by Thomas Page
The cop called headquarters, which in turn called the Forest Service. When Drake and his men arrived, the cop was poking through the woods, looking for Lester’s body.
“Let’s not fly off the handle yet,” said Drake over the map spread out on the truck hood. He indicated a fanlike section of Colby’s face with Lester’s trailer as the base. Checking it out meant trudging uphill through tangled timbers and maintaining your balance by gripping bushes. “There isn’t any reason for them to come all the way around the mountain. Oharaville’s on the north side.”
They climbed for an hour, searching the ground. After a hundred yards the blood gave out. Taylor was leaning against a tree, feet securely planted in the ground, cupping a match against the wind to light a cigarette, when he saw the shoe wedged in the exposed tree roots. It was a cheap loafer, the sole worn to paper-thinness. The heel was caught in the root.
Drake examined the shoe. Blood had dried on the instep. “It was upside down, so that means he was either walking backwards or he was dragged up and the heel caught in the roots. Let’s look for clothing or something.” They spread out, searching the underbrush and branch tips. Jones was standing next to Wallace when the wind shifted. “Listen!”
Wallace listened and heard nothing. “What?”
“It’s gone now. Did you ever blow over the top of an open bottle and make this whooo noise? For just a minute there. . .”
Again the wind shifted and this time Wallace heard a lowing sound, like that of a distant cow, coming from a rock ledge above them. He and Jones scrambled up to it.
Brush was pushed tightly against the wall of rock. It did not quiver as the wind crossed it. Jones grabbed a handful and pulled. The entire bush popped out like a cork from a small horizontal cave some four feet high and seven feet wide. The bush flew away in an ungainly ball from Jones’s hand, hit a tree, and disintegrated.
They waited on the ledge for Taylor to puff back up the slope bearing a rope and lights. Drake tied the rope around his waist and flashed a light inside the cave. “Somebody make a note that Forest Rangers be equipped with gas masks next time.”
“You don’t need Rangers here,” said Wallace. “You need a plumber.”
Although the entrance was small, the cave itself was large. Stones had been piled against the floor, forming a sort of staircase. Drake saw stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The chart had said Colby was full of limestone. Under the action of water, limestone dissolved into caves.
“If I’m not back in five minutes, flush the thing,” said Drake. Jones played out the rope as he slipped, rifle first, through the opening.
“It’s like a church,” said Drake, his voice booming. The interior was a good fifteen feet high. The walls were smooth and curved. On the opposite wall was a small opening leading to another tunnel. “It’s clean except for the smell. It’s dry, too.”
Drake could not pin down any particular detail that told him the cave was used frequently, but that was what he sensed. Somewhere he had read that living things leave a memory of their presence behind, like a battery charge. It might have been technical nonsense, but he trusted his instincts.
“Everybody tie yourselves together and let’s go in a little ways,” said Drake. “Stay behind me.”
The wind receded to a faint whistle as they followed Drake single-file into the tunnels. Unlike the mine, which was filled with the drip of water, the cave system was quiet. Dry and quiet. Silence was an unnatural state of nature, Jones thought. It meant you were being watched.
The tunnel branched, and they walked to the right. All of them smelled the smoke at once. “Taylor was right,” said Jones. It was not thick or visible. It was an old odor, as if given off by a deposit of soot on the walls.
“Hickory smoke,” whispered Wallace. “Now what in hell . . .”
Drake rounded a corner and aimed his light at the floor. Twenty feet ahead they saw the tattered remains of Lester Cole lying in a gush of dried blood.
Drake examined the body. “His head’s gone,” he said quietly. He flashed the light around, as if expecting to find it lying somewhere close by.
They carried Lester down the mountain in a tarpaulin and deposited him in the back of the truck. Drake called the state police. “We’ve found him. I want you to do something for me. I want you to take samples of all the blood in his trailer and find out what kind of an animal he was carving up in there, if that’s really what he was doing. Okay? Ten four.”
He stood outside the truck, breathing in great drafts of fresh cold air. He turned to Jones and said, “Now what, Jonesy?”
“I can’t see them doing anything in the middle of a snowstorm.”
“On the other hand,” Drake drawled, “if they were going to do something nasty, a snowstorm is the perfect cover, isn’t it? Anybody been up to the lodge over the weekend?”
Nobody had.
“I’ll run up there myself. Helder won’t be happy about being evacuated, so I guess it’s only courteous for the boss to tell him.”
Martha Lucas found herself standing next to John Moon as Helder called the guests together. Moon seemed so shrunken that his hair was the only substantial part of him. The rest was just a ghost.
As Drake stifled yawns of exhaustion, Jack Helder spoke tonelessly to his guests. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have been ordered by the Forest Service to evacuate Colby Lodge immediately for the duration of the storm. There is a very serious problem with bears at the moment—” A titter of laughter rippled through them. “Please! One of our kitchen workers was killed over the weekend. I’ll ask you to have your bags packed and ready to go beginning at four this afternoon. Lodging will be furnished for you in Garrison. Thank you.”
After that speech Helder entered his office, locked the door, and would not answer it.
Martha intercepted Drake at the parking lot. “It’s them,” he told her. “They got Lester Cole. I don’t know why. Where’s Mr. Jason?”
“I haven’t seen him all day. He must be in his bungalow.”
“As far as you two are concerned, it’s still bears, understand? I want to see you both at the station tomorrow morning.” He tipped his hat as he walked to his truck.
She found John Moon heading into the woods and called to him. “John? John?”
“Yes, ma’am.” There was a dark-blue swelling ringed with little scabs on his hairline.
She faced him, trying to hold his eyes. “John, do you know who wrecked the ski lift?”
“How should I know, ma’am?”
“John, listen to me. It doesn’t have anything to do with you personally. Have you ever, ever in your life come across any kind of”—she made movements with her hands —“gorillas in the woods?”
His gaze drew back and focused on her. “Why, no, ma’am. That’s silly. They ain’t nothing like that in these woods.”
“What about spirits? Have you ever seen any spirits?”
His eyes widened in pleasure. He smiled at some secret knowledge within himself. “Why, yes, ma’am. Why, a day don’t hardly go by that I don’t see spirits!”
He pushed out the door into the wind.
Over the next hours the van picked up people and luggage for the forty-five-minute drive to Garrison. The vehicle had room for only eight or nine people, and weather conditions were becoming so bad that the last ones would not be out until seven o’clock.
By four in the afternoon cold powdery flakes of snow were riding the wind. The day had darkened to dusk, and Jason had still not shown up. From Helder’s office came the sound of loud, deep snoring. He was sacked out on his couch, probably next to a bottle, Martha decided.
For the third time, Martha pounded on Jason’s bungalow door for a full minute. This time he answered.
“Where’ve you been!” she gasped.
Jason’s eyes squinted in pain. His neck was stiff, and h
e rubbed it tenderly. “I’ve been sleeping off a headache.”
“Sleeping!”
“That’s right. I had a little argument with Moon this morning, and he won.”
She told him about the evacuation order and the death of Lester Cole.
“Are you going?” he asked.
“We have to go! Everybody. Helder’s putting us up in a motel.”
Jason put his chin in his hands. “What about Moon?”
“He has to go, too.”
“I bet he won’t. And if he doesn’t go, I don’t either.”
“We don’t have any choice, Raymond.”
“Neither do I.” He told her what he had told Moon that morning. “The director of the Primate Center started me thinking about it. I guess it’s been growing in me all along.”
“But that’s ridiculous!”
“Don’t tell me—I know it’s ridiculous!”
“Bestiality? I mean, it’s inconceivable!”
“It happened all the time a million years ago. In fact, it happens on farms all the time today. Look at any police blotter or the records of any mental hospital if you want your eyes opened.”
Wind trembled the little bungalow. Martha sat down well away from him. “How long ago did this . . . thing happen?”
“Kimberly—he’s a biologist I know—figured two hundred years ago. After being dormant for a long time, the gene would gradually appear, causing them to change their behavior through the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Now that the whole species is in trouble, they’re coming out of the woodwork.”
“How many are there?”
“Not too many, I don’t think. They’re competing with two other species. No more than a dozen, I would guess, scattered from here to California. I think Roger Patterson got one on film.”
“Who could have . . . done it, Raymond? Any Indian trying it would have been tortured to death or expelled from the tribe. Bestiality is as big a taboo as incest.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about that.” He sank into self-absorption for a moment, then looked up laboriously as if surfacing from some great depth. “One, it’s a psychotic act. There’s no sensible motive of any kind for bestiality. Two, it wasn’t a woman, for the same reason it couldn’t have been an Indian. That leaves us with a psychotic white man. Most important of all is opportunity. Whoever did it not only had to be crazy but had to be out here years on end when their numbers were greater and was able to get close to them. Maybe he even lived with them. There’s a type of man that fits the bill perfectly.”
“Who?”
“What do you know about the mountain men?”
Images of fierce, bearded men with falcon eyes, dressed in animal skins, came to her. There were Charles Russell paintings all over the lodge, pen-and-ink sketches of hard-eyed men, drawn in such a texture that they were almost indistinguishable from the animals always portrayed with them.
Jason continued. “Forget Daniel Boone, Martha. They’ve been romanticized a lot, but a scruffier bunch never lived. They were trappers mostly, and all they wanted of civilization was a trading post to take their skins to once a year. Even the Indians thought they were strange. You had to be a little strange to want to live alone for all your life.”
Martha looked involuntarily at the door. “They’ll come for us, won’t they?”
“They’ll come for the lodge. When did Lester Cole die?”
“Friday night. I don’t know the details, though. I think Drake must have told Helder everything.”
Jason reached for his coat and checked the pistol in the pocket. “The question now isn’t how ugly they may be but how different they are up here!” He tapped his temple. “So far all I know about the male is that he can throw rattlesnakes and stones and walk long distances. I’m wondering if they’re capable of planning things. Coordinating things.” He slipped on the coat and opened the door. “Maybe it’s time I had a talk with Jack Helder.”
They knocked on Moon’s bungalow door. They peered in the window. The bed was messed up but empty. Snow was piling over the ground and banking up against the bungalows. The snowfall was so thick that it blanked out the world with a seamless whiteness.
Martha followed Jason into the woods where Moon had lost the dog. They heard that loud, lonely summoning whistle from the sea of white before them.
“That’s what I figured!” Jason cried above the wind. “He’s not going anywhere till that dog comes back. We better go back and get you on the van.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.
“Like hell! It’s getting late!”
She scuffed at the snow and settled her head deeper into her fur collar. “I’ll stick around. I am, after all, sort of an anthropologist.”
“I see.” Jason laughed. “Moon gets to you, doesn’t he. Maybe I should forget Bigfoot and put him in a cage. It must be ten below with this wind, and I bet he isn’t even wearing a coat.”
Helder’s door was still firmly locked. There were several people waiting apprehensively for the van to return. The loading entrance was propped open, and a huge fire thundered in the hearth.
A man with wiry red hair and a bulky build sprawled in one of the stuffed chairs. “He’s locked himself away real good,” he said to them. “I nearly knocked the door down trying to get in. What’s the matter with the phones around here anyhow?”
“They don’t work,” Jason responded, pounding loudly on Helder’s door.
The red-haired man leafed through a Sports Illustrated and grinned. He held the magazine up to Martha. It was a photograph of himself decked out in a football uniform. The caption stated that Duane Woodard of the Dallas Cowboys had broken some yardage records that fall. “I figured I’d take a couple days off up here,” he said to Martha. “I’d still rather stay. I don’t know why everybody’s so afraid of a little old storm.”
“It’s not the storm, it’s the bears,” said Jason. He sat in a chair, impatiently cracking his knuckles.
“Naw, it ain’t bears,” said Woodard. “I’ve hunted bears. They don’t tear up ski lifts.”
“What do you think it is, then?”
“It’s people. Has to be. How would a bear know how a ski lift works?”
The van wheezed up and creaked to a stop at the loading entrance. The tires were clogged with slush and the fenders rimmed with muddy ice. Delbert helped lash the luggage to the roof.
The door to Helder’s office popped open and the lodge owner swayed there, reeking of good Scotch. His natty coat was crumpled and his cuffs were open, splaying over the sleeves of his sport jacket. He lurched out to say farewell to the guests.
“Thank you so much for, hic, coming. See you next year. So sorry about this nonsense . . . Marvelous . . . We’ll be open by the end of the week.”
“Last chance,” said Jason to Martha.
She might have gone had Moon not walked into the lounge just then. His hair streamed with melting ice, and his clothes were stiff. He walked to the fire, oblivious to his surroundings, and warmed his palms.
“I’m staying,” she said to Jason, her eyes on the Indian.
The van pumped clouds of bluish exhaust, which were torn away by the storm. Delbert leaned out the window and shouted to Jack Helder, “We got most of them into the Pines Motel and some others into Howard Johnson’s down in Clayton.”
“Excellent,” hiccupped Jack Helder. “Fine people. Give them my best.”
“When are you coming down, Mr. Helder? The road’s getting bad.”
“In my own good time, Delbert, my boy. It’s my home, and no Bigfoot is going to chase me out.”
“No what?” Delbert cupped an ear.
“Never mind, Delbert. It’s all a crock of shit.” Helder started back to the door. “A . . . crock . . . of . . . shit! Don’t worry, I’ll have more fun than a barrelful of boa
constrictors. Drive safely, my boy.” Helder blew a wet kiss at the sour faces packed against the windows. “Good-bye, my lovelies.”
He waved as the van backed around, facing the road, then churned away through the wind-lashed night until the red taillights disappeared. He waved again as he tottered through the door and closed it behind him.
Martha Lucas, Raymond Jason, and John Moon were waiting for him when he stepped into the lounge.
Helder looked at each one of them. “Moon!” he roared.
“Yes, sir?” Moon replied quietly.
Helder pointed a wavering finger at the door. “You missed the van!”
Moon did not deign to answer. He put his back to the fire and watched Jason.
“Didn’t you hear the orders of the big bad Forest Service?”
“I’m staying,” said Moon with icy finality. “Until my dog comes back.”
“Martha!” Helder roared.
“Yes, Jack?”
“What’s going on around here!”
“Well, Mr. Jason is staying because Moon is. And I guess I don’t have anyplace to go either. I never liked motels. Besides, I’ve got to think of my reputation, haven’t I?”
Helder had the disjointed feeling that he had walked into a room he had lived in all his life and did not recognize it. “But . . . but . . . Oh, the hell with it. Glad for the company. We can all go to Mexico together.”
“Mexico?” Jason inquired.
“Yup. Mexico is where we’ll wind up if this wind doesn’t let up.” He sniffed the air. The lodge trembled under a gust of wind. It was still settling its joints. “My little baby,” Helder murmured in a loving voice.
Then to the others he said, “Listen to this. You will never guess what Mr. Drake told me this afternoon.”
“I can guess,” said Jason. “The Bigfeet are restless.”
“Is that a crock or isn’t it?” Jack Helder slumped onto a footstool before the fire.