Chapter 1

Mythchaser

Malcolm Sutherland knew he was in trouble. He had known for quite a while and was trying not to panic. His breathing was laboured as it was without hyperventilating. He knew what was wrong. There was no doubting it now. It had started with an increase in shivering above what was normal in such freezing conditions, and had been quickly followed by hypertension, tachycardia and trouble breathing. When he had tried to use his satellite phone he had found that not only was its battery almost dead, but that he could hardly hold it properly anyway. It shocked him to see how violently his hands were shaking. Inability to perform precise tasks. One major sign. He fumbled to put the satellite phone back into his rucksack but stumbled as he tried to swing the pack off his shoulder. Stumbling pace. Second major sign. He battled for three mintues just to unzip the rucksack and insert the phone. By the time he did so he noticed that his fingers were becoming blue. Third major sign.

Hypothermia. Still moderate, but getting worse. He knew his core temperature must have dropped to between 28  to 32 degrees. Normal body temperature for a human being is between 34.4 and 37.8.

He knew his symptoms were caused by excitation of the sympathetic nervous system. His body was attempting to preserve heat. The thought of this unconscious process irritated him. It was as if his body was saying, ‘Idiot, what is this?! You can’t be trusted to take care of yourself, I’m taking over!’ He mumbled angrily under his breath and even in the howling wind he knew his speech was slurred. Great. He concentrated hard on how he had got here, making sure amnesia had not set in. He had to stay alert. Had to stay sharp. Professor Dalton had taught him confusion was the greatest danger in hypothermia.

“Keep your head,” he had said, “you have to be aware of what is happening, have to stay in control.”

It was easier said than done. Malcolm liked to be in complete control all the time, except when it came to self control.

Feeling a surge of real panic he pressed on, stumbling twice before he moved forward. His GPS was useless now. It was relating nonsense to him. What was going on? Was it the cold interfering with its electronics? A while ago it had told him the base was just two miles away! He must have missed it in the storm. Could have passed right by it and never realised. The GPS should have alerted him. Maybe it had. Had it? Some part of him realised that the cold wasn’t interfering with the GPS, it was interfering with him. Mental confusion. Sluggish thinking. Difficulty speaking. Inability to use hands and stumbling. Symptoms of severe hypothermia.

His core body temperature had dropped to somewhere around 30 degrees now. A strange sensation of detachment set in and the academic part of his mind observed that soon walking would be all but impossible. He was already weaving about hopelessly, stumbling to his knees every couple of steps. Ahead all he could see through increasingly blurred vision was white. White snow, white sky. There was no distinguishing features at all. Even though he was outside in a vast expanse that went on for hundreds of miles, he had the acute impression of being trapped in a small white room. He strained against the walls of that room, but could not breach them. Voices called to him and he remembered a misty night on a dark Loch that seemed achingly similar; once again he was trapped in the cold, unseeing, unknowing. The voices were hallucinations. He knew that on some level. Cruel hallucinations. One was his mothers’. Time and time again she called his name as she had that night.  

He was so tired now. So tired. The whiteness all around him beckoned him and he longed to be lost in its embrace, to sleep. It called to him like a siren. If only he lay down and went to sleep. The pain would stop- the difficulty breathing, the aching in his legs, the confusion. How had he even got here again? He should know that, shouldn’t he? ‘This is bad,’ he thought, then in the next instant- ‘it doesn’t matter.’

He heard his mother reading to him, Robert Frost. Frost- Ironic.

“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.”

She skipped the next two verses because she couldn’t remember them (or was it because he couldn’t remember them? He had known them since he was ten)

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

Some people thought the poem was about suicide, that behind the facade of a pretty poem about snow lay a dark undercurrent of weariness and longing. The lovely, dark and deep woods were calling Malcolm now, but he had promises to keep...promises to her, if she still wanted them. Those last two lines, repeated, surely spoke of longing, complaint, weariness;

‘And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before...’

Malcolm suddenly felt very warm. He wanted to undress. Man it was warm! Somewhere alarm bells rang but he ignored them. Dalton seemed to say, “Don’t do it! Your body is confused- you are actually freezing!”

Malcolm stopped dead. His eyes were glazed, his lips, ears and fingers blue beneath his clothes. For a moment he stared around him at the nothingness, then suddenly he dropped to his knees and started to dig. His gloved hands burrowed furiously, ineffectively. In unhitched his pickaxe and started to swing furiously. The first swipe hit something solid. He did not care. He had no idea what he was doing, or why he was doing it. His body, that had taken control away from him an hour previous, was now out of control. Like a zombie driven only by fear and desperation, by the sheer need to survive, Malcolm tried to burrow into the snow like an animal. On his fourth swing of the pickaxe he heard the crack and made no connection between the sound and any knowledge he had in his harried brain. If he had he would have realised that he was indeed very far from his destination. He had planned to avoid the lake at all costs. In one second the ice beneath him gave and he slipped into the icy depths below. His poor body, unable to feel or even compute any more coldness, gave in. The organs it had prioritised and protected so desperately gave out. ‘Uh oh,’ some part of mind said. The last thing he heard was Professor Dalton saying, in his best lecturer’s voice,

“After all of this, when the body has done its best and lost, major organs fail. Clinical death occurs...”