Black Stump Ridge

by John Manning; Forrest Hedrick

  It happened so fast. Even now that moment was a blur. Suddenly, he found himself staring down at Janine, his chest heaving, and his knees on either side of her chest. In his hand he felt a heavy weight. He glanced at it, horror struck, trying to figure out just what had happened. The base of the blender was shattered. Shards of blood-covered plastic lay everywhere. He looked again at Janine. Her face was a bloody, unrecognizable mass.

  Blood.

  There was so much blood – on the floor, on the cabinets, on his clothes. He tried to remember what happened, but all that came to mind was a red haze. No picture. No sound. Just red.

  “Janine?” His voice was weak, a faint whisper, a desperate prayer. “Janine? Oh my god! Janine!”

  •

  “Help me watch for a blown down barn.” Fred gripped the steering wheel so tightly his hands hurt as he leaned forward and stared through the windshield.

  They had left the gravel road and were driving on a narrow, somewhat asphalt road. The center of the road was black topped, but the edges were broken and jagged creating a one-and-a-half lane strip. There was no centerline that Fred could see so he held to the middle of the road by hunch, praying that everyone who lived around here was already down for the night. At every tight, right-hand turn he visualized running head on into some farmer’s battered pick up truck.

  Suddenly, the trees on the right pulled back from the edge of the road. The land flattened into a gently rising grassy dell. Fence poles leaned forward and back as they followed the road at a distance of about three feet. Sections of barbed wire glittered from the passing headlights.

  “Is that it?” Dave pointed at a pile of broken wood. One corner of the structure still stood. The remnants of a roof sloped downward like a ski slope into the ruins.

  “Probably. There should be a gravel road just a little bit farther down.”

  “There it is.”

  Fred slowed and then turned to the right. The gravel track was barely wider than the Jeep. With no moon in the sky he could barely make out the road. He felt like he was driving in a tunnel.

  Johnny spoke up from the back seat. “How far do we have to go on this one?”

  “’Til the end. Don’t tell me you have to pee again.”

  “No, I was just wonderin’, that’s all. My ass is going numb from all this sittin’. It’ll be good to be able to just walk around some, y’know?”

  “Well, we’re almost there.”

  “I see we have neighbors,” Dave said. “There’s lights back in the trees.”

  “I think there might be three houses, but they’re down here closer to the road. I didn’t see any up by my uncle’s place on Purdie’s map. Does it matter?”

  “Depends. If they’re all down here and we’re hunting farther up the mountain, probably not. Otherwise, well, I don’t want to have to worry about somebody’s cow.”

  Dave snickered. “All you have to remember is deer are smaller than cows and propane tanks are silver or white.”

  Fred frowned. Dave and Johnny’s cutting up seemed normal, but neither Peete nor Charlie joined in. He understood Peete’s mood. Charlie’s silence, however, was totally uncharacteristic. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Charlie stared out the side window as if completely absorbed with the passing scenery – or deep in thought on things far from where he sat. He made a mental note to get with Charlie away from the others. He returned his attention to his driving as they approached the end of the road. He turned the Jeep into the driveway.

  The gate stood open. Ahead, a single light - blue-white in the near total darkness – illuminated the front of the house and the garage doors. A single window glowed with yellow warmth from the second floor. His mother had already come, made the place ready, and left. He smiled.

  “Well, we’re here.” Fred stopped the Jeep in front of the house and shut off the motor. Silence, broken only by the ticking of the cooling engine, filled the truck as the others stared at the house.

  “Jeez,” Dave finally whispered. “This ain’t a cabin. It’s bigger than my split-level back home.”

  “You got that right,” Johnny said from in back. “Hell, the pictures you showed us don’t do it justice. Not at all.”

  “Wait ’til you see the inside.” Fred turned off the headlights and opened the door. “Let’s go inside and I’ll show you around. We can unpack afterwards.”

  •

  Dave stood on the porch looking up at the clear night sky. He loved these trips to the mountains — Ozarks or Smokies didn’t matter — because the night air was so clear it seemed he could just reach up and pluck the stars from the sky. An amateur stargazer, he often tried to find the constellations but usually succeeded in finding only the most common – the dippers, Orion, Cassiopeia, the scorpion.

  From inside the house came thumps and clatters and laughter – the sounds of the others putting away their gear and getting ready to enjoy the weekend. His things were in his room; he’d put them away tomorrow. Tonight, he just wanted to relax and enjoy the celestial show.

  A faint but steadily growing silvery-blue glow caught his eye. He looked to the left at a low circular wall of stone. It looked like an old well. The rim seemed to have some sort of phosphorescence just inside the outer edge and tracing all the way around. Curious, he went down the steps. As he drew closer the glow seemed to brighten. He stopped beside the wall and squatted down for a closer look.

  Strange silver shapes formed the ring on top of the stone. They were bright enough in this moonless night to illuminate the steel cover and its pad-locked center door. He reached down and touched one of the designs. It felt cool and slightly greasy. It shimmered as his skin made contact. He withdrew his hand. For a moment he felt as if he was suffering from a hangover. His stomach felt queasy. His head ached – a dull throb in his temples and at the back of his neck. The feeling left as quickly as he broke contact with the strange symbol.

  Intrigued, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He opened it and scraped at one of the shapes. His efforts separated one of the designs into two parts. The glow immediately faded from all of them. From beneath the steel plate he heard a scraping, shuffling noise that sounded like something large and flat slapping at water. Just as suddenly all was quiet. He looked at the metal fragments hanging from the edge of the blade, but there was nothing unusual about them.

  Shrugging, he folded the knife, put it into his pocket, and headed back to the house. He’d ask Fred about the strange markings in the morning.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Perdis watched from behind the screen door as the Jeep backed away from the store. The brake lights flared bright red as the truck stopped and then faded as it turned onto the gravel road leading into the hills. He had a bad feeling. Those boys were headed for trouble. Bleeding trouble. Killing trouble. He should have kept the keys, promise be damned. He should have turned them out; sent them packing back to the city. He shook his head as he turned the sign in the window from OPEN to CLOSED. What was done was done. It could not be undone.

  Suddenly, the hairs on his neck bristled as he heard the skritch of a match head being dragged across a coarse surface. He turned around. In the far back corner of the store a tall dark figure lit a cigarette. The brief flare revealed a ghastly face. The match’s flickering light was reflected from the figure’s one good eye. Deep lines and creases radiated from the crater of his right eye socket. A shock of white hair hung lank over a deeply furrowed forehead.

  The light went out as the shadow waved the match in the air. The cigarette tip glowed briefly, intensely, as the shadow drew in a deep breath.

  “Good job, Purdie.” The shadow’s deep rumbling voice sounded like rocks rubbing together. Acrid smoke surrounded the man’s head. “Think they’ll stick to Lawyer’s place?”

  The familiar voice did little to settle Perdis’ composure. “Mebbe. Cain’t say fer sure. I reckon it’ll depend on th’ huntin’. If’n it’s good enough, they’ll prob’ly stick close by. If not �
��” He let the rest hang in the air.

  The shadow took another deep drag. The flare of light threw his face into sharp relief, accenting the scars and furrows like a gruesome Halloween mask. “I hope you’re right. They’re city folk and that means they might get bored pretty easy. If they get bored they might go explorin’. Folk like that always stick their noses where they don’t belong.”

  “One of’em’s kin.”

  “Not to me. Not to mine.”

  “I promised his mama I’d keep an eye on him.”

  “Maybe you better make sure he don’t go wandering where he don’t belong, then. I ain’t beholdin’ to any promises you make.”

  “If you an’ yer boys keep back an’ leave’em alone, then it won’t matter if they stay put or go wanderin’. Won’t be nothin’ fer’em t’see.”

  The shadow stepped away from the curtain that divided the back storeroom from the rest of the shop and into the light. Jake Harper was an imposing figure of a man despite his facial disfigurement. Well over six feet tall, his two hundred and ten pounds included very little fat. His blue chambray shirt and khaki trousers always sported sharp creases.

  “Well, we’ll just have to see how it all plays out, won’t we.” Jake’s smile, unnaturally white, chilled Perdis. He squeezed Perdis’ shoulder as he walked by on his way to the door. “Yessir, we’ll just have to see.”

  Perdis heard the screen door slap shut. The porch boards creaked marking Jake’s exit into the gathering darkness. He shivered, but did not turn around.

  When he was sure that Jake was gone, he stepped outside. It was full dark in the cul-de-sac although the sunset glow still backlit the mountain. Overhead the stars shone in cold brilliance. The moon would be rising soon, not that there’d be that much to see. Tomorrow night would be the first night of the new moon. Tonight it would show only the faintest sliver. This was when most of the folks around here locked their doors early and kept them locked until daybreak. Livestock had to fend for themselves if they weren’t inside when the sun went down. A knock on the door by a neighbor in distress was more apt to be answered with the charity of two barrels of double-ought buck than with aid or compassion.

  The cold air brought a sense of urgency to Perdis’ bladder. It happened increasingly often as he got older. Moving as quickly as his seventy-eight-year-old legs would permit Perdis headed for the outhouse. Although his house had indoor plumbing — his father had put in a septic system and hooked up an electric pump on the well more than twenty years ago — he didn’t think he could make it up the steps and through the door in time. Best to be sure; best to take the shorter route.

  Perdis emerged from the outhouse a few moments later feeling much better. He looked skyward and frowned. He’d best lock up the store and call it a night. Normally, he’d just close the door and let the sign stand guard – not that anyone in these parts would let a CLOSED sign keep them from knocking on his door if they needed something. Theft was not a worry; kin didn’t steal from kin and nearly everyone in these parts was related in some way despite what Jake said earlier. Travelers on the black top that ran past his store were rare. Hardly anyone dared the narrow road through the hills after dark unless driven by desperate need.

  Dark of the moon, however, was not a normal time. Although he was miles from Black Stump Ridge he locked up tight when the moon was black.

  Of course, the dark of the moon didn’t bother Jake and his boys. That was their time. Perdis often wondered if they worried about the stories that kept decent folks off of the mountain and out of the woods during that time. He suspected they might, although he doubted that either of Jake’s boys would admit it to their old man.

  Perdis looked at the night sky one more time. He shook his head and headed for the store to lock up. As he walked up the sagging steps and into the store he debated taking the cash out of the drawer. It had been a slow day despite being the day before Thanksgiving. Not many folks were out looking for last minute items. Fred and his friends were his biggest sale of the week. Still, there was no sense in tempting anyone. He scooped out the bills, folded them, and slipped them into his pocket. As the register drawer closed, the overhead lights went out.

  He froze.

  The darkness was nearly total. Only a ghostly radiance from the coolers lit a small area at the back. It wasn’t a power failure, then, or the darkness would be complete.

  He heard a scratching noise, like claws on wood, coming from the area near the curtain that separated the shop from the storeroom. Something had come into the store while he was in the outhouse. Heart pounding, he tried to penetrate the darkness with his eyes as he reached for the twelve gauge double-barreled shotgun he kept beneath the counter. Given the opportunity, most creatures around here would avoid a man. He was between whatever it was and the door, however, and if the creature felt trapped or cornered it might attack. He relaxed somewhat as his hand closed around the stock.

  “Wasamatta, Coozin?” The voice was high-pitched and child-like.

  A small hunched figure leaped onto the counter. A jar of hard candies fell, exploding as it hit the floor. Although the light was dim Perdis could still make out the distorted, goblin-like features in the creature’s full-moon face. Feral green eyes glittered beneath a mop of unruly black hair. A smile of sharp, stained, and broken teeth stretched from cheek to chubby cheek. It wore a wrinkled shirt so stained and dirt encrusted that Perdis couldn’t tell with certainty what the original color had been. Bare feet stuck out of the bottom of a pair of ragged, muddy blue jeans. The creature’s stink – the acrid stench of a long-unwashed body – assaulted Perdis’ nose like a physical blow. Hands slightly larger than a child’s reached toward Perdis from the squatting form. Perdis shivered. Only one child he ever saw had hands like those. Instead of rounded fingertips, these ended in elongated digits that sported sharp, talon-like claws.

  “Levi! Getcher ass outta my store! Does your mamma know yer out here after dark?”

  “Nope,” the boy giggled. It was an unnerving, hyena-like sound. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Mamma don’t know where I’m at. ’Sides, she knows th’ dark don’t bother me none.”

  “You know you ain’t s’posed t’ be down this far. Now, git outta my store. Git on home t’ your mamma’s.”

  “Whatcha gonna do iffen I don’t? Kin cain’t hurt kin, Coozin.” Levi giggled again.

  “Your momma shoulda drowned ya right after ya squirted out.” Perdis felt his disgust rising like bile in the back of his throat. “An’ quit callin’ me cousin. Only thing you’re cousin to’s one o’ them apes like ya see in th’ zoo. Yer just one tick this side of an animal. Git back t’ th’ woods where you belong. Don’t be comin’ down here an’ upsettin’ decent folk.”

  The creature’s green eyes narrowed; his nostrils flared. Then, just as quickly, the vacuous smile returned. “So I’m a ape. A animal. You decent folks is jus’ jealous ’cause I’m stronger an’ faster’n y’all.”

  “You ain’t faster or stronger than this,” Perdis lifted the shotgun but did not put it to his shoulder. “I ain’t gonna tell you again. Gitcher ass outta my store an’ back up th’ mountain where ya belong.”

  The creature looked at the shotgun, then back at Perdis. His lip curled contemptuously. “One o’ these days, old man, I’ll show you who’s a ape. Y’all know who m’daddy is. One o’ these days he’ll come down an’ show all o’ y’all what fer.”

  The creature dug into a pocket. He extended a grimy fist. The hand opened. A nickel and three pennies clattered to the counter. “Only reason I’s down here t’night is t’get somethin’ fer Ma. T’morra’s her birthday. She likes sweety things. ’Spesh’ly them choklitty things. So, how much o’ that there candy can I get with this?”

  Perdis put the shotgun away and relaxed. A twinge of guilt tugged at him for the way he treated the wretched creature. It wasn’t the boy’s fault he was the way he was. Beneath the filth and deformity he was, in the end, mostly human. Perdis pulled a gallon jar f
rom a shelf behind him, opened the lid, and extended it towards the boy. “Tell ya what. Since it’s fer yer ma, take out three pieces ya think she might like. Keep yer money.”

  The boy looked at Perdis, and then extended one clawed hand. He deftly extracted three foil wrapped chocolate kisses, but made no move to pick up the coins. “Ain’t no beggar an’ I ain’t no thief. I pays fer m’stuff or I does without. Y’all thinks cuz I’s ugly I ain’t a man. Someday I’ll show y’all I’s as much a man as any o’ y’all. Mebbe more.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jake watched the Jeep’s taillights disappear and reappear as it followed the curves near the top of the ridge. Why were they here? Purdie said it was for some Turkey Day hunting. One was kin to Purdie and Lawyer. That might be so and then maybe it wasn’t. The others weren’t kin. Could they be something more? Could they be Treasury men? Agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? Jake and his boys would have to be careful until they knew for sure what was going on.

  The timing of their visit was suspicious to say the least. Jake had a large batch of shine up at the still in the cave. It was almost ready to send to Atlanta. He and the boys just needed to bottle the last run and bring it down from the mountain. Suddenly, five men show up for a Thanksgiving hunting trip at just this time and in just that place. Maybe it was true, but Jake wasn’t about to have his freedom depend on maybe.

  In the old days he’d know what to do. Catch them nosing around where they weren’t wanted and they’d simply disappear. The hills held more unmarked graves than people knew about. You couldn’t do that any more. If anything happened to any of them nowadays there would be an army of federal agents combing the hills. Killing a cop was bad enough. Killing a nigger cop guaranteed a whole new level of manhunt and prosecution. Definitely bad for business.