The creature was a mere weight upon his shoe, not that Herbert could feel it anyway; sensation in that region had long since departed. Herbert looked at the creature with a mixture of awe and unease. Its apparent hospitality came as a relief, but its jarring call was like fingernails down a chalk board, and made his skin crawl, and would have made him shudder, had the cold not already seen to that.
An idea slowly dawned upon Herbert: if he could somehow find his way off the mountain and back to England, back to his laboratory, then he could study the creature. It seemed to have transcended the springing of its mortal coil and was as close to alive as a skeletal creature could hope to be. The secrets of reincarnation likely resided, at this very moment, on his foot. And if not, it was still a marvel of science, even his mind struggled to invent a plausible elucidation for its existence, so selling it to a museum or private benefactor would no doubt bring a huge sum with which he could renew his research. He found himself hoping more strongly than ever that he had not slipped into some awful, mocking delirium.
Feeling almost giddy with excitement, partly forgetting his situation, he bent over, offering an outstretched finger to the bone-creature.
“Come now, little spectacle,” Herbert purred, “Let us get inside where I pray we may find shelter.”
The thing bobbed its head up and down and from side to side as it eyed the finger. It clicked, and then scrambled up his jacket sleeve, sending the snow that had settled there up in tufts behind it. Herbert recoiled, mostly out of shock, but it had already nestled on his shoulder. He looked at it from the corner of his eye and it let out a creaky dissonance. Despite himself, Herbert smiled, a fraction at least.
“I suppose that works too.”
A vast obsidian monolith, the tower loomed ominously over the two of them, and Herbert’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Flames licked the outside, and ice thawed and froze anew. A door-less archway three metres high led inside. Much snow had gathered at the base, and a silvery sheen of slick ice covered the lower stairs. A stairwell, without handhold or railing, spiralled upwards out of sight.
The first steps were the most difficult, and Herbert almost lost his feet from under him twice, but a hand on the wall steadied him. A few of the stairs had partly fallen away, but he was able to skirt around the edges where they had remained intact. He did not look down. At several sections, fire-rimmed holes in the walls let the elements in, and strong winds threatened to blow Herbert over, but he would get down on his hands and knees and crawl up until the icy glint had vanished from the stairs. The skeletal creature buried its head deep into his collar, hiding from the gusts that could carry its tiny framework away.
Upon reaching the top, Herbert sat down on the highest steps. Snow had gathered here too, but less of it; the doorway leading onto the bridge was much smaller, but still did not have a door. Icy flurries were whipped about by the howling winds, all the more audible this high. A short stonewall offered some protection, but Herbert could see that it was crumbling in places. He knew at the end of it there was the castle, but journeying across would be no small amount frightening.
Ribs rose and fell rhythmically; the stairs had been steep and numerous, and it was a deceptively tiring climb. Herbert’s cold muscles ached, but they were slightly warmer than before.
A high, hollow Cluck.
“Just catching my breath,” Herbert replied, and, aware that it likely had no clue what he saying, he laughed a little. “Not something you have to worry about, is it?”
The thing let out a lower sound, like popping joints, almost as if it was agreeing. Almost.
After a few more moments, Herbert pushed himself to his feet, pulled the collar of his jacket tight round his face, and raised his other arm above his forehead in a vain attempt to shield his vision. It was not as bad as he had expected, but the wind did buffet him to his knees occasionally.
Then Herbert began to notice something, a sensation deep in his gut, as if it were full of lead, sinking. A slight burning arose in his chest, and he suddenly felt very queasy. The bone creature began to shuffle about, crawling from shoulder to shoulder along his collar, letting out an acrimonious chittering, like a thousand clicking knuckles. Herbert was not so sure this was the best idea; the castle was the most sheltered area he had seen, and likely the only place to hold food, or maybe some slender hope of survival. However, Herbert was beginning to strongly doubt that; the animal instincts of both Herbert and the once-dead creature cried at the intrinsic and unnatural wrongness that radiated from the castle.
Motion ahead; a figure against the backdrop of fire: silhouetted. It was too far away to make of details, but, importantly, it seemed to be human. There were other shapes behind him, but the fire cast shadows that made them impossible to discern.
Heart racing, Herbert’s first reaction was to back away, but then he saw the garments, simple cloth robes. They bore a striking resemblance to those worn by holy men, and suddenly Herbert was thinking about the possibility that he was in the afterlife; it explained the bone creature better than anything else. Was this man another damned, lost soul, or perhaps a demon with a sense of irony?
He could hear sounds, muffled, but distinctly human, and what’s more, English. Encouraged by this revelation, Herbert slowly began lurching towards the figure, the ill feeling persisting. If he was in a similar situation to Herbert, then they could help each other, and if this was some frozen purgatory, he imagined it would be helpful having a monk around.
Perhaps it was not a castle at all, but a monastery, and it had had some dreadful accident and the monk and his brothers were in need of help. They likely had a stockpile of food and knew of safe passage down the mountain to a rural settlement with friendly farmer’s wives and buxom daughters that would dote on him with hearty cooking and beg for him to tell stories of the city and the civilised world, which would beg wide-eyed stares and slack jaws. Wishful thinking, Herbert knew, but it helped comfort him, for the Lord knew little else about his current predicament did.
“Hello,” he called, as loud as he dared, not wanting to wake the malignance that hung in a lull over the place, but loud enough to assert himself over the snow, “I am lost, have you any idea where I am?”
Fetzen