Red Mountain (6 page)

He kicked the door off its only hinge and watched it splinter when it hit the ground. Stepping inside the house, Logan’s eyes probed at the damage. Horn’s scenic carvings were mounted all over the walls. And although they were nothing more than charcoal now he could still make out the rendered landscapes and portraits of wildlife and people. The sharp smell of burnt wood prickled his eyes and made them water.

When he heard a hissing sound in the next room, his heart skipped a beat. He released the safety and moved forward. With the muzzle of his rifle leading the way, Logan turned the corner and saw the small wood stove in the corner of the room. On top of the stove was an iron pot full of boiling water.

What the hell?

****

Underwood had gone back to his horse to get some headache powder. He could no longer think straight. His head felt like someone was inside his skull, trying to kill a fly with a hammer. The medicine’s bitterness tasted good as he washed it down with water from his canteen. After he closed his eyes and started to rub his temples, he began hearing Logan’s screams coming from inside the house.

He lifted his rifle and hobbled toward the house, his bad hip sending a hot stitch up through his lower back. By the time he reached the front doorway, Logan’s screams had stopped. Goosebumps traveled up Underwood’s back and across his arms. He hadn’t heard a man scream like that since the time he’d come upon some Indians on a moonlit night during his first year as sheriff, had witnessed a man being skinned alive for raping and killing a young woman from their tribe.

Underwood shouted Logan’s name as he made his way into the house, staring at the wooden pictures on the walls. It seemed as if the things depicted in Horn’s carvings had started moving, like the moving picture machine he’d once seen at the state fair. Except these were different. They swirled and hummed with a life of their own, transforming into scenes from a hell never before imagined. He watched in horror as a herd of elk melted into vile creatures playing catch with squirming naked humans, impaling them on their horns. In another grisly tableau a group of cowboys sat around a campfire on a starry night, drinking coffee. Suddenly, hellish beings made of fire leaped out of the campfire and engulfed the men in balls of flame.

He swore he could smell them burning. It was so real, and then again it wasn’t.

Underwood shook his head to get rid of the bad thoughts streaming inside. He recalled the havoc played on the Wrath Butte residents unfortunate enough to have something made from Horn’s hands. In some ways he could understand why a vigilante party had formed and done what they did. So many folks in Wrath Butte had nearly gone insane. Underwood’s neighbor, a mother of four, was preparing to put out her children’s eyes when their father had heard the cries and stopped her…

He stepped into the room with the wood stove, but the pot of hot water Logan had seen was gone. A crimson sunset bled between the boards nailed across the room’s only window. There was no sign of his deputy anywhere.

Suddenly the floor below Underwood began to drop. He instinctively tried to back up, but the trap door caught him in the lower back and sent him plunging into a deep pit of carved rock. The wind was knocked from his lungs when he hit bottom, and he heard the fractured ends of bones tearing through skin. His left leg had snapped apart above the knee and his right arm was dislocated and twisted behind his back. Glancing up, he saw his bloodless palm looked as if it were about to pat him on top of the head.

Next came a sickening squeal, and when the Sheriff looked up he saw the square of floor settling back into place. He gripped his rifle one-handedly and fired. Splinters rained down onto his face, but the door continued to rise until it settled back into place. Now in complete darkness, Underwood gradually lost consciousness. He felt as if he were bobbing on the surface of a black tide. He remembered taking his wife to see the Pacific Ocean not long after they’d married. They’d sat up on a cliff together and just watched the waves for hours, eating a picnic lunch of fried chicken and apple pie.

Caroline…

Eventually the presence of light caused Underwood to open his eyes. He’d toppled over sometime during the night, and the side of his face was pressed against the cold floor. He felt like an insect that had been crushed under someone’s boot and left in a tangled mess. His clothes were covered with damp, bloody straw. He heard water dripping from further back in the cave. As he lay craving a drink of it, he saw a child moving toward him, clutching a tiny lantern.

“Help me...” Underwood pleaded, lifting his only good hand.

The child backed away several steps and stared at him, the expression on its thin white face both scared and curious. Its head was shorn and scabby. Underwood let out a sigh and gently motioned the child over. The child didn’t move. It stood silently, studying Underwood’s mangled body, the stream of blood flowing from his left ear and down to his jaw where it fell off in thick drops.

He couldn’t even tell at first if the child was a girl or a boy, until he eventually recognized him as Horn’s youngest son. It had been a long time since he’d seen any of Horn’s children, so long since anyone had seen much of the Horn family at all. Rumor was the mother and eldest son had fallen victims to a disfiguring disease, leaving only Jared and his youngest child capable of making their bi-monthly trips into town.

“Don’t be afraid of me boy. I mean you no harm.”

He began to drag himself across the floor so the boy could see his face better in the wavering candlelight. The boy stepped back and lit several candles in a small alcove. As Underwood’s eyes adjusted to the light, he wished he’d stayed put.

Holy Christ…

Resting on a bed of dirty yellow straw were thick blocks of clouded ice. One lay split apart and leaking. Ice like that, Underwood knew, could only have been taken down from the mountains in the back of a mule-drawn wagon.

In the flickering candlelight he could make out a grayish form suspended inside the unbroken block. It occurred to Underwood the steaming pot of hot water sitting next to it was there for the purpose of helping it melt. When the child touched the block with his palm Underwood was startled by a shadowy movement inside. The boy took his hand away and giggled.

“What is it?” Underwood asked, not believing his eyes. Torrents of pain passed through his body, creating hallucinations that played tricks on his mind.

The boy grinned and picked up the lantern from the floor. Before Underwood could say another word the boy disappeared. He thought he heard the padding of bare feet ascending a wooden staircase and shouted at the boy to come back. As the night wore on, he watched the candles sink into runny puddles on top of the blocks of ice. Then, just as he was going to shut his eyes again, he heard the sound of something moving toward him through the near darkness, its hot breath stinking of raw flesh and death.

“Sheriff… Sheriff…” hissed a voice just outside the golden refuge of candle light.

Underwood strained to see, but it was too dark. Then the candles began to go out, one by one, and with each candle he could feel the temperature of his blood drop several more degrees.

It can’t be Horn. Horn’s dead…

He loaded his rifle and braced it against his good knee.

But then again it might be….

“Sheriff… Sheriff…”

He could have sworn the voice was a woman’s.

He had an idea. A desperate one and the only damn card he had left holding…

“You and I’ve got no bad blood between us,” he shouted to the unknown presence. “I’m asking you to let me live. I’ve got a wife and a daughter who need me. If you just put me on my horse, I can take myself home. I’ll tell them all you’re dead so they won’t come looking for you.”

Underwood waited. Whoever—whatever—had stopped calling his name. But it hadn’t stopped coming toward him. He listened to the gritty scrape of its feet.

“I’m begging you. Please…”

Shaking badly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wooden match. He struck it against his silver belt buckle, stretched out his good arm and held it there.

A shape suddenly blurred into view, a human monster covered in sticky yellow fat. Its jaw sank into the sheriff’s wrist and tore it away in seconds. Blood sailed from the ragged stump and pattered against the candle-lit blocks of ice. The match he’d lit still flickered in the palm of his severed hand.

When Underwood fainted the thing leaped on top of him. In the pitch black he felt its muscular thighs rock against his groin, and its long hair fell into his face and tickled it just as his wife’s sometimes did. He felt himself getting hard, and forgot for a bittersweet moment he was probably bleeding to death. He lifted his hips and moaned, his mind engulfed by an unspeakable ecstasy as long finger nails twirled playfully with his ears before plunging deep inside, stirring the delicate bones and flesh into a pulpy soup.

He couldn’t even hear his own screams.

He splashed backwards into a heaving sea and floated along an obsidian surface until a swift current gripped him by the legs and pulled him under. He knew he’d never be coming back.

Underwood’s final thoughts were of his promise to take Caroline to see the Pacific again in late summer. With luck, perhaps they’d meet there again in some form or another, yet he knew in his heart it was all just gambler’s foolishness, for the cards you were dealt in life held no meaning after you took your last breath.

Absolutely no meaning at all…

CHAPTER 11

Peggy had no idea where they were until they were ordered out of the van. When she smelled the dry air spiced with juniper, she was certain they’d come as far as central Oregon or Southern Washington.

Not long after she’d spoken to Robert on the phone, Walker had led her and Connor to an Air Stream trailer behind the farmhouse. Connor had kept his face hidden against her chest as they’d walked.

She saw three trailers in all, spread out in a circle. Each was equipped with its own power source, water and sewer hookup. Black spray paint and barbed wire mesh sealed off every window from the outside. The doors themselves were fitted with heavy- duty latches and key padlocks. In the middle of the prisoner trailer park was a large tent where she could hear voices talking low.

She’d spent time in the high desert before, but a low-lying band of white cloud on the far horizon kept her from spotting any recognizable landmarks. On a clear day she would have been able to orient herself with the mountain range to the west. When she stopped to watch a pickup moving down a distant highway, Walker frowned and looked impatiently skyward.

“Mrs. Crain…”

Laughter made Peggy turn her head to look behind her. Two men armed with rifles stood watching, their eyes staring menacingly as they lit cigarettes and puffed from smirking lips. Peggy had recognized their raspy cackles. They’d been the one’s who’d carried her and Connor out to the van after binding their wrists and mouths with duct tape. Later, while the van sped unnoticed down the highway the night before, they’d taken turns feeling her bottom through her jeans.

She turned back to Walker, her eyes widened with anger. “So whose shoe did you scrape those two off of?”

Walker met her gaze with a crooked grin. “You’re not going to want to make any trouble for them.”

****

Connor had spent the entire day huddled in a corner of the bed. His condition hadn’t changed much since they’d arrived. Peggy tried to comfort him the best she could, and a few times he actually opened his eyes but they looked as if he were staring at something far away. When night arrived, she searched the entire trailer from top to bottom for anything useful, finding nothing but some forgotten rusted pliers wedged beneath a cabinet.

A man she hadn’t seen before brought them their dinner. He was brittle-thin and appeared nervous as he stood next to one of the armed guards who called him Stick. He handed her a cardboard box packed with sandwiches and bottled water.

“Why are you doing this?” Peggy asked. Stick’s jaw quivered as if he wanted to say something, but the guard quickly motioned him to move away. The guard held up his hand so she could see the open padlock swinging on his finger.

“You don’t want to ruin the surprise, do you?”

“What the hell is this all about?” Peggy screamed. Her voice had carried out into the desert night, causing the guard to take a step closer.

“Keep it down or I’ll have to gag that pretty mouth of yours.”

“I’m not shutting up until I get some answers.”

“Enjoy your dinner, lady,” the guard said. He slammed the door shut. She heard the snap of the padlock and crunch of rock as he walked away. Other than the hum of trailer generators, the place was quiet except for the occasional howl of a lone coyote or far off wail of a passing train.

Peggy sat down on the bed next to Connor and started to cry. His hand crept out from the blanket and touched her face.