Nightmare Country (28 page)

He moved toward the light at the end of the tunnel. There was rock down in several places here, and a good pile of rubble at the end. But no lanterns left behind. Just a shovel leaning against a wall. No dust on the scant air. Things seemed stabilized and would have seemed normal if not for the dull light coming from a fair-sized crack in the wall above a jumble of rock and dirt. And if not for the funny airy hum coming from the same direction. Russ spit out the broken toothpick and wiped his mouth on his jacket cuff.

He crawled over the pile of rubble to peer through the crack, and saw what looked to be a lighted room with a large metal object in its center. The object was encased in glass or clear plastic. And it was shiny, just like his underground manager had said.

Now, who would bring something like that inside the mountain, and how? The air seemed fresher up next to the crack than it was back away from it. Could there be an entrance to the center of the mountain that he didn't know about? He stuck his hand into the crack and accidentally knocked some dirt out on the other side. Russ reached for the shovel and poked carefully along the opening, watching for signs of a more general cave-in.

“B & H leases this mountain,” he fought it out with his good sense. The crack widened. The roof didn't fall in on him. “And I am the company's representative here.”

He had a hole big enough to crawl through, and still the roof hadn't caved in. “It is my duty to investigate anything funny going on concerning the company's interests in Iron Mountain.”

He set down the shovel, turned off his lantern. There was plenty of light without it now. He stared at the hole, and before his good sense could talk him out of it, Russel Burnham made a dive for the opening.

The floor on the other side was lower, and the limestone here looked cut, laid, and polished. He worked his feet through and righted himself in a tumble of panic, half-expecting someone or something to rush him. But the room was empty. Just Russ and the large metal object. There were steps leading up to it. Although there was plenty of light below, the ceiling was lost in darkness. The air was cold, faintly fresh. The cave smell of the tunnels was gone. A different smell here. He couldn't place it.

Keeping his back to the wall, he circled the metal object in the center of the room. There was absolutely nothing else in there with them. When he reached the hole he'd made, he put a hand up into it for reassurance, but kept an eye cocked at the thing on top of the steps.

That sound like rushing air was coming either from the thing or from something on the ceiling Russ couldn't see. He could always go back and get Johnson, he decided. Now, Darrell Johnson was levelheaded enough, stolid, dependable, unimaginative.

“I oughta go back and get Darrell,” he said even as he moved toward the center of the room.

He put his foot up on the first step. Nothing happened. The thing did look like a machine of some kind. And there was an indentation in it like Baggette reported. It could fit a human body of almost any shape, it was so nebulous. But that didn't mean that's what it was meant to do. Russ took another step, and a section of the see-through casing (too clear for plastic, too thin for glass) parted noiselessly along a crack, which hadn't been there before, to make an opening about the size of a high doorway.

“Holy shit!” And Russ was off the stairs and back to the hole to the tunnels practically before he'd had a chance to think about it.

The doorway remained. What could the damn thing be for, anyway? He circled the room again, inched his way back toward the steps. He couldn't see anything on them to activate the opening of the shield or whatever it was. He stepped onto the second step again to see if the doorway would close, but nothing happened. The third and last step brought no change either.

The doorway lurked before Russ like a trap. “I ain't that dumb.”

Someone came in here regularly to dust, that was certain. The place was surgically clean except for the pile of dirt he'd knocked in while making the hole larger.

This setup must be for some kind of criminal purpose. But what, he couldn't imagine. He pulled out his pocketknife and tossed it through the opening. It lay unharmed on the shiny aluminumlike floor of the machine.

Russ watched his pocketknife for a while and then threw in his helmet. Again nothing reacted. He put his hand into the opening, and when he was able to withdraw it without mishap, he tossed in his jacket. He knew he was playing with fire, but he couldn't help it. He was able to hook the jacket around the helmet and pull them out.

He knelt in the doorway and leaned into the machine, expecting it to try to close up on him, trap him. Like he used a good lure to trap animals on the family farm in Nebraska. He could remember a few getting caught, with the trapdoor snapping shut on their middles.

The knife was situated so that Russ had to crawl forward to reach it, and only his feet and ankles were outside the doorway. Why put a trap in the center of a mountain where nobody came? He grabbed the knife and stood so suddenly that he forgot and brought his feet inside rather than backing out and onto them. Panic took his breath away when he realized what he'd done.

But the doorway remained open for him to pass through. No hole opened in the floor to swallow him up, no blade dropped from above to pin him. None of the worries that came upon him in that instant of panic materialized. He walked out and down the steps unscathed.

Shivering from the coating of sudden sweat that had sprung out everywhere in reaction to his crazy fantasies, Russ groaned a halfhearted chuckle. He'd never claimed to possess great intelligence.

His hand was still in his pocket, replacing the rescued knife, and he was over halfway to the hole that led to the tunnels, with his back to the machine for the first time since he'd entered the room, when the machine made a noise. The light on the wall in front of him blinked. He turned, to see the cylindrical metal object revolving slowly inside its clear casing. It would have been a perfect cylinder if not for the curved-in place.

It revolved more rapidly and the light flickered instead of blinked, and Russ watched his jacket billow toward it, felt something tugging at his helmet, and watched it fly through the doorway and attach itself to the indented place in the cylinder. His short hair stood up and bent in the same direction.

All his commands to his body to run for the escape hole went unheeded as Russ was sucked across the room, up the steps, and into the swirling cylinder, along with the dirt he'd knocked into the room. He was barely able to turn so that his back pressed into the depression that could have been meant to fit a human body. The pressure flattened him into it, increased as the spinning speeded up.

The whirring sound revved itself into a scream. The hole to the tunnels stretched into a black band that appeared to circle the room. The only other time Russ had been too shocked and overcome to swear at himself was when he'd been in an automobile accident. The suddenness and complete loss of control over his environment had been the same. He'd expected to die then, as he did now. He melted into the cylinder, his body feeling like jelly, and the cylinder spun so fast on screaming air that it no longer seemed like movement, and against all reason, he could see the circular room. Russ felt amazingly comfortable, lulled and floating.

Russ floated over a wooden building, the size of a small warehouse, with a tar-paper roof. It had an attached dock area next to a set of railroad tracks, and a man in tan pants with only red long underwear above hoisted a block of ice over his shoulder with giant tongs and walked down some steps. The old-timer with the five-foot stride. A white horse, spotted, with heavy legs and matted mane, pulled a wagon out of the three-hundred-foot portal and along the tracks to the old crusher building Russ had seen only in pictures. The wagon was loaded with limestone. The man on the wagon seat lifted his hat to the man with the ice. Neither of them paid any attention to Russ.

“Malfunction, malfunction,” a calm voice repeated mechanically in his head. “Malfunction, mal—”

“Primitive in the funnel,” another voice said, and Russ was spinning with the cylinder once more. “Full body …” and there followed a series of word sounds that meant nothing to Russ.

The room turned a deep green. Russ glimpsed a gorgeous blue sea and a beach of white through a veil of leaves. Except for the slight movement of the leaves, it looked like a postcard picture.

29

Jerusha Fistler sent word by way of Vinnie that the cereus would bloom that night and everyone was to bring a hot dish and come to a potluck dinner party to last until all the blossoms had opened. The Whelans were having breakfast when Vinnie dropped her little bomb and then rushed off to tell others.

“Will we have time to make something after school?” Adrian carried her cereal bowl to the sink. “Want me to get some stuff out of the freezer?”

“No, because we aren't going. There's no reason why we have to jump every time that woman—” Tamara pretended to choke on her coffee to hide her shock. Her fantasy life was getting out of control. She thought she saw Backra standing by the gold brocaded couch.

“But it'll be fun. I haven't been to a party in years.”

“Adrian, I resent your constant refusal to listen to me. I'm not trying to be unreasonable, but I am responsible for—”

“Well, you are unreasonable. The whole town's going to be there. All the kids who live here. Jerusha says there's some long folding tables in one of the empty apartments she's going to clean up and put in her place. All of Iron Mountain will be having a party next door, and—”

“I don't trust that woman. She's up to something. A lot of people feel that way about her, and I doubt there'll be many there.”

“I'm going, Mom, with or without you.” Adrian looked pensive and then turned to walk past where Backra had stood. He had vanished.

The children were still out on the playground before school started, when Saul Baggette walked into the classroom. He was Will and Nate's dad and he and his wife had become a little more friendly since school started. Saul was young, bearded, with the sad deep-set eyes of a poet and the solid body of a workingman.

“We was just wondering if you might have seen Russ around … last night maybe? Or this morning? Fred didn't see him when he went off duty, and I wasn't supposed to let the men in the mine until me and him checked out a cave-in. Thought maybe he'd said something to you or …”

“Saul, I haven't seen him to speak to in several days.” There was apparently some talk around concerning the mine manager and the schoolteacher on their off-duty hours.

“Not like him to go off without leaving a message. But his pickup's gone. We don't know whether to send the men on home or …”

“He could have gone into Cheyenne and been delayed.”

“Yeah, I guess … Well, thanks.” But he hesitated at the door. “It's just that the lower portal doors're unlocked, and I saw Russ lock 'em myself yesterday.”

“What if he went in to check on the cave-in and got in trouble?” But then, why would his pickup be gone? “Have you asked Augie if—?”

“Augie's one too. But his pickup's still here. Thought maybe he went with Russ.” Saul shrugged and reached for the door. “Suppose we'll see you at the party tonight,” he said somewhat reluctantly, and left.

Tamara was surprised the Baggettes were going to Jerusha's party. She'd never known them to exchange visits before. Over the lunch recess she went out onto the playground to enjoy some sun and saw the miners' vehicles pass the school. Darrell Johnson, Larry's father, walked down the road carrying his metal lunch pail.

“No sign of Russ yet?”

“Naw. Sent the men on home. Just not like him to …”

“Has anyone checked inside the mountain?”

“Me and Saul just got done doing that. Called. Took us hours. Searched every last tunnel.” Darrell Johnson's eyes slid away from hers.

“Do you think you should report him missing to the county sheriff?”

“Already called the company office in Cheyenne. Might just be stuck with a broke truck someplace. If he don't show up by the time of the party, I'll call somebody. See ya tonight.” He walked off. So the Johnsons were going too. If enough people went, Jerusha couldn't very well do anything.

By the end of the school day, and after listening to her students' excitement about the party, Tamara relented and helped Adrian concoct a hamburger-and-macaroni casserole.

“I do love you,” she said wearily as they worked side by side.

“I love you too, Mom. More than anybody. That's why … Just remember that, no matter what, okay?”

“No matter
what
what? Adrian, you're not getting involved in Jerusha's experiments or anything?”

“I meant, no matter … no matter what I say when I mouth off and say mean things.”

“Oh, honey, I understand.” They hugged each other. “Actually, we're doing better in this awful place than I thought we would.” But when Tamara tried to turn back to the casserole, her daughter clung to her so tightly she couldn't move.

The main room in Jerusha's part of the duplex was filled with two long folding tables covered with cheap paper tablecloths. In the center of each, a dried-weed arrangement and candles stuck in old wine bottles. Balloons hung from streamers that were already wilting in the false, vaporized-induced climate. And everybody was there. Everybody except Russ Burnham. Even baby Ruthie squealed and drooled in a much-used playpen in the corner.

But to Tamara the most pervasive impression was that made by the vine. Its luxuriant growth was out-of-place in the dingy room and the dry climate in winter. And the scent of the white buds sprouting on it overcame that of the food she and the other women were arranging buffet-style on Jerusha's kitchen table, of the beer and assorted booze being sloshed and served by the sink, and even of Deloris Hope's perfume. The sickly, exotic scent of overripe fruit and gardenia and lemon made her see again the snake coil about Thad Backra's shoulders, and she drew in her breath with a shudder.