The Mountain King Page 2

Mark was still dwelling on how they would get past The Zipper, so he didn’t answer right away. He was racking his brain, trying to think of another way off this damned mountain.

  “Let’s just get down from here first,” he replied without looking back. “Then we’ll see what makes the most sense.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Phil said as soon as the narrow ledge came into view. “I forgot about this place.”

  Several feet from where the trail funneled down to

  the ledge, Mark drew to a halt and glanced back at his friend. “You aren’t intimidated by it, are you?”

  Phil smiled thinly as he studied the narrow shelf of rock they would have to cross. Altogether it was more than forty feet to the next wide-open area; at its worst, the ledge was no more than six inches wide for a stretch of more than twenty feet. A fresh coating of ice reflected sunlight that hurt the eyes if they stared at it very long.

  “And to answer your next question—” Mark said. “No. There’s no other way around it, not unless we want to backtrack for a couple of miles.”

  “Shit!”

  Both men pondered their situation in silence for a moment. Then Phil said, “Do you think the heat of the sun might melt it?”

  Mark shook his head. “Not today. Can’t be more than a couple of hours of sunlight left. Besides, we’re on the eastern side of the mountain. Sunlight won’t be hitting this ledge until tomorrow morning.”

  ‘’Shit! And shit again!” Phil said. Then, sucking in a deep breath, he added, “Well, if we’re gonna do it, let’s do it and get it the hell over with. You want me to go first?”

  Mark nodded agreement, figuring he would be of more help if he was behind Phil. In truth, he knew if either one of them went over the edge, there wouldn’t be much the other could do. Hell, in the next few minutes, they both might find out for themselves exactly what sound a hiker made while sliding straight down The Zipper.

  “Be careful now, and remember one thing,” Mark said.

  “Yeah—what’s that?”

  “If you do fall, try and look over to your right. You’ll get one hell of a great view on your way down.”

  “You’re a real laugh riot, you know that?” Phil said.

  He sucked in and held his breath, and then, keeping his face turned toward the rock wall, started inching his way out onto the ledge. The wind was strong, spinning up little tornado funnels of snow and ice. With every step he took, his feet almost slipped out from under him, but he pressed himself hard against the rock wall and kept pushing forward.

  “How’s it going?” Mark asked, careful not to sound too uptight.

  “It’s a real bitch!”

  “Well, you’re doing just fine. You’re already more than halfway past the narrowest part. Just keep close to that rock, and you’ve got it made.”

  With less than six feet to go, Mark’s worry for Phil began to subside as his worry for himself began to rise. Then, in an instant, it all changed. Like a vision from a nightmare, Mark saw Phil’s left foot slip to one side. The sudden shift of weight threw him off balance. Paralyzed by a sizzling jolt of fear, Mark watched as his friend swung around. His hands clawed viciously for something to grab on to, and he snagged a small outcropping of rock, but it gave him only a moment’s reprieve. His gloved fingers couldn’t hold. They let go, and with a single trailing shout, Phil disappeared over the edge.

  “Jesus! No! Phil!”

  Mark’s voice as well as Phil’s fading scream echoed from the surrounding mountains, but what resonated most in Mark’s ears was the harsh zip-p-p-ping sound Phil’s body made as he slid down the ice-slick cliff side. In the echoing silence that followed, Mark stared at the empty ledge, momentarily incapable of believing that his friend was gone ... just like that.

  Mark edged as close to the brink as he dared to go and looked down, but the slanting rocks blocked his view of the base of the cliff. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted, “Yo! Phil! Phil! Can you hear me?”

  No response from below. There was just the hollow moaning of the wind as it gusted around him.

  Mark knew there was a broad expanse of sloping rock ledge below The Zipper that ended with an even bigger drop-off that had been dubbed “Katherine’s Leap.” There was a story from the 1800s about a young girl who, despondent about a failed love affair, climbed up there and leapt to her death on the rocks below. The only way down to the base of The Zipper was from the bottom. Short of falling down there himself, Mark had the challenge of getting safely across The Zipper before he could climb down to check on Phil. And there was no guarantee he could make it, but he knew he had to if only so he could find out what had happened to Phil.

  Bracing himself, Mark started edging out onto the narrow rock shelf. His feet kept threatening to slip out from under him, but he choked back his fear and moved steadily toward the other side. When he was halfway across, he twisted around and looked down to see if he could catch a glimpse of Phil. He wasn’t prepared at all for what he saw.

  Thirty feet straight down, almost lost in the gray swirl of blowing and drifting snow, he saw a dark, crumpled form that had to be Phil. He wasn’t moving. Mark was about to call out to him when he saw something else—an indistinct shape that moved across the rock ledge toward the base of the cliff. Out on the exposed cliff above Katherine’s Leap, the wind was strong. It swept the newly fallen snow high into the air. At first, Mark thought he was imagining this, that what he saw was nothing more than a shadow created by the windblown snow; but then he saw that the shadow had substance, and it was moving straight across the rock-strewn ledge toward his dead or seriously injured friend. Mark almost lost his balance as he craned his head around to watch.

  “Jesus, no! No way!” he said as his view of the thing became clearer.

  For a panicked instant, he thought it might be a bear, coming to attack Phil. Then he saw that whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t any bear. It walked erect, swinging its long, thick arms at its side like a lumbering human being.

  Was this another hiker? Someone who had seen Phil fall and was coming to help?

  Mark sucked in a breath and was about to call out, but then he froze.

  No, this wasn’t a human being ... not unless it was someone dressed up in animal skins. The creature moved over the icy rocks with a surefootedness that no human hiker could ever have achieved. Even through the swirling snow, it looked large, at least six feet tall by Mark’s estimate. He only caught glimpses of it, but he noted that it was dark-skinned with a sloping forehead and backward-pointing skull. It walked with a shambling gait that reminded Mark of the way apes move.

  Swiftly and silently, the creature came over to the foot of the cliff where Phil lay. It leaned over him as though inspecting him and then, with a quick, sure motion, lifted Phil’s limp body and swung him over its shoulder. The creature glanced back and forth, sniffing the air as though sensing danger. Then it let loose a loud, echoing howl that sounded uncannily like the mournful wailing sound Mark and Phil had heard earlier. Moving with a swift, effortless stride, as though Phil’s added weight meant absolutely nothing to it, the creature shambled away and was soon lost in the blinding haze of blowing snow.

  “No! No fucking way!” Mark whispered. He shook his head as if that would help his numbed brain accept what he had just seen. His pulse was slamming like a hammer in his neck, and his entire body was trembling. He had to have imagined it all!

  After staring awhile in dazed disbelief down at the foot of the cliff where his friend should still be, he braced himself and finished making his way across The Zipper. But even after he was on relatively solid ground, he couldn’t stop trembling.

  He knew he had to move fast. If he didn’t get down off this mountain before nightfall, he would die of exposure ... or worse! He might end up another victim of whatever the hell that creature was that had just carried Phil away!

  Chapter Three

  Two-timer

  “I dunno ... I just don’t like doing it like this, you know?”r />
  “Don’t worry. It’s not your problem.”

  “Bullshit it’s not my problem! If your husband ever finds out I was here, he’ll make sure it’s my problem, all right!”

  “Yeah, sure, but he’ll never find out. Come on, Dennis! Jesus! ... Sit your butt down! Relax a little, will you? God, you make me nervous when you pace like that!”

  “I’m sorry, okay? I—I just can’t relax!”

  “How about a beer, then? Maybe that’ll help you unwind . . . unless you want a little of . . . this.”

  Even with her hands cupped over her ears, Sandy Newman wasn’t able to cut out the voices that drifted up to her bedroom from the living room. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes tightly as she cringed beneath her bed covers, trying her hardest not to think about what was going on downstairs. Of course, knowing Polly, her stepmother, as she did, it wasn’t all that hard for Sandy to imagine what was happening.

  “God damn you! God damn you both!” Sandy whispered in the darkness underneath her bedcovers.

  It was a little past nine o’clock on Saturday night, but Sandy had gone to bed early because she hadn’t been feeling all that well. Her stepmother had accused her of faking being sick so she could miss school on Monday, but that wasn’t true at all. Sandy’s senior year at high school had started just a few weeks ago and, so far, was going great. She was actively looking forward to finishing off her high school years with straight A’s so she could get into her first-choice college, either Bates or William and Mary.

  No, she really had been feeling lousy for the past three days, and right now, more than anything else, all she wanted to do was sleep.

  But the voices coming from downstairs—and what she imagined Polly meant when she said Dennis might want some of this—were keeping sleep at bay.

  “I’m telling you to forget about it, all right?”

  “Yeah, but I—”

  “Come on. Sit down on the couch next to me. Let me give you a back rub.”

  “I don’t want any goddamned back rub!”

  “Then how about a front rub?”

  “Jesus Christ, Polly, will you cut it out? Shee-it! It’s one thing to fool around a little back at my place, but

  I—I don’t know ... I mean, you really want to do it right here, right now?”

  “You got any better ideas?”

  “I dunno. I mean, in your own home—in Mark’s home? Key-rist! It—it just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Hey, let me feel it. I’ll tell you if it feels right or not.” Polly let loose a low, malevolent laugh.

  Their voices were as clear as if the two of them were standing right there in Sandy’s bedroom beside her. Sandy closed her eyes and focused on the shimmering darkness behind her eyelids, trying to shut out the voices. She desperately wanted to clear her mind, but there were just too many questions.

  Like why was her stepmother acting like such a . . . such a slut? Why had her father ever married her in the first place? Had she always been like this, or was this something new?

  As much as Sandy hated the word slut, it seemed to fit Polly perfectly.

  This certainly wasn’t the first time Sandy had suspected her stepmother of fooling around.

  Oh, no.

  She had seen the way she and Dennis Cross, the man who was downstairs with her now, acted whenever they met around town. Dennis worked at the Mobil station on the corner of Main Street and Salmon Road. Yeah, good old Dennis. All-around gas jockey and married woman’s stud. Just last week, when Sandy and Polly had driven in to the Mobil station to get some gas, Sandy had wondered why both Polly and Dennis had chuckled so hard when he asked if she wanted him to check her oil.

  While Dennis might not be as handsome as he seemed to think he was, he wasn’t exactly ugly, either; but how could her stepmother cheat on her father like this? How could she stand to be touched by those callused, work-stained hands? Had he even tried to clean the oily black rings from under his fingernails before coming over tonight?

  Other why questions filled Sandy’s mind.

  Like: Why couldn’t her father see what was going on? He certainly wasn’t stupid, but he had taken off for a weekend hike with his friend from work as if everything at home was just peachy-keen. Could he really be totally blind to it all? Or was he pretending that he didn’t see it . . . for whatever reason? Maybe he did know about it and had simply given up. After all, two failed marriages wasn’t much of a confidence builder.

  And why, Sandy thought, why did she feel so nervous, so tormented about telling her father about all of this?

  She knew she should. She knew she had to, but doubts and worries and concerns filled her. How would her dad react? Would he even believe her? They’d had more than their fair share of conversations about how he thought Sandy wasn’t giving Polly a fair break. He objected to the way Sandy treated his new wife with such cool, aloof distaste—at best.

  But what did he expect?

  Sandy’s real mother had left home when Sandy was only ten years old, and in all that time she had never called her or visited her. She might as well be dead, as far as Sandy was concerned. Maybe she was. Either way, it was the kind of loss she knew she would never get over. Things weren’t supposed to happen that way. And no matter what her father thought about his first failed marriage, Sandy wondered how he could ever expect her to accept, much less like, someone like Polly.

  And thinking of Polly, how would she react if—no, not if—when Sandy told her father what she knew?

  Would she deny it all? Would she make up some half-assed excuses? Would she break down in tears and say she was so-o-o sorry and promise never to do anything like that ever again?

  Or would she try to get even with Sandy? Maybe she’d have Dennis or someone else hurt her.

  Sandy found herself wishing—praying that her father would come home tonight—right now!—unannounced so he’d catch Polly and Dennis screwing around in the living room. That sure would make things easier. Then he’d have to deal with it!

  Once again, the discussion downstairs drew her attention.

  “Don’t worry about her, all right? She’s asleep.”

  “Yeah, but what if she can hear us?”

  “She’s asleep, I tell you.... She went to bed early, saying she was sick. And even if she isn’t asleep, so what? What’s she going to do, huh?”

  “Maybe tell her father . . . or maybe he’ll find out for himself.”

  Yes! Please, yes, God! Sandy thought, clenching her fist desperately.

  “Christ, how many times do I have to tell you this? Mark isn’t going to be home until tomorrow night. He’s going to call me when he and Phil—”

  “Phil Sawyer, right?”

  “Yeah. When he and Phil get out of the woods and find a phone booth somewhere near Gorham, New Hampshire. I have to drive out there to get him, I suppose, if Sandy’s sick. So just forget about Mark, all right? He’s a good thirty miles away from here. Come on—

  Sandy’s heart pulsed heavily in her neck, almost choking her when she distinctly heard the rustle of clothing and the rasping sound of a zipper being opened.

  “You like this ... don’t you?”

  “Ummm.”

  “Well, then ... come on. Get the rest of those clothes off and show me a little appreciation, why don’t you?”

  Sandy took a deep breath, held it a few seconds, and then let it out in a slow, rattling hiss.

  “You’ll be sorry. . .” she whispered to the close darkness under her bedcovers. “Just you wait! You’re gonnaberealsorry,you—youtwo-timinglittle ... slut!”

  Chapter Four

  Down Off the Mountain

  Flames rose like slick, orange tongues high into the night sky, but the glow of the campfire could only reach so far; beyond the sphere of light, the night curled around Mark like a dark, threatening beast. The air was numbingly cold as he sat with his back to the blaze, his every sense tuned to the brooding silence of the surrounding forest. Every vagrant breeze, every
snapping branch drew his attention. It was well past midnight, but he knew sleep wouldn’t come as he watched and waited with his camping hatchet clutched tightly in his right hand, a cold cup of coffee in his left.

  “This is ridiculous . . . absolutely fucking ridiculous!” he muttered, but he didn’t dare drop his guard even for an instant. Danger was a palpable presence, hovering all around him.

  During the torturous hike down the mountain, Mark had seriously begun to doubt what he had seen. The creature couldn’t have been what he had thought it was! Other than moose and bears, there simply weren’t any animals that big in Maine. And none of them, not even bears, wandered that high above the tree line. It was totally insane to think there might be something like a mountain gorilla or whatever on Agiochook! What he had seen must have been something else, something distorted by the snow and the glare off the ice.

  Or his panic.

  In all likelihood, it probably had been another hiker, coming to Phil’s rescue. Or else it had been Phil himself. Maybe that dark shape at the base of the cliff had been Phil’s discarded backpack, and the shambling figure had been Phil, hobbling off to find his own way off the mountain.