The Mountain

Chapter 6

"Right!"

"Slight left!"

"Stop!"

I shout directions for ten minutes, every time James takes a step my heart nearly drops. Despite my fears, he gets across safely. When he steps onto grass, he rips off his blindfold and I pull him into a hug. He sags into me and I breathe a sigh of relief and whisper a prayer of thanks to whoever is listening.

"Are you alright?" I ask.

"Well, I'm alive, right? I think that makes me ok," he shrugs. "Can we sit down for a minute?"

I nod and lead him over to an empty spot on the grass. It's enough space between us and the cliff that we don't have to look over the edge as we rest. James eats a granola bar slowly, lost in his own mind as he chews. I take the time to read the map and look over the new part of the mountain that we didn't even plan on coming to. There's a long stretch of a grassy field that will probably take all day today and part of tomorrow to get through, but that's fine. I look up at the tall grass and boulders that cover the field. It will be a safe area to pass through, although it's a little hilly we will be able to see anything that could be coming after us.

"I kinda never want to think about that again," James interrupts the silence. "So... what now?"

"Now?" I ask looking around. No hints wait to tell us where to go. "I think we keep going until something else comes up."

Since the task has taken us very off course from my original plan, we decide to take the shortest route to the top until something stops us, or until we reach it. That seems to be what the group before us did. I hope that we can have a day or two of peace before our next test sprouts up, but I doubt that whoever has put this together will comply.

As we walk, we scout for any signs of the partners in front of us. They seem to have darted off quickly without stopping because there's no sign of them even being here. I wonder why they were so quick to run, I want to meet people here, even if some of us might be dying along the way. Wouldn't others want to group up, too? I feel like it's important for us to be altogether.

I shove my worries aside. At the moment, I'm not being attacked or threatened by anyone or thing. The walk through the grassy field is peaceful and represses my memories as to how I got here. It feels like a nice walk in the park compared to what we have been through. James seems to be getting better by the minute. His face has color referring to it and he doesn't stare at where his feet are going every step.

The full sun beats down on us, bringing the heat out. I have pulled off my jacket and tied it to my pack to cool off a little bit as we hike. We stay silent, enjoying the company but keeping to our own thoughts.

. . .

When we make camp that night, we've become exhausted from the warm hike. The sloping ground wasn't too bad but the heat was relentless. We found a couple of tall rocks with a space between them for us to curl up and sleep in. We make a fire outside of the rocks and watch as James spins the skewered bird he shot with the crossbow. He needed some target practice and we needed some food so we decided to stop early.

James yells me a story about one of his recent flashbacks. It was the longest one yet. He explains how he was sitting inside a school and didn't know the answer to one of the teachers questions. The teacher yelled at him and the other students who didn't know the answer, but they couldn't hear what she was saying. She was in the middle of yelling when people in all black came in and interrupted her. There were three in total but their faces were covered with black masks so he couldn't see what they looked like. He recounts the feeling of dread in his stomach when they appeared. The students were ordered to go outside and enter long black cars with windows covered so they couldn't see outside.

"After the car door closed, I woke up," he says. His voice is shaky as he recounts the memory. "I don't know what happened after that."

I smile reassuringly. "That's ok, because now we have a start. Maybe if you have more we will be able to connect things together. I haven't had any like yours yet, but I'm hoping soon something might pop up."

He nods, falling silent again. He stares into the fire again and I can see something in his eyes. 

"What aren't you telling me?" I ask, suddenly nervous. "I mean, if it's private you obviously don't have to but-"

"One of the kids in the class, he was sitting next to me. We all had worksheets on our desks with our names at the top. His name matched one of the contestants on this mountain," he says quietly.

The air to my lungs stops. "You knew one of them? Which one?"

He waits for me to dig out the list of names from my pack. "Dave Unzer," he answers.

There he is, Dave is number 4, right between James and I. Other than that, nothing stands out about him, much like the others. They are all faceless names, people that we will hopefully one day meet, but mean nothing to us now. I use the pencil to make an asterisk by the name, to mark that he and James once knew each other.

I don't recognize any of the names like I did before, but I do wonder if I had a connection with any of them before coming here. If any of them were part of my childhood before whatever brought me here.