by Rio Youers
“You don’t like me much, do you?”
Bobby’s brow furrowed beneath the peak of his Mets cap. He sighed, chest trembling, opened his mouth, but said nothing.
“I see you around town,” Oliver pressed. “Big old Bobby Bear, so friendly with everybody else—stopping to say hello, helping the old folks with their groceries. Makes me wonder why I’m so different . . . what it is about me that you don’t like.”
Bobby sipped his Pepsi-Cola. He was a big guy—six-four with a copper brush cut and a belly that sagged between his open legs. His hands were scuffed and scarred; he used to work at the mill until a heart attack—last summer, and only thirty-five years old—slowed him down. Now he sorted mail at the post office.
“Maybe it’s because our personalities rub,” he said, shrugging his heavy shoulders. “Or maybe it’s because you’re . . . well, distant.”
“Distant?”
Bobby nodded.
“I think most people would disagree with you,” Oliver said. “I think they would argue that my integrity, and my constant giving-back to the community, are not the actions of a distant man.”
“And don’t forget the fact that you built your house two miles away.” Bobby took another sip of Pepsi. His gaze met Oliver’s, then flicked away. “On a hill. So that you can look down on us?”
“Is that what you think?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
The jukebox fell silent but Drunken Debbie kept dancing. Her fly was unbuttoned. She had red wine stains on her blouse. She mumbled something, staggered, and jigged to the melody in her head. Oliver gave Jesse, the bartender, a twenty and told him to make sure Debbie made it home okay. “Call a cab or drive her yourself.”
“You’ve got a heart of gold, Mr. Wray.”
Oliver winked and finished his drink.
Bobby stared at him.
“You really are a bitter man,” Oliver said.
“Maybe I’m just a curious man.”
“Surely curiosity requires a modicum of intelligence?”
Bobby offered a dry smile. “You shouldn’t underestimate me.”
“You give me no reason to do otherwise.”
“So you’re not looking down on us?”
“It’s not in my nature,” Oliver said. “You heard Jesse—I’ve got a heart of gold.”
“Then what are you doing up there?” Bobby looked at him squarely, his small eyes almost lost in the folds of his face. “What’s so special—so secret—that you couldn’t have built your ivory tower a little closer? On that scratch of land at the north end of Jefferson Avenue, maybe, among the people you love so much.”
“I’m closer to nature up there,” Oliver said. “It helps keep me pure.”
“I’m not buying it.”
“Good, because you probably couldn’t afford it.” Oliver slipped off the barstool and stepped around the horseshoe. He leaned close to Bobby, and whispered so that no one else heard. “Look at you: fat as fuck and one heart attack closer to the grave. You won’t live to be fifty, I bet, and you’ll never have a penny to scratch your fat ass with. The only reason you don’t like me is because I’ve got everything and you’ve got nothing. You’re just an overweight prick seething with envy.”
Bobby’s lips trembled. “Looks like I touched a nerve.”
“You’ll never touch anything of mine.” Oliver said. He imagined the mountain’s darkness and threw it all on top of Bobby Alexander. “You’ll never come close.”
He turned around and left the Rack before anybody saw the smile crash from his face. The night air was warm and still, thick with the scent of trees. He stepped out of the streetlight and crossed the road to his car. Gunned the engine and screeched down Main—ran the red light at the Grace Road intersection and didn’t even notice. He made it home in under three minutes, furious at himself for letting Bobby get under his skin. To make matters worse, he’d lost his cool, lowered his mask. So foolish. The kind of reaction that could raise suspicion and get him caught.
Oliver killed the ignition and stepped out of his car. Just being here—home, among the trees, where he belonged—filled him with calm. Several deep breaths and Bobby faded from his mind. Several more and he was smiling again.
———
Two o’clock in the morning. Oliver sat on the rear deck and revelled in the silence. He let it drape over him like the perfect woman, who could touch him in every place he needed to be touched, and draw from him the seed of his nature, and make it flower. Was this the beginning of a new life, in the shadow of Abraham’s Faith, but not in its service?
He could only hope.
It hulked in the east, satiated, its belly filled with children. He had failed it only once, but he had been young then. Unready. When the mountain called again he had answered, albeit reluctantly. It had rewarded him with a long period of silence, and he had flourished.
He looked at the stars. Billions strong. A porous night. It was just as silent down here. The town, two miles distant, was a splash of light, as if some of the stars had fallen. Nothing stirred, not even the trees. Oliver clutched his chest and felt his heart vibrate through the small bones in his hand.
Such moments needed to be embraced. So many people took this peace and stillness for granted, but it was during these periods that he learned his world and developed his public image. He moved in and out of love, first with a sensuous, green-eyed beauty from Rochester—a photographer named Amber Beale who captured his heart in flashes. She had spooned with his soul and, with her touch and her pictures, shown him a universe beyond God’s Footprint. His second love was an older woman—married—who, with her authority, had found his weakness for being used. She had left upon his body the belt marks of her passion, and the pain was like a flame in the night. He had cried like a dog when they parted, but the mountain had scooped him into one stony fist and used him like no woman ever could.
His business, Manta-Wray Design, started out small, but boomed as the world moved into the computer age. He learned every program on the market, and soon had the credentials—and the guile—to approach affluent companies in the northeast states. His client base expanded. He rented office space in New York City and employed a small team of graphic designers. The next stop was the west coast, and then the world. Manta-Wray Design currently employed one hundred and fifteen people, and had offices in North America and Europe.
Oliver looked toward the mountain, feeling its dark pressure. He hated it. Loved it. A strict yet giving father.
He yawned and slipped into light sleep, only for an hour or so, but he woke with a skin of sweat on his forehead and a blunt pain in his lower back. He stood up and stretched. The world remained deep and silent, only the sound of his body creaking. Wiping his eyes, he stepped inside, flicking off lights on his way to bed. He had built this house six years ago, secluded among the trees. It was open plan, ultramodern, lots of glass. There were no pictures on the walls. No plants or pets. Some would consider it sterile. A few of his guests had commented—tactfully, to their credit—on the absence of life, to which Oliver always replied: Look out the window, and you’ll see all the life you can handle. He walked down the hallway, stopping briefly in his study to write in his journal: July 29, 2010: Four days of silence, and I am elated. He turned off his computer and reached to flick off the lamp on his desk, but his hand diverted to a folder sitting atop a pile of invoices. He flipped it open. There was an old black and white photograph inside. A reprint. He took it out and stared at it.
“Man of the mountain,” he said. “Original me.” He brushed one finger over the man in the photograph. “Who are you?”
The mountain had been silenced. Perhaps forever. Perhaps not. Its mystery continued to elude him, but he felt he was getting closer. The people of Point Hollow couldn’t (or wouldn’t) help him. The libraries offered scant, irrelevant information. But the
Internet . . . impossible to censor. He found out a little more about Point Hollow’s past. A church fire in 1923 that killed eighteen people. A shooting in 1953—six dead. A mass suicide in 1971, and Point Hollow’s population was thirteen souls smaller. Old Kip Sawyer hadn’t mentioned any of this when Oliver had asked him what was wrong with the town. Nobody had mentioned it. Even Sheriff Tansy—who was supposed to be his friend—had glossed over it all, suggesting that selective disclosure was one of the benefits of life in a small town. In other words, there were no records of these incidents. They had been covered up.
But why?
Despite the hours he had spent surfing, he found only one small thing he could link to the children in the mountain: this photograph. He had pulled it from a website that chronicled the history of the Catskill Mountains. It was not particularly remarkable, but it had snatched Oliver’s attention immediately.
The man in the photograph looked to be in his mid- to late-thirties, but it was difficult to tell with such an old print; he could easily have been in his early twenties. He wore charcoal clothes and had a mess of dark hair. His face was a pale smudge, his eyes a cluster of characterless pixels. Only his mouth indicated emotion: a thin, hooked smile. No, it was a leer. Too creepy to be a smile. He had three children with him, aged somewhere between four and eight years old. The caption that accompanied the photograph read: Family fun in the Catskills. Date/photographer unknown. However, the children’s expressions challenged the notion of “family fun.” Even though the quality was not good, Oliver could see that they were terrified . . . crying.
But the thing that caught Oliver’s attention was behind the man and the children: sloping, jagged rock face divided by a zigzag opening. Oliver recognized it in a heartbeat. It was his opening. His mountain.
Oliver imagined the photograph being taken (he’d had it dated to the early twentieth century, judging from the garments and hairstyles, although it was impossible to be specific) just moments before the leering, smudge-faced man led the terrified children into the mountain, where they would remain forever, turning slowly to bones.
“Who are you?” Oliver asked again. He touched his leering mouth, trailing his finger down to the children’s frightened faces. “What did you do?”
Silence.
Still.
Original me, Oliver thought. He slipped the photograph back into the folder, placed it on his desk, and flicked off the lamp. He walked, in darkness, to the hallway, and then to his bedroom, where he stripped naked and swayed between the covers like air. He fell asleep in moments and dreamed about the horizon.
Chapter Five
Point Hollow was one hundred and twenty miles north of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Once clear of the metropolitan miasma, it became a carefree, relaxing drive—into the Hudson Valley, suddenly surrounded by trees and granite face, rather than concrete buildings and overpasses. Matthew had rented a car (a gutless four-banger—damn Kirsty to hell for taking the Altima, along with everything else). He drove with one hand on the wheel and the window open, singing along to his Bee Gees CD. Sunlight flashed off his prescription sunglasses, and he actually felt good, for the first time in weeks, despite the fact that he didn’t know what Point Hollow had in store for him.
The good feeling didn’t last. What should have been a calming three-hour drive turned into a five-hour clusterfuck. By the time Matthew arrived in Point Hollow, his head was thumping and he had blood on his hands.
———
The most frustrating thing was that he was so close to Point Hollow when it happened. Ten minutes away, at most. He had turned off NY 17 and was navigating the narrow roads leading deeper into the Catskills. Impressive trees towered on both sides, throwing broad shadows across the blacktop. He may have been singing too loud, or driving a touch too fast, but the deer leapt in front of his car with demented abandon, out of nowhere, and even if he had been paying absolute attention, and driving the speed limit, he would still have hit it.
It was impossible to read the expression in its eyes in the split second before impact. They were wide, black circles. Matthew slapped the brakes but they barely had time to engage before crunch-time, and he wondered if speed would benefit them both—if he might go through the unfortunate animal, applying similar physics used when whipping away a tablecloth and leaving the glasses and plates standing.
This was not the case.
Five seconds of noise and confusion. Terrific impact, as if a brick of C-4 had detonated under the hood. Matthew was thrown forward, shuddering under a thunderclap of sound, his prescription sunglasses flying off as the seatbelt lashed against his chest. The car slid into the opposite lane, brakes hissing. The hood buckled. The windshield cracked. Matthew glimpsed, in his peripheral vision, the deer pirouetting wildly along the passenger side, clobbering off various panels. The car rattled to a halt and for a long moment the only sound was the Bee Gees singing—with noted irony—about staying alive.
“Jesus Christ!” Matthew killed the engine, unclipped his seatbelt, and wobbled out of the car. He took his regular glasses from his breast pocket and slipped them on, then toured the front end to assess damage. Not good. Lots of shattered pieces and exposed parts. The passenger-side doors looked like they had been trampled by stampeding bulls. Matthew pushed his hands through his hair and gazed up and down the road. Quiet. No other vehicles. The deer lay in the middle of the eastbound lane. He saw one of its front legs twitching. Lots of blood.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said. His hands were trembling again. He clenched them into fists. The deer snorted, pained and confused, lifting its head. It was trying to get up.
You know what you have to do, he thought, and shuddered. Put it out of its misery.
“I can’t do that,” he whispered to the empty road.
The deer looked at Matthew and he turned his back on it. The road was a silent grey ribbon, trees on either side, everything still. He remembered (and it came out of nowhere, like a piano falling from the sky) that his father always called this—the road leading into Point Hollow—the Dead Road.
Matthew glanced over his shoulder. The deer still looked at him. Huge eyes. Huge hurting eyes. It jerked and blinked. One of its rear legs was attached by a thin, furry strip of meat. It tried, once again, to get up, but could only paw pathetically at the air. It made a long mooing sound—possibly the cervine equivalent of a scream—that vibrated through Matthew, presenting thick chills that started in the vicinity of his anus and ascended promptly to his scalp.
“Don’t look at me,” he said.
It looked at him. Blood everywhere.
Kill it.
“I can’t,” Matthew said. “What am I going to do? Strangle it with my bare hands? Perform the Vulcan Death Grip?”
Just grab its head and give it a one-eighty, the darkness in his head grated. Wait until you hear the crack.
“Not going to happen.” He shook his head firmly.
A car approached from the direction of Point Hollow and Matthew turned to face it with a desperate expression on his face. It slowed as it approached, pulling around the crippled rental and stopping alongside him. The passenger window buzzed down. The driver was old enough to outlive his children, sitting on a booster cushion to help him see over the steering wheel.
“Hit a deer, huh?” he asked, running his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one crinkly forefinger.
Matthew gawped at him, unable to reply. His trembling hands made puppet-like gestures toward the shattered front end of the rental, and then to the dying deer in the road.
“Yeah, you did,” the old man said, as if Matthew needed it confirmed.
“It came out of nowhere,” Matthew said.
“You can’t help bad luck,” the old man said. His rheumy eyes widened behind his glasses. “She’s still kicking, huh?”
Matthew nodded. “Still alive, yes.”
“Poor bitch,” he
said.
“Do you have any suggestions?” Matthew asked, looking hopefully at the old man “Do you know any farmers or hunters? Someone who might . . . you know, put it out of its misery?”
“I had a gun once,” he replied. “In the sixties.”
“Okay.”
“She was a beaut. A twenty-two. Shot a raccoon once, nosing through the trash. Little bastard. Mary gave me three kinds of hell for that one.”
“Okay,” Matthew said again, nodding, frowning. What the fuck? “But do you know anyone who—?”
“Well, good luck,” the old man said, and then the window buzzed up, ending their strange conversation. He drove away, steering between the rental and the deer, back onto his side of the road. Matthew watched his taillights disappear.
The deer bleated. Matthew covered his face and groaned. Silence descended. The sun danced behind a cloud and then broke again, beating red wings against his hands. After a few moments he gained a bead of composure and clung to it. He looked at the Dead Road. It hadn’t changed. Shades of grey and green beneath the blue pall of sky. The rental oozed loose parts. The deer strained and worked for life.
He walked toward it. Its eyes snapped open and closed. He couldn’t look into them. That was too much. Not that it was any easier looking at its body. A sack of broken bones. An L-shaped spine. It lifted one foreleg and stretched it toward him, as if it were reaching for help.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.”
But could he? How hard would it be to reach down, place one hand beneath its jaw, the other on the curve of its skull, and twist? Two seconds. Minimal effort. Like loosening the lugs on a wheel rim. His mind painted an easy picture, but he had always been able to spill blood in his mind (Kirsty’s blood, specifically—God bless the pressure release). But in the real world . . . not so simple. Matthew turned away and closed his eyes. He took a moment to think this through, and resolved to call the police. Let them deal with it. Then he would call the rental company. They’d send a wrecker, provide him with a replacement vehicle, and he’d be rolling again. No problem. No sweat.