Touching The Void

The blue marker on Hugo Kessler’s glove vanished beneath the snow.

He had painted it there at dawn to mark the hour, a crooked line of ink above the knuckle, but the whiteout had swallowed the color along with the horizon. Ahead, the rope ran into nothing. Behind him, it disappeared into the same blank wall.

“Step where I step,” Mara called.

Her voice reached him thinly through the wind. The rope between them sagged, then tightened against his harness.

Hugo lifted his left boot and placed it in the shallow dent Mara had made. The snow compressed with a soft crack. He shifted his weight forward.

The glacier dropped.

There was no warning, no thunder beneath his feet. One moment he was walking, bent into the wind, counting the rope’s slow pulls. The next, the surface opened around him with a sound like a door torn from its hinges.

His right leg plunged to the hip. The snow bridge broke under his other boot.

“Hugo!”

He fell through white.

The rope caught him hard enough to wrench his shoulders from their sockets. His chest slammed against the edge, and for an instant his arms flailed over empty space. Then the lip vanished too. Ice struck his helmet. His body swung away from the wall, spinning once in the dark.

He saw blue.

Not sky. Ice. A vertical wall, polished and ridged, falling below him farther than his headlamp could reach. Snowflakes streamed past the beam like ash. His pack dragged him backward. The rope above groaned through the snow.

“Mara!” he shouted.

His voice came back at once, small and warped.

The harness cut into his thighs. He swung against the crevasse wall and drove his crampons into it. One point caught. The other skittered free, shrieking across the ice.

“Stay still!” Mara yelled. “We’ve got you!”

Hugo pressed his cheek to the wall. The cold entered through the fabric of his hood and seemed to settle behind his eyes. His right leg hung uselessly below him, boot scraping for purchase. Somewhere above, the team moved. He felt it in the rope: a tremor, then another, as if the people on the surface were crawling away from the hole.

“Anchor me!” he shouted. “Don’t move!”

The rope tightened.

For three breaths, he believed them.

Then the glacier shifted.

A deep crack rolled through the crevasse. It began beneath his hip and traveled down into the blue. The shelf where his chest had struck sheared away in a slab the size of a table. It dropped past him, turning slowly, and vanished into the darkness.

The rope jerked.

Hugo’s harness bit deeper. His body snapped upward, then slammed against the wall. Snow poured down his neck. He heard Mara scream, though the wind tore the sound apart.

“Stop hauling!” he shouted. “Stop!”

The line went slack.

He dropped another meter before the rope caught again. His crampons struck the wall. One point punched through a thin crust, and his knee folded beneath him. He hung there, twisting, with nothing under his boots but cold blue depth.

Above, a dark shape appeared at the edge of the opening. Mara’s face, hidden behind goggles and a frost-caked mask.

“Hugo, can you climb?”

He laughed once. It came out as a cough. “That’s the plan.”

“Your prusik is on the line.”

He looked down. His gloved hands found the short loop clipped to his harness, then the main rope running above his shoulder. The cord had gone taut against the lip. He could haul himself toward it, but the wall offered no ledge and his right leg had begun to tremble.

“Pull when I say,” Mara called.

“No. The bridge is moving.”

“We can’t leave you hanging.”

“You’ll bring it down.”

A gust drove snow over her face. For a second she disappeared. When she emerged, she was looking past him, toward the opposite wall.

“Mara,” he said. “Listen to me.”

“I am listening.”

“Get the others back. Find a second anchor.”

“We have one.”

“You had one.”

The rope shuddered between them.

Mara’s head snapped upward. Someone behind her shouted. The sound was muffled, frantic. Hugo felt the line draw tight across his chest.

“No!” he yelled. “Don’t - ”

The rope pulled.

His body rose half a meter. His shoulders screamed. He jammed both crampons into the wall and drove his ice axe into a seam. The pick struck, bounced, struck again. His left forearm shook as he hung from the tool.

Above, the lip collapsed.

Snow and broken ice poured around him. The rope whipped sideways. Hugo’s axe tore free, and he dropped.

He fell through the beam of his headlamp, through a curtain of crystals, until his left boot struck something hard. The impact folded him against the wall. His harness caught a heartbeat later.

The line snapped taut with a violent crack.

Hugo’s hand opened. The axe disappeared below.

He swung in silence.

The rope had stopped him, but the force had shifted his body beneath an overhang. His pack scraped the wall. A strap had twisted around his arm, pinning his elbow against his ribs. He could not reach the ascender. He could not see the surface....