Mountain of the Dead Page 10

  “You don’t find anything odd about him?”

  Kolevatov frowned. “Like what?”

  “Igor said he’s a war hero, awarded four medals. I asked him about this. He said one of those medals was the Order of the Red Star.”

  “So?”

  “So why’s he not still in the army? Someone decorated like that would have no problem becoming an officer. Why decide to become a tourist guide?”

  “Maybe he likes the job?”

  “Then why doesn’t he stay at one base? That’s what most tourist guides do. But Igor says he’s been traveling across the country from one base to the next. And he’s not married,” Doroshenko went on. “Have you noticed? No ring. What thirty-seven-year-old man—and a Cossack from the south—remains a bachelor? Why has he never gotten married? Why no children?”

  “Maybe he’s never met the right—”

  “That’s bullshit, Alex! And the tattoos and the gold teeth…” He shook his head.

  Kolevatov’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at, Yuri?”

  “I don’t know,” Doroshenko admitted, setting aside a dried plate. “I just don’t buy his story.”

  “What would be his reason for deceiving us?”

  “I don’t know. But something isn’t right. I think we need to keep an eye on him.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose—”

  “And don’t mention this conversation to anybody else. Agreed?”

  “Sure, Yuri, I guess.” He shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  ⁂

  Doroshenko awoke in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. He opened the door to his room quietly and stole down the hallway, treading gently to minimize the creaking of the floorboards. He relieved himself in the toilet and was returning to his room when a door farther down the hallway opened suddenly. Doroshenko froze. A dark shape appeared: Zolotaryov.

  What was he doing awake?

  Coming to the bathroom?

  Zolotaryov, however, turned in the opposite direction and disappeared silently into another room.

  Frowning, Doroshenko proceeded to the door that Zolotaryov had exited.

  Zina’s skis leaned next to it against the wall.

  Fuming, he returned to his room, but he couldn’t get back to sleep, nor rid his mind of the images of Zina and Zolotaryov huddled together in the dark, and what they might have been doing.

  ⁂

  The director of the settlement stopped by the guesthouse at first light to tell the Dyatlov group he had arranged for a woodcutter to transport them to Sector 41, though the truck wouldn’t depart until noon. This suited Igor fine, as he wanted to find the local forester, who could offer insight on the local terrain.

  As the ten hikers had discovered the night before, the damp firewood would take hours to heat the stove, so Yuri Yudin suggested they return to the cafeteria for breakfast. A mix of woodcutters, prison guards, and contract specialists filled the place. The hikers took a seat at a table by a window while Lyuda ordered them goulash, bread, and tea. Yudin shivered inside his jacket—he’d forgotten to close the window in his room thoroughly, and a draft had settled deep in his bones while he’d slept—and when the tea finally arrived he, like the rest of his companions, was dismayed to find it cold.

  Doroshenko shoved his cup away from him violently enough that half the liquid jumped across the checkered tablecloth.

  “Hey, take it easy, Yuri,” Rustem said. “It won’t bite you.”

  “They can’t heat the tea?” he grunted.

  “Go drink it outside,” Igor quipped, “and it will seem warmer.”

  Everybody laughed. Doroshenko scowled.

  Yudin wondered what bothered him. Stoic by nature, Doroshenko rarely displayed any emotions, so for him to get upset over cold tea was out of character.

  Yudin made a mental note to talk to his friend later, and then turned his attention to the food, which had just arrived. The stew at least was hot, and everybody wiped their bowls clean with their bread. After they finished eating Igor asked a cafeteria worker for directions to the forester’s house, which turned out to be only a short walk away.

  A stocky man wearing a fur hat answered the door. He had lively eyes, a broad face, and a grizzled jaw. “Good morning, my friends,” he greeted them, appearing not at all surprised to find ten young people standing on his doorstep.

  “Good morning, comrade,” Igor said. “We’re students of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, and we’re—”

  “Yes, yes, I can imagine why you’re here,” he said with a slight German accent. “I am Ivan Rempel. Come in, please.”

  The hikers followed the man to a cozy living room. Oil paintings on canvas adorned the walls, while glass jars featuring miniature tableaux lined several shelves. Yudin bent close to appreciate the details of the tiny winter landscapes that included the Nativity scene, Father Frost, Christmas trees and reindeers, and other religious and seasonal themes.

  “Wonderful!” Zina said from next to him. “How did you fit everything into those jars like that?”

  Ivan smiled. “If I told you that, my dear, they wouldn’t be half as wonderful, would they? Now where are you young adventurers off to?” He turned to Igor. “North, I imagine?”

  “Our final destination is Mount Ortoten,” Igor said.

  Ivan Rempel’s expression darkened. “Mount Ortoten, you say?”

  “Is something wrong?” Zolotaryov asked. He seemed to be watching the forester closely.

  “Yes,” Ivan Rempel said. “The Ural ridge is far too dangerous to attempt to cross in the middle of winter. There are numerous pits and ravines. If one of you fell into one, you could break your legs or worse. And the winds on the slopes of the mountain have been said to blow people away.”

  “Have you experienced these winds firsthand?” Zolotaryov asked.

  “Me?” Ivan Rempel shook his head. “I would not attempt to travel your planned route in the wintertime. But some local hunters have traveled similar paths.”

  “And?”

  “They usually do not go a second time.”

  “I assure you,” Igor said, nonplussed, “we are all experienced hikers.”

  “Of that I have no doubt. But I still urge you to reconsider.”

  “That is not an option.”

  Ivan Rempel looked from one hiker to the next. Each of them assumed brave, determined fronts.

  “There is something else,” he said finally. “There are stories…legends, I suppose you would call them…surrounding Mount Ortoten, as well as its neighbor, Kholat Syakhl.”

  “Mansi legends?” Igor said.

  The forester nodded. “For the most part. They believe—”

  “Forgive me, comrade,” Igor interrupted. “We have planned our expedition thoroughly. It has been reviewed and approved by the director of the UPI Sports Club, a very experienced hiker himself. So we are confident in our chosen route. We are prepared for whatever awaits us. We are not afraid of hidden ravines or strong winds or Mansi legends.”

  Ivan Rempel’s face tightened. “If you do not want my advice, my young friend, why is it you came here today?”

  “I was hoping you would have some survey maps of the area I could examine. No doubt yours would be much more detailed than mine.”

  The forester didn’t immediately reply, and Yudin was convinced he would refuse Igor’s request and ask them all to leave. But then, shaking his head in resignation, he went to get his maps.

  The Dyatlov group in Vizhay with some of the locals

  Woodcutter’s truck that would take the Dyatlov group from Vizhay to Sector 41

  CHAPTER 11

  Back at the Lozva River, Fyodor was crouched before his lead dog, a black Lab with a white blaze between its eyes, brushing its coat with a metal comb. He exchanged a few words with Vasily in Russian, then we promptly set off once again.

  For the next few hours the industrious buzzing of the snowmobiles reigned supreme in the unnatural stillness of the forest. At some poi
nt we left the Lozva River, following what I guessed to be a well-used Mansi path, to the Auspiya River, which continued in a more westerly direction.

  Snow fell in a silent ballet. Icy wind bit my face and snuck into my hood, snuffling around my ears and the nape of my neck. My fingers and toes had numbed long ago, while each breath filled me with chestcold air, chilling me from the inside out. Nevertheless, I didn’t pay any of this discomfort much notice. I kept thinking about what Raya Anyamov had told us, and hearing Vasily’s question in my head: What reason would she have to lie? And the truth was, I didn’t think she had been lying. She had no reason to. She didn’t know us, didn’t care about us. She had no agenda; she had been genuine in her answers. She really believed a so-called forest giant had killed Igor and company. Moreover, she really believed she had seen one as a child.

  So how to explain her claims?

  The first was easy enough. The Mansi were a primitive, superstitious people, and they had invented an apocryphal link between the dead reindeer and the death of the Dyatlov group in lieu of any evidence, the same way they might equate an animal sacrifice to one of their idols with a bountiful crop. They repeated the story over the years, each retelling solidifying its legitimacy, cementing it in their history, turning coincidence into fact.

  It was folklore, nothing more.

  As to the old woman’s assertion she saw this troll-demon as a child, well, that was the issue right there: she was a child at the time. Children have vivid imaginations. Shadows become monsters watching you while you sleep. And the footprints? Who knew for certain? Did they really exist, or were they a figment of her imagination as well? Perhaps they had been bear tracks, or wolverine tracks, and perhaps it had not been the middle of the night but closer to dawn, and her father decided there was no point going back to sleep, so he led them home instead.

  There were countless rational explanations to explain what she claimed to have seen in the dark that did not preclude the existence of a mythical creature stalking her family.

  ⁂

  With the wind whipping past my face, snowflakes pelting my goggles, and the never-ending ranks of evergreens flashing past on either side of the riverbank, I fell into a kind of content, hypnotic state, and my thoughts turned inward to Denise, to a shifting collage of nostalgic memories of her. Standing naked in front of my bedroom mirror while applying her makeup before work. Flushed and sweaty and clad in Lycra after one her Kenpo workouts. Triumphantly holding up a monster pumpkin she’d chosen from a sprawling patch to carve into a Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween. Running through a corn maze at the same pumpkin farm, glancing back and taunting me to catch up. Mock-flexing her biceps while kneeling in front of Muscle Beach, the iconic outdoor Venice Beach gym. Standing at the end of Santa Monica Pier on Independence Day, arms spread wide, imitating that Leo-and-Kate pose from the James Cameron movie.

  True to her word, Denise had begun job hunting the day after our talk at The Garden Club in the summer of 2016. She wrote up a new resume and sent it off to a half-dozen different hospitals, knowing her fentanyl secret was safe, as it was against Cedars Sinai’s policy to provide information regarding a previous employee’s resignation.

  By the end of the week she was offered a job in the radiology department at Shriners Hospital for Children in Pasadena. It was a step down from her previous position, pay-wise, but she wasn’t about to pass it up. That same week her GP wrote her another prescription for Percocet, this one slightly stronger than the last.

  For the next few weeks everything seemed back to normal concerning Denise and myself, and while her fentanyl addiction remained in the back of my mind, with each passing day it seemed more and more a thing of the past.

  Roughly one month after Nurse Cindy had summoned me to Cedars Sinai, on a Friday night in the dog days of August, I spent the night celebrating a friend’s fortieth birthday at a bar in East Hollywood. At three o’clock I hailed a taxi and gave the driver Denise’s address in Frogtown because it was a lot closer than my place in Venice Beach. I had a key to the back door of her bungalow, and I often came by unannounced. Doing so in the wee hours of the morning would be a first, but I figured she might consider it a pleasant surprise, as we could then get breakfast together in one of the new cafés popping up along the LA River.

  I entered her kitchen and closed the door quietly behind me. The lights were off, though random night lights plugged into sockets offered enough illumination by which to see.

  The bungalow was a cramped six hundred fifty square feet, though Denise had done it up with bohemian décor that gave it a homey vibe. I passed the loudly humming refrigerator and stepped into the living room, which always smelled faintly of lavender from the incense sticks she burned.

  On the glass coffee table in the center of the purple shag rug sat a collection of drug paraphernalia: a baggie containing several grams of cocaine, Denise’s Gold’s Gym card, and a rolled-up banknote. There was also a small vial with fentanyl written on the blue sticker, though I didn’t see a syringe anywhere.

  I felt momentarily dizzy. Then furious. I pushed aside the dangling beads that served as the door to Denise’s bedroom and stepped inside. I said her name and received no reply. I said it again louder. Nothing. I turned on the night lamp on the bedside table. Denise was on her side, clad in red silk pajamas, her knees pulled toward her chest in a fetal position, facing away from me. I repeated her name and she came awake, sleepily. Seeing me, she sat up, frowning, confused…and there commenced the longest night of my life.

  No more pretend civility like we’d demonstrated at The Garden Club. We argued, paced, shouted, accused. Twice I threatened I was done with the relationship, but couldn’t bring myself to walk out. Eventually I told her she needed to go to rehab. She refused. I reminded her that she promised me she would if she shot up again. This only enraged her further. Exasperated, I left.

  Dawn was breaking, reds and oranges coloring the sky in the east. I started walking the twenty miles back to my place. I needed space, and time, to clear my head. I only made it to Mid-Wilshire before hailing a cab. When I eventually reached my beach cottage, I knew what Denise and I had was over. As much as I cared for her, I was not going to remain in a relationship with an addict, especially one who refused to recognize she had a problem.

  I spent the rest of the day keeping busy in an attempt to distract my thoughts. I went for a run, did some grocery shopping, washed my car, caught up with some garden work—yet my mind continually flitted back to Denise. That evening I stayed in, drank a six-pack of beer, and watched animal documentaries on Netflix until I passed out on the sofa.

  As the days went by I was tempted stop by Denise’s bungalow, to apologize for some of the harsher things I’d said, to try to work something out. But my pride wouldn’t allow me to extend such an olive branch. I wasn’t the one in the wrong. I wasn’t the one leading a double life. Denise was. She needed to come back to me, not the other way around.

  I guess a month passed before I saw her again. By this point, in my mind, we were no longer together. I wasn’t seeing anyone else. I wasn’t at that stage yet. Not even close. But life moves on, and mine had moved on without Denise.

  I was playing baseball with my pick-up team in Grand Park like I did every weekend. I was up to bat when I saw her standing on the sidelines with some other spectators, wearing a cotton summer dress, dark sunglasses, and a straw sunhat. I popped out and couldn’t have cared less. I went over to her, my pulse quickening. I smiled, and she smiled back. I knew her face so well, every contour, bump, and imperfection. Yet seeing her again, after so long apart, was like seeing her for the first time, reminding me of just how beautiful she was.

  While we made awkward but pleasant chitchat, I wondered why she’d decided to make the effort to see me now—and became increasingly convinced it was to tell me was seeing somebody and wanted me to hear it from her first, or something along those lines.

  So when the bombshell dropped, I was doubly surprised—but in a g
ood way. She had enrolled herself in a long-term treatment center for drug addiction, which she would be entering the following week.

  After the baseball game—my team won 7-6 in extra innings—I took Denise out for lunch at a popular Jewish deli, and we ended up spending the rest of the day together.

  When we parted at dusk, we hugged, I wished her the best, and told her I would visit her at the treatment center, if she wanted me to. She told me she did.

  That night I slept better than I had in a long time.

  ⁂

  Disco swerved his snowmobile to the left, then slowed until he paced me. He shouted above the engines, “Race ya!”

  “No!” I replied, coming out of the past.

  “Bwaaaak, bwaak, bwaaaak!”

  He zipped ahead.

  “Don’t race him!” Olivia yelled, her breath warm on my exposed earlobe.

  “I’m not—”

  Far ahead, Disco disappeared through the ice.

  One moment he was there, semi-standing in a racing position on the snowmobile’s running boards, his upper body leaning forward over the handlebars, the next moment he and the machine were gone.

  I cut hard to the riverbank and jumped off the sled before it came to a stop and ran toward where Disco had vanished. Olivia was shouting at me. I wasn’t listening to her. I couldn’t hear anything except the blood pounding in my temples and the sanguinary voice shouting inside my head: Where is he? Why hasn’t he resurfaced? He needs to come up for air!

  When I neared the lip of the hole, I slid to my stomach.

  “Disco!” I shouted.

  I pulled myself forward with my forearms and elbows.

  “Disco!”

  “Corey!”

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Olivia toddling toward me on the slippery ice, arms outstretched for balance.

  “Go back! It’s too thin!”

  Facing forward, I continued dragging myself toward the hole. A multitude of spider web cracks extended from it.