The Mountain Read online

  He had lain the girl down at the brink of the precipice, far enough away from the bloodstained ground that she wouldn’t have to worry about getting any on her. Not that it should be much of a worry—she was already covered with blood from her injured leg. Her pants were soaked with it, as were her arms and her hands. But Lewis didn’t think it was right to get somebody else’s blood on her. And he didn’t think it right to send her down to the shadows either, not alive, anyway. No matter what Willem said.

  He’d never given them a live one before, and he sure didn’t want to start now, not with her—she was too pretty. Even in the flickering torchlight, he could see that. With her blonde hair and her chest all swelled out, the curve of her hip; she looked a lot better than the girl at that old rundown shack. So what if her face was all pale, she still looked pretty darn good. No. Huh uh. He didn’t want to give this one up. He wanted to marry with her, just like he’d done that other’n.

  Fire blazing from a thick piece of wood wedged into the wall of the cave spread the giant’s shadow like an oil spill across the rocky floor. Tendrils of black smoke rose up to the ceiling, and then flowed across it in a wide, dark vein. Lewis leaned over, knees digging into the dirt as his deformed nose rested against her head. The scent of her hair, reminding him of apple blossoms on a bright spring morning, lay across her shoulders like fine strands of corn silk. He stroked a calloused hand across her face and she moaned, moved the hand to her breast and her eyes fluttered open. She turned her head toward him and they snapped up like windows being yanked skyward.

  He smiled and she looked away, raising her hand a couple of inches off the ground before letting it fall limply to her side.

  “You all right?” he said, and gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “You gonna be all right. Yep, you gonna be awww-right. Willem wanted me to give you to the shadows—”

  Thel’s head jerked toward him, eyes wide and fraught with panic. Her jaws worked up and down, but the only sound to come out was a faint, dry rasp. Her head rolled back and forth as Lewis said, “I ain’t gonna do it though, not as long as you’re still with us.”

  From down below, a husky voice said, “Send her on down.”

  Another said, “That you, Lewis?”

  Then a chorus of mewling bubbled up, a multitude of voices calling out, “Send her down! Send her down!” echoing through the cave as Thel sputtered, “P…please.”

  “Don’t you worry,” he said, leaning over her body, one hand flattened on either side of it as he stared into the wide mouth of the pit. “Don’t you worry a bit.”

  “Send her on down, Lewis!”

  “I ain’t gonna do it!”

  “You come down then!” the husky voice called from the darkness. “C’mon down and fuck me!”

  “Ain’t gonna do that, neither!”

  Lewis leaned a little closer, until his head jutted over the edge. He could see their opaque forms jostling around beneath him, feel his skin prickle as he stared into the darkness, as if an army of cockroaches was inching its way up his back, his heart hammering against his ribcage at the thought of what lay hidden down below.

  “Yeah, cocksucker!” a man’s voice called out. “C’mon down here so I can fuck you!”

  Lewis lurched backwards, Thel screaming as he scrambled over her, away from the pit. The voice echoing through the cave was one he had never heard before, the voice of a man so obviously not from around these parts. And it put the fear of God in him when it shouted, “C’mon, mountain man, send her on down. I’m tired of fucking these freaks!”

  Lewis knew they couldn’t reach him; they couldn’t get at him. Even so, he couldn’t fight the dread slithering through his guts. What if somehow he did find himself down in the pit, what would happen then, when the hands were grabbing and the teeth were gnashing? They hated him, him and Willem. Once, they had been given a steady supply of food—real food—but Willem had put a stop to that, said they had to keep it for themselves. Good game was hard to come by, and they weren’t going to spend their days traipsing through the woods for the likes of them. Meat was meat, and as long as they had something in their belly, they’d be happy. What difference did it make where it came from, as long as Elbert didn’t find out what they were doing?

  “Send her down, ya big son of a bitch!”

  Maybe he should give them what they wanted and be done with it. That’s what Willem wanted. Maybe he should just do it. He still had that other girl to go back to. She was going to have his baby and it was going to be pretty, just like she was, and he could hardly wait to see it. It wouldn’t have an ugly old eye halfway down its face. Its skin would be soft and smooth like a baby’s should be, not a gnarled mess like his and Dolly’s. It would not end up in the pit like all the other disfigured and malformed children, kinfolk so hideous even Lewis could not bear to look upon them. This one was almost dead. Maybe almost was good enough. Willem sure seemed to think so.

  “Gimme a live one, you son of a bitch!” It was the throaty voice Lewis knew well, and it sent a chill up his spine. He gave Thel a little nudge and her body went rigid, pushed her closer to the edge and she grabbed his wrist. “Please,” she said. “Don’t.” She had the frantic look of someone grasping at their final thread of hope.

  “Willem says I have to.”

  “I thought you wanted to marry me.”

  Lewis flinched as Thel raised her hand. She stroked it across his misshapen face and he grinned.

  “That’s what you said back on the mountain,” she said, and then smiled up at him, a sad, forced twist of the lips, more a grimace than anything else. “You can’t marry me if I’m down there with them, can you?”

  “You really wanta marry with me?”

  “I’ll marry ya, ya cocksucker!”

  Cackled laughter rose up from the pit as Lewis roared, “YOU SHUT UP!”

  “And give ya a honeymoon ya won’t never forget!”

  Lewis brushed a hand across Thel’s breast. This time she did not flinch. She looked up with a warm smile on her face, as if he were not a grotesque, inbred freak of nature but a long lost love who had finally made his way back home. He reached beneath her bloodstained blouse, cupped a breast in his hand and began kneading the soft mound of flesh, as the voices in the pit kept up their incessant chanting and mewling and lewd suggestions, and Lewis blocked them from his mind. He wasn’t about to give her up now.

  Not now, not ever.

  He slid his hand free, moved it down to her jeans and grabbed at the button fastening them closed. Thel screamed and he snatched it back as if a rattlesnake had lunged at him.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “My leg…it hurts.”

  Lewis wanted so much to feel her wrapped around him, but he had once found a sparrow with a broken wing lying on the forest floor, and when he picked it up it’s brittle body crumbled in his hand. He didn’t want the girl to die on him, because then he could only have her once. Lewis wanted her to live a long time, so he could have her again and again. He stroked a hand down the side of her head as gently as he could. “I’m gonna take care of you.”

  Thel’s sad, pathetic smile returned to her face, as her teeth chattered her body shook. “Rest,” she said. “I just need… to rest.”

  Lewis gave her shoulder a little pat. “You go on and rest then,” he said. “We’ll get to marryin’ when I get back.”

  “Why is it so cold in here?”

  “We’re down deep, deep in the—”

  “Goddamn you, Lewis! Throw her ass down here!”

  “I ain’t gonna do it, I told you!”

  “Well throw something down!”

  Lewis reached beyond Thel to a human ribcage that lay split open down the middle on a patch of bloodstained ground several yards away from the yawning pit; a piece of an arm, a foot and a leg and a man’s severed head lay amongst various other body parts scattered about the place. He grabbed an arm, leaned across Thel and tossed it down, frowning as a great scrabbling rose up from the darkness. Then h
e stood up, dusting dirt off the knees of his bib-overalls. Grabbing the ax he’d left leaning against the wall of the cave, he made his way under the flickering torch and through the great walled-in room.

  Thel watched him disappear into the narrow mouth of the tunnel, the agony in her leg so bad she could feel the throbbing all the way up in her temples. If only she had strength enough to stand, courage enough to push her way through the excruciating pain; she could get up and hobble after him, find her way back down the mountain and out of this nightmare. But it was too much. To move her leg was to invite unbearable suffering. She was flat on her back, helpless against whoever, or whatever kept calling up from the wide mouth in the cave’s center. She couldn’t believe what he had tossed down that hole, or the sounds that had come wafting up immediately thereafter: the insane howling of whoever was pushing and shoving down there; the unmistakable sound of lips smacking, frenzied laughter and the grinding of teeth.

  Feeding sounds.

  Somewhere in the valley, a warm, dry bed awaited her return. Food was in the kitchen, milk in the refrigerator. All she had to do was get up and leave. Just get up. She had to do it, no matter what the pain whispered to her—she had to. She sure didn’t want to be here when that crazy bastard came back to ‘marry with her’, whatever that meant.

  Although Thel was quite sure of what his intentions had been.

  What else could he have meant, fumbling around with her pants like a horny teenager? Thank God he’d stopped when she cried out. She didn’t think she could have lived through what was coming next—not with him.

  Sooner or later he’d be back, and when he showed up, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t let a few tears stop him. She looked at her wound for a moment, at the blood-soaked blouse held in place by the tightly wrapped black leather belt. She couldn’t be here when he showed up. She just couldn’t. She moved her injured leg, crying out at a sharp stab of pain while the pit came to life with catcalls and howled laughter, and that deep-throated voice calling out, “Hey, little darlin’! Hey! Stick your face over the edge so I can get a look at you!”

  Thel paid it no mind as she put her hands on the flat surface beneath her, tears streaming down her face as she tried pushing herself upright, trembling and sobbing at the unbearable agony it caused her. She managed to sit up for a moment, but the pain was so intense she fell back on her elbows, gasping and staring at the mouth of the tunnel, which at that moment seemed to be a million miles away.

  “You okay up there?” It was the stranger’s voice which had caused Lewis so much fear and trepidation that rose above the others. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s my leg!” Thel cried out, still sobbing, the pain so great she thought she might faint. “It hurts so bad!”

  “What’s your name?” the voice called up to her.

  “Thel.”

  “Look, Thel. Look around. See what you can find, a rope maybe? Is there a length of rope or a ladder? Maybe you could go find a long tree branch or something. Something to help get me outa here. Get me out and I’ll help you. Those cocksuckers jumped me and my buddy, took everything we had and left me down here. I don’t know what they did with him, but… if you can get me out…”

  Thel looked around in front of her, but there was nothing on the cold dirt floor except a jittering shadow caused by the flickering torchlight. Even if there had been a rope or a piece of a tree limb, she couldn’t have gotten to it—she couldn’t even sit up.

  “My leg… I can’t get up! I can’t stand!”

  “Goddamnit! Try! There’s gotta be something up there!”

  The frustrated tone of his voice made her feel even worse. If she could get him out of that hole, he would help her, but she could do nothing for him. She simply was not physically able to do it. And if she couldn’t move, she would be sitting here defenseless when that grotesquely deformed ogre returned. And he was coming back, he wanted her, that much she knew—she’d seen it reflected in his eyes. And now the tears really were coming, streaming down a face frozen with fear while her body trembled and shook.

  “Goddamnit,” grumbled up from the pit, followed by the deep, husky voice of the female, “Just roll on over the edge, darlin’, and let Granny take care of you.”

  A series of cackled laughter filled the cave as Thel said, “Please.”

  “C’mon down, little darlin’!”

  “Leave me alone!” cried Thel.

  She looked over her shoulder at a human ribcage lying in a pile of bones just beyond her reach, at the arms and legs and other hacked up pieces of indistinguishable parts that lay scattered amongst the gory mess. In the middle of the disorganized array of dismemberment, two severed heads stood upright on a raised, flat stone; a dark-haired woman and a man in thick, black-framed glasses, facing each other with the horrified expressions of stark terror they had carried with them to their deaths; the flickering shadows combining with Thel’s tear-blurred vision to give the unlikely appearance of a couple of people nonchalantly carrying on a conversation.

  Thel shrieked and screamed and collapsed onto her back, and as the laughter rose and her eyes began to flutter, she wondered how long it would be before her own head wound up on that wide, flat stone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Willem led Arley onto Elbert’s front porch. They stood for a moment, staring down the mountainside before Willem noticed Lewis stomping up the path, the head of his ax making the wide, pendulant swings of an old man’s walking stick while his gigantic shadow stalked him up the trail like a great black beast.

  “C’mon,” Willem said, and then he and Arley took off down the stairs, across to where the jeep had been left in front of Gerald’s place. They waited by the porch as Lewis made his way toward them in slow, plodding strides.

  “Look,” Willem said. “I want you to stay here and look after Cindy’s pals.”

  “Me? I thought I was goin’ with you.”

  “Huh uh, Lewis is.”

  “Lewis? Why Lewis?”

  “’Cause I wanta see the look on that old bastard’s face when he opens his front door in the middle of the night to find that big son of a bitch on his doorstep.”

  “Shit, Willem, I wanta go, too. I wanta see what happens if he breaks bad like he did this afternoon.”

  “He won’t. When I tell him about Elbert, he ain’t gonna do nothin’ but pay up. No, I need you to stay here and look after Cindy’s pals. And remember what I told you: he choked on his food.”

  Arley nodded his agreement. Moments later, Lewis showed up. He had the nervous, apprehensive look of a misbehaving child caught with his hand in somebody else’s cookie jar.

  “Well?” Willem said.

  “What?”

  “What? What do you think? How’d it go?”

  “Aw, all right, I reckon.”

  “You reckon?” Arley said. “What’dya mean, you reckon? You took her down to Granny, didn’t you?”

  Lewis looked down at his feet, shuffled them, and said, “Kinda.”

  Willem let out a frustrated sigh. “What’d you do?”

  Arley said, “Did you send her down to Granny or not?”

  “She wasn’t dead yet, Arley, and I ain’t never sent a live one down to ‘em.”

  “Goddamnit, he told you—”

  “Never mind that now,” Willem said, and then stepped over to Lewis, looked into his crooked, malformed face and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Look, Lewis, we’ve got some business to take care of, but first, well, I guess the best thing is to just come right out with it… Elbert passed on a little while ago.”

  A puzzled frown passed over Lewis’ face. “Say what?”

  “Yep, he sure did.”

  “Choked on a goddamn apple core,” Arley told him.

  Lewis made a move toward Elbert’s place, but Willem held him in place. “Huh uh,” he said. “You and I’ve some business to tend to. We’ll look after Elbert when we get back.” To Arley, he said, “Go on in there and take care of our g
uests. Me and Lewis have got business in town.”

  Lewis tossed his ax in back of the jeep, and Willem climbed behind the steering wheel. When Lewis jumped onboard, the springs groaned and the chassis rocked back and forth. Moments later the jeep rumbled away, leaving Arley alone in front of the cabin.

  Arley stood for a moment, watching Willem and Lewis make their way down the winding path. He wasn’t happy about staying behind. He was sure the horse trader was going to balk, and he wanted to be in on the action when he did. Wanted to see him bleed. But Willem was the boss now, and Arley wasn’t about to go against him. Nobody defied Willem, a fact Arley had learned the hard way, many years ago when he’d gone crying to Elbert about something so trivial that now he could barely remember what it had been.

  But he remembered what happened when Willem caught him alone on the mountainside the next day. He remembered being pinned to the forest floor, the strong forearm mashing his head against the ground so he couldn’t move it. And he sure wasn’t going to forget how Willem first teased him with a sewing needle, and then slowly, oh so slowly pushed it through his earlobe until it came out clean on the other side. Arley didn’t doubt one bit that Willem would have made good on his threat to slice that ear off had he ever gone crying to Elbert again. No. Nobody stood up to Willem, except for Elbert, and look where that had gotten him: rotting up in his cabin while Willem took his place as head of the family. Not that it mattered much to Arley. As far as he was concerned, Willem had been in charge ever since he’d shoved that needle through his ear. And now he was going to do what Willem told him to do, just exactly what he told him.