A Peculiar Peril by Jeff Vandermeer

Author:Jeff Vandermeer
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2020-07-06T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Seven

PLEASE, SIR, NO MORE PUFFIN’ TRAIL

Rack’s body had been like a cathedral bell being constantly rung since Danny’s disappearance, and there was nothing that could stop the shaking. His thighs were aching terribly after all the hiking, but that wasn’t the issue. All he could keep thinking about was how he should have made up with Danny for good and all around the campfire the night before, not just continued with what she called the Truce.

But he just couldn’t, had been stuck obsessing about all the times Danny had held things back. All those strange away trips with all the teams she belonged to, the times not all her teammates seemed to be going with her, which he’d thought nothing of at the time. What if some of those trips had been to Aurora? What if what if what if. It would drive him crazy if he let it, because he had to trust, especially now. He had to.

Her and that bloody rat. Rack prayed that Tee-Tee was a help and not a hindrance, and if that were the case, would happily kiss the rat on the lips if he ever saw it again. If Danny was even alive. Resolved in the same breath to avenge Danny if need be. Heaven forbid. She couldn’t be dead, could she? Not indestructible Danny.

He could live without her, but why would he want to? The loneliness growing up with such absent parents who were not even his real parents, in such an empty house.

Except for Danny. Danny, who was always in a good mood. Danny, who had never complained, ever, about helping him with his leg or his foot. Danny, who had sneakily forced him into a form of physical therapy by enrolling him on the Poxforth rowing team.

Christ, it seemed a sin now that he had let one lie, no matter how large, come between them.

The monster had given up right before the pod hit the archway, fallen off rather than continue. Perhaps scraped off was more accurate, there being mere inches between pod and tunnel wall, but it also might just be playing with them, cat and mouse. He’d gotten a disconcerting sense the thing was enjoying itself.

The funicular pod came out of the steep darkness of the mountainside with an incongruous peeping sound and a locking of gears that steadied them as they leapt out. For the funicular was already, counterweight and cockpit both, headed back down.

Which meant they knew what was coming up.

Yet even now they could not find any spare luck lying around. Directly in front of them lay the most rickety of rickety rope bridge, slung low over an icy plateau dominated by a deep pond and framed by broken and burnt ski lifts on the mountain slopes above them.

On the other side stood the way station: a cabin of sorts cut into the mountainside. An unprepossessing rectangle of stone with a faded red aluminum awning. No gate. No garden next to it. No sign. No signs of life.

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