The Mountain King Read online

  Inside the house, asleep on the couch with an empty beer can in one hand and the television remote control in the other, Josh O’Connell came instantly alert when he heard the sudden uproar coming from the barn. Leaping to his feet, he ran into the back entryway, grabbed his high-powered flashlight and twelve-gauge shotgun from the closet, and charged out into the night. The chilled night air made him shiver as with brisk, steady strides, he crossed the dooryard and entered the barn by the side door. The cone of light from his flashlight weaved and danced around the barn, illuminating the rising cloud of yellow dust and hay chaff that hung suspended in the air, looking like thick, sulfurous smoke.

  “Just what the fuck’s going on out here?” Josh shouted.

  Bracing the flashlight between his arm and chest, he checked to make sure the shotgun was loaded. He clicked off the safety and, holding the shotgun in one hand, the flashlight in the other, swept the area back and forth. His eyes blinked rapidly as he tried to pierce the cloud of dust that obscured the stalls at the far end of the barn. The cacophony of terrified animal sounds filled the barn, hurting his ears, but below that, Josh heard something else—a low, grumbling, snorting sound that reminded him of what a pig sounds like when it’s slopping down.

  At first, all Josh knew was that something was going on here. His first thought was that some kids might have tried to sneak into his barn to play a practical joke, maybe do a bit of cow-tipping, but the joke had backfired. When he finally saw the massive dark figure squatting in the calf’s stall at the far corner of the barn, his resolve suddenly wavered.

  “Jumped-up Jesus H. Christ.’”

  In spite of the chilly night, sweat broke out like dew across Josh’s forehead. The shotgun felt suddenly heavy and useless in his hand. The flashlight beam wavered as he pointed it at the dark shape, unable to believe what he was seeing. A large, dark-furred animal, looking for all the world like a huge bear, was crouching in the stall, holding the limp carcass of one of last year’s calves up to its mouth and munching on it like it was an ear of corn. From beneath low-hanging eyebrows, eyes glistened green in the glow of light as they stared back at him.

  Josh’s heart gave a quick, hard double thump in his chest as an icy ball of fear filled his stomach. A corner of his mind was telling him that this was completely crazy, that he had to be imagining this, but then the creature pulled its face away from its bloody feast and, snarling, let the carcass slide from its grip to the floor. Every muscle in Josh’s body was frozen. The pressure in his bladder grew intolerable.

  “What the fucking fuck?”

  The creature skinned back its upper lip, exposing a row of long, bloodstained teeth as it made a sharp, high barking sound. A chunk of cow flesh hanging from one corner of its mouth fell onto its blood-smeared chest.

  Josh almost dropped his flashlight as a wave of dizziness swept through him. The sudden fear of being anywhere near this beast filled him with a desire to race back to the house, but he was rooted to the spot, unable to turn and run. He couldn’t take his eyes off the creature, not even for a second. With mounting terror, he watched as the beast slowly stood up to its full height. With a blubbering snort, it spread its arms wide. Even within the spacious area of the barn, it looked huge—at least seven feet tall.

  “No ... no,” Josh whispered as he took a quick step backward toward the door. His hands were aching from the tight grips he maintained on the flashlight and shotgun. He was trying to calculate how fast he could run—and how fast this beast might be able to run—if he made a break for it, but his leg muscles wouldn’t obey the commands of his brain. At last, though, he remembered the shotgun in his hand.

  “Whatever the fuck you are,” Josh said, getting a slight grip on the situation, “you’ve done et your last cow of mine!”

  He raised the shotgun slowly so as not to spook the beast; then, squinting down the barrel, he squeezed the trigger.

  The blast of the shotgun slammed like a sledgehammer through the tumult in the barn to be followed immediately by a howl of pain and outrage. The animal’s left shoulder jerked backward as a thick splotch of blood spurted like a splash of ink into the air.

  Josh almost dropped the flashlight as he crouched down and fumbled to pump another shell into the chamber. His body was trembling uncontrollably. He was afraid that he had already pissed his pants, but he was determined to fight and not run unless it was absolutely necessary. To his amazement, the wounded animal didn’t charge. Instead, it looked down at its wounded shoulder, grunted softly, almost pitifully as it touched the wound, and then wheeled around and bolted out through the hole it had made in the back of the barn.

  Knowing that the creature was wounded and no doubt dangerous, Josh waited until he was sure it was gone before he cautiously approached the dead calf’s stall. His stomach did a sour flip when he saw what was left of the calf. Broken ribs surrounded by tangled shreds of bloody meat glistened wetly in the glow of the flashlight. The floor of the stall was slick with dark, fresh blood. The calf’s eyes were wide open and glistening like wet marbles that stared sightlessly up at the dark corners of the barn ceiling.

  Choking back a rush of vomit, Josh stepped over the calf’s carcass and outside through the opening in the barn wall. For a moment or two, he saw nothing as he swept the field with the beam of his flashlight. Then, far out across the field, down by the woods that lined the south creek, he saw a black silhouette moving silently toward the trees. Whatever it was, it walked with a curious, off-balance gait. Josh hoped that he had wounded the creature seriously, perhaps fatally. The night wind carried a faint echo of the animal’s pained howl.

  “Yeah, God damn yah! That’ll teach yah, yah bas-turd!”

  But Josh felt no desire to go after the animal.

  Let it die in the forest, alone and in pain, he thought. Without even aiming, he cracked off another shot in the general direction the animal had taken, but by then the creature—whatever the hell it was— had disappeared into the forest. The echo of the shotgun blast rolled down into the valley and faded away.

  The cows in the barn were still terrified, stomping and bellowing in their stalls, but those sounds soon faded, too.

  Once the peace of night had settled back down over the farm, Josh decided to leave everything just as it was. He ran as fast as he could back up to the house, intent on reporting this to the police immediately.

  Chapter Eight

  Delays

  Mark was scheduled to start two weeks of night-shift work at the paper mill on Monday, but as soon as he was out of bed around noontime, he called Sam Barker, his department supervisor, to tell him what had happened over the weekend. Mark left out any mention of the “creature” he had seen—or thought he had seen—carry Phil off, but he insisted that Sam could contact the hospital emergency room for corroboration of his story. Sam told him it wasn’t necessary and mentioned that since yesterday afternoon he had heard about Phil being missing from at least six other people. He told Mark not to worry, that he could take the whole week off if he needed to. Mark thanked him and hung up.

  Even after nearly twelve hours of sleep, however, Mark still didn’t feel all that rested. His sleep had been so haunted by twisted fragments of what had happened up on the mountain that everything had taken on disorientingly surreal overtones. Doubts and strange imaginings were so mixed up with fact that he was no longer sure what was or wasn’t real. All he knew for sure was that one of his closest friends was missing and presumed dead somewhere on Mount Agiochook.

  Sandy had left for school hours ago, and Polly was off to work at the hairdressers in town by the time Mark, wearing only a T-shirt and underpants, lumbered down the stairs and into the kitchen. He sighed heavily as he ran his hands over his face, trying to focus on something simple, like scrambling a couple of eggs or getting a pot of coffee started. But his mind was totally preoccupied with wondering what had happened to Phil, and what Guy LaBrea and the other authorities were planning to do about it. He wasn’t even aware tha
t he had taken a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator and a glass from the cupboard, and had started to pour juice, overflowing the glass until the splattering sound of liquid hitting the floor drew his attention.

  “Ahh, shit!”

  He grabbed a handful of paper towels and started sopping up the mess, but by then, the mere thought of anything—juice or eggs or coffee—hitting his stomach filled him with a squeezing nausea. Swearing under his breath, he threw the wet, wadded-up paper towels into the trash. Staring ahead blankly, he emptied the glass of juice down the sink.

  “Damn it all! God damn it all! I’ve got to do something,” he whispered as he began pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor. His bare feet squeaked every time he turned on the slick linoleum. “I can’t just hang around the house all week, waiting for something to happen!”

  Pale sunlight angled through the kitchen window, glinting like white fire off the faucet and sink. Mark paused in his pacing, leaned over the sink, and looked out at the sunny afternoon. The world looked fresh and clean, rejuvenated. The maple trees in the front yard had already started to turn color. A hushed peacefulness had settled over the street.

  It seemed odd, almost impossible that just two days ago it had been snowing up on the mountain. Mark shivered with the memory of how cold it had been up there. His shoulders hunched up as he remembered the stinging pellets of ice and snow—his and Phil’s desperate scramble across ice-slick rocks—huddling for protection under the spread-open tent—the low, whistling howl of the storm wind—and that deeper, rumbling growl that had been ...

  —been what?

  That creature?

  Mark clenched both hands into fists but stopped himself from punching anything. Instead, he sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and just stood there, trembling as he fought to regain control. Worrying and getting angry wasn’t going to solve a goddamned thing—least of all what to do about finding out what had happened to Phil.

  Mark turned on the faucet and ran the water until it was lukewarm, then splashed several handfuls of water onto his face. It stung his eyes. Sputtering, he grabbed a dishtowel and dried his face, rubbing so vigorously that he took off at least a couple of layers of skin. Agitation swelled up inside him like thick, black poison, making his stomach do sour little flips.

  At last, convinced that he had to do something right now, he looked up the number for the police station in the phone book and picked up the kitchen phone to dial. On the third ring, the dispatcher answered and immediately put him through to Chief LaBrea.

  “Hey, Mark ... I was just about to give you a call.”

  “Anything happening yet?”

  After an uncomfortable pause, Guy answered, “Well, no. Nothing about Phil, anyway. Haven’t really had a chance. I tell you, I’ve been busier than a three-balled bull in heat. Last night ‘round nine o’clock, a semi jackknifed out on 26. Then, a little after midnight, just as we were getting that mess cleaned up, we got a call from Josh O’Connell out by your way, on Spruce Mountain Road. He was all worked up with some harebrained story about how a bear or some damned thing got into his barn and killed one of his prize calves.”

  “A bear . . . ?” Mark said, mostly to himself.

  “Hell, Josh was going on and on about how he took a couple of shots at this—this thing. He thinks he wounded it, but it ran off, he says; and get this, on two legs, he says, like it was some kind of bear or ape or something.”

  “You know,” Mark said, “O’Connell’s farm borders the National Forest.”

  Mark knew that, at least as the crow flies, Josh’s farm wasn’t more than a couple of miles from where he had been camping the night before, when that creature had attacked him. He decided not to remind Guy of his own harebrained story.

  “Yeah, well, I went out there and checked it out,” LaBrea went on. “There certainly was a lot of blood, and there were some rather unusual looking tracks out behind in the pasture; but to tell you the truth, I suspect Josh has been hitting the sauce again, ever since his old lady up and left him—again. I’ll bet he’s just digging up that crazy-assed werewolf scare they had over there in Cooper Falls—what was it? Some fifteen years ago.”

  Mark decided to let Josh O’Connell and his problems slide for now and asked, “So when do you think you can get a search party organized?” He used a clipped, businesslike tone of voice to help keep some of his more unnerving thoughts at bay. He realized that he should show at least a modicum of concern for how hard LaBrea had been working, but he was already feeling defensive, suspecting that there would be a long bureaucratic delay before anything was done about trying to find out what had happened to Phil.

  “First thing this morning, I put a call in to Fred Gibbons at the Forestry Department,” LaBrea said. “I—Hold on. Let me check my messages. Nope. He hasn’t called back yet. I’ll give him a follow-up call.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  LaBrea snorted with laughter and replied, “Yeah, you could get the town council to increase my damned budget so I could hire me a few more officers. I can’t do shit with the manpower I have.”

  “If it would help, I could drive over and talk to Gibbons myself,” Mark said.

  “I don’t see where that would do any—”

  “It sure as hell would if it got some men out there on the mountain in an hour or so,” Mark snapped. He tried to block out the corner of his mind that was whispering that, even if Phil had survived the fall down The Zipper, and even if he had been able to last through two nights of below-freezing temperatures up there on the bare mountain, he probably wasn’t going to last much longer, not without food and water.

  “I was going to say I don’t see where that would do any harm,” LaBrea said softly. “Look, Mark, I know you’re really upset about what happened up there, but God’s honest truth, you know and I know that you can’t take it personally. It was an accident, all right?”

  “Yeah, but I—”

  “I know that cliff. I’ve been up there, and the only thing you would have accomplished if you had tried to get down there to help him would’ve been to get yourself killed, too.”

  Mark took a steadying breath and said softly, “We don’t know for sure that he’s dead.”

  “But the odds are—”

  “Yeah, I know what the odds are, but I’ve got a gut feeling that Phil isn’t dead. Look, I—I’m not sure what the hell I saw, okay, but it looked to me like someone picked him up and carried him off. And if that someone is helping him, maybe brought him down a different trail, if we go back up there we might find some tracks or something that’ll help us figure out where the hell he is.”

  There was a brief silence at the other end of the line; then LaBrea said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you drive on out and talk to Gibbons. You know where the department station is, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Maybe, if you’re feeling up to it, Gibbons can get a couple of guys to go up there with you.”

  The thought of going back up on Agiochook so soon sent a chill through Mark. After the ordeal of getting off the mountain alone and fending off— whatever it was that had attacked him at his campfire—he wasn’t so sure he had the strength or desire to go hiking. But LaBrea’s suggestion sent a clear message that he didn’t have the time or the manpower right now to get things going himself.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure,” Mark said. “As soon as I get something to eat, I’ll drive over there. In the meantime, if you talk to Gibbons, fill him in on what’s happening.”

  “No problem there,” LaBrea replied. “Right now I’m going to head home and grab a bit of shut-eye myself. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Sure thing. Thanks, Guy.”

  With that, Mark hung up. He knew by the cold emptiness in his stomach that he should eat something, but he was too nerved up. His stomach felt like a clenched fist. He ran upstairs, took a quick shower, threw on some fresh clothes, and went out to his Jeep. Half an hour later, he was sitting in Gib
bons’ office, trying his best to explain why, if it was already too late today, the Forestry Department had to have a search party organized and ready to go up Agiochook first thing in the morning.

  Chapter Nine

  The Search Begins

  Before dawn the next day, Mark drove his Jeep out to the base of the Wheaton Trail to meet Wally Doyle and John Sykes, two rangers from the State Forestry Department who were going to climb Mount Agiochook with him. Due to the heavy overcast, there was no true dawn that morning; the sky simply lightened from black to battleship gray. Before the Forestry Department launched a massive—and expensive—wide-sweep search for the missing man, Gibbons had opted to send a few men up to spend a day or two searching the area around The Zipper. Then, if they came up empty-handed, a more detailed search party would head out.

  Because the weather might turn bad, or some other unforeseen situation might arise, all three men were packing heavy clothing and enough food and equipment for five days and four nights. Also, Mark was carrying a medical kit and extra rations, in case they found Phil alive. Doyle and Sykes each carried small radios with which they could call for an evacuation helicopter, in case they did find Phil’s body. Although Mark tried to keep the thought at bay, finding Phil’s body was the most likely event.