by Ronald Kelly
After Hendrix left the command station, Vincent Russ studied his boss, trying to gauge the man's reaction. "Do you really think the guy meant what he said?"
Dellhart smiled. "Of course he did. But I'm not planning on being such a conspicuous target for the good colonel." He reached into the high top of one of his hiking boots and withdrew a folded map. Russ recognized it as one of the infrared geological maps of the rural mountain. "You see, while Hendrix and his men are busy exploring the surface of Pale Dove Mountain, we'll be doing a little exploring of our own…from the inside."
On the drive back to Tucker's Mill, Dale tried to cheer Alice up, showing her the great pictures that had been taken at Brice's cabin the previous Friday. They had captured the entire transformation of Lance LaBlanc and his albino followers on film, as well as the flight of the doves and the Dark'Un in the form of a living pterodactyl. But no matter how much the boy tried, he couldn't break Alice free of her sullen mood. She merely smiled and nodded, unsuccessfully trying to hide the worry and fear that surfaced in her brown eyes every few moments.
"Don't worry about Rowdy," he kept telling her. "Heck, he's probably waiting for us at the store right now."
"Maybe," said Alice, but she didn't look as if she believed it.
Dale returned the photos to their envelopes and regarded the brunette uncomfortably. He wasn't exactly sure what was going on in Tucker's Mill. He knew that Gart and Rowdy had disappeared last night and there had been a bunch of local guys killed at the beer joint at the county line, Homer Lee Peck among them.
He could also tell that Alice McCray was worried over the mystery of Rowdy's absence, just like Miss Mable was about the sheriff. Dale didn't know much about love or any of that adult junk, but he did know that Alice liked Rowdy quite a bit, maybe in the same way Jenny Brice had grown to like his father lately. That was okay with him. He figured grown-ups were bound to get mixed up in that mushy stuff every once in a while. It just bugged him that the lady professor had lost her enthusiasm for their big discovery in the shadow of the musician's sudden disappearance.
They reached Tucker's Mill around ten-thirty and parked in front of the market. As they were getting out of the rental car, Dale noticed something. "I wonder where Dad's four-wheel drive is."
When they climbed the steps of the porch and tried the front door, they found it locked. Alice shielded her eyes and peered through the windowpane at the store's darkened interior. "Nobody seems to be here."
Dale fished his emergency key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. "Dad?" he called. "Jenny? Where is everybody?"
They were answered only by silence. Then Alice spotted a paper bag lying on the front counter with a few hurried words scribbled on one side. "Take a look at this."
Dale walked over and read the message on the sack.
WE'VE GONE TO PALEDOVEMOUNTAIN TO FIND GART AND ROWDY. STAY PUT AND WE'LL SEE YOU LATER.
It was signed MISS MABLE.
"So, what are we gonna do?" asked Dale.
"You're staying put just like the note says," Alice told him. "I'm going up there myself and see if I can help find Rowdy."
"You're crazy if you think I'm gonna hang around here," Dale said, defiance flaring in his youthful eyes. "Besides, you'll just get yourself lost up there. I know the mountain a lot better than you do. I can show you the best places to look."
Alice stood there in indecision for a long moment. She didn't want to take the child into a potentially dangerous situation, but she knew that what he said was certainly true. She had been on PaleDoveMountain only once and she would surely end up walking around in circles without a guide to show her the way. It was against her best judgment, but she knew she had to take Dale. If she didn't, she would probably end up as a handicap to the others, rather than an asset.
"Okay, come on. I don't have time to argue with you about it."
"Wait a second." Dale ran to the back of the store to where the fishing and sporting supplies were located. He returned carrying a couple of aluminum baseball bats. "Might need a little protection up there, you know."
"Good idea," said Alice. She took one of the bats and they left the store. Soon, they were on their way south, toward the wooded peak of PaleDoveMountain. They had forgotten to take their cameras with them this time, but they were more concerned with finding Rowdy and the others than taking snapshots of the inhuman changelings. In fact, they kind of hoped that they wouldn't run into any of the strange beings—especially the one with the particularly dark disposition.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After reaching the mountain, Glen parked the Ramcharger near Brice's cabin and they set out on foot, following the flock of white doves up the western face of the wooded peak. The ascent led past the pine grove and on into the heavy stand of timber where kudzu and honeysuckle thickly carpeted the earth. Jenny and Glen were afraid that Miss Mable might have trouble climbing the mountainside, but the elderly woman was bound and determined to get to Gart as soon as possible. She traveled the steepening slope at a steady and relentless pace that the other two found hard to keep up with.
As they left the forest, the land gave way to scrubby thicket and bare boulders. The doves flew in a northerly direction and they were quick to follow. Once they began to climb the rocky terrain, Jenny turned to the others. "I know where we're going," she told them, her voice heavy with apprehension rather than enthusiasm.
Soon, they were on the winding pathway that led to the very tip of PaleDoveMountain. Jenny slowly felt panic begin to surface. She tried to ignore the sensation, but it defied her, growing with each step she took up the narrow, flower-garnished trail. She felt as though she were reliving the recurring nightmare she had suffered since her youth. She hung back from Glen and Miss Mable, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. It was all precisely as it had been during the summer of her twelfth birthday—the delicate white petals of the blossoms, the heady fragrance of dogwood and rose, the flat rock where she sat reading Alice in Wonderland. She lingered beside the smooth stone, staring up at the last few yards of the pathway. There the beauty of the flowers gave way to the gray ugliness of thorny brush and barbed thistle. She could see the dark entrance in the craggy wall of the peak and Lance LaBlanc and the other albinos waiting there for them. Jenny watched as Glen and Miss Mable walked the rest of the way without a second thought. She, however, could not bring herself to go any farther. Every time she saw that black opening awaiting her, Jenny remembered what had emerged from it so many years before. She recalled the dark and dangerous incarnation of her father, grinning an iron-gray smile and snapping a black razor strop with lethal fury.
"Jenny?" called Glen from the top of the mountain. "Is there anything wrong?"
The blonde avoided his eyes. She sat down on the rock and shivered, despite the warmth of the sunny spring day. "I…I can't go in there."
Glen was about to go back down when LaBlanc raised a hand to stop him. "Let me talk to her," he said.
Jenny sat there, breathing hard, feeling a wave of dizziness threaten to overcome her. She closed her eyes and tried to fight off the frightful emotion that gripped her. She didn't open them until she heard the crunch of light footsteps on the rocky pathway.
"We must hurry," said Lance LaBlanc in a deep, authoritative voice that he had borrowed from a local newscaster. "There is no time to waste."
"I'm sorry, but I can't," she whispered. She looked into his gaunt face and saw the compassionate pink eyes…the same eyes that had once stared at her from the face of the White Rabbit.
LaBlanc smiled gently and took her hand. She didn't flinch at his touch. The soft warmth of his pale flesh seemed to seep into her tense muscles, soothing her, gradually eradicating her sense of alarm. "I understand your hesitation," he told her. "That day was a very frightening one…for both of us. We were strangers then and did not understand the nature of one another. But we do now. There is nothing more to fear. You are among friends."
"But what about the other one?" she
asked. "What about the Dark'Un?"
"I assure you, the Dark'Un will do you no harm. It does not kill because it is evil. On the contrary, it kills because of its love for us."
It was difficult for Jenny to think of the dreaded Dark'Un in such terms, considering the past few days of savage slaughter. But she took the albino's assurance at face value and, leaving the rock, accompanied him up the pathway.
"Are you all right, honey?" asked Miss Mable.
"Yeah, I'm okay," she replied with an embarrassed smile.
LaBlanc led the way, "Then, if you will follow me, I shall take you to where your friend is." He and the other albinos ducked through the peaked opening of the cave. Darkness swallowed them instantly.
Glen turned on the flashlight he had brought with him. Jenny and Miss Mable followed closely. Upon entering the passageway, they felt the floor begin to slope downward, almost imperceptively at first, then at a more pronounced angle farther on. Walls of raw black coal enclosed them on either side, and even with the illumination from Glen's light, it was difficult to see more than a few feet ahead at any given time. The tunnel spiraled downward like a corkscrew, never steep enough to throw the travelers off balance, but enough to give them an uncomfortable feeling of disorientation.
Oddly enough, the deeper they descended into the core of PaleDoveMountain, the less choked with darkness the passageway became. The soft glow of torches flickered from where the tunnel expanded into a chamber of tremendous size. LaBlanc and the others lingered at the mouth of the passageway as Glen, Jenny, and Miss Mable approached, keeping close to one another. "Welcome to our home," said the lean albino with a graceful bow.
The cavern was massive. It was the width of a football stadium and roughly the height of a twelve-story building. A network of small caves pocked the lofty walls of the cavern, serving as dwellings for the inhabitants of PaleDoveMountain. From the dark openings, they could see pale forms staring down at them with bright pink eyes that glittered in the light of the torches. Some possessed the simple forms of birds and mammals, while some had grown bolder because of their recent exposure to the outside world and had taken the forms of human beings. A few familiar faces peered down at them from the dark hovels. Some resembled the citizens of Tucker's Mill, while others looked like washed-out images from various television shows and commercials.
But it wasn't the vast number of albino creatures that amazed Jenny and the others the most. Rather, it was the nature of the cavern's inner walls that made their hearts pound in excitement. The scarcity of the torches divided the interior between light and shadow, but what light there was gleamed and glimmered on the craggy walls, causing them to blaze like yellow fire from floor to ceiling. After a few moments, they came to the realization that the entire expanse of the underground cavern was completely formed of solid gold.
They walked across the vast stone floor of the cavern, awed with the sight of the subterranean world. For centuries a secret society of peaceful creatures had lived there, hidden beneath the dense forests of PaleDoveMountain without anyone's knowledge, except for the Brice family. And it might have remained a well-kept mystery for many more centuries if Jackson Dellhart hadn't chosen it from a hundred other Tennessee mountains to exploit and destroy.
As they followed LaBlanc to the far end of the cavern, they passed a huge opening in one of the golden walls, a burrow much larger than the others. Two albinos guarded the entrance. One was the pale likeness of a famous wrestler, while the other was in the form of a brawny linebacker.
"What's in there?" Glen asked out of curiosity.
"That is the lair of the Dark'Un," replied LaBlanc almost sternly. "Entrance beyond that point is strictly forbidden."
Glen, Jenny, and Miss Mable exchanged uncomfortable glances. They certainly weren't about to argue the point. After all the wholesale destruction that the dark being had caused lately, they were in no big hurry to find out what horrors lay within its shadowy lair.
Moments later, they ducked through a short passageway and emerged into an inner chamber. In a corner lay Gartrell Mayo. His clothes were dirty from his mad scramble through the woods and dried blood from his gunshot wound stained the lower half of his chambray shirt. The nude albino woman with the cowboy hat and spurred boots knelt beside him, bathing his ashen face with cool water.
Miss Mable was across the chamber in a flash. "Step aside, sister," she said, crouching beside the injured sheriff. "Gart? Can you hear me, old man? It's me…Mable."
Gart cracked his eyelids a fraction. "You albinos sure have a lot of nerve, changing into a shriveled old busybody like Mable Compton. Don't you have any more imagination than that? Make a dying man happy. Bring on the naked ladies."
Miss Mable glared from behind her bifocals, drawing a low chuckle from the elderly lawman. "I swear, Gartrell Mayo, I should've left you up here to rot!"
"Well, I'm mighty glad you didn't," he said with a wry wink. "So, how about a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to bring this old man back to life again?"
The landlady frowned at Gart a moment longer, then bent down and planted a big kiss on his gray lips. After she was finished, Gart looked up at her in stunned surprise. "Lordy, woman, you pert near sucked out my dentures with that one!"
"How do you feel, Gart?" asked Glen as he and Jenny knelt beside the wounded man.
"Well, I won't be joining in any high-stepping square dances anytime soon, that's for sure. The albinos stopped my bleeding, but I still have a bullet buried in my gut and some of my feeble old bones are in more than one piece."
"Don't worry. We're going to get you to a hospital soon." Glen called LaBlanc over. "Do you think you could gather up some stuff to fix up a stretcher with? Maybe a couple of long poles and something to make a sling in between?"
"I will send some of my brethren into the forest to get you what you will need," promised LaBlanc. He drew some of the albinos aside and spoke to them briefly. They left the chamber to retrieve the materials that Glen had requested.
Gart regarded his visitors, looking from one concerned face to another. "Where's Rowdy?" he finally asked. "Is Rowdy with you?"
An awkward silence drifted between them. Finally, Jenny decided to let him in on what had happened since his late-night ambush. She told him of the bloody massacre at Rebel's Roost and the puzzling disappearance of his grandson.
After she finished, Gart laid his head back on the stone floor and stared at the ceiling of the cave. "If anything bad has happened to him, I'll never forgive myself," he muttered, looking downright scared.
"Don't worry," said Miss Mable, taking his hand. "That boy is just as ornery and leather tough as his grandpa is. He may have gotten the same idea as we did and came up here looking for you. Hopefully he'll turn up before long."
Gart Mayo didn't answer her. He clutched Miss Mable's hand tighter, fighting the mixture of pain and nagging fear that gathered in the pit of his belly, making for an unpleasant combination. He remembered the invitation he had sent Rowdy a few weeks ago, suggesting that he come to the mountains for a vacation. He couldn't help but wonder if his well-meaning offer hadn't turned sour in the wake of the violence that had hit PeremontCounty and if his grandson hadn't become an unwilling victim.
Chapter Thirty
Alice and Dale were hiking up the southern face of PaleDoveMountain when they heard a noise drift from a stand of oaks up ahead. They paused, straining their ears, trying to detect the familiar sound of crackling that signified the changelings' bizarre metamorphosis. But this noise was different, more rhythmic and coarse, almost nasal in nature. In fact, the closer they came to a particular oak among the others, the more the harsh racket resembled that of deep and unconscious snoring.
Puzzled, Alice and Dale looked at one another. The woman silently motioned the boy forward, signaling the intention of confronting the sleeper from both sides of the tree. Dale understood and nodded his agreement. They quietly encircled the oak and then jumped into the open at the same time, faces full o
f menace and baseball bats raised threateningly overhead.
"All right…don't move a muscle!" warned Alice. Then, abruptly, on seeing the identity of the snoozing man, her apprehension was replaced by heartfelt relief and she let the bat drop to her side. "Well, look who it is."
Rowdy Hawkens staggered sleepily to his feet. His red hair was sticking up in a dozen tousled cowlicks and his Western clothes were wrinkled, and filthy from his frantic nocturnal trek through the forests of PaleDoveMountain. He stood with his back to the tree, a flashlight in one hand and his .44 Magnum in the other. "Howdy," he managed with a yawn and a smile.
Alice hesitated for a moment, then launched herself at the lanky singer, planting a passionate kiss on the man's lips. Rowdy was both surprised and delighted. "Now that's the way to wake a man up in the morning!" He was about to take the brunette in his arms and return the show of affection when he noticed Dale standing there, frowning and rolling his eyes. Rowdy smiled softly at Alice, sharing her sudden embarrassment. "Later," he promised.
"We came up here looking for you and here you are sacked out under a tree," said Dale, leaning his bat over one shoulder. "So what's the story?"
Rowdy told them about overhearing Homer Peck and his gang in Rebel's Roost and going out to the jeep to get his gun, with the intention of making Peck take him to the location of Gart's ambush. He mentioned being knocked cold, obviously by the Dark'Un, but he didn't go into great detail about the bloody massacre he had discovered in the tavern afterward. He was trying to forget that horrifying scene himself. "I drove up here and hid my jeep in a blackberry thicket on down the mountain. I figured there might be some more Eco-Plenty goons lurking around up here. Anyway, I took to the woods and roamed around in the dark, looking for Grandpa most of the night. I sat down under this tree around dawn to take a little rest and I reckon I must've fallen asleep out of pure exhaustion." He checked his watch. "And it must've been a good rest, too, 'cause it's nearly noontime."