The Mountain of Death

By Lincoln Reed

Liam entered the Mountain of Death at dusk.

He adjusted his headphones, checked the volume unit—or VU—dial on the mixer strapped to his belt, and reasserted his grip on a boom pole carrying a shotgun microphone. With his headlamp’s yellow beam piercing the darkness, he pointed the mic’s windscreen into the cavern’s mouth. Composed of enormous, blackened boulders, the Mountain of Death stood like a hill of charred rubble against the surrounding green-and-brown terrain decorated with eucalyptus trees.

Liam hoisted the boom pole. Outside the cave entrance, the Queensland outback seemed locked in an inhale—no critter chatter, no nocturnal stirring. Liam stepped deeper into the uncharted opening, pausing every few steps to listen.

Rogan, his guide, crept up from behind, his headlamp dancing upon the cavern walls. Through the microphone, Liam heard Rogan’s crunching boots like a giant’s footfalls. Liam raised his hand for silence then tampered once more with the gain button on the sound mixer.

Come on, sing to me.

As an audio ecologist, Liam hadn’t discovered a location this serene since National Geographic had hired him to record the quietest spots in every US national park. They had paid well. How much more would they reward him for—

A subtle murmur slithered into his headphones. The volume unit meter jumped.

Liam froze.

“Easy, mate,” Rogan whispered from back at the cave mouth. “Let’s not be a dimwitted drongo. That’s as far as ya go. Don’t want to lose sight of ya in that hollow.”

Liam glared back at the guide.

“Can’t let ya get lost, mate. Blokes go in there, then they don’t come out.”

Liam shook his head, monitoring the VU meter, waiting for another blip. He hadn’t imagined the sound. Was it a groan? A whimper?

“Ya me mate,” Rogan pleaded, “so I take ya this far, let ya mic up, get your recordings. But let ya in there like all them missing blokes? Me wife will kill me if I go down there wid ya.”

Liam turned to Rogan, made a zipping motion across his lips, pressed record, and aimed the mic toward the heart of the tunnel. The shotgun microphone could detect the faintest sound a hundred meters away. If something lived within the cursed mountain, he would capture audio proof. Even better, he might snag the paranormal frequency rumored to have scared away the natives—the siren song believed to draw poor animals and lost souls into the devouring shadows.

A subtle groan scampered up the tunnel, into the mic, and crooned into Liam’s headphones.

Liam stiffened, eyes wide. Was it wind? Or…

The moaning decayed into ringing silence.

Liam stopped recording and replayed the sound on the audio mixer, cranking the volume up. “Oaaaaahhh.”

The sound skittered and swooshed in an eerie cadence.

“Oaaaaahhh.”

Liam shrugged away a creeping fear gnawing at the back of his mind. Could this be the same sound reported by those lucky few who had escaped the cavern’s clutches?

Liam spun back toward the cave’s entry. “Rogan, you’re not—”

He blinked. Rogan?

Liam’s chest tightened.

The guide had vanished.

Liam strode to the cave mouth and scanned the remote landscape underneath a sky of ancient stars.

His heart jackhammered. Palms moistened.

“Rogan?” Liam called softly at first, then louder. “Rogan!”

Liam remembered the shotgun mic. If Rogan needed help, the pickup pattern would—

“Liam!” A voice sliced through the unending silence and into Liam’s headphones.

He checked his mic levels. Had he imagined—

“Liam.”

His skin crawled. He swiveled the boom pole toward the cave’s interior. The volume unit meter jumped from green to red. “Help!”

A sharp warning burned within Liam’s head, urging him to retreat. “Not possible,” he mumbled. “How’d he… He’d have had to…”

The groan returned. “Oaaaaahhh.”

An orange light flickered within the bowels of the cavern. The headlamp!

Before he realized his error, Liam found himself shuffling deeper into the tunnel, chasing the lingering glow. He turned a corner and edged along a narrow channel until, pausing to catch his breath, Liam listened with the microphone. Come on, Rogan, where are you?

“Help!”

Liam spun around. Had the voice come from behind… the way he had just traveled?

His headlamp flickered and died.

Liam cursed, tapped the power button in vain, and prayed Rogan’s light would glow once again. Now lost in a sea of darkness, fighting the urge to panic, Liam exhaled slowly. “Couldn’t have gone too far. Just retrace…”

“Oaaaaahhh.”

The sound echoed from deeper within the mountain. “Oaaaaahhh.”

Liam clicked record on the mixer and followed the unearthly noise for what seemed like another hour, feeling his way along the wall, lost in darkness and curiosity, inching closer until the earth opened into a hollow basin. Rogan’s headlamp sat in the center of a large room, resting on the floor like a wounded lightning bug. Liam gasped with renewed hope and raced toward the source.

“Oaaaaahhh.”

He snatched the headlamp and held it aloft.

He blinked, processing the impossible, enchanted by the strange noise.

His jaw slackened. He dropped the boom pole.

Above, dangling in thick strands of gray cords, Rogan hung upside down, cocooned. Lurking in the webs near the cavern’s ceiling, a mass slunk from the shadows, its black eyes glistening in the headlamp’s failing light. Eight hairy legs crept atop Rogan’s form. Fangs flashed.

“Liam!” The giant spider mimicked the guide’s voice. “Help!”

When Queensland park ranger Austin Yancey found the audio mixer discarded at the foot of the mountain, he brought the device back to the station and played the SD card in a laptop.

After hearing the name Liam play through the speakers, Austin took the file to his superior’s office where he scrubbed through various sounds, many of which resembled wind, footsteps, and finally, the crunch of bones.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lincoln Reed is a writer, filmmaker, and professor. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Miami University (OH). More than 50 of his short stories are featured in online publications and print anthologies. The short film adaptation of his Havok story Tritanopia is currently in its film festival run.

---

More Stories | Author Website | Facebook | Twitter