Door to the Mist

Chapter 1

    The white snow glittered in the afternoon sun as it spiraled toward the three figures slowly trudging up the icy slopes of the Himalayan Mountains in bulky ice climbing gear.  One of the three turned to the shortest, who was lagging behind.

    “Hurry up, Jay. After all, it was your idea to go hiking up here anyway.”

    “Oh, be quiet John.  At least you have a beard to keep your face warm.  If you weren’t going so fast, maybe I could keep up,” snapped Jay, wiping his sweaty brow as he paused to remove his short brown hair from his goggles.

    “Both of you shut up and enjoy the view,” replied the third who was clearly the leader.

    “You’re one to talk, Catrina,” muttered John.

   There was a long period of silence as the trio examined their surroundings.

    “Hey, what’s that?” asked Jay.

    Catrina looked around, “What do you mean?”

    “There’s something shiny over there by that cliff. I’m going to go take a look.”

    “OK, let me know if it’s a mirror of some sort,” called Catrina as Jay hurried off. “I really need to check if this red hair dye is coming out and mixing with the brown. I tried that once and it turned out purple,” she said to John.

    “It’s fine, trust me,” he sighed.

    After several seconds, Jay’s voice reached the pair waiting on the side of the trail. “It looks like some kind of steel ball stuck in the ice. I’ll try digging it out with my ice pick. Argh!”

    John groaned, “What is it now?”

    “Help!”

    They both hurried over to where Jay’s voice had been echoing.

   Catrina gave an exasperated sigh, “You idiot, your feet are only a few inches above the ground!”

    “Oh… Whoa, there’s a tunnel down here. I wonder where it leads,” Jay pulled his ice pick loose and dropped down into the hole he had accidentally created.

    “Wait, don’t--”

    But he was already gone.

    “Oh boy, here we go again. This is just like that time when he climbed over the fence at the zoo and tried to ride one of the tigers,” groaned John.

    And with that, they set off after their runaway friend.

    The tunnel led downward to the very bottom of a cliff which they now realized they had been standing on only minutes before. The startled trio was struggling to recover their wits, when Jay, pocketing the metallic globe, suddenly noticed something.

    “Hey look a crevice!” exclaimed Jay jumping up and down with excitement and pointing. “Can we climb it?”

    “I don’t see why not,” shrugged Catrina.

   They were roughly half the way up when Jay noticed something alarmingly strange. It was a section of the ice that seemed to swirl like some vertical lake trapped in stone…and John was about to slam his pick into it.

    “John don’t—”

    It was too late. His pick struck the rippling wall and the stone around them began to move, shoving them towards the hard, merciless cliff with tremendous force. However, instead of being mashed to pulp, they were propelled through the wall and into an enormous grey stone cavern. The constant dripping of water off the many stalactites gave the place an eerie air of danger. They staggered to their feet, once again bewildered. John rushed over to Jay who was staring awestruck, looking at something in the corner.