The Mountain King (6 page)

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 that 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 Gibbons’ 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.

The hike up the mountain was exhausting but uneventful. The sky remained cloudy, and a raw, knife-edge wind drove at them out of the north. Throughout the day and especially at night, when they camped just below the tree line at the base of the summit, Mark found himself wishing he had brought along a gun. There had never been any clear indication that they were being tracked or followed, but after thinking about the “creature” that had attacked Josh O’Connell’s cows and how close that was to where he had been attacked by some kind of creature, Mark almost expected another encounter like the one he’d had a few nights ago.

Although they lived in neighboring towns, Mark didn’t know either of the two rangers personally; but the situation didn’t exactly lend itself to friendly conversation, not when it seemed more than likely that they were here to retrieve his friend’s body. After supper on the first night, with darkness pressing in on them from the surrounding forest, Mark stood by the campfire and whittled on the maple branch he’d been using all day as a walking stick. Thin curls of bark dropped into the flames and sputtered.

“Carving anything special there on your walking stick?” Wally asked. He held a fresh cup of coffee up to his mouth with both hands, and blew over the top to cool it.

“Not really,” Mark said, shrugging and unable to think of anything more to say.

“I used to have one helluva great walking stick,” Wally went on. “An old Penobscot Indian from up ‘round Millinocket carved it for me. Had a big bear’s face carved on the top. Looked like a Christless war club. I used it for ten, maybe fifteen years before I lost it. Hiking up Mount Katahdin one time, I dropped it off a cliff like a damned fool.”

“Too bad,” Mark said softly. He held himself back from mentioning that the only thing he had ever lost over the side of a cliff was one of his best friends.

Raising the stick to his eye like a rifle, Mark sighted down the long, smooth shaft. After a few more passes with his Swiss Army knife, he gripped the top end tightly and shook it to check its heft. Satisfied, he cleaned the knife blade on his pants leg, folded up the blade, and slipped it into his pocket, then knelt by the fire to warm his hands. Although Mark never went hiking without a walking stick, this particular one, he feared, might have to serve a different purpose; he wanted to have something close at hand that he could use as a weapon—what Wally would call a “Christless war club”—in case the creature that had attacked him before was still lurking in the area. He was tempted to tell the rangers his fear that they might be in more danger than they realized, but he let it drop, not wanting to sound like a nervous, greenhorn fool in front of the rangers.

“Hard to believe it’s only nine o’clock,” Sykes said suddenly. He was the younger of the two rangers, no more than twenty-five years old, Mark guessed.

“Gets dark early now,” Wally said without looking up as he sipped his coffee noisily.

“Cold, too,” Mark said.

“Yeah, but at least we don’t have any Christless mosquitoes chewing our asses,” Wally said.

Trying his best to sound casual, Mark stretched and said, “Yeah, well, I guess I’ll settle down for the night. We want to get started as soon as the sun’s up, right?”

“Sure thing,” Wally said. “I heard John volunteer to get up and fix us breakfast in the morning, ain’t that right, John?”

“Uhh—yeah, sure,” Sykes said, knowing that in the pecking order of this small group, he was what Wally kept calling the “littlest pecker.”

“G’night then,” Mark said.

He walked over to his tent and zipped open the flaps. Feeling a bit foolish still holding on to the walking stick, he climbed inside, undressed quickly, and slid into his sleeping bag.

But sleep wouldn’t come.

For several hours, he just lay there, watching the soft glow of the campfire flickering on the tent walls and listening to the muffled conversation of the two rangers outside. Their words eventually blended with the night sounds around them, and then, the next thing Mark knew, the forest was alive with the raucous songs of morning birds. Grunting softly, he rolled out of his sleeping bag and crawled to the front of the tent. In the dim gray light of dawn, Sykes was kneeling in front of the campfire, feeding the flames some dried branches to get the blaze going again. His misted breath hung around his neck like a silver scarf.

“Mornin’,” Mark said softly, his teeth chattering. He didn’t like disturbing the hushed serenity of the forest. He was a bit amazed—and relieved—that he had slept so soundly and that there had been no problems during the night.

He fished around until he found his clothes, zipped opened the tent flap, and crawled out into the chilly dawn. The first thing he did was wander over behind some trees and take a piss.

The campsite was still shrouded in shadow, but the first slanting rays of the morning sun lit up the snow-covered mountain peak like a fiery cone. Mark helped Sykes get breakfast going, and by the time the food was ready, Doyle had roused himself and made an appearance.

The three men ate in silence. Their agreed upon plan was to leave this campsite set up as a base camp. It was no more than an hour’s climb to The Zipper. From there they could begin their search for Phil. After breakfast, they cleaned their eating utensils, stowed their food high up in the branches to discourage squirrels and other scavengers, and draped their sleeping bags over branches to air out.

Then they headed out.

Mark was tingling with expectation as he gripped his hiking stick and followed the two rangers up the steep, rocky incline. Most of last weekend’s snow had melted, but in sheltered areas large patches still glistened with a dull blue glow. The morning air was surprisingly cold out in the open. All three men snuggled into the collars of their down jackets.

They moved off the marked trail and made a bee-line for the base of The Zipper. As much as the terrain allowed, they walked side by side in order to cover as wide a swath as possible leading up to the cliff edge. Sheer ice made the going a bit difficult in places, but by pushing hard, they made it to the cliff in a little under an hour.

“This is the place, huh?” Doyle asked as they stood at the bottom edge of the cliff and looked up. Still shrouded in shadow, The Zipper looked like a long, wide slippery-slide made of red granite.

Mark nodded silently as they all looked around.

“See anything?” Doyle asked.

Mark shivered as he stared up the steep incline, remembering how helpless and terrified he had felt the instant he realized his friend had gone over the edge. Now, after being scoured by wind and weather for even only a few days, there was absolutely no trace of their passing. The dark spot Mark had seen at the foot of the cliff, what could have been either Phil or his abandoned backpack, was gone. No tracks were visible in the remaining patches of snow below.

“Well, let’s have ourselves a look around,” Doyle said simply.

They quickly spread out around the base of the cliff and started examining the area carefully. Wally found what looked like one small splotch of dried blood on the rocks at the base, but that was all. Between the sheltering rocks, drifted snow was six inches to a foot deep, but there was no indication that anyone had broken the smooth surface.

The three men fanned out wide, keeping within calling distance as they searched the side of the mountain for even the slightest trace of the missing man. After more than an hour of fruitless searching, Doyle called them back together.

Mark, who was the furthest away on the steep downside of the mountain, was about to start back when he caught sight of something in the snow between two rocks. He whistled shrilly and waved for the two rangers to join him.

“What’s this look like?” he asked, pointing to the wide, rounded depression in the snow.

“A footprint,” Doyle said simply, kneeling down and studying the print carefully.

“Yeah, and a pretty goddamned
big
one, at that,” Mark said. He found it difficult to contain a rush of excitement. He wanted to mention the large creature he had seen, but didn’t want either of the men to think he was crazy or something.

“You know, it snowed for the first time this year last weekend when my friend and I were up here, so this print
has
to have been made since Saturday.” He regarded the track a moment, then added, “And I’d guess that wasn’t made with a hiking boot, either.”

The print did, in fact, look as if it had been made by a bare foot. At the front, there were five rounded indentations that could very well have been made by toes.

“It’s human, no doubt about that,” Doyle said. “But you know, especially this time of season and this high up where the weather changes so drastically, any impression in fresh snow is going to melt and refreeze dozens of times. I think that’s what makes this look so big. It expands every time it does that.”

He measured it against the flat of his hand. Even with his fingers spread wide, he couldn’t span the width of the print.

“Naw,” Doyle said, standing up and shaking his head authoritatively. “This wasn’t made by no Christless bare foot.”

Unconvinced, Mark shook his head as he stared blankly at the impression. He took a deep breath and said, “Well, at least we know what direction to head.”

Keeping several paces apart, all three men started moving in the direction the single footprint indicated, but after spending the rest of the day searching the rough terrain, they still came up empty. Other than the small splotch of blood on the cliff side, and that single footprint, there was no other indication that Phil or anyone else had been up here recently.

As the sun started to set in the western sky, they reluctantly headed back down the slope to their campsite and a supper of beans and brown bread.

“You know what I think?” Sykes said once they were settled around the campfire after supper.

Doyle cocked an eyebrow at his partner as if surprised that he would offer an opinion.

“I think that, come next summer, or maybe in a year or two, a couple of hikers are gonna come across a pile of bleached bones.” He looked squarely at Mark. “And
then
we’ll know what happened to your buddy!”

For a flashing instant, Mark wanted to slug the man, but he let the rush of anger pass, opting instead for silence. After an uncomfortable hour or so sitting around the campfire, the conversation limited mostly between the two rangers, Mark went to his tent to sleep.

Like last night, he found it difficult to sleep, but eventually he drifted off. He awoke some hours later from a dream.

He had been standing at the top of The Zipper, looking down into a thick cushion of pure white snow. Blinding white. His fear had steadily mounted as he watched the snow begin to churn as though it were alive. First two hands, thin and blackened with frostbite, reached up out of the snow; then a face broke through the surface. Mark stared in horror as the pale, gaunt face of Phil Sawyer looked up at him, his eyes sparkling with fiery anger. Phil furiously dug himself out of the deep pile of snow and then, once he was free, started to scuttle up the steep incline of the cliff. He moved like a huge spider.

“You left me here
—”

Phil’s voice rasped through black lips, cracked and bleeding.

“You left me here to die! . . . So I’ve come back for you!”

Mark awoke to find himself sitting straight up, his eyes wide open, his face slick with sweat, and his breath burning like a hot coal in the center of his chest. Both hands were clapped across his mouth, forcing back the scream that was threatening to burst out of him.