Would that be it? Would he be another case of sudden and mysterious stupidity in their eyes?
Michael climbed over a ridge, and the rock flattened out so he could stand. He stopped and caught his breath. Sweat clung to his face, burned his eyes and soaked his clothes. At this elevation, he breathed clouds. The gray sky and snow made everything appear flat. He couldn’t see the contours of the land; the incline was barely perceptible. He could now see the peak of the mountain. The wind howled, pushing against him. It seemed for a moment he had been transported from the Adirondacks to some massive Alaskan peak, tens of thousands of feet high, treeless and surrounded on all sides by an angry sea of rising rock and snow-blown valleys. He was in a different time and different place – a place no man should be, seen only as a last vision by doomed explorers. Michael looked around the world from this massive height and did not recognize Earth anymore. He was at the top of the world, but he knew, logically, he shouldn’t be.
Conner’s footprints in the snow ascended, and he followed them with his eyes one hundred yards until he saw a figure standing at the base of the peak, staring into the sky. Conner’s back was turned to Michael, but the sight of him after this journey was shocking, almost frightful. The wind kicked up hard and seemed to push Michael back toward the ledge. He called his brother’s name, but it was lost in the lonely expanse of wind and sky.
Conner didn’t move. He stood motionless as a statue. Michael called to him again but he did not turn. Michael pushed one last time to reach him and struggled up the trail of his easy footsteps. It seemed the entire world was stripped away and there was only Conner standing in this lonely place, staring at something only he could see. As Michael made his way closer, he called for his brother, but still there was no answer, no movement.
Michael’s legs gave out when he was only a few yards from him. He couldn’t breathe anymore and dropped to his hands and knees. The lack of food, the expenditure of the last ounces of his energy, had pushed him to his final limit. But there was Conner, standing before him, and Michael felt he was on the edge of darkness and had to make one last surge to grasp his brother. Michael stood, reached out and put his hand on Conner’s shoulder.
Conner turned and gazed at Michael with dead, whitened eyes, his jaw drooping down below his neck. The skin seemed to fall away from the bone like a carcass left in water. His arms and legs were bent at strange angles. He seemed to float, held up by some invisible force. The wind blew, and as it swept across them, Conner’s giant, gaping mouth gave forth a deep, cavernous moan.
Michael stared, disbelieving, and then Conner held up a long arm and touched him. It was real. The evidence was in front of his eyes, defying the logic of life. Michael fell backward in the snow, staring in horror at the thing that was his brother. It moved closer to him.
It all came to him at once: perhaps death was not so simple.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jonathan stood in the snow with the tall grass rising up and bending in the wind and watched Michael run into the trees until he disappeared, swallowed whole by the mountain. The sound of his heavy footfalls, the mad scramble through the brush and branches faded away, and there was nothing but the soft rustle of the frozen meadow. Jonathan was alone now. He felt the world turn, and the mountains seemed to pass by slowly like the sails of a great ship. He felt dizzy, caught between life and death – the same fate that befell Conner and now, most likely, Michael. He tried to convince himself he was still among the living. He thought of Mary and Jacob. He thought of love, but when he tried to feel it, there seemed an impenetrable wall separating him from any emotion besides fear. It was all that was left in him.
It was an interminable climb up through the meadow – the horizon far above, the grasses pulling against his clothes, the cold reaching into his blood. At the top he would have cell service. He could call for help; he could hear Mary’s voice. He could know that he was still alive. The meadow lay out before him like a strange vision of hell, an encroaching doom on the wind, a cold, lonely and eternal place.
He heard the whispers rise up from the land itself. He heard Mary’s low and beautiful voice in the darkness, a memory of the night they snuck hand in hand out of a wedding and into the surrounding hills to make love. It was her cousin’s wedding, held in the brick remnants of an ancient factory in the wooded farm hills of Pennsylvania. Sparkling white lights hung from brick edifices. Some of the structures lacked roofs, or were merely an empty foundation with four brick walls that looked ready to collapse; former windows were gateways to nothingness. It was all rust-belt hip, beautiful in its decay. The revelers danced and drank deep into the night on the grave of a once-meaningful existence. The converted factory grounds were surrounded by thick forest, patches of forgotten farm fields and hills that rolled like distant thunder through the night. They were slightly drunk – laughing, touching. He brushed his hands against her ass,
