Dead Five's Pass Read Online Free PDF

place into a fair ride. Carise stood on shaking legs and watched in slow motion as the paramedics entered and locked eyes with Marge, then Frank, and finally her. She pointed to the door and regretted it immediately; she tried to stop the two women in their bright red coats, carrying a gurney as they reached the interrogation room. She wasn’t quick enough, and the lead woman, with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and unusually extravagant makeup, pulled the door open before gasping and turning her head away in disgust.
    Both paramedics dashed to the girl who now lay still on her side in the middle of that horrific pattern of shapes and angles.
    Carise couldn’t look at those dread drawings any longer and just stared out of the window, focusing on the whirling emergency lights.
    The paramedics stretchered the girl out of the room and into the back of the ambulance. Both Marge and Frank were standing now and moving out of the station, but Carise stood where she was, all the time trying to ignore that magneticlike pull of the room and its terrible new paint job. It was if it had some kind of power, some attraction, despite the unnatural angles and strokes. Snapping out of it, Carise ran to the door of the station before it closed and let the freezing air pull her back to the world.
    It wouldn’t be her last experience of chaos that night; she was sure of it. And in the back of her mind, all she could really think of was Marcel. She had to get a message to him.
    Against her better judgment and natural inclination to have nothing more to do with that room, Carise walked back into the station, and with her camera phone took a series of pictures. She knew Marcel had an Internet connection at his cabin; maybe he could help find out what it meant. She assumed that once the girl was taken care of, she’d be going out to the pass to confirm the whereabouts of her boyfriend, and she’d rather do it with Marcel’s company.

 
     
     
    5
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Michael stepped out from the back of the group of climbers and overtook both Mouse and Brick to join Nate at the front. The going was heavy now, with the freezing wind howling and the temperature dropping to twenty-five below. The previous climber’s tracks had so far been in line with Nate’s navigation to the new cave.
    “How much farther, Nate?” Michael asked as he stepped beside his friend.
    Nate pulled the map out of his jacket. “See that outcrop on the eastern side? The cave is underneath it and obscured by a curl of rock. Partly why it was never found until now.”
    That didn’t sound right. Rock doesn’t so easily curl, and it’s an odd phenomenon to happen naturally, but then he wasn’t graduated or a professor yet, so he reminded himself he didn’t know all the answers, just like he had no answers for the standing stones in the pass. But whatever the answer was, he had a creeping suspicion it wasn’t normal. He struggled to get the image of the climber’s face lying in the snow next to his own skull out of his mind.
    What irked him even more was how casual everyone now seemed. It had been less than thirty minutes ago, and there was Mouse joking and laughing with Brick as if this was just another regular climbing weekend. But there was nothing regular about any of it.
    Nate kept the pace up and began to veer to the east—following the tracks all the way. It was clear to Michael now that the climber did come from the cave.
    As they headed into the tree line, Michael thought he noticed something shift beneath the outcrop. “Guys, did you see that?”
    Mouse and Brick were still laughing, but shut up when Michael stopped and they walked into the back of him. “Dude!” Mouse said, rubbing his face from the collision.
    “Shut up and listen for a second,” Michael said, not even attempting to hide the irritation from his voice. “Up ahead under the outcrop. I saw something.”
    Nate eventually stopped, but was now five meters in front of