Black Mountain ah-4

by Greig Beck

  ‘Military?’

  Hammerson shrugged.

  ‘What’s going on? Why are you really here?’

  Hammerson handed back the map and his face became serious. ‘To capture a beast… before too many people get hurt.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Alex switched off the engine and sat staring at the small house. He’d seen it before — the bed of flowers bordering the front deck, the swing seat on the porch with a pillow at one end, the worn blanket on the boards in front of it that had once held a large dog. Everything was still there and he remembered it all.

  He got out of the car and walked trance-like towards the front door, where he stopped to look back at the slopes, now bathed in midmorning sunlight. There was a large rock up on the hill; he had lain there looking down at this very spot… When? Months ago… years?

  He ripped away the police tape at the door and grabbed the handle, pushing hard until he heard the crunch of old wood separating as the metal tongue of the locking mechanism tore through it. The door swung open and he stood for a few seconds inhaling the scents of the house, each one familiar — old smoke and cold ash from the fireplace, his mother’s perfume and soap, biscuits. He stepped inside, then half-turned to look at Adira, who was still on the front deck, carefully scanning the slopes surrounding the house. He ignored her and went into the living room.

  The pictures on the mantelpiece drew him like powerful magnets. He lifted two. The first was a picture of himself, much younger, with hair falling over his forehead and smiling as if every day held nothing but sunshine. The other was an older photo of a man, shirt off and strongly muscled. He was about the age Alex was now, and it could have been him except the man’s features were slightly different. He stared hard at the image, willing the memories to come faster.

  There was momentary pain and then they came flooding — he saw a very young boy, himself, and the man pushing him on a swing. He loosened his grip on the chains for a second and flew to the ground, landing face first in the dirt. The man lifted him up and brushed him off. ‘You’re not hurt, you’re strong,’ he said. Alex remembered that he hadn’t cried, that he’d felt proud at managing to hold in the hurt. The man was his father… Jim Hunter. What happened to him?

  Alex lifted a third picture from the mantelpiece — his father again, but here he was standing with another young man. Alex recognised the square jaw and angular-shaped head, even though the man he’d recently seen was much older. He and his father had their arms around each other’s shoulders, friends. Alex shook his head. Always there in the background — who are you? He stared hard at the face. Next time we meet, you’ll tell me, he thought.

  He heard Adira moving from room to room. Judging by the short time she spent in each of them, she was satisfying her security concerns rather than exploring. He replaced the pictures and went quickly around the room, pulling open drawers and cabinet doors. A small cardboard box tingled beneath his fingers, demanding his attention. He carefully opened the lid: it held papers — Kathleen and Jim’s marriage certificate, his own birth certificate, some school reports, and a death notice from the American government. Alex read it slowly; the language was bureaucratic and cautious, giving little information other than the fact that Lieutenant Jim Hunter had served his country honourably and had been killed in action. No remains were returned for burial.

  His mother’s voice came to him then, her tone sad: His job was to protect us, all of us. There was… an accident, Alex. He was a hero. Be proud of him… remember him.

  As he touched the last piece of paper in the box, his head began to swim and the air in the room seemed to distort and blur. It was if his own body was warning him, readying him for the shock. It was another death notification, almost a duplicate of the one he’d just read, except this one was written nearly thirty years later and showed his own name. Alex Hunter, killed in action; again, no body retrieved.

  Kathleen Hunter would have been devastated; first her husband killed in action, and then her only son. Except he wasn’t dead. Why had the US military lied to her; caused her so much pain?

  He let the box fall and looked around the familiar room. ‘What happened to me? Why did they make me a ghost? Now I don’t exist.’ He looked across at the photos. ‘We’re all gone, all dead now.’

  Adira appeared beside him and tried to take his arm. ‘Alex, are you okay?’

  He pushed past her and went out into the yard. He wanted to yell, to explode.

  There was a pile of logs, freshly cut, and more tape wound around the outside of a small outbuilding. The ground was trampled there, and he was drawn to it. As he approached, a smell rose up around him, lifted by the morning’s warmth — rank, acrid and bestial. It was the same stench he’d smelled on the dog’s fur in the animal hospital.

  His head pounded, and he reached down to grab some of the dirt and rub it between his fingers. It had been here. The ground had been raked clean, probably by the police forensics clean-up crew, but he could still sense the creature’s presence.

  He moved quickly to the edge of the tree line, and entered a few paces. He turned back to look at the small cottage. The beast had stood here, watching the house — watching her. He looked up at the trunk of the nearest large tree; about twelve feet up, a section of bark had been torn away. Alex visualised the creature hanging onto the tree in the dark, watching his mother inside the house, its blood lust building, its fingers closing on the outer layer of wood and ripping it free.

  The impressions started to become more solid. Alex moved to the centre of the trampled clearing. He saw Adira watching him from the back deck, but she kept her distance. To her, he was undoubtedly seeming more and more manic. He crouched down and closed his eyes. The impressions became images… and then he saw his mother, saw her lifting her arms to protect her head, terrified of the thing that loomed over her. It attacked, lifted her body only to throw it to the ground, smashing her like a bundle of twigs. It lifted her rag-like body again to sniff it, then carried her away under its arm. She might have still been alive, but it was unlikely…

  The images faded and Alex stood up, his teeth gritted, a boiling anger exploding up from his belly. He lifted his head and roared. He had been kept from her; they had told her he was dead and then hidden him away. He doubled over as if in extreme pain. If I’d been here, she might still be alive.

  * * *

  Thomas moved up the snow-covered slope like a machine. Matt had to work hard to catch up to him. The old man was probably fifty years older but seemed in better condition than all three of them.

  ‘It’s getting colder,’ he said when he was finally plodding alongside him.

  ‘Yes, the cloud is falling lower — maybe more snow coming.’

  Matt breathed hard, trying to keep pace with the old man. ‘Thomas, I’ve been thinking back to the legend of the First People and the Great Ones. I’ve studied hundreds of ancient races and their cultural mythology, but I’ve never heard of that battle, or the warrior you called Tooantuh. Surprises me, considering it’s literally in my backyard.’

  Thomas grunted. ‘You probably have, but didn’t recognise it. I have heard the tale many times, and not only in the form of the legend told around the Black Mountain. Like a lot of Native American history, it travels with the people and the tribes, and sometimes ends up far away from its first telling.’ He turned his narrowed gaze on Matt. ‘Ever hear of the Seven Devils Gorge?’

  Matt nodded. ‘Sure, the deepest gorge in North America. Also called Hell’s Canyon.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, you know the seven peaks on the Idaho side?’ Thomas didn’t wait for Matt’s reply. ‘Then you’ll know they’re called the Seven Devil Mountains. The tribes have a legend, handed down from the First People, about how they were formed. It tells of a time when the world was very young and the animals and men talked together. It also tells of seven brothers, evil giants, who lived in the forests. They were as tall as mountains, and the First People feared them because they stole and at
e their children, then wore their heads around their necks like decorations. Each year the monsters came out of the forest and devoured all the children they could find. Mothers ran away with their babies, tried to hide them, but the giants still found many of them. The wise men in the villages feared that their tribe would soon be wiped out, and yet no one in all the land was brave enough to fight even one of the monsters.’

  Thomas looked at Matt, perhaps checking he wasn’t about to make fun of him. He didn’t need to; Matt was spellbound by the tale.

  ‘The final straw was when the giants took the king’s favoured child. The wise men of the tribe decided to ask the eagle to help them. They said to the king, “Eagle is our father; he will know how to kill these monsters.” And he did. Eagle told the king to ask his best men to help him dig seven deep holes in the ground. When the giants next came out of the forest, they held their heads high, not bothering to look down for they feared nothing below them. Each fell into a hole, and no matter how he struggled, he could not break free and just became more tightly wedged.

  ‘Eagle flew overhead and the giants roared out to him to free them, but he said to the monsters, “You have attacked the people, and eaten them. You must be punished for all time so that everyone who sees you will know what you have done. I will change you into mountains, as dark as your evil sins, and I will make a barrier to seal you inside and keep you from the people forever.”

  ‘With that, Eagle struck each giant on the head with his tips of his wings, and each fell silent and grew dark and even larger and turned into a mighty peak. Eagle lowered his talons and scraped the earth for many miles, creating a deep impassable gorge — the Devil’s Gorge — so the monsters could never cross again to the world of man.’

  Matt nodded. ‘Of course, the stolen favoured child — the princess of Jocassee. And I’m guessing the eagle was Tooantuh, the barrier was the sacred wall, and the seven dark peaks are the Black Mountain and its surrounding peaks — it all fits.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Kearns, I believe this is another example of the story of Tooantuh and the defeat of the Great Ones.’ Thomas exhaled loudly and stopped. ‘We’re here.’

  Matt looked at where he was gesturing, into a green funnel-like gorge.

  ‘It’s a short cut,’ the old man said, ‘and our secret. You won’t find it on any guide maps.’

  Sarah and Charles caught up, and all four of them stood looking into the gorge. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of years ago, land had slipped to create a small ravine in the side of the mountain. Trees had grown up its sides and around its top, spreading their canopies over it. The result was a dark cave that ran for nearly one hundred feet, broader at the start, so Thomas told them, before funnelling tighter and eventually opening out onto an alternative route to the Black Dome.

  ‘Okay. Sorta cool… I guess,’ Matt said, gazing down into the dark crevasse but making no move towards it.

  ‘This is where Tooantuh and the other warriors held their final battle with the Chiye-tanka before forcing it back into its lair,’ Thomas said. He looked around briefly, then back at the three professors. ‘Hundreds of the First People’s warriors were massacred here.’

  Sarah looked up at the sides of the slip valley and nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Makes sense. Perfect killing zone — for one or both parties.’ She looked behind her, back down the steep slope. ‘Is this the only way up?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Thomas said. ‘But the only way if you want to save about three hours’ climbing.’

  ‘Okay, we’ve come this far,’ Matt said drawing in a deep breath. He took a step forward, but Thomas grabbed his arm, making him jump.

  ‘Wait… I need to make it safe for us to pass through.’

  The old man took a piece of cloth from his pocket, closed his eyes and started to chant. He hopped from foot to foot, waving the material in a circular motion above his head. He finished, opened one eye to peer at his companions, then burst out laughing and blew his nose wetly on the handkerchief.

  ‘You guys really do beat all. C’mon, I’m not spending the night up here.’

  None of them moved. Thomas stuck his fists under his arms, flapped his elbows up and down and made clucking sounds.

  Matt looked at Charles. ‘He’s really something, isn’t he?’

  Charles shook his head, and led the way into the dark gully.

  * * *

  Alex dived to the ground and tunnelled into the snow the instant he heard the helicopter’s approach. With just his head exposed, he watched the gigantic green machine float above him. Information flooded his mind: US-model CH-53 transport helicopter, seventy-nine feet in length, pinion-based 50-cal machine guns, both missing, and launch tubes for AIM-9 sidewinder missiles, also empty. He immediately knew the machine’s strengths and weaknesses should he need to take control of it, or act against it.

  It passed over low enough for him to see inside the cockpit. He was in there, the man from the photograph. Alex felt a rush of adrenaline, but couldn’t tell whether his senses were recognising a forgotten friend or giving him a warning. He tried to dredge up more information — fragments of conversations, images — but just as something coherent began to form, a fist of pain crushed it. Until he knew more, he would stay out of sight and trust his instincts. He watched as the machine headed towards the dark peak, now shrouded in low cloud.

  When it had disappeared, he turned to look behind him. A mile or so down the steep slope, Adira was struggling through the snow, her athletic body fatigued from trying to keep pace with him. They had a way to go yet, high into the dark forest, and he wondered if she would make it.

  A boiling fury welled up inside him every time he thought of that creature attacking his mother. He felt her agony, could see the terror on her face as the monster loomed over her, heard her screams as it brutalised her small frame. That voice inside his head was always there now, urging him to kill the beast, destroy it, crush its shattered bones to dust. He felt that his mind might destroy itself if he did not sate that urge to kill the creature.

  The snow started to melt around him as his body temperature heated well above normal. His head throbbed constantly. He pulled himself out of the snow tunnel, and picked up the smell of death in the cold air. His senses screamed a warning and he looked around slowly, his body tense, until he found the source of the odour. A riot of exploded meat and bone matter adorned a tree trunk off to his left, along with fragments of red and yellow material. He stared at the remains and the image of his quarry formed again in his mind.

  Grinding his teeth, he burst from the snow in a blur of pumping legs and clenched fists. He sprinted up the steep incline, kicking up snow behind him, dodging trees and boulders on his way to the Black Dome.

  * * *

  The helicopter slowed as the pilot searched for a drop spot, its rotor chopping and spreading the icy fog below them. Above, the mist grew thicker. With twilight rapidly approaching, it would soon be an impenetrable black curtain.

  Hammerson used the thermal scanner in the cockpit to trace for heat signatures on the mountain. ‘Got some strong readings about ten miles up,’ he told Logan. ‘Multiple bodies — mass profiles indicate human. Also a larger mass, or at least a big thermal signature — shape undefined. Not sure what that is.’

  Logan raised his eyebrows. ‘I know what I hope it’s not.’ He pointed at the contour lines on the screen. ‘That’s about where we think the Jordan photographs were taken, somewhere on the way to the Black Dome.’

  Hammerson narrowed his eyes, studying the terrain and the surrounding geological formations, looking for trap or ambush zones, defensive positions, or steep drop-offs. He noted that where the heat signatures were located, there was a near vertical rock face on one side and a bloody great drop on the other. Good for defence, as long as you’ve got a back door, he thought.

  The pilot spoke. ‘Requesting orders, sir.’

  ‘Find us a space to thread our way down,’ Hammerson said.

  He took one last look at the
thermal scanner, then out through the window at the cloud cover and the terrain. ‘Steep. Much as I don’t like it, we’re going to have to split up. We need to be up there ASAP, and your boys will never keep pace with us.’

  ‘Yup, figured that. We should stay in contact though.’ Logan pulled his phone free and held it up. ‘Not much good up here.’

  Hammerson nodded and reached into a pouch pocket. He pulled out a small box holding several flesh-coloured buttons. He pulled one free, fiddled with it for a moment, then handed it to Logan and pointed to his ear, before holding one of his earpieces away from his head to show he already had a button inserted.

  Chief Logan looked at it briefly, then took off his headphones and stuck it into his right ear.

  ‘Online; check 1–2–3,’ Hammerson said.

  Logan nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

  The pilot motioned with his head. ‘Ten o’clock, some open ground — not enough to land. Going to have to drop from approximately twenty feet.’

  Hammerson nodded, and pressed his ear button. ‘Franks, gonna be a rappel in five. Prepare and instruct the officers.’

  * * *

  Franks looked out the small window and moved her eyes quickly over the piling snow, taking in how steep the slope was. She reached into a pouch at her side to remove a black cylinder, which she screwed onto the end of her handgun.

  ‘Silencers — are you shitting me?’ Markenson scoffed. ‘Who’s gonna hear? The fucking bears?’

  Franks spoke without looking up from her task. ‘Just a precaution when operating in a steep snow theatre.’

  Markenson made another sound of derision in his throat.

  Franks looked at him. ‘Ever seen an avalanche, Officer Markenson? Ever seen a 100-foot-high wall of snow and ice moving at about 200 miles per hour? Did you know that if it doesn’t immediately crush you or freeze you solid, you can be entombed in the ice until your tongue dry-freezes in your mouth.’