The Glaciermen #6: Old Man

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

Hey everyone. I know it’s been a while, and that is because I took a few week hiatus. It started with “a week off for the holiday craziness,” and quickly grew to three weeks.

And thus the non-Tuesday release. Figured I’d get this out there and get the wheels turning again. (By the way, always feel free to skip my ramblings and jump to the story, if that’s your fancy. No hard feelings.)

I would like to say that this unscheduled hiatus was to “find myself as a writer” or something profound like that (and it was, in part), but mostly it was due to the endemic self-doubt that supposedly wracks anyone who writes stuff, along with a healthy dose of laziness, and perhaps something having to do with work-life balance.

I did actually ponder some stuff, get helpful feedback, and read a classic to stoke the ol’ brain case and hopefully end up better at writing. After all that, and getting back behind the keys, I think am actually a bit better at writing than before—hopefully that feeling translates into better words on the page.

Who knows… either way, I’m back, and so are Lee, Sandy, and the men of the ice…

(Here’s a quick link to the previous segment, if you want to jog your memory.)

Chapter 4: Lee

The Old Man

The two dozen some prisoners walked through ice winding tunnels for several hours, descending at an almost undetectable gradient most of the time. There were numerous junctions in the tunnels, and Lee tried to memorize them, but there were too many and he lost track of the twists and turns.

He shivered. The air was cold, colder than in the cavern, and a few of the captives had already collapsed from exhaustion. Another tried to run and was promptly speared through the back with a swift throw from one of the blue men guarding the rear. The fallen bodies were simply added to the piles already on the sleds.

The able-bodied were forced to take turns on the sleds, often slipping or tripping while pulling against the rough-braided ropes, which seemed to amuse their captors, who laughed whenever one of them stumbled under the load. Lee was not made to take a shift, being the only child among the group. He could not remember if there had been any other children on the plane or in the cave, but it did not matter, they would have ended up as bodies on the pile.

The prisoners were allowed some freedom of movement, so long as they stayed between the sleds in front and the guards behind, so there was space to spread out. Lee got as far away from the pee-smelling couple as he could as soon as he had a chance. No longer bunched up, Lee could see among his new companions. They were a mismatched bunch made up of those who had survived the initial chaos, some old, some young, more men than women. One was an incredibly obese man with a scraggly brown beard and a massive red winter jacket. Lee could hear his strained breathing even though they were walking at a normal pace.

The blue men did not seem to notice or care about whispered words among the captives, as long as they kept moving, however, other than a few short exchanges here and there the captives remained for the most part silent.

Next to the fat man Lee spotted a familiar figure. Sandy must not have seen him brought into the group, otherwise she would have found him already. He noticed she was walking with a limp, so he quickened his pace to catch up to her. Once he was close, he reached out a hand and brushed it against hers hanging at her side.

Sandy jerked her hand back, startled, but then saw it was Lee and let out a whimper of relief. He saw her shoulders drop as she sighed. She offered her hand back and Lee took it. 

“I thought I lost you back there,” she said, eyes watery.

“Well… I found you instead. So it’s okay now,” he whispered, squeezing her hand and giving her a nod. “Partners, remember?”

“Partners,” she replied, squeezing his hand in return.

They walked on in silence. Lee tried to imagine himself as one of the real-life men his toy soldiers were modeled after—a special forces operator shot down and taken captive behind enemy lines by an unknown hostile force. He pictured various ways of getting the jump on these sinister man-things of the ice, stealing weapons, snapping necks, and saving everyone.

It helped pass the time, but he knew in his heart that none of his elaborately athletic imaginary combat takedowns would actually work. He was just one boy against a half dozen, fully-grown—and very scary—foes. He was better off waiting for a chance to slip away into the shadows, hiding in the darkness, stealing morsels to eat, gathering information, and plotting his escape while freeing the prisoners one by one.

But this plan also did not pass Lee’s increasingly annoying filter of practicality. The tunnels were cold and labyrinthine, and the blue men seemed to know all the twists and turns. He would either freeze to death alone in the dark, or be caught and no doubt brutally murdered like the others.

Disheartened by thinking about the prospect of being murdered, Lee was no longer entertained at these imaginings. The true gravity of the situation was beginning to settle into his young mind. He had been in a plane crash, lost his mother, witnessed the wholesale slaughter of most of the passengers, and now kidnapped by half-naked savages who would most likely kill him along with everyone else. He decided to ignore these darkening thoughts and instead focused his attention the sound of his footfalls crunching against the icy floor with each step.

After hours of trudging, broken only by the changing of those pulling the sleds, the tunnel opened into a larger cavern. It was not as big as the one near the surface and was circular rather than loosely rectangular. The space was illuminated by a circle of flickering blue-flamed torches that were evenly spaced among five additional tunnel entrances around the perimeter. The ice of the floor and walls was carved smooth, and the ceiling arched upward into a dome with a small hole in the center where whisps of smoke from the torches snaked away.

Lee was focused on the center of the room. The sleds had turned to the side when they exited the tunnel, for if they had continued forward they would have fallen into the hollowed out pit in the center which filled most of the cavern. It was about fifty feet in diameter and seven feet deep, carved at perfectly right angles down into the ice. The path from the tunnel curved to both sides around the pit like a raised walkway.

The captives pulling the sleds were brought back to the main body of the group. The blue men now corralled them together against the edge of the pit, surrounding them on three sides. Lee and Sandy were together in the middle of the group. The bare-chested blue men lowered their spears and began stepping forward. The captives nearest to them stepped back, pressing into Lee and Sandy, forcing them into those behind them nearer to the edge of the pit.

Someone in the back began to shout, pushing into the crowd away from the pit. The blue men continued inching forward, spear tips glistening in the eerie blue light of the torches. Soon the whole group was embroiled in a congested scrum—those nearest the spears pressing backward and those near the pit pushing forward. Sandy picked Lee up and held him against her chest, both of them caught in the middle of the thronging human vice.

Soon there was no space left, the pushing bodies packed tightly between the spears and the edge of the pit. The blue men began prodding with their spear points, but the captives in front had nowhere to go and merely became more frenetic in their push against those behind them, their feet slipping on the icy floor. Those closest to the pit felt the increased pressure and redoubled their own efforts in opposition.

A snarl of frustration on his face, one of the blue men plunged his spear into the closest torso. As he pulled it back, the speared man collapsed, blood spilling dark red against the blue-white ice. Those adjacent to him became frenzied in their attempt to avoid the spears, now pressing with renewed vigor against the bodies behind them.

It was enough to tip the balance, and the entire group shifted toward the edge. A cry came forth as someone fell into the pit. The rest soon followed, momentum dragging Lee and Sandy with them. Others fell on top of them, and something hard, probably someone’s skull, banged into the center of Lee’s back, forcing a pained breath from his lungs.

They lay there panting amidst the awkward pile of tangled limbs and bodies on the floor of the pit. There were moans of pain and the fresh smell of someone’s fear overcoming their bowels. No one moved for a long minute, then, as if collectively realizing they were not being actively killed at that very moment, the pile began to slowly untangle.

Two of those who had been nearest to the edge, and subsequently on the bottom of the pile, lay still where they fell, the life crushed out of them. The survivors edge away from where they fell in, soon congregating in the center of the pit, many limping or cradling an injured limb from the tumble, as if the center was somehow safer by being the farthest point from the blue men, who had now spread out evenly around the perimeter of the pit, standing guard and looking straight ahead.

There was movement on the ledge above, drawing several spectators. Two blue men threw the man who had been speared down into the pit. His body landed with a dull thump on top of the two corpses already present. Shortly, the two sleds with the bodies of the rest of the passengers were dragged away, leaving only the blue men standing guard on the perimeter of the pit. They stood perfectly still, faces without expression. Even their eyes appeared not to move, staring forward blankly at nothing.

With nothing to do, the captives sat in a shellshocked cluster in the center of the pit. Sandy pulled Lee close against her, overcome by the adrenaline of the past few minutes, and began to cry. Her quiet sobs somehow broke the traumatized reverie of the others, and soon more than half the survivors broke down in tears.

 Lee hugged Sandy back, patting the top of her head with his hand like his own mother had done when he was younger. She cried for some time, chest heaving with heavy sobs at first, eventually shifting to just tears and sniffles. After a while, she noticed the boy patting her head and chuckled weakly past a sniff.

“Look at you kiddo. I’m supposed to be the one taking care of you, not the other way around.”

“But were partners,” he said, “we take care of each other.”

Sandy just looked at the boy with mild bewilderment.

After a pause he asked, “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know, Lee… I don’t know.” Sandy replied with a sigh, shoulders slumping against the small boy in her arms.

The fat man in the red jacket, who was near enough to hear them, interjected, “I know. We’re all gonna die here, then probably get eaten or something by these psychos. You saw what they did to the copilot…” He voice trailed off, thick with bitterness and fear.

Sandy turned to him, “Hey, there’s a kid here. Try to keep it hopeful, eh? I’m still breathing, and I plan on keeping it that way, for me and him both.”

The fat man shrugged. “I don’t want to die either lady, but let’s face it,” he said, his posture signaling defeat and clearly seeking company in his misery, “This is the end. No sense in lying to ourselves about it.” He reached into his jacket, taking a flask from an inside pocket, unscrewed the lid, and took a long pull.

“The fat man is correct.”

The soft, gravelly voice belonged to the old man with the long hair. The others in the pit now turned to listen to the conversation. The old man’s skin was a deep brown, creviced with deep wrinkles like the ice of the glacier above, and the shape of his features betrayed an indigenous heritage. Gray hair hung from his head, tied in a long ponytail down to his shoulder blades, though his face was hairless despite his advanced aged. He sat cross legged, facing away from the main body of people, eyes closed. He breathed a long sigh out through his nostrils before speaking again.

“There are stories—old stories—that tell of creatures such as these,” he said, raising a finger toward the blue men around the pit.

Lee, interested now that they were done talking about dying, asked, “What stories? Who told them?”

“Tales from my people, the Kalaallisut. We lived in this land long before the white settlers arrived.”

The fat man interrupted, “Our flight was to Iceland, not Greenland. You got on the wrong plane old man.”

The old man opened his eyes to look at the fat man scornfully. “You talk too much, fat one. Perhaps distract your mouth with some food so it stops bothering me.”

The big man stayed silent, face flush with embarrassment.

The old man continued. “But he is correct. I was not going to this place you call Greenland. My family left when I was young… because this land is cursed.”

“Cursed? What happened, why?” Lee asked.

“You are a curious one, I see,” said the old man, smiling. “Since you appreciate the wisdom of an elder, unlike this fat one here, I will tell you the tale I was told by my grandfather, who learned it from his grandfather before him, and so on. My people have numerous traditions and legends. I knew many were merely stories meant to scare children, but I suspected some told truth, and now I see that this is one of them.

“Once long ago, there was a shaman who had been wronged by a rival. So he set out to create a tupilaq, a spirit creature made from the bones of animals and children, to exact revenge on his behalf. But the rival’s powers were stronger than the shaman’s own, so when the tupilaq went to kill the rival, it was repelled, and turned against the shaman. Fearing this possibility, the shaman had cast a spell during the ritual while creating the tupilaq, contorting the creature so that it would love him as its master and could never harm him.

“But this had unintended consequences. When the creature returned to the shaman to kill him, it could not harm him because of his spell over it. But the power of the rival had perverted the tupilaq’s love for its master. Instead of killing the shaman, it dragged him away onto the glacier, never to be seen again.

“It is said that it twisted his mind out on the ice, making the shaman love it in return, not as one loves an animal, but as a man loves a woman, and they spawned bastard children together. These vile offspring were neither angut nor tupilaq, neither man nor beast. They are abominations, living between worlds in the ices of the glacier.

“When the blizzards are so thick one cannot see past his own face, this is when they hunt, seeking out any form of warm flesh to feed their distorted forms.”

The old man paused, looking toward the blue men standing guard above them.

“They are called tunlaq.”

Lee was absorbed in the old man’s tale, and repeated the name slowly to himself, feeling the new syllables in his mouth. “Toon-lock.”

“Yes, boy, and it appears they are much more than a story to scare children at night.”

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And that’s it for now folks

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