Red Mountain (30 page)

Robert wasn’t sure how long he’d passed out. It was eerily quiet as the cloud oozed out of the room, revealing the carnage left behind. He felt Marsh and Billy grab him from under his arms and drag him across the shrine through an obstacle course of dead bodies before they dropped him hard onto the bloody mirror of ice.

“Holy shit,” he heard Marsh say after he’d removed the canvass from Maynard’s frozen remains. Robert tried opening his eyes but everything was way too blurry when he attempted to focus. He lowered his head upon the cooling sheet of blood and felt himself begin to drift off once again.

“Sure is an ugly son of a bitch,” Billy said as he moved to get a better look at Maynard. “I wonder how long ago he died down here?”

Marsh stared into the face he sometimes saw when Jared Horn’s ghost was really messing with his head. A grin spread slowly across his blistered mouth while his eyes danced like moths trapped inside a hot lantern.

At last…

“What is it Walker?”

Marsh didn’t hear Billy at all, and glanced around at the ceiling of the shrine, laughing with nervous relief. It was fucking over. After all this bullshit the time had finally come to collect his paycheck and head for Reno, maybe find a plastic surgeon to patch him up before he went on a binge of drinking and whoring.
Even god won’t be able to save the world from me now!

Marsh pulled off his hat and spoke politely to the ghost he could not see but felt was close.

“Look Horn, I’ve done what you’ve asked… I’ve lived up to my responsibilities, delivered to you your rightful kin. I’m just going to take what I’m owed now and leave. It’s what was agreed.”

Marsh waited for a response but none came. He could hear the sharp clang of Chester setting hooks in the ice with his hammer and the moan of the wind as it blew across the lip of the crevasse. Marsh didn’t know if it was a sign Horn had completely vacated the premises of his skull for good or was waiting for him to make a punishable mistake. He could never predict when the ghost would be in the mood to inflict pain.

“Speak to me!” Marsh repeated over and over, while Billy slunk around the research team and quietly stole the rings and watches from their stiffening bodies.

Marsh soon tired of Horn’s game of hide and seek. He told Billy they should just get the gold and leave.

“It’s going to be light soon, and god knows how long it’s going to take us to get off this mountain.”

“What about him?” Billy asked.

Marsh toed Robert’s head with a blood soaked boot. He was alive, but barely conscious.

“He’s not our problem anymore.”

****

After Chester secured a line to the sled, he’d had the feeling that someone was watching him. It didn’t take him long to figure out why. When he climbed back up to the ice shelf from a different route than the one he’d come, he found Marco impaled on a giant stalagmite of pure blue ice. The Argentinean was pierced through the stomach, and his arms were wrapped around it as if he’d actually attempted the impossible task of pulling himself up to freedom. Chester observed he’d made it maybe an inch or two before giving out. Quite a feat for a man who’d already been shot in the back first.

Amazing what a man is capable of doing over a bunch of gold, he mused. He’d enjoyed Marco’s brave attempt at scaring them off, had even felt a little sorry for him when Marsh decided he’d had enough and shot him.

The surface of the stalagmite below Marco glowed more pink than blue. His eyes remained opened, and already Chester could see they were beginning to freeze.

****

Robert could hear them coming. As his mind drifted within the cavern of the ice shrine, he’d heard footfalls on the glacier surface far above him echoing down like some kind of weird sonar. The sounds grew louder and soon he was able to make out what he believed to be familiar voices calling his name.

Peggy. Will. Connor.

Am I dead?

There was no way to be sure. How could he verify anything? He felt the frozen man begin to stir his mind. Thoughts of death or his would-be rescuers began to blur and lose significance. The frozen man was preparing a stew within Robert’s head. Dropping in pieces of memory, adding pinches of this and that, until he turned up the heat to bring it all to a raging boil...

Robert’s body became as hot as molten lead, until the ice below him began to give way and he sank into it like a spear through flesh, passing through the mountain’s heart and heading for the core truth of its being.

He forgot about those above who were still calling his name…

****

Peggy and Connor had collapsed on the silt-grayed snow and gulped painfully for air. Will gave them water, told them to try and relax their lungs for awhile. He’d never seen two people so determined in his life. He’d begged them to stay back in Wrath Butte where they’d be warm and safe, even went as far as saying it would be what Robert would want.

But they wouldn’t buy it. They refused to even consider the idea of turning back. And despite the exhaustion racking their muscles and surrounding their eyes with dark circles, Peggy and Connor’s unwavering obsession of finding Robert appeared greater than ever.

Fortunately he’d talked them into stopping in at a sporting goods store on the way up to the mountain. They’d at least been able to find some warm jackets and hats, some bottled water, beef jerky and chocolate bars. Being still the hottest period of summer, the grizzled owner had no gloves in stock, or at least that was his excuse. Will had hoped for some rope and better footwear for Peggy and the boy but he only found flashlights and a couple boxes of matches. They’d shopped frantically while the worried owner stood near the counter with his eyes screwed up hard.

The man didn’t ask them any questions while he rang them up, but he seemed terribly nervous. Peggy was certain she’d seen him pick up his phone once the clang of reindeer bells announced they’d left the store.

“I hope he called the Sheriff,” She’d told him when they were back on the highway. “Maybe it’ll back up the call I made earlier, because I got a bad feeling that dispatcher I talked to thought I was a crank.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Will had said.

Nugget prodded Will’s leg with her nose and eyed the canteen in his hand. Will unscrewed the cap and dribbled some water onto her tongue. He glanced at the dim blue lights further up the glacier.

They had no idea what they would do when they reached the lights above, nor did they have any weapons with which to defend themselves except a single pistol. Their odds for survival didn’t look all that great, Will thought. He still hoped he could convince Peggy and Connor to turn around at the first sign of trouble.

CHAPTER 59

Few had the constitution to undertake a witch doctor’s teachings. After completing the task of killing two of their great cousins, some men would lose their minds and try to commit suicide. Others would be hurt so badly they could do nothing but curse at their great grandfather and the horrific tradition that had put blood on their hands. The lucky ones were those who hadn’t grown up being friends with their great cousins. The ones that had were the most tortured of all.

Oman had nearly died when some of the most grievous wounds he’d received had become infected. One of the two cousins he’d killed had been a childhood friend. They’d played in the jungle and fished in the bay, unaware their blood connection would one day demand a violent end to one of their lives. Afterwards, Oman had suffered from a great fever, but while he began to hallucinate he started to see how everything fit together—his people and their home on the island and the need to return their thanks with the spilled blood of brave young men. He realized that abandoning the painful tradition would tear his people apart from the very fabric that wove them into the soul of the island.

Maynard’s initiation had been the most brutal anyone on the island could recall. He was the first outsider to have ever been considered. Since he had no great cousins to fight, Oman chose three of the islands most prodigious young men to hunt him down and kill him. But Maynard had learned his way around the island by then, and he had developed many of the island’s skills. Eleven days after the community had seen him disappear into the jungle with three men not far behind, Maynard finally returned late one evening while the tribe was gathered around a giant bonfire, anxious for news. To the shock of everyone he carried with him his hunters’ smoke-cured faces on a long piece of twine.

It was just the beginning. His apprenticeship with Oman would take several years more. Some of it required him to ingest powerful drugs and spend days in the jungle or out at sea alone. Then he was taught how to make the powders and potions of his trade, and lastly he learned how to practice the magic that had been passed down generation after generation. Oman taught him how to conjure spirits from the other dimensions, as well as bring life back to things that had recently lost theirs.

Maynard also learned about ghosts. As he grew more skilled in the craft, Oman began to introduce him to the spirits that inhabited the small island. Until then he had always imagined ghosts to be no more substantial than a drifting cloud of smoke, something you might have imagined you saw when you were a child but eventually outgrew. He had no idea ghosts could take on a material presence akin to flesh and bone, until he’d met several, including Oman’s great grandfather.

Despite being a smallish man, Oman’s great grandfather projected a power that nearly vibrated the bones of anyone who had the courage to meet his gaze. The sharp, proud angles composing his face were painted in the ash of his ancestors, as was the custom still amongst the witch men, and the whites of his eyes were ruby red due to the concoctions he frequently ingested so he could increase his awareness of the spiritual world around him. Maynard tried talking to the ghost but it only sat there, staring at him until the first hints of sunrise seeped through the wicker roof until the ghost dissolved into a million specks of black mirror.

Oman explained to Maynard that he’d never met his great grandfather in person. The man had lived alone on the other side of the island, although his mother had told Oman the old man had died years before he had been born.

When Oman and his cousins reported seeing the old man in their dreams, some of Oman’s uncles and many tribesmen searched for the old man on the island and demanded he put a stop to it, knowing the violence was soon at hand. They told him they didn’t need his magic anymore. They were tired of living in isolation from the rest of the world. It was better to join now and avoid being slaughtered again like their ancestors. Other tribes were trading with the pale men who came in giant ships, and they wanted a piece of the action.

The old man had listened quietly while tears streamed down his face. In the end, he told them he would not give up his right to find a successor and asked them to leave. Later the same evening while he lay asleep in his hut, several of the men returned and killed him.

Thinking they’d freed the island of tradition that seemed more like a curse than a benefit to the community, they celebrated. But the elders in the tribe took a different view. They warned the men who’d killed Oman’s great grandfather they had made a big mistake and the entire island itself would be in jeopardy. And they were right. Oman’s great grandfather returned and promptly took revenge on those who had killed him.

Like all ghosts, his physical materiality was sometimes fleeting and the only way to avoid long periods of not being able to exert one’s influence was to avoid touching living things.

And this was what drove most ghosts insane.

CHAPTER 60

“You cannot turn your back on your destiny, Robert,” Maynard explained. “It’s not an option.”

Robert stared into the crimson sky above. The spirit of the frozen man leaned over him, his hands pressing sharply into Robert’s chest until his sternum and ribs burned like fire.

“Where is my family?” Robert gasped. It was all he could think about, his only connection to a life that had suddenly become mysterious and frightening. The only reason why he hadn’t given up and wished for a quick death.

“They are alive, Robert. Maybe not for long, but they are alive now.”

“I want to go back to them. I’ve already told you I have no interest in what you’re offering. I have a life and people I love. I don’t want to be like you or anyone else.”

Maynard lifted his hands and backed away. “I think you misunderstand me. I must ensure the powers I possess are transferred to you. Only you can pass on the sacred knowledge. It’s your duty to do so. It has protected you all this time and has given you the strength when you needed it.”