Blood Mountain

by J. T. Warren

  If not for his moment of release in the woods, he might have tackled the woman, tore off her sweatshirt and jeans and ravaged her. He would, eventually, but not yet. He had to know how much fight she would give him first.

  “You didn’t want to go with him?” he asked about her father.

  She stared at her slender fingers and how they rubbed over each other repeatedly. Some of her hair had fallen around her face. He wanted to touch that soft hair, yank it tightly, and snap her head to the side so he could suck on her neck like a vampire.

  “I’m not much of a hiker,” she said. She looked at him and smiled a half-sort of smile which was either meant to complement her remark like a shrug of the shoulders or gently prod him with flirtation.

  “I’m Victor,” he said.

  She laughed. “I’m so stupid. I’m sorry. I’m Mercy. Since I recognized you, I felt like we knew each other but we don’t even know each other’s names.”

  “We do now.”

  Her smile was larger this time but she glanced toward the distant mountain peak. Maybe she would want to catch up with her father. That would be fine. In the woods, they would not be so exposed.

  They shared a bout of silence in which he saw himself tearing at her body, lunging deep inside her, screaming into her ear as he released all the potentness inside him.

  “How come you never introduced yourself?” Mercy asked.

  “I thought I just did.”

  “I mean at Rune. You’re always in there. But you never said hello.”

  She was looking at him kind of strange. He had been staring at her breasts, though that was more an act of imagination because her sweatshirt was puffed out like she was a giant inflatable ball with a head. He knew her breasts, though. He’d stared at them in pictures for hours.

  “I never wanted to bother you,” he said.

  She appreciated him for a moment. “It’s kind of weird.”

  He raised one mud-clad foot. “We already covered weird, didn’t we?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She was looking down again. “Why are you sorry?”

  “I shouldn’t be so rude. I just thought since I saw you earlier and now you finally said hello . . .”

  “That I had been thinking of saying hi to you for a while?”

  She lifted her head with a face like a child’s, full of vulnerability and helplessness. “I mean, I was always working when you came in.”

  “What if I said I had wanted to say hi to you for a long time? What if I said I decided to follow you up here today when I saw you at the diner? What if I said I think you’re beautiful?”

  “Do you?”

  He smiled. Let her interpret that as she wished.

  He waited. “I come up here all the time,” he said. “I would have left you alone but you looked lonely. I didn’t mean to give you any ideas.”

  “I’m so stupid. I’m sorry.” She covered her red face like a child.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said and paused. “You are really beautiful.”

  She uncovered her face and he knew he had her.

  TWENTY-SIX

  After reading every damn Cosmo article since she was ten on how to talk to a guy, Mercy had made every mistake. She had practically been begging him to say that he was obsessed with her and dreamed of her every night, that she was his one and only and that now that they were alone in the woods he could confess his undying love and profess his eternal devotion.

  It’s a wonder the guy didn’t run back into the forest.

  The most important thing to remember when talking to a guy was not to come on too strong. Men needed something to pursue. Some men might like a forward girl, might even love a girl who demands to be liked and worshipped and other men might relish having a weak-willed girl who needs a man and is willing to do anything to get and keep one, but those weren’t guys you wanted to date. They weren’t well-adjusted.

  Mercy had come across as desperate and childish and this guy had basically told her to go back to playing in the sandbox. You were never supposed to call a man out on his interests, even if you knew beyond a doubt that he wanted you--men don’t confess emotions. She was the one who sounded like a stalker. Always watching for him to return. Like some pathetic girl working at a bookstore who was forever waiting for her Prince Charming to whisk her away.

  Well, wasn’t she?

  But he had said she was beautiful. It was either a genuine remark or a pity complement. She’d gotten many of those over the years. They were like old Chinese food in the back of the fridge. Not exactly worthless but something she could do just as well do without.

  She wanted to ask him if he really meant it--did he really think she was beautiful?--but she couldn’t do that. Couldn’t be that pathetic, needy girl.

  “How long have you been coming to Rune Books?” she asked.

  “A while. I love books, of course, but I really like the feel there. It’s dark and quiet. No screaming kids. No loud colors. No cafe bar. Just books and the people who love them.”

  She almost mentioned that there would be a cafe bar very soon but he had stumbled upon something so coincidental that it struck her as magical.

  “I thought of opening a store with that name.”

  “‘No Screaming Kids’?”

  She laughed and so did he and the moment felt warmer somehow. “Just books,” she said. “It would be a simple, little store. Nothing fancy. No superstore chain madness.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Probably wouldn’t last anyway. Didn’t you hear that print is dead?”

  “Who actually said that?” he asked. “I mean, first? Could it have been a hundred years ago?”

  “I always think of Ghostbusters.”

  “Dr. Spengler?” he said.

  They stared at each other as if he had said something appalling.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t collect spores, molds, or fungus.”

  Her laughter was so loud and unexpected that she felt herself blush again and she covered her face like a little girl during a horror movie.

  “Guess I’m funnier than I thought,” Victor said.

  She was apologizing but still laughing like it really had been quite funny and not just one of those amusing things people said that deserved only a chuckle or two. It wasn’t his delivery or even the line itself but her instant remembrance of every part of that movie which made her laugh like she was stoned.

  “I love how uptight he is in that movie,” Victor said.

  “And how the woman, the secretary, is trying so desperately to get him to like her.”

  Silence settled between them again. He was looking at her like she had just confessed.

  “Who played him?” she asked quickly.

  “Dr. Spengler? I think it was Harold Ramis.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Isn’t he a director or something?”

  “Groundhog Day,” Victor said.

  “Where Bill Murray is experiencing the same day again and again.”

  “And again,” he added. “And again.”

  This stab at humor got another laugh from her but she had control of herself again. In that moment, she decided that Victor was a good guy, likable, and harmless.

  Only a few hours later, she would no longer believe any of those conclusions.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Victor always marveled at the complexities and interconnectedness of the universe. It was incredible how everything always came back, even obscure films from the eighties he had watched as a child. When his mother left him alone, she put Ghostbusters on and told him to stay in place. If she wasn’t back before it ended, he was instructed to rewind and watch again. One night he watched the movie five times successively.

  His mother was always out looking for “a new daddy.” She found a few stand-ins for a while but they never stuck.

  Even now, he played Ghostbusters at night when
his heart would race so quickly he thought it might explode right out of his chest. If that didn’t work, he got in his car and came up here. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Escaping to the wild.

  It would soon be time to renounce all of society’s comforts and entertainments and this mention of Ghostbusters was only further proof. The universe was bringing everything back, showing him the use of things that had seemed like only distractions. He was jettisoning his past just as he was discarding all of modern society. His rebirth was upon him. He would be whole for once and complete with righteous purpose.

  Mercy and he talked more about movies and then books and then television. He wasn’t able to keep the conversation going when she talked about reality shows he had never heard of, but she liked many of the same books he had found solace in at times in his life. Books like The Collector. Books about madmen and the women they stalked.

  It was like she was telling him she knew who he really was and that she was okay with that. She was ready to play her part. Ready to be his captive.

  He still had to keep control. It wasn’t quite time, yet. He would know when. The universe would tell him.

  Until then, he remained Victor-the-charming.

  Their conversation bored him at times and annoyed him at others but he did his best to stay smiling and inserting innocuous jokes where relevant. She laughed a lot and moved closer to him. He said something that she found particularly amusing and touched his arm, a quick, gentle pat. It took all his self-control not to seize her wrist, twist her arm behind her, and bite through her sweatshirt into her breast. He saw the splotch of blood soak into her sweatshirt.

  Yet, he kept smiling.

  “You don’t have to wait,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My dad will be back soon. I’ll be okay. You can keep hiking.”

  “How do you know I want to?”

  She smiled from the side of her mouth. “You didn’t come all the way up here just to talk to me.”

  No, he wanted to say, I came up here to give you a chance to save yourself.

  “I never really have a purpose when I come up here except to get away. I’ve been to the top before. It’s beautiful but going up there is never my reason for climbing this mountain.”

  “You must have a lot of stress in your life.”

  He thought vaguely of his life in a series of distorted mental flashes, some stained with vibrant crimson streaks. “Everyone does, right?”

  She thought of something. Perhaps of her dead mother. He knew more about it than she could possibly realize. It was amazing how much you could hear if you only listened.

  “I guess,” she said. “So, this place is like a retreat for you?”

  “It’s paradise.”

  “A lot of work to get some peace.”

  “The exertion is part of it. I get drained. All the stress falls away. Everything is clearer.”

  “When everything is clear, what do you find?”

  “Purpose,” he said.

  “Which has nothing to do with climbing to the top?”

  “Not today, it doesn’t.”

  The conversation wandered off into irrelevance and even politics, something Victor could not process very well and really tested his fortitude, but it always danced back to why he was up on this mountain, why he was spending so much time with her.

  She sat with her legs stretched out before her, ankles crossed, arms propping her up, head tilted back to the sky like she was sunbathing. The bottom of her sweatshirt pulled up enough to reveal a sliver of pale skin. Her blood would be so potent against that skin. So alive.

  “Some people would say you’re weird,” she said. “Come up here and sit in the woods alone with your bare feet in mud.”

  “I told you, didn’t I?”

  “Why do you come up here?”

  “To relax, like I said.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  His ears felt warm. “Why not?”

  She rolled her head side to side and then turned to him. “I think you followed me up here.”

  “Didn’t I already answer that question, too?”

  “You lied because you don’t want me to think you’re a freak.”

  His palms were sweating. “Do you?”

  “Think you’re a freak?” She laughed. “You did punch a teenager in a parking lot this morning.”

  His hand slipped into a fist with the memory. “Probably shouldn’t have done that, huh?”

  She thought about it. “The kid was an asshole.”

  “Right.”

  “But someone might have seen you.”

  “Someone did,” he said. “You.”

  She tilted her head back and sunlight washed over her face and down her white neck.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mercy Higgins was surprising herself with every passing minute. Somewhere between her initial embarrassment and self-consciousness and his vague answers about why he liked coming up here so much, Mercy discovered a girl who would have had great times at frat parties and maybe let girls suck shots off of her stomach.

  Leaned back, head tilted, chest arched, she felt like a model. It didn’t matter she was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and her rattiest jeans and her hair was knotted behind her. Victor knew her as the quiet bookstore girl. And that was it. She didn’t have to stay that way. She could be the come hither vixen. Men always fell for that. It was all about attitude. Cosmo said so.

  “What if I told someone? What if I reported you?”

  “You didn’t,” he said.

  “I still could.”

  “You won’t.” His voice wavered just a little and she giggled. Being a vixen felt wonderful.

  “And why is that?” she asked.

  When he didn’t respond she fought the urge to open her eyes. He was panicking now, genuinely worried that she was going to report him for punching some stupid kid in the face. Moments ago, Mercy never would have been able to play this game. She would assure him that she wasn’t going to tell anyone. She’d apologize for making him nervous about it.

  That woman was gone. Or at least on hiatus.

  “You’re not going to report me,” he said, “because you liked that I hit that kid. He had been acting like an asshole. That pissed you off.”

  “That’s why you hit him?” She broke character, looked at him.

  He was staring at his feet. The mud was cracking off in clumps.

  “Some people deserve to be hit.”

  When he lifted his head there was something in his eyes she hadn’t noticed before. Something like darkness. Something a little scary.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get so intense.”

  She laughed weakly and waited for the darkness to lift or harden into something more tangible but it didn’t change, just floated there in his face like a cloud. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Dad would be back soon. She hoped so, anyway.

  There was a long pause, maybe a few minutes. A few crows were cawing back and forth somewhere not too far away. The breeze had chilled and when it ran over her body she fought the urge to curl back into a hunched-over, cross-legged position like a little kid. She had the upper hand and she couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t let this guy think she was weak or easily won.

  “I haven’t been honest with you,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “I did follow you up here.”

  She suppressed a smile teasing at her lips.

  “I might have come anyway but when I saw you at the diner, I thought there might be greater meaning in it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like destiny.”

  “That’s kind of heavy-handed, don’t you think?”

  He paused. “When I come up here, I always find some purpose. There is always a reason I am where I end up. Like fate. And on this mountain it is so much stronger. I feel at home. When I saw you coming up here, I knew I had to come, too. I knew this mountain was tel
ling me something, giving me grand purpose.”

  “Which is?” she asked.

  “I have always thought you were beautiful. At the bookstore. And when I saw you this morning, there was pain in your eyes. But you were still beautiful. This mountain has given me so much and now it has given me the chance to spend a few hours with you. I’m not trying to be weird or anything; it’s just the way I see it. My purpose today has been to spend time with you.”

  It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her and she had no idea how to respond.

  TWENTY-NINE

  It didn’t take much to be charming. His mother had taught him all he needed to know about it. It boiled down to knowing what you wanted and telling the other person exactly what they needed to hear so you could get whatever it was you were after.

  Some nights when his mother came home drunk and maybe stoned or high on some other narcotic, she would launch into long tirades about humanity. This included extended rants against the establishment, which from what the young Victor could gather, meant anyone who made more money than she. But her talks, her seated on the couch, glass overflowing with red wine in hand, inevitably came back to her strategies for success.

  Her number one strategy for success? Be charming, of course.

  She would wear some low-cut shirt that hugged her breasts, often going braless so while she spoke, Victor would find himself staring at her nipples. Sometimes they would stick out at him like tiny accusatory fingers.

  “You can get whatever you want, honey,” she’d say. “You just gotta seduce ‘em. You gotta be charming. Charrrrming.” She would drag out the “r” in charming like it was some exotic word.

  She would rub her legs together and yank at her skirt, which barely reached mid-thigh. If she caught him staring, she’d rub them slower as she spoke and ask him if he wanted to see her special place. Before she would, however, he had to charm her, had to practice the technique and make her proud.

  Mercy Higgins said nothing for almost a minute. He had played her well. Been his charming best. Mother would be proud.

  Finally, she stared at him like a love-lorn puppy and said, “Thank you.”