The Mountain King Page 4

  “Oh, Mark!” Polly said. “You don’t know how worried I’ve been, wondering when you were going to call. I’ve been waiting all afternoon for you to call from New Hampshire.” Frowning, she stared back and forth between the two men. “Is something the matter?” She looked past them, out the window toward the driveway.

  Mark frowned deeply, then hiked his thumb toward the kitchen window. “Dennis Cross was just leaving when we drove up.”

  “Yeah, he—uh, he stopped by on his way to work. God, Mark! I was worried sick when you didn’t call this afternoon. Guy. Why are you here? Has there been any trouble?”

  Mark sighed heavily as the accumulated fatigue of an entire night without sleep dropped onto him like a hammer. His legs suddenly felt unable to support him. He nodded slowly. “Yeah—Phil got hurt up on the mountain yesterday.”

  “Jesus, is he all right?”

  Mark shook his head. “No. I don’t know. He got lost. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Oh, my God!” Polly said, taking a backward step and leaning against the counter for support. Mark thought her reaction seemed just a bit exaggerated, but he didn’t say anything. He was ready to collapse, and all he could think about was how incredibly nice a hot shower and then bed were going to feel. He was about to thank Guy and excuse himself when the kitchen door burst open, and Sandy walked into the kitchen. Her jacket was draped over her arm, and her book bag was slung over one shoulder. She stood in the doorway a moment, panting heavily. Sweat darkened the ringlets of hair above her forehead.

  “Hello there, beautiful,” Mark said, moving over to her and giving her a big hug. “Who you running from?”

  “Huh? Oh, no—no one,” Sandy said. “I saw the cop car out front and sort of panicked, I guess.”

  Her eyes danced from side to side as she looked at her father’s face close up. Her lower lip was trembling as she opened her mouth as if to say something else, but words wouldn’t come.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Mark asked, sudden concern darkening his brow.

  Sandy bit her lower lip and nodded once, quickly. “Yeah. Sure. I was going to ... I was just heading back from Karen’s house, and I . . . Dad, we have to talk.”

  “Not right now, sugar-babe,” Mark said, letting his shoulders drop wearily. “I’ve got to get some shut-eye before I fall apart.”

  He took a shuddering breath and let his head drop. His eyelids felt as though heavy weights had been suspended from them. Dark, swirling waves were crashing inside his head, tugging at him, threatening to pull him under even as he stood there, staring blankly at his daughter.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said. His voice was no more than a whisper. “I’d better get upstairs. See you in the morning, all right?” He started out of the kitchen, then stopped and looked back at Guy. “Oh, and thanks for the help.”

  “No sweat,” Guy replied as he carefully placed the backpack down on the floor.

  “Let me know when you hear from Gibbons, all right?” Mark said as he walked into the hallway toward the stairs. His feet dragged heavily on the floor.

  “I swear to God, if you don’t follow up on this, I’m gonna go back up there myself and find him.”

  “You just get some rest for now,” Guy said. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

  “You bet the Christ I will!”

  Chapter Six

  Night Sweat

  Mark awoke with a cry and found himself sitting up in bed with his hands clutched like claws in front of his face. His eyes were wide open, and his gaze frantically darted around the darkened room, seeking something to anchor onto. A thin line of silver moonlight that edged the window shade drew his attention.

  “Huh? What is it?”

  Polly’s sleepy voice drifted to him from the darkness like a soft, feathery touch.

  “—you awright?”

  Mark’s throat felt scorched. He couldn’t take a deep enough breath to speak. Cold sweat bathed his face and neck, making him shiver violently. Although he realized—now—that he was wide awake in his bedroom at home, the nightmare he had just wrenched himself out of still clung to his awareness and wouldn’t let go. He sighed heavily and closed his eyes, trying to shut off the terrifying flood of images that filled his mind, but that only made them worse; they swept across his mind’s eye like a fast-moving storm cloud. ...

  Phil Sawyer was dead at the bottom of a cliff that telescoped dizzily in and out. The friction of his rapid slide down the cliff had ripped off most of his clothes, so his battered, nearly naked body lay on the rocks spread-eagled, half buried in a snowdrift. His skin was nearly as white as the snow that covered him. His empty, sightless eyes, glassy with dead, black centers, stared up at a twisting, steel-gray sky. A tight grimace exposed large, flat teeth.

  Somehow, Mark found himself hovering high above the scene, circling like a hunting hawk as he watched a dark, monstrous black shape resolve from the gloom that surrounded Phil. There was a brief impression that the creature had simply materialized out of the smooth stone side of the cliff, large and powerful, with rounded, thick-muscled shoulders that were covered with a thick mat of dark fur. It looked almost as if one of the many granite boulders on the mountainside had suddenly sprung to life.

  Mark stared down from an incredible height at the creature. His throat was paralyzed. He was unable to scream or make even the tiniest of sounds as he watched, horrified, as the creature raised the dead man from the ground and, supporting him from behind, placed its huge, clawed fingers on either side of the dead man’s bare chest. Then the creature—whatever it was—began to bend Phil backwards, continuing to apply steady pressure until ribs started to crack. Splintering bones sounded like a string of exploding firecrackers as Phil’s torso was split open like a plump, ripe fruit. Uttering low growls of pure bestial pleasure, the creature stuck one hand into the gaping hole in Phil’s body and fished around until it yanked free a fistful of dripping red guts. With a deep sigh that sounded almost sexual in its release, the creature stuffed the steaming gobs of organs into its mouth and began to chew noisily. Thick, bloody chunks of tangled meat fell to the ground with a sickening wet sound.

  Then Mark’s perspective in the dream suddenly shifted.

  With steadily mounting terror, he watched as he started spiraling downward, closer . . . ever closer to this horrible scene. He felt a dark, sickening rush of vertigo. After a moment, the creature sensed him and, snorting viciously, looked up at him. When it saw him, a wide smile spread across its gore-stained face. Mark was falling with steadily increasing velocity. His arms flapped helplessly as he stared down into eyes that burned with a cold, animal fury... and intelligence. The creature raised its arms as though to catch him, but just before he fell into the creature’s waiting embrace, Mark’s terror—at last—became too sharp, too keen to bottle up inside. He found the strength to scream, and he woke up just as he realized the creature’s blood-streaked face was that of Dennis Cross.

  “Yeah,” Mark said, gasping. “Yeah, I—I’m all right.” He swept the blankets aside and swung his feet to the floor. A chill danced up the backs of his legs to his shoulder blades. Every breath he took came in a raw, watery gasp. His pulse was pounding heavily in his ears, throbbing as if someone had a hold on his neck and was squeezing.

  “It was just a ... just a dream.”

  “Umm,” Polly said. She rolled over and pulled the blankets up over her head.

  Mark took a deep breath to steady himself, but the cold rush of fear, and the impression that he was still falling, plummeting downward, gripped him as he looked around the darkened room. He wanted to get up and go into the bathroom for a drink of water, but he was afraid that his legs wouldn’t be strong enough to support him. Every muscle in his body was wire-tight and trembling. He shifted forward as if to stand, but then dropped back down on the edge of the bed. Pressing both hands hard against the sides of his face, he breathed into his cupped hands and listened to the thin rattle.

  “Stop it! J
esus Christ! Just stop it!”

  But even his own voice, rasping in the dark, set his nerves on edge. Dream images mingled in his mind with memories of what had really happened up there on the mountain until he was no longer sure exactly what he had seen.

  Could there really be some kind of creature up there? Something like a Bigfoot or whatever?

  It seemed impossible ... a figment of his over-stressed imagination. He knew rationally that there could be no such thing, but if that wasn’t the case, what in the hell had he seen? How could he verify what he had experienced?

  The only sure thing was his conviction that his friend, Phil Sawyer, must be dead by now up there on Agiochook.

  “Polly . . . can we . . . talk?”

  Polly’s only answer was the steady rhythm of her breathing as she slept . . . or feigned sleeping, Mark thought with a warm flush of anger.

  He wanted to nudge her to wakefulness, but another wave of black terror washed over him, paralyzing him. His chest ached, his heart thudded against his ribs. He was burning to take just one deep breath, but couldn’t. The night closed around him, pressing in from all sides with a steadily rising pressure. His hammering pulse throbbed in his throat so hard he thought he might choke.

  “Polly!”

  His voice sounded strained and oddly distant to his ears, and that only increased his rising panic.

  “Oh, shit!—Jesus!—Shit!... Polly!”

  “Ummm . . . wha—?”

  “Polly, I . . .”

  Before he could say anything more, he twisted around and reached for her, practically lunging at her in the dark.

  “Mark! For Christ’s sake! I was sound asleep!”

  “Polly, I’m really freaking out!” he blurted, his voice nearly breaking on every syllable. “I—I’ve got to talk to you!”

  There was a rustle of sheets as Polly rolled over to face him. Unseen in the dark, her hand reached out, touched his sweat-slick shoulder, and began to rub in small circles.

  “You feel cold as death.”

  Mark shifted his position so he could wrap his arms around her, clinging to her with a desperate strength that made him tremble. He was close to tears but fought them back.

  “No, it’s just that . . . after what happened ... up there on the mountain ... it was so ... so ...”

  He took a shuddering breath.

  “I’ve never been that scared before in my life!”

  “I know, I know,” Polly whispered, her mouth so close to his ear he could feel the warmth of her breath. “It must have been terrible. I was worried, too, waiting all day for you to call.”

  Mark held her tightly and buried his face in the crook of her neck. Unable to hold back any longer, he let the warm tears flood from his eyes. His shoulders shook as deep sobs racked his body.

  “It’s late, honey,” Polly whispered as her hand continued to make lazy circles on his sweat-filmed back. “And I’m beat. Can this wait till morning?... Huh?”

  Mark tried to answer, but the cold, lifeless fingers he felt wrapped around his throat were tightening. Waves of panic swept through him, each one stronger than the last. Spiraling circles of light flashed across his vision, blinding him as he tried to sink down into the warmth of his wife’s embrace.

  But as much as he tried to feel safe and secure, he also sensed the vast distance that separated them. Perhaps it was just from the stress of what he had been through over the past few days. Perhaps it was the residue of his dream and the horrible monster he had created using Dennis Cross’s face. Or maybe it was the surge of suspicion he had felt when he had seen Dennis’s car in his driveway, a suspicion that he had felt before but had tried his best to block out and deny.

  Or maybe it was something else entirely.

  All he knew right now was that, even in the arms of his wife, he felt as lonely and lost as an abandoned child. He knew that neither Polly nor anyone else would ever be able to fill the deep, hollow hurt inside him.

  “No, I . . . I . . .” he said, but then his voice trailed off as he rolled away from Polly. Her hand dropped to the mattress, and almost instantly her breathing resumed the deep, steady rhythm of sleep.

  A stinging loneliness filled Mark. Tears streamed from his eyes and soaked into his pillow. After a moment, he closed his eyes and prayed to relax, but he couldn’t get rid of the thought that, like Phil, he had been crippled and left for dead at the top of a rocky, windswept mountain. Through his seemingly bottomless misery, he had only one clear thought, one faint spark that held his attention as he lay there trembling in the dark.

  I have to do something about it!

  Even if it’s as little a thing as going to visit Phil’s wife tomorrow morning, or as big as packing up a week’s worth of supplies and heading up to the mountain and staying there until I find him, I have to do something!

  Chapter Seven

  Mutilations

  The night was clear and cold. A fingernail slip of moon rode high in the western sky, lining the distant jagged edge of the White Mountains with faint silver. Dusty stars sprinkled the sky like powder on blue velvet as a brisk wind shifted across the land from the north, bringing with it the promise of approaching winter.

  Within the silent shadows of the woods that bounded Josh O’Connell’s seventy-five-acre farm, a large shadow moved with surprisingly fluid ease along a hidden forest trail. It made almost no sound other than a near constant sniffing as it tested the wind. The creature stealthily approached the edge of the forest and looked out across the open field toward O’Connell’s barn and farmhouse. Faint moonlight edged everything with silvery lines which, to the creature’s light-sensitive eyes, fairly vibrated with purple energy.

  The creature cringed back into the brush as it stared across the wide expanse of open ground. Having lived its entire life high up on the bare, rocky slopes of the mountains to the north, it was not afraid of open spaces. It felt comfortable being exposed to the wide arc of sky. But here in the lowlands, it sensed danger, and it knew caution.

  After two days of following the trail of the hairless, two-legged creature it was pursuing, the creature was hungry. Hot animal smells wafted on the night breeze to its sensitive nostrils and stirred the beast’s hunger until it became a burning craving in the pit of its belly.

  Somewhere back on the trail, just as dark was falling, it had lost the scent of the small creature it had been tracking. After leaving a clear trail the whole way down the mountain and into the forest, the tracks of the small creature had suddenly disappeared on the wide strip of trail that was as hard and unyielding as the mountaintop that was the beast’s domain. The small creature’s sickly, sour scent, spiced with fear, had been lost beneath the stinging stench of heavy smoke. The creature had no knowledge what fear was, but it knew fire and smoke well enough to respect and avoid it.

  Not having paused to eat for two days and nights, it was now nearly starving. The hollow gnawing in its stomach had replaced everything else in the creature’s mind, and the smells drifting across the field meant only one thing—food . . . hot-blooded, raw, red meat!

  After watching silently for a long time and sensing no immediate danger, the creature finally left its hiding place and shambled noiselessly across the open field, all the while sniffing the air for danger. From far off, it heard the sound of a dog barking; but the more immediate, the more demanding sound was the soft lowing of the cows inside the barn. As the heated animal smells got steadily stronger, a red haze filled the creature’s brain until, by the time it reached the back of the barn, it was nearly crazed with bloodlust.

  With a single thundering roar, the creature reared back on its hind legs and smashed both fists against the weathered side of the barn. The impact smashed the gray planks inward like they were made of balsa wood. In an instant, the night was filled with the sounds of panic-stricken animals as the creature burst through the splintered wood and roared its challenge. It smelled as much as saw the terrified cows as they stomped and bellowed frantically in thei
r stalls. Raising its clawed hands high above its head, the beast charged the nearest animal—a year-old calf. The creature smashed through the flimsy wooden barrier and, with one mighty swipe of its claws, laid open the calf’s flank and belly.

  The calf bleated, wild with pain as it staggered and fell, and its guts dropped in a wet heap onto the straw-covered floor. The calf tried to get up to run, but its feet got tangled in the uncoiling ropes of its own intestines, and it fell. Lurching to one side as its thin front legs folded up, it rolled over onto its side, all the while bleating in terror.

  Leaning forward, the creature picked up the steaming pile of organs with both hands and stuffed them into its mouth. The red haze clouding its vision began to clear as stringy meat, barely chewed, slid down its throat. Hot blood streamed from the corners of the beast’s wide mouth as it lifted the dead calf from the ground and thrust its face into the bloody gash. It made sickening slurping sounds as it feasted on the tender flesh and internal organs.