For a long time, Harmon just lay there, drinking in the moonlight that now fell across his upper body, soaking it in as if it were nourishment. The sense of euphoria he felt inhaling the fresh air made him wonder just how close to suffocation he had been under all that snow. And, on the heels of this thought... would he have stayed there too long if that thing -- whatever it was -- hadn't passed by so closely and goosed him into action?
All these thoughts were nicely distracting him from the corporeal concern of his broken leg, a subject he knew that he had to address soon. Although being packed in snow for an hour or so had reduced the sharpness of the pain, there was still no way for him to move in any meaningful way without rousing its wrath. He'd had plenty of broken bones before, and could tell that this one was shaping up to be in his top three, both in terms of pain and inconvenience.
His first goal should be to get his head up above the snow and take a look around, but since he had been thrown under this sheltering tree and half-buried while face down, this was going to require his turning over first. To be honest, at his age there were mornings when this exact maneuver seemed like a tall order even when he was in his own warm bed, all his body parts in working order, an urgent need to piss jumpstarting his motivation.
He grabbed on to the branch that he had shaken to clear his way to the open air, and pulled forward. He didn't think about it, didn't prepare for it, because no amount of either of those things was going to make it easier. This was the time when he just had to do the thing that was hard to do. Do it, and have it done. He pulled again. By increments, at first large and then smaller, he drew himself forward until his shoulder was up against the branch, his legs had almost fully emerged from the leg-shaped hollows they left in the snow, and tears were coursing down the veteran skier's cheeks.
Then he rolled over onto his back, wincing for the fiftieth time as his legs crossed. He had done it with the intact leg going over the top, however, so he could reach down and pull it the rest of the way without too much extra pain. Then he braced himself against the branch, and sat up. The old pain hit him in all-new places as he changed position, but he had expected that. He tried to imagine being a rock in a stream, letting the water pass over and around him without resisting against it. It had been a meditation exercise that had sounded like bullshit when he first learned it, and only slightly less so now. But it was working (or at least he thought it might be), so he kept at it.
His head rose above the level of the snow, and he sucked in his breath in shock. It wasn't that the view of the mountainside wasn't familiar, it was that after an hour or two of being trapped in such a small space, the sight of such a huge, open area was hard to process. He found himself looking across a field of tiny hills, and immediately assumed these were other trees that had been covered the way his had. The constant rising and falling of the land added up to an upward slope, revealing that he was looking back the way he had come.
He was too low to the ground, or perhaps merely looking in the wrong direction, to see the lodge, but he wondered how quickly the thing that had been stalking him got to it. After the sound of shattering glass, it had seemed to take off at a considerable speed, but he also knew that he got well away before the snow-wave had overtaken him. Whatever the reason, he hoped that the residents of the lodge had figured out a way to evade it, or scare it off. He knew that he could attempt to slip back into Kerren's mind to check, but was reluctant to. It took so much of his energy, and he would need every ounce if he were going to get out of this situation on his own. Not only that, but it had felt like an invasion of the woman's privacy, and then she had only been partially conscious. Now it would be too weird. He chuckled at himself for thinking in such terms at a time like this, as if social mores really applied here and now, whatever that term even meant anymore.
There was something he was starting to notice, especially now that he was above the surface again. He had spent over half his life on mountains, and knew the feel of them, their breath and temperament. There were even times -- usually when he was high -- that he felt he was tapping into a sense of its movement, those impossibly vast, geologic time scales by which mountains roam the world.
But now, he could sense none of those things. This mountain was dead. Or possibly not even a mountain at all.
As he turned his head from side to side, a thin, flat gleaming line leapt into his vision. He turned his head toward it, but it disappeared. He bobbed his head around, ducking it weaving it, trying to regain sight of that light, and eventually found it. To his surprise, it was moonlight bouncing off the grip end of one of his ski poles. He had assumed they had both been thrown even farther than he had when the wave hit, but he must have held on to this one long enough to get it tangled in the tree's outer branches.
He smiled at his good luck, and then realized that he now had very little excuse not to tuck it under his arm like a crutch and try to hoof it the rest of the way down the mountain. Well, then that was how it was going to have to be.
He was surprised to find that he had enough strength in his hand to wrench the ski pole free from the tree's formidable grip. Doing so only caused mild discomfort in the parts of him still under the snow, all of them. But this was the unspoken pact of the athlete; there are times when you will be hurt, and when this happens, you will have to take care of it yourself, to one extent or another. You do it without complaint, knowing that everyone else falling down the hill/plunging through the air/slamming into other people are running the same risk. The hard part comes, and then you deal with it.
Like a chick emerging from the whiteness of its egg, Harmon began to squirm his way up and out of the imprisoning snow. He grimaced constantly, and progressed slowly, but progressed nonetheless.
-9.6-
Carlos didn't ask any questions until after he was reasonably sure that the thing outside wasn't going to try to push itself into the room again. The door and wall on that side of the little room was stable and solid for a good two minutes before he scooted over to the fallen stack of books. He scooped up the old paperback copy of The Qoloni and looked closely at the cover art, scrutinizing it.
"What are you saying, Benny?" he said, waving the book in his injured friend's direction. "That the thing out there, is like this?" He pointed to the figure pressing against the bent mirror on the front cover.
Benny, still lying on the floor next to the fallen stack of books, clutching the iron Deertail logo, expelled a great amount effort, and took a deep breath, before belching forth the words, "Not like... Is."
This just confused Carlos even more. He looked at the artwork, then at the door again. It couldn't be... He tapped the author's name on the cover. "Bruce Casey. He's actually here this weekend." His brow furrowed, struggling to put the pieces together. He said his next sentence as matter-of-factly as he could, trying it out, seeing if he could do it while remaining sane. "So this book is based on real life, he somehow brought this creature with him, and now it's terrorizing us after a terrible avalanche." He considered this last part, then amended, "Or it actually caused the avalanche."
Benny made as much an approximation of a shrug as he could, lying on the floor on his side.
Carlos blinked his eyes, widened them in the dim light of the lamp, as if trying to fully rouse himself from sleep. "Well, I'll tell ya, old buddy, if I hadn't just spent the last five minutes watching that thing--" he pointed at the door, trying not to let his finger tremble as he mentioned the monster outside, "-- doing its fancy trick, I would say that you were crazy. Or maybe we were both hurt in the avalanche, and we're hallucinating the same thing." Even as he said this, he knew it wasn't true. He hadn't seen the book until now, so why would he have already imagined it? Down that road lay the possibility that the book wasn't real either, and once you got to that point everything was up for debate. Better to assume that at least some of what was going on around him was real.
He looked at the title again. "The... Koh-lon-ni," he sounded it. "Like 'colony', sort of. Is that the thing's name, or what?" He flipped the book over, and read the synopsis on the back aloud.
"'Princess-to-be Ynarra Mednik arrives in the Kingdom of Cheval thinking she knows everything about her prospective husband. He will one day soon be King, and the girl who can win his heart will find herself in a world of riches and luxury beyond measure. However, not only does Ynarra have to compete against the Prince's other suitors, but Cheval Castle holds many secrets, inaccessible tower rooms, levels below the dungeons, hidden passages behind walls, hallways that lead nowhere. Too late, Ynarra will learn that this architecture is designed to confound and trap the one inhabitant of the castle that no one speaks of, yet all fear. And with good reason, for she is about to unwittingly unlock the biggest secret of all. The secret of... The Qoloni.'"
He sat there for a minute, trying to work out what new light this threw on what he and Benny had just experienced. He looked across the tiny room at his injured friend. "You've read this?"
Benny closed his eyes, nodded.
Carlos riffled through the pages quickly as he continued his musing aloud. "And if what we're hiding from really is the thing in this book, then how are we thinking that's possible? Did Mr. Casey write about something real, something that has been following him around?"
Benny had enough strength enough to make a fist, extend his thumb, and point it toward the ground.
"Don't think so, huh?" Carlos thought a little longer, wishing that Benny was able to articulate himself better. "Okay, how about this? That this is an idea that Bruce had, and he somehow made it real?"
Again, Benny turned his thumb downward. Carlos furrowed his brow.
"Not that either? Well, how do you know?"
Benny made no response other than lifting his other hand, which still held the metal Deertail logo in a white-knuckled grip.
"What is that?" Carlos asked, puzzled. "What does that mean?"
Benny didn't answer right away, but deliberately lifted the metal to his forehead and gently tapped his temple with it. Finally, he said, "Just know... We... *made* it."
Carlos just stared at him for a long time, trying to comprehend what his friend was saying. He couldn't quite piece it together, and after a minute or so of silence, he became aware that he could tell something was going on elsewhere in the lodge.
At first, he thought it was a distant sound... footsteps, or maybe someone moving furniture around. But the longer he listened, he realized that it wasn't sound traveling through the air; it was the slight vibration of the wall he leaned back against. The thought should have made him realize how vulnerable he currently was to a creature who could bend and twist the fabric of reality, but instead he found he was only curious.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to divine what the lodge was telling him. He could hear/feel distant thumping, but it fell into no regular pattern. Now that he was paying close attention, he found he was getting two sets of thumps, varying in distance and intensity. One seemed random, farther away, and was occasionally punctuated by "louder" thumps; the other was slower, stealthier. Strangely, he thought he understood what the wood was telling him... There was someone upstairs moving things around, and the thing -- the Qoloni, if what Benny was telling him was right -- was approaching.
His eyes snapped open. "Benny," he said, "we've got to warn whoever that is!" He struggled to his feet. Benny looked like he was less on the verge of dying than he had been since Carlos had pulled him from the avalanche, but he would still be incredibly hard to move at this point. Thinking as quickly as he could, Carlos reached for the lamp that had been steadily glowing on the bookshelf closest to the bed. For what he had in mind, he had to give it to Benny. Unfortunately, the cord was short, and didn't reach anywhere near to where his friend was lying.
Carlos turned it over, trying to figure out if there was any more cord he could play out, but instead found himself looking at a screwed-down battery compartment cover. Of course. The power in the whole Lodge had gone out long ago; the only reason they hadn't been sitting here in the dark all along was because it had backup. He yanked the cord from the wall and set the lamp down next to Benny.
"I'm going to go out there..." Benny started to rouse himself, clutching the metal Deertail logo even closer to himself if that were possible. "Just for a second!" Carlos reassured him. "Someone's out there with that thing, and I can't just sit here while it catches up to them. Now, we know the thing's weakness; it can't pass through wood, maybe it can't pass through any physical material at all. It sounds like the book says that it can be confused, or get lost easily. Maybe it can't really see the way we can. I think I can get around it, or at least hide from it when I need to."
Benny struggled to speak, and Carlos gave him a few minutes to get it out. "Can't... fight. Run. *Run*."
Carlos knew what Benny was saying, but chose to act like he misunderstood. "I'll go as fast as I can. I'll bring whoever it is back here, if I can. Just hang tight, okay? You can turn this back on when I close the door." He tapped the lamp and then, without giving Benny time to react, Carlos switched it off. He set it on the floor next to Benny's free hand, then turned to the door. He wondered if the knob would feel any different, or maybe the door would stick a little in its frame, but the thing's distortion of it apparently hadn't caused any lasting effect.
He turned the knob, knowing that no extra light was going to be spilling out into the lobby, and slipped out. He heard only one final, whispered "Run!" from behind him as he closed the door silently behind him and stepped back into the silent lobby.
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