Black Mountain

by Laird Barron

  “Science and progress are the ultimate in eminent domain,” I said. “How did you put it all together?”

  “I got one of the grads wasted and pumped him for all he was worth. Which wasn’t as much as I’d hoped. He’d witnessed a gallery and evidence of fossilized artifacts—he couldn’t determine what they were. Morris filled me in on the fungus angle a bit later. Zircon hadn’t planned for their fake expedition to discover the caves. They’d arranged this elaborate scheme to help shield the region from interlopers, not have its minions expose a secret the corporation had hidden for decades. The team’s precipitous action triggered a precipitous response.”

  “Corporate skullduggery ensued. Tears flowed. Then blood.”

  “Why do you think I hunkered in this shithole and hoped to run down the clock? Zircon and members of the government are in cahoots. Ask everybody else who went on that trip. Oh, you can’t because they’re dead.”

  I’d perused the obituaries of the Anvil Mountain team. Without context, accident, misadventure, and natural causes read innocently enough.

  Vance calmly recited the facts as he perceived them—within six months of completing the impact study and filing it with the relevant authorities, both professors were deceased. The older man died of a heart attack, while his junior associate committed suicide by leaping from the roof of an apartment building. The younger prof got engaged the week prior. A year later, two of the grad students were tragically killed in Mexico—hit and run, no arrests. An undergrad fell victim to a fatal robbery in Philadelphia; another went missing and was presumed drowned while kayaking in the Pacific Northwest.

  “When the last grad student choked to death in his Birmingham flat, two and a half years after our expedition, I couldn’t ignore what had unfolded,” Vance said. “Somebody was snipping loose ends; making certain we’d never tell tales about the expedition, never testify at a congressional hearing, never contradict the official designation of Anvil Mountain as a wildlife refuge.”

  “Did this ‘somebody’ come after you?” I said.

  “Morris and I remained friendly after 1976. My photography caught fire with several small-time magazines and I traveled extensively. Whenever I got back into town, which was New Paltz, Morris materialized and we’d hit the bars and catch up. He loved my work, especially the red-of-fang-and-claw material. Got off on dangerous animals and desolate landscapes the way other men stroke it to porn. He’d gotten hitched and had a baby on the way. Landed a job with a refrigeration company. Drove a wide route across the state. Said he envied my footloose and fancy-free lifestyle. I was flattered.

  “We were drunk as lords one night and I confided in him my theory that our companions from the Anvil Mountain trip didn’t expire due to natural causes, that I suspected they were murdered. Morris had appeared slobbery drunk for half the night. Totally plastered. He straightened on his stool and his face changed, became cold and sterile. Hard to describe unless you looked at the visage of a wolf or a leopard with zero compunction about its biting your throat. I wasn’t nose to nose with a human anymore. He laughed and said I should be a detective because I was right, they’d been murdered. He’d snuffed them himself on behalf of people in high places.

  “In his opinion, he’d done his victims a kindness. Particularly the ones who’d descended into the caves. Spared them what he termed a living death. He confirmed Zircon coveted the fungus’s ‘exceptional’ medicinal properties. Dedicated chemists could surely develop applications to give the DoD a raging hard-on. Drawback? Unfiltered exposure to its spores is as lethal as a high dose of radiation. Might kill you in a month, might kill you in a decade. Claimed that the death gods slowed his demise because of his devoted service. Morris presented a pattern of weird sores on his shoulders. Whole time I knew him, he kept shriveling. Stank of decay and a persistent infection. In other words, I have no reason to doubt he was telling some version of the truth.”

  “If anybody ever needed a drink, it’s us,” I said, parched and lamenting the distinct lack of booze in his loft.

  “That night at the bar when Morris O confessed himself to me was the last time I ever got drunk. I toke to manage the pain. Pop a pill here and there. Same reason—pain. Late-stage pancreatic cancer. Considering how it all shook out, I stupidly neglected a sea of vodka. While we’re on the subject, would you mind if I spark a jay?” He proceeded to roll a joint. Got it lit and took a drag.

  “Oestryke killed your colleagues and spared you. Your square jaw and charm win the day, or what?”

  “Wasn’t due to my clean living, not back then. Morris said he couldn’t kill me because I wasn’t on the list. Promised I’d be okay for a while if I kept doing my thing. He liked me doing my thing.” He made a camera-clicking motion. “Morris is a collector. Art, people. Especially people. Sociopaths have a knack for attracting flies into their web.”

  “You’d be okay for a while?”

  “He had bizarre ideas, bizarre stories. He field-tested experimental weaponry in Southeast Asia. Zircon subsidiaries—Valero and others developed the hardware and he ran trials on behalf of the Department of Defense. Zircon has tentacles everywhere.”

  “Someone else mentioned unorthodox weaponry. Give me an example.”

  “Lasers—you can burn or blind with focused light; induce seizures or hallucinations. That’s old hat. Infrasound. The military is enamored with the offensive potential of psychoacoustics. Boil a man’s brains, make him shit himself, or become delusional. Weirdest, though? He claimed to have undergone chemical and psychological experiments related to Cold War programs like MKUltra.

  “Said he could slow his pulse and breathing down to almost nothing. I personally observed him hold his breath for nine minutes on a dare. It’s impossible. He did it anyway.”

  “He allegedly died in an explosion in 1987. How did he seem after that? Did his appearance change; his demeanor?”

  “Morris suffered burns to the majority of his body. A plastic surgeon did a stellar job patching him up again. His face was doll-like, if you stood next to him, but small price to pay. The accident altered his brain for the worse. Either that or exposure to the spores. Whatever. He became sneakier. And radically paranoid. Like, tinfoil-bandanna-level craziness. Yet inflected with a horrible, conniving rationality that scared me shitless. He carried false papers, wore disguises—the whole bit. I didn’t comment, for obvious reasons.”

  “His home videos fell into my possession,” I said. “One was called Black Mountain, filmed in 2011. Did you run the camera?”

  Vance nodded unhappily.

  “Yes, he dragged me along to revisit the caves. He said it was dangerous, but possibly a pilgrimage would cancel out the cancer in my cells. I didn’t have cancer then—the diagnosis came well afterward. Sometimes I lie awake wondering what came first, the chicken or the egg? Did he foresee my affliction or is there some type of background radiation in the caverns? That system is a labyrinth. I was upside down and backwards after thirty seconds.”

  “He cared for you.”

  “I’ve come to accept that despite his asocial tendencies, Morris valued me. There’s a valid correlation. Animals can form attachments with humans and remain fundamentally wild, amoral. He told me, It’s later than you think. Time has come for you to behold a terrible wonder before we sink into the wall of sleep. I didn’t want to accompany him anywhere, but was afraid to refuse.”

  Terrible wonder sounded too close for comfort to some mystical bullshit Gene K would spout while we were skinning a moose or diagramming the best method to sever a man’s arteries.

  “Your camera work leaves something to be desired,” I said. “What did he show you in the caverns? Was it terrible? Was it wonderful?”

  “He wanted to show me the Garden of Night. The sacred gallery of Those Who Came Before Men. A site of worship, of sacrifice. My memory is Swiss cheese. Fumes, electromagnetic currents. Claustrophobia, perhaps.
I was positive he meant to leave me down there in the dark. Fear scrambled my senses. I recall dizziness before I fainted. He carried me to the surface and brought me home without a word.”

  “Okay. The caves held an irresistible attraction for him. I wonder if that’s where he took all those heads he chopped off.”

  “Morris was pathologically fascinated by the idea of death. His and others’. Insisted the black ops programs and his forays into the caves changed him on a molecular level; opened doorways of the mind. He believed he could intermittently predict the future. Gripped my shoulder, looked me dead bang in the eye, and said that by the time I betray him, it won’t matter anymore. We’d both be as good as dead.”

  “A reliable source assures me Oestryke is already dead dead.”

  “With any luck, your source is correct. I’d have to see it myself before I popped a champagne cork.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Vance rose and went to one of his cabinets of tools. He moved gingerly, his body already stiff from remaining motionless for just this brief interval. He retrieved a bundle of cloth and unwrapped it. Inside lay a chunk of amber, almost as lustrous as his flesh. An elongated fragment of some larger blackness hung suspended at the milky core.

  “It’s a spearhead fashioned by a Paleolithic hominid.”

  Archaeology intrigues me; I’ve skimmed Scientific American in a few waiting rooms. The fossil would be tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years old.

  “That arrived in a package this summer. Postmarked Kingston, bogus return address.”

  I was thinking that while fascinating as an artifact, it didn’t prove anything conclusive. He unfolded the stained and blotted note that accompanied the spearhead. The note read Dear X, greetings and farewell from the Garden of Night; blackest heart of the Black Mountain. Carry this with you into the underworld. Yrs. truly, MO, 6/5.

  “Morris’s handwriting,” Vance said.

  I’d seen examples of that script on a collection of videotape labels and multiple documents. Absurd as the proposition appeared, as of June the Croatoan was aboveground. Gene, wherever he was, had to be laughing at the look on my face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I assayed a circuitous path back to the rented car. Climbed in and turned the key. The ignition didn’t fire. I almost tried again before an alarm bell rang in the primordial depths of my subconscious. That damned lizard stirred again. I stepped out of the car and performed a walk-around, inspecting the undercarriage where a bomb might be easily placed. No bomb. However, snazzy wingtips and the cuffs of expensive pants were visible on the passenger side of the car. A hammer cocked, cold and metallic, in the vicinity of the back of my head. I glanced over my shoulder and Hyde smiled. A rare expression for him.

  Jekyll stepped from behind a pillar. He strolled over to relieve me of my revolver and sundry implements of violence while Hyde continued to train the bore of his hand cannon at me.

  “Happy Halloween, Coleridge. Check it. Are you aware Black Dog has a nifty, proprietary app that alerts us when a flagged credit card is put into play?” Jekyll dropped the .357 into his pocket. It off-balanced his jacket. He didn’t seem to care. “Here’s another trade secret—we have a separate, equally handy app that permits us to tap antitheft devices or onboard GPS of any rental vehicle in the registry. Very cool. Scary, if you’re twitchy about Big Brother. But cool.”

  “What a time to be alive,” I said. The Black Dogs need not have tailed me; they’d merely had to track an icon on a screen until they found my car and then bided their time like patient little mutts. “Too bad you dumb bastards haven’t dedicated more man-hours to tailing the actual bad guy.”

  “Can I get you to come along quietly?”

  I said I would, mentally crossing my fingers. They escorted me across the lot and up a level. Delia Labrador awaited in the fancy black SUV her bodyguards drove everywhere. This was her idea of returning my phone calls.

  “He’s disarmed and clean,” Jekyll said as Hyde prodded me to get in facing Delia.

  She’d dressed down for the occasion—a light overcoat, slacks, boots with fur trim, and a snow-white handbag lacking diamonds or gold embroidery. Her makeup did its level best to provide the illusion it didn’t exist. I had a fiery, all-consuming passion for Meg, but, merciful God, you couldn’t linger that close to Delia Labrador and not get heart palpitations. Her barely there fragrance hinted of top-shelf brandy.

  Jekyll shut the door harder than necessary. He and Hyde seated themselves in front. Hyde started the engine as a tinted partition whirred upward and divided the compartment. Moments later, the vehicle rolled forward and onto the street. I didn’t inquire where we were bound. Stubbornness is a virtue.

  I affected a stoic demeanor and visualized waiting by the river for the bodies of my enemies to bob past.

  “I apologize if they were rough. Father terminated their contracts. They’re piqued.” She produced a lovely, and elaborately engraved, flask from her purse, unscrewed the cap, and took a dainty swig.

  I laughed.

  “Black Dog will find something for them to do.”

  “They’re already doing it.”

  “You’re paying them out of pocket?”

  “Yes.”

  “Daddy excommunicated you.”

  “Father and I had a major . . . disagreement. The summerhouse is my new abode.” Another swig.

  “About Lionel.”

  “About many issues. Personal security is my own concern, for the moment. Father will calm down.”

  “Will he?”

  “Mom’s on my side. She’ll exert her wifely influence.”

  “Pleasant forecast for you, lady. I wonder what the weather has in store for me.”

  “He’s a right sonofabitch. It depends upon his cost–benefit analysis. Your Mafia ties unnerve him. Executives abhor subjecting themselves to the vagaries of the unknown. He isn’t certain what will happen if he tries to put you in check.”

  “Rather curious to find out myself.”

  “It could be useful to have a spare hitman lying around. I’d prefer you alive for the present.”

  “Don’t forget the man of your dreams,” I said. “Wouldn’t do for that pretty face of Lionel’s to be tenderized. Or notched with bullet holes. Not until you get whatever it is you’re after. You didn’t maneuver us to Oestryke’s clubhouse for fun. I’m sure the honeymoon weekend was incidental.”

  “On the contrary, it was a pleasant vacation until you waved a gun around.”

  “I hope you don’t expect an apology.”

  “Damn.”

  “Damn what? Who? Me?”

  “You’re cold. I’ve enjoyed the company of criminals and brutes who were gentlemanly, or at least civil.”

  “It’s a hard knock life. I’m not rich—faking civility isn’t integral to my skill set.”

  “No, don’t cop out. Don’t pretend it’s the nature of the business. Your problem is, you can’t imagine anyone loving Harry or Lionel—any woman who gets close to them must be running a con. Try showing your friend a modicum of respect.”

  “I respect him plenty.” Her words stung more than a few of the punches I’d ever taken. Funny how that works.

  “Lionel is sweet. Alas, you’re the one calling the tune. I wanted to impress upon you the resources that my family has at its disposal. May this knowledge advise your decisions going forward.”

  “You wanted to impress upon me that I’m an ant under your family’s boot?”

  “In essence.”

  “Alas, you’ve got this whole scene backward.”

  Her smile flickered between uncertainty and contempt.

  “Do I?”

  “You didn’t catch me, Delia. The reason your valets aren’t lying shot full of holes back there in the parking garage is because I very much wish to speak wit
h you.”

  Her smile faded. I would say she belatedly remembered who was seated across from her.

  “Before you do anything rash, bear in mind there are two large, heavily armed men two feet behind you. Your weapons have been confiscated and—”

  “Not all of my weapons. These dopes always miss something.”

  “Oh, I see.” She composed herself. “Please, continue.”

  “Last week, I showed you a photograph of Morris Oestryke—or, as he’s fondly known around the plantation, Uncle Ephraim. You recognized his face.”

  “I recognized his eyes. Hardly the same thing. A man visited my shows in the early aughts. Infrequently, perhaps five or six times, but his presence left an impression. Like a stain.” Her hand trembled as she lifted the flask to her lips.

  “Come on. Blood knows blood.”

  “He was a creepy, nameless old man who watched from the back of the room. Creepy old men are a ubiquitous hazard in the song-and-dance industry. Like sand traps on a golf course. Anyway, he hadn’t come around for a while and it slipped my mind.”

  “Nic Royal murdered Harry and Ray. Tall, ornery fellow. Roomies with Harry. I’m sure you’ve met.”

  “Your theory regarding his motive?”

  “Ray’s death is a mystery. Harry and your uncle were tight. Then Harry got himself in a bind and betrayed Ephraim to the bad guys. The bad guys took Ephraim into the woods and shot him dead. Or left him for dead. Distinction without a difference—Royal is Ephraim’s protégé and he took exception. Getting even became his mission in life.”

  “This is a shock. Nic seemed decent. For a thug, at least. Harry treated him like a kid brother.”

  “By ‘decent,’ you mean not the type to decapitate someone.”