The Mountain Read online

  “Goddamnit, Gerald!” Willem said, and then turned and ran, down the hill and back to the jeep. Tossing the shotgun in the back, he jumped behind the wheel, and then turned his head and looked back at Gerald, at the shotgun that was still pointed in his direction. He shook his head, fired up the ignition and put the jeep into gear, made a long, sweeping U-turn, and headed back down the mountain.

  * * *

  Brenda opened her eyes, and Mark said, “We’ve gotta get her up.”

  “How about it, Brenda?”

  Her mouth opened. Her lips moved up and down, but nothing came out. Finally, she said, “Eddie… yeah, get me up.”

  Mark grabbed an arm and Eddie grabbed the other. Tina went around and eased her hands under Brenda’s back. She groaned when they started to move her, and then gritted her teeth as they raised her gently to her feet. Her breathing was shallow, her face pale. She looked down at her chest and started to tremble. Her hand shook, and then fluttered uncontrollably as it rose toward the knife—Eddie, clamping a hand around her wrist, said, “Huh uh. Don’t touch it. Don’t even look at it.”

  Mark said, “Can you walk?”, and Brenda said, “I’ll try.”

  “We’ve gotta get you off the mountain,” said Tina. “We’ve gotta get you some help.”

  Brenda, groaning with each faltering word, said, “What… about Thu… Thel?”

  Eddie, his hand still holding Brenda’s wrist, said, “Dolly gave us the slip. We don’t know how to get to Thel. All we know is she’s in a cave somewhere and it’s too dark to go wandering around trying to find it. All we can do now is take you down the mountain and get you to a doctor, round up some folks and come back in the daylight and find that cave. I know it sucks, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  Tina put a hand on Brenda’s shoulder. “C’mon, honey” she said. “Let’s get outa here.” She gave her a gentle nudge, and Brenda stumbled forward, Mark and Eddie on either side to keep her from falling; Eddie ending up with the gun in his waistband after all, because he needed both hands to steady Brenda.

  The going was slow and tedious, but somehow they managed to get through the underbrush, to the edge of the clearing. Brenda said, “Stop.” But Eddie told her they couldn’t, that by now Willem would have discovered his son lying dead in the shack, and any second now he and Lewis could show up to exact their revenge. They had to go. If they had to carry her, then they’d do it. But they had to go, and it had to be now.

  They made their way through the tree line and into the clearing, moonlight glinting off a narrow edge of metal sandwiched by the wooden handle of the kitchen knife protruding from Brenda’s chest. Eddie couldn’t stand looking at it, or at the dark trail that had spread from the wound. So he focused on the ground in front of them, a hand on Brenda’s back and one supporting her arm; a mirror image of Mark as they both guided her down the path.

  The going was slow, but at least they were going down the mountain instead of into a cold, dark cave, which was how Eddie imagined it: cold and dark, a deep, dank burial vault that would have swallowed them whole and left them rotting with Granny and Thel, and the ones who looked so much worse than the deformed pig-faced girl.

  Thel.

  He couldn’t believe it had happened. They went looking for a little bit of fun before the long journey to Louisiana, and now look at them, beaten, battered and bruised, on a death march across a dark and foreboding landscape.

  Down the trail they went, Tina with a hand on Brenda’s shoulder, Mark and Eddie on either side of her. Every once in a while Eddie would look over his shoulder, expecting to see the jeep barreling toward them. But where was it? Surely to God Willem and Lewis had found Arley by now. He couldn’t believe their luck would hold out, and he hoped against hope the mountain men didn’t find them, because he was afraid that he and Mark would run away and leave Brenda and Tina to fend for themselves. They weren’t superheroes, just a couple of down on their luck pot-heads, a couple of dumb-asses who had tried squeezing a little extra dough out of a load of Christmas trees.

  Eddie looked up.

  The peak was in sight. Fifteen or twenty yards away, they would begin their descent. It would be a long, hard trail, but they were going to make it. He knew it. He could feel it: hope, surging through his bloodstream like a jolting shot of adrenaline. Brenda must have felt it, too. Her feet moved a little faster now, her steps a little steadier, Tina walking along behind her, a supportive hand still clamped on her shoulder.

  They reached the outer edge of Rickert’s Peak.

  “Whew,” Brenda said when they found the path at the left of the formation. “I can’t believe we made it.”

  Mark said, “We haven’t made it, yet.” Brenda frowned and he added, “But we will. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Eddie wondered if Mark actually believed what he was saying.

  Tina spoke the words that were on all their minds: “How’re we gonna get her down?”

  She couldn’t go upright—that much was obvious. The trail was narrow, and much too steep to allow it. She couldn’t stand by herself, much less negotiate the rock-studded path.

  Brenda stood quietly while Mark said, “You first, Tina. Then Eddie. We’ll sit Brenda down and scoot her along the path.” He paused for a moment, before adding, “Go ahead, Tina.”

  Tina started down, and Mark said, “Tina.”

  She looked up, and he said, “Anything happens, you haul ass running and don’t stop ‘til you get to some help. No matter what you hear behind you, get your ass down the mountain as fast as you can.”

  In the distance came the steady rumble of an engine.

  “You mean like that?” Tina said, and Mark said, “Shit!”

  * * *

  On his way up the mountain, Charlie kept his eyes and ears open, but he heard nothing. Not the thundering blasts exploding deep inside the caves, or Mark and Eddie and Tina talking amongst themselves as they tried formulating a plan to get Brenda out of the woods. He didn’t hear Willem calling out Gerald’s name as he made his way to Elbert’s cabin, or the argument that ensued when he reached it.

  He heard nothing but his own footsteps, chirping crickets, and the wind rustling through the tree branches.

  Traber’s pump-action shotgun gave him the courage to move forward, but Tina gave him the will.

  Tina.

  How could she ever forgive him? She hadn’t even wanted to go to the shack, and when they got there she didn’t want to go inside—she told him she didn’t. She’d done it to keep him happy.

  But Charlie didn’t listen. He had beer in his belly, drugs in his blood and pussy on his brain. All he cared about was getting her inside, and getting inside her.

  Maybe we should go somewhere else…

  No shit.

  Charlie turned and looked down the mountain, at the bend in the trail. He’d come a good ways since leaving Harry and Traber at the mouth of the cave, and he wondered how much farther until he reached the campsite. He also wondered who and how many would be there, and how long it would take for Harry and Traber to catch up to him.

  He turned to resume his climb, and heard an engine turn over…

  … gears grinding, and a vehicle rumbling down the mountainside.

  Charlie started for the tree line, but halfway there he stopped. He didn’t know what to do, run for the woods or hold his ground, hit the dirt and blast them when they came around the bend or let them go by. He damn sure couldn’t just stand there in the open like a sitting duck.

  The chugging sound of the engine was getting louder, the vehicle drawing closer.

  Charlie pumped the shotgun, got down on his knees, and lay on his stomach, waiting for headlights to sweep over the mountainside. He was still waiting when the vague outline of a jeep appeared in the fog. Elbows planted in the dew-covered ground, he steadied the rifle stock against his right shoulder.

  The jeep and its lone occupant rumbled closer.

  Its lone occupant.

  Willem Johnson in his b
uckskin jacket, his long hair blowing in the breeze.

  Charlie was seconds away from scattering Willem’s head across the clearing. The seconds ticked down and his finger tightened on the trigger. All he had to do was squeeze it. Willem passed by and he relaxed his finger. He couldn’t do it. For all he knew, Tina was up at that campsite surrounded by God only knew how many of Willem’s inbred kin. No telling what would happen if they heard the shotgun thundering across the mountainside.

  Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pretty.

  When the jeep was safely past, Charlie stood and ran toward the trail, much like Harry and Traber had hauled ass through the caves: shotgun held before him, feet churning against the tall grass… up the path and into the bend the jeep had just emerged from. When he rounded the curve he stopped. A faint yellow glow bled from the open doorway of a wooden structure thirty or so yards ahead. Beyond that, an identical building stood across a wide clearing from a two-story log cabin. Charlie could see light flickering in the front windows of each house. He took off at a dead run, eyes sweeping house to house. If somebody stepped out and challenged him he’d blow them apart. If a face appeared in a window, he’d duck and roll and come up blasting.

  Ten yards and closing fast, ten more yards to go. Then he was on the porch and through the door, gasping and pointing his shotgun at the dead redneck lying face up in the middle of the floor, the same son of a bitch who had held Tina’s arms while the giant savaged her. Blood under his head, the handle of a fork protruding from his ruined eye socket. Charlie wished he could’ve been there to see it happen.

  “Tina!” he called out.

  He walked across the room, to a closed door, opened it and light filtered into a dark bedroom. “Tina!” he whispered, but no one answered. There was another door at the rear of the shack. He went to it and opened that one as well, and found another empty bedroom.

  Charlie retraced his footsteps, across the room and out the front door. Over the porch and onto the ground, he ran from one building to the next, finger on the trigger, ready for anything. Once outside the cabin, he eased a foot onto the front porch step. Quickly but quietly, he made his way up the steps and across the porch, put his hand on the door and eased it open. He stepped through the doorway brandishing his weapon. He should have been afraid but he wasn’t.

  Traber’s shotgun gave him the courage to move forward, Tina gave him the will.

  Across the room he went, until he stood in front of a closed bedroom door. On the other side of the door came the sound of squeaking bedsprings, grunts and giggling young voices.

  Charlie kicked open the door, exploded into the room and found a wild-haired old man on his knees on a mattress, ramming a young girl from behind. One bloodshot eye seemed to have melted halfway down her cheek—it was looking at Eddie while the other stared straight ahead. Half her face looked like it had been scalded with boiling oil. She had the pushed-up nostrils of a pig, which sat above a crooked mouth decorated with a massive set of buck teeth. She was huffing and puffing and laughing, gripping the bedpost while her hips moved in time with each of the old man’s humping strokes. A carbon copy freak of nature lay in the opposite direction beside her, smiling and giggling, and cupping impossibly long fingers around the old man’s balls. A bag of pot, a jar of moonshine and a flat cardboard package of Viagra lay on the small night table beside the bed.

  The old timer looked at Charlie, laughed and said, “Well by God!”

  Charlie couldn’t believe it.

  “You crazy son of a bitch!” he said. “Grandma’s been worried sick over you!”

  “She can keep on worryin’, ‘cause I ain’t comin’ home!”

  “The hell’s got into you?”

  “Ain’t what’s got into me; it’s what I’ve got into.”

  “Goddamnit, Grandpa. Do you know these sons of bitches kidnapped my girlfriend?”

  The old man stopped in mid-stroke while the girl moved slowly back and forth in front of him, smiling and rotating her hips. “Don’t know nothing ‘bout that,” he said. “Give Elbert across the way a little cash and he gives me pick of the litter. I don’t give a fuck what the rest of ‘em do.”

  “You crazy son of a bitch.”

  Charlie backed out of the room. Everybody worried about the prick, and he’s up here with these cocksuckers. He turned and crossed the floor. Then he was out into the night, on his way across the clearing. He came upon the side of the two-story log cabin and crept around to the porch, raised his weapon, and heard the unmistakable snick-snack of a shotgun being pumped.

  The guy on the porch said, “Don’t try it, son.” It was the same guy Cindy Jackson had led into the shack, the only one who didn’t look like an inbred freak. He was standing beside her, the wide barrel of his shotgun a foot and a half from Charlie’s face. “You know I could blow your head off, don’t you?”

  Charlie didn’t speak.

  “Charlie,” Cindy said. “None of this was supposed to happen. We were just gonna—”

  “Where is she?”

  “She got away. Her and Brenda Sykes and a couple of guys I never seen before took off down the mountain a little while ago.”

  “Go on,” Gerald said. “Go on after her. We ain’t gonna do nothin’ to stop you.”

  “We’re sorry, Charlie. It wasn’t us. We didn’t want this. We didn’t want none of this.”

  “Just remember we let you go, and don’t ever come back up here,” Gerald said.

  Then he lowered his weapon and Charlie took off running, across the clearing and down the old mountain trail.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  They were halfway down the side of Rickert’s Peak, Tina in front, Eddie lifting Brenda’s legs and Mark cupping his hands under her armpits. Brenda, groaning and biting her lip, gasping and crying out every time they jostled her, was a far cry from the beautiful young woman Eddie had met back at Farley’s. A thin sheen of sweat covered a forehead and face as white as blackboard chalk. Mixed with the sweat were tears that came streaming down her cheeks. Her auburn hair, which had been as soft and fine as silk, now lay plastered against the sides of her head. She had the terrified look of a drowning victim grasping and clawing at the water before slipping beneath the surface one final time.

  Farley’s.

  It seemed like days since they’d walked into the place, rather than the hours it had actually been. Brenda and Thel on their barstools, the old redneck behind the bar.

  Farley: ‘Rocks roll down the mountain ‘round here’

  Yeah, rocks. Heads roll down the son of a bitch, too…

  Thel’s brother swinging the stick, Mark dodging sideways, laughing as the cue bounced off Farley’s forehead.

  Fun and games: bing, bang, boom; the truck blocking the highway as Mark sawed down the tree and threw it in the back. The red-headed pool player and her bouncing tits, the way she fondled her cue like it was her partner’s dick. Eddie holding Brenda tight against him as the music played and her perfume washed over him. The goofy look on Mark’s face as he danced with Thel and shot Eddie the ‘okay’ sign. The cheering crowd as Eddie rocked the joint, and then the four of them passing joints around the Honda, Mark and Eddie, Brenda and Thel.

  Thel…

  Eddie looked down at Brenda. It was all so surreal: the bloody trail leading from the knife, down her bare stomach and onto her jeans. The wooden handle jutting from between her gore-soaked bra had turned her into a human sundial. Eddie wondered if he would ever be able to flush the image from his mind, or any of his memories of this night.

  He let go of her legs, moved a couple of feet back and grabbed them again.

  “Oh!” she cried when he lifted.

  He wanted to let her rest, let her marshal her strength. But he couldn’t. He didn’t dare. “You’ll be okay,” he told her. And the look in her eyes that screamed Stop lying! made his heart sink.

  The jeep rumbled to a stop above them, and Tina looked up.

  “God,” Brenda said, and Mark said, �
��Shit!”

  “Hurry!” Eddie said, Brenda crying out again as he and Mark bounced her up and down the trail, half-pulling and half-pushing, halfway carrying her down the rocky path.

  “Quiet, Brenda,” Mark whispered. “For God’s sake, be quiet.”

  “Leave her alone!” said Eddie.

  “She’s gonna give us away.”

  “Just leave her alone.”

  They kept moving her down the trail, lifting and scooting, sliding and pushing and pulling. The end was in sight, the disused campsite at the foot of the cliff, the charred logs and the flat stones laid out in a circle, broken and busted liquor bottles and old flattened and rusty beer cans—beyond them the clearing where Butchie Walker and Bobby Jarvis lay. Eddie could see them both sprawled out on the forest floor, the arrow rising from Butchie’s chest, Bobby still staring up at the heavens.

  At the end of the trail, they eased Brenda to her feet. She stood for a moment, hands shaking by her side, Tina behind her, still with a hand on her shoulder as Mark and Eddie stared back up the trail.

  They turned to Brenda, and Mark said, “Can you walk?”

  She nodded and Eddie said, “C’mon.”

  The four friends started across the campsite. And even though they barely knew each other, they were friends, for there could be no bond greater anywhere on earth than what they had been through tonight… through the campsite and out into the clearing, Brenda groaning with every faltering step she took, Eddie wondering when that crazy mountain man would step out of the shadows and nail them.

  And then he did.

  Willem stepped out of the looming shadow of Rickert’s Peak, into the moonlight.

  He had a shotgun and the same ‘look what I’ve found’ smile Eddie had seen when they’d first laid eyes on him tonight. “Well, well, well,” he said.

  Then he jacked the shotgun and the smile turned mean.