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  RETURN TO DYATLOV PASS

  J.H. Moncrieff

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2018 by J.H. Moncrieff

  Also by J.H. Moncrieff

  Monsters in Our Wake

  The Bear Who Wouldn't Leave

  GhostWriters series:

  City of Ghosts

  The Girl Who Talks to Ghosts

  Temple of Ghosts

  In February 1959, nine experienced Russian skiers set off on an expedition in the Ural Mountains. When an expected telegram didn’t arrive from group leader Igor Dyatlov on February 12, and there was still no word from the skiers by the twentieth, searchers left on a rescue mission.

  Once they reached the campsite on Dead Mountain, they witnessed a scene horrific enough to give them nightmares for the rest of their lives.

  Something had panicked Dyatlov and his friends, who fled their tent by slashing it open with knives. Some of the group was in their underwear and socks, while others had bare feet. The temperature was estimated to have been -13°F when they ran into the snow.

  A few of the bodies were recovered right away, while others took months to find. All of the Dyatlov group had suffered extreme trauma, and four of the bodies were crushed so badly that doctors compared the extent of their injuries to those sustained from being hit by a car.

  Russian authorities eventually ruled that a “compelling natural force” had caused the deaths. To this day, the tragedy remains a mystery. It is known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident.

  This book is dedicated in memory to the nine skiers who died on what is now known as the Dyatlov Pass: Igor Alekseievich Dyatlov, Yuri Nikolaievich Doroshenko, Lyudmila Alexandrovna Dubinina, Yuri (Georgiy) Alexeyevich Krivonischenko, Alexander Sergeievich Kolevatov, Zinaida Alekseevna Kolmogorova, Rustem Vladimirovich Slobodin, Nicolai Vladimirovich Thibeaux-Brignolles, and Semyon (Alexander) Alekseevich Zolotaryov.

  May they rest in peace.

  Ural Mountains, Soviet Union

  March 1959

  The moment before she died, Lyudmila wondered how it had gone so terribly wrong. Concealed within a makeshift snow cave for warmth and protection, she huddled close to Nicolai, though her friend’s body had long grown cold and stiff.

  “Remember, Mila,” he’d counseled her. “Whatever you do, do not scream. However frightened you get, whatever happens, you must stay quiet. You will be the one to survive, to tell our families what befell us.”

  Her tears had frozen on her cheeks long ago. The air was so frigid it would not allow her to grieve properly. Whatever loneliness and pain she felt at losing her last remaining friend, the man who had given up everything to protect her, must stay locked away. When she’d made it safely home, she would mourn him. But not yet. For now, her focus had to be on survival.

  Lyudmila had spent most winters exploring these mountains on skis. She was well versed in the symptoms of hypothermia and frostbite. If she didn’t find a way to raise her body temperature soon, she wouldn’t draw breath much longer. Ignoring the tingling in her weary arms, she pushed herself away from Nicolai, crawling on her stomach through the snow to the crumpled heap that was Alexander. Of the little group in the cave, Alexander had been the first to die. She averted her eyes from his frozen face as she undid the laces on his boots and tugged. The boots were too big for her, but they were warmer than her own. With the wool socks she’d collected from Semyon, she could make them fit.

  She forced several more socks and a boot onto her stiffening foot, flexing her toes while she bit on her lip to keep from crying out. The burning in her extremities, however torturous, was welcome. It meant her feet weren’t frostbitten—yet.

  A crack from the surrounding forest startled her, making her pause with her hands on Alexander’s second boot. Another crack, followed by a series of rustles and the pattering of cedar branches falling on snow. Lyudmila whimpered before clapping both hands over her mouth, pressing hard enough that her front teeth broke through the skin on her upper lip, flooding her mouth with the metallic tang of her own blood.

  “No,” she moaned under her breath. “No.” She looked at Nicolai, who lay on the other side of their shelter. He was so far away, too far for her to make it in time. She should never have left him. When the others had occasionally mocked her, dismissing her as the youngest in the group, only he had believed in her. He’d called her brave. Though her corneas felt glazed with ice, Lyudmila’s eyes welled with tears once more. She dared not let them fall. Her tormentors were attuned to the slightest sound, like foxes poised to hear their dinner scurrying under the snow. She would not scurry, but she would slide back to Nicolai’s side. Even in death, he would protect her.

  Ignoring her shrieking nerve endings, Lyudmila began the slow, agonizing crawl to her friend. She was a dozen feet away when she heard the worst sound of all, the one they’d come to dread more than any other.

  The sound of meat being torn from bone.

  Biting her lip again, she focused on Nicky to keep from screaming. Her upper thighs, strong from years of skiing, propelled her forward along the snowpack. Swish, swish. Swish, swish. She timed her movements to match the horrible chewing, careful that the slightest rustle of her snow pants was concealed beneath the other sound, but she’d forgotten.

  Forgotten the siren call of fresh blood.

  In spite of the frigid temperatures, sweat beaded her forehead and trickled down her nose from her efforts. Swish, swish. Swish, swish. Dearest Nicky. Soon he would be close enough to touch. The last remaining warmth from his body would renew her courage. At his side, she would survive this night, and in the morning, with his good coat protecting her from the elements, she would attempt to make her way down the mountain to safety.

  Lyudmila was inches away from Nicolai’s body when a flash of white broke through the snow in front of her, seizing her friend’s skull and popping it like an overripe grape. As the deep crimson of Nicky’s blood painted their sanctuary the color of death, she forgot her last promise to him.

  She screamed.

  She was still screaming when her tongue was torn out, along with the inside of her mouth.

  ~ Chapter One ~

  Nat longed for the days when trolls were grotesque creatures who lurked under bridges in Norway. Sadly, trolls lurked in one’s inbox now, and there was no getting rid of them until they grew bored and moved on. If she could have sent this particular one to the fjords, she would have in a heartbeat.

  “Another death threat?”

  “Huh?” Nat tore her attention away from her screen long enough to see Andrew grin at her.

  “I’ve worked with you long enough to know that sigh. What was it this time? Death threat? Sexual harassment? Some good old-fashioned stalking?”

  “None of the above. Good old-fashioned baiting.”

  As the host of Nat’s Mysterious World, the US’s most popular podcast dealing with the supernatural and unsolved mysteries, Nat was used to hearing from whackos. But this guy was different. He’d been writing her for the past three weeks, the tone of his emails just shy of incendiary. Worst of all, he’d been hitting her where it hurt. She should delete his messages unread and block him before he stole another minute of her precious time, but he was like a car accident she couldn’t look away from.

  This troll wasn’t like other trolls. The guy knew his stuff.

  “Cliff again?”

  “Yeah,” she admitted, bracing herself for a lecture. The road was a well-traveled one.

  “I don’t understand why you haven’t blocked him yet. Why are you wasting your time on that asshole?”

  “I should; you’re right.” Nat ran her fingers through her platinum crop, tugging at the roots. No matter what, she couldn’t take her bad mood o
ut on Andrew, who was her producer, as well as the closest thing she had to a friend. “I guess I haven’t been willing to give him the satisfaction. I’m sure that’s exactly what he wants, proof that he’s gotten to me.”

  “But he has gotten to you. Pretending he hasn’t is costing you more than giving in. Once he’s blocked, it’s over. You’ll move on and forget you ever heard from him.”

  If only it were that easy. “He’ll probably set up another account.”

  “Those creeps never do. You know that. They have their fun, and once it’s over, they move on and torment someone else.”

  “You really don’t think he has a point?” Nat studied Andrew’s face, fancying she’d be able to tell if he lied to her. Though he’d recently celebrated his thirtieth birthday, her producer could pass for a high school kid, and thankfully, he still had the energy of one.

  “No,” he said, his bottle-green eyes meeting hers without flinching. “I really don’t. I think he’s full of shit, and the fact this jerk is getting to you pisses me off.”

  “Thanks.” To humor him, she deleted the email, but it didn’t matter. Cliff’s words would run through her mind for at least the next hour or three, torturing her. “But maybe he’s right. Maybe this show has become all talk. It’s been a long while since I’ve done anything noteworthy.”

  “And what’s he done, besides jerk off and spew hatred from behind his computer? Probably lives in his mom’s basement, eating Cheetos and swigging Mountain Dew.”

  A ghost of a smile played over her lips. That was exactly how she pictured Cliff. But Cheetos or no Cheetos, it didn’t mean the guy was wrong. In years past, no adventure had been too dangerous or too difficult. She’d braved Poveglia, otherwise known as the most haunted island in the world. She’d spent the night in the Winchester Mystery House, explored the bowels of the Queen Mary with only a flashlight, and puked her guts out in Romania’s Hoia Baciu.

  Lately, though, she’d become complacent. Sure, she’d go on the odd ghost tour or hunt for Bigfoot in a national park, but there hadn’t been anything remotely risky in far too long. Troll or no troll, Cliff was right. She talked the talk without walking the walk. She’d lost her authenticity, the very thing that had made her cast popular in the first place.

  “Look, he’s a freak. He’s obsessed. You need to let it go. You don’t have time to worry about the Cliffs of the world and their deranged opinions.”

  It was true; she didn’t. But still…

  “It would be one hell of a challenge though, wouldn’t it? That story has always bugged me. Did you know it’s been almost sixty years, and they still have no idea what happened to those people?”

  Andrew rolled his eyes. “And they never will. It’s a loser, Nat. Not to mention suicide.”

  She bristled, as he’d no doubt expected. In his own way, Andrew was pretty damn good at baiting her too. “You forget I’m Canadian. I’m not soft like you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Spare me your stories of growing up in an igloo and getting to school on a dogsled. You were raised in Vancouver, which is hardly the Russian mountains.”

  “Vancouver is where I went to college, not where I was raised. Shows how little you know. We may not have had igloos in my hometown, but the Iditarod champion lived just down the block.”

  “Whatever. Is that really how you want to spend your vacation, freezing your ass off on some godforsaken Russian mountain, attempting to solve a mystery that’s almost six decades old?”

  “You have to admit, it sounds like fun, doesn’t it?” Cliff’s latest taunt-fest forgotten, her mind was already packing. “Gets the blood racing again.”

  “Schlepping around on a suicide mission is the opposite of fun. Not to mention it’s been done—if you’ll forgive the expression—to death.”

  Calling Nat unoriginal was almost as bad as calling her a coward. “By whom? When?”

  “Come on, Nat. Everyone and their uncle’s BuzzFeed has written about the Dyatlov Pass incident. It’s hardly groundbreaking. If you’re going to risk your life, at least find some nice possessed girl no one else has discovered yet.”

  She snorted, hoping to convey an appropriate amount of disdain. “Those listicles? They don’t come close to doing it justice. All they do is recycle the same Wikipedia content and slap a new byline on it. If I were to do this, I’d do it right. Get a team together and investigate what really happened out there. Who knows, maybe we’d come up with some answers. Or at least an interesting theory.”

  “Gee, that’s never been done. No one’s ever made a movie about it.”

  “That was fiction, Andrew. And I’m hardly a wet-behind-the-ears film student with delusions of grandeur.”

  “No, you’re an experienced journalist. Which is why I’m shocked you’re even considering this. What makes you think the Russian government would cooperate? Trust me, it’s a waste of time. You’re letting this guy bait you into an early grave.”

  “Have you no mystery in your soul? Doesn’t it intrigue you, even a little?” The more he argued against it, the more excited she got. All her best ideas had begun with people insisting she was insane. It wasn’t like wandering a deserted island infested with the bubonic plague had been the wisest course of action, but people loved that shit. Her ratings had skyrocketed, and the sponsors had followed. “Let me put it this way—would a nice big raise intrigue you?”

  The corner of Andrew’s mouth twitched. Just for a second, but it was enough. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll call the Russian embassy this afternoon.”

  “You’re awesome.”

  “And you’re insane.”

  “Thanks.” Slipping on her earphones, she hummed along to the music.

  It had been too long since someone had called her that. And damn, it felt good.

  ~ Chapter Two ~

  Her cell woke her in the middle of the night, which for Nat was more like three in the morning. Startled from a nightmare where the Russians had rejected her passport and thrown her in the gulag, she groped for the phone, disoriented.

  “Andrew?”

  She’d almost gotten used to her producer calling her at all hours. Once he’d realized she wasn’t going to change her mind about Dyatlov, he’d jumped into preparations wholeheartedly, and part of that was assembling the best team on the planet. That meant Canadians. Nat didn’t care how many champion rock climbers resided in California—she wanted people who understood cold, who had experience surviving extreme temperatures. It had taken Andrew a while to succumb to her logic (and to see that it was logic, not some twisted form of patriotism for the old country) but once he did, he’d embraced it with a vengeance. He’d managed to convince a young Inuit couple to come along for the ride. Anubha and her husband Joe followed the traditional ways, and Anubha was a skilled tracker. Her knowledge of arctic wildlife would serve the team well. While Nat had no desire to turn her investigation into a survival show, it was wise not to depend entirely on their supplies.

  So far, Andrew had soared over every hurdle she’d put in front of him. Except one. Nat wanted a Mansi on the team. She didn’t believe that bullshit about the native tribe being unwilling to set foot on Dead Mountain. Not for a second. Everyone had a price.

  This had to be her producer phoning in triumph, telling her he’d achieved every condition she’d set.

  “Andrew, you’re a genius. How on earth did you find one?”

  “I’m happy to see you’re taking my advice.”

  Nat stiffened. The voice, rough as a cheese grater over gravel, was not her producer’s. “Who is this?”

  “You know who it is. What you should be asking is why it took me so long to call.”

  “Cliff.”

  “Bingo.”

  She clutched the sheets tighter, bringing them closer around her body. “How did you get this number?” Her cell was unlisted, private. Very few people had access to it, and that was the way she liked it. She certainly didn’t share it with her audience.

  “You’re not the
only one who can do research.”

  “Call me again and I’ll report you,” she said, her voice strong and unwavering, belying how spooked she was.

  “For making a phone call? What’s my crime?” As rough as his voice was, it was also smooth like a radio announcer’s. Nat thought she’d heard it somewhere before. Maybe if she kept him on the line, she’d remember where.

  “Stalking.”

  He laughed. “I’m hardly stalking you, Ms. McPherson. If I were, I’d be outside your bedroom window right now.” Waiting a beat, long enough for her arms to break out in goose bumps, he said, “Don’t worry; I’m not.”

  She swallowed around the lump that had formed in her throat. “Email and phone calls count as stalking too.”

  “I’m not a stalker. I’m a fan. Do you have so few you can’t recognize them?”

  “I wouldn’t call you a fan, Cliff.” Remembering some of his harshest criticisms, her face flushed. “You’re a troll. A spiteful, petty troll with too much time on his hands.”

  “Now, is that any way to talk to the fan who gave you the best idea of your career?”

  “You hardly gave me the idea. I’ve been interested in the Dyatlov Pass incident for years.”

  “Is that a fact? Why didn’t you do something about it before, then? Why did you wait for me to goad you?”

  His audacity brought her to the brink of trembling rage. Who did this asshole think he was? Did he actually believe he had power over her? Andrew was right—this guy was a creep, and nothing more. “No one goaded me into this expedition. Do you have any clue about the amount of preparation, not to mention money, something like this takes? I would never go to this kind of trouble because someone double-dog dared me. I’m not twelve years old.”

  He laughed again. “Having trouble sharing the credit? That’s fine. I understand.”