by Neil Gaiman
“That’s so.”
“What I thought. You a hillbilly, I seen it straight away. Me too. North Carolina, Blue Ridges. We know all about squirrel stew, an’ opossum pie, ain’t that right? You got opossum in Utah, don’t you, boy?”
Behind Miller’s left eye the world cracked and vomited blood—red sky limning a benighted prairie of scrub and slick pebbles like the scales on the spine of the Ouroboros. In the seam of the horizon a jackrabbit flew from rock to rock.
“That Po-lack said you shot a bunch of Huns in the war. That right, boy? You pick off some Huns?” McGrath grinned and spat again, sent a withering stream of acid against the plank skirting of the shack. “Nah, don’t worry about that. My grandpappy was in Antietam and he didn’t talk about it none either. They’s a photographer comin’ in on the John Henry. Be here this weekend. Cookie wants a couple nice bucks for supper. I’m thinkin’ you, Horn, Ruark, Bane, and Stevens can take the day off, go git us some meat. Oh, and Calhoun. He smashed his thumb the other day. Cain’t hold an axe, but maybe he kin skin with his good hand, huh? Useless as teats onna boar ’round here.”
“A photographer.” That meant a distraction of the highest order, surpassed only by visits from upper management. This outside scrutiny also meant the bosses would be bigger pricks than usual.
“Some greenhorn named Chet Goul-ee-ay. Goddamned Frenchies. The Supe says we gotta squire him around, wipe his ass an’ sich. Put on the dog an’ pony show.”
“I’m in the cedar stand with Ma today.” Miller raised his head to follow a jay as it skimmed the roof and landed on a moss-bearded shake. A camp robber. The bird fluffed its gray feathers and watched him and the straw boss.
“I ain’t sendin’ Ma with you. He cain’t shoot worth shit. That I know.”
“Somebody’s got to pack the meat downhill.”
“Okay. Take him too. Seven, that’s a good number, anyhow. Maybe you boys’ill get lucky.”
∇
Miller went to the bunkhouse and fetched his frame pack and rifle and slipped a knife into his belt. He stuck some shells into his jacket pockets and helped himself to biscuits and beans from the cook shack. There were four cooks. Two stout, no-nonsense types, and two doughty women renowned for their severity and parsimony with seasonings. The dour quartet bossed around a squad of bottle washers and scullery maids. The chief cook, Angus Clemson grudgingly handed over the vittles, grumping that he hadn’t been given prior notice of this raid upon his stores. Leftovers were the best he could do—and Miller had best be damned grateful for the courtesy.
The impromptu expedition took some time to organize and it was nearly midday before the other men had gathered the necessary supplies and were ready to venture forth.
Calhoun, Horn, and Ma met him in the yard. Calhoun was a tall lad; hard-bitten and deadly serious. His left thumb was wrapped in a bandage. Despite his youth and hard bark, he’d proved meticulously groomed and well-spoken. Ma was shorter, and wide as a mattock handle across the shoulders. His hair hung long and oily over a prodigious brow and his eyes shone dull yellow. He spoke seldom and when he did, his Welsh slur rendered him largely unintelligible. His raw strength was the stuff of legend. He could walk off with three hundred pounds of cable looped over his shoulders as if it were nothing. He’d once grabbed a planed log that took three men to move and hoisted it overhead with a grunt and a groan before heaving it onto a pile; on another legendary occasion he singlehandedly dragged a cast iron camp stove of at least a quarter ton out of the mud before other men could finish harnessing the mules. Ma wasn’t challenged to many arm wrestling or Indian wrestling matches.
Thaddeus Horn, a rawboned youngster raised in the finest Kentucky backwater tradition, wore a coonskin cap slick with grease and dirt, declared it had been in his family for three generations. Flattened and hideously bleached and hopping with bugs as the cap appeared to be, Miller scarcely doubted the assertion. The youth packed a massive Springfield rifle that could’ve been a relic from the days of the Texas Revolution, or a buffalo gun Sam Houston might’ve fired over the ramparts of the Alamo—although Cullen Ruark swore by his Big Fifty and Moses Bane scoffed good-naturedly and bragged his antique Rigby could knock down a small tree if he cut loose both barrels at once.
Miller asked Horn if he’d seen Stevens or the others. The kid waved toward the hills, said he figured the trio decided to hightail it before the straw boss changed his mind and sent them all back to hacking at trees.
They hiked up out of camp, slogging through the wastes and ruins of a vast swath of clear-cut land. The near slopes were littered with shorn stumps and orange sheaves of bark. The sundered loam oozed sap and water like a great open wound. Bombs might’ve caused such devastation, or perhaps Proteus himself rose from the depths to rip loose the skin of the ancient mountain, peeled it away to bare the granite bones.
Bane, Ruark, and Stevens awaited them at the boundary where deep forest began. Three pack-mules were tethered nearby, munching on weeds. Ruark was a wiry galoot. His snow-white beard touched the middle button of his leather vest. Nobody knew much about Ruark—he didn’t say two words on any given day, but he swung an axe like a fiend from Hell. Moses Bane was another old-timer, hair just as snowy, yet even shaggier. He was also much fleshier than Ruark and scarred around the eyes and nose and almost as bullishly powerful as Ma. A lot of the younger hands called him Grampa Moses. He was a bit more talkative than his pal Ruark, especially after he’d gotten a snootful. It was said the duo served in the Spanish-American War as scouts. Neither spoke of it, however.
Both men were loaded like Sherpas—, bedrolls, ropes, and hooch jugs; rifles, single shot pistols, axes, skinning knives, and God knew what all. Miller felt weary from simply looking at the old boys.
Stevens lounged on the butt of a deadfall and smoked an Old Mill from a bashed pack he stuffed in his front pocket. He rested a lever action Winchester across his knees. A few years older than Miller and almost handsome after a rough fashion. His hair was dark and shaggy and fell near the collar of his canvas vest. Some said Stevens was the best topper at Slango; he certainly clambered up trees with the speed and agility of a raccoon.
Miller privately disdained this popular assessment—if the man was that good McGrath wouldn’t have turned him loose to poach deer, visiting photographer or not. Bullhead & Co. ran entirely too close to the margin—Superintendent Barret had announced a few days beforehand that the home office expected to see the Slango region logged and its timber on rail flats by Valentine’s Day. This produced a few sniggers and wisecrack asides about Paul and Babe signing on to right the ship. Neither Barret nor McGrath laughed and it was plain to see Slango would be upping stakes or folding its tents by midwinter.
“Boys,” Stevens said.
“Whatch ya got there?” Horn eyed a glass jug in the weeds by Stevens’ boot.
“Hooch,” Stevens said.
“Well, guddamn, I seen that,” Horn said. “Ma got some, too. Regular heathen firewater. Right, Ma?”
Ma ignored them, his attention fixed on a mosquito growing fat with blood on his misshapen thumb knuckle. The stupid intensity of the Welshman’s fascination made Miller slightly sick to his stomach.
“Yeh,” Stevens said. “May not bag us a deer, but we gonna get shit-drunk tryin’.” He picked up the jug and put it in a burlap bag. He tied the bag to his pack and slipped the pack over his shoulders and began trudging into the woods.
“Okay!” Horn followed him, the Springfield slung loosely over his shoulder. Ma went close behind them and Miller hung slightly back to avoid being slashed across the face by sprung branches. The sun had burned through the overcast, but its rays fell weak and diffuse here in the cool, somber vault of the forest. The air lay thick and damp as if they’d shuffled into the belly of a crypt.
None of them was familiar with the environs beyond Slango. However, Stevens had borrowed a topographical map from the Superintendent’s car and they decided to follow the ridges above Fordham Creek. The surveyors who’
d originally explored the area had noted a sizable deer population in the hinterlands upstream. Eschewing a group council, Bane and Ruark silently moved ahead of the group to cut for sign.
The old growth trees were enormous. These were the elders, rivals to the Redwood Valley sequoias that predated Christ, the Romans, everything but the wandering tribes of China and Persia. Crescents of white fungus bit into slimy folds of bark and laddered toward the canopy. Leaves had begun to drop and the ground was slimy with their brown and yellow husks. Vast mushroom beds, fleshy and splendorous, lay in shallow grottos of root and rock. Horn tromped across one in childish glee. Hooting and cackling, he grabbed Ma by the arm and the pair jigged in the pall of green smoke. Horn had been drinking heavily, or so Miller hoped. He dreaded to think the boy was so simple and maniacal as a matter of inbreeding.
Birds and squirrels chattered from secret perches and Horn abruptly blasted his rifle at a roosting ptarmigan as the group negotiated a steep defile of a dry stream bed. Leaves and wood exploded and it was impossible to determine whether the bird flew away or was blown to bits. The unexpected boom caused Stevens and Miller to drop to their knees. Horn staggered from the recoil and lost his footing on the slippery rocks. He slid ass over teakettle down the slope and crashed into some brambles. The mules skittered free and bolted into the brush and it required a good half hour to recapture them.
Steven scowled at the boy. He gained his feet and hesitated as if contemplating violence. Then he laughed and unlimbered his jug and had a pull. Afterward, he handed the jug to Miller. Miller took a snort of the sweet, dark whiskey and lost his breath for a few seconds. Stars shot through his vision. “Careful, sonny boy. That’ll curl your toes—my Daddy makes it himself. Finest Californee awerdenty you’re likely to sample in this lifetime.”
Miller would’ve agreed if his voice hadn’t been burned to ash in his throat.
Bane and Ruark emerged from the undergrowth and reported they’d located a large hollow not far below the chaparral and possibly that supply of deer meat the boss so badly desired. Spoor was plentiful at least. There were several high vantages and effecting a killing field shouldn’t prove difficult. If all went well, the party would bag their prizes and return safely to Slango by tomorrow night.
The expedition made camp within a tiny clearing in the lee of a slab of rock jutting from the hillside. The outcropping loomed, thick with tufts of moss and lichen. They gathered wood and built a bonfire and sawed rounds from a log to seat themselves in the glare of the flames. The men stuck their hands near the fire. It was bitter cold. Each evening the snowline crept lower, dragging its veil of white dust.
Darkness blotted out the landscape. Embers streamed through notches in the canopy and swirled among the stars. Stoic, brooding Ma unpacked his fiddle and sawed a lively jig for the boys, who clogged in time while tending the mules and cooking supper. The Welshman’s expression remained remote and dull as ever. His hands moved like mechanisms that operated independently of his brutish mind, or as though plucked and maneuvered by the strings of a muse. Idiocy and genius were too often part and parcel of a man. Miller grinned and tapped his toe to the rhythm, however, the ever watchful segment of his brain that took no joy in anything wondered how far the light and music penetrated into the black forest, how far their shouts and hoots echoed along gullies and draws. And his smile faded.
Supper was roasted venison, Indian bread, and coffee, a couple of fingers of moonshine in the dregs for dessert. Conversation and fiddle-accompaniment ebbed and for a while everyone fell into reverie, heads cocked toward the whispering wind as it brushed the treetops. Night birds warbled and small creatures rustled in the leaves.
“They’s stories ’bout these parts,” Bane said with an abruptness that caught Miller off guard. Bane and Ruark had laid out an array of knives, tomahawks, and sundry accessories for oiling and sharpening. Ruark hefted an Arkansas Toothpick, turning it this way and that so it gleamed in the firelight. Bane painstakingly stroked a whetstone across the edge of his felling axe. A lump of chaw bulged his cheek. “Legends, guess ya might say.” It was no secret how much ‘Grandpa Moses’ loved to spin a yarn. His companions immediately paid heed, leaning closer toward where he sat, white hair and beard wild and snarled, little orange sparks shooting as he rasped his axe.
Horn became agitated. “Aww, dontcha go on, old man. No call for that kinda talk while we’re hunkered here in the woods at night. No sir, no sir.”
Stevens guffawed. “What’s a matter, kid? Your mama put the fright in you back in Kentucky?”
“Hush yer mouth ’bout my mama.”
“Easy, kid. Don’t get your bristles up.”
Miller didn’t speak, yet misgiving nagged him. He’d dwelt among the Christian devout as well as the adherents of mystical traditions. There were those who believed to speak of a thing was to summon it into the world, to lend it form and substance, to imbue it with power. He wasn’t sure how to feel about such theories. However, something within him, perhaps the resident animal, empathized with the kid’s fear. Mountain darkness was a physical weight pressing down and it seemed to listen.
Bane paused to gaze into the darkness that encroached upon the circle of the cheery blaze. Then he looked Stevens dead in the eye. “I knew this Injun name o’ Ravenfoot back to Seattle who come from over Storm King Mountain way. Klallam Injun. His people have hunted this neck o’ the woods afore round eyes ever hollowed canoes. He told me an’ I believe the red man knows his stuff.”
“Who’d believe an Injun about anything?” Stevens said. “Superstitious bastards.”
“Yeah. An’ what tickled yer fancy to speak up now?” Horn said, his tone still sour and fearful. Ma squatted near him, head lowered, digging into the dirt with a knife. Miller could tell the brute was all ears, though.
“That map of your’n,” Bane said to Stevens.
“What the hell are you chinnin’’ about? The map? Now that don’t make any kind of sense.” Stevens took the map from his pocket, unrolled it and squinted.
“Where’d you get that?” Miller said, noting the paper’s ragged border. “Tear it from a book?”
“I dunno. McGrath gave it to me. Prolly he got it from the Supe.”
Now Bane’s eyes widened. “My grand pappy was a right reverend and a perfessor. Had lots o’ books lyin’ ’round the house when I was a sprat.”
“You can read, Moses?” Calhoun spoke from where he reclined with the wide brim of his hat pulled low. The men chuckled, albeit nervously.
“Oh, surely,” Bane said. “I kin read, an’ also write real pretty when I take a notion.”
“Recites some nice poetry, too,” Ruark said without glancing up from whetting his knife. “I’m partial to the Shakespeare.” These were the first and only words he’d uttered all day.
“But Grand pappy was a dyed in the wool educated feller. He took the Gospel Word to them heathens in Eastern Europe an’ the jungles of Africa, an’ some them islands way, way down in the Pacific. Brought back tales turn yer hair white.”
“Aha, that’s what happened to your hair!” Stevens said. “Here I thought you was just old.”
Bane laughed, then spat. “Yeh, so I am, laddio. This is a haunted place. Explorers wandered ’round Mystery Mountain in the 1840s. Richies in the city, newspapermen mostly, financed ’em. Found mighty peculiar things, they say. Burial mounds ’an cliffside caves with bodies in ’em like the Chinee do. A few o’ them explorers fell on hard luck an’ got kilt, or lost. Some tried to pioneer and disappeared, but onea ’em, a Russian, came back an’ wrote hisself a book. An pieces o’ that book wound up in another one, a kind o’ field guide. Looks like a Farmer’s Almanac, ’cept black with a broken circle on the cover. I seen that page afore. Ain’t too many copies o’ that guide not what got burned. My mama was a child o’ God and hated it on account o’ its pagan blasphemy, documentin’ heathen rites an’ sich. Grand pappy showed me in secret. He weren’t a particularly devout feller after he finished sp
readin’ the Lord’s Word. Had a crisis o’ faith, he said.”
“Well, what did the Russkie find?” Calhoun said.
“Don’t recall, ’xactly.” Bane leaned the axe against his knee and sighed. “Ruins, mebbe. Mebbe he lied, ’cause ain’t nobody backed his claims. He was a snake oil salesman, I reckon. They run him outta the country.”
“I think,” Miller said, “that’s an amazing coincidence, your ending up on this hunt. Could be you’re pulling our legs.”
“Mebbe. But I ain’t. God’s truth.”
“ Arri, arri.” Ma scowled and stabbed at the ground. His voice was thick as cold mush.
“Sounds like Ma thinks that redskin mumbo-jumbo rubbed off on you,” Stevens said. “Why’n blue blazes did you volunteer to come along if this place is lousy with bad medicine?”
“Hell, son. McGrath done volunteered me.”
“Have at it, then.” Calhoun raised his hat with one finger. “What’s so spooky about Mystery Mountain?”
“Besides the burial mounds and the cave crypts, and them disappeared explorers,” Stevens said with a smirk.
“Oh, they’s a passel o’ ghosts an’ evil spirits, an’ sich,” Bane said, again glancing into the night. “Demons live in holes in the ground. Live in the rocks and sleep inside big trees in the deep forest where the sun don’t never shine. Ravenfoot says the spirits sneak up in the dark an’ drag poor sleepin’ sods to Hell.”
“Hear that, Thad?” Stevens nodded at Horn. “Best sleep with one eye open.”
“I hearda one,” Ruark said, and his companions became so quiet the loudest noise was the pop and sizzle of burning sap. He spat on his whetstone and continued sharpening the knife. “Y’all remember the child’s tale Rumpelstiltskin? The king ordered the miller’s daughter to spin straw to gold or die, an’ a little man, a dwarf, came to her an’ said he’d do the job if’n she promised him her firstborn child? Done deal an’ she didn’t get her head chopped off.”
“They got themselves hitched and made a bunch of papooses,” Stevens said. “Everybody heard that story.”