The Mountain King Page 15

  Jesus! This isn’t the one I was tracking, Mark thought with a numbing flood of panic as he looked over his shoulder at the dead creature.

  There’s more of them!

  A knot of fear settled in his stomach when he realized that he had just wasted two shots.

  Of course, it made sense. He was a damned fool not to have realized it before now. If one of these creatures could exist up here, then there would have to be others. How else could they continue to survive?

  “So how many are there?” Mark whispered as he scanned the cliff side to see who—or what—could have caused that rock to fall. Aiming his rifle up at the spot where he thought the rock had come from, he waited silently for some sign that there was another creature nearby.

  Keeping a watchful eye all around, he moved slowly along the base of the cliff until he was back at the spot where he had found Phil’s things. When he looked up and carefully scanned the face of the cliff, he saw a protruding ledge which he hadn’t noticed before. Now, with the early afternoon sunlight glancing off it, it looked quite large.

  Could the creature have been hiding up there before it attacked him?

  Maybe there was a cave up there. It didn’t look it from down below, but Mark was suddenly convinced that he had to climb up to that ledge and find out.

  As he was staring up at the spot, a voice so faint he thought at first he was imagining it called out to him. It sounded infinitely distant, almost like it was from another world.

  Mark shivered as he listened to it echo with an odd reverberation from the cliff side, slicing through the eerie silence of the mountain.

  “. . . Help . . . Help us . . . They’re gone for now . . . Help us! . . . Please? . . .”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Moving Out

  From now on, the police are going to be watching every move I make! Polly thought bitterly.

  She was sitting at her kitchen table, staring blankly out the window at the evening sky. Deep shadows stretched across the lawn and driveway. It had taken no more than half an hour to fill out the accident report at the police station, but the whole time Polly suspected LaBrea was using the accident as an excuse to get her down to the station for more questioning about Dennis’s death. Apparently, though, the police no longer suspected that she might have been responsible.

  In any event, the delay had totally screwed up her plans to be on the road by noontime. LaBrea had dropped her off at work, and there was nothing she could do to avoid it without it looking suspicious. She had stayed at work until five o’clock, and now, after she finished packing and loading everything into the car, she had been sitting here in the kitchen, chain smoking cigarettes and sipping on a cup of coffee as she watched evening descend. She couldn’t stop wondering how it would look if she just up and took off right now.

  “Do I even care how it looks?” she asked herself.

  Her voice was a raw rasp as pale cigarette smoke drifted from her mouth. Of course, the police had asked her to “stick around town” until they solved the case ... but then again, she told herself, they hadn’t insisted that she stay in Hilton. As long as no charges were pressed, she was free to go wherever she wanted to go, and—Christ on a cross!—did she ever want to go!

  It didn’t really surprise her that she felt so little remorse about Dennis’s death. They had been lovers for several months, but she had never felt anything even remotely approaching love for him. Dennis had been good for one thing and one thing only.

  Sex.

  Like a grieving widow, Polly knew she would have to wait a respectable amount of time before trying to find someone else to satisfy those physical needs Mark no longer filled for her, not that he ever had.

  She was pretty sure Mark already knew about her affair with Dennis—and maybe with those other men, too. Sandy had no doubt blabbed all about it to him; but even if she hadn’t, Mark would have to be both blind and stupid not to put it all together. In a small town like Hilton, talk got around pretty fast, so she and Mark would no doubt be heading for divorce court sooner or later, probably as soon as he was back from his crazy-assed search up on the mountain for his missing friend.

  The idea of going through another divorce didn’t really bother Polly, either. This would be her third. She laughed, thinking how she was almost getting used to it. Besides, there was no love lost between them, as they say. Perhaps naively, she had simply been hoping to get out of town without any more mess.

  Yeah, that was the problem.

  The mess of Dennis’s death ... and the mess of Mark’s inevitable discovery of her affair.

  But grieving for Dennis or worrying about Mark wasn’t going to help her solve her immediate concerns about what to do right now!

  The car was packed. The gas tank was full. She should get the hell moving, but something ... something was holding her back. She didn’t think it was anything like a sense of responsibility or loyalty. Those ideals, like love, had left her marriage long ago ... if they had ever been there in the first place.

  A flicker of motion outside the window drew her attention. She looked up to see Sandy walking up the driveway toward the back steps. Polly crushed out her cigarette and quickly primped her hair as Sandy’s footsteps thumped on the stairs. The doorknob clicked, and the door swung open.

  Sandy snapped on the overhead light as she entered the kitchen. She looked startled when she saw Polly sitting at the table.

  “The house is dark,” Sandy said shakily as she draped her jacket over the back of a chair. “I didn’t think you were home.”

  For a lengthening moment, the two women glared silently at each other. Polly sensed that if either one of them had spoken what was truly on her mind, the words would have been fast, bitter, and cutting. She took a deep breath and forced a thin smile onto her face as she stood up and walked over to the sink to dump out what was left of her cold coffee.

  Sandy cleared her throat. “Uh, thanks . . . you know, for coming down there to help me out today.” Her voice was soft as she stood beside the table, letting her fingertips brush lightly against the tabletop.

  Polly looked straight at her and frowned. “Your father’s going to be pretty upset when he finds out what happened to the Jeep. Next to his ‘Vette, that was his favorite car to drive, you know?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “You’re darned lucky you weren’t killed, too,” Polly said.

  Polly’s face flushed as a twinge of anger rose up inside her. All she could think was how much Sandy hated her and how much she hated Sandy right back. In a way, it was rather sad how they had never given each other a fair chance. But it was certainly too late now. This rotten stepdaughter relationship was just one more reason why she should get the hell out while she still could.

  “I know,” Sandy said, even softer. She brought her hand up to the wad of bandage on her forehead and touched it gingerly.

  “What were you doing out there, anyway? Weren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  For an instant, Sandy considered telling her the truth, but she knew that she couldn’t trust Polly in the least, so with a slight shake of her head, she simply shrugged and said, “Oh, I was just out for a drive after school . . . I needed some time to think.”

  Polly sniffed as though grimly amused. “Well, I suppose now you can start thinking about ways to help pay for the Jeep.”

  “Oh, I’m sure the insurance money will cover that— most of it, anyway.”

  Polly shook her head and almost said something but remained silent, waiting for Sandy either to continue or leave the room. The tension between them fairly crackled.

  “Actually,” Sandy said, fighting the tight tremor in her voice, “I was starting to think about what I’d do until my father gets back.”

  “And just what do you mean by that?”

  Sandy stared at Polly as a hot current of anger raced through her like fire. Her hands curled into tight fists, and her legs suddenly felt all rubbery. The air in the kitchen was suddenly too h
ot, almost impossible to breathe.

  “I mean that—that I’ve been thinking I might stay at someone else’s house,” she said, “at least until my father comes home.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Actually, I—I already asked Karen Bishop’s parents about it, and they said I could stay with them until then because—because—” She swallowed hard, but the hot lump in her throat wouldn’t disappear. “Because the truth is, I can’t stand living here . . . under the same roof with you!”

  Polly took a threatening step toward her, then drew back.

  “Now, Sandy, come on. I know things have been just—just horrible for you lately. I can understand that you’re under a lot of—”

  “Don’t even talk to me, okay?” Sandy screamed as the anger bubbling inside her suddenly exploded. She shook her fists wildly in front of her face as a hot wash of tears spilled from her eyes, blurring her vision. “I don’t even want to hear your voice! When I just think about—about what you—what you did to my father, I—I—”

  Her voice choked off with a strangled click.

  “Yes?” Polly said, taking another step closer to her. “You what?”

  Sandy sucked in a deep breath and held it, then let it out slowly, but the pounding pressure inside her head wouldn’t ease up. For a horrified instant, she clearly imagined what she would do to Polly if she had a knife or an axe or a gun in her hands. She had heard how mutilated Dennis Cross’ body had been, and she found herself wishing that whatever that thing was that had attacked her out at Round Top Trail, it would find its way to Polly and rip her to pieces.

  “I—I’m going upstairs to pack,” she said in a low, controlled voice. “Mr. Bishop said he’d come by to pick me up before supper.”

  With that, she squared her shoulders and walked boldly into the hallway and up the stairs to her bedroom.

  “Wait just a minute there! You can’t—” Polly said, but then she cut herself off. Anger seethed inside her, but she held it in check. There was no sense letting Sandy know anything she thought or felt. Over the years, ever since she was a little girl, living in a home with a drunk for a mother and worse for a father, Polly had learned that it didn’t pay—ever—to let anyone know what she was really feeling.

  Heaving a deep sigh, she leaned back against the counter and listened to the muffled sounds of activity coming from upstairs. She wanted more than anything to shout up to Sandy that she’d be more than happy to help her pack, and drive her over to the Bishops’ herself. She was just about to do that when something—nothing more than an indistinct blur— shifted past the darkened kitchen window.

  A sudden jolt of nervousness snapped through Polly as she went over to the window and looked outside. Night had closed down around the house, cut only by the glow of a distant streetlight. The kitchen light glazed the glass with a soft, yellow reflection, making it impossible for her to see much more than the outline of the driveway and the dark block of the adjoining garage.

  What if he’s out there now? she thought with a sudden rush of fear. What if the person who killed Dennis is after me now?

  Sweat broke out on her forehead. Her breathing came fast and light as she glanced over at the telephone, wondering if she should call the police and ask them to come by and check things out. It might be nothing at all, maybe just her own reflection shifting across the glass . . . but what if it was something?

  What if she was next on someone’s list?

  From upstairs, she could hear Sandy stomping back and forth across her bedroom floor as she packed whatever she was getting for the night.

  “Sandy . . . ?” Polly called out, surprised at how strange her voice sounded. Of course, she knew, even if Sandy could hear her, she would ignore her.

  She shifted away from the window, thinking it best not to alert whoever was out there that she suspected they were there. She crossed the floor to the phone and was reaching for it when another thought struck her.

  What if it’s the police?

  What if, ever since the night Dennis was killed, she had been under surveillance?

  What if she still was their prime suspect, and they were watching her twenty-four hours a day to see if she did anything to give herself away?

  “Oh, shit,” Polly whispered.

  She moved back to the sink, making a conscious effort to appear nonchalant to anyone who might be watching from outside. She busied herself with the dishes for a moment, then walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, turning off the kitchen light behind her. She plunked herself down on the couch and clicked on the TV with the remote control, but her mind was so filled with wondering who—if anyone—was sneaking around outside her house, that she was unable to concentrate on the show.

  A few minutes later, the glow of headlights washed across the living room wall as a car pulled into the driveway. Sandy had obviously been watching for it, and she came running down the stairs, carrying an overstuffed night bag. Without a word or even a glance at Polly, she went out the front door before Mr. Bishop had a chance to get out of his car and come up to the door.

  Polly jumped when Sandy slammed the front door shut behind her. She went over to the window and watched the car back out of the driveway and pull away. As soon as it was gone, she ran to the door and locked it. Moving quickly, she went through the rest of the house, checking the locks on all the windows and the back door. But even after all that was done, she didn’t feel safe.

  Not at all.

  She imagined that there were dully glowing eyes glaring at her from out of the darkness through every window. She wished she knew something about guns so she could load one of Mark’s rifles—just in case— but she didn’t, so even though it was much too early to go to bed, she went upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Into the Cave

  Before Mark could get a fix on the voice calling for help, it stopped, fading away like a vagrant breeze. He was fairly certain that it had sounded from up above, but there was no way he could be sure. As soon as the mountainside was silent again, he wondered if he had heard anything at all . . . or if he had, if it was Phil or some other lost hiker. Was he imagining things, or could someone be trapped somewhere underneath any of these boulders?

  Mark called out several times, but his echo was the only answer. Maybe the stress and excitement of his encounter with the beast was making him imagine things.

  Maybe he was starting to lose it.

  But of one thing he was positive: there was some kind of creature, a creature unlike anything he had ever seen or heard of in the wild before, and it was lying dead on the rocks at the base of Katherine’s Leap. And from what he could figure, it was not the same creature he had been stalking since yesterday afternoon. He was positive that one had a serious wound in the left shoulder. The only wounds on this one were the entry and exit points of the three bullets he had just fired, and none of them had been in the beast’s shoulder.

  At first, Mark couldn’t see how he was going to scale the sheer cliff to get up onto the overhanging ledge. And until he got up there, there was no telling how wide or narrow it was.

  Once again, as he had earlier that morning, he started walking back and forth at the base of the cliff, carefully examining the steep sides. Whatever else had happened, the creature had definitely attacked him from above. That had to mean, if there was a way down, there was a way up.

  The bright sky hurt his eyes as he looked up at the side of the cliff. The sun was just skimming over the angled surface of the rock. Even the tiniest bump made a shadow several inches long. With the light angled like this, Mark noticed for the first time many grooves and notches in the side of the cliff which hadn’t appeared when the rock was shrouded in shadow. They looked as if they might even provide enough of a handhold to climb, but there sure as hell was not going to be an easy way up . . . not without ropes and climbing equipment.

  Although it would be much more time-consuming, Mark knew he could hik
e around to the east side of the mountain and then scale down The Zipper to the top of Katherine’s Leap. He could mark the location below with the remains of Phil’s backpack so it would be easy enough to find from above.

  But the voice he had heard—if it had been there at all—had sounded desperate and in pain. Mark didn’t want to waste most of the day climbing around to the more accessible side of Agiochook.

  No. One way or another, he had to scale this rock wall now.

  His frustration rose steadily as he studied the narrow overhang on the cliff. Like the rest of the cliff, it was basically featureless, but the sunlight was angled just right so it illuminated a narrow channel, what mountain climbers called a chimney, running straight up to the top of Katherine’s Leap. The chimney passed within a foot or so of the right edge of the overhang. Inside the funnel of the chimney, the rock looked like it was worn much smoother than the rest of the cliff side.