A Climb up A Mountain: A Sketch

By

Charles D. O’Connor III

Slowly I made my ascent up the rough and jagged mountain. Some distance away the moon's pale light burst through a luster of gray clouds, revealing miles of sharply gabled rooftops below.  At that moment I felt suddenly isolated and threatened. Throughout my twenty-odd years as a professional mountain climber I had tackled a wide range of challenges around the world, overcoming obstacles far worse than what lay ahead of me. What could be the source of

this eerie fear?

All I could think was that this was my first assault on a mountain in over five years.  During that time I had been caring for my cancer-stricken mother.

"No need to be afraid," I told myself. "You have been here many times before - just

get used to being in harness again."  After a little self-assessment, my fears seemed to fade, and I resumed the climb.

The night was peaceful.  The stars sparkled like diamonds in the onyx-black sky, and as I paused in admiration a soft breeze tenderly caressed my cheeks. I never felt closer to the heavens as at that moment.  Then, while struggling up for a more commanding view, there came a startling shift in the atmosphere.

One by one, the stars vanished, and blood seemed to ooze slowly down the moon's

ghost like surface.  I looked on in awe, bewildered at what this supernatural event might portend.  A baleful whine began from somewhere in the distance.  Each moment it grew louder and louder, nearer and nearer, and dread filled me as though I were prey.  Gasping for air I hurtled down the mountain, heedless of cuts on my knees against the sharp and jagged escarpment.

Then, as though by design, while seeking sound footing, I glimpsed a thick red fog

advancing from the horizon and drawing near the valley.  The fog came on howling and spreading like a desert storm, tearing the earth, snapping trees, drawing the water from lakes and streams, destroying homes blanketing the earth like the shroud upon the corpse of what had been a mini-paradise.

Struck dumb by what I had just seen I stared, wild-eyed and haggard at this loathsome phenomenon, babbling incoherently at it to "go away ... go away!"

Morbid phrases started to form in my mind: "...and in the end they will come for you"; The church bells are tolling for their dead"; and from the Book of Revelations: "and the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from the heavens to the earth, and it was given the keys of the abyss", "and it opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace."

Suddenly all was clear.  The Red Fog was the embodiment of every one of those bleak and abhorrent passages because the truth of it found my mind as if they were called to me up the mountain, like the snake charmers Cobra emerging from the basked to the sound of the flute.  For a time, Mother Nature allowed me to scale her mysterious creations of rock, and gaze upon other wondrous and amazing things from her hand.  But then she had turned on me for a reason beyond my understanding, causing all her creations to focus their wrath on me.

As the fog reached me, the air gave off a repugnant smell reminiscent of old church graveyards where the corpses have washed up to the surface - then it separated and masked the whole expanse of sky and land.

Imprisoned in a world of crimson, and all means of escape obscured, I backed helplessly against the mountain, and peered frantically about.  All was silent and still, save for swirls of red fog gliding and the wind whistling from afar.  Then at once, a dark chasm opened before me.

Within the abyss I saw orange and yellow flames, hissing and erupting over mounds of human bodies.  Each body was desperately clawing at the torrid air with melting fingers and limbs, empty sockets staring at the heavens pleading for deliverance.

One body on the edge of freeing itself was overtaken by a sudden sound of beating bat wings and then snatched by a hideous vulture-faced gargoyle.  The sky was filled with such scorpion tailed creatures, faces red and rubbery, bearing green, glowing eyes, mouths of layered fangs, slavering they swarmed down upon the helpless, tearing them from the flames and carrying them to some dark lair unseen.

Soon, with no human bodies to feed them, the flames subsided, and afar off space itself begin to heave like a beating heart.  As this sensation grew the appearance resolved into a massive figure thrusting for entry with frightening and supernatural power.  I cringed more tightly into my niche hoping that whatever this new entity might be, it could not break through.

Planets and shining particles from space streamed toward the outline of this giant figure, gathering about it in blue and purple shafts of light as though awaiting salvation.  The cosmos itself had never imagined such a thing, yet here it was, a titanic play on the grandest stage.

The atmosphere itself began to crack like and egg, widening as frightening and indescribable colors emerged, planets and space debris whirling in a frenzy like starved carnivores feeding off the light.  At last the light exploded and legions of the horrible flying creatures poured forth as from some other dimension -- screaming they flew at me their poisonous maw ecrudescent.  Sweet oblivion took me at this.

I came to at morning, golden rays of sunlight were breaking through the dark clouds and a refreshing fragrance of dew hung heavily in the air.  The previous night's events seemed vague and distant somehow.  A strong sense of rejuvenation was upon the land, as if it had been purged of something dark and sinister.  Painfully I got to my feet to soak it all in, when a shock of realization struck as my gaze absorbed the remnants of the nightmarish valley below.

Mid the rubble and shattered monuments made by men's intelligence and ingenuity, lay an eerie peace upon the land.  But sight alone is deceptive, so I climbed higher to gain a better vantage. At the highest point I surveyed the battered landscape and saw it strangely altered: there was now a limitless stretch of sand and clustered in the center were large pyramidal shapes seemingly constructed of diamond.  Around about were great carven images of rattlesnakes.  Each seemed to stare guarding an appointed direction, as if ready to strike any intruder.

The ancient marrow-deep fear and hatred of the serpent set ice in my bones.  My foot brushed an object caught in a small declivity there atop the mountain. I knelt down and grasped what appeared to be an ancient scroll -- yellowed with age and moldy dust, unreadable but for this paragraph:

"And so it will be when the human world meets its demise: Everything created for and built my Man shall be uprooted and cast down.  Mankind, prideful, and most vile of creatures imagining themselves the highest beings shall then be broken and torn apart by the flying creatures, themselves the new and Lordly inhabitants of earth and sky.  They shall dwell in safety forever in their Snake-guarded houses of diamond.

To celebrate the dawn of the new age, when earth shall have wakened from her nightmares, one human shall be spared for sacrifice..."

From thereon the text was illegible, and I was roused from the effort of reading by disturbance in the air behind me as of great, slow, inexorable wings.