Tom understood it was a way of guaranteeing his return.
“Oh, and remind me to give you the first of those ledgers tonight before you leave,” she added with a roguish grin.
So, just as he’d feared, she was going to ration them out, one by one, like lollipops for good behavior. He thought of asking how many there were, and decided against it. By the mischievous look on her face, he knew she was anticipating the question.
He was beginning to understand her better, and he had some idea now of just how lonely she really was, lonely enough to coerce a total stranger into spending time with her. It made Tom feel sad, as well as trapped and resentful.
Like a wild animal scenting freedom, he shoved his arms into his jacket and picked up his hat.
“See you later then, Evelyn.” Along with utter relief at making his escape, compassion for her curled inside of him. It must be a bitch to have to lie there and watch him put on his coat and hat and walk out into the blue-canopied day.
“I’d strongly suggest that you and this Jackson person go up to the Interpretive Center this afternoon, Thomas. You probably don’t realize it, but tomorrow is April 29, the anniversary of the Slide. It happened at 4:10 in the morning, April 29, 1903. This is the day before the Slide.”
Annoyance and amusement mingled in him. She was a petty tyrant. He’d known her all of a day and already she couldn’t resist trying to arrange his life for him.
“The Interpretive Center might be called my only progeny, Thomas,” she added with fierce pride in her voice. “Not to brag, but I was the one who lobbied the government, both local and provincial, and finally shamed them into building it.”
The aide was arranging the luncheon tray on the adjustable arm of the bedside table. “Our Miss Evelyn’s famous around here,” she said archly. “She was on Calgary TV a couple of times, and she got written up in the paper and everything.”
“Large stones, small pools,” Evelyn snorted, but it was evident she was pleased.
Tom opened the door and turned to give her a jaunty salute. “We might just drive on up there later this afternoon,” he lied. “See you later, Evelyn.”
A Distant Echo: Chapter Four
When he thought it over afterwards, Tom was never sure what prompted him and Jackson to visit the Interpretive Center that afternoon.
They ate burgers for lunch at a fast-food outlet, then washed the truck at a garage car wash. They found a cash machine and replenished their supply of Canadian money and paid a visit to the tourist booth on the highway to find out about fishing guides and to get some local maps that would show them the best route to Banff.
As the afternoon waned, Tom drove aimlessly down the highway, enjoying the brightness of the day and the magnificent, snow-topped mountains that cupped the valley. The truck’s stereo was turned high, playing cowboy ballads, and Jackson sang along in his clear, true tenor.
The sign for the Interpretive Center turnoff was well placed and clearly visible, and impulsively Tom turned up the paved, winding road, intending only to have a quick look and drive back down again.
The road led in a series of switchbacks up the side of a steep hillside, ending finally in a paved parking lot. Steps led still higher, to a pinnacle where a modern glass and concrete building commanded a view across the narrow valley of the fractured face of Turtle Mountain. It loomed like a gray, scarred, topless sentinel over the miles of boulders and limestone debris which buried the valley floor.
The building was constructed on the very edge of the Slide, so close that a visitor could reach out and almost touch the neat line of rocks where the Slide had ended.
There were only two other cars in the lot. Tom parked and turned off the ignition.
“Want to go inside and have a look?”
“Why not? It’ll earn you brownie points with your old lady,” Jackson teased. “And we don’t exactly have any other pressing engagements until your date with her at five.”
They climbed the steps, stopping at the top to gaze out over the panoramic view before them.
Again, shivers ran down Tom’s back and his breath caught in his throat as he stared out at the tumbled limestone boulders. From this vantage point, the extent of the Slide was made plain.
Tom could see at a glance the entire mass of giant rocks and the highway snaking its way through them like a toy road in a giant’s sandbox.
The scar on the face of Turtle Mountain was somehow ominous. Even now, the outline of the slide rock stood out in light contrast with the adjacent dark greens and browns of the surrounding landscape.
“Must have been one hell of a bang when that sucker decided to come down,” Jackson muttered, standing shoulder to shoulder with Tom and staring out over the scarred valley.
They stood for another long moment, silently studying the Slide. Then they turned and went inside the building. Tom paid the nominal admission charge.
“The lower level consists of a small museum that provides a history of the Crowsnest Pass area, and particularly the coal mining that has always been our major industry,” the smiling young female guide informed them as they brought their tickets. “Upstairs is our theater where a movie graphically portraying the Slide is presented, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to show you that this afternoon. We’re closing early today. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Slide, you see, and we’re having a special presentation with the mayor and other dignitaries. Maybe you’d like to come back then?”
Tom was certain that until that moment, Jackson hadn’t given a single thought to sitting through any movie. But telling Jackson Zalco he couldn’t do a thing because of rules was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
“No movie? Ahhh, now, honey, that’s shame,” Jackson suddenly acquired a Southern drawl, and he directed every ounce of his considerable charm at the girl. “Ain’t that a shame, Tom? See, ma’am, we drove all the way up here from New Mexico, and we heard about this place and that there movie. We can’t come by again. We’re headin’ on down the highway. We’re downright fascinated by this whole Slide thing, and we’d be mighty glad to pay you extra for your trouble.”
The young woman colored and gave Jackson a look from under her eyelashes. “Well, maybe we could bend the rules just this once. No extra charge. Look around down here, and I’ll let you know when the projectionist is ready.”
The wandered around, examining the exhibits. A great many of them depicted underground coal mining techniques used in the early part of the century.
Jackson fingered an antique kerosene lamp, used by miners a century before. “Didn’t you tell me once your pa was a coal miner, Tom?”
“He was, yeah.” A sense of acute discomfort had been growing in Tom as they walked past one mining artifact after another.
They moved on, and Tom was relieved when the young guide appeared. She directed them upstairs to a small, circular theater with steeply tiered seats that looked down on a tiny stage backed by a wide movie screen.
Except for the two of them, the room was empty. It was dimly lit. They closed the doors and slumped into seats, taking off their coats and trying to find a comfortable position for their long legs in the cramped space. The meager lighting suddenly dimmed to blackness.
“Wish I’d saved my breath to cool my porridge,” Jackson muttered as minutes went by and nothing further happened. “This is a sinful waste of valuable drinking time.”
Suddenly the sound system came alive, although the screen still remained dark, and a woman’s haunting soprano filled the room, singing a coal miner’s ballad.
The screen flickered to life. In the Shadow of the Mountain, the title proclaimed, and the movie began, depicting the booming coal town of Frank as it was before the Slide.
Not expecting professionalism, Tom was impressed by the quality of the film. The visual effects and particularly the sound, coming from wrap-around speakers, were both expert and subtle.
The camera took the viewer inside the mine with the unsuspecting night s
hift of miners on the night of the Slide.
Conversation and men’s laughter echoed as the tunnel narrowed in the simulated flicker of a miner’s lamp, and Tom’s skin crawled with recognition. He felt again the claustrophobic sensation of being in the bowels of a mountain with untold tons of earth pressing down on wooden beams, all that kept the narrow passageways from collapsing. He heard the endless, infernal dripping of water all around him in the suffocating darkness. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and soaked his shirt.
To his relief, the camera moved outside again to view the slumbering village as it must have been seconds before the Slide, sleeping in the long-ago cold April night.
The voice-over faded away, the flickering lights on the screen dimmed and gradually went out. For a long, tense moment, the theater was again blanketed in darkness.
Tension built in Tom, and he was grateful for Jackson’s bulk, motionless beside him. And then a single rock tumbled in eerie isolation down the mountain slope, bouncing ominously against the limestone walls, its passage echoing throughout the silence in the valley.
For another long moment, there was peace, then the theater seemed to reverberate as the visual and audio depiction of the Slide began. The sound simulated ninety million tons of rock breaking away from Turtle Mountain and plummeting down, sweeping over the mine entrance, obliterating a portion of the town in a scant hundred seconds of wind, falling rock, and dust.
Tom jumped half out of his skin at the noise, and every muscle in his body tensed. His breath came in short, shallow gasps.
The damn film was entirely too realistic.
Tom had researched every aspect of the Slide, and he knew that seconds before the deadly rock fall, a solid blast of icy air raced across the valley ahead of the churning mass of rock.
He knew it had to be his imagination, but he shuddered all the same. It felt as if that same freezing air was whipping over him right now, blowing his hair back and making his eyes sting with cold. He couldn’t seem to get his breath, and his lungs ached.
He wanted to get the hell out of there. He grabbed his coat and turned to tell Jackson they were leaving, but something was now wrong with the projector.
The room was once again plunged into inky blackness, although the audio effects of the avalanche went on and on, filing his ears with noise too overwhelming to bear. The audio grew louder and still louder. It felt as if his eardrums were breaking. He shouted in pain and put his hands up to cover his ears, staggering to his feet, trying to holler over the infernal dim. “Jackson – Jackson -”
But the icy air knocked him backwards, into an endless void. He tumbled as he fell. He screamed and threw out his arms to break the impact, but there was nothing there, no bottom, no sides, no ceiling….
Terror filled him and he went on falling and falling. He knew that he was dying, drowning, choking, in a void of empty space that endlessly and forever reverberated with the awful cacophony of the avalanche.
A Distant Echo: Chapter Five
Cold. Icy cold.
Tom opened his eyes, shuddering. He moved his head from one side to the other.
He was outside, he concluded. Lying on his back on hard, rocky earth, under a dark night sky that stretched like a pewter canopy above him. No moon or stars, but even as he watched, the color in the heavens changed, growing infinitesimally lighter.
Dawn? Dawn where?
He sat up gingerly, trying each limb to see if anything was broken. He was bruised and half frozen, but he seemed to be in one piece. He was on a hillside, in a small clearing surrounded by shadowy pine trees. He looked at the digital watch on his wrist.
4:10 A.M.
A.M.? Where had the intervening hours gone?
His Stetson had disappeared but his jacket lay nearby. He snatched it up gratefully, shook dust out of it, and forced his arms into the sleeves.
“Jackson.” It came out in a hoarse whisper, and Tom cleared dust from his throat and struggled to his feet. “Jackson?” This time his voice was louder, frantic and fearful. Hey, Zalco, are you there?” Where was there? Where was here, for that matter?
He turned in a circle, searching for a landmark, something that would indicate where he was, but there was nothing he recognized.
Trees, a clearing, a valley below. No lights, no sign of the Interpretive Center, or of his truck, or even a road. Where in God’s name was he? And where was his partner? His heart was thundering against his ribs, and foreboding churned in his gut.
“Jackson, where the hell are you? Answer me,” Tom roared, and at last a response came from out of the gray darkness.
“Over here. I’m over here.”
Tremendous relief flooded through Tom, and he ran, stumbling over stones and fallen logs in the half-light.
“Hey, buddy, you okay?”
Jackson didn’t answer right away. He was sitting a few hundred feet away, bent forward so that his head rested on his knees. He sat up straighter as Tom approached, revealing a jagged cut on his forehead from which blood was oozing slowly. “What the hell happened? There was that godforsaken noise, and then… Where are we?”
Tom knelt beside his partner, groping in his pocket for a tissue to wipe the blood away. “I don’t know where we are, and God only knows how we got here. We were in that theater, and then –”
To his relief, the wound on Jackson’s head was no more than a deep scratch.
“Must have hit my head on a rock when I landed,” Jackson said in a dazed voice. He looked around again, confusion in his gray eyes. “Last thing I remember is that awful noise. And it was freezin’ cold in there. Lucky I grabbed my coat before all hell broke loose. It seemed like there was an explosion of some kind. We must have been blown clear, huh? Where is the damned Interpretive Center, anyhow?” He peered around, frowning, swiping blood from his eyes with the back of his hand.
Tom shook his head. “Got me. It’s gone. Disappeared.” He searched for a logical explanation and came up blank. “I haven’t the foggiest notion what happened to us, but I’m damned glad we’re in this together, whatever it is.” He got to his feet and helped Jackson up. “Your leg okay?”
Jackson took an experimental step on his bad leg, and then another. “No worse than it ever was.” He squinted up at the sky. “Looks like it’s comin’ daylight, anyhow.”
They made their way through the thick trees, heading up the rise of the hill. The ground began to level, and they came out on a flat plateau that overlooked a shallow, familiar valley. It was the Crowsnest. Tom recognized the distinctive shapes of one of the mountains, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where they’d landed. There was a subtle difference in the landscape.
“There’s lights down there,” Jackson said, pointing. “But it doesn’t look like Blairmore to me.”
Tom shook his head. “Nope. That town’s set right smack up against the mountain. Blairmore was more spread out than that. And there sure as blazes wasn’t any mountain that close to the town. And there wasn’t any highway down there, either, although that looks like railroad tracks.” He pointed his finger.
There was something else missing, something that sent a chill up Tom’s backbone. “There’s no Slide either, Jackson.” His voice didn’t reveal the growing apprehension he felt.
Jackson whistled, long and low, staring out over the valley, shaking his head. “That doesn’t seem possible. We must have got blown a fair distance away, that’s what it is. Well, let’s have a good look around up here and see if we can locate anything at all. If there was an explosion, you’d think there’d be emergency vehicles around. Someone must have heard something. We couldn’t be the only ones who survived.”
For the next half-hour, as the indigo sky became deep gray, then began to turn a faded gray-blue, they stumbled through pine woods searching for something – anything - that was familiar. But there was nothing anywhere to indicate buildings had ever existed on the hillside.
At last, back on the plateau where they’d begun, they had to admit de
feat.
“This is the damndest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jackson clapped his cold hands together and shoved them deep in the pockets of his jacket. “This hillside feels like the same place that Center was on, but there’s nothing here. No roads, no buildings, no parking lot. Sure as hell no people.”
“No truck, either.” Tom was looking out over the valley toward the flickering lights of the town. “Let’s go down there and find out what’s going on. Someone must have heard something. We’re going to have a to hike straight down the side of this mountain to get there, though. Wherever the road was, it’s disappeared.”
Jackson sighed and nodded. “Let’s get started then. It’s gonna be one hell of a long walk, and walkins’ not my strong suit with this game leg.”
Tom estimated that it took them the better part of an hour to make it to the outskirts of the little town.
Jackson’s injured leg gave out several times, and they had to sit and rest until he could again put weight on it. The sun came up, spilling rose and gold over a snow mountain peak, and slowly the icy chill in the high mountain air began to dissipate.
They crossed the railroad tracks and reached a roadway of sorts, a rough dirt track that led toward the village, and they slowly made their way along it.
“Something’s mighty screwy here,” Jackson muttered as they walked past the first buildings on the town’s outskirts. “This place looks like it’s straight out of the Old West, like some of those ghost towns in New Mexico. But this one’s inhabited. There’s all that smoke coming out of chimneys, which is another weird thing. It’s like nobody here ever heard of natural gas or oil or pollution.”
Tom, too, had the strangest feeling about the place. The buildings were most of wood, antiquated two-story affairs on either side of a wide, unpaved street. There was no concrete roadway, no streetlights, no neon signs. The sidewalks were wooden, many of the buildings had false fronts, and there were hitching rails all along the street instead of parking meters. There were no fast-food outlets, no filling stations.
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