Black Stump Ridge (25 page)

“Oh, well,” he muttered as he leaned forward. “No balls, no blue chips.”

He gripped the jaws of the trap. Taking a deep breath, he tried to force them apart. The spring was stiff and strong, the mechanism slightly rusted. The jaws resisted. He pulled harder. His arms ached, but the gap slowly widened. They were almost far enough for him to slip his foot through...

Suddenly, he heard a sound in the leaves behind him. He turned his head. The jaws slipped from his fingers. The steel bands snapped closed on his leg. He felt steel on bone and heard a crunching sound just before the mushroom cloud filled his brain and carried his consciousness away on waves of agony.

Levi watched as the man turned, arched his back, screamed, and fell backward onto the leaves.

“Now, why’d he go an’ do that for? Ah done tole him ah’d be raht back.”

•

“Oomph!” Someone punched Dave in the gut and drove the air from his lungs.

“Oomph!” He opened his eyes and watched as the dark ground passed inches from his face. His fingers churned furrows in the cold, wet leaves as they dragged through the ground next to rapidly-moving denim-clad legs.

“Oomph!” Something softball-sized and rock hard drove into his stomach again. He tried to shift but a thick, padded bar held him firmly in place.

“Oomph!” Again the air forced its way through his lips.

“Stop,” he wheezed. To his surprise all motion stopped. A moment later he was gently lowered to the ground on his back. Levi’s round face loomed over his own.

“You’s awake, Coozin?”

“Yes-s-s-s,” the word pushed past his lips like escaping steam.

“Well, you jus’ lay there a minute, Coozin. We still got a piece t’go an’ you ain’t zackly light.”

Dave struggled to catch his breath. His stomach felt like he’d tried to do too many crunches. “Where…where are you…where you takin’ me?”

“Why, I’s takin’ you t’ yore people, Coozin.”

“My people?”

Levi nodded. “Th’ big house with th’ big roun’ thing that points at th’ sky.”

“Satellite dish,” he panted. “It’s a satellite dish. You’re takin’ me t’ Fred’s cabin.” He lay back.

Levi shrugged. “Don’t know no one called Fred.”

“That’s all right.”

“Listen, Coozin,” Levi stepped closer to Dave and bent down. “We gotta get goin’ ’fore the fiddles start.”

“Fiddles?” Dave shook his head. It had to be a local thing. He tried to move his leg. Pain shot up his right side and exploded like a skyrocket inside his head. He lay back, panting. “I don’t think I can walk. My ankle.”

“Ah knows that.” Levi positioned his hands on either side of
Dave. “’Tha’s why I carried you this far. Ah kin carry y’all the rest o’ th’ way, too.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Don’t you worry none. Tain’t much farther.” Levi’s legs levered upward as Dave fell across his right shoulder. What little air remained in his lungs whooshed out, preventing any protest.

Levi scrambled down the slope, his awkward gait barely disturbing the leaves. Dave jounced about like a badly packed bag of flour. He tried to hold his hands up but the effort proved too much. His palms and fingers kept dropping down to drag in the cold wet soil and leaves.

“Noooooooooooooooo…”

Levi stopped and looked back up the trail at the darkness. “Oh, no. Someone’s done gone up on th’ ridge where no one’s s’posed t’ go.” He turned and headed down the slope, his steps quicker.

“What…was…that?” Dave managed to gasp.

“Don’ ask,” Levi replied. “You won’t like th’ answer.”

Dave felt a chill. There was something familiar about that scream. Peete? Oh, God in Heaven, what could make Peete scream like that? What could possibly make
any
human being scream like that? He suddenly realized that Levi was speaking – muttering, really – and, as he listened, the creature’s words chilled him.

“Gotta get this one someplace safe. Sounds like pa done got one fer his dinner already. He ain’t gonna settle fer one, though. Ain’t no one safe on th’ mountain t’night.”

Despite the urgency brought on by the scream, Levi struggled under the weight of his charge. At six feet, one inch tall and almost two hundred and ten pounds, Dave was a big man. Levi stood barely four feet in height and weighed just over one hundred pounds. Worse, Dave was unable to help. Levi’s leg muscles trembled from the effort. His lungs burned with each labored breath. Only the occasional glimpse of light from the house below as they drew closer kept him from collapsing beneath his burden.

“We’s almos’ there,” he hissed through clenched jaws.

His shoulders ached. His knees threatened to buckle under the weight. His steps dragged through the damp leaves. Step by staggering, struggling step, Levi carried Dave closer to the house. Just as he felt he could not take another step they emerged from the forest and into the side yard. He saw Jake standing near the house with his back toward him. That made no sense. Why would Jake be here?

Levi glanced to his left. Candles burned and a figure stood near one of them. It was Granny. She was naked and held a knife pointed in the air. Something huge, hulking, furry, and glowing crawled out of the well behind her.

“Granny!” Levi dropped Dave and ran to the middle of the yard. He froze. Wherever he looked he saw carnage, chaos, and death.

The creature was free of the cave opening. It resembled a huge, Dali-esque caterpillar. Its long abdomen was a series of diminishing rounded sacks – large at the head and steadily decreasing towards the tail nearly twenty feet away. Six ropey tentacles – pointed at the end and lined on the underside with a double row of suckers – writhed beneath the creature’s head like grasping snakes. The creature’s face looked like a primate. The skull was rounded where the eye sockets held the huge unblinking eyes. Elongated slits bisected the yellow-green irises and made them look reptilian. A third eye stared from a rounded hump just above and between the other two.

Flattened tissue resembling a nasal passage split the face between the lower eyes. Rather than nostrils, however, a single horizontal slit opened and flapped below the membrane above the lipless mouth. Needle sharp teeth lined its gaping maw like stalactites and stalagmites. A bifurcated tongue darted in and out of the creature’s mouth. A row of wide, vertical slits lined each side of the creature’s neck like gill slits, although the being appeared to breathe air comfortably.

Energy crackled and danced over its skin. Colors beyond description ebbed and flowed and shimmered. The sharp tang of ozone filled Levi’s nostrils.

He stared in horror as the thing reached towards Granny. When the tentacles encircled her waist she screamed. Her hands slammed downward driving her knife deeply into her naked, bony chest

Levi watched Jake take one slow, lurching step after another away from the shadows of the house and closer to a tentacle that writhed before him like a dancing cobra. The tip darted back and forth as Jake’s lips moved. He held his arms apart as if he were trying to placate someone. Before Levi could shout a warning, the tentacle struck. It ripped Jake’s head from his shoulders. Blood spouted from his neck as the tentacle deftly, almost daintily, popped Jake’s head into the creature’s gaping mouth.

•

Dave lay on his back. When the goblin had tossed him aside, he’d landed hard. Pain erupted from his ankle. It became his world, his universe. It expanded until it became unbearable. When even that became too much, he ceased to feel it any longer. He now floated on an endorphin cloud.

So this is what a runner’s high is like,
he thought. From somewhere beyond his field of vision he heard screams of pain and terror, but they were not relevant to his situation. He stared upward at the stars, so cold and bright in the darkness above.

He heard music. At first it was so faint that he thought he imagined it. Slowly it grew louder until he realized that it was some kind of stringed instrument. Not a guitar. No. More like a sitar. Something with a Middle Eastern quality.

Motion at the edge of his vision made him turn his head. A cloud of smoke grew and intensified in the air just to his right. As he watched, it took human form. It wore a turban and flowing robes. A scimitar rode inside of a wide sash that encircled its waist.

“A genie,” Dave whispered.

“We prefer to be called D’jinn, Master,”
the creature replied.

“D’jinn. Okay.” Dave gasped as a sheet of agony broke through the endorphin haze.

“You are the one who freed me, Master. It is customary for me to grant you a wish.”

“Just one?” Dave grunted. “Aladdin got three.”

“That was a fantasy.”

“There’s always a catch.”

“I am afraid so, Master.”

Pain gripped him once more. When it finally eased, Dave panted, “I think I know what I will wish for.”

“And, that is?”

“I wish to be free of this damned pain.”

“As you wish, Master.”

Dave barely saw the flashing, whirling blur of the scimitar as the blade severed his head from his shoulders.

“Your wish is granted.”

•

Another thick tentacle stretched past Levi. He turned in time to see the end dancing upright over Dave’s body. Dave’s mouth moved. It looked as if he and the appendage were talking. Suddenly, the tip darted downward. Dave’s scream was cut short as the creature devoured his head.

“What the hell?” Levi heard from behind him. He spun. Two men emerged from the house. The one in front stopped and stared. A tentacle snaked towards him. A strange look came over his face.

The other man stood by the door, his head turning left and right as he struggled to make sense of what he saw.

The tentacle grabbed the man in front, ripping him in half.

“Johnny!” The other one started forward.

“No!” Levi screamed. His paralysis snapped. He lowered his head and ran as fast as he could. The man never saw him coming. Levi’s shoulder drove into his midsection. The momentum drove them through the open door and into the garage. Both men hit the concrete floor with a sickening thud-thump.

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“So what do you think?” Johnny stood before the sliding glass doors and looked at the mountain rising from just beyond the redwood deck. “Will they make it back by sunset?”

Fred looked up from the couch. In his hands lay the open journal. He looked at the sky outside. “Hard to say,” he replied. He looked back down at the handwritten pages on his lap. “Hope so. It’s gonna be even colder tonight than last night.”

“How can you do that?”

“Do what?”

“That! Just sit there reading that book. Aren’t you the least bit concerned?”

“Of course I am. But, what can I do about it?”

“It’ll be dark soon.”

“Yes, it will. I can’t do anything about that, either.”

“But, they might be lost.”

“Yes, they might be.”

Johnny turned back to the glass doors. “It’s gonna be cold.”

“Yes,” Fred replied. He looked down at the book once more. “I believe I said that earlier.”

“Don’t you care?”

Fred looked up. “Of course I care. I care very much. It frustrates me, too, because there’s not a damn thing I can do to change the situation. Getting worked up certainly doesn’t accomplish anything.”

“But, what if it gets dark?” Johnny faced Fred.

“I’m sure it will.” Fred laid the book face down on a nearby coffee table and sat up. “Johnny, we have no idea where they went after we split up. I made a suggestion, but that was hours ago. They obviously went further. The point is, it won’t do any good to go out there looking for them. They could return from any direction and we wouldn’t see them. Then, they’d get here, see we’re gone, and assume we’re still out there. They’d come out looking for us and the next thing you know, there we’d be – all four of us out in the dark cold woods freezin’ our asses off while we looked for each other. That’s a pretty good example of a clusterfuck, don’t you agree?”

Johnny started to argue and then closed his mouth. He looked at Fred for a moment. He exhaled, his body sagging as he did.

“I guess you’re right,” he finally admitted. He looked out the window once more. “I just feel so helpless. I hate that feeling.”

“I know. I feel it, too.” Fred picked up the book from the table. “Since I can’t do anything about it, I’m looking through my uncle’s journal. Maybe there’s something in here that will help us not only find Charlie, but the others, too. If they’re lost, that is.”

“If,” he echoed. He pointed at the journal. “Any luck?”

“In here?” Fred shook his head sadly. “Not yet. So far it seems like he was real interested in the Cherokee Indians.”

“Really?” Johnny looked around. “That’s odd.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if he was interested in the Cherokees, you’d think he’d have some artifacts or something layin’ around.”