Mountain Madness

by Daniel Pyle

  Beth clapped for him and giggled. “Good boy,” she said and accepted the damp toy. “How bout this time you throw it to me?”

  Alfred wagged his tail and continued smiling at her, but a hungry eagerness had entered his eyes. Come on, he might have been saying. Ball. Throw it. Throw the ball.

  Beth wondered just how long he would go on. If she stayed out here for a week straight, gave up bathing and eating in order to endlessly toss her dog his oversized ball, would Alfred ever tire? Alfred was more than ten years old—seventy in human years—and still he often acted like a great big puppy.

  We must be feeding him some kind of atomic dog food, Beth thought and threw the ball again. Alfred took off, and Beth considered going inside for a sweatshirt. The day had been warm, but the heat never lasted long up here. In another hour, full dark would arrive and she’d be shivering. It was one of the things she liked about living in the mountains. She could open her bedroom window at night and snuggle up under a pile of warm blankets, wear thick socks around the house and never get sweaty feet, or fix herself an evening cup of hot chocolate in the middle of the summer. It was great. They said you couldn’t handle the cold as well when you got older, which explained why so many fogeys ended up slinking down to Florida; Beth planned to enjoy the cool while she still could. With any luck, she’d be an exception to the fogey rule and could spend the rest of her life with thick socks and mugs of hot chocolate and mounds of cozy blankets.

  Beth watched Alfred and pulled herself up from the patio. The dog stopped halfway to her, cocked his head, then dropped the ball and let out a single loud bark.

  Beth said, “Oh relax, you big furball, I’ll be right back.”

  Alfred barked again, louder this time, and turned his head toward the northern end of the property. His tail had stopped wagging. Beth frowned and walked across the yard to where he’d stopped. She heard what she first thought was the distant grumbling of an engine and moved right up next to her dog. He was trembling.

  Not an engine, but a growl, and coming from Alfred.

  Beth almost backed away but instead turned her head to see what was worrying him. The only movement came from the leaves on the trees and the clouds in the sky above.

  Alfred’s growl picked up a notch, and for just a second Beth had the crazy idea that maybe he’d gone rabid, that any minute he’d foam at the mouth and bite into her face like she was nothing more than a juicy hunk of meat. But then she saw something else, a shape within the trees.

  A man. Splatters of something dark covered his shirt and pants and even his face—motor oil maybe, or paint—and there was a boy who looked about her own age with him. The boy walked a step behind the dirty man and seemed to tug on his sleeve like he was trying to hold him back.

  Beth touched Alfred’s neck and felt the vibrations coming off him like electricity. She thought about taking Alfred into the house and locking all the doors, but by the time the thought was fully formed, it was too late. The man ran at her, boy in tow, and she was too dumbstruck to move.

  FIFTEEN

  LIBBY PULLED THE Honda into the garage and shut it off with a slow turn of the key. For a while, she simply sat there, leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed, listening to the car’s engine click as it cooled. She and Trevor had left the house that afternoon around one, and although it was just past seven now, it seemed she’d been away for days. She thumbed the button on the remote clipped to her visor and waited until the garage door had rolled all the way down to the concrete and thumped in place before letting herself out of the car.

  She considered leaving her shopping bags in the trunk—she could always come out and get them later—but then she remembered the books she’d picked up and her earlier thoughts of slipping into a nice warm bath, glass of wine in one hand and a paperback in the other, maybe with some music drifting in from the stereo in the bedroom.

  Yes. Throw in some bath salts and a few unscented candles, and she’d have herself the perfect evening.

  Libby jammed a key into the trunk and popped it open, reached inside for her bags and pushed the lid shut again.

  Except she didn’t think wine would cut it. Maybe she’d bring up a bucket of ice and beer instead. She had an untouched six-pack of Corona in the back of the fridge and thought there might also be a lime in the bottom drawer with the apples and oranges. If there had ever been a night to indulge in a little heavier-than-usual drinking, surely this was it. Although at one point during the day she’d intended to come home and put in a couple of hours of work, she’d already been second guessing the idea before she’d lost Trevor. She’d decided on the drive home that any work she did now would have been worthless anyway and that she might as well go ahead and take off the whole day.

  She let herself into the kitchen through the connecting door, shut off the garage light behind her, and deposited the shopping bags on the counter beside the half-full sink of dishes. She’d have to run the dishwasher soon, but that could wait for later, too. She hung her keys on the hook beside the fridge and carried her purse with her into the living room, where the newly repositioned leather sofa waited like an open-armed lover.

  Libby dropped face first onto the cushions and let out a long, tense sigh. The sofa sighed back, the cushions compressing beneath her and making a low burping sound when she turned lazily onto her side. To think, none of this mess would have happened today if she’d just let Mike come and pick up Trevor, if she hadn’t been so afraid of what he’d think of her redecorating.

  Way to go, she thought. She let her purse drop from her fingers to the floor beside the couch and reached up to give her face a slow massage.

  She hadn’t turned on the living room lights. As the daylight filtering in through the windows continued to wane, the room dimmed around her. The couch was so soft and the lighting so relaxing that Libby almost fell asleep right there and then, forgoing the bath and the beer and the paperback, would have fallen asleep if not for a car whizzing by outside and the glare of its headlights coming in through the living room windows.

  Libby groaned, pushed herself into a sitting position, and finally stood.

  On her way upstairs, she found a pair of Trevor’s action figures pushed to the edge of one of the steps. She’d told him a hundred times not to leave his things on the stairs, that someone might trip and really get hurt, but she guessed little boys just weren’t programmed to remember certain rules no matter how many times you told them. It would be one thing if he’d disobeyed her on purpose, but she was sure he’d just forgotten. Despite what had happened at the Mountain View, she knew Trevor was probably a better boy than most moms could ever expect to have, and not, as the mall security guard had suggested, an untrained pup.

  Besides, at least he’d pushed the toys to the side, where they were unlikely to get underfoot. Libby reached down to pick them up and carried them with her to the second floor.

  Trevor’s room wasn’t exactly spic and span—rumpled bed sheets covered the mattress, a pile of his clothes filled one corner, and several of his coloring books and his tub of crayons lay on the floor where he’d left them—but neither was it a total pigsty. Although she and Mike had always tried to instill a sense of cleanliness in their son, neither of them had ever been obsessive, and they hadn’t wanted to bring up Trevor like a couple of museum curators, making him afraid to touch anything and uncomfortable in his own room. They’d always believed a house was for living in, not for displaying, and if that meant the occasional coloring book on the floor or the previous day’s outfit piled in the corner, so be it.

  She arranged the action figures on top of Trevor’s bookshelf, which was mostly filled with magazines and comic and coloring books, along with several first- and second-grade readers. Trevor had mastered his reading skills very early, much sooner than many of his classmates, and although he was only headed for the first grade come fall, he now read at a third-grade level. The school had talked about skipping Trevor a grade, but Libby suggested they wait at leas
t another year. Trevor liked school, had made some good friends, and she didn’t want to push him too fast. Besides, although he’d shown a talent for reading, she knew it was something that simply came easily to him and not a sign that he was trying to surge his way through the school system any faster than the rest of the kids. She was also well aware that he still preferred the pictures in his comic books to anything Dick, Jane, and their dog, Spot, had to offer.

  Libby had gotten one of the action figures into a standing position, but the other didn’t want to stay upright. After only a second try at getting the uncooperative toy to balance, Libby gave up and let the little guy rest on his back. Five minutes after Trevor came home, the thing would be in the bathtub or the laundry hamper or back on the stairs again anyway.

  Smiling, she returned the coloring books and the crayons to the bookshelf, took the pile of clothes from the corner of the room, and headed for the utility room.

  She came to the open door of her dark office, looked inside. Her laptop’s power light pulsed, which meant it was not off but merely asleep. Work was only the flip of a lid and a few keystrokes away, but she resisted the urge to enter the room.

  Besides her website work, she also did some occasional consulting for a graphics firm based out of Denver. When helping out with one of those jobs (designing a law firm’s new letterhead or a company’s revamped logo), she often had deadlines to meet and customers to please, but none of her current projects were in any dire need of attention, and she’d already decided to let it go. At least for tonight.

  She moved on to the utility room, threw Trevor’s clothes on top of the washer and promised herself she’d get to them later. Like the dirty dishes. Like her work.

  The master bathroom called to her.

  She turned on a bedroom lamp and sorted through the stack of CDs on top of the dresser until she found the new Paul McCartney album, which she inserted into the stereo and set to repeat. The music came softly from the stereo’s small speakers, mellifluous and perfect for her current mood. She turned it up just a notch, loud enough to hear from the bathroom, but not so loud that it would disrupt her reading once she’d gotten into the bath.

  She crossed the room, the hardwood floor cool beneath her bare feet, slipped out of her pants and tossed them gently on the unmade bed.

  She smiled. A coloring book or two and a couple of action figures and she’d be worse than her son. She left her shirt on for the time being, readjusted the waistline of her bikini briefs, and moved onto the bathroom tile, which felt noticeably cooler than the hardwood.

  She wasn’t normally much of a bath person, though mostly because she rarely had time for such niceties. A quick run through the shower was usually about the best she could expect, and even then she sometimes had to simultaneously brush her teeth and shave her legs to get everything done in the available timeframe. She had expected the tub to be too dirty to use, covered in soap scum and strands of shed hair, but it actually looked surprisingly clean. She gave it a quick wipe down with a hand towel, just to be sure, and then plugged the drain and started the water. After fiddling with the knobs until she’d gotten the temperature just right, Libby wiped her hands on the towel and went in search of bath salts.

  She found Epsom salts and some kind of eucalyptus beads she didn’t remember buying under the sink and decided to use a handful of each. She sprinkled them through the rising bathwater and dipped in a hand to double check the temperature.

  Just right.

  Before leaving the bathroom to fetch the rest of her bath-time goodies, Libby paused in front of the mirror to give herself a quick once over.

  Fastened to the back of the bathroom door, the mirror gave her a full-body view. She stood with her back to the door and looked at her reflection from over her shoulder. Her legs looked long and trim, her bottom firm beneath the thin panties. She turned sideways and lifted her shirt. Stretch marks crisscrossed her tummy, left over from her fluctuating weight during and after her pregnancy, but the belly itself was flat and well muscled. Libby stepped closer and studied her face. The bags under her eyes were noticeable, but not outrageously so, and although it could have used a trim, her hair was as silky and sleek as it had ever been.

  All in all, not bad. She might not be nineteen anymore, but she wasn’t exactly falling apart either.

  She posed like a swimsuit model at the end of the runway, then pouted and blew herself a kiss.

  Behind her, water bubbled. The tub was a quarter full already. She’d have to hurry or risk it spilling over the rim. It was an old tub with no overflow safety feature.

  She ran through the bedroom, barely hearing the ex-Beatle end one song and begin another.

  In the kitchen, she grabbed the beer, a lime and a paring knife, and the least-suspenseful-looking book of the three she’d brought home. She sifted through the junk drawer until she found a box of unused tea light candles and another box of matches.

  Libby guessed that would do it. She juggled the items and walked out of the kitchen, not wanting to drop anything but also not wanting to dawdle. She heard the bath still running upstairs and knew it had to be getting awfully close to full. She didn’t want to spend her evening cleaning eucalyptus-scented water off her bathroom floor. The purpose of all this—the bath, the beer, the book, the music—was to relax, not add stress to an already stressful day.

  She’d moved through the dark living room and up the first five stairs when the doorbell chimed behind her. She stopped mid-step and frowned.

  “Hold on,” she said, setting the beer and the rest of her armload onto the stairs from which, not long ago, she’d removed her son’s toys. “Be right there.” She couldn’t answer the door without shutting off the faucet upstairs, and she definitely couldn’t answer dressed the way she was. Unless it happened to be her gynecologist at the door, she was showing just a little more crotch than was generally considered polite.

  She ran to the master bathroom and shut off the water with what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds to spare. Before she got into the bath, she’d have to let some of the water drain out, but she’d worry about that later.

  In the bedroom, she found a pair of scrub pants and slipped into them. The doorbell rang again, and Libby huffed. She’d said she’d be right there, hadn’t she? Jeez.

  In her rush to get to the door, she almost forgot about the discarded items on the stairs. She’d have ended up with a foot in the ice bucket if she hadn’t seen it at the last second and avoided it with a carefully timed jump down two of the risers. She hit the landing beneath the stairway awkwardly, and the joints in her left ankle tensed.

  The front door had a group of three windows set just above eye level, and through them Libby saw the very top of someone’s head bobbing in and out of view. Before opening the door, she engaged the security chain and hid most of herself behind the door so that only her eyes and the top of her own head would show through the narrow gap. Such measures were probably unnecessary and wouldn’t have done her much good if the doorbell ringer had been a shotgun-wielding maniac intent on blowing her away, but they made her feel safer just the same.

  The man on her front stoop wasn’t a shotgun-wielding maniac, but Libby wasn’t sure he was much better. Seeing her through the opening, he smiled brightly and pushed forward a bouquet of wilted daisies.

  “Hey,” he said. “Just thought I’d drop by.”

  Libby closed the door and undid the chain, but before she opened up again, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Why tonight?

  Wondering how in the hell she’d get rid of him this time, she opened the door without smiling, accepted the flowers reluctantly, and motioned him in.

  SIXTEEN

  MIKE NEVER PARKED the pickup in the stand-alone garage. He’d allocated that space for his workshop, and it had been one of the reasons he’d purchased the property to begin with. Separated from the house, the small building provided the perfect space for working late into the night. When Tr
evor was here, Mike could run his table saw or his router, his drill press or his lathe without ever having to worry about keeping his son awake. And the nearest neighbors lived a mile away—able to hear the sound of his machinery, maybe, but not likely to be bothered by it.

  Different lengths and sizes of wood he needed for his projects filled the workshop to the ceiling. He’d stocked a utility shelf with wood stain, lacquer, and glue, a sorting bin with dowel rods, and a chest with handles and hinges and the other bits of hardware he required for many of his pieces. The tools spread over the room’s many work surfaces, most of them loose and unplugged, but others, like the drill press, bolted permanently in place, easily accessible. He had installed heavy-duty work lights overhead and added an industrial-sized fan to use during the hottest parts of the day. Likewise, he’d brought in a space heater for the winter months, though his fear of accidental fire kept him from using the heater in all but the most extreme conditions.

  He parked the truck in the driveway just shy of the garage-turned-workshop and shut off the lights. It hadn’t grown entirely dark yet, but he’d gotten into the habit of leaving his lights on all the time while traversing the mountain roads. You never knew when you might alert an oncoming motorist to your presence from around a blind curve or a switchback, when the use of your headlights might be all that stood between you and a head-on collision.

  Trevor unbuckled his safety belt and popped open his door. He had a new action figure and had spent a good part of the drive testing the limits of its articulation. More than once, Mike had looked over and seen the boy bending back an arm or a leg so far he was sure it would pop right off the torso, but the little guy held together. Mike guessed they made toys a lot more resilient now than they had when he’d been a kid. He vaguely remembered one of his transformers breaking apart in his hands as if it had been made of wet sand.

  The garage doors were shut, but not locked. This far into the mountains, Mike didn’t worry much about thieves. He also wasn’t worried that Trevor would wander into the shop unattended. Back home, Mike had worked out of the corner of their garage at a group of tables Trevor passed by almost every day of his life. Trevor had long been familiar with both the workings and the dangers of Mike’s many tools. He’d been in and out of Libby’s garage as often as any other room of their house and was in no more danger now of doing something foolish (sticking his hand beneath the chop saw or playing guns with the battery-powered drill) than he had ever been. But although Mike hadn’t actually banned him from entering his new workshop, they had an unspoken agreement that he should not go in alone.