The Confluence

The Confluence Part XIV

"It has me."

"It will take my eyes."

"It has me."

Suzie dropped the flashlight. Taking the shotgun in two trembling hands. "Hey..."

Adrian continued to stare, gape-mouthed. "Hey Adrian! Snap the hell out of it!" She brought the gun up, over her head. "If you don't wake the hell up now, I'll hit you! Ill fucking do it!" Suzie yelled hoarsely at him, panic gripping her heart with icy fingers. She wanted to be able to not face this alone, for once having the trust to rely on someone outside of herself. SHe knew she had to break him out of this, whatever this strange possession was. She bared her teeth, and taking the shotgun in one hand, she took two steps over to the man, and slapped him across the cheek as hard as she could. The impact left her hand stinging and buzzing, but definitely not as bad as Adrian's face felt. The slap knocked his head straight to the right, along with a lot of his weight, immediately severing the weird blankness that had slowly glided across his brain. "Ow! Shit jesus!" The side of his face alternated between burning and freezing as he shook his head and tried to clear his mind. "Oh hell. I think.. I think whatever that was is gone." Suzie kept looking at him with uncertainty. She had taken the shotgun back in two hands, with the barrel leveled at Adrian's chest. "You walk first, ahead of me. I don't want you behind me if that shit happens again, alright?"

"All right. Just point the gun somewhere else other than me okay? I think you're jumpy as hell right now too. I don't wanna get shot by an itchy trigger finger."

"Whatever. Just fucking walk, man."

With that, Adrian turned, and taking a deep and shuddery breath began walking up the silver stairs. The wind was howling over the barren rocks of the side of the mountain, screaming across the vast stretches of ancient stones as the two worked their way up the mountainside. The cold of the night had sunken deep into their flesh, both of them felt unable to feel anything other than the persistent numbness of piercingly cold air. The stairs were becoming increasingly steep, with the rest of the rocky earth rising on their right in a sheer wall of rock, and on their left was nothing more than a long fall down the mountainside. Looking over the side gave both of them a dizzying feeling of vertigo, and so both of them walked up the stairs half leaning against the rock wall. Both of them were breathing heavily, their breath misting out of their mouths like puffs of steam. They kept moving despite this, knowing that if they stopped, they risked becoming too cold to keep going. The air was getting colder and colder as they climbed, so much so that a small layer of frost covered everything. Suzie had flipped the collars of her coat up, their tips brushing against her sunken cheeks.

Adrian ahead of her was shivering uncontrollably. He kept moving, the pull of the mountain still present within him. He still didn't totally know or understand what had happened to him. It was blank fuzz that had suddenly come over him, and looking back, he could've sworn his mind swirled with bizarre half images, more sensed than seen. As much as he tried to concentrate on what he saw in his head, the thought that he was freezing to death overtook most of his thoughts. He had stopped shivering as his body numbed, but he kept climbing. Hypothermia was beginning to set in, and the stone staircase had begun to incline. It was very gradual, but the frosty stairs had become almost vertical. Adrian had to use his hands to steady himself as he ascended, the cold coming off the rocks biting deep into his hands. Whenever the metal of the crowbar touched him, his skin froze immediately and stuck to it. Eventually he stopped trying to unstick his hand, and kept climbing, climbing and climbing, One shaky arm over the other, legs seeming to crack every time he raised his leg to keep climbing. Suzie was having trouble herself, her every breath searing the back of her throat, the shotgun growing heavier and heavier. They had stopped taking in the sights of such a high elevation and were completely focused on the task before them. One arm up, one leg up over and over and over and over. The rocky stairs continued to get colder and icier with every step up. Just as Adrian felt like one of his lungs would explode, his hand reached up and found only a flat plane of frosted rock. "Oh fuck, finally." Adrian managed to grunt out through heaving breaths. He heaved himself up onto the small plateau. Plateau wasn't quite the right word, it was more a small six feet wide cracked circle that seemed to have been carved out with almost bizarre perfection. It was a perfect circle of stone, with dark crags rising around the all too even circle. Adrian stared around him, taking in this anomaly with eyes that wanted to deny what they were seeing. Looking up into the night sky, it seemed almost as if the stars themselves were leaning closer, as if they were being drawn by this alien place's pull of influence. The night sky seemed to contort right above the mountain in a way that made Adrian's brain physically hurt.