Lord of the Mountain

by William Ollie

  “C’mon, Big Earl… I insist.”

  “No… thanks.”

  Earl began to feel dizzy… lightheaded. He wasn’t aware of people watching him, did not feel Sid Haines’ hand on his shoulder, nor did he hear Arleta Briscomb cackle, or see Franklin Fletcher, Judge Croft, or Teddy Levay standing at the bar. It was him and Pitch, alone in the room, and then he didn’t even see Pitch.

  Earl came to his senses to find a near-empty bottle of tequila gripped tightly in his fist, his throat on fire, his cheeks wet from tears that were streaming from his eyes; staring down at the bottle while Doc Fletcher roared, “Thatta’ boy, Earl!”, and Sid Haines clapped a friendly hand on his back. He looked around the room to see everyone, including his wife, nodding their approval. Then he turned to Pitch, who was grinning like a cat with a canary trapped beneath its claws.

  “Earl,” he said. “I thought you didn’t want my tequila.”

  “I, du du didn’t.”

  “You du du didn’t? Then why’d you du du drink it?”

  “Drink?”

  “You don’t remember, do you, Big Earl? It’s like it wasn’t real, isn’t it? Like you were dreaming and woke up and found out it wasn’t a dream. Wasn’t a dream at all.” Pitch’s voice sounded like an echoing taunt from some far away galaxy. “Like it was a dream... a dream…dream…”

  Earl sat the bottle on the bar and looked out at his wife, who seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Evie Miller.

  “Well, everybody,” Pitch called out. “How about a little dinner?”

  “All right!” said Teddy Levay.

  “Just what the doctor ordered,” Doc Fletcher said, raising his glass in the air, and tossing its contents down his throat.

  “All of you go on ahead. I want to talk to Earl and Vonda a minute. We’ll catch up before you know it.”

  The group filed out the door, and Pitch pulled two chairs over in front of his big mahogany desk. He motioned for Vonda and Earl to take a seat, and walked around in front of Earl once they had.

  Nothing was said as Pitch sat on the edge of his desk, staring directly into the eyes of Earl Peters, the sheriff who had faced down a trio of bank robbers, the man whose grim determination had carried him through a battle that should have left him dead on the side of the mountain. The same man who did not want to look into the cold, hypnotic stare hovering at the edge of his vision, but found to his utter amazement, that he could not avoid it. He sat in his chair, staring into Pitch’s dark blue eyes, which slowly began to fade, until nothing was left but two solid white orbs, which, before he knew it had turned as black as two glistening fragments of coal. Earl thought he could see flickering flames reflected in those eyes, which now held his attention like nothing ever had before, refusing to release him as his head grew light… lighter still, until like a helium-filled balloon it lifted from his shoulders, drifting up and colliding with words that swirled through the air as if spoken from all corners of the room at once. He wasn’t aware of the ticking Grandfather clock in the corner of the room, of the lamp on the mahogany desk or of his wife sitting in the chair next to him, or even of himself. The only thing he could see was the fiery stare of William Pitch, whose dark and foreboding presence bore into him, while the room tilted and the ceiling pressed down, the walls moved toward him, and a lilting voice echoed throughout the ever-shrinking boundaries of his sanity:

  “Well, now that I have your undivided attention, listen very carefully to what I have to say.”

  * * *

  Alvie Ross needed to think, to sort out everything that had happened. Bobby Jackson and Jerry Hodges were linked to Frankie Stapleton and those other kids. There was no doubting it now, not after Callie Hopkins called to say her youngest hadn’t come home from school. ‘Maybe he went out trick or treating’, Alvie Ross had suggested, trying to keep a nest of vipers from slithering into his stomach. But Callie had made her boy promise to go straight home, and she was right: Leonard Hopkins wouldn’t have hung around after school. He would have gone home to Butcher’s Holler to go door to door with his own brothers and sisters and friends. Three kids vanishing on the same three consecutive days thirteen years apart was no coincidence. And now those slithering snakes were writhing and flipping, twisting his gut into a quivering knot of despair.

  Alvie Ross pulled to the side of the dirt road, turned off the car and closed his eyes. Clearing his mind of Missy Thomas and her boys, Elmer and Jason and Katie Lynn Stone, Marty Donlan, the preacher and the mayor, Croft and all that shit, he concentrated on Jerry Hodges. They had been up all night, barely a couple hours of sleep when they were rousted to go look for him. What did we miss? What did June tell them? Nothing important… just how he was dressed. What did the neighbors say? None of them had seen him. Cindy Clark hadn’t seen him, Callie Hopkins, either.

  Now her boy was missing, too.

  He opened his eyes and stared through the windshield, past twin beams of light silhouetting the log cabin at the end of the road. Goose bumps marched up his forearms as his thoughts traveled back to Arleta Briscomb, scowling from her porch as he and Earl stood before her.

  Jesus... What did that mean-spirited bitch say?

  Alvie Ross leaned back in his seat, remembering… ‘What the hell are ya askin’ me for?’… ‘Didn’t none of her people lift a finger to help me when my Johnny went to missin’. Didn’t nobody do a goddamn thing to find my boy.’ … ‘If it’s her turn to have her heart ripped out, well that’s too goddamn bad, ain’t it?’…

  “Her turn.” Alvie Ross pumped the gas pedal, twisted the ignition and the engine turned over, eased off the clutch and the car rolled forward. This was no coincidence. Neither was it was a coincidence that he had found himself in front of Arleta Briscomb’s log cabin. Something had brought him here, an omnipotent force larger than life itself, and now it was pushing him forward, up the road and onto the driveway, headlights washing over the pasture as Arleta Briscomb’s lowing cows moved around the field.

  No car was in front of the house he pulled up to. Nor was one beside it. Probably in the barn, he thought, as he looked down at his watch, noting the time to be ten o’clock. He stopped by the porch and killed the ignition, turned off the headlights, and darkness settled in around him. Then he was out of the car, dashing up the stairs and onto the front porch, pounding on the door and calling out, “Arleta!”

  He drew his pistol, intending to jam the barrel into her mouth when the door swung open, cock back the hammer and force her to talk.

  “Arleta!” he shouted, and kept on pounding, waiting for the lights to come on.

  But they didn’t come on, and no one came to the door, either. He stepped over to the living room window and peered inside. No sounds, no lights. He knew that Arleta Briscomb feared no one, that if she was in there, she would have shown herself by now.

  Alvie Ross walked to the end of the porch and leaned against the wooden railing, looked out across the yard and saw Arleta’s barn awash in the moonlight. He remembered how funny it all had been: Caleb, grinning and pulling up his pants, the frantic cow shuffling sideways away from him; Arleta screaming at them to get out while her son scrambled into the hayloft; fistfuls of hay raining down from the loft.

  ‘DON’T LET ‘EM COME UP HERE, MAMA!’… ‘Get out!’… ‘We wanta ask you some questions!’… ‘I don’t know nothing about no Jerry Hodges!’

  Jerry Hodges name had not been mentioned inside the barn.

  Fistfuls of hay raining down from the loft. ‘DON’T LET ‘EM COME UP HERE, MAMA!’

  Caleb didn’t want him up there.

  ‘Get out!’

  Neither of them wanted him up there.

  He and Earl had a good laugh about it on the way back to town. ‘Maybe he’s got a sheep up there,’ Earl had said, and both men laughed hysterically.

  What did he really have in the loft? What if Jerry Hodges was up there, tied up in the loft and they could have saved him?

  Alvie Ross turned and made his way off
the porch, back to the car. The passenger door was opened. Then the glove box. He fumbled around until he found a flashlight, and then shut the door and stalked across the yard, to the barn, where he turned the flashlight on, swung open the barn door, and stepped into the darkness.

  * * *

  Earl and Vonda followed Pitch down a long hallway, up the stairs to the second floor, where another large room had been set up as a dining area. On the right stood a long table, stacked high with platters of several different kinds of meats. There were mashed potatoes and gravy, steaming vegetables and a large assortment of cakes and desserts. Over by the French Doors that led to a large balcony, Pitch’s group sat around another long table, eating and drinking, laughing and joking with one another.

  Amidst the clatter of silverware and clinking glasses, Pitch led Vonda and Earl to the buffet, Vonda watching as her husband shuffled along like a doped-up mental patient, having not spoken a word since leaving the library, where he’d sat in front of Pitch gazing up at the ceiling—at what, Vonda did not know—eyes roving around the room, mumbling incoherently, until finally, he sat motionless, staring up at Pitch.

  She wondered what exactly Pitch had done to him.

  Earl did not pick up a plate, or a glass. He shuffled along behind Vonda, sat down between her and Pitch and stared at the food Vonda had prepared for him.

  “Well, Doc,” Pitch called out. “I guess you’ll get that property after all.”

  “Doc Fletcher, nodding, glanced at Earl and smiled. “Certainly does look that way, doesn’t it?”

  Pitch put a hand on Earl’s shoulder. “You didn’t know ol’ Doc here was trying to buy Marty Donlan’s little country store out from under him, did you, Earl? Bet he wishes he’d just sold that lot now… And that ain’t no goddamn dream!” Pitch cackled, and the rest of the group laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

  Earl looked at Pitch, then at Doc Fletcher.

  “You know,” Fletcher said. “It’s too bad about John Chambers. I told him to take it easy the day he died. Sat right in my office that morning and told him, ‘John, quit worrying about them goddamn kids’. But he just couldn’t let it go.”

  Earl’s eyes grew wide.

  “Fuck that cocksucker,” Pitch said. “We got us a good goddamn sheriff now, huh Earl?”

  Earl looked back at Pitch.

  “Eat your food,” Pitch said, and Earl picked up a chicken leg, took a bite without even looking at it, and slowly began to chew.

  Vonda wondered if he could even taste it.

  Pitch raised his hands in the air, leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “How about that fucking preacher!”

  “That son of a bitch,” Teddy Levay said, shaking his head as a bloody piece of beef was forked and crammed into his mouth.

  Pitch leaned nearer to Earl. “You know,” he said. “I called that self-righteous prick this morning, but he wouldn’t talk to me. Just dropped the phone on the floor and walked away.”

  Earl, still holding the once-bitten chicken leg in his hand, kept right on chewing.

  “Goddamn, son,” Pitch said. “Swallow that shit.”

  Earl’s Adams apple bobbed up and down as the bite of chicken he had been working so mechanically on slid down his throat.

  Across the room, the door opened, and Jimmy Tomlin walked over to Pitch, leaned over his shoulder and whispered into his ear.

  Pitch removed a bundle of cash from inside his jacket, handed it to Tomlin and stood up. “Well,” he said. “Are you through stuffing yourselves like a bunch of greedy, fucking pigs?” When no one spoke up, he laughed and gestured for everyone to rise.

  “Well then,” he said. “What say we go downstairs and have our dessert.”

  * * *

  Dust motes drifted through the faint disk of light Alvie Ross followed across the hay-strewn floor. The smell of fresh cow pies and baled hay hung in the air around him. He checked the stalls and made his way to the ladder, stuffed the flashlight into his waistband and climbed until his head was above the loft’s wooden floor. Then he grabbed the flashlight and swept the beam around the loft: to the left, to the right, directly in front of him.

  “Son of a fucking bitch,” he said, and then tossed the flashlight into the loft and scrambled up onto the wooden planking, grabbed the light and aimed it at two child-sized, hay-filled dummies laid out on small makeshift altars of twigs and twine. The first, dressed in blue jeans, a T-shirt and red jacket, had a rip down the middle of its chest. A Cincinnati Reds baseball cap covered its face. The second had a hunting knife sticking out of the faded blue T-shirt and old gray jacket it wore. Above them, a large sheet of yellowed paper had been nailed to a beam, the poster depicting a stick figure with horns, holding a knife in one hand and a round, red smear in the other. It looked like something a five-year-old might draw… if he was crazy.

  Alvie Ross stuffed the flashlight back into his waistband and hurried down the ladder, to the floor. Then he took off across the clearing, to Arleta’s log cabin, where he bounded onto the front porch and hurled himself into the door. Glass shattered as the door flew open and Alvie Ross pulled out the flashlight, sweeping it across the wall until he found a light switch, snapped it and the overhead light came on. He made his way to a room at the center of a lone hallway, opened the door and felt the wall for a switch, found it and flipped it and a faint yellow glow filled the room.

  It was a bedroom, with no bed or windows, nor furniture of any kind. Upside-down wooden crucifixes hung in the center of each wall, surrounding a thick brown throw-rug that lay on the floor in front of a statue of a demon, which had been fashioned from a four-foot high block of glistening coal. The demon had cloven hooves for feet, and thick muscular legs, clenched fists extending from its powerful-looking arms. He had a scowl on his black face, and deep-set eyes that seemed to be staring right at the shocked deputy, who drew his weapon and fired, and kept on firing until his barking pistol had turned the statue into a glistening pile of black shards that, even as it lay in a heap on the floor, seemed to be mocking him.

  * * *

  Vonda and Earl, flanked on all sides by the group, moved slowly along with them.

  Down the long stairwell to the first floor, Tomlin took them into the kitchen, where he opened the door to a large walk-in pantry. Removing three gallon-sized cans of tomato sauce from the middle shelf on the rear wall exposed a metal lever. He pulled the handle and a section of wall swung open, revealing a door. Tomlin opened the door and flicked a wall-mounted switch, flooding the stairwell with light as he motioned the group to follow him.

  Down the stairwell they went, slowly, one step at a time, as if prisoners being marched to their doom, and after what seemed like forever, they found themselves in the basement.

  Tomlin walked over and lit a torch sitting in a stand in the middle of the floor, and then went around lighting more torches, leaving Vonda gasping at the huge cavern-like room she found herself in—walls the rough-hewn walls of a cave, a floor of huge, flat, inlaid stones. Stretching out beside and beyond them, the torchlight grew fainter, until it was finally swallowed up by a wall of darkness. Beyond the dark loomed a faint patch of light at the stairwell’s bottom.

  Doc Fletcher led them to the far side of the cavern, where thirteen robes hung side by side on the wall. While the group donned their hooded garments, Jimmy Tomlin hurried to the staircase and scampered up the steps. Vonda watched him vanish into the darkness, and then looked up at her husband, who had not uttered a single word since leaving the library. He stood beside her, emotionless, his vacant eyes staring into the distance as a robed figure approached them.

  “He wants you up here with us,” Teddy Levay said, his voice cold, flat and emotionless.

  Vonda and Earl followed the mayor to the line of torches, where the others had formed three rows in front of a huge stone platform.

  “Stay here,” Levay said, and then left them standing in the last row.

  While Levay walked up to the
front, Vonda stood beside her husband, excitement blooming inside her as she found herself involved in an adventure as mysterious as any book she had ever read.

  The group gasped as Pitch appeared on the stone slab, holding a lit torch in each of his hands. Behind him stood a huge statue with goat-like horns protruding from its forehead, cold, cruel eyes, and a head full of curly hair. Cloven hooves supported its thick, powerful legs as the scowling demon looked down on an altar that had been fashioned from stone. Stretched across the altar was a young boy, clad only in a soiled pair of underwear. His mouth was gagged, his arms and legs tied down, a look of absolute terror frozen upon his face as he shook his head, screaming through his gag while his arms flailed his and body jerked uselessly against its bonds.

  Pitch, dressed in the garb of a country preacher, black suit, blue shirt and black tie, placed torches into stands located on either side of the statue. He removed his tie and walked over to the struggling child, looped the tie around the child’s neck and cinched it tight; slapped him in the face, and then raised his arms high into the air, sending shadowy figures writhing and crawling up the statue.

  “My children!” he called out. “Thirteen years have passed! Thirteen long, glorious years! I stand before you at the appointed time! To help you! To lead you to riches! To power and prosperity!”

  Pitch, eyes flashing, sweat pouring down his face, cried out, “Have you prospered one and all?”

  “Yes!” thirteen excited voices answered him.

  “Are you in good health, one and all?” he shouted.

  Teddy Levay rubbed his neck and smiled.

  “Yes!” came the roar of the crowd.

  “Do you want more?” he yelled, pacing back and forth, shaking his fist in the air.

  “Yes!”

  “Who is your leader?”