit, and roared “WHO ARE YOU?!” It halted, and began to pulse and shiver, then a disembodied voice echoed through the cave. “An Angel” it seemed to say in dozens of different echoing voices.
Seizing the momentary pause, I sprinted past that thing. As I passed, thin tendrils latched onto me, and were torn away as I threw myself at the narrow hole. I struck the cold stone, and felt something break in my shoulder, but the adrenaline carried me forward. The tunnel grew colder, and I heard small crunching noises when my hot breath connected with the frigid air. There was a shaking, chortling sound from behind me, and I felt my left leg growing heavier. I looked down to see hundreds of grey-brown tendrils wrapping around my boot. Making one last heave, I twisted and flung myself free from the hole.
I entered into a white void. A snowstorm had begun on the mountain, and I felt the breath snatched from my mouth. I began to crawl, keeping a hand to the cliffside for direction. I couldn’t see more than a meter in front of me, but when I looked back toward the cave, I only saw white. Then, the cliff which had been my guide fell away. I crawled vaguely toward where it had been. When I heard a crack, and felt the ground under my chest begin to fall, I scrambled back from the sudden edge.
I lay there, curled in a ball and overwhelmed by fear. I felt my body began to shake in convulsive spasms which ran along my spine. My feet were already beginning to go numb, and I struggled to wiggle my toes. I knew I had to move, or else I would surely die. I started to crawl, and before long the snow abated slightly, so I could see enough to stand and walk. I passed parts of the ridge which looked familiar, and felt a warm surge of confidence, but I kept one hand on the cliffside in-case the snow returned. I heard a crunching sound, and looked to find my hand resting on a pale rock. Beneath my hand-print were tangled threads of off-blonde, frozen to a solid mass.
I fell to my knees, wiping the snow from the rock, only to see a pale face under the white. Bonnie’s face, with an expression that seemed to have never known emotion. I tapped on her, and put my ear to her mouth. She was completely frozen. I shouted out in rage, banging on her crossed legs underneath the snowfall. She seemed to be naked, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed. What was she doing there? A pang of horror rang through my heard as I realized she must have come looking for me. My gaze rose from the ground, as I confronted what I had caused.
I stared in spellbinding terror at that face, while the wind whipped and howled. A face that had never known time, older than the mountain stone. My gaze frozen to Bonnie as she was frozen to the mountain. I felt that if I looked away, she would stop existing. That her life may be gone, but she would persist forever in this moment, so long as I never lost awareness of her. Somewhere, in the sound of the wind, there was a tiny spark of recognition in my mind. It was as if a voice had spoken. I could swear I heard the word “angel”. Something in me jerked violently. My gaze twisted around, and I and scrambled to my feet. I started to run, heedless of peril. I screamed in a hoarse voice into the wind. Only the rushing chaos replied to me. Then, faintly, I heard a sound. It was Barry, calling out my name. I ran to him, collapsing at his feet. He embraced me and pulled me back toward the tent.
When I woke it was bright outside. Jack was there, and he gave me hot soup, and crackers. There were tears in his eyes. He didn’t say much. When Barry came back to the tent later, he explained that the weather was clearing, and they should be able to hike down without issue.
I asked what happened. Barry shook his head and said “we woke up and you weren’t there.” Barry told me how stupid it was to go out like that. He said that it wasn’t just my life that I was playing with. Jack nodded solemnly. I opened my mouth to speak, but just then Bonnie stepped into the tent. She asked if I was well enough to hike down today. A voice came from my throat which said “I think so.” Bonnie said that she and Jack would be able to carry my bag and supplies. I thanked her. I raised the soup to my mouth, and felt a dull ache pulse through my shoulder.