Day 706

The bodies that are usually dotted about Mount Everest (two hundred and counting) have begun to move again. They've been seen slowly stretching out and up, reaching for anyone nearby with faces so contorted and frost-bitten they become caricatures.

Eventually climbers came back down without having gone farther than the Base Camp at 5270m, they said that there were clusters of frozen corpses gathering around the tents. They would huddle around fires, eventually thawing and even burning but all the while shivering and acting like a living person would in the extreme cold. The scent of burning meat lingered around the climbers for days after their return as they refused to leave the area or allow anybody else up there.

Of course nowadays people rarely believe anything without at least a dozen images from multiple sources. The last group of climbers came back with something more tangible - a video of one of the more famous bodies walking towards the cameraman with both tanned and shrivelled arms fully outstretched. His face the very definition of agony, mouth opening and closing as if he was chewing on needles.

The group also brought back an arm they'd found along the way. They said it had been crawling down so they thought they'd help it get to the bottom of the mountain, maybe give it a pen and see where it wants to go. Jokingly somebody did and much to their surprise it began to write about itself.

My name is Josh McKemby, it wrote, and I want to go home to Ireland.

Pleaser take me with you and I'll cause no harm.