Below the Mountain's Peak. By Violet LaFleur

It was a steep, steep ascent, but nothing I hadn't seen before. I'd been climbing mountains all my life, afterall. A long time of freeform and mixed rope climbing will make even the most impossible inclines seem typical. Typical in completion, mind you; in confidence. Each climb is surely unique. But they all more-or-less follow a set of rules. A set that one gets used to, year by year.

"How has no one around here seen it?" Terrance said, Head cocked sharply upward. It wasn't the mountain, mind you, that so entrapped his attention. But what was firmly planted onto the side of it.

A rectangular indent, near perfect proportions, sat cleanly on the rock. A hundred meters above us, a window into. Something.

"We're pretty far out. Maybe its just like, a trick of the light... or something." I said, as I readied my gear. We were on a grassy outcrop, sitting underneath the Mountain's heft. Trees lined a rough circle of earth in which we sat, gulping water and preparing for the trip upwards.

"That can't be right. Look!" He pointed up at the purported anomaly.

"I can see it from here, the way the light is pouring in!! That's... its just weird, man..."

"pfft, C'mon. It, its not that weird. You ever seen Giant's Causeway? Now THAT is weird"

I stood up, readjusting my pack.

"Or, or those, I mean you seen em right? There are those places where all the plate rocks smashed together a million years ago, and by sheer chance it just so happened to make a bunch of staircases? out of the rock??? THAT, is weird"

I gestured up towards the weird looking formation.

"this though?"

I smirked at him.

"Now C'mon, we can beat daylight and set up camp if we move now"

"We can find a peak, or something. No need to get within a dozen meters of your scary square"

"Pfft... no way man" Terrance said, standing back up.

"Something... Something's wrong, wrong with that! It's just, bad vibes. I'm, I'm not going."

He began to make his way back towards the trail we had just hiked. I couldn't believe it. We had climbed the underside of OVERHANGS together, and this? THIS??? Is what freaks him out???

"T c'mon dude, what, you're gonna make me climb this thing by myself? Who's gonna watch my back!!"

This was beyond unusual. I had no idea what had gotten into him. A few hours ago he was gun-ho about another climb. And now he's all but pissing his pants.

"Clyde, you can do whatever you want. But I am NOT going up there."

I was stunned. Years of sheer cliff's with this guy, and only NOW does he bail on me. Because of what? An optical illusion?

"FINE! I don't know what's gotten into you T, but let me tell you. This is NOT. COOL."

"I don't care. I'm going. You? Do whatever the hell you want.."

It was like he wasn't even there. Like his entire personality was wiped. Wiped by the sight of, that. Did a rectangle kill his dad or something?

Within a few moments of tense silence, Terrance had left me all alone, on that patch of dirt.

"Fucking lunatic..." I said to myself, under my breath. Alright. Guess its just me now. So do I climb it? Or, not... Its never smart to climb without a buddy. He himself is adamant as all hell about that. Which just makes this all the stranger...

I mulled it over for a few minutes, pacing back and forth, glancing up at the mountain, then back down again.

You know what, fuck it! I drove all the way out here, and I'M not gonna let myself catch nerves just because my friend is having a geometric PTSD flashback. I'm going for it. And I'll look down on this Earth, knowing I conquered yet another climb. T won't know that feeling today, but I will.

Stubbornly, I bore my supplies, and started the first step up.

"Up one, test the strength, up and over, three points of contact" repeating mantras to myself, I scaled the face of the mountain, little by little. The act had almost become routine, at this point. So much so that my mind began to wander.

The tiers of limestone stretched horizontally like planks of wood, endlessly to one side or another. My point of view limited, being what so close to the rock. But unlike a plank of wood, it was clear there was no deliberate placement of these rows. That each convenient pock to place a hand or foot into was an alien organization. Like the Giant's Causeway, like earthern stairs. Here I stood though, manipulating these by-chance formations for my own movement. An arena so randomly strewn, and yet I could find a legible path throughout.

The hours passed, as the sun ascended, and began a steady descent right back down.

"The same as I would do," I thought, reaching for another hold. It wouldn't be too long now. Within a few more paces I ought to be able to set camp, and have a thoroughly peaceful night. In that case, it was probably for the better that T chickened out. Otherwise he'd be nagging away a crystal clear night that surely lies in my future.

Finally, my fingers felt around the flat edge of a plateau. Excitedly, I got into position, swinging myself up and over the stable floor a few inches a-

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It stood like a monolith. Like some great, alien portal. Four corners. Clean. Impossibly clean. Mason's Envy. It was no illusion. Far from it. It was very, very real.

Surely, surely I didn't plot my path through it.... did I? Did my path curve at some point in the ascent? No wondering about it now...

Whatever ideas we had looking up at it from a hundred meters below were shattered. It was far. FAR. Bigger than it seemed. It made no sense. It soared easily twenty meters above me, and forty across. It, it wasn't anything like this from below... It couldn't have been more than four meters high, even adjusting for distance. This peak wasn't THAT tall. And yet...

I saw the peak above it. Where I could make camp, and look out amoungst the stars; the void of space. This was an entirely different void altogether... one I made no plans for.

Cautiously, I approached the entrance of the structure. Step by step, until I could put my hand on the interior of the walls, and stand a few paces deep within the entry way. A step inside created no echo. No, this was a chamber far too large to register the echo of a mere man. A basseous stillness, giant vibratious notes were the only thing to be granted reciprocation within these walls. A kind of tangible buzzing that not so much happens TO you, than around you. Perhaps even a company of men would fail to cause any disturbance worthy of note to a place like this.

The Cave was large. Large, large doesn't begin to describe it. The Cave opened up on my right into a Cavern, a stupendously large, long cavern, spanning what must have been the whole southern interior of the mountain. It stretched on. Hollow. A mountain. A mountain isn't supposed to be hollow. Why is it hollow? Whatever answers my mind tried to create, each came up an illegible jumble. It stretched on and on, until the sunlight itself lost its strength, succumbing to a balmy darkness. Whatever I could see of the cave walls mirrored its entrance. Sharp, right angles. On my left were two angles, one closest and one farthest, while on my right a set of ceramic smooth walls stretched out and out, ending who knows where. Indistinguishable from an industrial concrete ceiling, the top of the cavern stretched on. Towering above.

No. No. Certainly, No.

I dashed out of the cave. Then back inside. Then back out again.

How. How could that be possible. It was surely an illusion. The very thought made me laugh in a frustrated way. If thats the case, then this entire thing ought to have been an illusion from the start...

The ceiling was taller than the roof. considerably so. Or atleast, it must have been. From some sort of reflective mirrors game, a spacetime anomaly broke out of its binds, a standard geometric structure rendered non-euclidean to the disma-

"GHAAAH"

Very very nearly, my fettered pacing almost sent me careening over the edge of an outcrop, some meters from the entrance. scrambling back onto solid ground, I tried to catch my breath. But even the very air in a place like this felt as if it had taken in the characteristics of deep, great bassisity. Heavy, and hot. Surely the humidity trapped within this kind of structure would be one to contribute. But I had breathed heavy air before. A cube of aluminium compared to a cube of tungsten. It weighed down my very lungs. But whatever bizarre anomaly had occupied my mind before was now entirely replaced with what was over that edge.

I continued, crawling along on my belly, to the edge of the rift, no longer trusting my legs to do the job. As if this anomaly had sapped my very skills from me.

The cavern continued below, but my initial idea was, once again: wrong. The sun, an hour or so from setting and brightly lighting up the inside of the cave, was not the only source of light. The edge dropped off cleanly, reflecting the sculpting of all other features in this place. Like over the edge of a cube, it dropped, down, down, down. At the bottom, I could see the two corners that finished each wall: The one I was standing on, and the one far off from me. And between those corners, upon the floor, were brilliant, shimmering pools. The grey of the walls gave way to a pearl green, as the cresting waves of the surface pressed their impermanent impressions against them. Whatever light was allowing me to witness this, seemed to be coming directly from the waters below. Generating it. It was impossible to tell just how deep those pools were, nor how large each was. Each was cratered in its own separate oval, running along the length of the bottom. But curiously, losing even itself to whatever encompassing darkness lay to my right.

And the shimmering. The shimmering ocean green that subsumed the very air. That rose sparkles upon the atmosphere, reflecting the light from what mystery worked beneath them. The entire thing was a work of beauty. Of majestry.

Far after the sun set, and far after the moon rose, I lay there. Transfixed. Mesmerized. Watching the shimmering specks floating in that refreshingly light ocean of air in lime hew, turn and tide their directions depending on the humble puddles beneath them. These walls were no longer limestone and granite. They were sheets of flawless Emerald, whos reality only ended when the light from below did. And it was not about to end any time soon. In terms of reach sure, but never in perpetuity.

In reach...

In reach.....

....

I had been so hypnotized, that I completely forgot about my supplies. Hurriedly, feverishly, I went to unpack. There lay my ropes. A few bundles of 10 meters. Ropes for climbing, for camp. To hell with weight threshholds. All of it would go to use. Now.

Unroll. Connect each end with caribiners, hell I don't care. I just need to know. Know if I even have a chance...

Work was slow in the moonlight, so instead I took my hands to work above the ridge. The pale green light shown against my working hands, caribiner after caribiner, rope after rope.

With each new section, the rope was lowered deeper and deeper into the cavern. But soon too, did the dread reach deeper and deeper within me. Would I have enough? I... I'm not sure. I'm not sure I will. The depth would surely exceed 200, generously. And I don't even have enough rope for 50...

With every length I connected, and threw off, my hope grew dimmer and dimmer, as the rope continued to limply hang off, swaying in the air of the cavern. I thought how cruel it must be, that whether it was 5 meters of 50, both would keep me from reaching the bottom...

But finally.

Finally.

The rope bent. Just slightly.

I looked down and surely, there it was.

At the sight I hurriedly found something, anything to brace the end, before finding a suitable crag. Hammering in a peg, I tied off. Now, all that was left to do. Was descend.

Smoothly, as calmly as I could, I began to repel down. Down the near perfectly smooth, slopeless edge of the cliff. I don't know exactly what drew me so strongly to it. But this entire structure, this entire, environment. It was so deeply, wholly unique from anything I have ever seen. Not only in nature, in the artificial world as well. Where else on Earth could you find a place like this?? Surely, no where else. It was completely and utterly One. And I would in turn, be One to step into it.

As I descended, the heavy, humid air lightened its load. Pretty soon, the far-away sparkles of the mysterious lower atmosphere became not so far away. With every meter I descended, that emerald green mist, shimmering and sparkling so, wrapped itself around me, ever so gently. Ever so cool, so crisp. The breath within my lungs became lighter. Refreshed, refreshed beyond anything I've known. What smelled of balmy stagnant above was replaced with a fresh summer's bounty below. What a garden lay below me, I thought. I glanced down, the pools were much, much closer. And much larger. They looked utterly appetizing, an indulgent liquid through and through. But even so, as fast as I wanted to repel, I too wanted to enjoy this atmosphere. I did not under any circumstance, want to decrease a single second of existing in this plane, than I potentially may have. One step at a time, one breath at a time. Taking in each breath as life itself, and letting it nourish me. This was the only air on Earth that could do such, of that I was certain.

Was I even on Earth, anymore? Surely, a place this sublime could not be called Earth.

I was about half-way down, at this point. Maybe 20 meters. Maybe 200. As seamlessly as the lime green mist subsumed me, I realized that this place did not follow the rules I was accoustomed to. There was no fear in this discovery. There was too much beauty to be fearful.

What there was fear in though, was the growing. Growing. Rumbling. Emerging from the darkwing of the cavern. The gentle peace was a slimy tension. Even the shimmering fae seemingly froze in their place. I hung there, dumbly, halfway between the ridge and the floor. Do I try and climb back up? Do I make any movement at all? If ever two could beget infinite, those are the number of questions I struggled to keep up with in my racing mind.

The shaking soon transferred from auditory to tangible, as the entire place vibrated, the very granite shaking. I struggled to keep my grip.

A shape. A figure, an entity an impossibly large, inunderstandably large thing soon emerged from the dark. Breathlessly. Unceremoniously, as a deer emerges from the brush. I looked up, looked up at the towering, gargantuan cosmic entity that in a single second, had made itself known to me. Much of it still obscured by the darkness, the black cloud parted to reveal, something. A part, a component is all I understood. A supporting limb? A, a dangling protuberance, a hanging proboscis?? All I knew was that of this utterly maddening component that planted itself in my vision, a brown and yellow affront, tree trunks of disgusting matted bark that twisted above a pulsing pink creature, this thing was but one of many.

The mist. The mist dissapeared, almost in an instant. The puddles were gone. Deep streaming rivers of deep ocean purple, a wine so tempest and terrible ran along the bottoms of the cave in a hailing torrent. And that pleasant coolness was but a cruel distant memory, that mist turned to steam, and the temperature shot four score from twenty to eighty without notice. A wild gale threw itself at me, this way and that. As a leaf in a storm I hung on for dear dear life, hands digging in to the rope as I was tossed and battered against the rock walls, boiling hot torrents screaming below me. I didn't understand. What had I done wrong??? What had gone wrong??? I screamed, I screamed animalistically, desperately. Looking down, there was no telling what would kill me first, the water or the force of fall, should I slip. A cloud soon enveloped, a roaring, dampening choking cloud of steam and water, hanging as dumbly in the air as I did from the rope. But its wrath knew no bounds. My skin was soon a blaze, swarmed by this maniacal change in environment.

Damned if it even sees me!! Whos to say??? Whos to say it can even register me!! As soon as my senses were mine again, I made a wild, wild scramble back up the rope. One meter. Two meters. It was no use, I would slide back down, the walls of the cave now covered in a slick yuck that offered no traction, debris and water mixing together to form a thick sludge as slick as oil, the rope itself becoming soaked with the very air that surrounded us, my palms slick with grease and uncontrollable fear, shaking as they frantically tried to throw themselves at anything to bring us closer to the ridge. It was no use. No use at all. Every attempt up was one step forward and fifteen back. My hands burned. My eyes burned. My skin and feet and arms were all soon blanketed in that torrential baking air, boiling within themselves. I clung, clung desperately to the rope that I now put my life into more than ever before, more than I ever had in the decades and decades of life I've lived.

I could hear nothing. Only the storming madness above, below, everywhere around me. I could see nothing. I dare not open my eyes to the boiling swirling cacophony. All I can do is hang on.

Hang on.

Hang on.

Don't let go.

Don't let go.

Do not let go.

Do no let go.

Do not let go.

Don't let go.

Hang on.

Do not let go.

Hang on.

Hang on.

Hang on.

Hang on.

...

......

..............

..................................

...........................................................

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"It was as if his body was flash-frozen. Perfectly mummified. I've never seen anything like it."I relayed over the phone. It had been two day since we got that call from the concerned out-of-towner. Called in the morning, said he hadn't heard from his friend yet. Had gone hiking round here the day before. Well, we found him, dangling off a tree branch by his climbing gear. Poor Mary was scared half to death when she phoned it in, said she was afraid that someone had hung themselves.

When we got there, it was just the damnedest thing. As if he was tossed, tossed from somewhere high up. His climbing gear was all up in the branches, and he was hanging low, just swaying in the wind, a meter or two off the ground. Back, and forth. Now that land is a damn good ways away from the range, how do you explain that? Anyway, when we finally cut em down, It got even stranger. The coroner said he was cooked from the inside out, but by golly I swear: he was completely covered in ice. Ice! In July, no less! Just clinging to that rope, hands damn near fused to the thing. Not like it mattered anyway. By the time the hospital got em, he was just sopping wet and cold.

Weird enough, we did have a detective blow in, though. I asked about it, politely of course. Well, he clued me in that this sorta thing does happen from time to time, in these partsa the woods. But all in all, its just impossible to know how.

"People have tried, believe me Sheriff." He said, with a hopeless kind of chuckle.

"But the cause of death was Exposure. Theres no need to overcomplicate it."