by Thomas Page
“Hello, Augusta Station. Anybody there? This is Jack Helder . . .”
When he released the button, Drake was shouting at him: “. . . you to get the shit out of there, Helder! What’s going on! Over.”
“The bridge is out.”
“What!”
“The van fell—” The radio cut off, dead.
Overhead the lights flickered. They blinked in the lounge, too.
“Is something happening?” asked Helder.
Martha ran into the office, her face slate-white, and pointed at the Grizzly Bar. Duane Woodard ran past her, grabbing the rifle from the sofa, to the window. He raised the glass and pushed open the shutters.
The power line ran from a light pole at the edge of the parking apron to the corner of the building. A Bigfoot was pushing the pole out of the concrete, with hollow popping sounds.
“Got him, got him, got him,” Duane said to himself.
Sparks of released current shorted by snowflakes burst from the wires as they tore loose. One by one the lights blinked out in the lodge.
Duane slipped the rifle out the window and fired. He was certain he hit it. The ponderous head looked in surprise at him. The body quivered. But it turned and ran around the corner, out of range.
The pole descended in a tangle of wires to the eaves. The top crosspiece punched through the shingled roof in the lounge, sending down wooden bracing blocks, nails, and shingles that nearly hit Martha.
The fire was the only light in the lounge now. It illuminated Jack Helder’s sodden figure in the doorway, with the microphone still clutched in his hand. Woodard closed the shutters and lowered the window.
“What is going on here?” said Helder.
“Sssh!” Martha hissed at him. They could hear feet thumping outside. Past the chimney. More slowly toward the leading-entrance door.
“I will not be silent in my own lodge—”
Duane Woodard raised his rifle at Helder. That silenced him for a moment. They waited, barely breathing, as a log settled into the fire, flaring in a bright glow that receded immediately.
“I think I hit him,” Duane whispered in the lowest of tones to Martha.
“It might be a her . . .” she began.
“What are you whispering about!” Helder blared.
“Will you please shut up, Mr. Helder, it will hear us,” she said. Her voice was still low, but the tone was deafening.
Helder lurched across the floor, tripping over a shingle. “Oopsy,” he mumbled with a smirk. They formed a tight protective circle, with Helder as the swaying weak link.
Silence.
“I think it’s gone,” said Helder.
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Young man, if you dig that rifle into me once more . . .”
Woodard clapped his hand over Helder’s mouth and shook his head. Helder straightened his tie and sighed with a guttural burp.
They waited some more. The quiet still held. Jack Helder became impatient again. “Is it the one without the toe?” he whispered.
Martha impatiently shrugged.
“ ’Cause if it is, it’s in no shape to do anything.” Helder put a finger to his lips and started tiptoeing toward the door.
“Get back here,” whispered Woodard.
“I just want a little peeky.” Helder grinned. “Especially if it’s going to put me out of business.”
“Helder . . .” Duane Woodard’s voice rose.
“It’s all a crock of . . . shit.” Helder pulled open the leading door. Nothing happened. He grinned at them and stuck his head outside.
In the black square of the door where the firelight did not penetrate, Martha saw an arm, large and bristly as a tree trunk, batter down in a single movement. The sound of Helder’s skull cracking merged with the rifle crack slashing around the confined room.
Helder collapsed to the floor. Hands clasped his ankles and pulled his body out the door. Duane Woodard rained shots around the door frame that sent splinters flying. The Bigfoot howled.
Duane waited, wary of rocks. After a moment he heard a thump, and Jack Helder’s head bounced through the open door like a basketball. Bile formed a nauseating soup in his stomach. On the sofa, Martha screamed as he kicked the head out and slammed the door.
“Shut up, shut up!” Woodard shouted into her face. He shook her shoulders, waggling her head back and forth like a rubber doll’s. “We got to listen for it.”
“You’ve got to get a doctor,” she babbled.
“He’s dead, so stop thinking about it.”
“He’s not dead!” She tried to squirm free, but Woodard slapped her into the sofa, where she curled up, a half-conscious ball of heaving delirium.
Duane Woodard ran into the office and returned with the box of shells. He shoved cartridges into the bolt and slammed them home. “You know what this is, lady? This is psychological warfare, that’s what this is! That’s how they win if they scare you. I read about that.”
The crosspiece vibrated in the hole, sending more debris clattering to the floor. The pole bounced against the eaves. The giant was ascending the pole to the roof.
“Just like a monkey,” said Woodard. “Monkeys are stupid. I read about monkeys.” Before Martha could scream at him, he was across the room and out the door.
The wind made his eyes water. He pulled his feet through snow around the corner and looked up to the chimney. He could make that out but not much else. Snow trickled in a continuous powdery stream from the roof.
It was not on the pole. Already the thing was on the roof. Duane could see firelight where the flames in the lounge filtered through the cracks of the roof.
The cold paralyzed every cell in his body. It covered him like a painful liquid that would not dry off. He raised his rifle toward the roof and found his hands shaking so badly he could not aim.
That was the ball game. He did not fancy wasting ammunition. Regretfully he shambled back to the door and latched it.
“Are there any lanterns in this place?”
“Yes. In the shop.”
“How about getting five or six of them?”
The gallery was dark. She looked at it and climbed to her feet. “I don’t want to go in there alone.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Woodard. “I’ll be right behind.”
They collected lanterns and filled them with kerosene while feet thumped against the roof. Duane Woodard pumped pressure into them and lit them one by one. They gave out a hard white glow that softened farther out from the filament. Duane placed them on tables and the floor so as to fill the lounge with some kind of light.
The chimney stones creaked. Some hit the roof and rolled down to the ground. Snow gushed down the chimney, dousing the fire into steaming odorous coals. After a second, chimney rocks tumbled down on top of them.
14
The Indian’s snowmobile bounced in swishing heaves, like a boat fighting waves. He felt himself to be on a planet that hated him, an insane world rippled with bone-shattering ridges of ground. The storm tried to entomb him into a block of ice as an oyster coats an irritant with the smooth glossy shell of pearl. The physical anchors of the engine’s heat, the pull of the handlebars, and the red glint of Jason’s taillight kept him oriented.
His faith was all but smashed to pieces. It had survived Jason’s assaults in the bungalow this morning, but the girl’s casual remarks had pried it a bit looser. The most savage blow had come from the words of the red-haired man minutes before. His spirit did not kill people! Jason would turn and ambush him at any moment. This was all an accident. His spirit had mistakenly led him into a place where devils dwelled. The cold, the storm, the night ride over this spine-compressing land was all a trap. The vanful of passengers was safe in town.
Yet the strongest assault came
from his grandfather’s words. His faith could not sustain a betrayal. He would not believe that his “spirit” was a natliskeliguten—a devil. Everything—his life, his soul, his sanity—depended on what they found at the river.
They crossed the road well back from the bridge and headed down the lip of the gorge. Jason switched on his spotlight and swept it from side to side.
They stopped at the edge of the black river. Jason’s light found a brassiere swept up against a jutting rock. They forged up the shoreline into the gorge, the lights picking out pants, shirts, underwear, sweatshirts with Colby emblems, spilled toilet cases and flight bags mixed with toothpaste and ski poles.
A girl’s body undulated half in the water, half on shore, her arm wedged between rocks. The van lay on its back in the middle of the river, square columns of water gushing through the punched-out windows. Some bodies were still wedged in them; others lay against the rocks in the water as though being scrubbed clean for their final journey.
Jason dismounted and walked up to the concrete pillars in which bridge supports had been sunk. The base surfaces had been chipped away. Some holes were gouges, some mere pits, but Jason now knew what Lester’s apparition had been doing down here that night.
He ran his light over the concrete. Pointed tools had been used. This was the result of many patient hours of night work.
They used tools. Jason’s imagination again reeled with horror. Iron tools, probably, maybe even pickaxes left behind in the Limerick. Perhaps through the years they had glimpsed men chopping wood or digging in the ground and in their huge dim brains the human spark had connected that activity to this bridge.
Jason ran his light over a man lying splayed against the rocks of the opposite shore. The passengers were scattered among the luggage like thrown rags. Faces, some mangled, some peaceful, swam down the beam of his flashlight. Over all was the foaming rumble of the river.
Abruptly Jason could stomach no more. He walked back to Moon, who was kneeling beside the girl, face stony-blank, his thumb rolling back an eyelid.
“Moon, forget it!” he shouted. “They’re all dead. Let’s get out of here.”
The Indian moved his hand from the girl’s eye to her wrist, feeling for a pulse. Jason shook his shoulder.
“You hear me? We’ll call the Rangers from the lodge.” The Indian lowered the girl’s arm. He stared motionlessly into the river, with such concentration that Jason involuntarily looked to see if anything was there.
Then the Indian stood up with a slow movement, like a fish laboriously surfacing. He opened his coveralls and untied his medicine bundle.
He took out the toe and handed it to Jason. Without a word, he walked down the embankment to the snowmobiles.
“Moon? Moon?” Jason examined the precious toe in the light. “What’s going on?”
The Indian climbed onto his snowmobile and pointed it up the slope. Jason stumbled down the gorge after him.
“Wait a minute, Moon! Why are you giving up your talisman? Answer me, will you?”
Moon roared up the slope toward the road, leaving Jason alone.
With trembling fingers, Jason slipped the toe into a zippered pocket next to his gun and climbed onto his own machine. He shouted at Moon as he drove up, but the wind and the sound of his motor whipped away his voice.
The Indian set a tremendous pace into the wind, but Jason did not mind. All his aches and pains—his sore neck, his injured arm—left him as though exorcised by the toe in his pocket. The greatest of anesthetics is elation, Jason decided. Next to tension, of course. The Indian had given him the toe. It was his.
Those bodies must have jolted the Indian out of his haze. Perhaps they reminded him of Vietnam, a lethal dose of reality if ever there was one. Moon had lost his spirit but gained back his sanity. Not to mention ten thousand tax-free dollars. Jason was euphoric with gratitude. Moon wasn’t such a bad sort—a little confused, but he had many fine qualities. Jason would set the Indian up for life. He would give him a job with his company, a good one, if he wanted it.
They were ascending the road, almost halfway to the lodge, with the Indian still far ahead, when Jason was attacked.
A rock popped out his headlight. Jason decelerated and crouched over his handlebars. He pulled out his pistol and fired into the air to signal Moon.
He swerved into the meadow. The snowmobile jounced off the road and snagged a branch with the front ski, raising a curtain of snow that blinded Jason. The snowmobile hit a sharp hummock, knocking the handlebars into Jason’s chin. He toppled off the seat. Riderless, the machine careened crazily around the meadow and stalled.
Plastered with snow, his head swimming from the blow of the handlebars, Jason got to his hands and knees clutching the pistol in his right hand.
The dog! Watch out for the dog! Woodard had warned him that the dog was like a pilot fish for a shark. His appearance always preceded the beast.
From out of the wind came the pup, its fur stiffened by cold, dodging and retreating from Jason. A rock caught Jason full in the chest and knocked him down. He fired at the dog. The animal yelped and bounded off into the wind.
Jason climbed to his feet and ran toward his snowmobile in a crouching stoop. In the Army they had taught him that constant motion was the key to survival.
Behind him! Jason whirled around. The dog was returning. It turned around again when Jason saw it. Jason aimed and fired with both hands.
With a strangled cough, the dog went a full four feet into the air and came down in two bloody pieces.
Jason slowly turned around, praying that his helmet was strong. In the distance he heard the buzz-saw of Moon’s snowmobile finally coming to his aid.
The Bigfoot materialized behind his snowmobile. Jason aimed with both hands and fired again. The bullet whanged off the metal.
The giant picked up the snowmobile and threw it at Jason. It bounced over the snow and stopped upside down. Jason crouched behind it as light from Moon’s machine spread a pale-yellow glow over the snowy field.
Jason saw clouds of steam from the thing’s breath as it shielded its face from the light. It was the same horned beast both of them had followed for so long. Jason steadied his pistol on one of the snowmobile’s treads.
The beast jumped out of the light. Jason fired into the storm, the gunflash lighting up ice crystals, but it was gone. Like a spirit.
Moon halted his snowmobile at the edge of the road. He slipped the bow from his chest and took an arrow from his quiver. Then he noticed the shattered remains of the dog.
“That was him, Moon. I think he’s headed for the mountain.”
Moon slipped off his helmet and flung it into the snow. The wind made tentacles of his long black hair that grabbed and caressed his lean face.
“Moon, I want to pay you for the toe. Really, I mean it. A deal is a deal. I’ll get a money order soon as we get back to the lodge.”
The Indian kicked at the dog’s remains. Then he walked past Jason, following the fast-filling prints of the giant.
“Moon?” Jason called out uncertainly. “You won’t find him in this storm.”
When the night swallowed him up, Jason saw Moon fitting the arrow to the bow.
“Moon?” Jason called out again. The wind answered.
No, he would not come back. Might as well try to stop the wind. There had been murder in the Indian’s eyes. His spirit had betrayed him. His spirit and that ridiculous hound had been his whole life. His existence was thin ice through which he had finally plunged into empty cold darkness. The bottom was gone, the foundations smashed utterly and finally. Jason knew that feeling. He had barely survived it himself. He did not think the Indian could.
He slipped the gun into his pocket. And then horror chilled him to his very marrow. The toe was gone. It had flipped out when he took out the gun.
Jason went com
pletely to pieces. He clawed through the snow on his hands and knees. He had been here when attacked . . . no, no, he had opened the pocket here! He traced the marks left by the snowmobile, his fingers turning over every toe-sized clump of earth they found. Every few seconds his hands scratched at his coveralls, searching for the telltale lump that would signify that he had only overlooked it, long after reason told him it was gone for good.
The scanning traffic monitored by the radio at Ranger headquarters was concerned mostly with highway-patrol dispatches closing off roads with storm warnings or spotting fallen phone lines. These were normal occurrences for a blizzard. For that reason, Drake was unable to make up his mind whether the interrupted broadcast from Colby signaled a disaster or just more of Jack Helder’s poor luck.
Drake had asked the cops to test the tower on Mount Crane to see if the lines were down up there. When the calls came through perfectly, he knew the trouble was at the lodge itself.
Helder had solemnly sworn to have all the guests in a Garrison motel by eight o’clock. Drake had called them, and they said they had expected another group of passengers momentarily. Momentarily stretched into half an hour, and the van still did not show up.
At eight fifteen he received a call from the hospital in Garrison. “It’s about that blood?”
“What blood?” Drake asked. “Oh. That blood.”
“Right. We classified Mr. Cole’s from the body you brought in. We’ve been trying to get a line on the other stuff.”
“Okay. Fine. What is it?”
The doctor paused. “Well, that answers my question. I was about to ask you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I believe you said it was a bear.”
“Did I?”
“Somebody said it was a bear. We checked that. It’s not a bear. It’s not a deer, either. Did Lester keep hogs or chickens or anything?”
“Try human.” After hanging up, Drake shouted, “Tony?” Jones looked in the door. “I hate to do this, but take Wallace and run up to Colby Lodge.”
