Bleak Mountains

 He jerked up from his sleep, franticly rubbing his face and arms as if to get rid of something. But he did not remember what he dreamt. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the world around him, a small clearing surrounded by pine trees and wild shrubbery reached out into the clearing. The smell of a fresh stew reached him, and he saw his friend crouching beside a small fire with a small iron pot. They looked at each other and smiled.

Together they enjoyed breakfast, his friend passed him a cup of nettle tea. Yet they said little. Both knew what they had to get done today. He looked up above the pines towards the looming mountains that surrounded them, their peaks not white but black and bleak.

As they stepped back into the forest the light seemed to go out, even though it was just morning it was a perpetual twilight in the forest, and as soon as the two of them entered his friend started talking about the unnaturalness of it all, they have seen no animal for days, even the insects were odd looking here. Some jumped, some were larger, and some were to be found in large groups. Yet he was always quiet, he knew his friend needed the talking to calm himself. But unlike his friend, he stayed silent. He kept an eye out for that thing, for that one thing, in the corner of his eye, he kept seeing. Yet he did not tell his friend about it, there was no need to add more worries.

Towards midday, they reached the end of the forest and finally made it out. At first, the bright sun greeted them, lifting their spirits. A few minutes later a thick cloud pushed itself in front of the sun slowly growing and taking up more and more of the sky above them. Defeated they looked at each other before they kept on walking, past boulders and sharp rocks which seemed to place themselves in their path to block them from going further. Each of the stones grew out of the mountain like a spike, no weather or force of nature seemed to have smoothed them down.

Even though the landscape was now monotonous this could not quiet down his friends talking. Who now complained about the lack of sun and warmth and the continuously being poked by the rocks. All the while that thing, was still there. Whenever he turned to see, it jumped out of sight.

As the day crept on the two were getting anxious. Was it still possible to reach the top in time? Was there a safe place to set up camp? While they were talking, as if by magic an entrance seemed to open further up the mountain. At first, they could not believe it, but surely this would be a shortcut to the other side. They picked up their pace and eagerly took advantage of the one good thing that seemed to have happened in this place.

The tunnel was clean-cut and straight at first. They even saw the light at the other end. Yet as they stepped through the entrance both felt an uneasiness overcoming them. As the two kept walking further inward with torches held high, even his friend stopped talking and a silence surrounded them. After a few more steps the light at the end vanished and they heard tapping on the stone floor, tapping of many little feet or legs. They turned around and saw that the entrance was gone. In panic, they looked at each other and decided to run away from the tapping feet. But all they found was another bend and then another. A gust of wind pulled on their torches’ flame, yet they were still lit. Happy about that coincidence the two friends stopped to catch their breath. As he leaned against the wall, he felt something sticking to his shoulder, wanting to get rid of it he noticed, he could not see it, but it felt sticky and silky smooth. In a new-found panic, the two kept heading onward, hoping to find an end to this nightmare. Only to find themselves running in more and more of these silky, sticky strings that now stretched across the tunnel. They started using their torches to burn the strings which got bigger and thicker, the further they got. They heard screeches and popping, while dead spiders dropped to the floor. At first, everything turned quiet, until the tapping started again and got louder.

They kept burning the nets until they finally got through. They ran down the tunnel with the tapping sound behind them getting closer and closer. This is when they saw the light again, and they cheered. Yet he stumbled and fell to the floor, his friend did not notice him falling behind and kept running, while he tried to get up, but the first spiders were already crawling onto him, he pushed them off, got up and tripped again. The spiders crawled all over his body, he could not scream.

He jerked up from his sleep, franticly rubbing his face and arms as if to get rid of something. He woke up in a clearing surrounded by pine trees.