Chapter 5: An Interview with Sir George Lambton
Sir George Lambton, a mountaineer of tremendous notability and with an illustrious record of conquering the fiercest climbs has allowed to convey to us his story of a harrowing adventure he had experienced in his youth. After being graciously invited to his home in Londoom, I arrived to hear this incredible tale in his own words.
Sir Lambton received me at the door and ushered me into his parlour, where I was adulated by the sight of the many trophies that Sir Lambton had collected over the course of his career. Just as impressive was how spry Sir Lambton was for his age. Without missing a single beat, he was able to hop over a sleeping mastiff that was in his path on the way to our seats. Once we had settled in, over glasses of wine and a bowl of fruit, I set up my recording equipment to begin listening to this astonishing confession of wilderness survival. The following is paraphrased from the words of Sir Lambton himself:
The year was 1921, and Mount Walpurgis loomed its shadow over the rural countryside of Europe. For decades, it had lorded over the towns that rested at its foothills. According to the research that I had done when I was preparing to conquer its northern face, I'd learnt that many superstitions surrounded the mountain. Particularly, surrounding a rather peculiar marker that was to be found at the end of the trail.
It seemed that once upon a time, the mountain was a battleground for the Gothic tribes that inhabited the area. As per their burial customs, the dead were cremated after their defeat. However, an odd thing happened on that mountain. It seemed that the ashes of the dead were never blown away by the winds. As though rooted to the very spot they had fallen, the ashes stayed fast and never left. Those who took the ashes to examine them were said to be drawn back to the mountain to return what they had taken. Eventually, it came to be that some of the ashes gathered were drawn up into a circle of stones that marked the end of the mountain path. It was believed by many of the local residents that passing this point was to incur the wrath of the spirits of the mountain. At the time, I had decided that the spirits of the mountain were simply a personification of the fears one felt as they ascended the mountain. And so, I set to begin my trek.
On my first day of arrival in the town of Schweinglück, I was rather taken aback by the reception that awaited me. I suppose that my appearance as a monster must have been a little bit of a shock for some of the humans who lived there, but it was the monsters as well who gave me wary glances as I tried to glean information about the expedition I was about to undertake. Naturally, any solo climb is not a risk to be taken lightly, but they were all acting as though I intended to jump off the moment that I summited the mountain. Whatever I asked, I was always turned away with a warning to forget about going near Mount Walpurgis. Even the local rangers seemed to try to dissuade me from going up that trail. But I wouldn't be turned. The mountain had remained unconquered for too long. And I was going to be the one who would make history by defeating the spirit of the mountain that lorded over the land.
By the time that I was ready to begin my ascent, I began to feel as though I were quite alone on the streets. During my entire walk toward the mountain, I thought that perhaps I was being avoided. There was not a single wish of good luck that I normally encountered at least once on my other climbing expeditions. Nor was there even a single glance my way. I had always made it a point to respect the local customs, but I could think of no taboo that I was violating. There was no sanctity to those ashes that were upon that mountain. And there were no proper graves of those fallen heathens to defile. It made me think that not even the locals knew why they never climbed the mountain before.
It was only by the time that I reached the foot of the mountain that I was met by any sign of life. In the town, I had heard tell of a wild woman who lived very near to where I was going to begin my trek. She was supposed to be utterly mad, wearing naught but the same tattered dress and baking goods for the crows who visited her all the day long. To my horror, she stopped me along my way to ask me about the nature of my journey. I gave her only the vaguest details, yet she seemed to already know about what I was trying to accomplish. I suppose now that she was only trying to be helpful when she tried just the same as the townsfolk to dissuade me, but I was resolved to carry on. When she saw how determined I was, she became even more unseemly. She insisted on tying a pouch of dried asphodel and rosemary around my wrist. And as I attempted to leave, she made a rather queer gesture in my direction. She raised her arm with her fore and smallest fingers extended, and her thumb clasped over her other curled fingers.
"Gouge their evil eyes with this," she said to me. "Show them the compassion they never had! And never turn your back to something evil!"
I admit that the last part of her admonishment rattled me slightly. I had been climbing for years by that time, and I never expected to encounter evil in any form. And I certainly never meant to bring any evil with me. But I simply dismissed the old woman's ramblings and carried on my way.
Only a short ways up the mountain did I begin to notice anything unusual. Usually when you're only a short ways up the foothills of any mountain, you can still hear the sounds of the modern world below intermingling with the sounds of nature of the world you are about to enter. Only, there were no sounds below the mountain. Not a single motor or a train passing by. Not even the voices of picnickers along the trail. It was unusual to me at the time, but not at all unsettling. I had already made my commitment to summit the mysterious mountain. I had my tools, my ropes, my uniform, my climbing axe. And I was not about to let even myself down by turning back.
It was barely midday when I encountered the end of the trail that I was told of by the townsfolk. There was a sort of circular cul de sac in the path, which was surrounded by stones and filled with grey-white ash. That was when I knew that I had arrived. Past that point, I was going to make history. But nobody had told me quite how large this ashen pit was. It took up nearly the entire end of the path, leaving any other with no choice but to turn back, even if they would have wanted to carry on. But not me. I started by circumnavigating the outer edge of the stone circle.
Now, you see, opposite from the path that I had chosen, there was a sheer cliff face that would have allowed me no room to shin along the outer edge of the circle. And since it was unsuited for climbing, I simply chose the path where a steep hillside was the hazard that awaited me. So, to my left was a long drop that would have only severely maimed me. To my right was a drop into an ashen pit, where who-knew-what would happen to me if I fell in. The only guess I could have had was when my toe slipped and cuffed a small stone into the pit of ash. To this day, I'm not sure if I had imagined it, but the cloud of ash that I had stirred up might have been looking back at me. It was perhaps this first transgression that preceded all of my future troubles upon that accursed mountain. If only I had listened.
It began with a noise. When I was nearly halfway around the ring of stones, I heard something on the trail ahead of me. A low, throaty grumble and the shuffling of dirt. Over the hill before me stepped a hellhog. A brutish creature, snuffling the ground for things to eat. Something must have sparked in its greedy, little mind when it saw me frozen upon the outer foothold of those stones, as it bared its fangs the moment it summitted that little hump beyond the path. Now, perhaps this had been the evil that the mad old woman had warned me about, as one knows to not run from a hellhog. Though not evil in the sense that we are familiar with, we all know that they are not to be trifled with when they are hungry. And this demon surely was ravished with hunger.
To run was to permit it to give chase. Suddenly, being told to not turn my back to evil made sense. Armed with only my climbing axe, I was not about to let this lowly beast get the better of me. Now, the first thing that an outdoorsman learns when facing a wild animal is to never look it in the eye, as this is almost universally interpreted as a threat. Try as I did to not blunder into this neophyte mistake, my eye must have crossed its own at some point, as the boar began to snort viciously in my direction. I recall that I had very little time to ready my axe to attack as the boar was nearly upon me when my foot slipped.
Even to this day, I believe that I was almost doomed to fall into that pit. I swear that I was teetering toward it until I felt the tusk of the hellhog slice against my leg and I fell down the hillside. It was only my swift reaction that let me dig my climbing axe into the top of the slope. As I was dangling on the side of the slope, I'm not sure what precisely happened. However, I could infer that the hellhog had slipped on the same stone as I. Only, it had fallen into the pit. The noise that it made was terrible. One that I hoped I would never hear again. A horrendous squeal mixed with hysterical bellowing, it thrashed on its back as though it were being pinned down by some unseen predator. It took only moments for it to escape, rushing down the very path I had taken prior to my arrival, and leaving a thick trail of white ash in its wake. And this was where I began to think that things might not be as forward as I thought.
The ash indeed drifted across the ground, back into the pit from whence it came, crawling along like some animal that had spotted something it meant to remain hidden from. Hanging from the ledge on the side of the path, I was flummoxed at the sight of it. Never in all my years did I ever see such a thing. I don't know how long I hung there looking at it, but I began to feel as though the remnants of the dust were watching me again. After I took back control of my sensibilities, I shinned along the ledge until I was well away from the pit to pull myself back up to solid ground. My leg wasn't hurt nearly as bad as I had thought, so I continued onward. I admit that as I left that scene behind me, I nearly looked over my shoulder just to be sure that the ash was indeed still in that pit. But I decided it best not to dwell on such things. The past was past, and another climb was before me.
It was a great relief to me that the climb that day was very uneventful. That is to say that nothing out of the ordinary during a routine climbing expedition happened. A bent piton and a faulty handhold were the biggest obstacles that I had to face during the first day's ascent. I had gained approximately fifteen-hundred vertical metres that day. This may not seem like much to the average reader who walks well over that much most days, but you must realize that climbing is quite a slow and deliberate process. Especially when being done solo.
At such altitudes the wind is no friend to unwary travellers. And with the sun lowering in the distance, I decided it was a good time to set up camp for the night. The sun had just gone down when I finally got my tent poled up, and since I didn't feel like building a fire at that time I settled in to enjoy a can of unheated beans. Partway through my meal, I heard something scuffling outside my tent. Something with four legs tapping along the stones that littered the path. Immediately my mind went to the hellhog that I had brushed with before. Slowly, I put down my meal, armed myself with my climbing axe, and waited to hear its next move.
It was walking outside my tent. First to the rear, where the sound grew gradually softer. And then it circled around to my right. I could have been mistaken, but I thought that where the sound was coming from there was a sheer drop. Yet I still heard those steps until they had circled around in front of me. Just beneath the howl of the wind it was then that I heard them coming toward me. Just as they were in front of my tent flap, the steps stopped.
All that separated me from whatever was out there was a thin piece of fabric. And if it was going to come barging in, I wasn't about to go quietly. I stood at the ready, anticipating the moment that whatever had come to visit me was going to make its move at any moment. Except that it never came. It was as though whatever had come had lost its nerve. But I still hadn't heard it leave. So there I was, facing off against some unseen terror that was slightly more than arm's reach from myself. Another one of the most basic rules of mountaineering is to not let your emotions overtake you so that you may do something rash. But I could bear the anticipation no longer. If it was going to stay there, then I would face it. Throwing all caution to the blustering wind outside, I threw open my tent flap and burst out waving my axe like a madman.
Nothing was there. I turned every which way to try and discover what had been tormenting me, but I could see nothing that may have been walking about. It was then that I saw something that I had never expected.
At first I thought that it was nothing. Merely my mind playing tricks on me. Until I saw it move. A patch of shadows stepped out from beneath the eaves of stone. I had wholly expected it to be that hellhog I had encountered. But instead of the porcine opponent that I anticipated to face, it was something else entirely. A dog. An enormous mastiff, pitch black from its nose to the tip of its tail. It looked at me with its fiery red eyes, and this time I couldn't help but look directly back at it. I felt as though I were trapped by its gaze, unable to even think of my next move. As though by divine providence, I remembered the words of that madwoman at the foot of the mountain. 'Gouge their evil eyes with this,' she had said. And so, I raised my arm and thrusted that gesture that had been taught to me as I forcefully commanded the beast to leave me be. She had also told me to show them– whoever they were– compassion. However, I was not feeling quite so compassionate at the time. I wanted that beast gone, and any others that had decided to follow it.
By some power, it was as if the dog had suddenly disappeared from existence. I don't know how or where to, but it was no longer standing before me. Not wanting to press my luck on the matter, I retreated back into my tent and laid down for a light, restless sleep.
Before sunrise the next morning, I was ready and on my way to resume my expedition to climb the mountain. Normally as one goes further up a mountain, they begin to feel the air grow lighter. If one climbs high enough, they will need the aid of bottled oxygen to breathe normally. But as I ascended, I began to feel the air get heavier. A sort of thick, stuffy sensation that seemed intent on suffocating me.
It was then that I became aware of a savory aroma that came from somewhere within my jacket. When I investigated, I found that pouch of herbs that the madwoman had tried to tie around my wrist. If only to know that I was still in possession of my senses, I inhaled deeply of its fragrance. The moment I had, I felt my breath return to me. I don't know if it was something else that she had put in those herbs, but I tied the pouch around my wrist and would take periodic whiffs of that marvellous poultice for the rest of my climb.
It was when I was rounding a corner of a rocky shelf that I began to grow particularly anxious. As though from a great distance, I heard a noise on the wind. It was the baying of a large dog, although it didn't sound quite right. It was as though its sounds were gradually turning into the panicked bellows of that hellhog I had faced. I don't know what it meant, but I felt it rattling in my bones as the noise carried on. Gripping the wall with one hand, I shouted for the noise to stop as I thrusted that gesture in the direction I hoped this phantom to be. It seemed to have worked, because the noise faded away almost immediately. I was able to finish my climb to solid ground in relative peace. But when I did, I felt my hopes sink when I saw where I was.
There were urns. Dozens of half-broken clay urns that I conjectured had once held the ashes of the fallen warriors I had heard about. The ashes themselves were strewn about the ground like fallen snow. And even though the wind blew as fiercely as it had before, the ash remained still as rock.
The only way onward was through that ash. Truly there was nothing else for it. And so, expecting the worst but hoping for the best, I took that first unsteady step into the ashen fray. From that first footfall when the dust from the ashes billowed up, I felt as though it were watching me again. Though I wholly realize that it's far-fetched even where ghosts are concerned, I began to feel as if the spirits of those fallen warriors from centuries ago might have been stirred from their sleep in the ashes. That was where things truly took a turn for the terrifying.
From around a bend of the rocks, I thought I had seen something moving. When I looked, it was only what I had at first thought to be a cloud of dust. And then it occurred to me that the dust would only stir when a living creature like myself would move through it. I already knew that I wasn't alone on that mountain and I was prepared to defend myself from what beast was coming to face me. Except no such mortal thing approached.
The ash billowed up into an even thicker cloud. And through it I saw something I never thought could be. It looked like a ghost, but it wasn't a ghost. Its form was thin and wispy, emanating miasmic shades of itself as it walked toward me with a swishing gait. And its face…I'd never seen anything like it before. Its face was completely hollow. No eyes. No nose. No lips. Just a skeletal grin beneath empty sockets. Garbed, it was, in a tunic of leather and iron, and so armed with a sword half as broad as my torso.
Fear besot me. I didn't know what had come to face me on that mountain, but I could tell that it wasn't friendly in the least sense of the word. I can't tell you how long we stared one another down, it with its sword and I with only my climbing axe. Neither can I tell you about the depth of my hubris in my youth. My choices before me were to either backtrack down the path I had taken and face the humiliation of my peers when I admitted that I was unable to conquer the fabled Mount Walpurgis, or to pit myself against that unnatural thing and risk losing more than my dignity. And as my hand gripped my axe, the only available weapon at my disposal, I made my decision.
It seemed that my foe had come to the same decision and lunged at me with his sword.
One doesn't partake in such dangerous activities without developing fast reactions. I was able to dodge the blade and swing my axe as hard as I could. I feel I should have expected it, but my weapon passed right through its spectral form. But the stone that it had struck in my stead was nearly cleft asunder.
I dodged another swing of the sword, and another that nearly cut me at the waist.
Something in the back of my mind told me to dodge, and I did as another sword narrowly missed me.
As I collected myself, I saw then that my opponent was joined by another one of its ilk. And that was all I had time to see when they continued their attack.
I had barely regained my footing and fell back down to dodge the swing of a sword. In doing so, I dropped my climbing axe, which began sliding along the ashes toward the precipice.
Though it was no use as a weapon, it was one of the most valuable tools at my disposal. I chased it toward the ledge. And even though I didn't look, I knew my spectral enemies were chasing me as well.
My axe inched closer to the ledge.
I made a desperate leap to recover my tool.
My arm followed it over the ledge, suspending nearly my entire left half over the open air of the mountain as my fingers curled around the handle of my axe.
I rolled back to the solid ground, and looked up to see one of those things raising its sword to impale me. As I had said before, my weapon was useless to harm them, but I could think of nothing else but to swing at his ankles.
It seemed like a miracle. The axe pierced his misty legs as if he had suddenly become as solid as you or I. The way that he shrieked made me know that it had indeed done its job. For only a brief moment, I was able to see the poultice that I had been respirating from was tied around the wrist of my hand which held the climbing axe. I was in no position to question or wonder about it as the swords of the creatures began bearing down on me once more.
Over rocks I tumbled and through crevasses I squeezed to spar with my enemies as they chased me up the mountain path. Their swords were swift, and their tactic of trying to divide my energy between them was quite tiresome. I ended up fighting in two different directions to stave off their blows.
One I was able to hook my axe into his chest and hurl him over the ledge. As my back was turned, the other took advantage of my vulnerable state and tried to cleave me in two.
I blocked with my climbing axe, only stopping the blade mere centimetres from my forehead. It did not prevent me from being pushed over the ledge anyway.
As I have said, one does not undertake my profession without quick reflexes. I grasped the ledge at the last possible moment and did quickly to dodge the sword that nearly cut my arm off.
The creature I was fighting kept on swinging at me, and I kept shinning rapidly along the ledge to keep just ahead of that blade.
Just as I was running out of ledge, I was able to see the ash sworling up, and that first creature I had launched away was now back on the ledge where I was going.
I noticed the first of the creatures winding up to swing at me again. Dangling from the ledge, I did the only thing that I could think to do. I thrusted that gesture that I had learned at the thing. I can't say exactly why, but the creature seemed shocked by what I had done. If it had a voice, I suppose it might have gasped in terror at what I had done.
That was enough to pull myself back up. When the other advanced, I presented the same gesture to it, and it too became a quavering wreck. And when I saw those terrified faces, for just one moment I felt a pang of pity for them. I'm not a cruel man by any means, but I wasn't about to allow them a chance to charge me again. Instead, I kept them pinned by that unusual gesture, and remembered something that I was once told about when dealing with the undead. That it was best to not aggravate them, for they could make your life difficult if they so wished.
"Go back to your resting place," was what I told them. "This world is not yours to inhabit."
And though my hand shook as I directed that gesture to them, the unusual spirits looked at me as if I had pardoned their execution moments before they became the way that they were. In time, I was able to see them fade away, back into the ash from whence they came.
They had gone. I was now alone on that mountain again. And as I clutched my climbing axe, I began to wonder if I should continue on. The wind blew across the bluffs, and I recalled the sound that I had heard before I encountered those two vicious fellows. It wasn't so much the memory of that hellhog, as it was the baying of that dog that stuck out in my memory. And as I stood in the ashes of the fallen, I decided then that I had gone as far as anyone ever would up that accursed mountain. I planted my flag there, and my descent began almost immediately after.
Words cannot express how grateful I was to be back on that path beyond the ash pit. From there, I was able to finish my return to civilisation and put the ordeal behind me. I had wished to express my thanks to that madwoman for her advice, but she seemed to be out. And so, I only left the poultice that she had given me on her doorknob before I went on my way.
This is the first time that I've shared this story in such detail to another. For many years, I've tried to put it behind me. It seems that the entire thing is a part of me, however. And so I have tried to face it head on. But the past has a way of eluding oneself, no matter how you may try to make your peace with it. To this day, I even keep a pet mastiff as a way to face what had happened on that mountain. I just wonder if one day, old Bill here may one day have changed places with that black apparition. Yet through it all, some part of me still wonders what the devil that hound was. If even it was some other form of that hellhog, bent on taking out its vengeance on me for the first time I slighted it. Perhaps it was the cause of all of my troubles?
I apologise if this story sounds unbelievable, but I promise that every word of it has been true. In telling this to all you who have read it, I have found the greatest peace that I could in these many years since by simply conveying it to you. And I thank you.
When she finished reading the article, Draculaura's hands felt so cold that she could barely feel the keyboard beneath her fingers.
Ever since she had narrowly escaped that thing that had been stalking her, she had been looking for an answer. She had first asked her father for any answers, asking him in only the vaguest of terms. What he knew about giant black dogs, or what would happen in a person kept seeing one. Anything he could have told her was what she might have expected. In her father's opinion, he thought simply she had seen several and was just conflating them all as the same animal. Why nobody else could see them was beyond him, but noted that there were still many oddities that he didn't know about in his many years of unliving.
Her talk with her father had done little for her. Now she was on the search for anything. Anything that would have led her in the right direction to abate her doubts and fears. Anything about spectral black dogs that stalked people. The closest thing she had found was the story of Sir George and his harrowing adventure on Mount Walpurgis. Instead, she was only made more wary.
At what point would she see that thing again? What did it want with her? Why did nobody else believe her about it? Most of all, she wondered if she would be so lucky to escape the next time.
Draculaura reached for her phone and tried to send a message to her friends to ask them when was the earliest time they could meet. Except her iCoffin wasn't where she normally kept it on her desk. She checked her nightstand, and found it wasn't in its charger. Nor was it in any drawer she checked. Or her closet. Or her laundry.
Every step she had taken that day was replayed in her mind. At breakfast she had her phone because her father kept telling her not to use it during her meal, just before she nearly spilled a glass of tomato juice on it. She knew she had it for the rest of the morning, because she had texted her friends to meet her at the maul. And she knew she had it at the maul, because Cleo had texted her just before…
"Oh, fruit bats…!" Draculaura whispered to herself.
She had left it in the restroom when she encountered that thing! With any luck, some good samaritan would have brought it to the lost and found. Worst case was that somebody would have taken it for themselves, and she would have to spend weeks recovering her information and identity. No. Worst of all, that thing would have learned her scent and be able to track her down even easier.
Things had taken a sudden horrifying turn for Draculaura. And even worse than the worst of all was that she was alone for it. She knew she had to find a way out. Anywhere. Anything…
A/N: Another detour from our usual storytelling. As you might have guessed by this point, I'm writing this story without the input of my niece. There might be a few more offbeat chapters like this one, since I'm not adhering to her story structure this time around.
Mount Walpurgis takes its name from the German holiday, Walpurgisnacht, and this fictitious mountain is directly inspired by the 'Night on Bald Mountain' segment from the animated Disney film, Fantasia. In real life, Bald Mountain is based on a mountain called The Brocken, and it's where witches would gather on Walpurgisnacht to usher in the change of seasons. This is why in Germany the holiday is also called 'Hexennacht,' which means 'Witches' Night' in english. As time went on, it was bastardized to where people thought witches would worship the devil at The Brocken on Walpurgisnacht.
The references to Gothic burial practices are taken from real life history. The Goths really did cremate their dead, and would throw their ashes to the wind. There is also evidence of them keeping the ashes of their dead in urns and placing them in private hidden locations.
I guess I shouldn't say that my niece had no hands in this story, because Sir George Lambton is another character that she dreamed up, but it was me who named him. His name is taken from two bits of English folklore. George comes from the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. Lambton comes from the legend of the Lambton wyrm, which was said to live on a mountain. Hence Sir George Lambton's career as a mountain climber. However, my niece imagined him as a basketball player. To my niece, if you're reading this, sorry about that.
You might have noticed that Sir George's story is written using European grammar (i.e. 'apologise,' 'metre'). This is a detail that I sweated over, because I don't know it by rote. I'm not European, after all. As such, I do apologize if there are any inconsistencies. But did you also notice that in the letters that Wolf writes, he uses European grammar as well?
By the way, about that strange old woman that Sir George meets. Does her description sound vaguely familiar to you? An old woman who wears a tattered dress and bakes all day long? Could it have been Ms. Kindergrubber that helped Sir George at the beginning of his trek? We do know that she is canonically several hundred years old and lived in Germany for most of her life. Sadly, I'll have to leave that interpretation up to you.
Once again, I wrote a book called Secret Seekers: The Hidden Girl. It's the first in a series I'm working on about a group of girls who discover the hidden places and artifacts in their fantasy world. You can buy it at the Lulu website. Thanks for reading.