Chapter 15

After training all morning, they went back into the lodge for an early lunch. Jeremy showed them a map with their highlighted route.

Kendal finished a stack of blueberry pancakes and four slices of bacon. She was still hungry, so she ordered a side of eggs.

“We’ll start here,” Jeremy said, pointing to a picture of the lodge on the map. “We’ll climb to the top of Powell Point and then onto Palmer’s Glacier where we will rest. Then we’ll head past Devil’s Kitchen and through the Pearly Gates.”

“Devil’s what?” Kendal interrupted.

“Devil’s Kitchen. There’s a fumarole there. Gasses sometimes rise up from vents that have formed in the volcano.”

For the first time all day, Kendal remembered The Atlas of Cursed Places. She had been too busy training to even think about it, but just then she remembered Nellie Bly throwing gold down into a crevice while steam spewed up around her.

“Hey,” she said, turning to Jeremy. “Is there a legend about gold being discovered on this mountain?”

Jeremy took a sip of his coffee.

“There’s always stories about gold being found all over Oregon,” he said.

“But up here? On Mount Hood? Isn’t there a story about gold being found and lost up here? A story about a woman named Nellie Bly?”

Jeremy traced his finger along the edge of the map.

“Not one that I can recall,” he said. “Why?”

Kendal didn’t tell him about the book. She told her father that she needed to head upstairs and pack, but instead she went straight to the library again.

On the shelf she saw the empty place where The Atlas of Cursed Places had once sat. She looked through the other books on the shelf, and read for a few minutes about the glaciers and snowfields that made up the peak of Mount Hood. Apparently, experts believed that Mount Hood would likely erupt in the next fifty years.

She closed that book. That wasn’t something she needed to have in her head as she climbed the mountain the next day. No matter how prepared a person may be, Kendal thought, there’s no way to prepare for a mountain that suddenly erupts. She thought once more about the book she’d read last night.

There is no way to prepare for a curse, either.