KLONDIKE
By Keith Carpenter
The icy crunch of newly fallen stow is all that could be heard in the dark gloom of the shrouded mountain. The night was frozen on the mountain and the man, running for his life, had long since lost his snowshoes and his every labored step was sinking into the white blood-soaked snow. The blood that ran down his arm and painted a trail through the snow, was his and he was losing it fast and the deep layer of fresh snow was slowing him down, but it didn’t seem to be slowing down the ‘thing’ that was pursuing him.
***
August 16, 1896, the Skookum party discovered gold deposits in the icy waters of Bonanza Creek and the Klondike River, which winds its way through the mountainous tundra of the Yukon. There are many stories about the discovery that was made that fateful year and it’s not clear who actually made it. Some say it was Kate Carmack and others say it was Skookum Jim Mason, but the one thing nobody seems to dispute was the fact that Gold wasn’t the only thing that was found there… near the banks of the Klondike.
***
Seth had only caught a glimpse of the creature in the grotto. He thought it was dead at first but soon realized that whatever death had stilled its rotting corpse, was like nothing he had seen, for the moment his lamp-light shown on its twisted gnarled face, it lurched forward and wrapped its gaping maw around his forearm. His gun had jammed and he had dropped his buck-knife into the snow, leaving behind it a knife shaped impression descending several feet into the white crunchy ice. There was no ‘reaching into the hole’ to find the knife. It was gone and there just wasn’t time.
Seth knew his friend had to be dead. There was no way a person could survive having his face eaten off and his throat pulled out like someone gutting a trout. Exposed tendons and nerves and a blood soaked esophagus was all he could remember. That and the expression on his friends face when the creature began to rip out his organs and shove them into its mouth. Seth dropped his lantern and ran like hell.
“Oh dear God, what have I done?” Seth mumbled to himself as he crashed through the snow spackled trees. “What Hell have I uncovered… what demon have I awakened?”
Just below its branches, at the base of an old pine that was in the path in front of him, Seth saw the abnormally large opening to a burrow of some sort. It seemed the perfect place to hide in hopes that the creature would push past him in the knee high snow drift.
He quickly dove into the small cave and curled into a ball trying to take up as little room as possible. His teeth chattering and his heart racing and the bite on his arm throbbing with a burning sensation like nothing he had ever felt. His body writhed in pain and trembled as his stomach knotted up like a twisted rope being pulled to its breaking point. His heart pounded in his chest as he tried to control his breathing. The last thing he wanted was to give away his position but he had little control over the state of his throbbing body.
“Mother Mary, deliver me from this demon that pursues me like a rabid animal.” Seth repeated the prayer under his breath over and over again. It was all he could hear as it rang in his ears, when suddenly there was a loud ‘CRACK’ just outside the burrow entrance.
The moonlight beamed through the burrow’s two foot wide opening, casting shadows all around, but Seth could only pray that the sound had come from some angry badger or mongoose or hell even a skunk. He was hoping beyond hope that it was anything but that fiend that had chased him here.
Suddenly there it was again, the noise outside the burrow entrance. Again Seth prayed under his breath, asking God to let it be the small fuzzy animal that owned the burrow. All had gone quiet for a moment, when suddenly he heard a faint gurgling sound. He tried to tell himself the sound could have come from any number of sources, but in his heart he knew better… it was too familiar to be just anything.
He got his wits about him enough to shift his weight so he was able to see just outside the small opening. He could see nothing but the shadow riddled snow bank on the other side of the neighboring trees. The space was cramped but there was just enough room in the burrow for Seth to fold his legs and stretch out his body so he could lie on his stomach. Elbows folded tight under his chest, he inched his way toward the opening, hoping to see a clear path of escape. He knew he could not hide in there forever.
A small voice in his head told him to wait… just a little bit longer. He put his face in his hands and began to cry, muttering some unintelligible words to God, when out of the blue he was overwhelmed by the smell of death. The aroma was not only recognizable but it burned his nostrils like acid. He trembled like a scared rabbit and he dared not peek out from his cupped hands.
He could feel something moving into place just over his head, stretching and craning its way into the opening of the burrow. Was it the creature? Was it possible that it could not see him laying there in the shadows, covered in snow? Why hadn’t it attacked him? Whatever loomed above him was inches away from his head, that was face-down cupped in his hands pushed into the snow.
Seth separated two fingers and peeked out. He could see a shadow on the wall next to him that was cast there by the moonlight. The foreboding shadow spread itself across the stone in the shape of a human. It slowly and methodically moved as someone or something craned its head into the opening of the burrow and it was literally inches away from the back of Seth’s skull. He could only hope that by some miracle of God… the ‘thing’ didn’t see him.
The gurgling sound was louder now and Seth could feel something cold and sticky dripping down the back of his neck. The thing that was hovering over him didn’t seem to be able to smell him and he began to think that if he waited it out it might just go away.
Suddenly Seth’s heart leapt in his chest. A wisp of hope washed over him. He could hear footsteps in the snow. They seemed to come from behind whatever was looming over him in the burrow entrance. Had help come to rescue him from this nightmare? Had his friends from the camp followed him up the mountain out of curiosity and were now there to come to his aid? After a few heart-stopping moments his answer came.
After what seemed like an eternity, the low wet gurgling sound was accompanied by a faint airy moan. It was the kind of sound someone might make if their esophagus had been ripped out. Seth squeezed his eyelids tight and let out a soft moan of his own, because he knew. He realized that the “person” who had joined the creature was Warren, his partner who had been killed back in the grotto.
The time had come. Seth had summoned enough courage to take a look, so he slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head upward, but the moment his eyes adjusted to the darkness, it overwhelmed him. The creature instantly lunged on top of Seth, joined by what had once been his friend Warren. There was only time enough to let out a blood curdling scream before they both had hold of him and drug him kicking and screaming from the burrow entrance.
Without warning or without any reservation, Warren and the ghoul ripped out Seth’s throat, putting an abrupt end to his screams. The wicked sensation of jagged teeth ripping into his throat and the razor sharp claws of the creature thrusting deeply into his abdomen, tearing the flesh effortlessly, were the last sensations Seth ever felt.
The pain was more than he could take… everything went black as he tried to cry out with nothing more than the gurgling sound of his own blood gushing from his open gaping throat. It was over… Seth was dead, but only for the time being.
***
FIVE HOURS EARLIER:
“Goddamit Seth, we’re gonna freeze out here if you don’t get your ass up this mountain.”
Seth Berdgis and Warren Garver had been living in camp Rabbit Creek with the rest of their party for just over six months. The cold had become relentless and the winder had taken its toll. The population of the camp had dwindled from sixty men to just fewer than twenty over the months, due to a number of reasons. Sickness and death had thinned out the population substantially not to mention the disillusionment of claim holders who never found the huge mountains of gold they had unrealistically expected.
The men that were left in camp were greedy for the most part, but Seth Berdgis took the cake. Rumors of other kinds of treasures had traveled to the Klondike and they had definitely gotten his attention. A traveling merchant who came through every few weeks told Seth of a hidden grotto not far from the camp where there was rumored to be an ancient stash of all sorts of ancient native Indian artifacts and handy-crafts that could be worth a small fortune. The rumor of artifacts and valuables was accompanied by the whisperings of an ancient Indian curse but that part of the legend had a tendency to fall on deaf ears. Most of the men, even the superstitious ones, were more inclined to be driven TOWARD riches rather than AWAY from the rumor of native Indian curses. But in this instance, Seth Berdgis and Warren Garver were the only two men in camp that believed the legend enough to spend their hard-earned gold on a map of its alleged location.
“The grotto is supposed to be just through these trees.”
Seth pointed and yelled over the howling wind that had picked up just moments earlier. It looked like a blizzard was heading their way, so they made for the grotto with urgency. The gusting wind painted everything in sight with an ever-deepening blanket of snow, so Seth and Warren ducked under an outcropping of rock to try and stay warm.
Seth pressed his buck-skin mittens, that were lined with rabbit fur, against his face to muffle the sound of his chattering teeth.
“Where the fuck is this secret cave, Seth? Warren grumbled. “You’re the one with the Goddam map!”
“According to this,” He fumbled to stretch out a crumpled piece of muslin cloth so he could view the markings scribbled on it. “We’re there, but with this blizzard, who knows if we’ll ever find it.”
The two men sat, huddled together as the snow relentlessly pounded against their skin, stinging it with every flake. Red and chapped from the freezing temperatures their lips began to crack and get frozen together, making talking a chore.
Hugging himself tight for warmth, Seth closed his eyes and drifted away to thoughts of his family and all the things he was going to provide them with once he found his illustrious treasure. As his mind raced, a chuckle emerged from deep in his gut as he thought of the ridiculous notion of curses and bogymen.
Before Seth realized how much time had gone by, Seth noticed that storm had subsided. In the blink of an eye two hours had passed. Warren had dozed off and the snow had covered him like a blanket. The blizzard was over and they could now search for the grotto but how they would find it under several feet of freshly fallen snow seemed like an impossible task.
“Why did you let me fall asleep?” Warren grunted as he pulled a cigar from his coat and lit it. “I could have frozen to death.”
He began pushing the fresh snow away in hopes of finding solid ground. In the recess of the small outcropping Warren uncovered a pile of rocks that were concealing an opening of some sort. The two men brushed all the snow away and began pulling down the pile of rocks, revealing the entrance to a long since abandon cavern.
“Oh my god, this has to be it, Warren.”
Seth eagerly threw the stones aside like an excited child.
“I’m telling you, Warren, whatever is in here is going to change our goddam lives…. FOREVER!”
Seth took a small kerosene lamp that he had stowed in his satchel and lit it and sat it in the snow. Then to be on the safe side, he pulled out his revolver and opened the chamber to make sure it was fully loaded.
“You never know…. There may be a bear in there.” Seth said as he holstered his gun and grabbing the lantern.
“Yeah, a bear that locks up the door when it leaves?” Warren rolled his eyes and threw aside the final stone.
The sun was going down and it was dusk out and the lantern instantly provided them a small circle of light that illuminated the cave entrance just enough for them to see several feet inside.
The cavern was large and smelled of bitter sweet rot that permeated their nostrils. The stone walls all around the entrance were covered with strange writing that neither Seth nor Warren could read. It seemed to be some sort of ancient text that was written there by whomever or whatever had sealed up the cavern.
“Do you really think there could be anything worth a dam in this place?”
Warren ran his fingers along the drawing of a rough stick figure of a man that looked like it was eating the other stick figures around it. The closer they looked at the pictographs, the more gruesome they seemed to get, but there was no sign in any of the gruesome pictures that indicated anything about treasure or valuables.
“This all looks like a bunch of superstitious hogwash. All these pictures look like some sort of ritual killing spree, but there ain’t a dam thing about anything valuable.” Warren grumbled through his cigar. “I just hope we didn’t come all this way for nothing.”
Seth held his lantern up to another picture that seemed to depict one single figure kneeling as it ate something. Holding the lantern even closer, Seth could make out what it was the figure was eating. The drawings all around the lone figure seemed to represent severed body parts and they were strewn all around the figure. The men thought it very sickening that anyone would draw such things but neither Seth nor Warren had any idea what sort of significance the drawings might hold.
Seth, you remember that old medicine man that used to come into camp and trade his pelts for food and supplies?”
Seth thought for a moment and nodded his head.
“Yeah, I remember that crazy old bastard. Why do you ask?”
Warren rubbed his finger along a few of the drawings and turned to Seth with a very intense look in his eyes.
“That old bastard used to tell stories about some ancient Indian curse that caused an entire tribe to be killed off.
“Yeah so, that sort of shit happens all the time around here.” Seth replied. “You got one tribe killing off another and so on and so on and before ya know it, the whole dam Indian tribe is extinct. So?”
“Yeah, but the legend says they didn’t stay dead.”
Warren pulled his buck knife from its sheath punctuating the uneasiness in his voice.
“Well all we’re going to find in here are a bunch of old Indian artifacts that will hopefully bring us a pretty penny, so stop acting like a baby and let’s get going.”
Seth rolled his eyes, held up the lantern and continued into the cavern. He was determined to find something valuable no matter what the legends said.
As they made their way deeper into the cavern, Seth and Warren could see all manner of Indian relics that had been left behind by some long since extinct tribe. For thousands of years the northern territories of the Canadian Yukon, especially around the Klondike River, had been home to dozens of native peoples who had made the cold icy tundra their home for many generations. To see a cavern such as this, which was probably some sort of burial ground, was not at all out of the ordinary, but to have it sealed away so tightly was strange. It was obvious that the people that had sealed it up wanted to keep unwelcome visitors out, but the thought that was kicking around in Warren’s head was that of ‘What if they really wanted to keep something in?’
The first room of the cavern, a very large area with a dome-shaped ceiling, was cluttered with broken clay pots, rotted buck skins and all manner of Indian beadwork and other forms of art. It was as if they had been placed there as some sort of sacrificial gift to a heathen god, but as Seth braved the deeper darker recesses of the strange gloomy cavern he couldn’t help but think this was a place no ‘god’ would ever reside in.
“Here, help me move this.” Seth said, grabbing the edges of a large flat stone that marked the end of the large room they had walked though. He motioned for Warren to grab the other side so they could attempt to push it aside.
“I don’t like this…”
Warren pulled Seth’s lantern up to the markings on the stone. It appeared to be a door that sealed off another portion of the cavern and it was adorned with markings even more sinister then the last ones.
“God dam, these Injuns sure liked to draw some gruesome shit.” Warren grunted as he pushed.
The huge flat stone was just over six feet in height and weighed hundreds of pounds, but with a bit of leverage in the right direction, Seth and Warren were able to push it aside making a gap wide enough to squeeze through.
“This has to be it, my friend.” Seth smiled. “Whatever wonderful secrets this place is hiding, they have to be hidden in here.”
The stone had been sealed to the wall with a layer of thick clay that cracked and fell away as they pushed the stone aside.
The moment the seal was broken there was a hiss of putrid air that rushed from the hidden room within. As Seth entered the chamber his lamp filled the small dark space with light. The walls glistened with what seemed like sparkling gems at first, but upon closer examination Seth and Warren could see that what they had thought to be gems was actually a shiny layer of dripping tar-like goo that covered almost every inch of the jagged inner walls. It was obvious to them that the tar-like goo was the source of the rancid smell in the room.
As they moved in farther, they were greeted with a horrible sight. There, littering the floor, were dozens of corpses. All of which had been bound tightly, wrapped in what appeared to be buck skin straps and each and every one of them were frozen in a horribly distorted pose. It was as if they had been buried alive and had fought relentlessly to free themselves from their buckskin restraints.
“Good lord, Seth, what in the hell is this horrible place?” Warren got the words out just before turning away to vomit.
“I’m guessing a burial chamber, but like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
The closer Seth looked, the more disgusting the scene before him became. The corpses, which after decades of decomposition, should have been dried and mummified, but they were nothing of the sort. Each one of them seemed to be oozing the same tar-like slime that was covering the walls and causing the horrific odor in the room.
All the corpses were withered and twisted and obviously lifeless, but they still seemed moist and soft with a putrid aroma coming from them, but none of them were nearly as decomposed as they should have been given the amount of time they had been hidden away in their tomb.
Seth was closely examining each and every cadaver, looking for any valuables that might have been buried with them, when suddenly he saw something curious. Between two of the bodies was a pile of the same buckskin wrapping that the other corpses were bound in, but these seemed to have been shed like a cocoon. Suddenly it dawned on him. Seth stopped and looked around, putting his finger to his mouth motioning Warren to not make a sound. Had one of the corpses been freed from its restraints by another looter? Certainly it didn’t escape on it’s own…. It was dead, or was it?
Without warning a sound echoed through the room. Seth looked at Warren and Warren looked at Seth. They both wondered which of them had made the noise, but it soon became obvious that it was neither of them… it had come from something else. Being a cave and the way sound travels, it was impossible to know where it had come from, then there it was again. It was a soft gurgling growl, almost like an animal would make when it was warning you that you had invaded its space. They were not alone in the tomb… something or someone was in there with them. Seth pulled out his revolver.
“Seth, I don’t give a flyin’ fuck-all if there is anything in this god-awful place worth money, I want to get the hell out of here, NOW!
With that, Warren yanked the lantern out of Seth’s hand and made for the opening, but there it was, standing between him and freedom. It was the most horrifying remnant, of what once had been a man that Warren had ever seen. The much sought after secret. The thing they had braved the mountainous tundra and the stinging blizzard to find. The thing they both were sure was going to change their lives, and it did. But not the way they thought it would. Not the way they wanted it to. But change their lives…. It did!
THE END
By Keith Carpenter
The icy crunch of newly fallen stow is all that could be heard in the dark gloom of the shrouded mountain. The night was frozen on the mountain and the man, running for his life, had long since lost his snowshoes and his every labored step was sinking into the white blood-soaked snow. The blood that ran down his arm and painted a trail through the snow, was his and he was losing it fast and the deep layer of fresh snow was slowing him down, but it didn’t seem to be slowing down the ‘thing’ that was pursuing him.
***
August 16, 1896, the Skookum party discovered gold deposits in the icy waters of Bonanza Creek and the Klondike River, which winds its way through the mountainous tundra of the Yukon. There are many stories about the discovery that was made that fateful year and it’s not clear who actually made it. Some say it was Kate Carmack and others say it was Skookum Jim Mason, but the one thing nobody seems to dispute was the fact that Gold wasn’t the only thing that was found there… near the banks of the Klondike.
***
Seth had only caught a glimpse of the creature in the grotto. He thought it was dead at first but soon realized that whatever death had stilled its rotting corpse, was like nothing he had seen, for the moment his lamp-light shown on its twisted gnarled face, it lurched forward and wrapped its gaping maw around his forearm. His gun had jammed and he had dropped his buck-knife into the snow, leaving behind it a knife shaped impression descending several feet into the white crunchy ice. There was no ‘reaching into the hole’ to find the knife. It was gone and there just wasn’t time.
Seth knew his friend had to be dead. There was no way a person could survive having his face eaten off and his throat pulled out like someone gutting a trout. Exposed tendons and nerves and a blood soaked esophagus was all he could remember. That and the expression on his friends face when the creature began to rip out his organs and shove them into its mouth. Seth dropped his lantern and ran like hell.
“Oh dear God, what have I done?” Seth mumbled to himself as he crashed through the snow spackled trees. “What Hell have I uncovered… what demon have I awakened?”
Just below its branches, at the base of an old pine that was in the path in front of him, Seth saw the abnormally large opening to a burrow of some sort. It seemed the perfect place to hide in hopes that the creature would push past him in the knee high snow drift.
He quickly dove into the small cave and curled into a ball trying to take up as little room as possible. His teeth chattering and his heart racing and the bite on his arm throbbing with a burning sensation like nothing he had ever felt. His body writhed in pain and trembled as his stomach knotted up like a twisted rope being pulled to its breaking point. His heart pounded in his chest as he tried to control his breathing. The last thing he wanted was to give away his position but he had little control over the state of his throbbing body.
“Mother Mary, deliver me from this demon that pursues me like a rabid animal.” Seth repeated the prayer under his breath over and over again. It was all he could hear as it rang in his ears, when suddenly there was a loud ‘CRACK’ just outside the burrow entrance.
The moonlight beamed through the burrow’s two foot wide opening, casting shadows all around, but Seth could only pray that the sound had come from some angry badger or mongoose or hell even a skunk. He was hoping beyond hope that it was anything but that fiend that had chased him here.
Suddenly there it was again, the noise outside the burrow entrance. Again Seth prayed under his breath, asking God to let it be the small fuzzy animal that owned the burrow. All had gone quiet for a moment, when suddenly he heard a faint gurgling sound. He tried to tell himself the sound could have come from any number of sources, but in his heart he knew better… it was too familiar to be just anything.
He got his wits about him enough to shift his weight so he was able to see just outside the small opening. He could see nothing but the shadow riddled snow bank on the other side of the neighboring trees. The space was cramped but there was just enough room in the burrow for Seth to fold his legs and stretch out his body so he could lie on his stomach. Elbows folded tight under his chest, he inched his way toward the opening, hoping to see a clear path of escape. He knew he could not hide in there forever.
A small voice in his head told him to wait… just a little bit longer. He put his face in his hands and began to cry, muttering some unintelligible words to God, when out of the blue he was overwhelmed by the smell of death. The aroma was not only recognizable but it burned his nostrils like acid. He trembled like a scared rabbit and he dared not peek out from his cupped hands.
He could feel something moving into place just over his head, stretching and craning its way into the opening of the burrow. Was it the creature? Was it possible that it could not see him laying there in the shadows, covered in snow? Why hadn’t it attacked him? Whatever loomed above him was inches away from his head, that was face-down cupped in his hands pushed into the snow.
Seth separated two fingers and peeked out. He could see a shadow on the wall next to him that was cast there by the moonlight. The foreboding shadow spread itself across the stone in the shape of a human. It slowly and methodically moved as someone or something craned its head into the opening of the burrow and it was literally inches away from the back of Seth’s skull. He could only hope that by some miracle of God… the ‘thing’ didn’t see him.
The gurgling sound was louder now and Seth could feel something cold and sticky dripping down the back of his neck. The thing that was hovering over him didn’t seem to be able to smell him and he began to think that if he waited it out it might just go away.
Suddenly Seth’s heart leapt in his chest. A wisp of hope washed over him. He could hear footsteps in the snow. They seemed to come from behind whatever was looming over him in the burrow entrance. Had help come to rescue him from this nightmare? Had his friends from the camp followed him up the mountain out of curiosity and were now there to come to his aid? After a few heart-stopping moments his answer came.
After what seemed like an eternity, the low wet gurgling sound was accompanied by a faint airy moan. It was the kind of sound someone might make if their esophagus had been ripped out. Seth squeezed his eyelids tight and let out a soft moan of his own, because he knew. He realized that the “person” who had joined the creature was Warren, his partner who had been killed back in the grotto.
The time had come. Seth had summoned enough courage to take a look, so he slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head upward, but the moment his eyes adjusted to the darkness, it overwhelmed him. The creature instantly lunged on top of Seth, joined by what had once been his friend Warren. There was only time enough to let out a blood curdling scream before they both had hold of him and drug him kicking and screaming from the burrow entrance.
Without warning or without any reservation, Warren and the ghoul ripped out Seth’s throat, putting an abrupt end to his screams. The wicked sensation of jagged teeth ripping into his throat and the razor sharp claws of the creature thrusting deeply into his abdomen, tearing the flesh effortlessly, were the last sensations Seth ever felt.
The pain was more than he could take… everything went black as he tried to cry out with nothing more than the gurgling sound of his own blood gushing from his open gaping throat. It was over… Seth was dead, but only for the time being.
***
FIVE HOURS EARLIER:
“Goddamit Seth, we’re gonna freeze out here if you don’t get your ass up this mountain.”
Seth Berdgis and Warren Garver had been living in camp Rabbit Creek with the rest of their party for just over six months. The cold had become relentless and the winder had taken its toll. The population of the camp had dwindled from sixty men to just fewer than twenty over the months, due to a number of reasons. Sickness and death had thinned out the population substantially not to mention the disillusionment of claim holders who never found the huge mountains of gold they had unrealistically expected.
The men that were left in camp were greedy for the most part, but Seth Berdgis took the cake. Rumors of other kinds of treasures had traveled to the Klondike and they had definitely gotten his attention. A traveling merchant who came through every few weeks told Seth of a hidden grotto not far from the camp where there was rumored to be an ancient stash of all sorts of ancient native Indian artifacts and handy-crafts that could be worth a small fortune. The rumor of artifacts and valuables was accompanied by the whisperings of an ancient Indian curse but that part of the legend had a tendency to fall on deaf ears. Most of the men, even the superstitious ones, were more inclined to be driven TOWARD riches rather than AWAY from the rumor of native Indian curses. But in this instance, Seth Berdgis and Warren Garver were the only two men in camp that believed the legend enough to spend their hard-earned gold on a map of its alleged location.
“The grotto is supposed to be just through these trees.”
Seth pointed and yelled over the howling wind that had picked up just moments earlier. It looked like a blizzard was heading their way, so they made for the grotto with urgency. The gusting wind painted everything in sight with an ever-deepening blanket of snow, so Seth and Warren ducked under an outcropping of rock to try and stay warm.
Seth pressed his buck-skin mittens, that were lined with rabbit fur, against his face to muffle the sound of his chattering teeth.
“Where the fuck is this secret cave, Seth? Warren grumbled. “You’re the one with the Goddam map!”
“According to this,” He fumbled to stretch out a crumpled piece of muslin cloth so he could view the markings scribbled on it. “We’re there, but with this blizzard, who knows if we’ll ever find it.”
The two men sat, huddled together as the snow relentlessly pounded against their skin, stinging it with every flake. Red and chapped from the freezing temperatures their lips began to crack and get frozen together, making talking a chore.
Hugging himself tight for warmth, Seth closed his eyes and drifted away to thoughts of his family and all the things he was going to provide them with once he found his illustrious treasure. As his mind raced, a chuckle emerged from deep in his gut as he thought of the ridiculous notion of curses and bogymen.
Before Seth realized how much time had gone by, Seth noticed that storm had subsided. In the blink of an eye two hours had passed. Warren had dozed off and the snow had covered him like a blanket. The blizzard was over and they could now search for the grotto but how they would find it under several feet of freshly fallen snow seemed like an impossible task.
“Why did you let me fall asleep?” Warren grunted as he pulled a cigar from his coat and lit it. “I could have frozen to death.”
He began pushing the fresh snow away in hopes of finding solid ground. In the recess of the small outcropping Warren uncovered a pile of rocks that were concealing an opening of some sort. The two men brushed all the snow away and began pulling down the pile of rocks, revealing the entrance to a long since abandon cavern.
“Oh my god, this has to be it, Warren.”
Seth eagerly threw the stones aside like an excited child.
“I’m telling you, Warren, whatever is in here is going to change our goddam lives…. FOREVER!”
Seth took a small kerosene lamp that he had stowed in his satchel and lit it and sat it in the snow. Then to be on the safe side, he pulled out his revolver and opened the chamber to make sure it was fully loaded.
“You never know…. There may be a bear in there.” Seth said as he holstered his gun and grabbing the lantern.
“Yeah, a bear that locks up the door when it leaves?” Warren rolled his eyes and threw aside the final stone.
The sun was going down and it was dusk out and the lantern instantly provided them a small circle of light that illuminated the cave entrance just enough for them to see several feet inside.
The cavern was large and smelled of bitter sweet rot that permeated their nostrils. The stone walls all around the entrance were covered with strange writing that neither Seth nor Warren could read. It seemed to be some sort of ancient text that was written there by whomever or whatever had sealed up the cavern.
“Do you really think there could be anything worth a dam in this place?”
Warren ran his fingers along the drawing of a rough stick figure of a man that looked like it was eating the other stick figures around it. The closer they looked at the pictographs, the more gruesome they seemed to get, but there was no sign in any of the gruesome pictures that indicated anything about treasure or valuables.
“This all looks like a bunch of superstitious hogwash. All these pictures look like some sort of ritual killing spree, but there ain’t a dam thing about anything valuable.” Warren grumbled through his cigar. “I just hope we didn’t come all this way for nothing.”
Seth held his lantern up to another picture that seemed to depict one single figure kneeling as it ate something. Holding the lantern even closer, Seth could make out what it was the figure was eating. The drawings all around the lone figure seemed to represent severed body parts and they were strewn all around the figure. The men thought it very sickening that anyone would draw such things but neither Seth nor Warren had any idea what sort of significance the drawings might hold.
Seth, you remember that old medicine man that used to come into camp and trade his pelts for food and supplies?”
Seth thought for a moment and nodded his head.
“Yeah, I remember that crazy old bastard. Why do you ask?”
Warren rubbed his finger along a few of the drawings and turned to Seth with a very intense look in his eyes.
“That old bastard used to tell stories about some ancient Indian curse that caused an entire tribe to be killed off.
“Yeah so, that sort of shit happens all the time around here.” Seth replied. “You got one tribe killing off another and so on and so on and before ya know it, the whole dam Indian tribe is extinct. So?”
“Yeah, but the legend says they didn’t stay dead.”
Warren pulled his buck knife from its sheath punctuating the uneasiness in his voice.
“Well all we’re going to find in here are a bunch of old Indian artifacts that will hopefully bring us a pretty penny, so stop acting like a baby and let’s get going.”
Seth rolled his eyes, held up the lantern and continued into the cavern. He was determined to find something valuable no matter what the legends said.
As they made their way deeper into the cavern, Seth and Warren could see all manner of Indian relics that had been left behind by some long since extinct tribe. For thousands of years the northern territories of the Canadian Yukon, especially around the Klondike River, had been home to dozens of native peoples who had made the cold icy tundra their home for many generations. To see a cavern such as this, which was probably some sort of burial ground, was not at all out of the ordinary, but to have it sealed away so tightly was strange. It was obvious that the people that had sealed it up wanted to keep unwelcome visitors out, but the thought that was kicking around in Warren’s head was that of ‘What if they really wanted to keep something in?’
The first room of the cavern, a very large area with a dome-shaped ceiling, was cluttered with broken clay pots, rotted buck skins and all manner of Indian beadwork and other forms of art. It was as if they had been placed there as some sort of sacrificial gift to a heathen god, but as Seth braved the deeper darker recesses of the strange gloomy cavern he couldn’t help but think this was a place no ‘god’ would ever reside in.
“Here, help me move this.” Seth said, grabbing the edges of a large flat stone that marked the end of the large room they had walked though. He motioned for Warren to grab the other side so they could attempt to push it aside.
“I don’t like this…”
Warren pulled Seth’s lantern up to the markings on the stone. It appeared to be a door that sealed off another portion of the cavern and it was adorned with markings even more sinister then the last ones.
“God dam, these Injuns sure liked to draw some gruesome shit.” Warren grunted as he pushed.
The huge flat stone was just over six feet in height and weighed hundreds of pounds, but with a bit of leverage in the right direction, Seth and Warren were able to push it aside making a gap wide enough to squeeze through.
“This has to be it, my friend.” Seth smiled. “Whatever wonderful secrets this place is hiding, they have to be hidden in here.”
The stone had been sealed to the wall with a layer of thick clay that cracked and fell away as they pushed the stone aside.
The moment the seal was broken there was a hiss of putrid air that rushed from the hidden room within. As Seth entered the chamber his lamp filled the small dark space with light. The walls glistened with what seemed like sparkling gems at first, but upon closer examination Seth and Warren could see that what they had thought to be gems was actually a shiny layer of dripping tar-like goo that covered almost every inch of the jagged inner walls. It was obvious to them that the tar-like goo was the source of the rancid smell in the room.
As they moved in farther, they were greeted with a horrible sight. There, littering the floor, were dozens of corpses. All of which had been bound tightly, wrapped in what appeared to be buck skin straps and each and every one of them were frozen in a horribly distorted pose. It was as if they had been buried alive and had fought relentlessly to free themselves from their buckskin restraints.
“Good lord, Seth, what in the hell is this horrible place?” Warren got the words out just before turning away to vomit.
“I’m guessing a burial chamber, but like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
The closer Seth looked, the more disgusting the scene before him became. The corpses, which after decades of decomposition, should have been dried and mummified, but they were nothing of the sort. Each one of them seemed to be oozing the same tar-like slime that was covering the walls and causing the horrific odor in the room.
All the corpses were withered and twisted and obviously lifeless, but they still seemed moist and soft with a putrid aroma coming from them, but none of them were nearly as decomposed as they should have been given the amount of time they had been hidden away in their tomb.
Seth was closely examining each and every cadaver, looking for any valuables that might have been buried with them, when suddenly he saw something curious. Between two of the bodies was a pile of the same buckskin wrapping that the other corpses were bound in, but these seemed to have been shed like a cocoon. Suddenly it dawned on him. Seth stopped and looked around, putting his finger to his mouth motioning Warren to not make a sound. Had one of the corpses been freed from its restraints by another looter? Certainly it didn’t escape on it’s own…. It was dead, or was it?
Without warning a sound echoed through the room. Seth looked at Warren and Warren looked at Seth. They both wondered which of them had made the noise, but it soon became obvious that it was neither of them… it had come from something else. Being a cave and the way sound travels, it was impossible to know where it had come from, then there it was again. It was a soft gurgling growl, almost like an animal would make when it was warning you that you had invaded its space. They were not alone in the tomb… something or someone was in there with them. Seth pulled out his revolver.
“Seth, I don’t give a flyin’ fuck-all if there is anything in this god-awful place worth money, I want to get the hell out of here, NOW!
With that, Warren yanked the lantern out of Seth’s hand and made for the opening, but there it was, standing between him and freedom. It was the most horrifying remnant, of what once had been a man that Warren had ever seen. The much sought after secret. The thing they had braved the mountainous tundra and the stinging blizzard to find. The thing they both were sure was going to change their lives, and it did. But not the way they thought it would. Not the way they wanted it to. But change their lives…. It did!
THE END