by David Haynes
A voice kept telling him that if he waited long enough, the head would just vanish into thin air. It wasn’t really there. Ghosts didn’t exist except in the minds of those who chose to believe in them. He didn’t, so how could it really be there?
And yet it was. A face covered in the blue-green blooms of decay, of putrefying flesh that had been kept warm beneath blankets and furs and not frozen, not preserved. A large piece of the face was missing; the quarter above the right eye was simply gone.
Questions, thoughts and fears rushed through his mind, none of them sinking claws into his brain matter, none staying around long enough to form properly.
The only thing he could do to break the spell was yell, bellow as loud as he could. Anything would do, as long as it was loud. He opened his mouth and roared.
It did the trick. He was conscious of his breathing again. He was aware of the pain traveling up and down his spine and leg at express speed. Who the hell was this? Another hiker? Someone caught off-guard in the weather and attacked by a bear. It had to be.
The theory didn’t make sense. It didn’t work. A bear wouldn’t leave the kill out here where it could be found by another predator and stolen away. And where was the chaos a bear leaves behind? The scat, there was no scat. The jacket looked almost new, no claw marks. What was left of the flesh was covered in shallow hollows, almost scoops. They weren’t teeth marks. They were knife marks.
He reached out with his foot, dragged the jacket toward him and picked it up with the barrel of his rifle. It was lightweight, completely unsuitable for the weather. Just like Olin and Lauren’s clothes had been. It was the same brand too. Nobody around here was selling this crap. Definitely not Wilkes.
He turned it over in his hands, patting the pockets. They were empty, nothing in them at all. He reached the slim inside pocket, designed for a cellphone, and hooked his finger inside. There was something in there, something slim like a credit card.
He pulled it out and looked at the photograph. A smiling man in his early-thirties looked back at him. Wavy brown hair fell to his shoulders, three-day stubble lined his cheeks and chin. The passport card was out of date, stained with something, but it was legible. It was in the name Olin Murray.
Jonesy looked from the card to his boots, just to get some head-space, to allow him to think for a moment. His eyes settled on the scar the burning match made on his boots. He looked away, at the wall above the bed. Another mark, another smear. He squinted, not wanting to get too close. It wasn’t just a mark. It was a stain, a dark spatter of blood and brains and in the middle a hole about the size a .22 would make. Shot and then butchered.
He looked down at the head again. “Olin,” he whispered. He took a deep breath and wished he hadn’t.
“Oh, Christ.”
He stuffed the card into his pocket, turned and took three steps before his body caught up with his brain. His back went into a massive spasm, sending him crashing into the wall. He caught Lad’s confused expression a split-second before he collapsed in a heap.
“Get me out of here,” he hissed through gritted teeth.
He lifted his arm offered it to the dog. Lad sniffed it and backed up a couple of paces.
“Take it,” Jonesy said.
The dog whined, coming toward him with his head lowered. Jonesy pulled his hand back from the cuff and shoved it toward the dog.
“Pull!” he shouted.
Lad cocked his head to one side. He only ever heard that command when he was in the harness. He was confused.
“Goddammit, pull! Go!” Jonesy shouted.
Lad stepped forward, sniffed the cuff of Jonesy’s jacket and took it in his teeth. He stared Jonesy in the eyes, as if to say Really? You really want me to pull you? A second later he pulled Jonesy out of the hellhole as if he were made of rags. He didn’t stop pulling until they reached the door.
“Stop!”
Lad dropped his arm. “Good boy,” Jonesy said, scratching him on the chest. Lad looked at him. What next, boss? his expression said.
“We need to get back home,” he said. “Mom could be in trouble.”
*
Lad more or less put his paws and body into his harness. Jonesy did the best he could to secure himself to the sled but he wouldn’t bet on how long his knots would last. Pain racked his body with every shuffling step. His left leg was now numb from the foot to mid-thigh. The sciatic nerve was being pinched, cutting his leg off from the rest of his body. If he’d had use of an ax, he might have been tempted to hack it off.
Lad pulled them clear of the camp, up the slope and onto the trail. He had never needed their help to pull a sled but he labored up that hill like never before. Jonesy would have given anything to help him, to get them home faster.
Whoever it was that they had taken in, he wasn’t Olin. Olin was back there with his brains plastered all over the cabin wall, mostly eaten. It was possible he’d done it to himself, literally lost the will to live. Jonesy had considered it himself last winter. But he didn’t think so.
Why had they not mentioned another person traveling with them if suicide was the case? Olin wasn’t exactly a common name either. He knew of only one other Olin – a Chicago Bears center. His stomach was in knots. He’d left Lisa with whoever that was. A guy who lied about who and what he was.
“Come on, Lad!” he shouted. He knew the dog was giving it everything he had, not because he sensed danger, but because that was how he went at every single task. He would pull for the next three hours without break, he would pull for ten if Jonesy asked him to.
What had Lauren said? Her husband was dead, Olin was dead. Why hadn’t she told them? Why hadn’t she told them what had happened? When Jonesy found Olin – or rather the guy pretending to be Olin – why hadn’t she told them who he was? She’d just let them believe he was her husband. Someone had shot Olin and from what he’d seen of Lauren, she wasn’t capable.
He yelled out in frustration. He didn’t understand all of it. Lauren had allowed that man to trick both him and Lisa into thinking he was Olin. She was utterly cowed by him, under his control.
The same question kept coming back. Why? Why had she allowed it to happen? One word and Jonesy would have kicked his ass all the way to Big Six. For Christ’s sake, they had given her so many opportunities to talk.
He should’ve seen it sooner. There was something wrong with the guy, something cruel. Lisa had seen it, known what sort of guy he was, and he’d dismissed it. He’d been so caught up in just getting through winter and then getting them out of there. He stamped on the footplate and grimaced as a flash of electricity shot up and down his leg and back.
He’d have the answers soon enough. It was a good job the guy, whoever he really was, lay comatose on the couch. The question of how dangerous he was was moot. He wasn’t capable of anything at the moment and that would give him and Lisa time to get some answers out of Lauren. He felt sure that once he told her what he knew, she would spill it all.
The wind blew across the tundra. It swirled with more strength than yesterday, gathering great clouds of ice crystals as it lashed across the plateau. Jonesy barely noticed the cold or the pain now, his mind was racing, going faster than Lad could pull the sled.
28
The scent of burning wood guided Lad home. It was too dark to see the trail of smoke drifting from the cabin but the smell was not so easily concealed. Jonesy turned off the trail, taking the narrow path down to their clearing. He was frozen, hungry, worn out by the constant stabbing pain, but the worst of all was the deep anxiety that infested his mind.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he pulled the sled to a halt beside the cabin, but a scene of quiet and stillness wasn’t it.
In his mind he’d played out various scenarios during the last few hours. Most if not all were unpleasant, generated by the part of his brain that held on to what he’d done to the old guy last winter…it wanted revenge for what he’d put it through. But as he climbed off the footplate and
hobbled slowly around the sled, he could see nothing out of the ordinary. A warm glow spilled from the windows, falling on the snow either side of the cabin.
He unfastened Lad, expecting him to slope off toward the shed, but the dog stayed beside him.
“Thanks,” he said, patting his flank. “You earned your dinner tonight.”
He took the steps onto the porch as quickly as he could, grimacing with each step and shouldering the rifle. He put his hand on the door handle and stopped. The sound of loud laughter came from inside, raucous and unpleasant. It was a man’s voice. The man who claimed to be Olin. The anxiety rose another notch. He lowered the rifle and used the muzzle to open the door. He stepped inside with Lad at his side.
“Howdy there, cowboy!”
The sight of the Glock at Lisa’s temple stopped him where he stood. He lifted the rifle.
“Whoa there! You want me to put a bullet in your wife? You want that? Seriously?” He was smiling, grinning like it was all a joke.
For a second it all seemed too surreal to be a joke, or even a nightmare. Jonesy looked at Lisa. Tears were running down her cheeks, a blue bruise under her eye.
Jonesy shook his head, trying to get his brain to engage. “Get away from her!” he shouted, taking aim.
“Lower the gun, Jonesy.” He was still grinning but it was as ugly a smile as Jonesy had ever seen.
Lad growled beside him. Olin, or whoever he was, glanced at the dog. “And if that thing makes a move she’ll be dead.”
“And so will you,” Jonesy said. His mind was racing again, trying to come up with a scenario where Lisa didn’t die. He couldn’t.
“Lower the fucking gun, Jonesy.” The grin was gone now. He cocked the trigger. “One...two...you don’t want me getting to three, Jonesy. Thr...”
Jonesy lowered the rifle. Lad snarled like the time he got too close to a grizzly. “Easy,” Jonesy whispered.
“Now put it on the floor and kick it over to me.”
Jonesy winced and grunted as he struggled to bend. Adrenaline was pumping through his body but it wasn’t quite enough to shield him from the pain entirely. He lowered the Winchester and kicked it across the room, struggling to stand upright. He looked at his wife.
“You okay?” he asked through gritted teeth.
She shook her head.
Olin hooked his foot around the rifle and dragged it behind him. “Look like you’ve been in the wars there. Lisa and I were getting a little worried about you.” He tapped the Glock on her cheek. “She’s done nothing but cry since last night. You can see for yourself. Look at her. Quite distraught she was. I had to...bring her to her senses.”
“You bastard! I’ll...”
“No, Jonesy. You won’t do anything if you want to get through this. You’ll be good boys and girls, just like little Lauren over there.”
Jonesy followed the direction of his arm, his stump. The bandages were gone. Now there was just a horrible blackened lump. A flash of bone jutted through the end. The guy must be in terrible pain, he thought. Lauren was sitting at the table. Her expression said she was currently somewhere else.
He turned his attention back to the man holding all the cards. He felt impotent. Lad might get halfway across the room before he put a bullet in Lisa’s head. The dog might actually make it all the way across before he could turn the gun on him. But Lisa would be dead. And so would Lad.
“I found Olin,” Jonesy said. “Who the hell are you?”
“Now there’s the thing,” he replied. “My name, my real name, took a bit of digging to get out of here.” He tapped the stump on his head. “On account of the pain. I guess there’s some infection in there too. It’s not helping me think clearly, Jonesy.”
“Who are you?”
“I kinda like the name Olin. It’s growing on me and Lauren loves it. Don’t you, honey? I’d shake your hand but as you know I’m short of one on account of you hacking the fucker off.”
“Listen, you could just leave us here, take some food and take off. I won’t...”
He blew a raspberry. “You think? I’ve got a nice little number running here. I’m not designed to go hiking in Alaska. Especially not in the middle of winter. No, we’re all going to get nice and cozy in here.” He rolled his head from side to side. “Well Lauren and me are. You two are going outside in the shed. Gets a bit chilly out there. Although...” He let the word hang before continuing.
“Although that’s one big bed you’ve got up there, guys. Maybe I can make room for Lisa to join us?” He lifted her chin with the gun. “What do you say?”
“Keep your fucking hands off her,” Jonesy hissed.
“Or what? What exactly will you do? Huh?” He winked. “Tell you what, just so you don’t feel left out, I’ll let you watch, show you how a real man does it.”
Jonesy took a step forward. Lad took two, his shoulders hunched. The dog was getting ready to leap. Maybe if they both went at the same time? It might confuse him, he wouldn’t know where to shoot first.
The man calling himself Olin shook his head. “Try it. You might make it but at least two of you will die in the process.” He pushed the barrel harder against Lisa’s head. It forced her neck to bend until her ear touched her shoulder.
“You don’t need to do anything but sit tight, Jonesy. That’s all it’s going to take for you to survive. You want to survive, don’t you?”
Lisa’s rifle. Jonesy flicked his head to the right.
“Gone,” Olin said. “Now if we’re going to have a problem I’ll do her right now, you can watch that and then I’ll put a bullet in your leg. Bleed you nice and slow.”
Jonesy slowly brought his head back around.
“Do...we...have...a...problem?” With each word, Olin tapped the gun against Lisa’s temple. Jonesy winced with each one.
He grabbed Lad’s scruff. “Easy,” Jonesy said. Lad whined and pulled against his hand. “Easy,” he repeated.
His back no longer hurt – something to do with the adrenaline, he imagined. But the pain in his head was truly awful. His wife, his beautiful and strong wife, was under the duress of a monster, a man whose identity he didn’t know. He had seen something of what he was capable of back at the other cabin, but the full extent of his nature was yet to be revealed. One wrong move could change that and everything would come crashing down.
“We both want the same thing here, Jonesy. We both want to survive. That’s all there is.”
“Is that what you told the real Olin?” Jonesy replied. “Before you killed him.” He didn’t know that was what had gone down but it all pointed that way now.
“Not right before, but we did have that conversation.” He glanced at Lauren. “Didn’t we, honey?”
She met his glance with all the engagement of a corpse.
“He wanted to survive just like you, just like me. We just had different ways of looking at it.”
“You killed him,” Jonesy snarled. He glanced at Lauren. Maybe if he could get her attention, get her riled enough, she might react. He couldn’t kill all of them.
“Come on, man! There’s nothing you wouldn’t do to make it through. Nothing. When it comes down to it, you make the choice. Live or die. I made that choice. He didn’t. He procrastinated.”
The image of the partially eaten corpse flashed through Jonesy’s mind. The teeth marks, the knife cuts, the hacked limbs…it looked like a feeding frenzy had taken place.
“You shot him and then you...you ate him.” As soon as he said it he saw Lisa’s jaw drop, a look of horror in her eyes.
“Like I said, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make it through.” He licked his lips, smiling. “Hey, at least I said grace before I chowed down on him. She didn’t.” He pointed his stump at Lauren. “She just went right in with her teeth on her old man. Never seen anything like it.”
Lauren emitted a pitiful groan. It sounded like the trees bending against the wind. Jonesy looked at her, watching her face for something other than the abandoned des
olation she perpetually wore now. There was nothing. He would find no ally there, he knew that now.
“Are you going to kill us?” Lisa asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Way I see it, there’s enough food up there in that store of yours to last me through. I’d rather eat steak than you, darling.”
“I saved your life,” Jonesy said. “You’d be dead if it weren’t for us.”
“Why do you think I haven’t shot the both of you already?” he replied. “Truth of the matter, Jonesy, I kinda need you. Both of you. As Lauren will testify, I’m lazy, and just a teeny bit clueless about how to survive out here. I lied to her and hubby when I met them down in Big Shit. Told them I was a guide. I was just going to rob them and maybe have some fun with Lauren, but then we got lost and...and then well, you know the rest.” He winked. “You saw the fun we had.”
The cabin wasn’t hot but sweat dripped from the end of Olin’s nose. He was still feverish. The frostbite on his face had eaten deeper into his cheek. His skull would be visible soon. Removing the diseased hand had bought him some time but there was nothing to be done for his face. How long he’d last though, that was the question. It wasn’t something Jonesy could count on.
At that very moment, Jonesy had nothing. No gun, no hand to play, no leverage. He just wanted Lisa out from under Olin’s control.
“Just let my wife go and we’ll do whatever you want.”
Olin looked at Lad. “And him?”
“He’ll do what I say,” Jonesy replied.
Olin shrugged, pushing his stump through Lisa’s hair. It made Jonesy wince. “Go on, honey. Back to your darling husband.”
Lisa stood up slowly and took a step toward Jonesy. At the last moment, Olin raised his foot and kicked her in the back. It wasn’t exactly playful and she staggered into Jonesy’s waiting arms.
“Aww! Now would you look at that?” He turned to Lauren. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. How come you never fall into my arms like that?”
