The Mountain Read online

  “Goddamn it, Elbert, your brain gone all mushy or something? Girl said she was gonna bring some friends up here and that’s what she did.”

  “Yeah, well, she said a lotta things, and don’t none of ‘em make any sense.”

  “Well, yeah, they do. If you think about it, she makes a lot of sense. Just look at this here boy’s eye starin’ off in all kinds of crazy directions, looking everywhere except where it oughta be lookin’. And he’s one of the good ones, him and Lewis. And poor ol’ Lewis, with that goddamn nose of his, and that eye melted halfway down a face that looks like runny candle wax. Maybe if you’d brought some outsiders up here a long time ago, we wouldn’t have all them shadows crawling around down there.”

  “You and Gerald turned out okay.”

  “Luck of the draw, I reckon,” Willem said as he walked over to the rocking chair, where he leaned over and grabbed Elbert’s jug of shine.

  “How about them shadows, you boys take care of ‘em like I told you?”

  “We always do, don’t we?” Willem said, tipping back the jug and taking a healthy gulp of shine, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his buckskin jacket while holding the jug out to Arley.

  “I hate to think about ‘em staying down there like that.”

  “Well, hell, Elbert. What else’re we gonna do? Can’t keep an eye on ‘em all the time—and that’s what they need. There’s just too damn many. At least this way we don’t have to worry about ‘em hurtin’ themselves. Maybe she’s right. Maybe if we hadn’t been screwin’ our own kinfolk all these years, we wouldn’t have that god-awful mess down there.”

  “Aw, that’s a buncha bullshit. Girl goes to school for a few years and you two think she’s Solomon’s sister or something.”

  Willem laughed and Arley swallowed a mouthful of shine, smiling, his Adam’s Apple working in his throat as the liquor went down it.

  “Besides, she said she was gonna invite some girls up here and let ‘em get to know you boys—like that makes any goddamn sense at all. Not drag a buncha kids off at gunpoint.”

  “Oh, Elbert,” Willem said. “We ain’t hauled nobody off at gunpoint.”

  The old man limped across the floor, to a small table in front of his cast iron stove. A wooden bowl of apples sat in the middle of the table’s rectangular surface, below that, an empty glass; an old dishrag and a plate with a smattering of leftover dinner-scraps beside it.

  “Did we pull guns on them folks, Arley?”

  “Hell no. We saved their asses from a bunch that was huntin’ ‘em through the woods.”

  Elbert plucked an apple from the pile, took a bite and began to chew.

  “See?” Willem said. “We saved their asses, helped ‘em out of a bind and brought ‘em here to rest up a spell. Just like you said, invited them up to get to know us.”

  Elbert bit off another chunk. “Jesus,” he said around a mouthful of apple. “You two retards must think I’m as stupid as you are. Sometimes, Willem, I can’t hardly believe you came outa my loins, but I can damn sure see who that idiot belongs to.”

  “Now, El—”

  “Goddamn it, I seen ‘em leadin’ that little girl up the trail, and I seen y’all forcin’ them others into the cabin, and that sure as hell ain’t motor oil all over Arley’s arm, now is it? And I’ll tell you one more thing: you’re gonna go back down there and turn ‘em loose.”

  Arley took another pull off the jug, grinning as Willem said, “Well, I don’t much think we oughta do that, Elbert.”

  “Like I give a damn what you think. And you: bring that goddamn jug over here.”

  “All I’m saying,” Willem said, as Arley started toward the table. “Is we might not want ‘em goin’ down to the valley and… well…”

  “And what? You saved ‘em, didn’t you, helped ‘em out, didn’t you?” Elbert took the jug, put it to his lips and took a drink. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yeah,” Willem told him. “But you know how them townsfolk are.”

  “Just like you always told us,” Arley said. “Can’t trust nobody don’t live on this mountain. No tellin’ what kinda lies they might tell if we turn ‘em loose.” He shot a nervous glance Willem’s way, probably thinking about what Lewis had done to that girl, and he and Gerald had been right there with him. Willem didn’t know about that yet, not the details anyway, like how that kid had gotten away scot-free from the old shack and could be on his way to the law this very minute.

  “Turn ‘em loose, huh?” Elbert sat the jug on the table and took another bite of his apple. “Thought you said they come up here on their own.”

  Arley shrugged his shoulders as Willem came around the rocking chair. Snatching the jug and raising it to his lips, he took a drink and returned the jug to the table. They stood in the dimly lit kitchen, Elbert and Arley and Willem, their long shadows cast against the rough-hewn wall of the cabin.

  “Goddamnit, I told you a hunnert times to leave them townsfolk alone, stay the hell away from ‘em. Strangers is one thing, but we can’t have this here bullshit. You boys know we’ve always kept clear of them people, left them alone and they left us alone. Now you two done gone and stole their kids from ‘em. Next thing you know, the whole goddamn valley’ll be up here huntin’ their asses.”

  “Well, so what, they won’t find ‘em,” said Willem.

  “Hell no they won’t, ‘cause they ain’t gonna be here, ‘cause you morons’re gonna take ‘em back down and turn ‘em loose. That’s what you’re gonna do, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Well, now, Elbert, I just don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

  Arley flinched when Elbert slammed a fist against the table; the plate rattled and the glass turned over as Elbert issued a warning all three had heard many times before:

  “One: I run things ‘round here, and as long as I’m around you’ll do what the hell I tell you!” He bit off another chunk of apple, tossed the spindly core onto the table and Willem grabbed the dishtowel, Arley’s eyes nearly popping from his head as the towel was clamped to Elbert’s mouth and his arms began to flail.

  “C’mon,” Willem said, and Arley stepped forward to help restrain the old man, his and Willem’s shadows closing in like two hulking beasts, until they had devoured the stunned patriarch, who kept struggling against them, eyes bulging from their sockets as he tried desperately to snatch a breath that would not come.

  He screamed something into the gag and Willem pulled it away.

  “What’d you say?”

  Gasping and wheezing, he choked out, “I said you’ll go to Hell for this.”

  Willem clamped the towel back over Elbert’s mouth, and squeezed his nostrils shut, grinning as he said, “Keep it warm for us, Daddy.”

  When it was over, when all of Elbert’s quaking and bucking and the holding him in place was done, Willem eased him into a chair, and the old man slumped face-forward onto the table. Willem tossed the dishrag onto the plate beside Elbert’s head, and turned to Arley, whose one good eye seemed as wide as a saucer plate.

  “He choked on his food,” Willem told him. “We tried to help him but we couldn’t do nothin’.” When a moment passed and he didn’t get a response, he said, “Got it?”

  “Yeah, sure thing, Willem. Couldn’t do a damn thing to help him.”

  “Choked on his food, Arley. That’s all you got to remember, and that’s all I want you to say. That’s all I want you to say—nothing else. I don’t know what the hell might happen if Lewis finds out what we did.”

  “Gerald, too.”

  “Fuck Gerald. Him, I can handle.”

  Willem grabbed a chair at the end of the table. Scraping the wooden tips of the legs along the floor, he pulled it to Elbert’s side, sat down and laid a gentle hand on the dead man’s back, patting it, almost as if he were mourning the passing of a dearly beloved pet, or remembering some of the good times he and Elbert surely must have shared together. “Too bad he had to go out like this.”

&nb
sp; Arley looked down, one eye staring at his dead kin while the other gazed across the room. He pulled out a chair, angling it toward them before dropping down onto the seat. Mere seconds ago, Willem had gleefully invited the old man into Hell, now here he was acting like he’d walked in on a guy who’d just died of natural causes. It was nerve wracking, but really, just another weird twist in what had already been a crazy day. The couple in the woods; it wasn’t that they’d killed them, but what they had done afterwards: nailing the headless corpse to the tree instead of hiding the body, and what Willem had done with that woman; the look in his eye when Horse-Trader-Harry challenged him—Arley knew the old timer would’ve been dead right then and there if Willem could’ve gotten the drop on him. Then tonight when the gunfire sounded and he’d suddenly appeared on the trail with his bow and quill of arrows slung over his shoulder, that nervous twitch of excitement so evident when Willem sent Gerald and those two girls on ahead on foot, and then he and Lewis and Willem jumped into the jeep, hightailing it back to the cliff just in time to see that wild showdown, and the car hurtling backwards down the mountainside. When they were in position, Lewis off in the dark woods, Arley hiding behind a tree and Willem next to the rock formation, Arley wondered what was coming next. Whatever it was, he thought it was going to be intense. And intense it was when the head came rolling out of the shadows, and the whistling arrow nailed Butchie Walker’s eyeball to the back of his skull, Arley stepping out from behind the tree and gutting the fleeing kid before he could take so much as a step. And Arley didn’t want to stop with the kid. He wanted more. When he put his knife to the long-hair, he wanted to slit his throat more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted to kill them all, and he would have if not for Willem. He still didn’t understand what they were going to do with those two, surely not what Willem had suggested. But who could know with the way Willem had been acting lately. Look at what he’d just done—what they’d just done. The head of the family sprawled out dead across the table. And it wasn’t like it was the first time Elbert had raised holy hell at them. He’d done it plenty of times before, and a lot worse than that.

  “Aw, hell,” Willem said, and Arley looked over at him. “We had to do it, simple as that.”

  “No shit. Couldn’t very well let him turn ‘em loose, not after what we done down there on the mountain. And once he told Lewis and Gerald to let ‘em go, they’d have done it no matter what we had to say about it. He’s the head of the family.”

  “Not anymore,” Willem said, and then pulled the jug to him. He no longer had his hand on Elbert, but was looking past him at Arley, as if the old man was no longer there. He lifted the shine and took a swig, and then handed the ceramic vessel to Arley, who took a pull and sat it on the table.

  “Truth be told, I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout it for a while now. Reckon I knew it was coming when that goddamn car-rustler started his shit this afternoon.”

  “Guess that cocksucker’ll pay us what we want now, huh?”

  “Damn sure better, if he knows what’s good for him.” Willem dug his feet into the floor, squalling the chair legs against it as he pushed back from the table. He lifted an arm and looked at the stainless steel Rolex watchband locked around his wrist, and saw his face reflected in the glass faceplate gleaming in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp.

  “Only one way to find out,” he said as he stood. “C’mon.”

  “Now? It’s the middle of the night, for chrissakes.”

  “As good a time as any, I reckon.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Eddie couldn’t believe how effortlessly the giant hillbilly scooped Thel into his arms and over his shoulder, hauling her up the mountainside as if she were not a flesh and blood person, but a scarecrow he’d stolen from a cornfield. And it wasn’t like it was easy going for any of them—Mark and Eddie and Brenda had struggled mightily to traverse the steep incline, but not Arley and Willem, and especially not Lewis, who’d grunted and huffed his way up the trail as steady and sure-footed as an old mountain goat.

  At the top of the rise they stopped long enough for Willem and Arley to toss Butchie Walker’s shotgun into a jeep, which was parked in the middle of a trail that started near the cliff and wound its way straight up the mountain. And once the bow and quill of arrows was stored inside, he and Arley and Lewis led their captives onto the wide, flat surface of Rickert’s Peak, to the edge of the formation, where Eddie looked out across the mountainside. From here, he could see everything: the main thoroughfare running through the valley, the shops lining it; the road where Butchie Walker and his two fallen comrades had chased the Honda until Mark had sent them all screaming over the mountain’s edge. Ghostly beams of light painted the sky above the trail Eddie and his friends had fled down as they scurried away from one horrific situation into another so bizarre that it defied belief. They stood for a moment, Mark, Brenda and Eddie, before their captors ushered them back to the jeep.

  And they were being held captive, there was no denying that, no matter what Willem and Arley had said about getting them up the mountain so they could take care of Thel. They were taking care of her, all right, such good care that none of them knew where the hell she was. Eddie had watched something in Brenda die when the jeep pulled away, leaving Lewis and her still unconscious friend behind. So transparent was the lie that no one believed it when Willem said his gigantic cousin was taking her to see Granny ‘to get her wound tended to’.

  All three had turned to see Lewis standing in place, both he and Thel disappearing when the jeep curved up the narrow, winding trail.

  Now Eddie wondered if any of them would ever see her again.

  Up the mountain they had gone, Brenda in the front seat, Mark and Eddie kneeling in the rear compartment, Arley sitting between them on the jeep’s rusty frame, holding them in place by holding Willem’s machete by his side. Eddie probably wouldn’t have tried to escape anyway. What would he have done if he could’ve gotten away, run haphazardly down the mountain, leaving behind his injured best friend who had risked his life to help him, leave him to fend for himself? Then what, end up lost? End up running into Lewis or some other crazed freak, more like it—no telling how many of those fuckers were roaming the mountainside. And what about Brenda, could he really leave her on her own?

  No. If they were going to get away, they’d have to do it together.

  Those were the thoughts running through his head as the jeep pulled up to what he could only imagine to be some Hole In The Wall hideout for psychotic hillbillies, a suspicion seemingly confirmed when he spotted the wild-eyed old mountain man glaring down like God Almighty from his front porch overlooking the encampment.

  Once on the ground, Arley herded them onto the porch and into the log cabin, pushing them through the door with a smile on his face. Several kerosene lamps cast the large room in a warm yellow glow. A couple of high-backed wooden chairs sat against the rough-hewn wall, beneath a white-curtained window on the left side of the cabin. The right side housed a stone hearth and an empty fireplace. A tattered and frayed couch with a guitar case propped up against its end, a couple of more chairs and an old oak rocker gave way to a large rectangular table occupying the back of the room. Two girls sat on either side of the table. The one with her back to Eddie had the thin frame of someone several stone’s throw away from maturation. He doubted if she was more than fourteen or fifteen years old. Long black hair cascaded down her back and over her shoulders, across the ill-fitting white gown she wore. The soiled garment had pockets sewn onto either of its sides; so long was the loose fitting dress that the pockets covered her knees. A line of embroidered multicolored flowers decorated the neckline and hem; a torn flap of fabric drooped from one wide pocket like a grimy cloth tongue. The other girl’s head hung over a bowl of stew, eyes closed as if she were bowed in prayer. Hands beneath the table, her long, unkempt hair covered most of her face. The tight silk blouse she wore seemed familiar to Eddie. When she looked up, he realized it was
the doughnut-cutter’s girl, flanked by a guy with the butt of a pistol sticking out of his waistband, not much more than a teenager himself, who looked to be a younger version of Arley—minus the slow eye. She stared past him, and another woman who stood beside him, as if they weren’t even there. Eddie wondered if she was looking for a way out of this mess. He also wondered what had become of her boyfriend—he’d certainly looked fit enough to handle himself, but so had Butchie Walker and his boys.

  “Looky what I brought!” Arley called out.

  Brenda gasped. “Cindy?” she said.

  “Hey, Brenda!” the girl answered. It was the cheerful reply of someone happy to see an old friend, and Eddie thought it seemed as out of place here as the slow-eyed freak might have been in a fine dining establishment.

  “Keep an eye on ‘em, Gerald,” Arley said. “These two try anything—plug ‘em.”

  “Plug ‘em!” the youngest girl called out, laughing and turning her head as Arley exited through the front door, Eddie flinching as Mark said, “What the fuck?”

  This girl, this child, had a carbon copy of the giant’s lopsided, bloodshot eye. Just like his, it sat halfway down a cheek whose flesh was the consistency of melted plastic. The other eye, the normal eye, which shone as bright as if a flashlight burned behind it, lay in a creamy patch of healthy skin, above a set of pushed-up nostrils that more resembled the snout of a pig than anything belonging to a human. Eddie had thought the giant to be a bizarre-looking creature, but this was the most grotesque thing he had ever seen.

  * * *

  He heard them, moving around in the dark, growling like a pack of hungry cats. But they couldn’t be hungry—not this fast. He doubted if they even needed her, not after that woman earlier in the day. But who could know their needs? He wasn’t even sure how many there were these days, or if they were all his kin. For all he knew, Willem and Arley could have thrown some strangers in with them; live bait who’d managed to stay alive. No telling with the way they’d been acting lately. Boy, if Elbert found out what they’d been doing, he’d be madder’n hell. Not about them killing folks—they’d been doing that for years, Elbert too. But he sure wouldn’t like what they’d been doing with them lately. What they’d been doing with what was left of them.