Red Mountain (31 page)

“I never asked for anyone’s help.”

“You know that’s untrue Robert. You’ve always known you could tap into something much deeper inside, a primal darkness that has lain silently within you since the day you were born. For so long you’ve repressed your nature. You’ve been keeping it under lock and key, not exercising it when you could have put it to use.”

Robert gritted his teeth. If he’d been able to look down at the rest of his body he would have expected it to be engulfed in flame.

“Please. If you won’t let me have my family back again just let me die…”

“Don’t disappoint me Robert. If it wasn’t for me watching over you all this time you would have been dead a long time ago.”

Robert’s mind flashed back to Mexico. He’d never known before that he and Will could have pulled off what they did, had never imagined the extreme violence he was capable of. But it wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter. Either he rescued his father and Uncle Barney or stayed home and did nothing.

Then there was the ghost Will had seen in the abandoned building, the one he’d told Robert about when they’d been driving in his truck that morning. Something had come to protect them from the assassins outside—the men who worked for the dogfighter, drug dealer and kidnapper—the man who dressed in white. They were about to burst inside and fill the Americans’ bodies with holes from their automatic rifles. Instead, the thing sent them back into an alley where they took one another’s lives.

Was it you who drove those men crazy?

Maynard shook his head. He’d been reading Robert’s thoughts.

“No, it was your great grandfather, Jared Horn. He’d made those two men think that the other had the head of a giant rattlesnake. He drove them to complete madness. Your great grandfather was the first to discover me down here, and at the time he was in desperate need of help. In exchange for helping him, he agreed that his great grandsons could one day be summoned by me when the time came for new blood.”

“So this is what it’s all about?” Robert asked. “Making people kill each other so you can give the victor your power?’

Maynard grinned coldly and turned away his eyes.

“That is the tradition. I owe it to my teacher, as he did to his teacher and so on. Now that I’ve completed my task I will be freed from my prison, and not just the prison of ice that has kept my body all these years. My untimely death, of course, was unfortunate for me, just as Jared’s execution by a party of vigilantes had been for him. We’ve both been ghosts for a long time now, waiting for the right moment, knowing all too well how the fever for gold can take over some men’s minds, cause them to do things they’d normally never consider. I knew it on the day the Sheriff’s posse was going to gun me down on this mountain. I knew if I took the gold with me I would be planting the seeds of my eventual rebirth through you.”

“And if I refuse to go along? I will not have the blood of innocents on my hands. I’ll kill myself first.”

Maynard shook his head.

“Your true nature has much more to teach you. It’s too late to go back I’m afraid. The knowledge is now embedded in the very fiber of your being and cannot be removed. I have completed my work here.”

“But you haven’t taught me anything. You’re just a thief and a murderer.”

Maynard laughed and the crimson sky above them turned dark velvet blue as he vaporized into a foul-smelling fog and disappeared.

Robert lay silent, unable to move. There was nothing he could do to save the others who’d come looking for him. They didn’t have a chance in hell. Not against three desperate lunatics armed with rifles.

What they needed was more help. But even if he were able to radio for help somehow it wouldn’t make a difference. No one could make it up here in time to do anything.

If only I could hold them in my arms one last time…

Suddenly Robert began shaking, and a powerful heat began to spread through his body, opening up from his empty belly like a giant flower. Did he have hypothermia? Was this how he was going to die?

He tried to sit up but couldn’t. Invisible hands kept him pressed against the ice until he began to accept the fever running through him. The images of animals and faces of old men stared at him with glowing eyes while he started to drift out of consciousness. You can’t do this. You’ll go to sleep and then you’ll die…

Robert awoke to the sounds of people moving nearby.

Had they found him?

“Peggy?” he called out, hearing his echo careening away through a maze of glacier corridors.

He waited. No one replied. And yet there were rustling sounds very close by.

Robert remembered to open his eyes. When he glanced around he realized he was still lying in the ice shrine on his back with the low ice ceiling pressing down at him. When he sat up he saw the research team had come to life again, had pulled themselves up from the bloody muck and were headed out of the shrine. Some had their heads hanging by strands, while others pulled themselves along the ice on bloody stumps.

Oh god. They’re coming back to life.

And it’s because of me…

CHAPTER 61

Satisfied that the sled of gold was safely secured, Marsh and Chester began to head out of the glacier. Billy stayed behind to see that the load didn’t get hung up on anything while the others would see to bringing it to the surface. But just as Marsh and Chester reached the place where they’d have to start climbing, the crevasse echoed with Billy’s horrified screams.

Marsh stared at Chester, bewildered. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

Chester shivered with fear. “Something’s scared him bad. That doesn’t sound like the Billy I know.”

“I knew he wasn’t worth a damn. We’re so close now and he’s going to mess things up for us.”

“Maybe it’s Crain. He could be killing Billy down there for all we know.”

“Shit.” Marsh said, resigned. He dropped his pack to the ground, cracked his rifle to make sure it was still loaded. “I should have wasted the son of a bitch when I had the chance. Come on. Let’s get back down there before he cuts the line or something.”

****

They hadn’t even touched Billy yet.

He couldn’t run. In his hurry to get away he’d slipped over the ledge and crashed against a glassy spire of diamond-hard ice. Some barbs growing out from the spire had gotten hooked through his jacket and shirt and possibly into his flesh. Held up above a seemingly bottomless crevasse, he’d kicked wildly in an attempt to find a foothold. Soon his legs turned to mush, and all Billy could do was hang there and cry for help.

They were supposed to be dead. And now they were moving toward him, quietly, making only delicate mouse scratches on the ice with the tips of their boots, their gunshot-mangled bodies floating in the blue hue of the glow sticks.

Billy shrieked again. He could feel the air rattle up from the bottom of his lungs, burning and twisting as it broke from his mouth. He’d never been this scared in his life. Piss soaked the front of his jeans and froze painfully against his crotch. What managed to escape his jeans was forming icicles.

“Go away!” He shouted at the black approaching mass. He could see the pale yellow orbs of their eyes dancing with a kind of life that seemed otherworldly. It was clear they were angry, that they wanted him dead. When Billy saw them float across the crevasse without falling he turned his head away and sobbed like a child.

This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.

Then they were upon him, squeezing his flesh between their cold hands, and the woman scientist who’d stood up to Marsh in the ice shrine sank her shattered teeth down deep into his Adam’s apple and tore it away.

Gunfire exploded throughout the cave. A bullet passed through the back of the dead woman’s head and tore Billy’s lower jaw to shreds. Billy went limp and his head toppled back spouting blood as the woman slid away from him and plunged down into the shaft below.

The three dead grad students turned away from Billy and faced Marsh and Chester.

“Fuck me,” Marsh said, clumsily reloading fresh bullets from his coat pocket as he backed up. Suspended not far above Billy was the treasure-laden sled, swaying back and forth like a canvas-skinned cocoon. Marsh was relieved to see the ghouls appeared to show no interest in it.

If I can slow them down enough to get out of this place… it shouldn’t take much time to reel the sled out of here.

Chester stepped forward with his rifle at his side, unloading all he had into the ghastly figures whose eyes burrowed into him.

They weren’t going down like he wanted them to. Chester worried that once his and Marsh’s ammo was spent there would be very little left they could do to stop them. Even the grisly remains of the woman who’d been biting into Billy’s neck had floated back up to the edge of the crevasse. She drifted in their direction, leaving behind cold clumps of brain matter splattering against the ice like uncooked hamburger.

The ammo wasn’t going to last forever. Especially if those things just kept getting back up again...

Lagging behind, Marsh raised his rifle and searched for a target. He only had a few bullets left and he had to make them count. He aimed at a large bearded grad student with lungs that bubbled from a gaping wound in his chest. But just seconds before he pulled the trigger Marsh was struck by a better idea. He calmly re-guided the crosshairs over to Chester’s leg and fired…

Chester hit the ice floor screaming as he grasped at the splintered chunks of what used to be his knee. Marsh didn’t stick around to hear his curses.

Sorry pal, but I’ve got my priorities. I’ve waited too long to get this far, and I’m not going to spoil it by becoming dog meat for those things…

CHAPTER 62

Robert pounded Maynard with his fists until they were completely slimed with his own blood.

“You son of a bitch. I never asked for your help. I never did.”

His head was swimming with the after-images of his encounter with the ghost of the frozen man. He no longer knew what he was supposed to do, or who he was anymore for that matter.

“You must get out of here,” a voice behind him said, as brittle as crackling ice.

Robert recognized the voice from long ago. His heart slammed against his ribcage. He turned to face the ghost that had nearly frightened him to death when he was a boy. The tall figure wavered in the candlelight, but created no shadow on the smooth porcelain-white walls. He was surprised by the expression on the ghost’s face, for unlike the cruel ghost of Charlie Maynard he thought he sensed concern.

“Jared Horn… Why did you have to speak to me in riddles? Why couldn’t you have truly warned me when you had the chance?

The ghost of his great grandfather took a step closer and his features began to appear sharper, as if his transparent form was now being filled with solid matter.

“I wanted to protect you. I’ve watched your father become a man. Not a perfect one, but your father nonetheless. And then you came along—as did your cousins—and I wished I could have put a stop to it all.”

“It’s your fault people’s lives have been ruined and innocent people have been killed. I wish to god I’d never been born.”

“I understand. I am ashamed I have brought this curse upon you. If I had the power to do so I would have turned back the clock. I would have made things different. But Charlie Maynard tricked me from the very beginning. He knew he could take advantage of a desperate man. That’s how he came up with a plan to have me killed and yet still possess my family. He was a liar and a thief, even after he was killed. There are some men you can never change and he was one of them.”

“And now that he’s gone...”

“He’s done with me. I’ve served his purpose and now I’m free to leave this lifetime of purgatory forever.”

“So what’s keeping you from going?”

“I wanted to be sure that you survived. To make certain you were aware of the powers you now possess.

“Powers?” This had to be the greatest joke of all, Robert thought. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t feel any different. I’m so tired now I could lie down and let myself freeze to death in this hellish place.”

Horn reached out and set his hand on Robert’s shoulder. Robert could feel the coldness of the ghost’s touch through his jacket. It reminded him of the night up in the woods near his grandfather’s cabin. Except this time he was pretty sure the ghost wasn’t going to kill him.

“Don’t be fooled Robert. What you’re now capable of is beyond your comprehension as yet. Just promise me you won’t take the same poisoned path Charlie Maynard chose. The man had no heart left in him. It was already eaten up by revenge long before he took advantage of me. And once I was under his spell there was no escaping it. I did terrible things. I might have lived had I only walked away from him in the first place.”