Rounding the final bend in the stony path that had seemed set to zig-zag up the mountain for eternity, Martha breathed a sigh of relief. She stopped on the highest point, surveying the countryside around her. The flanks of the mountain were clad in thin grass patched with clumps of incongruously bright flowers, from which stony outcrops emerged like elbows poking through the holes on a worn-out garment. Further off, the ground dropped steeply away on all sides, dividing into several small valleys, lush with thick green grass and cradling the glint of mountain streams. Then rose again, acquiring a thick cloak of dark evergreens before throwing off all vegetation to reveal itself in stark rocky peaks, the far-off summits dusted with snow. The whole view was patchworked in light and dark due to the ragged clouds in the sky; one moment bathed in welcoming sunbeams, the next plunged into forbidding gloom.
The small cable car station Martha had been hoping to reach for the last hour was finally visible, just a short way down the hillside below her. The car wasn’t yet in sight, so Martha took a moment to rest, digging in her rucksack for her water bottle and gulping the lukewarm liquid thankfully. She didn’t risk sitting down – her protesting leg muscles might take this as a capitulation and refuse to hoist her back up again. She hadn’t dared to pause for even a moment during the last section, pushing her aching legs mercilessly up the slope. Her chosen hiking route led from the summit station of one cable car, crossed the slopes to an intermediate cable car, then finished at a third that went down into the valley. The last trip down was at 4:30pm, which, given her prompt start in the morning, had seemed comfortably far off. But recent heavy rainfall had swelled several waterfalls to the point that they had overflowed across the path. The situation had never been truly dangerous, but tricky enough that Martha had lost a lot of time carefully stepping across wet rocks and edging around collapsed sections of path. It had got later and later. By the time she started to seriously worry about making it to the final cable car before it shut down, she had been past the point at which going back was a viable option. Visions of being stuck on the mountain for the night – with nothing but a water bottle, waterproofs and a couple of muesli bars – raced through her mind. Dark clouds gathering in the distance had done nothing to ease her fears, and as she walked on and on with no sign of the intermediate cable station, headlines and news reports started to flash past her mind’s eye – “Woman hiker dies on mountain. She was ill-equipped, unfamiliar with the terrain, and was walking alone”. She had never met a holidaymaker who did a thorough survey of their planned route and packed enough to survive a night in the open. Yet invariably when things went wrong people wagged their fingers in self-righteous criticism. As for doing anything at all on your own as a woman, well, basically whatever happened to you was entirely your own fault.
But now it should all be fine. The little cable car on this slope ran straight across to the other side of the mountain, from which it was a short stroll to the main summit station that would take her down to the valley. It was quarter to four now, and it was only a twenty-minute ride according to the schedule, so even if the car had only just left before she arrived, she would still make it. Martha put the top back on the water bottle, stowed it safely away, then gave her legs a quick pep talk, holding out the tantalizing prospect of soaking in the thermal bath at the swimming pool tomorrow if they would only do their best now. As she headed down the switchbacks to the station, wisps of mist started to form around the nearby peaks, so that the rocks with their fine striations were regularly hidden from view. Martha became more and more thankful that she was nearly done. The signposting of the trails was not brilliant, and the route often crossed sections of ground that showed no trace of a path. In fog, or even any meaningful level of mist, she would be hopelessly lost.
As she descended the last few steps to the station, little more than a concrete island in the grass supporting a metal pylon, she could already hear the car coming, a creaking, clanking sound emerging from the mist. The car came into view, a small, almost coffin-like contraption. Martha thanked her lucky stars that she was not claustrophobic and that no one else was waiting to share the cramped space with her. She remembered the family of hikers she had encountered the day before, trunk-like legs and arms straining at their thin summer clothes and bulging bellies hanging out over their waistbands, and shuddered at the idea of having to squash into the car with even one of them.
The car came to a shuddering halt, and the doors squeaked grudgingly open. With no poster listing contact information, Martha wondered what you did if it broke down, then swiftly pushed that thought out of her mind. She stepped in gingerly, the car swaying unnervingly beneath her feet, and the doors inched closed once more. With a few jolts, the car moved forward out of the station. Did they have a camera hung up somewhere, Martha asked herself? Or did it all run on an automatic schedule, and they just counted on people using their common sense when stepping in and out?
The ground dropped away below, the thin, worn grass from near the summit giving way to lush, overgrown tangles of grass and thorny bushes. The path she had been following continued down into the ravine, zigzagging in countless bends just like the section she had cursed on her way up, but now Martha sailed effortlessly over it. In the distance, the peaks gleamed where the sun broke through the clouds, and Martha hastened to unearth her small camera from the bottom of the rucksack, where it inevitably slid no matter how she packed her things. The cable car’s perspex windows were not only yellowed but also scratched, so she forced open the two small sliding windows at the top and poked her hands through, checking repeatedly as she did so that the camera strap was around her wrist so that the camera couldn’t possibly slip from her fingers and plummet into the depths below. She took several pictures, as the light came and went, hoping that at least one of them would go a decent way towards capturing what she saw in front of her. But photos never could do justice to the reality. The true beauty of the peaks was inextricably intertwined with the rest of the panorama, the play of light and dark, the fresh air blowing through the open window, the swaying motion of the cable car, even the throbbing of her legs and the preliminary rumblings of her stomach.
Pulling the camera back in, she turned away from the views to examine the terrain unrolling beneath the car, enjoying the acrophobia-tinged thrill of seeing how far down it went. Dark pine trees clotted its bowels, occasionally ripped open where piles of shattered rocks and twisted shards of once-mighty tree trunks marked the course of a spring torrent. The path itself didn’t descend so far, swinging round on the higher ground to skirt the ravine in a wide loop that would have cost her a long time to walk. Martha always enjoyed watching other hikers from the lofty perspective of the cable car, feeling a mix of kinship with their struggles and schadenfreude that, for this brief period, it was them and not her having to scramble over the rocks. But today the bright spots of hiker’s apparel, so out of place against the muted hues of the scenery, were nowhere to be seen. Probably everyone planning to hike this route had been smart about the timing and was already nearing the main cable station.
But wait, there was one solitary hiker, on the incline ahead, striding up at a demanding pace. Unlike the usual crowds in their neons, reds, purples and aquas, he was dressed entirely in black, which made him much harder to spot. One of those extreme hikers, perhaps, thought Martha, who seemed to look down on ‘ordinary’ hikers with disdain. She could imagine such a person deliberately choosing black to distance himself from the frivolous masses.
Her interest piqued, she kept watching him. As her cable car sailed creakingly closer, she realized that his black outfit wasn’t the usual tight-fitting fabric, but a baggy material that billowed around him, a ragged end occasionally drifting free. She revised her assessment from modern fitness freak to ancient eccentric hermit. His head was covered with a black hood, and he was facing away from her as he scaled the slope, so she wasn’t sure what gave her that impression of great age. Old or not, he was clearly very agile. While most people would be puffing up the trail, he seemed to spring upwards like a mountain goat. He reached the top and disappeared over it before her cable car had made its stately progress over the edge.
Here, the ground flattened out into an undulating plateau, patched with boggy areas of reeds and small rises, almost like tumuli. The mist was thickening, and the ground was frequently obscured. Martha peered through the different windows in turn, trying to spot the hiker again, her efforts hampered by the mist. There! On top of the small rise in front of the cable car, standing erect and still, as though he were waiting for her. His appearance was distinctly strange, the black hood tight around his pale face, then the ragged garment falling out wide towards the ground, almost like a cloak. He looked so odd that Martha started to lift the camera to take a photo of him, but then broke off the movement, feeling rude. He was staring fixedly at the cable car. Partly to cover up her action, partly to make up for her lack of manners, she turned the lift of the camera into an awkward wave instead. He did not wave back, but remained standing there rigidly. The only movement was in his head, which tilted gradually backwards to track the cable car with unerring gaze. The car passed right over him, and in that moment Martha gasped and stumbled backwards, banging her elbow in the close confines and losing her balance in an inelegant sprawl on the floor.
Dragging herself back upright, her heart pounding, she staggered to the back of the cable car, searching the mist-swathed landscape for the figure. Surely it must have been a trick of the light, or of her own imagination. The image of a skull-like face remained seared in her brain, rotted teeth gaping in a grin, dead eyes impossibly managing to blaze from sunken holes. Frantically she dashed from one window to the other, desperately hoping to spot the figure again and prove to herself that she was being ridiculous, that it was just an ordinary person in odd clothes. Then she spotted him, out on the right, effortlessly keeping pace with the cable car despite the difficult terrain, seeming to glide over the swampy bogs.
It was a grim parody of a race, standing there watching him rush along while she could do nothing to speed the ponderous, hearse-like pace of the cable car. Surely he must have to slow down, would run out of breath or lose his footing in the bog. Yet every time another swathe of mist had passed by, there he was still.
Ahead, the ground climbed once more, a steep slope rising up to where the concrete mouth of the end station waited to swallow the cable car. Surely he would fall behind on the slope. The cable car would overtake him, and she would breathe a sigh of relief to see him drop behind her, while feeling embarrassed at the foolish tricks her own mind was playing on her. But he seemed to swoop up the switchbacks at a supernatural speed, like a dark bird ready to strike. It was clear that his route was converging on hers, that they would come together at the station. She could do nothing, there was nowhere for her to go, no way to escape from the car that trundled along its inevitable path. Her only chance would be to slip out of the car at the very first moment she could. Maybe, just maybe, she could stay ahead of him long enough to find someone who could help. All illusions of an extreme sporter or a harmless eccentric were gone, and she knew, deep in her heart, that she must not be caught by that dread figure. As the car slid into the station, slowing with a whirr of wheels and a series of jolts, she braced every muscle in her body, breathing deeply, ready to run.
A soon as the car reached the platform she sprang into action, her hands tearing at the door. Groaning, protesting, it gave a few inches and she could force her arms through. Just a little further… Then shadow engulfed her as a dark silhouette blocked all light from the door, and her hand was grasped in an icy, fleshless grip.
The family of hikers, tired and snappish, were nearly at the end of their walk. Looking up, they saw a cable car with a woman inside, heading back to the other side of the mountain. ‘Silly cow’, the mother tutted self-righteously, ‘Doesn’t she realise she’s going the wrong way?’. She called out, in a strident, bossy tone, ‘Hey, you up there! You’re going the wrong way!’. Hyped up on the sugar rush of too many placatory sweets, the kids joined in, shrieking ‘Wrong way!’, between giggles.
But the figure in the car didn’t react. Didn’t panic. Didn’t call out some irritated justification. As the car come closer, their raucous shouts died away, and they stared in horrified silence at the corpse in the car, the only motion the camera swinging from its wrist, as the cable car bore its grisly burden away into the darkening mists.