Disappearances

The tent, half-buried in the snow, was the first horrifying clue. It wasn't merely damaged by the brutal mountain winds; it had been sliced open from the inside, a desperate escape hatch. Inside, boots, warm clothes, food – everything was left behind. Then, following a trail of bare footprints in the sub-zero night, the first two bodies were found, lightly dressed, near a pathetic, frozen campfire. But it was the later discoveries, the ones found months later under thirteen feet of snow, that truly plunged the case into the realm of the bizarre: crushed chests, fractured skulls, and one victim... missing her tongue. What compelled nine experienced hikers to flee into the deadly cold, abandoning all reason, only to suffer such brutal, inexplicable fates? The mountain, it seemed, held a terrifying secret.