HELL’S CAULDRON by Anthony Toole

The white, bulbous mass, solid looking, rushed in from my right. With aching legs and bursting lungs, my head throbbing to the bang, bang, bang of my heart, I raced it to the summit. But I was defeated. The cloud struck the mountain at such a speed that I almost expected the very rocks to shake me from my feet. Instead, the hush became more complete than before. In an instant, the sun disappeared, and the explosion of white silence devoured everything around me.

More slowly now, I proceeded up the last few yards to the top and sat down, more than a little annoyed at having been robbed of my reward. The now superfluous camera hung from my shoulders, its weight an extra burden to be resented. I remained there for several minutes in the hope that the mist might clear, but it only thickened, condensing tiny drops of moisture on my clothing, hair and eyebrows, and filming my spectacles to such an extent that I was forced to remove them.

Dejectedly, I rose and treaded away from the summit. I moved carelessly at first, jumping from boulder to boulder with the abandon of one accustomed to such terrain. Then the ground steepened suddenly. I paused and looked around me. The rocks had gained an unfamiliar appearance, made more ominous by the vapours that sped past and limited my vision of the world to what lay within a radius of a few feet of me. I continued hesitantly downwards, until I could go no farther. Ahead of me lay white space.

Unwilling to struggle back uphill, I skirted the rocks to my right, searching for a path through the nothingness below. I slithered down onto a heathery ledge and round a corner, only to be confronted by a black, mossy wall of rock. Below, a second ledge beckoned seductively. With one hand on the slimy wall, and the other grasping a clump of heather, I lowered myself down. But I had underestimated the distance between the ledges. My feet found nothing to rest on. I tried to struggle back, but was unable to do so. My feet slid helplessly on the rock and the roots of the heather began to pull away. I glanced hurriedly over my shoulder.

My ledge was there, but it now appeared much less attractive. I looked down. A small grass sod clung hopefully to a narrow crack. I removed my hand from the rock and grabbed at the sod. I did not test it, but trusted it, and let go the heather. After a fraction of a second of near terror, my feet touched the ledge and stopped there. I closed my eyes and muttered a short prayer of thanks, before inching my way along.

I floundered up and down, and back and forth, for how long I do not know, until the angle of the hillside became less steep. More easily now, I proceeded until I found myself standing on a slope of shifting, clattering scree. At last I knew where I was, but my knowledge gave me little comfort. I had not been here before, but knew of this place through hearsay. I was in ‘Hell’s Cauldron’.

No place, I felt, could be more aptly named. Though safe for the time being, I shuddered apprehensively, and gazed at the awesome spectacle around me. I stood in a semi-circle of rock, which funneled down past me to a narrow opening some twenty feet lower. Upward progress, either by way of the screes or the slopes across which I had come, was impossible, as they were crowned by the most repulsive rock. Hideous overhangs jutted through the mist: a conglomeration of pain and torture. Grey, pocked faced stared at me, streaked with black, slimy hair that oozed the stench of decay and tears of agony.

Here, the petrified souls of the damned fought each other in an attempt to escape their punishment, and screamed silently and vainly to the narrow strip of sky above. But today, not even the sky could witness their torment, only the mists, and the solitary, fearful human who stood below, shivering, while the gaunt rock pillars, which stood at the other side of the funnel like gigantic organ pipes, threatened to blare out a cacophonous welcome to this intruder into Satan’s domain.

And surely, only Satan could take pleasure at being here in so evil an atmosphere. I could not but think of the few I had known who had entered this forbidding kingdom, only to retreat more rapidly than they had come. I thought also of those who were unable to retreat, but remained here, probably screaming for assistance, until their terrified bodies gave up the struggle against the forces of destruction that surrounded them. Some years ago, a young couple had come here seeking shelter from a blizzard. Two days later, their bodies were found. They had frozen to death in each other’s arms, and wore facial expressions that testified to extreme suffering.

On another occasion, the partly decomposed body of a man was found. He was identified as one who had disappeared some months earlier. An examination of the corpse revealed two broken legs, which had partly re-set. How many days, perhaps even weeks, had he laid alive while his bones painfully knitted together? I shuddered in apprehension of a similar late awaiting me.

My only possible way of escape lay downwards. I gingerly descended the scree, sending rocks sliding and clattering before me. Some of them came to rest after a short distance; others continued through the gap, and rocketed out into the void, sending back no sound to register their progress.

I peered through the gap. All I saw were whirls and eddies of mist, which flew in all and ever-changing directions, as though an icy soup of disembodied spirits were being boiled up for a macabre feast. Drops of moisture blew up into my face, stinging my cheeks and forcing me to close my eyes. My exhaled breath was pushed back into my throat, so that I had to turn away in order to breathe.

During a moment’s break in this battery, I picked out my footholds and stepped down. The wind returned, blowing my anorak up to my chest, so allowing cold, wet tongues to lick the naked skin of my waist. I struggled down, one foot on either wall of the chasm, slithering on the treacherous holds, uttering frequent prayers for deliverance.

I reached a flat section in the gully bed, and sighed with relief . But my relief was short-lived. There were more steep sections below. Down I went, and ever down, sometimes following a slippery ledge, which might lead somewhere, but more often came to a dead end.

Water trickled down the walls and into my sleeves, but I had lost the sense of discomfort. I had lost all sense. I seemed to be moving mechanically, like a robot. I could not remember the moves I had just made, nor how I had come to be here. I was merely impelled downwards into the thick, white soup. I seemed to become more and more detached from my body, as though in the grip of that narcosis which is said to accompany violent death.

Then a sudden phantom arose, which transfixed me. Horror-stricken, I peered into the swirling vapours, unable to believe what I had seen. It disappeared for a few seconds, then returned with added terror. A huge mouth, open and ringed with jagged teeth, a hideous tongue in its centre, waited to suck me from my precarious lodgement.

The jaws of Satan. Death ready to feast on me.

Fear took control. I grew weak. I slipped. I was falling faster and faster. Legs struck out at jutting boulders, but glanced off. Arms grabbed at passing blades of grass. I flailed about for anything that might postpone my doom, but to no avail. Sometimes I slid on my back, sometimes on my stomach, or rolled without control, but always toward the cavernous mouth. I could not escape my fate. I was going to be eaten alive.

Then, just as suddenly, all was still. I was sitting, bruised but otherwise unhurt, on the scree below Hell’s Cauldron. A thin, white wisp floated gently past me, like a soul that had been delivered from torment. Satan had found me indigestible, and had vomited me out. There was no more mist, only the grassy hillside, and below that, the two small tarns, bordered by rocks and separated by a thin spit of land.

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