The Incident On Mont Caubvik

When I finally regained my ability to think as a journalist again, I sat at my typewriter to chronical that nightmarish event. Finishing the article, I took it to the newswire services, but the story had already spread around the world like a slaughtering virus.

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I had this older friend Leroy. He was a bit of a mad mathematician. Leroy had spent the last thirty years of his life mentally laboring over the mathematical system used to build the Great Pyramid, but the building of the pyramid is not the story I am about to tell you.

Twenty years ago, on one of Leroy’s soul-cleansing journeys into the mountains of Eastern Canada, he was snowshoeing in the dead of winter, above the four-thousand-foot level of Mount Caubvick, when a whiteout dropped in unannounced. According to Leroy, the experience was spine chilling. To protect himself, Leroy hurriedly chopped down small trees and made a sturdy hut. The snow buried the shelter, as he expected, but he had a small fire inside venting through the roof, which kept him comfortable. The storm lasted twelve hours.

When Leroy was able to leave the shelter, he saw that the sky was a shade of thin blue and the impaired sun resembled a weak yellow icicle. The air was very cold. Leroy also noticed that tiny three-toed tracks were all over the top of the snow. Tracks he had never seen before, but he didn’t see any animals around. Nothing moved until he sat down outside the hut under the cold morning sun, eating jerky and drinking instant coffee. That was when Leroy couldn’t believe his eyes. The snow undulated and swelled until a dozen white-skinned frogs were hopping over the snowy surface. The white frogs gathered around Leroy and were chirping loudly, like a trembling of finches.

Leroy was awestricken. When he stood up to get an overview of this marvelous happening, his sudden motion caused the frogs to quickly dive under the snow, and they were gone. Leroy sat down again to enjoy his coffee and to contemplate on what he saw. Within several seconds the white-skinned frogs reappeared, tunneling out of the snow, this time hundreds of them. They had bulbous black eyes like geckos, and tiny snowshoe-shaped three-toed feet, and they continued to chirp like finches. The sound was so loud that my friend had to cover his ears. He then understood that they wanted food. Leroy crumbled his jerky into small pieces and scattered the crumbs over the snow. The bigger frogs turned demonic, killing the smaller frogs for the food they had in their mouths. Then the frogs invaded my friend’s camp, trying to attack him. When Leroy climbed a tree, the frogs climbed up after him. Terrified, Leroy jumped out of the tree and ran as fast as he could, while sinking into the snow. But the frogs hopped faster, and with their snowshoe-feet, they stayed on top of the surface. Leroy finally stopped running and decided to pee on the frogs. That slowed the frogs down. Leroy peed a circle around himself, and the frogs stopped in their tracks. Then they disappeared beneath the snow––the acidic chloride and sodium in the urine, along with the stench, possibly repelled them. That was what Leroy thought.

From that point on Leroy ate handfuls of snow so he could pee enough to fill a large container with urine. He then packed his gear and headed down the mountain, back to the safety of the village. The entire time that he trekked downward, he saw the snow around him undulating and swelling, as if the snow was breathing. To keep the frogs at bay, he would threw urine at them, which turned the snow bright yellow. At a certain point the undulating snow stopped. Leroy noticed that after he had dropped a thousand feet, the snow frogs retreated. It seemed that there was an elevation line the frogs wouldn’t cross. At that point, Leroy hurried down the mountain, while sprinkling urine all around, like a priest throwing holy water at his demons.

After making it back to the village of Nain, Leroy buried himself for two days in his cabin. When he finally emerged, Leroy had a fantastic multi-page typescript account of white-skinned frogs living on Mount Caubvick. According to him, they were fearless three-toed anomalies that thrive in the subzero atmosphere and will attack humans. After reading the story, I said,

“This is one of the most compelling Sci-fi stories I’ve read in years. The idea of aggressive white-skinned snow frogs living on Mount Caubvick is an extraordinary tale.”

While fixing the intensity of his grey eyes on my eyes, like a bolt-gun shooting through my skull, Leroy retorted,

“No, no, no. You don’t understand. You just don’t understand. This is not fiction. This is an actual account of what happened to me on Mount Caubvick. I was surrounded by white frogs. Snow frogs! They were killing each other for the jerky I threw at them, and they wanted to eat me too.”

Even though we were standing outside in the dead of an Eastern Canadian winter night, Leroy’s body was sweating profusely. Steam rose from the top of his bald head, and he was shaking from the frustration of me not believing that his story actually happened.

“Well,” I asked. “Did you bring psilocybin or peyote with you?”

“Of course, you idiot. I always trek with at least mushrooms. But I didn’t ingest any. I was clear-headed. Crystal clear!”

“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll pack our gear and head to four-thousand-feet. I’ll need photographs for proof, and even better, I’ll need a few snow frogs to bring back with us and––”

“Proof? I am proof! Read my paper again and publish it.” He was yelling within inches of my face so that his hot rum breath rushed me like a tropical front.

“As a journalist and the editor of The Nain Telegram,” I said, “I’m under an obligation to publish facts.”

But Leroy didn’t want to hear any of this. He was livid, and he threatened to have my journalist credentials nullified––whatever that meant––if I didn’t publish his story. Also, out of fear, he refused to go back to the four-thousand-foot level of Mount Caubvik, and I was not going to go alone. We were at a standstill. Leroy was as obsessed with getting this story published, as he was with the mathematical structuring of the pyramids. His obsessive personality had always been a challenge to be around. His endless monologues and lectures were difficult to endure, while I sat in silence nodding my head in constant agreement. But now he was over the top in thinking that I would put my professional career on the line for a story that was factually unsupported.

When it was clear to Leroy that my stance was firm against publishing his work, until he showed me a meat-eating snow frog, he threw some nasty words my way. Then he rushed back to his cabin, with his arms flailing in the air, like he was fending off a horde of flies. At that point it was late and the air had turned colder. I went back to my cabin and opened a bottle of scotch. Then I settled into the couch next to the fireplace, until I boozed myself into unconsciousness.

At dawn I was jolted awake by a noise that sounded like a massive trembling of finches. It was ear piercing, head splitting. The village dogs were barking and the cats were hissing. Hung over from the whisky, my brain felt like soggy lead sloshing against my skull. My eyes were dry and my body ached to the bone from passing out on the couch. I was physically miserable and in need of black coffee. Then it dawned on me that there aren’t that many finches in the village to create a sound like that. When I pulled the curtain back and looked outside, I shrieked. Tens of thousands of white skinned frogs with bulbous black eyes covered the ground. Some were eating the cats and dogs, and some of the larger frogs were eating some of the smaller frogs. Beneath the snow, more frogs by the thousands were tunneling through the drifts, which made the snow rise and fall like it was breathing. It was horrific. In defense, some of the villagers had gone into the streets bearing shotguns loaded with birdshot. They were blowing some of the frogs to smithereens, but the frogs were too many. Soon the gun-toting defenders were overtaken and buried under monstrous heaps of meat-eating snow frogs. Then I saw Leroy’s bone-skinny body franticly running toward my cabin. He was dressed only in white boxershorts, a white tank top, with bare feet. When he saw me standing at my window with the look of terror in my eyes, he screamed,

“No, no, no. You didn’t understand. You just didn’t understand.” Leroy slipped and fell and was quickly covered by hundreds of white frogs, until I couldn’t see him. The frogs devoured Leroy alive, like a school of piranha. I was horrified.

After ten minutes most of the snow in the village had turned tomato sauce red. The screeching frogs were climbing up the cabins and blanketing the roofs, until I could no longer see the buildings. Some of the skylights had caved in and the frogs were inside the houses. The human screams mixed with the screeching frogs was blood chilling. I closed my curtain and decided, if this was how I was going to die, I’d rather drink myself to death, than being eaten alive. I guzzled the whisky in hopes of passing out, but panic-drinking didn’t work. I only became dizzy and nauseous, until I vomited again and again. Then I fell to the floor drunk, moaning and crying. There seemed to be no end to this unholiness.

About thirty minutes later, while the terror and panic continued, another phenomenon occurred. Some called it a Divine Intervention. Call it want you want, but the fact is that the sun heated up and the temperature rose from minus fifteen-degrees to forty, then fifty, then to seventy-degrees Fahrenheit. The snow melted at an alarming rate, and it poured down the mountain in several massive waterfalls. The streets had turned into rushes of current-heavy rivers, sending the snow frogs, along with the blood-thick snow and the remains of dead people, cats and dogs into the fast-moving Fraser River, then into the bay and out to sea.

By late afternoon the snow and the snow frogs were gone, along with the remains of the villagers who had challenged the enemy by stepping into the streets. All traces of the great terror were washed into Nain Bay, except for the dead frogs and the human remains caught inside the buildings. The fluke winter heat wave lasted six days with temperatures hitting a steady ninety degrees on the second day. This made it possible for government clean-up crews to remove the decomposed frogs and to take the remaining dead villagers to the morgue. It was an unsettling sight. Cleanup crews in white Hazmat suits moved in slow motion, dragging the remains of dead people out of houses and pushing wheelbarrows of dead frogs to the garbage trucks.

When I finally regained my ability to think as a journalist again, I sat at my typewriter to chronical that nightmarish event. Finishing the article, I took it to the newswire services, but the story had already spread around the world like a slaughtering virus. Every television and radio news channel had reported on the dreadful incident on Mount Caubvick. By that time, roadblocks were set up to keep the throngs of gawkers and media people out of the area and off the mountain.

I suppose it’s needless to mention that the journalist, who first reported the story about the attack on the villagers, went on to win the Pulitzer.

Since my friend Leroy was actually the first person to report this story, I felt that due to my conservative narrow-mindedness, I had failed him as a friend. I also failed myself as a journalist, unwilling to take a chance. After all, isn’t that the foremost ingredient for the makings of a groundbreaking journalist––one who goes out on the thinnest most chance-taking limb to report a story?

On the seventh day, and again some called it another act of God, the temperature plummeted to minus ten degrees, and a twenty-four-hour whiteout swept through the region. When the sky finally cleared, the cold weak sun appeared like a blind eye of a moose, and the village of Nain had returned to its midwinter sleepiness––with all signs of the hideous attack gone.

On the eighth day after the horrific drama, I ran the story in a special addition of The Nain Telegram––in honor of my late-friend Leroy. I wrote it from his typescript, word for word, typos and all, as the very first person to witness the man-eating snow frogs, and as the first person to report about the incident on Mount Caubvik.

By D.A. Helmer

From: United States

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