***
At the same time, as Davis’ hell became hotter, Ian’s became colder. He was scrambling his way back up the hillside towards the waiting train. He couldn’t see the lights from the train, but he knew that the only way was up. There was nothing waiting for him in the pits far below. But every step was a struggle, as his feet slipped on the snow. There were even two times when Ian had almost slipped and tumbled backwards. Both times, though, Ian was able to lunge and claw at the snow like some animal.
His hands were animal, but his brain was still man. As he shuffled up the hill – made steep by the storm – he knew that there was no chance of reaching the train. He had to wait until the storm broke up, but how could he survive the wait? How could he evolve on the spot to survive the night?
And that was when he realized that he was already evolved for the challenge. Without wasting another moment, he immediately fell to his knees and began digging feverishly. Any minute, his arms would be uselessly numb, and he would definitely die then. He breathed heavily as he worked, the bitter air scraping the inside of his throat. But he didn’t pay attention to his ragged breathing as he hollowed out a cave just big enough to hold his body. As he squeezed inside, he fought down the claustrophobic panic. After all, there was barely enough room for himself, and it was likely that the snow above his head would collapse at any moment. Ian was almost certain that he was going to die. The question was how interesting the death was going to be.
Once inside, Ian padded and smoothed out the ceiling just an inch over his head. Reasonably confident that the snow would hold out for at least awhile, Ian then began to brick the entrance to his cave with snow. He left a hole towards the top for oxygen to filter into the cave, and a hole at the bottom for the heaver-than-air carbon dioxide from his breathing to escape. Ian didn’t have much faith in his crude ventilation system, though, so he would have to keep a watchful eye for symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning.
There was one more thing he had to do to survive the night. The thought of evolution earlier reminded him of a lecture he had attended, where they discussed the mammalian diving reflex seen in seals but is present to some extent in other mammals such as human beings. This effect explained how arctic creatures survived dives into freezing waters. When the creature’s face touched the water, it sets off a chain reaction that slows down the heartbeat and constricts the blood flow to the limbs. It shut down all of the body’s systems except those that were most critical, allowing the creature to survive in the most hostile environments. Hoping that the professor who delivered the lecture wasn’t a complete idiot, Ian took a handful of snow. He hyperventilated a few times before smashing the snow in his face.
He thought that he was cold before, but he wasn’t prepared for this. It was if his face was on fire, and he fought down the urge to scream. And still he kept his hands pressed to his face, massaging the snow into his skin. His heart sprinted for a few moments before collapsing. His breathing slowed down to match the pace. It was not long before his lazy breath was mummified in its own fog. It was only then that Ian’s hands dropped from his face, the white mask staying behind. His face was so still that the snow didn’t even crack and crumble off his cheeks.
Drunk off the cold, Ian’s last thoughts before falling asleep weren’t of fear or pain. If anything, he felt like an infant again, waiting to be born. The wind, which whistled like a knife through the air just moments before, now sounded like a mother’s lullaby. He felt himself falling into the gravity of the womb, where the cold felt warm and the strange felt like home.
His slip into his dream world was so seamless that he accepted the person stretched out on the snow next to him as being real. The tight cave even expanded to accommodate for the second body, something that Ian’s logical mind also accepted. He twisted and found his nose a few inches from an elderly woman staring at him. In the light of a candle that Ian couldn’t see, she looked as old as he always remembered her being. She still reeked of the herbs she always steeped in her tea.
His landlady of many years looked at him with a mother’s eyes, firm but tender. Wagging her finger at him, she said, “You better not back out on your lease now.”
“Don’t bluff,” Ian said with a smirk. “You would rather burn the place down than throw my belongings out in the street.”
“Well, if that’s what it takes to get rid of the horrid smell seeping from your place, let me just find my candle,” the old lady retorted.
“It’s not a smell, it’s a science experiment into how quickly human hands decay in different types of soil…”
His landlady made a face. “Why am I not surprised?”
Ian looked triumphant. “It’s why you’ll never get rid of me. You don’t want a stranger renting from you. At least you know how awful of a creature I am.”
“What’s this I hear about you being a human hand collector?” A voice said from Ian’s other side. He turned around and saw a stern man with a balding head and thick eyebrows staring at him. Ian’s breath picked up a little – his coffin of snow was starting to get too crowded.
He put on a brave face, though. “They were all donations from the medical school, let me assure you.”
The inspector didn’t look convinced. “So says the man who once robbed a grave.”
Ian rolled his eyes. “You keep forgetting I had an alibi. The same night that crypt was ransacked, I was halfway across the country, impersonating a sheriff.”
“Spreading state secrets, are we, little brother?” A voice drawled to Ian’s other side. Ian turned wildly and saw his brother squeezed between him and his landlady. His brother looked as lazy as he ever did, with his wrinkled tuxedo and massaged hair. Ian’s brother clucked disapprovingly. “Don’t embarrass the family name now.”
“Embarrass the family name?” Ian asked, incredulous. “You asked me to go on that little fact-finding mission for you, because you didn’t want to cancel the bridge game you had scheduled that night.”
“I don’t go to my information – my information comes to me,” Ian’s brother pointed out.
“I’m not your hound,” Ian snarled.
His brother smiled widely. “And yet, whenever I say fetch, there you go.”
“What’s he talking about?” A voice spoke up. It was the quietest one of the bunch, but creeks carve valleys. Ian glanced around for his partner and found him in a vice between the inspector and the wall. His loyal friend was as youthful as ever, with a strong head of hair and a brain that echoed.
“You know the story. I told you about it the last time we met,” Ian reminded him.
His friend’s eyes squinted for a few moments before lighting up. “That’s right! Sorry, I forgot.”
“You’re supposed to be my biographer, and yet I’m remembering my stories for you,” Ian said with a patient smile for his friend, his partner, his writer. He had to smile to hide his grimace. The cave was becoming crowded with his luggage of ghosts, and he was finding it harder to breathe. And then, just like that, the ethereal light inside of the cave was snuffed out, and the memories died with it. The darkness was sudden, as if a bottle of ink had spilled out across his life story. And that was when a voice glided to him through the night.
“That’s all they are, just little bits of memory,” the woman said, her voice like plucked violin strings. “They’re syllables of the past. You’ve always felt trapped by them. Don’t lie to me now. I know you too well, because we’re the same. We both have electric minds that reassemble into countless rooms to explore. Don’t you want to get lost in me, love?”
Ian’s eyes stung. He reached out to hug the voice, but all he felt was the ceiling of snow just inches above his head. The frost sparked a realization deep inside of him. He said thickly, “I wanted you to be my future, but you’re the past just like the rest of them. Let me get some sleep, please.”
The woman went silent. And for the first time i
n years, Ian was alone. He had decades of his life measuring himself against other people’s standards, when he could be just as tall as he wanted to be. He was just as shackled to them as the Coburns were shackled to the East. The newspapers spoke of the West as being a god of experimentation, but the people brought the East with them like the pharaohs brought their servants with them into the afterlife. And so many wondered why they were spat out by the frontier. Just like the old shouldn’t replace the new, yesterday shouldn’t happen after tomorrow. Ian was no longer going to carry around his past like stones in his pockets. Even as he thought this, the mirages vanished and the cave grew just a little bit bigger. He just wished he reached that understanding before being eaten by the monster in the snow.
He thought of all this, not realizing that not too far away, Nellie was pressing her face against the window of the train car, desperately trying to find Ian’s silhouette in a landscape of shadows. As ready as Ian was to let go, Nellie wasn’t.
Chapter 15