The Mountain King (13 page)

Chapter Twenty
 

The Wreckage 

“Please, Mr. LaBrea! You have to call off the search for my father!” 

It was early Thursday morning. Guy LaBrea was sitting at his desk when Sandy Newman burst into his office. He couldn’t hide his surprise when he saw the wadded bandage taped to her forehead. 

“Hold on a minute, now. Tell me what happened to you.” 

Sandy grimaced and said, “It’s a long story, but first of all, you have to contact all those men you have out there in the woods and tell them to stop looking for my father.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I
know
he didn’t kill Dennis Cross.” 

LaBrea stood up and casually waved Sandy over to the empty chair beside his desk. She approached it cautiously, then sat down stiffly and leaned forward with both of her hands clenched into fists in her lap. LaBrea noticed that she limped as she walked. He sat back down, trying to appear casual as he waited for her to start talking. 

“I went out to Round Top Trail yesterday afternoon,” Sandy began, her voice high and trembling. “And I saw—I think I saw what might have killed Dennis . . . maybe even Phil Sawyer, too.” 

“’What
killed them?” LaBrea said, arching one eyebrow. “You don’t mean
who,
do you?” 

Sandy bit her lower lip and shook her head as she inhaled sharply. “No. I know you’re not gonna believe me, but there’s a . . . there’s some kind of monster out there in the forest. It attacked me yesterday afternoon.” 

“Is that how you got hurt?” 

Sandy winced as she touched the edge of the bandage on her forehead. “It’s nothing serious. Just a couple of little cuts.” 

“I noticed you were limping, too,” LaBrea said. His mouth was set in a firm line as he regarded her, but his eyes were earnest and sympathetic when he said, “So tell me everything.” 

Trying to clear her mind so she could begin, Sandy took another shuddering breath, but the memory of what had happened out at the trail head still gripped her with a tightening tension. 

“I—well, I know it’s probably against the law, but I’ve been helping my father—bringing him supplies.” 

“Hold it right there!” LaBrea said. He slapped his hand down hard on his desk. The sudden sound made Sandy jump. “I hope you understand that, as of right now anyway, no one’s charged your father with any crime of any kind, all right?” 

Sandy nodded tightly. 

“I know, but there are men up there looking for him. And some of them want to kill him.” 

“No one’s gonna go killing anyone, understand? Now go on. Tell me what happened yesterday.” 

“Well—” Sandy said. She looked at him earnestly, wishing she felt she could trust him entirely, but she couldn’t dispel the suspicion that he was trying to set her up to reveal where her father was hiding. 

“Right after school yesterday, I went out to drop off some stuff for him—some clothes, food, and—uh, bullets—out at Round Top Trail. I waited around for a while, but my dad never showed up, so I—I guess I started to get pretty worried, you know? Because of all the people who were out there looking for him, and I guess I—well, I panicked a little, thinking he might have been hurt or—or something, you know? When I couldn’t take it any more, I started driving back and forth, honking my horn, hoping he’d hear it and hurry up.” 

“But he didn’t show.” 

Sandy shook her head. “No . . . but
something
did. This—this gigantic animal came out of the woods and attacked the Jeep.” 

“Animal . . . you mean like a bear?” 

“Yeah, but it seemed much bigger than a bear, and it didn’t really look like a bear. It was—I don’t know what it was. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“But you’re
sure
it wasn’t a bear?” LaBrea said. “I’m not doubting you, but you know how in a situation like that, you might not see what’s really happening. Your imagination can exaggerate things.” 

Sandy shook her head firmly. “No, I know it wasn’t a bear. I mean, I was scared and everything, but I saw it, and it didn’t look at all like a bear. It had a face that was—I know this sounds crazy, but it really looked almost human. It broke the window on the Jeep and—and tried to grab me—” 

Her voice cut off with a sharp intake of breath. 

“Hey now, take it easy, all right?” LaBrea said. “Would you like something to drink? A soda or glass of water or something?” 

“Umm. Water would be fine.” 

When LaBrea got up from his desk and walked out into the hallway, Sandy closed her eyes and tried to focus her thoughts. He returned a few seconds later with a paper cup full of water. Sandy took a sip, shivered, then cleared her throat and went on with her story. In a halting voice, she described to the police chief everything that had happened, at least as clearly as she could recall. LaBrea listened patiently, interrupting her only a few times to ask her to clarify some detail. 

“But none of the men you met—Willis or Tim or Frank—none of them mentioned seeing your wrecked Jeep back there on the road?” 

Sandy shrugged. “No. Maybe it was too dark when they passed by, or maybe it’s too far down in the gully for them to have seen it. I don’t know.” 

“What do you say you and I take a little drive out to Round Top Trail and have a look around?” LaBrea said. “If we put together what you’ve just said with some of the confusing evidence the investigators found out at your house and that complaint I got from a local farmer last weekend—well. . .” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I’m just not sure.” 

“Wha—what do you mean?” 

“Come on. Let’s take a ride. We can talk in the cruiser on the way there.” 

But they didn’t do much talking as they drove out of town and up Route 26 and into the forest. For her part, Sandy still felt suspicious of LaBrea, even though he seemed to be genuinely trying to help her. One thing that concerned her, though, was that he hadn’t done anything to call off the search parties that, she assumed, would be out again today, looking for her father. And she would have felt a whole lot more comfortable if he hadn’t had his service revolver holstered at his side. What if he was bringing her out here hoping she’d lead him straight to her father? 

“It can’t be far now,” Sandy said once they turned onto the dirt road where a sign read: “Round Top Trail—3 miles.” 

Although the sun was shining brightly, and the police cruiser’s heater was working, Sandy shivered as they drove down the narrow corridor of tall pine trees and thick brush that lined the roadside. Whenever she looked out her window, she imagined huge, hulking shadows slinking behind cover before she could focus on them. In broad daylight, the events of yesterday now seemed strangely remote, almost as if they were someone else’s memories ... or a dream she’d had. 

“I think it’s just up ahead here,” she said, sitting forward on the seat and straining against the shoulder strap. “It was dark, so I’m not exactly sure where I went off the road. I know it was on one of the hairpin turns. It will be up here on the left—Yeah! There it is!” 

LaBrea stopped along the side of the road, and they both got out of the car as the dust swirling in their wake slowly settled. 

“Whew!” LaBrea said, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm as he stood on the roadside and looked down at the wreckage. “When you go off the road, you
really
go off the road. You’re lucky you weren’t killed.” 

Sandy gave him a twisted smile but said nothing. She watched as LaBrea scrambled down the rocky embankment and approached the Jeep, which was lying on its side in the scrub brush. 

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing for sure; this baby’s totaled.” LaBrea walked around to the front of the Jeep and, bending over, looked at the underside of the vehicle. Twisted metal and broken glass were strewn everywhere. 

“What window did you say this creature of yours broke?” 

“On the passenger’s side.” 

LaBrea nodded, then after pushing against the Jeep to make sure it wouldn’t turn over on him, he climbed up onto the topside, opened the driver’s door, and lowered himself inside. As soon as he was out of sight, Sandy felt a wave of nervousness. Shivering, she cast a worried glance all around, fully expecting to see the shadows in the woods thicken and take on form and start closing in on her. 

“Wha—what are you looking for?” she called out, fighting down the tremor in her voice. She wanted only to hear LaBrea’s voice so she could get rid of the notion that she was all alone out here. 

For a moment, LaBrea didn’t reply; then he said something, but his voice was indistinct, as though he were speaking to her from the bottom of a deep well. 

“I can’t hear you,” Sandy called out as she cast another worried glance over her shoulder. She felt totally vulnerable, and was convinced that there was someone hiding in the shadows, watching her. 

LaBrea’s head popped up from inside the Jeep. “I said, it sure does look as though
something
funny happened here.” 

“It wasn’t funny to me.” 

“No, I mean—look at this!” 

Raising his hand above his head, LaBrea showed her something, but Sandy was too far away to see clearly what it was. She started down the slope as LaBrea clambered out of the Jeep and jumped down to the ground. 

“Looks to me like—well, whatever this thing you say you saw was, it scraped off a fair-sized piece of itself when it punched out your window.” 

Sandy looked at the clump of brown fur LaBrea was holding in his hand. They were both silent for several seconds, neither one knowing quite what to say. Finally, Sandy cleared her throat and said softly, “So— now do you believe me?” 

LaBrea squinted as he looked at her for a moment in silence; then he said, “Well, it sure as hell looks like you were telling the truth about this.” 

He regarded the piece of fur in his hand a moment longer, then said, “I don’t know what the hell it is or what’s going on here, but I think you might be right.” He looked for a moment at the woods surrounding them. “There might be something out there that’s responsible for what’s been happening. Let me get on the radio and see if I can cancel those search parties ... just so no one gets hurt up there today.” 

Chapter Twenty-one 

Katherine’s Leap 

Night seeped out of the sky like a dark stain fading slowly to gunmetal gray. Mark roused himself from the light doze he had slipped into, stretched his arms out in front of him, and groaned as he rubbed his eyes. A stiffening chill clung to nearly every bone and muscle as he slid out onto the rock in front of his shelter and stood up, stretching to his full height. 

The sun had not yet risen from behind the mountain, so everything around him was still locked within the gloom of night. A vagrant wind stirred the air with a numbing touch of winter. From far down the mountainside, Mark could hear the distant songs of morning birds in the forest. Tilting his head back, he sucked in a deep lungful of the frigid air and held it for a moment. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have appreciated the early morning stillness, the calm, the serenity; but today a sense of caution made him grip his rifle tightly as he swung around and let his gaze shift up the steep slope of Katherine’s Leap. 

A rumbling deep in his stomach reminded him that what he really wanted was, if not the comforts of home, at least a hearty breakfast around a roaring campfire. But his campsite was a couple of miles away, and he was heading up to Katherine’s Leap on the west side of Agiochook. A handful of trail mix and a few swallows of stale water were going to have to suffice before he started. 

The incident last night stirred in his memory as he looked up at the summit, steel-gray and foreboding in the predawn darkness. It was easy enough to think that he had imagined it all. How could anything cover that much ground in so short a time and make it halfway up the cliff side before disappearing? Whenever he was in the wilderness, Mark felt an almost surreal aspect to it, especially when he was out alone, but he also knew his mind well enough not to doubt the reality of what he had seen. He was definitely tracking something . . . something that didn’t fit very well into his conception of what should be out here. 

“And today, God damn it, I’m gonna find out what,” he said, watching his words appear as streamers of mist that instantly blew away in the cold morning air. 

He took one last swallow of water, relieved himself against a boulder, then shouldered his day pack and rifle and started out as the first traces of morning light trimmed the edge of Agiochook’s summit with white fire. 

It took him quite a while to work the morning stiffness out of his joints and muscles. Climbing in the 

shadow of the mountain, out of the warming rays of the sun, didn’t help any. He realized that the hunger, thirst, and exhaustion of the past few days were starting to take their toll on him. The experienced out-doorsman in him warned him that, no matter what else happened today, he would have to come down off the mountain soon, probably today. It didn’t matter what he had sworn to himself or to anyone else; there was no sense jeopardizing his own life on what, with each passing day, was proving to be an increasingly futile—and dangerous—mission. 

Mark tried to head straight toward Katherine’s Leap, but large rocks and deep chasms impeded his progress, making the going much tougher than he had expected. For all the times he had climbed Agiochook in his life, he had never taken the western approach. He didn’t see any more traces of the faint blood trail, but that didn’t matter; he didn’t want to waste any more precious time searching for the trail when Katherine’s Leap was his immediate goal. He was thankful that, at least so far, he hadn’t encountered any more search parties. Maybe they had realized how futile their efforts were, too. 

After an hour of climbing, Mark was starting to feel drained, both physically and mentally. Katherine’s Leap looked about as far away as it had been when he started. Looking back, he was surprised and angry at how little ground he had actually covered. 

“But I’ve covered it all with a goddamned fine-tooth comb,” he said to himself as he stared ahead at the cliff. 

It wasn’t until a little after nine o’clock that he was finally standing at the foot of Katherine’s Leap. The cliff was at least seventy-five feet high, almost straight up, and nearly twice that distance long. Above it in the powder blue sky were faint traces of fast-moving clouds, fanning out like long, smoky fingers from the east. 

At least from where he stood, the sheer rock wall looked absolutely unclimbable without ropes and pi-tons. No matter how far Mark ranged in either direction looking for any sign of blood, he didn’t see any traces. If the creature had, in fact, come this way, it must have veered off in one direction or the other. 

But which? 

Unless it had—somehow—found enough toe- and handholds to go straight up the cliff, as he thought he had seen it do last night. 

But how was that possible? 

Either way, Mark saw no point in going up the hard way. The top ledge of Katherine’s Leap was a wide, sloping stretch of rock below The Zipper. A steep but much easier climb down from there would get him to the same place—that is, if he wanted to take most of the day to hike around the side of the mountain to the eastern approach. 

In all likelihood, that creature didn’t go up there, Mark thought as he scanned the cliff side back and forth. Other than a few narrow overhangs and slanting rock shelves, the cliff, still cast in the shadow of the mountain, looked like smooth, red granite, worn to a flat gloss from centuries of harsh weather and numerous landslides, which had deposited tons of rock and rubble at its base. 

Maybe, Mark thought, last night the darkness and moonlight had played tricks on his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t actually seen the creature climbing up this cliff until it disappeared, halfway up. It made a lot more sense that it had taken some other route around the base of the cliff to ... to wherever it lived. 

But something told Mark that just wasn’t so. 

He walked back and forth among the jumble of stones at the base of the cliff, all the while looking up and searching for some place where he might find enough handholds to climb up. He had to keep looking down to watch his footing, and that was when he noticed the thin strip of bright orange cloth sticking out from underneath one of the large boulders. His breath caught in his chest as he bent down to inspect it. A shudder passed through him when he saw that it was the shoulder strap of a backpack. 

“Oh, Jesus,” Mark whispered. He knew that Phil had been carrying a brand-new Day-Glo orange backpack the day he had fallen off The Zipper. Mark had teased him about it when they had started out. 

Mark bent down and pulled on the strap, not too surprised when it didn’t slide out from beneath the rock. Leaning back, he pulled all the harder, but the strap was pinned down so tightly it barely moved from side to side. Bracing his feet on the rock, he leaned back and tugged for all he was worth, and still the strap wouldn’t pull free. 

“What the Christ!” he muttered as he put his rifle down, got onto his hands and knees, and leaned close to inspect the shoulder strap more carefully. It sure as hell looked brand-new. Of course, there was no way of knowing for certain if this was Phil’s or not, but whoever owned it and however it had come to be under this rock, it obviously hadn’t been here for very long. The nylon shell was still pliable and bright, not faded and brittle. Mark was certain the rest of the backpack was trapped beneath the rock, too; that was why he couldn’t pull it free. His problem was, the rock was too big for him to move by himself. 

A dry lump formed in his throat when he wondered,
What if the pack’s not the only thing under here?
 

What if, after falling off The Zipper, Phil had fallen off Katherine’s Leap, starting an avalanche that had completely covered him. . . .
 

What if his crushed, lifeless body is buried right here underneath this boulder?
 

Nearly frantic with apprehension, Mark began to tug viciously on the strap, grunting and swearing under his breath. His pulse was thumping heavily in his neck, and sweat broke out on his forehead in spite of the cold. Still, no amount of effort would free it. 

Suddenly he froze. 

A cold prickling sensation at the base of his neck made him turn around quickly and look up. His hand reached out and closed over the stock of his rifle, and he raised the gun to his shoulder as he scanned the cliff and sky above him. It was late in the morning, and the sun still wasn’t shining on this side of the mountain, but he’d had the distinct impression that a shadow had passed over him. He shivered as he looked around for something that could have caused that, but as far as he could see, the mountainside was deserted. 

“Fuck it,” he whispered. 

He stood up, still surveying the area, unable to rid himself of the sensation that he was being watched. 

After a moment, he put the rifle down within easy reach, wiped his sweaty palms on his pant legs, and geared himself up to move the boulder. Keeping a watchful eye all around, he placed his hands against the rock, braced his feet, and then, grunting loudly, began to push. At first, the boulder barely budged, but as he steadily applied and released pressure, he got it to start rocking back and forth. It made a loud grinding sound that sounded like a giant chewing. Sweat ran down his face as he clenched his teeth and built up a steady rhythm, back and forth, until he sensed the moment was right. Then, with a loud, belly-deep grunt, he heaved with every bit of strength he had. The rock teetered for a moment and then, with a slow, grinding crunch, rolled over and came to rest against another, larger stone. 

Mark’s pulse was throbbing in his neck as he looked down and saw—not just Phil’s bright orange backpack, but also a tangle of shredded red cloth. His hands were trembling as he picked it up, shook it out, and held it up to inspect it. After a moment, he realized what it was—or used to be. Not so long ago, it had been a bright red, down-filled jacket from L. L. Bean’s ... exactly like the one Phil had been wearing on the day he disappeared. It was torn to ribbons, and the down fill removed. Mark picked up the flattened backpack, not at all surprised to find that it, too, had been ripped open and emptied. 

“What the
hell!”
Mark muttered. 

How the hell had Phil’s jacket and backpack come to be underneath this rock? 

Phil certainly wouldn’t have put them here. No matter how seriously he had been hurt from his fall down The Zipper, he would have kept his jacket to protect himself from the cold nights. And both backpack and jacket looked as though they had been purposely sliced open in order to destroy them. Although they might have been tossed down here and then buried beneath a rock slide, it looked as though they had been carefully placed here, hidden beneath this boulder. Phil certainly wouldn’t have done that; but if he hadn’t, who had? 

Who would have stuffed these things under a rock that would have taken a lot of effort to move? 

And why? 

Mark was pondering all of this when—again— some primitive instinct warned him of imminent danger. As he reached for his rifle, he looked up and saw a dark mass blocking out the sky above him. In a paralyzing instant, he realized that something was falling down the side of the cliff, heading straight at him. He swore aloud as he dodged to one side and raised his rifle to aim. 

But it was too late. 

Before he could squeeze the trigger, the snarling creature slammed into Mark with the impact of a falling boulder.