June 17, 2026

HEAT
by Caolán Mac An Aircinn

A climber stranded on Everest discovers that the mountain holds
​horrors colder than death itself.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.




I suppose at some point, I must have noticed the cold. But it is, you see, all-consuming; the rocks, the wind, the snow of course, the very fabric of the mountain is ontologically cold, and as a necessary consequence the cold has crept past my hiking gear, my boots and thermals and mitts and expensive puffy jacket, into my withered flesh and desiccated bones and—as the poet said—the mild pods of my eyes. I lie here on the mountain, and the wind blows flurries of snow across me; they settle on me, and where once they would have melted, they persist, for I am now a creature of the cold and I am of one piece with the mountain about me.

But no—I know I noticed the cold. I know because—if I prod the calcified, rime-crusted pathways of my icebound mind hard enough—I can remember a time when I was human and not meat, a woman with dreams and ambitions. I lived in a place called Germany, I think; I remember desks and monitors and spreadsheets, birthdays and weddings and funerals, scintillating glimpses of a life before the mountain. I remember, above all else, a need: a need to show that I was not simply a desk jockey, that I was at home in the open air and in the harder places of my country. Though they are fogged by the ice, I remember my triumphs; firstly the hills around my hometown, then the snow-crowned mountains of the south—the Alps, yes; for all my flesh has dried, that much I do remember. I remember the burning need, which settled somewhere below my breastbone, to triumph over the world’s mightiest.

Chomolungma, the holy mother, where the earth most ardently strives for the sky; the English, in a surfeit of colonial arrogance, applied the name Everest.

I died here, in case that wasn’t already apparent. My spreadsheets and my conference calls, my puffy jackets and my thick gloves, my years of climbing lesser peaks counted, in the end, for naught. I remember this less well than my years in the homeland; I recall hope and determination being replaced by weariness, panic and, at last, acceptance. I ignored my Sherpa and the others in my expedition; I sat down on a snowy hillock and peacefully froze to death. The cold invaded first my outer tissues then penetrated to my marrow, my guts, the ventricles of my heart, till the tough muscles which I had honed against this day were stiff and frozen as a slab of beef in a supermarket aisle. 

Until they were not.

I do not know why I did not join the community of Everest mummies who sit endlessly in place, landmarks for those who repeat their journey. All I know is a half-memory of a warm, fuzzy feeling settling on me on my chosen hillock, lulling me warmly to death—and then crisp, sharp wakefulness, for all that I was cold, stiff, dead. Experimentally, I stood. My tendons cracked in protest, layers of snow peeled off—but I stood.

I am not the only one so afflicted. There are not many of us, for there are not many who die on the holy mother’s slopes, but there are enough of us that, if one lurks on the mountain trails of a night and keeps one’s eyes peeled, one may see in the shadows the hunting dead. I have tried to understand why I am cursed like this, chiefly by engaging my fellow revenants in conversation. Unfortunately, those who speak German do not wish to talk, and those who wish to talk do not speak German. I am left to fill in the gap with my own suppositions. This mountain is a holy place, and the Sherpas believe that one should avoid impure thoughts on its slopes; but I think I remember that I was angry with a cheating husband on my ascent, and whatever thoughts I had in that regard, pure is the very last thing they were. Perhaps my rage cursed me to wander. Or perhaps it was my drive. I remember—I do, don’t I?—that my life among the living was characterised by striving: the next promotion, the next mountain. My restlessness in life led to restlessness in death. Or perhaps it is simply random; there is something about this place beyond the ken of science, which simply causes some dead to wander and leaves others be. I am none the wiser.

Nevertheless, shadowing my—what shall I call them?—my fellow travellers revealed to me what it is that creatures such as I crave. It is, simply put, the very hardest thing to find on the mountain’s flanks: human warmth.

Do not understand this metaphorically. Let me explain. Some years ago, there was an ill-fated Chinese expedition. Regardless of what I or the other restless dead of the mountain did, they were not making it off Chomolungma alive; they did not have enough food or clothes to ensure their survival. Now, I had noticed my fellow travellers steer clear of the larger expeditions. I realised after a while that this made sense; while large, well-equipped expeditions are the hottest of them all, one cannot drink the heat of so many without either leaving survivors or causing a great deal of fuss, either of which outcome leads to fewer people on the mountain—and fewer heat. Little expeditions, however, like the poorly-prepared Chinese, were fair game. I saw them erect their pitiful camp, and I felt myself drawn to it, though I could not then explain why. Then I saw a fellow traveller—a familiar fellow, in a torn orange coat and blue boots, an Italian or Spaniard as best as I could make out from his gurglings when questioned. This Italian or Spaniard crept into the Chinese camp as quietly as a hunting fox, into one of the tents; and I sneaked closer, to see what it was he was doing. When I carefully twitched aside the tent flap, I saw the Italian or Spaniard lying beside the tent’s occupant, embracing her tightly like a lover; as I watched, the tent’s occupant grew more pale and shivery, and the dead man’s flesh, where visible, grew ruddier—until, at last, she gave her death rattle, and ice crystals began to form on her cheeks. Why, nothing would do but that I try it for myself. I found a likely-looking gent in the next tent over, already shivering and cold and tired; I crawled close to him, held him close.

When I say I experienced nirvana, I do not do the experience justice. It was water after the desert, food after a famine, family’s embrace after separation; it was easily the finest experience I have had in undeath, and in truth little I remember of my life compares to it. I drunk the heat from the sleeping man greedily, automatically, and I felt it nestle inside me where the desire to climb Everest had once lived. It was not life regranted, but by any gods that may be, it was the closest I’ve felt in a long, long time. I thought that the Italian—or Spaniard—would try to fight me off, and I was ready for it, but in the event we shared the camp equitably between us. I did not fully grasp what he said to me when we had drunk the heat from the camp between us, for my Italian and Spanish are both bad and his mouth had been mangled by a fall; but I gathered that he remembered his first time feeding, and he would not begrudge that experience to anyone.

Of course, then I had to live with the sense of that heat fading, being chipped away by the mountain and its ice; subsequently with the addiction-feeling of requiring more. So I took to haunting the ridges at night with my fellow travellers, a pack of desiccated wolves in the finest hiking gear looking for more weaklings to leech from. I do not feel bad about this; we prey on the weakest, those who would have died anyway, those who were unworthy; and even if this were not a consideration, the feeling of stolen heat kindling in my breast is so magical that I would sell my own mother, if she still lives, to the mountain for a trace of it.

Such is my life after death. Lately, I have been following one sloppy expedition. I have my eye on one girl in particular. She is pretty, black-haired, dark-eyed, though poor nutrition and the cold have detracted from her charms; I see her at evenings, scanning the ridges and snowfields above her. I think she knows that we are here, though her scientific rational mind will not yet let her accept it. I will have to drink her soon, before she warns her party.

But she is small fry. These paltry expeditions, though my fellow travellers do not realise it, they are all small fry. I remember enough to remember that there is a whole world of warm, living, breathing, unsuspecting humans out there simply waiting to be drunk; and, strange as it seems, many fewer questions are asked about a hypothermia death in the teeming cities of humanity than on the mountain face. Soon, I shall begin my descent back down the mountain, to the cities of Nepal and Bengal. But why stop there? I have an unfaithful husband and a family who did not bother to retrieve me. I will find my way to them, by air, sea, or by my own two legs, if I have to. And after that—well, where can I not go? Perhaps, dear reader, I will even visit you and curl up by you; and all you will know will be a deepening chill before your body shuts down.
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I’ll see you soon, dear reader. I’ll see you very soon.

                                                                       💀💀💀

Caolán Mac an Aircinn is a translator, classicist and musician from Dublin, Ireland who writes both in English and in his native Irish. He has published numerous short stories and poems both in Irish and in English in the horror and science fiction genres. When not writing, he enjoys playing traditional Irish music and bothering his cats. He can be found on Instagram at @writercaolan.