Danny, her ex-husband, hadn't been one to spend money on anyone but himself. She'd had plenty to wear, but mostly because she could still fit into clothes she'd owned in high school, and they hadn't all worn out. Even the small suitcase was the same she'd left home with after high school.
Now she was taking off again. This time, though, she wasn't going to run away from anyone, or anything. This time she was going to run to someone, and once she was close enough to grab him, he wasn't getting back out of her sight until things were back to normal and they could both return together.
There was a lot to accomplish. She ran down the list in her mind. They had plenty of money to cover a few months' utilities. She would have to put a hold on the mail—she could do that when the mail carrier arrived the next morning.
She packed quickly and efficiently. The bag held more than she remembered, and she chose sturdy, outdoor clothes, t-shirts and blue jeans. She had a pair of boots that Abe had insisted she buy for hill climbing, and she tucked another of his flannel shirts in on top for extra warmth—and comfort. She had a second bag, much smaller, that held her few cosmetics and necessities.
She returned to her list and wrote down a few names. One was Abe's agent. Another was the shelter in San Valencez where she worked part-time as a counselor, the first steps at recovering her lost direction and career. She added the name of their nearest neighbor. She didn't know what she would tell them when she called, but she didn't want to leave everything as Abe had done. If she intended to help him, one way to do that would be to make certain he had something stable to come back to.
There wasn't anything left that she could think of to do, so she carried the bags to the front door, then returned to the bedroom and slipped into bed to try and get some rest. She had a lot to accomplish in the morning before she could head off up the mountain, and she wanted her wits about her. She was thrilled to be doing something, though it terrified her. With the lights out, and Abe gone, the empty house regained its sinister aspect. Katrina pulled the blankets up around her ears and burrowed into the warmth of Abe's pillow.
It was a long time before she managed to sleep.
Katrina almost missed the turnoff that led up the mountain. There was a sign that said Friendly, 23 miles, but it was faded and tucked in behind a wild growth of shrubs. She pulled to the side of the road and parked just off the pavement. She had a Styrofoam cooler with sandwiches and bottled water in the back seat with her bags. The water was cold, and she drank gratefully. The old car hadn't had air conditioning for years—not since she'd owned it, in fact—and the day was blisteringly hot. She hoped it wouldn't overheat, but if it did, she had also thought to bring a couple of gallon milk jugs full of water.
When the bottle was empty, she slid back in behind the wheel and turned off the highway and up into the mountains. The road wound steadily upward, but it twisted around rocky outcroppings and huge, immovable boulders. It was impossible to get up any speed with all the turns. Katrina gritted her teeth and concentrated on the road. There were some hairpin turns and apparently it had never occurred to whoever had build these roads that guard rails might be a good idea.
As the highway below dropped out of sight, she felt a subtle shift. It wasn't a thing she could explain, but the further up the mountain she drove, the more out-of-place and detached she felt. The trees to either side of the road were no different than any other trees she'd seen, and the road itself, while not well tended, was much like a thousand other country roads she'd driven and ridden over in her life. This was different.
She lost the San Valencez radio station about fifteen minutes off the main road, and no matter how she turned and twisted the dial, she couldn't get anything else to come in. The mountain blocked most of the larger cities, and some oddity in the stone had apparently rendered reception difficult. She drove in silence with the windows down, and that silence grew until it flowed around her.
Twice she caught herself gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles went bloodless and white. More than once she caught movement in the shadowed spaces between trees, but when she turned to look, or stopped to get her bearings, there was nothing but sunlight filtering through the upper branches and the road itself, stretching up and away. It was nearly noon when she saw the fork ahead.
In the angle of that fork a post had been driven into the rocky soil. At the top, angled sort of down and away to the right, a sign hung. In simple black letters on a white painted plank it said:
"Cotter's Point." Beneath that, in smaller letters, it proclaimed, "Friendly—10." The other fork was unmarked, and it led to the left and up toward the next peak. That road was darker, shadowed by overhanging branches. It curved about a quarter mile in and disappeared. Katrina turned left and started the bumping, jostling climb toward Greene's General Store. She didn't know how far away it was, but she figured it couldn't be too far if the store shared phone service with Friendly. The power poles and the telephone lines that snaked off into the forest looked out of place.
As she rolled down that old road, the sound of her car's engine roared and echoed through the otherwise silent air. She hadn't seen another soul since turning off the main highway, and suspected that she wouldn't. The road showed evidence that others had used it recently, but not often. The further up the mountain's side she went, the deeper the sensation of isolation became.
By the time she rounded the curve that brought Greene's General Store into view Katrina was in a state of near panic. Her hands trembled on the wheel, and her knees had gone weak. What if something happened to the car? What if someone attacked her? Who would know? Once the first such thought reared its ugly head, the others followed in a flood.
Then she saw the store, and she breathed easier. No one was parked outside, but after the solitude of her drive, this didn't seem odd at all. She wondered how often people came to the store, and when they did how often they drove. It was hard to imagine homes up in the hills, buried among the trees, and harder still to picture the people inhabiting them with cars and trucks. Even the small store looked out of place, with its wood planks, stone foundation and paint that had been peeling more years than it ought to between coats. It was tacked onto the edge of the forest and stood out, stark and almost surreal.
Katrina parked in the dirt spot beside the store, and killed her engine. She stared at the old building in silence for a while and gave herself a chance to calm down. She was still shaky from the last part of the drive, and she didn't want to give away her fear before she'd even had a chance to introduce herself. It might be a little hard to explain why driving alone down a country road had frightened her half to death, and she didn't feel much like trying to do so.
Finally, she got out of the car, put her hands on her lower back and stretched, working out the kinks. What she'd taken for silence during her drive had come to life around her. Birds sang in the tops of pines so tall and thick she could only make out the lower branches. The wind sent leaves dancing over the road, and she heard the creak and groan of branches. Off in the trees, something skittered and ran—a rabbit? She turned her attention to the front of the store and started across the tiny parking lot.
Inside, cloaked by the shadows just inside the doorway to his back office, Silas watched her progress with interest. He had heard the phone ringing as he returned to the store the night before, but had not been in time to answer it. He had thought of tracing the call back to its source—no one ever called him—but now he knew the source. He couldn't have planned the day's events more perfectly himself, and he closed his eyes, offering thanks. He felt the comforting weight of ancient eyes, staring from the old church, their sight easily covering the miles, joining with his own in a moment of blending that sent a shiver through his frame. He heard a rustle above his head as shadow antlers flickered, brushed the rafters of the store gently, and then faded to black. Silas opened his eyes, straightened his shirt, and ran his fingers back through his hair.
He was already stepping forward when
the knock came on the door, and as he opened it, he smiled.
FIFTEEN
Abe eyed the path through the woods carefully. He hadn't wandered much beyond the confines of the small yard surrounding the cabin since his arrival. He gathered his firewood as close to the building as possible, and never stayed among the trees for long. He remembered the claustrophobic sensation of the vines wrapping around his ankles. Each time he rounded the corner of the cottage where he'd found his mother, he shuddered and stared into the trees, expecting to see vines snaking out from the underbrush, or a nest of vipers in the shrubs.
The night had passed in relative quiet, and he'd slept soundly. He didn't know how this could be, in the face of everything that had happened in the past few days, but the cottage drained the worries and pain of the world away. There was strength in the old stone, and though he had severed his connection with it many years before, it remembered.
The path down the mountain was a different thing entirely. He stared down toward the old church and frowned. The day before he'd struggled through hedges and thorns. His arms bore the cuts and scratches to prove he hadn't hallucinated the experience, but now the path was clear. He couldn't see all the way to the church, because there were twists and turns in the trail, but from where he stood he should have seen the hedges. The trail was a little overgrown, but it was the overgrowth of disuse.
Abe turned to the fresh grave where he'd buried his mother, then back to the trail. The sky was clear, and the sun already reached tentatively through the upper branches of the trees. He gave himself no time to think. He stepped onto the trail and started down, keeping his eyes on the ground before him and watching carefully for any movement. The snake still lurked in the back of his thoughts, and he didn't relish a second encounter with it, even unencumbered by vines.
The walk was brisk and uninterrupted. He made good time, and soon had the short steeple of the stone church in sight. He was about to break into a quick trot for the last few yards when a glint of light on the trail caught his eye. He stopped, squinted, and leaned down. A round bit of metal lay in the dirt, half covered by mud. It dangled from a chain that was wedged into the 'y' shaped branch of a small sapling. Abe unfastened the chain from the small tree and lifted it into the growing light.
He knew what it was before it broke free of the mud. His mother's pendant dangled from his fingers, and the world spun. His knees weakened, and he staggered. He started toward the nearest tree for support, then stopped cold. He stared at the tree, the vines wound around its base, the shrubs and plants trailing off behind it, and then he turned back to the trail. He gripped the pendant in his hand so tightly its metal edges bit into his flesh. The chain dangled over his fingers.
He descended the last few steps to the yard of the stone chapel and fell on his knees in the dirt. The night before he'd acted numbly, cutting his mother free of the clinging forest and laying her to rest in the rocky soil. He'd done what had to be done, still clutched in the fear and shock of his own ordeal. Now, kneeling before the door of his father's church, the pendant she'd worn since before he was born clutched in one hand, the full impact of what had occurred slammed into him with brutal, undeniable force.
He clasped his hands and bowed his head close to the earth. Tears flowed freely and washed down his cheeks to drip over his hands and the pendant. The sun beat down on his back, but he ignored it. He focused on the image of his mother's face, not the cold, lifeless countenance he'd seen the night before, but the warm, vibrant woman he remembered. He heard her voice as she wandered about her cottage. She was always speaking, chanting, or singing in his memory. He couldn't recall a moment of silence between them.
He shook with sudden fatigue and hunger, and sobs wrenched his stomach into knots of pain. He thought of Katrina, and wished she were with him. He thought of his father, and of his mother, and the years lined up between the memories like dominos. They fell away to the sides, and his universe focused on the shiny metal circle in his hand.
The cross caught sunlight and glowed. He felt it first in his hands, then rolling up his arms in waves. Heat, and strength. His mother's words, vague echoes just moments before, filled his mind. Abe raised his head and saw that the sun shone full on the face of the old church. The white walls gleamed, and for just a moment he thought of the Cathedral of San Marcos, dangling over the ocean above his cottage.
The warmth had reached his knees. Abe rose slowly and walked to the front door of the small church. He pulled it wide and stepped inside. Sunlight filtered in through the windows and striped the floor. Abe walked to the front of the church where the old stone podium stood. It should have been coated in dust and festooned with cobwebs, but it was clean, caught directly in the sunlight from one of the side windows. Abe stepped behind it, looked out over the stone benches, and closed his eyes.
His mother's voice gave way to memories of his father. He remembered the sermons; the words of praise to a power great enough to create the mountain. He remembered the sensation of unity this old, weathered building had brought, the community of spirit. He'd been too young to appreciate it at the time, but the memories were strong and surprisingly clear.
Very carefully, he wiped the last of the mud off of his mother's cross. He cleaned the chain, and then he fastened the clasp. It wasn't damaged, and when he saw this, he frowned. If it hadn't been broken off, then how had it come to be in the path? He knew his mother would never have given it up voluntarily. He'd asked her about it a thousand times.
"It's my protection," she'd told him. After Abe's father died, she gave the matching pendant to Abe, who'd worn it ever since. He hadn't done this out of a need for protection, but in memory of his parents. That, at least, is what he'd told himself. Now he wondered.
He slid the necklace carefully into the pocket of his jeans and stood a moment longer. He'd thought of this many times as a boy and wondered how it would feel to stand at his father's podium. No one returned his gaze, and if he spoke, they would not hear, but it didn't change the sense of something important taking place. The small chapel had grown warm with the morning sunlight. It would be hot soon, and he knew he needed to hurry. He wanted to reach his mother's cottage before noon, and to be back at the other cottage before even a hint of nightfall stained the mountain. The trail was clear enough now, but who knew what might happen in the course of the day? Dust rose from the floor as he headed back down the center aisle and out of the church. There was time to clean up and look at repairs when he returned. Abe turned down the path toward the base of the peak and walked, deep in thought. Behind him the stone chapel glimmered in the sunlight. Somehow it seemed less abandoned.
The trail down from the stone chapel to the lower peaks was less overgrown. The sense of foreboding that emanated from the trees lining the upper trail was present, but lessened as Abe approached inhabited lands. Off to either side of the trail lands claimed by the several families of the mountain stretched on around the peak and down the opposite side. There was no formal ownership, as far as Abe knew, though he was certain that at some point paperwork must have been filed in some government office somewhere. No one had ever come to claim the land as their own—or if they had, they hadn't come back.
His father's family alone had three separate branches. Abe's uncle Bradford lived up past the Murphys. He had two sons and a daughter. Abe remembered them all vaguely. There was another Uncle, Jacob, who had been with those who came up the mountain the night of "the cleansing."
He'd met them, of course, and he'd seen them on weekends at the church, but Abe's mother had caused a rift in the family that was seldom breached. The families on the mountain were so spread out that it was easy to live day to day and forget how many there were, and how widespread the influence of the two churches, and the single road leading down past Greene's General Store actually were.
Abe's childhood had been spent largely in the company of his mother, and his father, working on the mountain. He was one of those fortunate enough to have educated pa
rents, and the home schooling he'd received had been extensive. When there was time to spend with other children, it was a treat, rare enough to be special. He'd had free run of the mountain for most of his life, but for all of that his exploration and adventures had been oddly confined.
You didn't want to wander onto another family's land without permission, or at least properly announcing yourself, and this limited the "neutral" ground severely. The result was that Abe knew most of the people of the mountain by sight, a lot of them by name, but very few of them well enough for more than a polite hello.
The others on the mountain had always been particularly distant with Abe. His father tended the stone chapel, and the set of beliefs and customs surrounding their faith were intricate and intense. It was assumed from an early age that Abraham would take over when Jonathan passed on, that the family would continue into the future, father-to-son, tending the chapel, the graveyard, and the small cottage above.
Jonathan was the first not to make his home in the small cottage above the church, and the first to marry someone from the outside. He had been educated in the city, sent off by his own father, and then returned as he felt the call of the church, and the draw of the mountain. He had been resented for each of these variations from tradition, but despite this Jonathan Carlson was held in high esteem. He was a holy man with a holy cause, and he bore a weight that none of his followers would have shouldered. He alone stood against the white church, and all it represented, and Abraham was intended as his successor.
Both churches had gone empty for a long time, and there was no way for Abe to predict how the people would react to his presence. His father had gone away to school and returned, but he'd returned out of a sense of purpose, and the church was still in the hands of Abe's Grandfather, Malachi Carlson, at the time. In all the recorded generations of families on the mountain, the church had never been left untended—until now.
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