Ghost of the Abyss

Chapter 5 - A Little Game

My eyes opened groggily. What time was it? What day was it? Being up on Everest, you lose track of time rather quickly, and the days meshed together. You could easily be up on the mountain for a month or two, depending on how you span out how long you were in the camps and going back and forth between them to acclimatize.

My eyes fluttered open to see the top of my yellow tent, the light outside faint. I blinked a few times as my mind whirled with thoughts of the day before.

I met Sandy Irvine. He scared the spit out of me and then told me his story and where his body was. Did I dream all that?

I groaned, still a bit sleepy, as I sat up and searched around the sleeping bag for my phone. I found the flat black rectangle with a plum-purple Otter case and pressed the button. My eyes rose at seeing the time--6:34 am. "Apparently, I slept a night's worth. That's rare on this mountain." Usually a person sleeps a few hours, or just rests at the camps. The elevation was too high for REM sleep, but if your body was acclimatized well, you could sleep a while.

"Knock, knock," I heard right outside my tent. Craig's voice.

"It's open."

The tent door unzipped, and Craig poked his unmasked head in. "Good morning, sleepyhead."

"Good morning. I slept for a while, didn't I?"

"Yeah, longer than any of us. You had quite the eventful day yesterday... reaching the summit and befriending Sandy Irvine on the way down."

My heart jumped up at that in disbelief. "Wait, I didn't dream all that?"

"If you did, then the rest of us did, too. It's the talk of the group."

I got myself out of my sleeping bag and started to put my boots on. "They still think I'm crazy, don't they?"

"The rest of the guys still think your brain's foggy from the thin air. I had a talk with Nathan, Kal and Eli earlier this morning after we all woke up and told them to just pretend that Sandy's here."

I huffed in slight irritation as I finished putting on my boots. I brushed out my wavy brown hair and then put on my black winter hat. "You mean to play along?"

"Essentially. Adam and I are still planning on heading back up, and we want you to come with us, with Sandy leading the way. The others are staying here and are going to start on the trek down to the next camp. They said that they will wait for us at Base Camp when the time comes. It shouldn't take too long for us to go up and look and then come back down, maybe two days."

"We'll be in the Death Zone, and in a steep part of it. Why do you think people fall so far when they slip off the ridge? How to do you think George Mallory ended up where he did?"

"We'll be on ropes. We're just going down a bit farther than where they first thought Sandy's body was. We're planning on going down from the First Step."

I nodded, then a thought came to me. "We need to inform our families that we'll be gone longer than expected."

"Already done, the same with Adam."

I stood up, but hunched since the tent wasn't that tall. Craig allowed me to come through and I stepped out into the cold morning air. The sun was still behind the mountains, but a little light shone over it, making visibility manageable.

"I'll do that after I get a bite to eat." I looked around and saw our team around a little camp stove, and a few of them were drinking coffee out of mugs. Other people were around as well, doing the same. I spotted a person in our group who wasn't wearing a down suit and his skin and blonde hair illuminated. I gasped.