Fear Mountain

by Mike Dellosso

  The heavy footfalls on the steps descending from the second floor continued in an even rhythm, like a tribal drumbeat.

  Henry went first, pulling me by the arm. The steps were more solid than they looked. Surprisingly, the years of dampness beneath the house hadn’t weakened them one bit. When both my feet cleared the threshold and I had fully committed to entering the world of shadows, Henry reached past me and shut the door until it quietly rested against the jamb. He then leaned against the side of my face and whispered, “Keep the light off. We don’t want any stray light working up through the cracks in the floor.”

  We were surrounded by darkness, a world without light. I held my hand in front of my face and moved it closer until my palm touched the tip of my nose. I was invisible to even myself.

  The footfalls above us finally landed on the first floor and another set started at the top of the stairs. Thump, thump, thump, down they came.

  With my hand on Henry’s shoulder, my feet following the edges of the steps, and my heart doing double time, we descended the steps into the pit under the house. It was damp and cold and smelled like mold and mouse droppings. When we reached the bottom I felt for the wall. Not surprising, it was made of stone and the floor was dirt.

  Above us, both men wandered around the first floor. Occasionally, a floorboard would creak but other than that the only sound in the house was the sound of their feet clunking away on the wood flooring. Though it was sheathed in darkness, I stared up at the basement ceiling letting my mind’s eye watch the sound, watch the footsteps. The darkness was disorienting, and I no longer knew which way was the front of the house and which way was the back. I kept my hand on Henry’s shoulder, gripping tighter than needed.

  Henry’s breath warmed my ear, then his nose brush against my cheekbone. “We need to find a way out,” he whispered. “I’m gonna follow the wall until we find the outside steps.”

  I remembered seeing the outside entrance to the basement. It was along the side of the house, but in this darkness even Henry had no clue which way led us out of this dungeon.

  Upstairs, the footsteps stopped, and men started talking again. Their voices were muffled so I couldn’t make out any words they spoke but they were definitely communicating in German. I’d heard enough over the past three years to know it when I heard it.

  Henry started moving, and I moved with him, sticking so close I ran up on his heels more than once. In my high school class there was a boy who was blind, James Baldwin. He walked with a long stick, tapping the ground in front of him. He didn’t have many friends, mostly stuck to himself and clung to the walls in the classrooms and hallways. There in that basement, blinded and lost, I promised God that when—if—I made it off this mountain, I’d befriend blind James Baldwin. He’d never have to walk the halls alone again.

  Somewhere in the basement (it was hard to tell from where it came) there was a rustling, then a skittering of feet, then a squeak. Shortly after that followed another series of rustling-skittering-squeaking. Then another. We’d disturbed something, roused some rodent from a deep slumber. A rat. I tightened my grip further on Henry’s shoulder and my finger that rested on the flashlight’s toggle switch almost snapped the light on.

  Sensing my anxiety and trepidation, Henry turned and whispered in a harsh tone, “Keep the light off.”

  I probed the black air with my eyes, not seeing anything but imagining a host of hellish beasts scurrying along the floor toward us, their needlelike fangs ready to puncture soft skin. If they attacked, I’d never see it coming, but I might be able to bludgeon them with the flashlight. A chill slipped down my spine reminding me once again how cold it was in the basement.

  Most rats weigh no more than a pound, hardly fearful dimensions, but some have been known to push two pounds. Despite their diminutive size, rats are powerful eaters, known to gnaw through wood, brick, lead pipes, thin pieces of metal, even bone. I hoped God would send an angel to shut our dungeon-mates’ mouths like He had so graciously done for Daniel.

  Henry picked up the pace some. The faint grind of his calloused hand slid over the stone wall. His shoulder was thickly muscled and solid. He was no angel, but it gave me some comfort.

  The footsteps began again above us. I followed them with my ears and eyes as they circled the whole first floor. I wondered what kind of person belonged to them. From the heaviness of the steps, they had to be big people, broad-shouldered, wide-faced, big-handed. The kind of people I didn’t want to share this cellar with.

  Henry came to a stop and the sound of his hand against stone changed. It was more a soft scraping than a grinding now. Wood. He’d found the door leading to the steps that would take us up and out of this black cavity. The door moaned on its hinges, and a new smell greeted us—rotting flesh. There must have been a dead animal in the stairwell, decomposing in peace. The door moaned a little louder then stopped, and Henry advanced forward one short step at a time. With my hand on his shoulder, I followed. A cobweb swept across my face and clung to my eyelids. My mind conjured a large, black spider crawling over my scalp, seeking some tender spot in which to sink her teeth. Above me a door creaked then groaned and moments later, muted sunlight stung my eyes.

  I was never so happy or relieved to see the light of dusk. The sun was melting into the horizon by now, and the light had a carroty tint to it. The sky was cloudless and painted in gradient shades of orange and pink. The air was clean and fresh and rushed my lungs like cool water on a hot day.

  Henry escaped first and crouched beside the house. When I had cleared the stone stairwell, he slowly closed the doors and motioned toward the woods. Bent at the waist, flex-kneed, like we were running through a low tunnel, Henry and I made a run for the tree line. It was only five yards at the most but felt like a mile. We hit the tree line running and pushed another ten yards into the woods before stopping. Kneeling low behind an elderberry bush, sucking air, we watched the house for pursuers. My muscles were coiled springs, ready to burst into action if someone came storming out of the house, rifle in hand. But nothing happened. The house remained still and quiet, lifeless from the outside.

  Henry leaned toward me and whispered, “I got an odd feeling Dad and Pop are in that house.”

  I had the same feeling. When we were in the house I could sense their presence. They had to be on the second floor with the two German-speaking men.

  Henry looked at me, sweat beading his forehead and upper lip, and I knew what he was going to say, though I dreaded hearing the words out loud. “We’ll sleep here tonight, plan something tomorrow.”

  I was right. I shut my eyes and drew in a long, slow breath. Tomorrow.

  11

  When the sun gave its final farewell and the last sliver of mango melted into the horizon, Henry and I spread our blankets on the ground, side by side like brothers should. Though my heart was still beating faster than normal and a permanent knot had settled in my stomach, I lay back on my blanket, put my hands behind my head and listened to the sounds of the woods at night. A squirrel family chattered not far off. That would cease as soon as they hushed and bedded down for the night. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, a mournful call that seemed quite at home in the land of wooden giants. We were the intruders, of that I was certain. I thought of all the wildlife that surrounded us: squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, opossums, deer, black bears, bobcats. All God’s creatures, all part of His handiwork, all perfectly at home in this wild habitat. I was the stranger, ripped from my civilized home and planted in this wilderness without natural defense or the ability to survive for very long on my own. These creatures that stirred around me relied on God every day and were never conscious of it, never thanked Him, never praised Him. And yet day by day He supplied their needs, gave them food and shelter, enabled them to survive and live. I, in contrast, realized God’s gracious provisions, His blessings and mercies new every day, His loving faithfulness, and yet I rarely thanked Him, seldom gave Him the glory He deserved.

  It felt o
dd, lying there silently giving thanks to God while Dad and Pop were being held hostage not a hundred yards away. But it also felt good.

  The owl hooted again; it was a haunting sound. The canopy of leaves above us blocked out most of the sky but what I could see of it was the color of aged slate. Occasionally a few dark shadows would soundlessly flit across the sky. Bats. I followed them until they got lost in the silhouetted branches and leaves of the wood’s most permanent residents.

  Henry rustled on his blanket then cleared his throat. “Billy. You still awake?”

  “Yeah. You okay?”

  “I’m cold but other than that, yeah, okay.” There was silence for a moment, and I thought the conversation had ended already. Henry wasn’t one for talking. He’d converse when he had to but small talk was like a foreign language to him. He said what needed to be said, nothing more. Like Dad, he was direct and to the point. A man of few and select words.

  “Billy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Henry sighed in the dark. “You think Dad and Pop are okay? I mean, you think they’re still alive?”

  I had no idea—how could I? The Nazi-lovers could have very easily killed them and disposed of their bodies. Dad could have gone into shock and died. Pop could have put up a futile fight and been brutally beaten to death. How was I supposed to know? Though Henry was the oldest between us, there were times when he looked to me for assurance. This was one of those times.

  I rolled to my side and propped myself on one elbow, resting my head in my hand. “I do,” I said, and meant it. I really felt their presence in the house, and it was a living presence. They were in there and they needed our help. The thought twisted that knot in my stomach a little tighter. Dad and Pop were relying on us, Henry and Billy Harding, two scared brothers, one who would never admit it, one who would shout it from the top of this mountain if it meant getting out of trouble’s way.

  We both lay there in silence for maybe a minute or so. I thought about the farm again and how I’d be settling down for the evening right now, reading through 2 Chronicles, sipping hot tea, feet up, lights dim. As it would have in the comfort of my own bed, sleep crept up on me like a ghost, gently tugging at my eyelids and clouding my mind with a warm fog. It’d been a long day and over twenty hours since I’d last slept. My head bobbed and nodded like a cannon ball on the end of a sapling.

  “Billy.”

  I started and opened my eyes. It was Henry again.

  “Billy. You sleeping?”

  “No. I’m awake.”

  Silence.

  Knowing Henry had something on his mind that would need some prodding to work its way out, I said, “What is it? Just say it.”

  There was silence again, and I could vaguely make out the form of Henry wiping at his eyes with his hands. “How are we gonna get Dad and Pop out?”

  It was the very question I had stuffed somewhere in the back of the convoluted twists and turns of my mind. How to rescue Dad and Pop. The Nazi-lovers no doubt had weapons and prowess. They’d stolen Dad and Pop right out from under our noses with barely a sound. They may have even been military types. There were only two that I knew of but who was to say there weren’t more? Four, five, six? Two farm boys with a shotgun and a flashlight were hardly a match. I’d entertained the thought briefly when we first bedded down but quickly pushed it away, too tired to think and too discouraged for any more discouragement. I wished Aaron were there with us. He’d know what to do, formulate a plan, then lead us to victory. I thought of him in the Ardennes Forest in France. Aaron wasn’t named among the dead at Malmedy, those American soldiers, unarmed, gunned down and slaughtered by their German captors. But he could have been one of those who’d escaped and was now lost somewhere in the snowy maze of trees and foreign landscape. He could have been injured and taken in by a friendly French farmer . . . or turned over to the Germans in exchange for a life spared.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said. “You have any ideas?”

  “Not yet. But we’ll think of something. We have to, right?”

  We have to. I’d never thought of it that way. Henry, in his simple, minimalist way, had managed to scare me dumb. We had to. We didn’t have a choice. On the farm, I always had a choice. There were things to be done, but I could say no. Sure, I’d take a beating from Dad and have to suffer through Mom’s looks of disappointment, but it wasn’t life or death. This wasn’t like that. I had no choice. We had no choice. We had to rescue Dad and Pop. There was no one else to do it. And this time it was a matter of life and death. I swallowed hard, had to swallow twice to get the saliva down. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  More silence. Finally, I said, “I wish I’d never come on this trip.” That was something I did have a choice about. I’d refused for five years in a row, so why did I agree to tag along this time?

  “Don’t say that,” Henry said. “I’m glad you came. If you’d stayed home like you usually do, I’d be out here by myself.”

  He would too. Once Henry got his mind set on something, he stuck with it until he saw it through to its completion. Last spring our tractor broke down. Henry assured Dad he could fix it and spent ten hours without food crawling over that thing until he finally diagnosed the problem and fixed it. He climbed into bed at three a.m., then was up again at four-thirty to start on another day.

  “Why did you come anyway?” he asked.

  That was a question I kept asking myself. Why had I come on this cursed trip? “Mom told me to. She said it would do a lot for my relationship with Dad. You know, meet him on his terms, do something he enjoys doing. And I guess I thought I could show him I’m not the disappointment he thinks I am. So much for that, huh?”

  Henry was quiet for a while then said, “You’re not a disappointment to me. You’re different than us, me and Dad, but I’m not disappointed in you.”

  “Dad is,” I said.

  “Yeah, I guess he is, but he doesn’t mean it. I mean, he loves you and all, he just doesn’t understand you. I think you intimidate him.”

  Intimidate him? No one intimidated my dad. No one. And I was sure I didn’t. “Why do you think that?”

  “Dad knows a lot about farming, probably more than anyone I’ve ever met, and he knows about hunting too, but you know about everything else. There’s a whole world out there beyond our farm that Dad and me don’t know nothing about, and you do. And that intimidates him.”

  “Does it intimidate you?” It was a question I would have never asked Dad but felt completely comfortable asking my brother.

  “Sometimes it does. Makes me feel small when you go on talking about this and that and I don’t even understand half the words you’re sayin’. I had to work my butt off just to get passing grades in school and you seem to be able to cruise along with half your brain tied behind your back.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For intimidating you. I never wanted to do that. There’s so many things that you’re better at than me.”

  Henry humphed. “Shoot, Billy, ain’t no need to apologize for being smart. Let’s be honest, you’ll never make it as a farmer, no need to hide the fact. But I’ll never make it as a doctor or lawyer or preacher. Everyone’s got their calling in life. The important thing is not what the calling is, but just to listen to it.”

  Though Henry couldn’t see me in the dark, I smiled wide. He had no idea how intelligent he really was. I dropped my arm and lay on my side, facing my brother. “I’m tired, and we should get some sleep so we can come up with some glorious plan to storm that house tomorrow and rescue Dad and Pop.”

  “You’re right,” Henry said. “Good night Billy.”

  “Night Henry.” I rolled to my back, facing the leaves and sky above me. Sleep was knocking at the door, and I was about to open up and welcome it in. The last thing on my mind before that heavy cloud overcame me was Henry’s voice whispering in my head: We’ll think of something. We have to, right?

  Morning would come s
oon, then we’d have to. Right?

  12

  I slept fitfully that night, unable to surrender to deep sleep. Images of Dad and Pop swam through my mind. Dad’s ankle, twisted and deformed, his grimaced face, pleading for my help. Pop wandering around in the woods, stumbling over fallen branches, mumbling incoherently, dazed and very confused. At one point I thought for sure I heard leaves rustling around me, beneath me, above me. Henry’s voice was there, too, calling for help. I slipped in and out of sleep so frequently I dared not trust my senses. The line between the conscious and the subconscious had been blurred beyond recognition. My dreams teased me and threw images and sounds at me like a barrage of hand grenades. My sleep was troublesome, yet I wanted to keep my eyes shut, remain in that land of make-believe where bad things could happen and there were no consequences. I’d rather them happen in my dreams than in reality, and I was satisfied to spend as much time, however restless it may be, in a world where cause and effect were a moot point and cows flew through the air like eagles on an updraft.

  When morning finally came and pulled me from my slumber I pried open my eyes and blinked against the light of dawn. I was on my back, blanket twisted around my waist. Birds sang their songs as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Squirrels chattered and, somewhere in the distance, the faint screech of a hawk carried above all the other sounds.

  Looking up at the trees towering above me, their branches spread out like a giant net, clumps of shimmering leaves shielding me from the full brightness of the blue sky, I thought of Dad and Pop and wondered how they had slept. If they’d slept at all. I wondered how Dad’s leg was doing, if it was causing him much pain. Hopefully, the sprain was not as bad as I had diagnosed it to be. I thought of Pop and wondered if he even realized what was happening, or if God, in some ironic act of mercy, had kept him confused to spare his aging nerves and heart the stress.