'Sheer Hell' - by Marie Anne Cope
I have two friends. We’ve been together since childhood. We do everything together. We are inseparable. We have a bond, a special bond. That’s why we were here, standing staring up at Clogwyn Goch and the gaping crack of ‘Hellsmouth’.
“C’mon, Ed. You know you’ve always wanted to climb it,” Flash’s voice echoed in my head.
“Yeah, we’ve climbed higher than this in our sleep,” Muggy’s voice chipped in.
“But this one’s never been successfully climbed before,” I muttered. My head was pounding and their images kept flashing, like snapping synapses, in my brain. I shook my head to try and clear it and reached in my pocket for my tablets. I pulled out the empty bottle and stared at it. I should have got it refilled days ago.
I stood at the base of the wall and looked up the face. It leant out over me, darkening the shadow in which I stood. There was a story that the place itself was cursed, haunted by the souls of witches, burned at the stake at the top and then hurled into the river at its base. Now dammed, the dry riverbed remained as a barren ribbon below. Local historians had excavated the area, but had never found any human remains. Inquests into the climbing fatalities had always ruled them as ‘deaths by misadventure’, due to lapses in concentration, gear failure, poor placement and the like.
The first pitches passed without any real difficulty and I soon got into my rhythm, swarming up the face with easy, fluid movement. I could hear their voices echoing off the wall as they taunted each other, about this easy move or that tough pull. I preferred to climb in silence. They knew this. 
The rock face was almost red from a distance, but close up it was kind of mottled. It had a really smooth surface, with small pink crystals glistening despite the shade. In places red threads ran though it, almost like veins. I ran my finger along one of the thicker veins and the image of a rock fall flashed into my mind. I jerked my hand away from the wall and lost my footing. I muttered expletives as I bounced on the end of the rope.
“Careful!” Flash’s voice sounded in my head.
“Climbing again!” I shouted, as I managed to regain the face. I clung to the wall to calm myself and listened as the rocks I’d dislodged clattered away into the riverbed, now far below.
“Come on, you clumsy git!” Muggy’s voiced echoed across the face. “We’ve got this licked, easy!”
I looked up at the route and caught glimpses of them, a good fifty or sixty feet above me, almost halfway up the wall. That’s when I heard it. A low rumble, almost like an earthquake. Then I felt what seemed like a ripple through the rock face. Then I saw it. At first I thought it was just birds passing in front of the sun, but as I shielded my eyes from the glare, the shapes tumbled silently through space, getting bigger and bigger as they fell.
“Look out!” I screamed, but it was too late. Through the glare, I saw the rocks crash against his helmet. His body crumpled and he fell backwards off the wall, his impatience in belaying now costing dear. The cam came clean out of the rock face, as if the rock had just let go.
“Muggy!” I screamed, frozen to the wall, watching, as he appeared to bounce against it again and again, the pull of the rope dragging him in before leaving him pirouetting limp at its end.
Panic set in as I frantically locked off the rope, clipping into better placements. I closed my eyes and saw Muggy’s body spinning lazily in space. Tears welled as my heart thundered in my chest. I screamed his name, again and again, but it was no use. Another image flashed through my mind. This time it was of a frayed piece of rope.
“Flash!” I screamed. “We need to get down, right now!” I heard him swear as I started to descend as fast as I could.
“What’s up?” I yelled
“Rope’s stuck on something!”
I looked up and could just about make out the image of him yanking at the rope above him. I saw the picture of the frayed rope again and then I felt the ripple through the rock, followed by the deep rumbling. Above the pendulum of Muggy’s body, Flash’s rope rubbed against the small shiny crystals of rock.
“Don’t move! Get some gear in now and hang on tight!” I bellowed. He carried on yanking at the rope.
I yelled again, just as he gave one final pull and the rope snapped. I heard his screams as he lost his balance and fell away from the wall. I watched in horror as the gear at the top gave out and their bodies tumbled through the air in slowly rotating spirals. I closed my eyes and felt them hurtle passed me to land in the riverbed with a sickening thud.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I muttered and looked across at the cam, in the crack next me, which held my weight. It was slowly walking out of the rock. What the hell was going on?
“Secure yourself now! This one’s going to give, any minute!” I shouted, my mind spinning, my sanity vanishing. I started to edge sideways. I was only a few feet away and if I could just get to it, I would be able to secure it again. I grabbed a nut and reached as far as I could. Just as I was about to jam it in, the wall seemed to literally ‘spit’ it out again.
I looked down at the twisted bodies in the riverbed below. Another ripple went through the wall and I looked at the cam and saw it was almost free. Frantic to belay, I stabbed at the crack with different nuts, but nothing was holding. This could not be happening! How could this rock reject the gear!
“Nooo!” I bellowed and smashed gear repeatedly into the rock face. I heard the rumble before I felt it, this time. The image that appeared in my mind was fuzzy, hard to make out, as though it hadn’t been decided yet.
I didn’t waste any more time. I had to get down, fast. I could hear the rocks falling from the top of the wall and I kept myself as close as I could to the rock face. Some struck me, with sharp stinging pain, before splintering on the riverbed below. I hardly noticed. I placed six nuts as quickly as I could, the rock seeming to resist my attempts. All I could do was scramble down using the rope. I just hoped I would have enough time before the wall spewed out the nuts, which I knew it would.
My arms screaming in protest, I started to descend, desperately grasping rock and rope, abandoning safety for speed. I had to get off the face.
I felt the ripple run up the wall again and then I felt myself drop as the nuts were forced out of the wall, one by one. I just focused on the riverbed. Eighty feet to go. That was all I had and then I’d be safe. I felt the rope go slack. There was nothing left to hold me to the wall. Handholds seemed to melt away and footholds dissolved beneath my rock shoes. I allowed my body to go limp as I fell, the air whistling past me. The rope jarred as each of the remaining nuts was expelled from of the rock. As the last protection was vomited out of the wall I could swear I heard a deep guttural laugh.
The impact was harder and faster than I could’ve imagined. The pain instantaneous. Femurs snapped. Bones ruptured the skin. I looked down to see blood seeping through my trouser legs. Then a numbing blackness and laughter. Maddeningly absurd laughter. The laughter of euphoria. The laughter of a lunatic. As I blacked out, I realised it was mine.
For all my dreams of conquering the route, I got my glory. My name finally appeared in ‘Climb’ magazine, just not in the manner I had anticipated:
‘Celebrated climber, John ‘Ed’ Edwards, was found today at the bottom of Clogwyn Goch, following a solo climb, suffering from severe hypothermia and blood loss, due to the multiple compound fractures. Edwards, a functional schizophrenic, had even set up a camera to film his ascent and police are now examining the footage. He believed that after a life of climbing the living rock, it had finally rejected him. Once his condition has stabilised, Edwards will be moved to a secure mental facility.’
I do miss Muggy and Flash, but they’ve put me back on my tablets now, so the chances of new friends appearing are non-existent.
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