Page 16 of The Trap by Catherine
Isaw a woman saying that she didn’twantto know, that she was too terrified to go there, that she couldn’t bring herself to face up to the reality that the man she loved and knew to have kindness and joy and laughter in him, the man she was sharing her life and her heart and her bed with, was also a prolific serial killer who had murdered a large number of young women, often ending multiple lives over the course of a day or even an evening, and always with such a ferocious brutality that even the documentaries about him, including this one, didn’t dare go into too many details about what kind of state he’d left his victims’ bodies in.
Did you know, for example, that one of the survivors had been discovered in her bed, rocking back and forth, with her jaw distended? As in, it had become unhinged on one side. It was only attached to the rest of her at one end.
Inside the skin of her face, her jaw washanging loose.
I couldn’t say any of that, of course. I certainly couldn’t tell Amy that I knew for a fact that she wouldn’t know. And, anyway, I was supposed to be enthralled byHero of Two Worlds. So I just made ahmmsound and said something about hindsight being twenty-twenty.
* * *
I really liked that Everest documentary, actually. So much so that, about fifteen minutes in, I put downNapoleon: A Lifeand watched it openly. It was safe enough, what with it being about mountaineering.
I suspected Amy was secretly pleased that I was interested, that I’d put down my book and joined in. We even started talking about it, commenting on the people in charge, marveling at the scenery, pretending that maybe one day we would do something as adventurous as hiking to Base Camp, which is a thing people really do. Can youimaginethe eye-rolling of the actual summiteers when those eejits arrive into camp, taking up space and resources for astroll, just so they can go home and tell people they’veseenamountain?
I learned a lot from it. The documentary, I mean.
For starters, I had no idea that the real danger of a summit attempt is not the trying to get to the top, but the getting back down the mountain afterward. I didn’t realize how long people spent at Base Camp. Months, usually, acclimatizing and waiting for the weather gods to align. And until I watched it, I had no idea why anyone in their right mind would risk doing something so dangerous, so reckless, so overwhelmingly likely to end in failure, injury, or even death.
Were they mad? Or just stupid? Or was this all about ego, less about actually wanting to do something and more about being able tosayyou’d done it?
But now I do understand. I understand completely.
They do it because when they’re doing it is when they feel most alive. They can’t understand why the rest of usaren’ttrying to summit Everest, how we can possibly be content without trying to. The way they see it, yes, theymightdie on the way up or down from nearly six miles closer to the sky, but they know that. They accept it. For them, it’s a risk worth taking. Because not to try to conquer that mountain, not to aim for its peak, not to stand on the top of the world—literally—will bring certain death, albeit of a different kind.
And you know what I realized, watching that documentary?
That that’s how I feel aboutthis.
I know there’s a very real risk it won’t end well for me, but I’ve no interest in a life where I don’t do it. The first time I made it to the summit, it was a feeling like I’d never known. As if there’d been a hole inside of me all this time and that feeling was the missing piece. It was the exact right shape and size. It filled me up.
For the first time, I really did feelalive.
(I know, I know. Bit cheesy.)
And, better yet, I managed to get off the mountain. I practicallyglideddown the bloody thing, that time. Even though I’d barely prepared for the ascent. Even though the timing of my summit attempt was entirely opportunistic.
But once I reached Base Camp, I couldn’t bring myself to pack up my stuff and fly home. I wanted to go up again. So I stayed there, waiting and preparing, until one day the skies cleared and the opportunity to set off on another summit attempt arrived.
And I survivedthatone too.
Like any good mountain-climber, I didn’t assume it was because I was especially talented at it, that the accidents and tragedies that had befallen other climbers couldn’t possibly affect me. I knew they could—and likely would, at some point. I acknowledged that the thing I was best at was being lucky.
But so long as I was...
Of course, the more times I do it, the riskier it gets. It’s just math. Every time you get in your car, you increase your chances of being in a car crash. This endeavor will almost certainly be the reason my life as I know it ends. And I mightactuallydie. Those SWAT guys—what do they call them again? The Gardaí version? ERU? That’s it. Emergency Response Unit, yeah—but it always makes me think of the wordemu, which is an animal that’s very hard to take seriously.
Anyway.
Those guys have guns and you can tell by the way they walk around with them, like they’re extensions of their dicks, that they’d bloody love to use them.
But at least, if thatdoeshappen, I’ll die doing the thing that made me feel the most alive. I’ll die on the mountain.
Here’s what I wonder, though. This is the great unknown: will it be on the way up or on the way down? Will it be this time? And if it’s not, how many more summits will I see?
Are you even listening to me back there?
Look, if you can’t stop screaming, I’m going to have to make you.
PAST LIVES
