Red Mountain (25 page)

Marsh shoved the tooth into one of Wilbur’s nostrils and pushed it deep inside until his finger felt warm with blood. Wilbur squealed and thrashed his head.

When Marsh was finished, he had the information he needed.

He didn’t bother with killing Wilbur because he wouldn’t have any time to fully enjoy himself. There was a lot of work to be done before he could play again…

****

Peggy peered inside the barn and saw Marsh was no longer where she’d left him. Sweat popped out on her forehead and she began to feel an icy tremor up her spine.

How could it be possible? She’d hurt him bad and she knew it. Knew that someone in his condition couldn’t just get up and walk away…

She turned and ran back to the others beneath the walnut tree where she’d left them. As she approached, Connor ran up to her side and held her by the waist. As much as she tried, she couldn’t hide the terror she was feeling.

“What’s happened?” Jan asked.

“I’ve got bad news. Marsh is up, and god knows what he’s planning next.”

“Where’s my husband?” Betty cried.

“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here. Are there any weapons in the house?”

“Wilbur keeps a pistol in the bed stand.”

“Let’s go to the house then. How do you feel now?”

“I think I can walk.”

“Good. Okay everyone; let’s move as fast as we can.”

Peggy covered the group’s backs with the tire iron until everyone was safely in the house. Once they locked the doors and pulled the blinds, she bounded upstairs to the bedroom and found Wilbur’s pistol. She checked the chamber to see if it was loaded. It only had two bullets left inside. Probably not a high priority out here, she thought. Betty told her where to look for more, but after a frantic search through dusty closets and dresser drawers she gave up hope there’d be any more ammunition or guns in the house.

Two bullets – that’s all you’ve got.

She didn’t like the idea of them hiding in the house, but it was the best she could come up with. At least this way she could be here to defend them should Marsh decide to try and come inside. Still, their main problem was that there was no way for them to call for help and no guarantee that it would ever come. Marsh could hold them hostage as long as he liked…

****

“Is the woman with the boy yours?” Stick asked Robert.

“How did you know?”

Stick smiled. “There’s nothing special to it. All you need is a heart and a pair of eyes, and maybe you don’t even need to see in order to know. You’re hurting as bad on the inside as I’m hurting on the outside. But I know you’ll find them. There’ll be good times on the other side of the storm. You’ll see. Your wife is a strong woman, smart too. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know how. I’m a weakling, and I just took the job Marsh offered because I needed to eat and have a place to sleep. I didn’t know he was going to keep me prisoner. They beat me real bad the times I tried to escape. But if I’d been able to get away I swear I would have gone right to the authorities and told them everything.”

Robert nodded, finally understanding what had happened. There was no reason for Stick to lie to him at his deathbed confession. He took the man’s charred hand in his while Will wandered into another room with his cell phone.

“Listen. My friend here is calling an ambulance for you. The hospital will take care of you.”

Stick shook his head and coughed. “He shouldn’t do that. Tell him I’m not worth the trouble. I’m fixing to die. I know your wife didn’t plan to hurt me. It was Marsh she wanted. The devil Marsh should have been the one to open the trailer door.”

Robert’s happiness over being told his family was still alive was now tempered by sadness and guilt for the man whose hand he now held. Stick gripped harder as a bolt of pain traveled up from the end of his severed arm and caused him to spit and curse. When the wave finally subsided his eyes came back into focus.

“I’m sorry you got mixed up in this business, Stick. I can tell now that you wanted to protect them. You’re a far better man than you give yourself credit for, and I’m sure Peggy would agree.”

Stick leaned away until the back of his head touched the wall. Robert could see he was going fast.

“There is one thing I’m not sure about,” Stick whispered. A grin began to emerge on his blistered mouth, and for the last few seconds of his life Stick’s eyes sparkled with grim bemusement.

“What is it?” Robert asked, leaning in closer.

“I think she must have stole my matches.”

CHAPTER 50

Horn had nothing to do with the death of the sheriff and his deputy. The thing he’d brought down from the mountain—Charlie Maynard’s loaned out protector—had killed them before it tried to flee back to its master’s tomb up in the glacier. And despite its preternatural prowess, the coyotes had attacked and eaten it.

On his way back home, Horn had found the remains of the female creature lying just outside the farm. She—it—had borrowed the body of a prostitute who’d been recently buried just outside of Wrath Butte. The woman had died under suspicious circumstances – poisoned, it was later believed, by one of Wrath’s highly respected and pious wives.

It appeared that Maynard had been a fraud after all. Horn felt bitter and betrayed. He wanted to be with his family and watch his sons grow.

He went back to the glacier and ordered Maynard to give his life back to him, but the robber’s face only mocked him with empty black eyes. Horn waited for many days for an answer that would not come. Then he became desperate, and began to beg for forgiveness as if he were a boy pleading fervently with his father.

Maynard said nothing.

But Horn couldn’t wait forever. He was going crazy. During a severe thunderstorm on the mountain he emerged from the glacier’s jaw and left for San Francisco to look in on his family. He traveled the country—hopping trains with the hobos most of the time—and visiting places he’d only dreamed of ever seeing in his lifetime. Over the years he checked on his family he saw his wife fully recover and become the beauty she once was, watched sadly as she fell in love with another man. And then the grandchildren came, and soon they were older and having children of their own…

He’d lived a few lifetimes keeping up with what was going on. The rounds to the various places his kin now lived began to expand wider and wider. The advantage was he didn’t need to eat or sleep, although he suffered from great boredom and loneliness. There was only so much pleasure in being able to watch other people go about their lives.

Sometimes it became all too much for him, and Horn would lash out at the world. He’d cause people to hurt themselves. He’d learned how to get inside people’s heads and it scared him. He didn’t want to become another Charlie Maynard. All he wanted was to truly die and stop being a ghost.

After he’d crisscrossed the country many times he eventually returned to the farmhouse, the place he called home, and waited for Maynard to forgive him, to say something.

Panic set in when Horn’s great grandsons grew into men. Although he hadn’t heard from Maynard for decades, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t return when the time arrived. He’d tried to prepare his grandsons for the futures lying in store for them and had on every occasion almost scared the three men to death.

The worst time had been when he’d tried to speak to Robert up at his grandfather’s cabin. Afterwards, when he broke up into a fine mist and flowed down into the thick darkening woods he worried he might have hurt the boy’s heart. Thankfully Robert’s grandfather had taught him a trick or two and the boy he’d last seen clinging to a cedar tree had now grown into a man.

One day, after Horn was beginning to think there was hope his kin would be spared from having to climb the red mountain, Maynard returned to collect.

Horn was helpless and couldn’t stop it. The ghost from the ice was more powerful than ever. He ordered him to find men who could help oversee the ritual of finding the next shaman. Horn resisted, had argued that they were no longer living on Oman’s small island where the boys always know what is going to be expected of them. Those were different people back there, different times. These men—his great grandsons—were not savages.

Maynard laughed so long and hard Horn thought he heard ice crack.

“We’re all savages, Horn. With the proper motivation, that is. I expect you’ll find a man suitable for the job, someone who understands others in the very abstract.” Later he told Horn he’d be free once his kin had climbed the red mountain and given their blood to the magic.

It was then that Horn finally understood. He was nothing now but a ghost who took orders from another ghost. Maynard, he realized, had never intended to give him much power. He’d only been interested in guaranteeing that Horn’s children survived to perpetuate the family bloodline. He’d infected Horn so the power would not be lost, had used him like safe deposit box to stash the family riches.

Years jumped by, and Wrath Butte teens started coming to the run down house to party. Horn soon tired of it, and scared some of them so badly they’d taken their lives. He thought he’d put an end to the visits, until the day Marsh came and tried to tear the house down during a drunken rage.

Marsh… He was so much trouble for Horn, and yet he was the key to Horn’s freedom from purgatory...

CHAPTER 51

“You know I’m the best damn scientist you’ve got Harold. So stop riding my ass every time you call.”

Dr. Carol Unger turned off her cell phone and shoved it back into her jacket.

Stupid micromanaging prick. Why can’t he ever let me get on with my work?

Unger stood up from her chair and watched as distant hikers approached base camp. They’d been up at the glacier all morning taking measurements and core samples of ice. She would have been with them except she’d been suffering from altitude headaches again. She’d decided to stay behind unless they absolutely needed her.

Her current boyfriend had radioed her hours earlier, although she couldn’t understand him through the heavy static. The radios were crap, just another thing she should have brought up with Harold but didn’t have the energy for. Marco, who usually kept an unnervingly cool head, had sounded overly excited about something. Unger had grown worried as the hours ticked by, believing someone on the team may have been hurt. Yet when she last did a head count through her spotting scope they all appeared to be there. Four dark specks moving across a glinting snow field.

Although Marco wasn’t officially part of the scientific team, he’d proved himself invaluable. A native of Argentina, Marco had years of climbing experience under his belt. He’d taken many teams to the South Pole to study glaciers and understood what was needed to make the expeditions successful. Carol had met him by accident during a late night out drinking at a local campus pub. So impressed by his multitude of skills—including resurrecting her dormant libido—she’d hired him to go up the mountain with her team for the summer.

She chased a few aspirins down with a cup of watery tea before settling back into her chair and opening her laptop. Displayed before her were various graphs describing the deteriorating affects climate change was having on this particular glacier. In another week or two she would have enough data to take home with her to study it further. She hoped to publish a paper on her findings before the university pulled the plug on any further field projects. A paper would give her the leverage she needed to shut Harold up for awhile…

There was so much pressure involved. Developers, hungry to turn the glacier into another winter ski run and summertime sled course for the amusement park crowd, were growing increasingly nervous that she’d find something which would prevent them from pushing forward with future plans. Local environmentalists hailed the study as a positive step in the right direction.

What Dr. Unger had discovered so far was that her glacier was alarmingly smaller than it had been fifty years ago. All summer they’d heard the mountain roaring as blocks of ice, sometimes the size of townhouses, broke apart from the crevasses and crash against one another like giant dice. As the bottom end of the glacier receded, rock once blanketed by ice for hundreds of years was becoming exposed.

Dr. Unger lost herself in the data the team had already compiled. She enjoyed the rush of scientific discovery, could spend days searching for patterns and developing theories to explain them. Sometimes she felt sad by what she saw happening, days when she looked upon the glacier as if it were a terminally ill patient—a patient whose body was slowly vanishing…

“Carol! Carol!” she heard Marco yelling excitedly. He and the other hikers from the team had finally reached camp.