The Snow of Cerro Ooteca

 

Hiuke Wang (Nicole)

 

 

       That photograph looked like a mistake left too long in the developer fluid, or perhaps an optical illusion born of a shutter’s trick.

       It was London, 1991, in a basement bookstore that smelled of moldy paper and overly strong Earl Grey tea. You, a photographer with a pathological obsession with extreme landscapes, ran your finger across the inner page of that unreleased geographic magazine. The paper felt rough and dry to the touch, until your finger stopped on that black and white image, you knew something was growing.

       Located deep in the Andes, in the no man's land on the border of Chile and Argentina, was a dormant volcano named Cerro Ooteca, which was a strange name. The grain of the photo was coarse, but the anomaly was really clear: at about an altitude of 4,500 meters, surrounded by a hell of red scorched earth and saline wasteland, the crater was covered in a layer of lush, heavy, velvet-textured snow, as if breathing.

       "That’s absolutely impossible."

       The speaker was Dr. Hans Weber. At that moment, he was sitting in the passenger seat of the bumping Land Rover Defender, clutching the photo so tightly his knuckles turned white. He was a typical Germanic scholar— thin, neurotic, wearing a gold-rimmed monocle, always attempting to correct the world's chaos with data.

       "According to the adiabatic cooling rate," Weber's voice was sharp, carrying a tone of offended anger, "the ground temperature at that latitude would be hot enough to boil an egg at noon. Unless the rock structure of that mountain can violate the Thermodynamics, only steam can exist there, never solid water."

       A low, muffled murmur came from the back seat. Father Julian was constantly chanting something. He was a Jesuit exiled by the Vatican, built like an old bear, burly yet hunched. He was thumbing a string of bone rosary beads with his thick fingers, beads ground from the vertebrae of some rodent.

      "Perhaps it is a blank space left by God," Julian's voice was hoarse, as if his throat were filled with gravel. "Like the manna in the Bible. Science cannot explain grace, Dr. Weber."

        "That is not grace, that is a data error!" Weber turned his head, spittle flying. "Or perhaps some crystallization, I’d rather admit it. We will go there, take samples, prove it is just a pile of rocks, and end this absurd trip."

       You held the steering wheel, silent. There was an indescribable hunger in your heart. You watched the red Gobi desert receding outside the window, knowing clearly that this stubborn geologist wanted to prove it was stone, Julian wanted to prove it was a miracle, but you... you just wanted to know why that mass of white looked like it possessed body temperature.

       The convoy was forced to stop on the third day. The road ahead had completely vanished and left only exposed basalt bedrock that looked like flayed muscle. The thermometer indicated an outside temperature of 38 degrees Celsius. You shouldered your heavy hiking packs. Dr. Weber carried his portable spectrometer and sampling hammer; Father Julian carried only water and a massive, peeling copy of the Old Testament.

       As you climbed in altitude, an unsettling silence enveloped you. No wind, no birdsong. This silence had weight, it pressed against your eardrums.

       "Something is wrong," Weber stopped, gasping for air. Sweat dripped from his pale cheeks onto the rock and evaporated instantly. "The rocks here... they are too soft."

He crouched down and struck the ground with his steel geological hammer. There was no crisp sound of metal on stone. The sound produced was a dull, wet squelch. Like striking a massive slab of raw meat left out for days. Weber froze. He wiped the surface of the rock with his gloved finger. "Look," he extended his finger toward you, his voice beginning to tremble. "This isn't weathering. It's... slime." It was a black, semi-transparent gel, which pulled into thin threads, emitting a strange odor that mixed bitumen, burnt syrup, and formalin.

      "It is the fat of the earth," Father Julian leaned in, his eyes fanatical. "Ezekiel said that the earth would flow with oil."

       "Shut up, Julian!" Weber roared, his line of rational defense beginning to crack. "This is organic secretion! The rock structure of this entire mountain has been altered by something. Or perhaps... perhaps we are walking on a massive colony."

       You looked at the path beneath your feet. You suddenly felt the red mountain body undulating ever so slightly. Not an earthquake, but breathing. "Keep moving," you said coldly, adjusting the focus on your camera. "Whatever it is, what we want is at the summit."

       At the col, just five hundred meters from the crater, Dr. Weber completely broke down.

       The cause was a sample, he attempted to knock a white speck off the cliff face, when his hammer struck, the rock wall did not shatter; it contracted. Yes, the stone twitched like startled muscle, and then sprayed a jet of yellow gas from the fissure.

       "It's alive! It's alive!" Weber threw away his hammer, the first time in his career he had discarded a tool. He collapsed on the ground, holding his head, German words spewing from his mouth like broken glass. "This isn't geology... this doesn't belong to this planet... I want to go back! I want to go back!"

       He ran down the mountain like a madman, scrambling and crawling. You didn't stop him, obviously the exit of rationality was inevitable, but you could understand him, that faced with absolute absurdity, logic is merely a burden, you only worried whether Weber’s poor heart could take it.

       So now, only you and Father Julian remained. The priest’s state was becoming increasingly manic, hypoxia flushed his face, and his eyes even were bloodshot. "He has no faith, Elias," Julian wheezed, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth. "He cannot see the truth. But I can see it. Look above, those are angel's wings."

       A downdraft surged from the crater. It really was snowing. Light, grayish-white flakes drifted down in the blazing sun, they refracted the sunlight with a greasy luster. "The Body of Christ! this is the Body!" Father Julian dropped his water bottle and knelt on the scalding rocks. He tilted his head back, arms spread wide, as if welcoming a baptism. He extended his rough tongue, trying to catch a drifting "snowflake." The palm-sized white flake landed softly on his face, covering his left eye and half his cheek. You raised your camera and wanted to record this holy moment.

       However, the lens captured not ecstasy, but shock. Father Julian’s expression froze. The thing did not melt. It hooked into his flesh.

       "Ah" The priest let out a short, confused groan. He reached up to grab the "snow" on his face, but let out a piercing scream. Tearing at it did not dislodge the object, instead, it stretched his skin. Through the telephoto lens, you saw the details clearly that the "snowflake" had chitinous barbs, and those barbs had deeply embedded themselves into his facial nerves. Even more terrifying, the thing was vibrating. It was flapping its tattered wings at an ultra-high frequency, emitting a tooth-aching buzz.

       "That is the Devil!" Julian rolled on the ground, crazily clawing at his own face, blood mixed with white phosphorus powder streaming down. "They are eating me! Lord, they are eating me!"

       He stood up, driven by that agony and the collapse of his faith, and charged like a blind man toward the nearby cliff. "Don't!" you shouted, but your voice was drowned in the wind. Julian disappeared into the red dust, seconds later, the muffled thud of a heavy object hitting rock echoed up.

       Now, only you remained. Fear gripped your heart like a cold hand, but another, more primal impulse, a voyeuristic aesthetic desire pushed your legs forward. The trembling of pathology covered your whole body. You climbed the final ridge. You finally stood at the edge of the colossal crater.

       The setting sun was like blood, casting your long shadow into the massive abyss.

There was no snow. No glaciers. No miracles.

       Filling the crater, two kilometers in diameter, were billions of moths, layer upon layer.

       They were grayish-white, each the size of a human face. Like a sleeping army, they were densely packed, filling the abyss, piled into white mountains. The reason it looked like snow from a distance was that the surface moths were still trembling slightly, you didn’t know whether it was their pre-death spasm. Countless pairs of wings rubbed together, emitting a low and continuous “sh-sh-sh” sound, it sounded like millions of people whispering prayers, or curses.

        A potent odor assaulted your nostrils. Not sulfur as you imagine, but an intensely sweet, rotting smell. It was the scent of billions of life forms fermenting, dissolving, mating, laying eggs, and dying in the high heat. The smell was so thick you felt the air had turned to oil.

       You understood. This mountain actually was a massive trap. It emitted some heat or pheromone undetectable to humans but fatally attractive to insects. These moths crossed entire continents, flew over oceans and deserts, just to throw themselves into this final "flame," to complete the only mission of their lives here, reproduction, and then become part of this mountain of corpses.

       You felt a wave of intense fainting. Before you knew it, you had walked into the interior of the crater. The sensation under your feet made your skin crawl. It was no longer hard rock, but a soft, slimy, warm abyss. With every step, your boots sank into the pile of corpses, meters deep. You heard the crisp snap of breaking wings and felt sticky bodily fluids seeping through your uppers—the grease made of dead moths.

       Clouds of white phosphorous powder rose into the air, which wrapped around you like a heavy fog. You coughed violently, feeling as if fuzz was growing inside your throat. In the center of the corpse mountain, you vaguely saw something stand out. They seemed larger than moth cocoons, large enough to make people faint on the spot. They looked like unfinished sculptures, wrapped in countless white silk threads. Some were already tottering, looking like a scene of sacrifice. You walked over, kneeling in the pile of still-squirming moths. You drew your hunting knife and tremblingly sliced open the thick, tough web.

       “Rip”— The cocoon was cut open. But unlike your imagination, there was a curled-up dry corpse inside. A brownish liquid assaulted your vision with unprecedented impact.

       A massive sense of absurdity hit you. The scream stuck in your throat, but laughter slid out smoothly. You felt an irresistible tired, it was a sweet, heavy exhaustion, like being drowned in honey. So you dropped your camera and slowly crawled into the cut cocoon.

       It was warm here. Much warmer than that cold apartment in London. This was the temperature maintained by the death of billions of lives. Although you didn't know when or if it would be your turn, these were not things to consider now. The most urgent matter was to hurry up and form that cocoon for yourself. Rationality returned for a split second, constantly asking if you really must do this, but you just felt a certainty and insanity.

       You felt the moths around you beginning to gather. A giant moth with eye-like patterns on its wings landed on your forehead. Its antennae gently brushed your eyelashes, like a gentle kiss, then a second, a third. The white tide gradually covered your legs, your chest, and finally, your vision.

       Before darkness completely fell, you felt your skin beginning to harden, felt new limbs breaking through the soil of your back. Just like being injected with an overdose of anesthetic, you felt your fingers and toes lose sensation first, a numbness like electric current spreading from your limbs to your spine. You could still feel your hands and feet existed, but you couldn't command them. You nervously tried to tell your brain to lift your hand, but to no avail.

       Your body let go. Jaw, gut, everything that once held you together, the chin involuntarily dropped open, saliva drooling out and body naturally curled into the fetal position. But to your delight, the severe knee pain from the climb and the burning sensation in your lungs vanished within seconds, replaced by a floating warmth. After a brief moment of satisfaction, you immediately plunged into unparalleled burning, then nothing.

 

     Huike Wang is a junior student majoring in English (Global Settings Option) at Wenzhou Kean University and is currently on exchange at Kean University. She focuses on crafting fables and psychological narratives that explore the destructive charm of human desire. The submitted story delves into the compelling and often perilous nature of human obsession and boundless desire, drawing direct inspiration from the metaphor of a moth drawn to flame.

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Sophia Wiseman-Rose (aka Sr. Sophia Rose) is a Paramedic and an Anglican novice Franciscan nun, in the UK.  Both careers have given Sophia a great deal of exposure to the extremes in life and have provided great inspiration for her.  

  She has travelled to many countries, on medical missions and for modelling (many years ago), but has spent most of her life between the USA and the UK. She is currently residing in a rural Franciscan community and will soon be moving to London to be with a community there.  

  In addition, Sophia had a few poems and short stories in editions of Black Petals Horror/Science Fiction Magazine.

 The majority of her artwork can be found on her website.

  https://www.artstation.com/sophiaw-r6