Blood Mountain

by J. T. Warren

  He walked quickly outside to his car. The friction of his jeans only encouraged his arousal. His underwear, always a size too small on purpose, was doing little to stymie the growing bulge.

  He had parked at the far end of the parking lot. His car was a beater from the late eighties he had bought for one-hundred dollars. It had two-hundred-eighty thousand miles. The steering wheel shook violently at speeds over forty and the exhaust stank of rotting eggs. But it was all he needed.

  There were no cars near his.

  He dropped into the drivers’ seat. It groaned like it might finally give out. He yanked down his jeans and took his cell phone from his jacket. He caressed himself faster and faster as he scrolled through the fifty pictures he had taken of Mercy Higgins.

  He managed to get the box of tissues out of the glove compartment in time.

  SIX

  Mercy almost started crying harder when she thought how much easier it would be to explain everything to Mom. Women understood how messed up they were. They knew their bodies were uncontrollable vessels of perpetually battling hormones. A woman could be giddy with happiness one minute and completely devastated at the crippling power of some perceived fear the next. She could not explain everything to Dad. She couldn’t tell him how she felt about Mom, about her desperation to have sex with Joel, her overwhelming feeling of failure about her music and her fear that her life was a pointless string of disappointments. Mom would have understood, let her voice her shopping list of worries and then shared a secret smoke with her and told her that life for a woman was much harder than a man could ever realize. Dad would blame himself because he was sensitive and then she’d feel even worse.

  She almost surrendered. She almost told Dad that she wasn’t feeling well and that she’d rather just go home and curl up in bed with a book. Spend tomorrow at the bookstore helping Pete.

  The bookstore. Where she had seen that guy.

  Since high school, Mercy worked a few days a week at a local bookstore called Rune Books. Pete Harwinski started the place in the eighties and managed to keep it profitable through all the publishing scares. He created an online presence to make his place known for the people who prided themselves on shopping only at privately owned shops. He’d recently added free Wi-Fi and was building a coffee bar with a few plush chairs for costumers who didn’t want to buy books but liked scrolling the Internet in such ambiance. Since graduating, Mercy worked there six days a week. She’d probably end up serving coffee by the end of next week. Not very impressive for someone with a Bachelor’s in Literary Theory with a minor in English Literature.

  The store was never very busy except around Christmas, but Pete made enough to keep the business going and pay Mercy twelve dollars an hour. She lived at home and didn’t really care about the money. She worked there because Pete was such a nice guy, a second father, really, and because she’d always loved books. She could sit in the store, breathing in the sweet intermingling aromas of new and old books and read all day long.

  The small size of the store and the way the towering shelves of books obscured what dim lighting there was always intimidated newcomers. Most newbies wanted the latest bestseller from whoever, but some were on a mission to get a rare hardback copy of some novel published in the sixties or seventies.

  Maybe two-dozen regulars frequented the store every few days or so on what seemed like a rotating schedule. Most were nice, some weird. She knew all their names, too, all except for the guy she had just seen in the diner. She should have recognized him immediately. He usually came into the store every three or four days an hour or so before closing. He never returned her hellos. He went right to the far end of the store, opposite the cashier counter. He never seemed to find anything to buy. Pete called him “the perpetual browser.”

  Mercy was reorganizing a shelf of horror paperbacks from the eighties with their flashy covers of gory monsters and blood-soaked landscapes when he caught the man peering around the corner of the bookcase at her. She asked if she could help him. His eyes did some kind of weird jiggle or something and he said no. A moment later, he was running out of the store like he had forgotten some urgent appointment.

  That had been a month ago. Since then, he had been in the store but always like a ghost, hidden from view, only felt as some kind of different presence. Not threatening, exactly, but certainly strange.

  He probably wanted to ask her out.

  Perish the thought.

  SEVEN

  Victor cleaned himself up and stuffed the towel back into the glove compartment. Free of that stuff, his body was calm, his mind focused. When he didn’t relieve himself for a while, he could get a little crazy. He accepted that. The pleasure he gave himself was part of his maintenance, like brushing his teeth or bathing.

  With a clear mind, he could see the situation better. See the pitfalls. The danger. He had been stupid to enter the diner. Stupider still to stare at the girl and, stupidest of all, to make eye contact. It wouldn’t take long for her to place who he was. Not that she knew anything about him, but he hadn’t exactly been as covert as the situation required.

  The girl might get freaked, call off the camping expedition. She’d told her friend over the phone that her father thought the night on the mountain would be some kind of bonding thing but she would much rather see a therapist together. The girl had laughed at something her friend said before saying that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, maybe they would run into a cute hiker.

  Victor had been near the back of the bookstore where she worked, on his knees, pretending to scan the bindings of old hardcover books. The girl’s voice echoed through the store and teased him with its sensuality like those mythological creatures and their songs that lured sailers to their death.

  The girl was no beast. She was an innocent, perhaps marked for death as the old world gave way to the New Time, but he would give her a chance to save herself. At least for a while.

  It was the how of this situation he had never fully calculated. He couldn’t simply speak to her. She would see the truth of his nature, discover he was a cleanser, and rebuke him. Then he would have to kill her.

  For now, he would stay out of the way. Trail them up the mountain. Hide in the distance. Wait for his opportunity.

  Like when the rats came out. He could spend hours waiting in the dark of his basement. His hearing would get fuzzy and then adjust to the silence. His eyes would find the outline of the furniture and then gradually reveal their hidden dimensions. If he waited long enough, his senses grew super keen.

  Then the rats had no chance.

  Sometimes he killed them outright. Other times he amputated their legs and then gradually sliced open their bellies to see how long they would keep fighting to live.

  The struggle could last for some time.

  He would trust in his patience, in his senses, in his self-control. In the power the universe had given him.

  That was easy to do when his mind wasn’t flooded with images of the girl on her knees before him, mouth wide. In those fantasies, her eyes were black holes that cried tears of blood.

  Like the tears the trees cried on the mountain.

  The girl and her father were at a table in one of the windows. The glare from the sun painted the girl in a holy aura like a giant halo.

  Two teenage boys were smoking on the opposite side of the front stairs. They were laughing about something.

  Victor got out of the car and opened his trunk. He checked his supplies. He hoped the rifle would not be necessary. He had never fired one. It was the same kind Hugo Herrera had used. He must have been quick, reloading and firing to kill five people without anyone stopping him.

  Too quick to almost be unbelievable. Why didn’t anyone try to stop him?

  Because in those final minutes, everyone in that diner knew the bell of a special hour had rung. People spend lifetimes looking forward to things but when destiny catches up with them they are helpless.

  We are all helpless before the Great Plan.
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  Victor caressed his backpack. The hunting knives were in there. Set of seven. Each sharpened and polished. Sometimes he stared at his reflection in those blades and imagined blood traversing the grooves like open veins.

  He grinned.

  EIGHT

  The teenage boys were gone. On the table, they left one dollar. Dad looked so sad and helpless that Mercy’s tears almost returned full force. When he began to apologize and call off the camping expedition, Mercy shook her head like Mom used to and said she was sorry, that she wanted to go on this trip with him, she really did.

  “It won’t be as bad as you think,” Dad said. “It’s not going to rain.”

  He was trying.

  She picked at the remainder of her meal.

  Outside, the two teenage boys were walking across the parking lot toward the far end. Their tight jeans with the sagging butts looked ridiculous. They probably didn’t have a car. Maybe been up all night drinking, talking about sex. They were assholes, but boys had it easier. Living the bohemian way came naturally to them. Ratcheting up sexual escapades like they were collecting baseball cards. Virginity was a grease stain needing to be wiped clean.

  Joel had not pressured her. He had given her intense physical pleasure. The first time he went down on her she was appalled and horrified, afraid he would comment on her smell, but those worries vanished in a full-body tingling sensation. She was nervous returning the favor and had done her best imitation of what a porn woman would do. Even after a month of similar exchanges, he denied her the full pleasure of his sex because he had found someone new and he didn’t want to take advantage of her.

  How wonderfully noble of him.

  “We can talk about anything,” Dad said. “I know I’m your father and that makes it weird sometimes, but I am here for you. I won’t judge you.”

  He meant well but it made her feel even more like a little girl. She was supposed to be a woman, a college-educated woman, not some teen fretting over boy issues.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m thinking about Mom.” Ironically, talking about Mom was a preferable discussion.

  Dad’s face paled. “It was hard. But you were so wonderful, honey. So strong.”

  “It’s fine, Dad.”

  “No. I mean it. Without you, I would have fallen apart. My little girl saved me.”

  “I was a mess.”

  “You were so strong. There is a lot of your mother in you. I hope you know that.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Gradually, their solemn faces brightened until he made that stupid walrus face and she managed a giggle. Like when she had been young.

  The boys were almost at the far end of the parking lot where a small car with dark splotches of rust on its side waited, the trunk open. The guy from the bookstore was standing there, gesturing for them to approach, like he had something really wonderful to show them.

  The boys came around the car on either side like jackals. All three stepped behind the open trunk lid.

  “You don’t have to keep things bottled,” Dad said.

  “I’m just looking at the mountain.”

  Dad appreciated the view for a moment. “A little bare right now but in a few weeks the trees will be lush. By then, lots of people will be up there. The trails will be littered with wrappers and plastic bottles.”

  Going up Blood Mountain was a rite of passage for many people in Stone Creek. Parents took their kids up there as infants. Boys shot their first deers up there. Teenagers gathered to drink and have sex up there. Or so she heard.

  “This time of year is why the mountain gets its name,” Dad said.

  The boys moved behind the curtain of the trunk. A jagged rust scar marked it like a battle wound on a soldier’s face.

  “All the pine trees. They start excreting around now. Change in the temperature or something. Sap is deep red. Tourists come to see it. The Great Bleed, it’s called.”

  Dad had been stumbling around the Internet again.

  In elementary school, kids said the mountain got its name from all the Indians that were slaughtered up there when the white settlers founded Stone Creek. In high school, the story had something to do with a hook-armed psychopath who liked to kidnap teenage girls up there. He’d rape them and hang them naked upside down from the trees. He would slice their throats with a hunting knife and watch them bleed out. Even a teacher once supported the story. “Lesson is, girls,” the teacher said, “don’t go camping.”

  “The Great Bleed?” she asked. She thought of the first time she got her period. Thankfully, Mom had still been very much alive.

  “It’s what they say.”

  “Who?”

  “They.”

  “Can’t trust everything they say, Dad.”

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked like she were debating getting on a roller coaster she’d finally gotten tall enough to board.

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Outside, one of the boys fell to his knees.

  NINE

  The boys said they wanted to see what he had in the trunk, like they were cops. He opened the case and pointed to each of the seven knives. The skinning knife, the work knife, the Tanto knife . . . They were each five inches long with wooden handles that gleamed.

  “Know anything about knives?” Victor asked.

  The boys stood on either side of him. They made stupid noises and laughed like they were retarded. They weren’t, though, they were just kids. Smelled like fire and bourbon.

  Victor pointed to one of the knives. “See that? It’s the gut hook. Jam the knife in and drag that hook across. Spill the insides. Yank them out if needed.”

  “That’s fucked,” one of them said. He was slightly taller than his buddy but just as skinny.

  Victor removed a felt case from his bag. He unfurled it in his hand. The eight-inch knife sloped to a curved point. That made it easier for skinning an animal without hacking up the meat. The straight side was serrated. That was for splitting through ribcages. Just above the handle, VD had been carved into the metal.

  “You’re like some sicko who lives in the woods?” one kid asked.

  Victor covered the knife, placed it back in the bag. In there was also the small curved axe and the bone saw.

  “You think it’s smart to talk to strangers like that?” Victor asked. “Especially one with so many knives?”

  “Can I touch them?” the kid asked and his buddy laughed.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” The kids stepped closer.

  “No one touches them.”

  “Uh, okay,” the second kid said in a stupid voice.

  “What you got in that bag?” the taller one asked. “Drugs and shit?”

  “I don’t do drugs.”

  The boys laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  The kid stepped closer and reached toward the bag. The other kid was almost at Victor’s back. Victor brought his fist up out of the bag and cracked the bottom of the kid’s jaw. His head snapped back, his eyes rolled lazily, and he collapsed to his knees. He fell forward onto the pavement with a splat. Victor turned to the other kid. Blood dripped from the stainless steel points of the brass knuckles.

  The kid stepped back several feet and was running away before Victor could say something really clever and witty. Not that he had anything in mind.

  The kid on the ground moaned. His feet rocked side to side on the toes of his sneakers.

  Victor grabbed one of the many towels in his trunk and cleaned the blood from the black brass knuckles.

  TEN

  Mercy had never seen a fight before. This didn’t qualify as much of a fight but it was the closest physical violence she’d ever experienced. When the kid hit the ground, she thought he was being stupid or something but then the trunk lid swung down and the man from the bookstore stood there massaging his right hand. The kid was on on the ground and her first thought was that he was dead.

  “Daddy . . .”

  But the kid’s feet were moving,
not much, but enough.

  “What?”

  “That guy . . .”

  But he was staring at her. Standing at the back of his car, some kid on the ground at his feet, the man smiled. It should have been repulsive. She should have started yelling that there was a crazy guy outside who’d just pummeled some kid, should have dialed 9-1-1.

  He raised his hand in a half-wave and she returned it. His smile was big. Then he was in his car and pulling out of the parking lot, headed down the road toward Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

  “What, baby,” her father was saying. “What is it?”

  When had he last called her baby? Had she been ten? Younger? Right around the last time she’d called him daddy.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just a guy I recognized from the bookstore.”

  “Oh, really?”

  She blushed. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t even know his name.”

  “Maybe he’s shy. Maybe he’s been following you around.”

  That creeped her out some but it also intrigued her. Maybe the guy wasn’t as weird as he seemed. Perhaps he was shy and scared to make the first move. She could appreciate that. A little healthy stalking wasn’t the worst thing for a girl, was it?

  The violence, however, helped her keep the warm flooding sensation from fully seizing her. The man obviously had problems, an anger issue, at least. The poor kid was still on the ground. His legs and arms flopped around like the last throes of a fish out of water. The guy had done some damage. And with only his fist, just one punch.

  The kid had been an asshole. He’d deserved it.

  When she was heading to the bathroom and spotted the man, had something passed between them, something she hadn’t fully realized at that moment? The man sensed how upset she was and, knowing where she was seated, assumed it was because of those stupid boys. It had been, too, at least partly.

  So, this weird guy who watched her from around the corner of bookshelves had punished the kids, redeemed her honor.