Snippets II - The Ice of the Northwest

Snippets are small pieces I am considering expanding into larger works.

I know nothing of ritual or any eldritch pattern of tongues long dead with the passing of innumerable centuries.  The mysteries of life and death remain tangled threads to my mind.  What I do know, what I can clearly recount to these borrowed tattered pages is that the world, the night, and the darkestplaces therein hold their secrets clutched fiercely to their breast and only release those terrible wonders to the bold, the foolish, or the doomed.  I have certainly been accused of all three in the recent past, however, as I hope these letters can somehow convincingly relate, insane is an unwarranted moniker.

The happenings of the weeks prior to my internment in this miserable abode are imprinted fresh on my mind each night when my eyes at last close.  And although my eyes burn with those wretched sights, my tongue falls dry and freezes stiff whenever I attempt to recount the tale to what few visitors I receive.  My hope is that the icy spectres of fear and memory will fail to find purchasewithin the hand that wields this pen.  But enough, now, of prevarication through the abstract retelling of the terror lodged firmly in my core.  Although eventually doomed, the path of this tale, that first thread dealt into that first stitch by the fates themselves, begins in the wilds of the great Northwest.


There are three of us on this adventure, the Goodman Kemper, the ubiquitous Smith, and myself whom the other two have taken to addressing as, quite plainly, Doctor.  We let loose our guide several days ago, but kept most of the dogs, trusting Kemper and his uncanny ability at orientation.  So far we have seen little beyond the ebb and flow of ancient forest and the perpetual roll of unbroken hillocks and bumps snow coated by the hand of a master confectioner.  The dogs are dire things standing nearly as tall as a man's waist and crafted by the surrounding winter into frost hounds pulled from an ancient Norse legend; at once steaming with energy and coated in saber rattling wind chimes of jagged ice.  It is easily ten long days since last we huddled beneath a civil structure and sipped a piping hot tea.

Rising above the unending wall of trees to the north are crags of white capped rock, rough edges of violently upturned crust peaking through on sheer faces and outlined with snow at each wrinkle.  We travel a north easterly line.  A part of me wishes it was northwest instead if only to hold the future promise of the eventual Pacific as some measure of an end to this quest.  We are each left alone to thoughts of this sort.  At least, this is a common path my mind takes to divest itself from the constant battle against glare and cold and the continuous whuffing and yipping of the dogs.  I know not how the wheels turn for my companions.  Kemper is meticulous to a fault and it is ever a wonder to me that he can leave aside his planning, maps, and calculations to actually embark on adventure.  Smith is older than both Kemper and myself.  He has seen places and events that make familiar border with the unmentionable.  He is a survivor although I have yet to determine if that makes him especially lucky or unlucky.