Devil Creek

by Mertz, Stephen

He awoke with a snarl, instantly aware of where he was and of what had happened, riding passenger in the Bronco.

  Lovechio was at the wheel. The van was chugging up the narrow dirt road that rose steeply through the dark somberness of the tall pine forest that surrounded them, blocking out any view of the mountains.

  He grunted. “Chill. I was catching a catnap. What? You need help driving?”

  “No, I don’t need help driving. But I don’t want you sleeping on the job, either.”

  Domino said, “The job will get done. You’ve just got a case of nerves. What’s wrong? This your first hit?”

  Lovechio did not respond to that. He said, “We’re almost there.”

  “I’m ready,” said Domino.

  But inwardly, he chastised himself for having nodded off like that. What the hell could have caused that?

  He usually got a rush when he took someone’s life, a turn-on that left a pleasant lingering after-sensation for the rest of the day. He should have felt that way today, after Olson. And in anticipation of what was to come when they reached Del Muskie’s cabin.

  Not only had he fallen asleep, but had the strangest goddamn dream of his whole goddamn life during the short time he’d dozed off, and he wondered if the dream had anything to do with that queasy sense of foreboding he’d felt earlier at the construction site. It had been the damnedest dream… .

  He was Ataka. War chief. Feared by all who had ever heard his name and knew of his exploits. His enemies—the bluecoat pony soldiers, the other tribes he fought to keep from this sacred land of his people—trembled at his name. Those who would betray him—the men he traded with, the women who were his squaws—feared his mildest displeasure. A gouged eye for trickery in horse-trading; the nose carved from the face of a faithless wife. His command was absolute.

  His war party raided ranches outlying the settlements established by the whites. They swooped in at night and took the horses and slaughtered everyone but the girls, who they took as wives: those who did not commit suicide, or who had not pleaded with their men to take their lives as an act of mercy rather than falling victim to such a fate.

  When the cavalry came, he and his warriors waited until the bluecoats rode to the very mouth of the canyon, where the canyon began to widen and there was much cover to hide until the moment to strike was at hand. They swooped down from two directions at once.

  There was dust and the frightened whinnying of bucking horses and the war cries as lances and tomahawks speared and crushed flesh, and some gunfire, and some of his braves fell, but not many. It was over in a very short time.

  He strode through the scene of sprawled bodies. Flies buzzed madly under a fiery sun. His braves moved from body to body, killing the wounded, sometimes slowly: scalping, mutilating, looting for clothes and valuables.

  He was Ataka. Ruler of this land. He was the spirit of war, chosen by the Old Ones to forever guard and protect this sacred land. His duty was to eternity. He would never die. He was Ataka.

  He knelt over the body of a young, blond-haired lieutenant who had ridden at the head of this column. He was barely conscious, moaning into the long grass beneath them. One glazed eye looked up and saw Ataka, and widened with realization and sudden protest. Ataka laughed and grabbed the man’s head with both hands, crying his fiercest war cry to summon the attention of all. There was a short scream from the soldier

  Ataka stood, twisting the man’s head in the smoothest yet most violent of gestures, yanking the head from the body and holding it high in both hands. The head—wide eyed, mouth agape—gushed a torrent of blood down upon him as every brave present stared in awe and respect and, yes, fear.

  And that’s when the cavalryman behind him, who had done a convincing job of pretending to be dead, leaped to his feet, lunging with his rifle with bayonet fixed. Screaming a war cry of his own, he hurled himself at Ataka and the bayonet sank to its hilt in Ataka side, and his cry of triumph and jubilation faded, gurgling into a death rattle… .

  That’s when Lovechio had snapped him awake. That was the dream he had been pulled from.

  Domino had never been to church. He’d never read a book since his schoolboy days. For relaxation, there was sex with strangers he paid money to. Everything else was work, including what he thought about. He did not know what to think of the dream, and so he stopped thinking about it as easily as flicking off a light switch. He prided himself on his discipline. And yet he could not shake the strangest feeling of foreboding.

  Lovechio steered the Bronco into a deeply-rutted path that climbed sharply. Several yards later they reached a makeshift barbed wire gate that had been stretched across a break in a barbed wire fence. There was a Keep Out sign on the gate.

  Just inside the fence, two large dogs—a German shepherd and a golden retriever—were barking, loudly and constantly: a warning to their master, a challenge to the Bronco.

  Behind the dogs was a small ramshackle structure that looked more like a shed that had been nailed together, from random scraps of wood, than a cabin. There was a tarpaper roof. A single small, square window glared out at the cool sunlight on a shaded slope. A dented Volkswagen van of indeterminate vintage was parked between the “cabin” and an equally ramshackle outhouse.

  There was no one in sight.

  Domino observed the canines, yawping with increased ferocity at the Bronco. He said, “I hate dogs.”

  Lovechio said, “Here we go.”

  He accelerated slightly, enough for the Bronco’s grill to effortlessly force its way through the makeshift gate, driving over it with wide, oversized tires.

  Both dogs were barking louder than before, and growling, their fangs bared, tails curled, ready to defend, ready to attack. Domino stepped from the Bronco and shot each dog with a single round to the head from a 9mm pistol. The velocity of the heavy, powerful bullets flipped the dogs several feet away, and the soft pine needles and rich soil beneath them became red with their blood.

  When he was certain the dogs were dead, Lovechio stepped from the driver’s side of the Bronco. He walked to the structure.

  Domino held back only slightly, his pistol held at his side, his every sense attuned to his surroundings, watchful.

  The sudden silence after the mad barking of the dogs was aching and absolute. No birds. No breeze. As if nature were holding Her breath. The scent of pine hung heavy.

  Lovechio knocked on a plywood panel that served as a door. “Open up, Del. You’ve got company.”

  There was no response.

  Lovechio looked at Domino and nodded.

  Domino drew a booted foot back and kicked the “door” inward, off its hinges. He hurried into the darkened interior, easing to the side of the door as soon as he was in so as not to silhouette himself in the doorway as a target.

  The interior of the shack was as decrepit as its exterior. Light coming in from the doorway exposed an unvarnished wooden floor, a “kitchen” that was nothing more than a counter with a Coleman stove. There was an Igloo camping cooler for perishables, the boom box he had taken to work with him, and teetering stacks of books wedged into every available space between a table, a recliner and a cot. Even with fresh air coming in through the doorway, there was an unpleasant, musty closeness to the place.

  Muskie squatted in a gloomy corner, his knees drawn up before him, his eyes staring from a trembling, whiskered face behind shaking hands that he held up, palms outward. He wore soiled, tattered Army fatigue trousers and a black T-shirt. He was barefoot.

  Lovechio stepped in. “Hello, Del.”

  Muskie recognized him. “No! Please, I didn’t do nothing!” Spittle sputtered from his frantic plea.

  Lovechio sneered. “Oh, I think you did do something, Del, and I think you know what it is. You should have stayed with nuking burgers in your crummy roach coach and not gone snooping. Haven’t you ever heard of surveillance cameras?”

  Muskie’s frantic eyes darted between them. “My dogs! Goldie and Benjamin. Oh God, you didn’t kill my
dogs!”

  Domino spoke quietly, with ice in his narrowed eyes and in his voice. “Those mutts were getting on my nerves. I might kill you for the same reason.”

  Muskie was gasping for breath. “I’m sorry I went snooping.” His features were beet-red. “I didn’t see nothing, I swear!”

  Lovechio said, in a reasonable voice, “It really doesn’t matter, Del, what you saw or what you didn’t see.”

  “Then why are you here?” Muskie asked in a plaintive voice, and his sorrowful eyes shifted to Domino. “You didn’t have to kill them dogs, mister. Goldie and Benjamin, they were good dogs.”

  Lovechio said, “I think you’d better stop worrying about those hounds and start thinking about your own ass.”

  Beads of perspiration on Muskie’s face gleamed like small pearls in the light from outside.

  “What … what do you mean?”

  “What you found when you were snooping around at the construction site,” said Lovechio, “and what you heard me and Olson talking about yesterday. I want to know who else you told.”

  “I didn’t tell nobody.”

  Lovechio said, “Domino.”

  Domino raised his gun, tracking on the man in the corner. “With pleasure,” he said. “Whiney little puke.”

  “No!” Muskie leaped to his feet, but remained cowering in the corner, his hands up before him. “Wait! Will you let me go if I tell you?”

  Lovechio said, “Of course.”

  “Okay then. That newspaper guy.”

  Lovechio frowned. “Landware?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s him. I told him.”

  “You and Landware were the ones my guys chased late night on the mountain. Snooping around then too, weren’t you?”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Mr. Lovechio. I’ll go away, I promise.”

  Lovechio chuckled. “Oh, you’ve got that right. But first, Del, you’re going to do me a favor.”

  Muskie’s Adam’s apple bobbed wildly. “Please, Mr. Lovechio, I won’t ever say anything to anybody about anything, I promise. I won’t—”

  Domino gestured with his pistol, as if he were about to strike Muskie. “Shut up, puke, and listen.”

  “Yes sir,” said Muskie.

  Lovechio said in a calm, reasonable tone, “Now, Del, here’s what you’re going to do.”

  Chapter Twenty

  At first, Mike barely heard the knocking at the front door of The Clarion office. He barely heard the persistent rapping, and someone calling his name with an increasing measure of concern.

  He barely heard because he was drunk.

  The whiskey bottle was in front of him on the desk, which had been cleared by the simple expedient of sweeping the papers, files and everything else that had been on the desk onto the floor with a careless sweep of his arm. He hated to make work for Rose, picking up after him, but the truth was he was drunk when he’d arrived several hours ago. Actually, he’d lost track of time. The level in the bottle wasn’t that low, but for a recovering alcoholic who hadn’t had a drink in years, it hadn’t taken much. He hadn’t had a sip of alcohol in any form during the years since Carol made him promise to stop, and then helped him quit, way back in Albuquerque, before she would agree to marry him and start a family.

  When it penetrated his brain that someone was tapping at the front door, he lifted his head and tried to focus on the door across the office. The upper portion of the door was glass, but he couldn’t distinguish the woman’s features because the sun was at her back, pouring in as if she was emanating the bright rays of light that were hitting him squarely in the eyes, hazing his vision.

  He heard a voice mumble, “Carol … honey, why are you haunting me like this?” The voice was mushy, garbled, and he came to the realization that it was his voice.

  When he first returned home after his confrontation with her ghost outside the construction site, he had decided on just a sip of whiskey to calm his nerves. He could handle that. His nerves, his brain, needed steadying.

  Something was happening. He had been stone cold sober when he saw the woman in the Altima, staking out his office last night. And he was sober when he chased the same ghost who had been spying on him at Sunrise Ridge. Jeff Lovechio in Devil Creek! That was no hallucination, no invention of his brain. The son of a bitch who had done his best to ruin Robin and Paul’s life was in the here and now, not a ghost but flesh and blood. As was the “ghost” of Carol. Ghost? Ghost, hell. Did ghosts have a shapely body he knew every inch of as only a man who sleeps every night with his wife can know her? Yes, he remembered her body. Every curve. Every dimple. The smattering of freckles across her nose that she always tried to hide, which he adored. And her perfume. He’d held her. He’d smelled her scent. It was Carol. Did ghosts disable you with martial arts, then drive off in a silver Altima? Well, this one had.

  He left the house with the bottle he kept stored there, and drove to the newspaper office. He should have contacted Robin, he knew that. For that matter, he should have checked in with Paul. But he was sleepwalking, or so it felt. It was the scent of her perfume that had done it, pushing him over the edge like this.

  He missed her so. Yes, he loved Robin with all of his heart, and Paul too. He would die for them if he had to. But they had came into his life after Carol was gone. Was she gone, really? Without a doubt, these were not rational thoughts. But could he disbelieve his senses? What he saw, what he felt … the scent of her. But why was this ghost always running away from him? Why did she torment him, only to flee?

  At the newspaper office, he should never have gone to the closet at the back of the house, where he stored the shoebox of their special memories together that he’d never had the strength to part with. Robin had always respected his memory of Carol, which made him love Robin all the more, the way she coped with his memory of Carol. But he had felt wrong about storing the box of old snapshots and mementos and love notes at the home he shared with his present family. For that matter, he had not opened the shoebox to delve into its contents since before he and Robin were married.

  Today, he delved into the whiskey bottle and the box of memories. Digging up bones, the country song called it.

  There were pictures of their camping trip to Elephant Butte Lake, south of Albuquerque. He remembered making love under the desert stars. There were the love notes that they used to write each other and then leave between the pages of a book being read, or an I love you, honey penciled in midway down a mundane shopping list one had been sent to the store with. There were pictures of their wedding day.

  He started to cry. Then he decided to rest. He’d done enough.

  Why was the past coming back to haunt him in this unspeakably painful way, so painful that for the first time in years, this recovering alcoholic was no longer recovering, but losing himself again in the bottle because it hurt so damn bad? The woman last night in the Altima. The woman today near the construction site. So real!

  He squinted again at the light streaming in through the glass of the door. His vision was a blur. The woman continued knocking, calling his name, wanting to be let in.

  He said, “Carol… .”

  He stood from his chair and that movement resulted in the whiskey bottle being knocked onto its side and some damn fine Johnny Walker splashing across the desk and spilling onto the files and papers which had been swept to the floor. He took two steps, and the room spun once at dizzying speed. The floor came up and smacked him in the face.

  A key was fitting into the lock. The door was opening.

  He struggled to roll over onto his back. His vision was so blurry, he couldn’t distinguish the features of the woman walking in … but it was her!

  Carol walked in the light that shimmered and glowed around her. She came to him. She was saying something, words he could not understand though he did hear her speak his name. Then she was above him, bending toward him, and he caught her scent, different than before but arousing just the same. She knelt beside him and spoke his name. Her fingertips c
aressed his face.

  He grabbed for her and did manage to get her in his arms, and he brought her down to his level upon the floor, one arm holding her while the other pawed at those beautiful breasts and he tried to kiss the brightly shimmering ghost.

  “Carol… .”

  And then he passed out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Coffee’s ready,” called Ben from the front of the house that served as The Clarion’s office.

  “Thanks, Ben,” Robin replied from the rear of the house. She said to Mike, “Hear that, honey? Let’s get some coffee in you.”

  Mike muttered something unintelligible. He sounded groggy, terribly hung over, but no longer drunk. He steadied himself on his feet.

  Robin guided him out of the small bedroom at the back of the house that served as the “newspaper morgue,” where back issues of The Clarion were stored on shelves, carefully arranged and indexed. The room held a desk with two chairs, and there was a small bathroom with a shower adjacent to this former bedroom.

  She had just finished dressing Michael and herself. She hoped she looked presentable enough after some work with a towel, hairbrush and makeup, since she had just finished taking a shower with Mike, holding him propped against the tile wall with the shower streaming down upon them both. She had been nude for this. But in this instance, taking a shower together—something they hadn’t done since their honeymoon!—was anything but erotic.

  She again wore the same beige blouse and denim skirt that she’d changed into at home after school. Mike wore a fresh pair of slacks and shirt that he kept in a closet in this back room.

  As they walked down the short hallway which led to the front of the house, she thought twice that she might have to help prop him up, but in fact he was staging a pretty fast recovery, so she guided him gently with an arm around his waist, letting him advance under his own steam.

  When she first entered the newspaper front office less than a half-hour ago, a wave of emotions had punched her like a brutal body blow at the sight of Michael, lying upon the floor. At first, worry and fear, then despair as she rushed to him, crying out his name, as she became aware of the stink of spilled whiskey and the mess of papers and file folders on the floor near where he’d fallen. When he began pawing her blind drunk and calling out Carol’s name … well, she was not sure what she felt.