Nice Story Studios giving story a voice. I'm David Alts and you're listening to
The Wicked Library. Warning. The Wicked Library is a horror fiction podcast created
for immature audience. Our stories contain graphic descriptions of pain, murder, violence,
blood, betrayal, and inhumanity. Monsters win, people die, and
hope is often shattered. There is also beauty, heart, catharsis, and
raw emotion. Fear may be deeply personal, but we all share. If
at any time a story takes you to a place too dark, turn on
the lights, press pause, or press stop, and always remember that,
unlike in the real world, these nightmares and your participation in them, are
under your control. Welcome to the Wicked Library. I'm Daniel Foytech, and
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com Forward slash Wicked Library. Now, let's get wicked with today's dark tale,
told by Graham Rowitt with a custom score written by Nico vites of We
Talk of Dreams. It Stares Back at You by Vincent Robert n Account.
By the time I left the refuge, the first streaks of dawn had tinged
the jagged pinnacles and seracs to the east of the glacier with pink light.
I scanned the frozen expanse beneath me, trying to pick out a potential route
to my destination, and set out to climb down a sheer cliff of exposed
rocks. With a rush of excitement, I stepped onto the airy, metallic
structure and began my descent. The wind was whistling around me, making the
ladders and narrow ridges seem even more precarious. I pressed on, unconcerned by
the precipice. It wasn't my first time in the Mont Blanc area. I
was glad to be back, to feel the cold mountain air on my face,
and to challenge the dizzying heights once more. Until five years ago,
I had spent most of my holidays here either dangling from a rope above the
void or skiing down the powdery slopes. If the early stirrings of my obsession
with this vast, chaotic stretch of ice were lost to my memory, it
was obvious that the trip I made five years ago had marked a decisive turn.
With my climbing companion, a British expat named Will, we decided to
take advantage of the last days of cold weather in early spring to attempt the
infamous off track ski descent through the Giant's Glacier and down White Valley to the
town of Chamony. It was to be our last epic journey through the so
called Sea of Ice, one of the largest glaciers in Europe. A proper
send off before I left for the United States. I'd accepted a job offer
in a New York office, completely giving up my dream of becoming a mountain
guide. When the day of the descent finally came, it brought along tumultuous
clouds sagging over the valley and a mean, icy drizzle. The weather was
much warmer than we had anticipated, and it had made the slopes treacherous.
We proceeded slowly, trying to avoid patches of ice and mounds of wet,
sticky snow. As we were zigzagging between the colossal seracs above the sea of
ice, the fog rolled in, forcing us to slow down even more.
We slogged through a monumental maze of ice pillars, trying not to think about
the low rumble in the heights above the valley. This late in the season,
there was always a risk of avalanche all around us. Cyclopean shapes were
emerging from the dull grayness, like shipwrecks forever trapped in a frozen store.
It wasn't long before I realized that we were way off course. There was
no doubt in my mind, but I couldn't bear to admit it openly.
After what seemed an eternity of trudging along the moraine debris and looking for an
easier way down, I became distracted by a distant, continuous sound. Will
and I decided to change course and track its source. Only a short way
down, and a little while later we were standing next to a deep gully
which had been carved by a powerful torrent of bright blue melt water tumbling down
the middle of the glacier. The gap was too wide to be crossed,
and since it was that kind of a day, it soon became evident that
we were on the wrong side of it. Thankfully, a crust of icy
snow had formed near the edge of the torrent, offering us a quick way
down. We couldn't wait for a change of clothes, and a warm cup
of coffee went whizzing away, and I followed a few dozen feet behind him.
Soon the roar of the stream grew louder, almost to the point of
drowning all other sounds. The reason for this became obvious once I reached the
gaping hole into which the water rushed with much froth and thunder. I braked
hard and steered around the cave mouth a perfect circle ten or fifteen feet wide.
I stood near the rim, gasping and wondering why Will didn't stop to
have a look himself. It took me a moment to realize that he was
laying on the edge some twenty or thirty feet down the icy shaft, motionless.
All it would have taken was a little more speed or a misplaced patch
of ice, and I would have ended down there with him. My mind
quickly filled up with what ifs, all leading to catastrophic outcomes. Not that
Will's situation wasn't catastrophic, but at least I could try to rescue him or
call for help. Looking down, I saw that he was now shouting,
but I couldn't hear anything above the din. I fumbled through my pack,
looking for something, anything, that could help me get him out of there.
But when I glanced back into the chasm, the ledge was gone,
swallowed by the darkness below. After a moment of frantic, breathless panic,
I felt the abyss beckoning to me and found myself drawn to the void.
How long did I peer into the oblivion, wondering about its seemingly bottomless depths.
I fought the urge to hurl myself into the hole, and to make
a long story short, managed to get back to town. I learned later
that these shafts were called moulon. They were known to be fickle and unpredictable
features of the glacier's ever changing landscape, often collapsing and reforming elsewhere. I'll
rescue it, tempts failed. Will was considered lost, his body trapped in
a crystal blue coffin, or more likely crushed under gigantic ice blocks. In
the years that followed, I often dreamt about the Moulan's gaping maw and deep,
unexplored hollows. After a period of initial reluctance, I went back to
Chamony a few times and even scoured the glacier. My repeated failures to find
anything even remotely like the Moulan in which Will had disappeared became frustrating. My
love for the mountains waned. I couldn't set foot on the ice without imagining
vast caves and dark tunnels plunging to immeasurable depths just beneath me. The interval
between my visits lengthened until I stopped coming altogether. What compelled me to come
back for the fifth anniversary of Will's disappearance, I couldn't say I hadn't,
and on going back to the glacier, but as chance would have it,
I overheard a group of mountaineers talking about a deep, circular chasm that had
appeared in the northernmost part of the Sea of Ice. It was already late
in the morning when I reached the bottom of the latter section. A strange
feeling overtook me, as if I'd set foot on a fixed path laid with
the mutable rails. A voice whispered in my mind, barely audible above my
eagerness to press on. There was still time to turn back and return to
warmth, to safety, and to sanity, but this itch of mine needed
to be scratched. After a short hike, I stumbled upon a deep channel
etched into the glacier. Something must have blocked or diverted the torrent of meltwater
responsible for carving it, because the gully was nearly empty. The next hour
or so I spent under a blaze sun following the dried up river bed.
Hard snow crunched under my crampons as I reviewed my equipment. Two hundred and
fifty feet of rope, a harness, a pair of ice axes, a
helmet with a powerful head lamp, some climbing gears, and two dozen ice
screws. Although my preparation was impeccable, I still felt that my motive did
I even know what I was looking for in the glacier's bowels, was questionable,
if not downright irrational. Such a thought, it struck me, was
something straight out of the mouth of Captain Ahab. Before long, I was
staring blankly into my white whale's single, inscrutable eye. I knew it couldn't
be the same Moulon as five years ago. Not only was it in a
different location, but it also seemed larger and was shaped like a lopsided crater.
No matter, I thought, there wasn't going to be another opportunity like
this. Yet standing next to it made my skin prickle. I had to
fight off the overwhelming impulse to leave. On some deep level, I knew
that such places weren't meant for us to visit. Survival instinct, ancient attavistic
fear, altitude sickness, call it what you will. I also knew that
once missed, this chance wouldn't present itself again. It seemed silly to have
gone all this way just to back away. Now, just a quick peek,
I promised myself while setting up an anchor. Then, with a surge
of trepidation and awe, I slowly leaned over the edge there, almost suspended
between the sky and the abyss. All fear left me for a short while,
and I felt the pull of the void once more. I knew how
dangerous it could be. Hadn't I witnessed it first hand? Will's fall,
or rather the moment when there was nothing where he had been seconds before,
was imprinted in my mind. Yet, despite my gut instinct, screaming and
rebelling against each nerve and fiber of my body, I lowered myself down,
inch by inch, moved by some primeval force beyond my understanding. It wasn't
as if I had lost my mind, I told myself, trying my best
to sound confident. After all, I had warned the refuge keeper that I
was going on a solo truck on the glacier. My rope anchor was as
sturdy as one could hope for, and I was confident in my experience in
ice climbing. I didn't trust my ascender to work in such conditions that I
had planned to set up anchors with ice crews at regular intervals to help me
on my way up. See, I said out loud, the sound of
my voice echoing down in the Moulan's funnel. You've nothing to worry about.
Just slow down, breathe, relax, and enjoy the views. I'd assumed
the inside of the hole to be dull and gray, but nothing could have
been further from the truth. It was as if I had stepped into another
world. All around me, the walls were alive with light and colors,
shimmering blue, dark, purple, tinged with orange and pink everywhere, the
bright sheen of crystals glimmering in the half light. I was so mesmerized that
I hardly realized how small the blue circle of the Moulan's mouth was becoming.
By my estimate, I was about thirty feet deep when I next glanced to
the surface. Reaching for the wall, I managed to grab hold of a
protruding ice boulder and set up a rope anchor with two screws and carabineers.
It would make the ascent easier and helped maintain the rope in place to prevent
it from scraping against sharp edges. Not that I expected to descend all the
way to the bottom, just a safety measure, nothing else. With my
back to the empty void, I absailed further down. The colors grew dimmer,
more subtle, dark grays with hints of blue. The silence, which
so far had only been broken by the clanks of my crampons and the squeaking
of my rope, seemed heavier, more palpable. Noises closest to me were
muffled and faint, while far off sounds reverberated amplified to the point that I
could hear the trickle of a few drops. Hundreds of feet down. Auxiliary
tunnels branched out from the main shaft in every direction. Mulon's inside structure was
complex, beyond my imagination. I began to wonder about these narrow, meandering
spaces. They seemed to be taunting me to explore them. Everywhere I turned
my head lamp made the black walls glitter with specks of golden light. After
rigging the force anchor about ninety feet down, I took a break and listened.
The void gaped below me, steeped in stidgion gloom. I shifted in
my harness, trying to find a more comfortable position. My skin crawled cold
and clammy. I wriggled again, annoyed by an itch under my helmet.
Was probably the dark wearing on my nerves, I assumed, letting out a
nervous laugh. It was strange noticing how much of an effect the situation had
on my mind. I couldn't tell whether it was the black emptiness below or
the immensity of the glacier pressing all around me that was more unsettling. Breathing
became hard as my chest grew tighter. One moment, I felt the walls
closing in and imagined what would happen should the moulan collapse. In the next
I was losing all sense of the world above, and my own being was
becoming insubstantial, just another shadow lost in the inky blackness. Time to head
back out, I thought, and slammed my axe against the wall. It
bounced against the ice with a resounding thud and sent needles down my forearm.
I tried to gain a foothold, but my crampons barely scratched the wall.
I took a deep breath, hoping to slow down the pounding in my chest.
A few attempts later, My lungs were wheezing, my mouth was dry,
and I only had made minimal progress. My arms were shaking and burning
with exhaustion. With a cry of desperation, I let go of my hold
and dropped back down, hanging from the rope, shivering and limp I began
to lose the sense of time. Who knew how long I had been underground?
It could have been ours. I was about to give up when something
brushed against my leg. I twitched and fumbled in a vain attempt to turn
around, but only managed to tangle the rope. Impossible. I thought nothing
could survive down there. I would have ascribed it to fatigue and sense deprivation
had I not felt it again, more distinctly, this time like a firm
hand pulling me downward. Terror swelled, chasing the air out of my lungs.
It was at this point that an absurd thought crossed my mind, not
simply absurd, but utterly insane. I tried my best to push it aside
and ignore it. The thought came back more insistent, until I cried out,
well is that you? My voice cracked. It's me, It's your
friend, Harry. I remained as motionless as possible, and listened intently.
At first, there was nothing but the sound of my chaotic breathing. Then
from the depth came the distorted echo of my voice. Shrill and foreign,
Harry, it said, barely louder than a whisper, Harry. The voice
resounded in the black void, Harry. The echo grew louder, more inquisitive,
filling me with dread. Twisting and turning like a fish hooked at the
end of a line, I caught a glimpse of a pool of crystalline water
bleeding into another crevasse. I thought I saw darker shadows creeping out of the
pit, but it could have been my imagination. Something stirred below steps.
The air shivered around me. A low rumble echoed in the distance, shaking
me to my core, the roar of some unseen monstrosity, or the sound
of crumbling ice blocks. Sheer, bloody panic squeezed my throat and nearly overtook
me. I wriggled and prised, kicking and screaming, clawing at the rock
hard wall. In the confusion, my helmet came off, Gasping with horror,
I watched it fall. It bounced against some boulders dropped near the edge
of the pool and fell further down in a large cleft, until it was
only a tiny, distant speck of light, lost in an notion of obscurity.
Once my eyes were accustomed to the dark, I looked up, hoping
to see the light of the surface. I had little notion of how long
I had spent in the moulon could have been night outside, or some clouds
could be blocking out the sun. I grabbed hold of the rope anchor.
There it was, I thought, sturdy and reassuring. I let my finger
run across the rope, a life line, a guide through the night,
with a strength I didn't know I had. I thrust my axes in the
ice and began carving my way up. Soon my whole body was sore,
but I found that I had more endurance than I could ever imagine. I
carried on, determined to reach the surface at any cost. The thought of
the outside spurred me. I could almost feel the warmth of the sun and
the kiss of a light breeze on my skin. The muscles in my forearms
seized up. When I reached the next anchor, only two more to go.
Two more anchors, and I would breathe fresh air. No time to
rest, I climbed further up. I couldn't feel my hands and feet.
The tip of my nose seemed about to fall off. No matter, there
would be people looking for me helicopters, even if I only could make it
to the surface. I got to the third anchor, exhausted and shivering,
almost there only one more. Who was I kidding? The only thing that
was waiting for me outside was a cold, lonely death. But it didn't
matter to me. All I wanted was to emerge from this crevass, to
see the moon and stars, to feel the earth beneath my feet. The
walls seemed to enclose as I slithered my way up the shaft like a cockroach,
hardly paying attention to the cold and the dark anymore. From time to
time, a low rumble came from the moulon's entrails, like a distant thunderclap.
I closed my ears and pressed on, anxious to escape from the horrors
lurking in the depths far below. The shaft seemed to grow tighter and tighter.
Out of breath, I kept clawing my way up as quickly as I
could, in my hurry, I passed two more anchors without stopping number nine
perhaps or was it number ten? All I needed to do was to hold
on and climb further up below me. The abyss beckoned. I refused to
listen and tightened my precarious grip around the rope. Thank you for listening to
episode number twelve zero two. Today's author was Vincent Robert Nicowed with his tale
It Stares Back at You. Today's story was told by Graham Rowitt. I'm
Daniel Foytech and I've been your host today. Our resident composer and executive producer
is Nico Vetes of We Talk of Dreams. Artwork for today's episode was created
by Greg Schaefer. Our producers are Meg Williams and Daniel Foytech. To find
out more about The Wicked Library and our other shows, visit the Wicked Library
dot com and Ninth Story dot com. If you'd like to help us continue
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