Then, as if they were some clever optical illusion, the meaning of the violent images became clear. They were messages, spelled out in human viscera and mangled steel. Or rather, warnings. The first one read LEAVE US ALONE!, while the second read SECOND CHANCE!
“Where did you get these?” asked Russ.
“I have people working for me in Tucker’s Mill,” said Dellhart. “Spies who are keeping an eye on things in the area. I didn’t see any need to inform you of my hidden sources, but now I think it is best that you know.”
Russ suppressed his obvious displeasure at being left in the dark. He had set the initial steps of Project Pale Dove into motion, thinking that he was taking care of the situation extremely well, considering that he was acting alone. He had successfully bribed the county clerk, Bill Baldwin, to legitimize the land transaction in the eyes of the local law, as well as the state investigator, Robert Jergens, whose influence helped put necessary distance between the Stoogeones and Eco-Plenty. But now Dellhart was telling him that there had been hidden informants in his midst without his knowledge. Russ didn’t like that one bit.
Dellhart handed him a file. Russ opened it. It contained various reports on local activities, as well as a list of two dozen names, one column highlighted in red, the other in yellow. “So what are my instructions, sir?” he asked.
“I want you to take command of the operation and see that there are no further problems.” Dellhart shook his head in disgust. “Only three days into the project and I have two men missing and presumed dead, and one man confined to a psychiatric ward. And these bizarre messages start popping up, too, trying to scare us off. You have two objectives, Vincent. Objective one is to get the surveying finished and the timber crews onto the mountain on schedule. Objective two is to discover the identity of the bastard who is making things hard for us and eliminate him. I thought it was a wild animal at first, but now it seems to be a very cunning and dangerous man.”
“How am I going to get the surveyors? There’s a good chance I won’t be able to hire any locally, especially with the trouble those two encountered yesterday.”
“I’m having a surveying team flown in from our ongoing project in the Brazilian rain forests. They’ll have the mountain sectioned off well before the May deadline.”
“What about protection for the workers?” asked Russ. He thought of the ill-fated Colin Wainwright and his ineffective presence on the mountain. “And the termination of the threat?”
“I’ve already hired some local muscle for that purpose,” Dellhart told him. “They are the names marked in red on the list. Mostly poor white trash and backwoods rednecks who live in Peremont County. They have been on the Eco-Plenty payroll for a few weeks now and are prepared to get mean and nasty at a snap of our fingers. I want you to contact each man and inform them of the situation, in a limited capacity, of course. Then I want them armed and stationed around the mountain, to provide protection for the surveyors as well as defense against this renegade meddler. The names marked in yellow are my local ears. I’ll have them attuned to the daily activities of Tucker’s Mill, ready to inform you when the identity of the vigilante is discovered.”
“Anything else?” asked Russ.
“Just keep the press and the local law enforcement away from Pale Dove Mountain as much as possible, which may prove difficult with all the trouble that has been taking place there lately. We may have to eliminate Gartrell Mayo from the picture eventually. The sheriff is stubborn and he still has strong suspicions of our involvement in Brice’s death. Mayo’s investigation is in a deadlock since Jergens informed his superiors that there is no connection between the Stoogeones and Eco-Plenty, but the old geezer might start snooping around again. If he does, I want him stopped.
“And another thing. There may also be a chance of interference from Jennifer Brice. She may choose to give us a fight in court, or try to regain possession of the property by other means. If you are approached by Ms. Brice about selling back the land, you are to turn down all offers, no matter how large the amount. I never abort a project once it’s in action. You should know that well enough by now.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Vincent Russ.
“That’s all. You may go now.” As his right-hand man turned to leave the office, Dellhart stopped him with the sternness of his voice. “Vincent, I want no more delays or setbacks concerning this operation. I want it to proceed smoothly and without incident from here on out. If you can’t grant me that simple assurance, then your services may no longer be required by this corporation. Or by anyone else, for that matter.”
Vincent Russ stood there, stone still, a rigid mass of tension dressed in an expensive European suit. “Yes sir. I promise I won’t disappoint you.”
Jackson Dellhart smiled to himself as Russ closed the door behind him. Then he turned his attention back to the snapshots. “Threaten me, will you?” he said, looking them over before tossing them angrily back into his desk drawer. “Well, we’ll see about that. After my crew gets finished with you, you’ll wish that you had left well enough alone.”
He considered the identity of his troublesome adversary. Who could it possibly be? Maybe a mentally unbalanced friend of Fletcher Brice that he had no knowledge of. Maybe it was someone that Jenny Brice had hired to launch a campaign of terror against the corporation. Dellhart recalled their fleeting encounter at the party and dismissed the idea. She was only a naive artist with hopes of fortune and fame. He doubted very much that she could bring herself to hire a deranged killer just to regain possession of Pale Dove Mountain.
He thought of her bright new career in the world of art and a cruel thought itched in the back of his mind. Perhaps he would pull a little sabotage on Jennifer Brice after the current project was completed. Maybe pull some financial trickery and gain possession of the Memphis art gallery she partly owned with Erica Page. Then he would find a way to claim ownership of Jenny’s artwork and, with it, gain the power to make or break her fabulous career. He might even choose to send her back to the poverty that she had been subjected to in her youth, never to achieve the success that was within her reach.
Dellhart decided that might just be a fun hobby to pursue, after the business at hand was taken care of.
That night, Jenny Brice awoke in the darkness of her room, fighting back the panic of her recurring nightmare as she sat up in bed and breathed the crisp night air that breezed through the open window of her room. The ogre of her dreams, the dreaded Dark’Un, fled into the far reaches of her mind, to hide in the deep shadows of her subconscious, if only for a short while.
“Damn!” she muttered, reaching for her purse on the nightstand. She was rummaging through it for the vial of Valium when she became aware that she was not alone in the room. She looked up. There were pale shapes in the darkness. They clung to the dark walls of her bedroom, eluding the nocturnal light that filtered through the open window.
She reached up and snapped on the lamp next to the bed. She felt her skin grow cold and her mind swim with sudden shock. A gathering of albino people stood around the canopied bed. Six were beautiful women in various stages of undress, a couple completely naked. One was a man. He stood at the foot of the bed, his white hair pulled back into a ponytail and his tall, gaunt body clad in white silk pajamas with a pink sash. He stared at her almost pleadingly, his brilliant pink eyes seeming to glow in the sparse light of the lamp.
This isn’t really happening, she thought. I’m having another dream.
Jenny watched as the pale forms approached the bed and stood there. All stared at her with the same desperate expression as the male. “What do you want?” she asked dully. “Why are you here?”
They extended their hands, as if begging something of her, and their mouths opened and closed, soundlessly, like gasping fish.
She watched as the man leaned over the footboard of the bed, his clutched fist reaching out to her. There was something in his grasp. Something that he wanted to give her.
Slowly, J
enny extended her own hand, palm open to receive the gift he offered. It was only when something of definite weight and hardness pressed against her palm, that she realized that it was not a dream after all. Her fingers met his, and she found that his flesh was soft and warm. And very much alive.
A great terror welled up within her and she began to scream. She watched as the albinos recoiled from her shrill cries and then sank to their knees. But no, that wasn’t what was happening. Instead, they were dissolving right before her eyes. Her horror grew more intense as she watched their bone structures seemingly collapse and their loose flesh and clothing puddle on the floor around her bed, reminding her of the melting witch in The Wizard of Oz.
“Jenny?” came the sound of Miss Mable’s voice from the other side of the bedroom door. “Jenny, are you okay?”
She suddenly remembered that she had locked the door before going to bed, a stubborn habit from living in the city during the past five years. But she didn’t dare try to cross the room to unlock it. The floor swirled and seethed with pools of pale slime that bubbled and popped with a loud crackling noise.
“There must be a fire in there!” she heard Rowdy yell. “I can hear the flames. Everybody stand back…I’m gonna kick this sucker in!”
As the pounding of Rowdy’s boot heel hit the door again and again, splintering the wood around the lock, the crackling noise stopped. Jenny unleashed a new shriek, this time one of startled alarm. A swarm of seven large, white moths rose from the bedroom floor. They flew around the dimly lit room for a frantic moment, then escaped through the open window.
The door burst inward just as Jenny leapt from her bed and ran to the window. She saw the pale insects congregate around the streetlight in front of the courthouse, before disappearing into the inky blackness of the night.
She turned to find Rowdy and Gart searching the room for flames, while Miss Mable and Alice McCray lingered in the doorway. “What’s wrong, Jenny?” asked the old woman. “You sounded like you were being murdered in here!”
Rowdy scratched his sleep-tousled head of red hair. “I could’ve sworn I heard a fire blazing in here.”
“I heard it, too,” said Gart. “But it didn’t sound quite like flames. Sounded like something else…something I might’ve heard before, but I can’t recollect where.”
Miss Mable rushed to Jenny and found that she was trembling and unsteady. “Good Lord, girl, you’re scared half to death. Come and sit down on the bed.” She turned to Alice McCray, who still stood in the doorway, dressed only in a Denver Broncos football jersey. “Miss McCray, could you fetch Jenny a glass of water?”
“Sure,” said the brunette. She headed for the bathroom at the end of the hall.
“What happened here, Jenny?” asked Rowdy. “Did you have a bad dream or something?” He was wearing his cowboy boots, along with a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt that read PROPERTY OF LA GRANGE CHICKEN RANCH.
“It must have been a dream…but it seemed so real.” She remembered the warm touch of the albino’s pale hand and shivered.
“Tell us about it, honey,” urged Miss Mable, sitting down on the bed next to her.
Jenny sipped the water that Alice brought her, then began to tell the four about the albino man and his entourage of nude women, as well as the way they had melted and reformed into a swarm of snow-white moths. After she was finished with her story, she felt incredibly foolish. It did sound wildly farfetched and absurd. She waited for them to laugh, but they didn’t. Rowdy and Gart looked at each other with a peculiar expression, almost as if they actually believed her story to be true.
“Kinda sounds like that group that Bubba Graham told us about,” said Rowdy. “Lance LaBlanc and his harem of buck-naked beauties.”
Gart agreed. “And that ain’t the only strange thing, either. I remember where I heard that crackling sound before. It was in Anthony Stoogeone’s cell the night that he was murdered.”
A strained silence hung in the bedroom as everyone wrestled with the disturbing idea that had begun to surface. “But it must’ve been a dream,” Jenny mumbled. “It’s insane to think otherwise. Things like that just don’t happen.”
Miss Mable reached to take the young woman’s hand, but found it tightly clenched. The blonde clutched something bulky within her grasp. “Jenny, dear, what’s that you’ve got in your hand?”
“Huh?” Jenny uncurled her fingers and stared at the object cradled in her palm.
It was a nugget of pure gold, roughly the size of a golf ball.
“Where did you get that?” asked Rowdy. “I’ve got enough gold records to know that’s the real McCoy.”
Jenny didn’t answer. She stared at the hunk of precious metal that the pale likeness of Lance LaBlanc had given her. She remembered the way his mouth had worked in frustration, as if trying to tell her something of great importance, yet without the vocal means to do so.
And another thing disturbed her. The pale man had been a mystery to her, but she had recognized his eyes. She had seen them once before, during her youth.
They were the blazing pink eyes of the White Rabbit she had encountered on the peak of Pale Dove Mountain.
Chapter Twenty-One
The following morning, shortly after sunrise, Gart Mayo, Rowdy Hawkens, and Mable Compton sat on a bank of the Little River. They had their poles in hand and their bait cast into the gentle current. The day was sunny and peacefully picturesque.
The steel and concrete bridge that linked the two halves of Peremont County from north to south loomed to their right, while directly across the river stood the old stone mill that Clement Tucker had built well over a century and a half ago. It was long since abandoned and overgrown with creeping ivy, but the huge wooden paddlewheel continued to turn lazily in the river’s steady current. Also on the opposite bank sat another fisherman, probably a city dweller down for a bit of relaxation. They had waved in a neighborly fashion to the fellow when he chose his spot and he had waved back with a smile, then donned the headphones of a Sony Walkman to keep him company.
The three from Tucker’s Mill had packed themselves a picnic lunch—chicken salad sandwiches, potato chips, and thick wedges of Miss Mable’s applesauce-walnut cake with creamy molasses icing. Next to the picnic basket sat Gart’s five-tiered tackle box loaded with every lure, tie, and sinker you could ever imagine. There was also live bait—earthworms and minnows from Tucker’s Market and a whole string of crappie, perch, and bluegill that they had caught before the morning sun had reached the nine o’clock mark in the vast spring sky.
Their outing had been planned solely as a fishing trip, but eventually it turned into a secret meeting of sorts. As the conversation drifted to the subject of last night’s puzzling event, the discussion lost its lightheartedness and grew more serious in nature.
“So, what are we going to do about all these peculiar happenings that are going on in Tucker’s Mill?” asked Miss Mable, voicing the first word on the subject, as usual. She baited a minnow on her hook and cast her line into the rocky shallows.
If anything’s to be done, it’ll be done by me alone,” Gart told her in no uncertain terms. “I’m the elected law in Peremont County and it’s my responsibility to set things right.”
“It doesn’t look like you’ll be getting much help in doing it, though,” said Rowdy.”That jackass deputy of yours has turned downright timid since that Stoogeone business and it looks like that investigator the state attorney sent down is dragging his heels.”
“I agree with you on that. I suspect that Robert Jergens has been paid off by Eco-Plenty, just like the county clerk was. He came down here saying he was gonna get to the bottom of this rash of killings and disappearances. Instead, it looks like he’s doing his damnedest to cover the whole matter up. I thought I was really going to get my butt kicked over the death of Anthony Stoogeone, but nothing’s happened, not even a reprimand. Jergens says he’s putting the investigation on the back burner, but I think he’s done closed the case.”
“Hell, no, it burns me up! Fletcher Brice was brutally tortured and murdered in his own home, then the three bastards who were clearly to blame were killed. A man was run plumb outta his mind and a couple more are unaccounted for. Three, if you count Dwight Lovell. That no-account poacher has been on some mighty long drunks before, but this ain’t one of them. I have a feeling in these old bones that he met with a bad end up there on Pale Dove Mountain.”
Rowdy nodded. “Seems like that dadblamed mountain is the center of a lot of peculiar things. Maybe there is something to those old tall tales I used to hear when I was a young’un.”
“The old Cherokee legend about those albino critters up there having the power to change their form at will would clarify some odd things that have been going on around here lately,” admitted Gart. “Especially those visitors in Jenny’s room last night.” The sheriff wished that Jenny were there now to take part in the conversation, but she and Alice McCray had gone to Knoxville to do a little shopping that day, as well as have that nugget of gold appraised.
“Aw, that was just a nightmare the girl had,” scoffed Miss Mable. She saw by their expressions that Gart and Rowdy weren’t so convinced. “I vow and declare, you two are acting like a couple of Boy Scouts shivering over a campfire ghost story. The next thing you’ll be telling me is that the Dark’Un was responsible for those killings.”
The two men neglected to answer her.
“Lordy Mercy! You do, don’t you? You’ve done gone and lost your senses, the both of you. Believing in that old boogeyman! What’s next? Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?”
“There’s a big difference, Miss Mable,” Gart said grimly. “Neither Kris Kringle nor Peter Cottontail would creep into a man’s cell and tear him apart, limb by limb, and piece by piece.”
Miss Mable thought of the carnage in Anthony Stoogeone’s jail cell and found herself feeling a little queasy. She had only caught a fleeting glimpse of Stoogeone’s remains before turning away, but it was one that would stick with her until the end of her days. She had never witnessed signs of such gleeful brutality before and hoped never to again. Maybe there was something to Gart’s theory. It is said that every legend has its basis in fact. But this was utterly fantastic and inexplicable, like UFOs or the Loch Ness Monster.
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