The White Road

by Sarah Lotz Narrated by Sam Alexander

Overview

A cutting-edge thriller about one man's quest to discover horror lurking at the top of the world.

Desperate to attract subscribers to his fledgling website, 'Journey to the Dark Side', ex-adrenalin junkie and slacker Simon Newman hires someone to guide him through the notorious Cwm Pot caves, so that he can film the journey and put it on the internet. With a tragic history, Cwm Pot has been off-limits for decades, and unfortunately for Simon, the guide he's hired is as unpredictable and dangerous as the watery caverns that lurk beneath the earth. After a brutal struggle for survival, Simon barely escapes with his life, but predictably, the gruesome footage he managed to collect down in the earth's bowels goes viral.

Ignoring the warning signs of mental trauma, and eager to capitalize on his new internet fame, Simon latches onto another escapade that has that magic click-bait mix of danger and death--a trip to Everest. But up above 8000 feet, in the infamous Death Zone, he'll need more than his dubious morals and wits to guide him, especially when he uncovers the truth behind a decade-old tragedy--a truth that means he might not be coming back alive. A truth that will change him--and anyone who views the footage he captures--forever.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 03/27/2017
The ominous opening sentence, “I met the man who would save my life twice—and ultimately destroy it—on a potholed road in the arse-end of the Welsh countryside,” sets the stage perfectly for South African author Lotz’s outstanding thriller. The haunted speaker is Simon Newman, who fractured his skull in a climbing accident and now works as a barista. Simon seeks to add more adventure to his life by cofounding a new website, Journey to the Dark Side, which features spooky and scary images and videos. His search for unique content takes him to the wilds of Wales so he can enter the Cwm Pot cave system, where three previous explorers have met their deaths. His perilous exploit, aided by a possibly unbalanced guide, proves to be just the prologue to an attempt to scale Mount Everest, where other bodies await exploitation for profit. Lotz (Day Four) excels at making you feel like you’re there and her flawed lead sympathetic. Fans of Dan Simmons’s The Terror will be pleased. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath & Company. (May)

From the Publisher

"A terrifying tale of unparalleled danger, both physical and mental, The White Road will keep you guessing (and scared) until the very end."—Bustle

"If you're looking for a fun, creepy, adventurous summer read, this is it!"—Book Riot

"Oustanding . . . Lotz excels at making you feel like you're there . . . Fans of Dan Simmons's The Terror will be pleased."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An expertly fashioned, spine-tingling account of danger, both physical and mental"—Booklist

"Dark and unsettling . . . Lotz knows how to develop suspense and horror . . . The supernatural elements keep one engaged and guessing."—Kirkus Reviews

"Skilled at creating real-world scenarios and imbuing them with a steadily growing feeling of danger and terror, Lotz brings readers to Everest, where the line between altitude-induced hallucinations and actual supernatural events may be very thin. A solid pick for readers who enjoy modern horror by Dean Koontz and Stephen King."—Library Journal

"Both characters risk spooky fates on the mountain that are made all the more vivid by Lotz's ability to get on the printed page the terrors of high climbing in the most exact language."—Toronto Star

Library Journal

04/15/2017
Lotz (Day Four) returns with another creepy tale, this one about an adventurer who uncovers eerie happenings on Mount Everest. As the book opens, explorer Simon Newman has hired a guide to help him navigate a cave with a tragic history. When disaster strikes during his spelunking, Simon barely escapes with his life—but footage from the expedition goes viral on his website Journey to the Dark Side. Still reeling from his brush with death, he soon signs on to a trip up Mount Everest as a way to move forward. But as he and his fellow climbers ascend into the mountain's fabled "death zone," Simon begins to believe that something else is on the mountain with them. Skilled at creating real-world scenarios and imbuing them with a steadily growing feeling of danger and terror, Lotz brings readers to Everest, where the line between altitude-induced hallucinations and actual supernatural events may be very thin. VERDICT A solid pick for readers who enjoy modern horror by Dean Koontz and Stephen King. [See Prepub Alert, 11/21/6.]—Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins

Kirkus Reviews

2017-03-07
After a near-death experience, an adrenaline junkie sets his sights on Mount Everest—accompanied by the ghost, or the madness, that followed him out of a cave.Simon drifts through life with little purpose or ambition besides seeking to boost traffic for the sensational website he runs with his buddy, Thierry. When Thierry convinces him to film a journey through the notorious Cwm Pot caves in Wales, in hopes that he will stumble onto the bodies of three spelunkers who died years before, Simon teams up with a shifty, unpredictable man named Ed whom he hires to be his guide. When rising waters trap them in the cave for hours, Simon barely makes it out alive, and he finds himself unable to recover any sort of equilibrium in the days following. Depressed and possibly hallucinating, Simon reluctantly agrees to Thierry's next big idea: that he should climb Everest in order to film the bodies of those who have died on the mountain. While pushing his body and mind to the absolute limit, Simon must confront the fact that he may have brought a "hitchhiker" back from the caves: either a malevolent spirit or the first stirrings of complete insanity. Lotz knows how to develop suspense and horror, and despite her rather pedestrian writing, the supernatural elements keep one engaged and guessing. It's not remotely believable that Simon would actually be able to climb Everest, but it makes no difference: the plot takes over where character development and authenticity fall short. The caving descriptions are specific enough to make the reader feel claustrophobic. Dark and unsettling, Lotz's (Day Four, 2015, etc.) latest is a quick and mindless read that taps into, and exploits, our deepest fears.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173410931
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	05/30/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The White Road

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By Sarah Lotz

Little, Brown and Company

Copyright © 2017 Summit Fiction Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-316-39660-8

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CHAPTER 1

Simon

December, 2006

I met the man who would save my life twice–and ultimately destroy it–on a potholed road in the arse-end of the Welsh countryside. He was sitting on a kitbag at the side of the lane, a trio of crushed cider cans at his feet. Morning mist still clung to the snowdusted hills surrounding us, but all he was wearing on his top half was a Harley-Davidson T-shirt.

I pulled up next to him and wound down my window. 'Ed?'

A curt nod.

'Hi. I'm Simon.'

'You're late, lad. I said eight.'

'Sorry about that, got a bit lost. All looks the same round here, doesn't it?' I gave him my best self-deprecating grin–it usually thawed the frostier punters at the coffee shop where I part-timed. It didn't work on Ed.

He jabbed a finger at the rutted track snaking through a wooded area on the opposite side of the lane. 'Pull into the trees over there. Don't want the car to be seen from the road.'

'Wilco.'

Wincing as branches scraped along the paintwork, I slid Thierry's Ford Focus beneath the limbs of a broken tree. My breath smoked as I climbed out, stretched, and waited for Ed to join me. I was chilled to the bone (the car's heater had packed up just outside Newport), and already cursing myself for setting this thing up.

He threw his bag next to the car and gave my hand a rough-palmed shake. Close up, he had the swollen nose and florid skin of a career alcoholic. Babyfine hair wisped over his scalp. I put him at around sixty. Do you really want to follow this grumpy old sod down a hole, Simon?

'Where's your car, Ed?'

'Don't have one. Hitched here last night.'

'All the way out here?' Quite a feat: apart from a stoical sheep, he was the only living thing I'd seen in the last hour. He smelled like he might have slept rough; a cured-meat fug wafted off his clothes. 'I could've given you a lift, picked you up somewhere.'

'It's no trouble.'

'Well, I really appreciate this.'

A sniff. 'So you want to go down Cwm Pot, then?'

'Yeah.'

'To film the caves.'

'That's right. Like I said in my emails, I'm interested in what happened down there in the eighties. Thought it might make a good documentary.' Bullshit of course, but I wasn't going to tell him the real reason I wanted to explore the caves until I had a clearer idea of how he might take it.

'Caves are off-limits. Have been for twenty years.'

'I know. That's why I got hold of you.'

'Dangerous, too.'

Fuck's sake. 'Yeah, Ed, I know.'

He smirked as if he knew something I didn't. His irises were dark, the whites around them tinged with yellow–pickled-onion eyes. 'You got my money?'

Tell this prick you've changed your mind and get the hell out of here. Good advice, sensible advice, but I ignored it. It had taken serious legwork to get to this point, and I wasn't about to throw in the towel. After hearing about Cwm Pot and its grisly history, I'd spent days scouring caving forums looking for a guide, finally coming across Ed, the only caver who openly admitted sneaking into the caves. He was clearly a miserable old git with a drinking problem, but the other cavers on the forum deferred to him, so presumably he knew what he was doing. I gave him the three hundred quid we'd agreed on. He counted it, taking his time. 'And an extra fifty for the equipment.'

Bastard. 'That wasn't part of the deal.'

'It is now.'

'Twenty.'

'Twenty-five.'

He smirked again as I handed it over. Now I had to make this work. Half a month's rent had disappeared into the pocket of his filthy jeans, as well as next week's food and beer budget. 'You brought gloves and boots like I told you?'

'Yeah. Wellies and washing-up gloves, right?' Not exactly the outdoor gear I was used to.

He dug in the bag and handed me a helmet, a head torch, a ratty belt with an old-fashioned karabiner attached, a yellow rubber exposure suit, a pair of kneepads and a blue fleece under-suit that resembled a giant Babygro. 'Put that on first.'

He pulled his T-shirt over his head and I tried not to stare at the wormy scar bisecting his concave chest. That and the grey hair furring his limbs made him look older, vulnerable, less of a hardman. 'What you waiting for, lad?'

Not wanting to look prissy by retreating to the car to get changed, I used the exposure suit as a makeshift mat, stripped off and gingerly shucked the fleece suit over my legs. It held the same cured-meat pong as Ed.

'What happened to you, lad?' He was eyeing my own cluster of scar tissue, a network of raised white flesh crisscrossing my left shoulder.

'Climbing accident. Eight years ago. Smashed up my ankle, femur and collarbone. Fractured my skull too.' A stupid, avoidable accident. I'd been showing off in front of a group of hikers, free-climbing an easy first pitch at Cwm Silyn–the kind of training-wheels route I'd have cruised through when I was a kid. I'd got cocky, miscalculated what should have been a no-brainer grab, and then the ground was rushing up to meet me. 'Two months in hospital.' I rolled up the suit's bottom cuff and pointed out the keloid bumps where the pins had fused my ankle together.

Another grunt. A sign of respect? Impossible to tell.

The yellow outer-suit was a size too small and nipped at my armpits and crotch, but it was surprisingly effective at keeping out the cold.

Time to get the guy onside–I was about to spend the day doing some seriously dangerous stuff with him, after all. 'So, Ed. How long have you been —'

'How old are you, lad?'

I blinked, wrong-footed. 'Uh ... twenty-eight.'

'Think of yourself as a pretty boy, do you?'

'What? Why would you say that?

No.'

'Married?'

'No.'

'Girlfriend?'

'No. What's all this got to do with —'

'Not one of them pillow biters, are you?'

'No!' Great–homophobic as well.

'You sure you can handle this?'

'The caves? I think so.'

'You think so?'

'I know so.'

'It's not some tourist day out. Gets technical. Dangerous.'

'I can handle myself.'

'Caving experience?'

'No, but like I said in my emails I've been climbing all my life.'

'Don't tell me, some namby-pamby weekend outings, am I right? A trip up Snowdon and a fiddle around Ben Nevis's botty?'

'I know what I'm doing. Among other things, I've done the Aiguilles and I was leading out on VS routes at sixteen.' Pompous, and an exaggeration, but so what? He was pissing me off.

'The Aiguilles, eh?' A sneer. 'Means nothing to me.'

My irritation flipped into anger. 'Look, I've come a long way to do this. If you don't want to guide me down there, just say so and give me my fucking money back.'

A cackle, a flash of tea-coloured teeth. 'No need to lose your temper.' He belched. 'Get a move on. Want to be out of there before dark.'

'Sure you don't want to give me a hard time for a few more minutes?'

'Nah. You're all right, lad. Before I took you down there, I needed to know you had a backbone.'

'Seriously? You were messing with me?'

He winked. 'Get off your high horse. You'll do.' He took a hip flask out of the waterproof bag slung over his shoulder, knocked back a slug and handed it to me. I wasn't a fan of hardtack, especially that early in the morning, but I surreptitiously wiped the spout and drank anyway, stupidly pleased that I'd passed the Ed test.

Back then, whenever I met someone new, I used to do this thing where I'd try and figure out their film or TV character equivalent–a dumb mental tic that started when I was in hospital recovering from the climbing accident. I knew immediately that my best mate Thierry was Ray, Dan Aykroyd's character in Ghostbusters (American, pudgy, nerdy, endearing); Cosimo, my manager at Mission:Coffee, was Tony Soprano (mercurial, morbid, a mouth-breather with major mommy issues). Ed was easy. He was Quint, the unhinged, predatory shark hunter from Jaws. Same cruel smirk and scar fetish.

He rolled a cigarette while I fiddled with the helmet-cam's waterproof case, attaching it to the helmet with clumsy fingers.

'That going to work down there?'

'Absolutely.' Another lie. Thierry and I had bought the camera off a dodgy, debt-ridden motor-cross enthusiast who used to come into the coffee shop. Even in ideal conditions, its quality wasn't great, I hadn't tested it properly in limited light, and I wasn't sure that the case, which I'd bought on the cheap and modified, would actually work. 'How likely is it that we'll get wet?'

'Should be fine.' A sly smile. 'Unless you fall in.'

'Fall in what?'

'Just keep your wits about you, and mind you don't get me on your film.'

'You camera-shy, Ed?'

'Just mind you don't, lad.'

I tried the helmet on for size. The weight of the camera made it droop to one side, but it would have to do. I collected the Snickers bar I'd bought for elevenses from the console, locked the car, and hid the key under the wheelbase. I thought about sending Thierry a text, something along the lines of , but it was unlikely I'd get a signal out here.

Ed made for a bramble-strangled stile, scrambled over it and headed up the sloping field beyond. I followed, my boots crunching on frosted grass and sheep shit. Despite being bow-legged and decades older than me, he set a cracking pace. By the time I caught up to him, I was puffing.

'How far is it?'

'Entrance is two miles or so.'

'That far? Couldn't we have driven closer?'

He gave me a sideways look. 'You're not in London now, lad. After we cross this section, we'll be trespassing. Keep an eye out for the farmer. He's come at me with a shotgun before.'

'That bad?'

'Doesn't want the hassle if people run into trouble down there. Happened more than a few times over the years.'

'How many times have you been down Cwm Pot? Since they closed the caves, I mean.'

'A fair few.'

'And you don't worry about the caves flooding?'

'I know what I'm doing. Know the signs.' He paused and looked up at the low concrete slab of the sky. 'Think it'll hold, but there might be run-off from the snow if it warms up later.'

Thanks to the booze and the fleece Babygro, my body was warm, but the crisp air made my lungs ache, and I trudged on in silence. We slurped through a shallow ford, and I trailed him across another couple of fields, through a barbed wire fence–a 'no trespassing' sign hanging from its tines–and down towards a rocky outcropping. A stream frothed and burbled alongside it, edged with a fringe of startlingly green moss. After another short and slippery trek down a path, we came to a rock face with an opening about the size of an oven door. This was barred by a padlocked gate with a cracked and fading 'danger, no entry' sign on it. He hung back while I got an establishing shot, then whipped out a Swiss Army knife and picked the padlock in seconds.

'Where did you learn how to do that?'

'Never you mind. In you get.'

I squeezed my body through the opening, and crab-walked into a sloping cavern. Ed relocked the padlock ('Don't want to advertise that we're down here'), clicked on his headlamp, pushed past me, and disappeared into the mouth of a rough-hewn vertical tunnel at the far end. I peered into the tunnel's throat, the beam of my head torch unable to penetrate much of the blackness. The ladder bolted to the wall was showing its age, and to reach the top rung, I'd have to swing my legs into the abyss and drop down more than a metre. Ed was already slithering down the mossy rungs like a ferret.

'Stop playing with yourself, lad!' his voice echoed up, punctuated by the thunk of feet on metal rungs.

I rolled onto my belly, and inched down until my toes hit the top rung, fingertips clinging to the edge of the hole until I had no choice but to commit. There was a bladder-weakening moment when I teetered, unbalanced, and then my legs took my weight and I was able to wriggle down until I could grip the top rung with my hands. You used to be able to do this shit in your sleep, what happened to you?

The fall happened. The bones had healed, but my confidence was still shattered. In hindsight, I suppose part of my motivation for heading down Cwm Pot was to see if I could still handle myself.

The washing-up gloves gripped the metal surprisingly well, as did the wellies I'd bought from a discount store the day before. The lower I went, the more comfortable I became. Then my left foot stepped down into nothing. I bent my head and directed the light between my legs, revealing the stony floor a couple of body lengths below me. There was no sign of Ed. Muscles straining as I took my weight on my arms, I let my legs dangle, counted to three and dropped, careful not to land awkwardly on my ankle. There had to be another route out: I doubted I'd be able to reach the sheared-off end of the ladder even if I stood on Ed's shoulders.

'Ed? Now what?'

'There's a crack at the base.' His voice was reedy, as if it was coming from miles away. 'Get down on your arse, and slip through it feet first.'

True enough, there was a ragged fissure in the rock to my right. I wriggled through a short lumpy passage that dipped abruptly, and before I could arrest myself, plopped onto the floor at Ed's feet, landing on my tailbone.

'Ow. Thanks for the warning.'

Ed cackled. The sound didn't echo. Rather, the air seemed to swallow it.

I stood up and took stock. We were in a church-sized chamber, the ceiling arching above us in graceful waves, several walls adorned with the dripstone cascades of calcified rock in muted shades of red and bronze and gold. I'd imagined there would be a dank, dark odour of rot and stale water, maybe mould, but I couldn't smell anything at all. I breathed in, sniffing the air like a dog–still nothing. It was slightly warmer than outside. The sound of distant water whispered in the background, and every so often came the musical plink of globules dripping into shallow rock bowls. 'Impressive.'

'They were going to open it to the public back in the eighties, then those lads died down here. Put paid to that.' He led the way to a tunnel that branched off to the left. 'Time to go off-piste, lad.'

'How long will it take us to get through?'

'About three hours to the Rat Run if you don't mess about. Then another hour or so to get out. We'll exit about a mile from where we started.' Up until the mention of the Rat Run I'd successfully managed to keep claustrophobia at bay, but now it began to nip at me. 'Cwm Pot is known for its aptly named "Rat Run", five hundred metres of some of the tightest squeezes in the UK', was how the sadistic caving guide I'd consulted put it.

The tunnel's roof tapered down, forcing me to lurch along like a hunchback, and ended at a jumble of mid-sized boulders. A scramble over these led into a more impressive conduit, the rock around us diminishing up into velvety blackness, the sloping floor peppered with scree. The burble and spatter of water was always with us. I double-checked the camera was secure, mindful that I only had an hour and a half of battery life. I'd have to be picky; especially if I got the chance to capture the footage I was really down here for.

The tunnel widened again, roomy enough for us to walk side by side. 'Where are you from, Ed?' Sometimes his voice had a Yorkshire burr; at other times it morphed into something less distinct.

'Lived all over.'

'And you usually do this alone?'

'Ay.'

'So what drew you to caving?'

'Been doing it off and on all my life, lad.' He turned and tapped the side of his nose. 'It's one of the places they can't get you.'

'Eh? Who can't get you?'

'Them, lad. Them. You know who I mean. Blair and Bush and those other fuckers. They can't track you down here, lad, with their CCTV and their satellites and their electromagnetic signals.'

Was he trying to psych me out again? I waited for the accompanying cackle. It didn't come. Shit. Now it wasn't just the thought of squeezing my bulk through a sodden rock fissure that made my bowels clench. Ed wasn't just a grumpy old codger with a drinking problem, but a bona fide nutter. But as we walked on, I caught him glancing slyly at me. I honestly couldn't tell if he was messing with me for some twisted reason of his own, or if he was genuinely deluded.

Go back, go back, make some excuse.

It wasn't just the practicalities that kept me moving forward–I'd never get back up that ladder–but my ego. Conspiracy nut or not, I couldn't bear the thought of Ed's scorn if I backed out now. Instead, I changed the subject. 'So they would have come this way? The lads who died down here in the eighties?' Lads. I was picking up his speech patterns.

'They would. One route in, one route out. I was part of the rescue team.'

'Really?'

'Oh ay. Only cavers can rescue cavers. No good sending anyone else down. Don't know what they're doing, see?'

'It must have been horrible.'

'Oh it was horrible all right, lad,' he spat, reminding me more than ever of Quint. 'Couple of us almost drowned as well. Had to dam that stream up top, but it wouldn't hold.'

We'd reached an enormous pile of boulders, the evidence of a long-ago cave-in, stacked to the top of the chamber. They looked impassable, implausible, like a movie set. 'Boulder choke,' Ed said, matter-of-factly. 'Stay close. Going to be tight.' He glanced at my belly. 'You're going to wish you'd given the pies a miss, lad.'

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The White Road by Sarah Lotz. Copyright © 2017 Summit Fiction Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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