by David Haynes
“He was a mechanic in Carlisle, I can tell you that,” Mercer said. “But that’s about it.”
“How much do you need to know? He’s a good mechanic, isn’t that enough?” Draper asked. He was hoping the question would prompt more analysis from Flynn.
Flynn shrugged. “Maybe.” He paused. “Do you trust him?”
It was a simple enough question. One that should be easy to answer. He’d left him up there looking after the claim, looking after the gold.
“We’ve all heard his comments. They’re not right,” Flynn added. Maybe it was the beer but his tongue was well and truly loosened.
Mercer sighed. “Look, I brought him up here and he’s one of the best mechanics I’ve ever worked with. But, it’s like he’s trying to test the water, trying to push things down the wrong road.” He topped the glasses again.
“Does he want us to fail?” Draper asked.
Mercer shook his head. “Remember when you took Gil’s son on for a season? A favor to his old man.”
Draper nodded.
“That kid was mean,” Mercer started. “He wanted to get rich but he didn’t want to listen to anyone, least of all me or you. He was impatient and thought we were ripping him off, not paying him his share. He’d argue with himself if nobody else was around. Tried to tell us where to dig at one point. Called you every name under the sun for not making him foreman. Picked fights with everyone and wound the whole crew up into a frenzy. What a dick he was.”
“Vinson isn’t like Gil’s kid. Don’t even remember his name.”
“Richie, his name was Richie. No, Vinson ain’t like that, he’s worse. I get the feeling Vinson thinks all the same things Richie did but he keeps them to himself. Mostly. Those comments we get at the clean-up meetings are like the tips of icebergs. He’s thinking, not saying.”
Flynn nodded. “Nobody knows what he’s thinking for sure, but Ray’s right. You can’t trust a man you don’t know. Especially one who looks likes he enjoys trying to get under the boss’s skin.”
Draper felt relieved and anxious at the same time. Relief that he wasn’t being over-sensitive to Vinson’s little digs at him. Anxious because he had a man working for him who wasn’t trusted by the others. A man he had left at Black Pine Creek alone.
He looked at Mercer, the man he trusted most in the world. “I could let him go but we won’t find another mechanic at this stage of the season.” He looked at Flynn. “We all know our way around a wash-plant but if something big goes wrong and we shut her down, we’ve got no way of fixing it. The season’s over. I can’t risk it.”
Flynn shrugged. “What’ve we got left? Three weeks? A month if we’re lucky. We keep going as we are. Nobody here gives a damn about what he says. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think you could find the gold. None of us would have gone to Black Pine Creek if we didn’t trust you, Scott.”
Draper drummed his fingers on the wooden table. “You sure about that?”
“I’ve worked for you for most of the last twenty years. You’re the most honest man I’ve ever known.” Flynn looked him straight in the eye. “I wasn’t at Delta Junction and I’ve heard stories about it from other men who weren’t there either. All bullshit as far as I’m concerned. I trust this lump.” He elbowed Mercer in the ribs. “He was there and he told me the truth. That’s all there is to it. My opinion of you didn’t change because you shot two men. Two bad men. Nope, you’re still the guy who brought his little girl to camp to pan for gold. You’re still the guy who I watched distract her and drop two nuggets into that pan. Man, she squealed. Remember that? You’re still the man who bought me a plane ticket to fly home when my dad was dying. You still can’t grow a mustache for shit but you’re the same guy who got two thousand ounces out of that shit-hole on Porcupine Creek. That’s the sort of guy I trust.”
Draper felt moved. He’d forgotten about dropping the gold into Meg’s pan. He’d distracted her by pointing at an imaginary bird flying high in the clear sky and then sprinkled the gold in. She had squealed too. Maybe that was why she was here now? Maybe that was the moment she got hooked? Just like the moment he’d shared with Grandpa.
“Look at us all! We’ll be hugging and kissing in a minute. Come on, drink up!” Mercer shouted.
They all took long swallows. It was as much to put an end to that particular conversation as it was out of thirst.
“Here we go.” The waitress put three plates of food down on the table.
“A whole chicken?” Draper asked.
Mercer winked and pulled a strip of greasy skin off the breast meat. He pushed it into his mouth and licked his lips. “Oh man, that’s good. ”There was nothing left on any of the plates by the time they had finished. Puckett and Meg had sat on the table at Flynn and Mercer’s back. Draper tried not to listen in on the conversation too much but there was a lot of laughter between them. He hadn’t heard her laughing so readily in... well, he couldn’t remember.
Two more pitchers of beer had been consumed on their table and Puckett had drunk most of another on the other. It was a world away from Black Pine Creek, but Draper knew he had to try to reach Burgess. He didn’t like the man but he’d given him a chance and fair was fair, he needed to update him.
He stood up. His bladder was aching and his legs felt a little heavier than they had been a couple of hours ago.
“I need to try Burgess again,” he said.
“Are you going to tell him about the guy we found in the container?” Mercer asked.
Draper thought about it for a moment. Burgess wouldn’t give a crap about a vanishing corpse, especially since it hadn’t had any impact on the mine. If the police had shut the mine down to investigate or tried to trace the man’s relatives, that would be a different matter. As things stood, it made no difference to Burgess. It would make a difference to the dead man’s family though, if he had any. He doubted there was anyone. If someone had missed him, Black Pine Creek would be the first place they would look. It was clear nobody had come looking.
“I think I will.” He walked slowly out the bar, trying to retrieve his cell from his pocket.
By the time he stumbled out in the daylight again, the screen on his cell looked as bright as the sun. Burgess would know the names of the last crew working up there. Whether it affected Burgess or not, a dead man was a dead man and someone had to care for him.
He found Burgess’s number and called him. The next few minutes were not going to be a comfortable experience. As it rang, Draper walked around the side of the building. He didn’t want any of the others to hear the conversation, at least his part.
After five rings, he knew the result was going to be the same as the last time he’d tried to call. No answer. This time he would leave a message, a brief update and promise to try again in the morning. The phone clicked, Draper’s mouth dropped open to speak, but it didn’t connect. Instead there was a piercing scream, a sound so shrill it felt like someone was driving a spike into his ear.
He pulled the cell away from his ear, wincing.
It lessened the impact but the noise didn’t abate. It just changed. Not subtly, not gradually. It moved from the very peak of his hearing to the base in a split-second. It had the effect of making the air vibrate about his head, inside his brain and mouth. A vile stench filled his nostrils, burning the hair inside his nose. His skull was shifting in his head, the fluids trying to force their way out, through any gap they could find.
He opened his fist and let the cell fall to the ground. The smell was the same as that night in the container when he’d fired the Beretta at someone, or something. It was impossible to forget it, the reek was burned into the hairs in his nostrils.
The screen flickered for a moment then grew dim. The noise coming out of it stopped but the echo scratched at his skull for a few seconds more. It felt like there was a fly buzzing around inside his head.
He stared down at the cell, lying there in the dirt. Had it been his imagination, a migraine? In answer, a dro
p of blood fell from his nose and landed beside the phone. Then another came, and another until the earth turned black, oil-like.
He squeezed his nostrils. The last time he’d suffered a nosebleed was in a fight and that was at least ten years ago. There was a reason for the blood back then.
20
Vinson heard the phone ringing. Apart from his own breathing, it was the only sound in Black Pine Creek. The birds, the creek itself and even the trees, they were all silent. He’d killed a man. It was something new, something different and he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. He’d thought about doing it before. Considered how it would feel to take a life. How his mind would cope with the aftermath. Would there be guilt? Fear? Or even happiness?
He sat on the floor in his camper. There was nothing, none of the emotions he thought he might have to deal with. Nothing at all. The physical exertion had been the toughest thing to deal with. His upper body ached all over. Not just from the beating Burgess had given him, but from the muscles he was unaccustomed to using. Who knew that killing someone was muscle-specific?
He didn’t want to climb up onto the bed. There was a lot of blood on his clothes. He hadn’t looked in a mirror but he guessed there was a lot on his face too. He could feel it drying, clotting on his flesh, changing into a flaky layer of dirty brown skin. It would be easily removed by the fast-flowing creek.
Burgess was still outside, lying where he had taken his last breath. His blood had turned the earth black. That would be easily cleaned too. A few scuffs of his boot and it would be gone. The body, though. The body and the garish yellow truck parked up by the track. They would take a little more thought. He had the gold. That was the most important thing. He had his gold.
Nothing had changed since this morning. For a few minutes he thought Burgess might be the answer to his prayers. The man had the land and by the end of the season, Vinson would have the money to buy the lease. That wasn’t going to happen now. At least not with Burgess. There were other men like him, there had to be, all over the country. It wouldn’t take long to find someone.
Burgess’s cell, wherever it was on his body, was ringing again. The ringtone was coupled with a low hum as the phone vibrated against his dead flesh. The man had a lot of flesh, probably more than anyone he had ever...
A loud exhalation from outside. No, it was more like a groan. How could he still be alive? How many times had he stuck that knife into him? By the end, too many to count. Yet there it was again. A low grumbling groan.
The ringing stopped. For a moment there was nothing again. Total silence… and then it came. The snapping, crunching, ripping and tearing. And panting. Hideous, monstrous noises. At once, Vinson knew what it was he was listening to. Something was eating Burgess.
He covered his ears but the sound ripped through his own flesh and bone. He could hear the body being pulled and pushed in the dirt, bits of him coming loose, snapping like rotten twigs. Meat, muscle and sinew ripping from bone.
He felt acid burn the back of his throat. The camper door was closed yet the stench forced its way through, up and into his nostrils, singing the hairs and soft tissue as it traveled into his lungs. He heaved and spat on the threadbare, stained carpet.
For the second time that day, he cursed himself for not taking a gun when it was on offer. When would it stop? When would the awful noises stop?
Whatever it was, he was a sitting duck. He’d heard about bears unscrewing jars and containers just to get at the food inside. It wasn’t a big leap to imagine one ripping the door off the camper and mauling him too. Particularly one that had the bloodlust after finishing off Burgess.
He got to his feet slowly and withdrew his knife. The hilt was sticky, the blade still coated in Burgess’s blood but that wouldn’t matter. Whatever it was out there couldn’t be as big as Burgess and it definitely wouldn’t have a gun.
The rending and wrenching sounds stopped. Vinson stopped too. As quiet as he had tried to be, his presence had been detected. He edged forward to the window and tried to peer down the side of the camper to where Burgess had fallen. It was no use. The angle was wrong.
His breath clouded the window. Outside, the day was almost at an end. In less than twenty minutes it would be black out there. He wouldn’t be able to see a thing. He wiped the vapor away, leaving a bloody smudge. He should just wait it out. Whatever it was, wolf or bear, would be doing him a favor by disposing of the remains.
Vinson breathed on the window and wiped it again. He made a smiling face with a dirty smile. He winked, but as he was edging away a shadow fell across the dirt outside, stretching, twisting and growing. There was no sun to grow a shadow. Nothing to cast it from.
The side of his camper rocked as something hit it, not full-on but a glancing blow. It pushed Vinson to the side, away from the window. As he toppled away, he gasped.
Burgess’s face moved slowly across the glass. His mouth twisted in agony, a silent scream formed on his tongue and his pleading eyes full of blood. There were no whites, just pools of blood.
The backdrop was of utter blackness. So fathomless he could not see Flynn’s camper only three feet away. Burgess was being displayed for him. Moved horizontally across the viewing window. Vinson thought about sharks at the aquarium and how they moved slowly across the glass, watching the meat on the other side. Showing their teeth and their malevolent eyes.
He wasn’t being shown the predator but he was being shown what it could do.
And then Burgess was gone. Gone in a chattering, squealing and stench-ridden maelstrom of bone, blood and flesh. Taken who knew where. Vinson felt his stomach rise up again, trying to force its way out of his ribcage.
A shifting of the darkness as something large and unseen caused the air to ripple and lighten once again. A last inhalation of poisoned air as the world outside became alive again, not the hellish vista it had just been.
Vinson watched the smiling face he’d painted melt away, leaving a rusty streak down the window. Better that than what he had just seen. Burgess had been dead. But he looked alive as he was dragged across the window. No, not alive. His eyes weren’t alive, they were... somewhere else. Was that it?
He swallowed, still tasting the acrid stench, but less now. He realized his hands were shaking. His right hand, the one gripping the knife, would cramp up completely in a few seconds if he didn’t loosen his hold.
Why had he been shown Burgess? Whatever it was knew he was in the camper. Whatever it was had deliberately made a display. To frighten him? To revolt or punish him?
To excite and entice him?
He stepped toward the door, taking another deep breath, and pushed it open. Cool air rushed inside with a refreshing urgency. He’d been in the camper for so long he hadn’t noticed how stale it was in there. The coating of blood on his skin and clothes made it smell like the butcher’s counter at the store.
Where Burgess had been, there was nothing. No blood, no dark stain on the dirt. Nothing. He stepped down and walked slowly across the dirt, pausing to look between the gap in the campers; walking backward for a few steps to make sure nothing was waiting for him. The trees swayed gently but in the dying light he could see little else.
There were no prints in the dirt. No prints, scuff marks or anything to indicate the ground had been disturbed. No claw marks. It was as if none of it happened. There was not a shred of clothing. There was literally nothing and yet Burgess’s truck was parked just a few yards away. He had been here. Vinson had killed him.
This was a welcome break. The truck would be easy to dispose of. The whole area was thick with forest, undergrowth and rock. Hiding it was just as easy as hiding a body. Probably less work too. He scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot. Could it really be this easy? He smiled and thought about the gold in the safe. There was a lot of money in there, more than he had anyway. None of the crew were as big as Burgess, not even Mercer. If he could take care of him, he could leave Black Pine Creek with more than he had ever imagined. Natur
e would clear up after him. Just as it had done tonight.
*
“That bad?” Mercer asked when he came back inside after the phone call. Draper had stayed outside long enough to stop the bleeding and to get himself together. It was also long enough to convince himself that an afternoon drinking beer and five hours sleep in the last week were enough to send his brain into a temporary meltdown.
“Couldn’t get hold of him. Top me up, I need the bathroom.”
He did need it too, and not just to relieve his bladder. His face and head felt odd. Swollen. Somehow even inside it felt puffy. The mirror had a crack down one side and the glass was foggy in places, but miners didn’t come here to preen themselves. He stretched his facial muscles and wriggled his jaw. Everything was okay and he didn’t look any worse than the last time he’d checked. It was the frequency of the interference that had got to him. That and the lack of sleep, the beer and the stress. That’s all it was. He splashed his face with cold water and walked back to the table.
Normal service was resumed. The conversations got louder, Puckett’s music taste got worse. When the other crew came in, a little after Draper recovered from the incident with his cell, Puckett had to share the jukebox, which everyone was pleased about.
The crew were from a claim a few miles out of town. Mining so close to town was convenient. A little too convenient, if their foreman was to be believed. Once or twice a week, he had to haul his men out of their beds the morning after a night in the bar.
Eventually, everyone slouched off to their rooms, ready for some proper sleep. It had been a good night.
They met in the morning for breakfast. Puckett only wanted coffee. He hadn’t touched his eggs so Mercer ate them for him. As well as his own plate of bacon, pancakes, eggs and home-fries. Draper was amused. Puckett liked to think he could take his beer with the rest of them. He could drink it all right, it was the next morning when he found he couldn’t take it quite as he thought he could.
