Black Mountain

ELEVEN

Chief Logan stood in the afternoon chill and watched Forensic Services finish up their examination of the Wilson place. He’d managed to persuade Helen and Clark Wilson to stay in a motel in town for the evening so they wouldn’t be following the officers around during their investigation. His men needed the freedom to probe everything, from under the beds to the surrounding woods. It would be stressful for the parents if nothing was found; even worse if something was.

An hour earlier, one of his officers had returned from the far tree line at the foot of the mountain carrying a small red sweater in a plastic bag. It matched the description of the clothing Emma was wearing when she disappeared. It was intact, and there was no blood or other signs that could be associated with an animal attack. At least that’s something, Logan had thought as he watched the head of Forensics, Ted Brandon, open the bag.

Brandon had sniffed the contents then recoiled slightly.

Logan had frowned. ‘What?’

Brandon shook his head, shrugged and resealed the bag. He’d thrown it to one of his team and wandered over to Logan.

‘What was it?’ Logan had asked again.

‘Funny smell is all.’ Brandon had looked distracted.

‘Got something, Chief!’

The shout from the woods startled Logan back to the present. He should have felt elated at the discovery of a clue, but for some reason he was dreading any news at all.

‘Whatta you got, Ollie?’ he yelled back.

Officer Markenson pointed at several spots amongst the grass and dirt in a clearing. ‘Tracks… plenty of ’em.’

Logan and Ted Brandon moved quickly to where the men had formed a ring around where Markenson was pointing with a flashlight. Brandon crouched down and rested his forearms on his knees. After a moment he nodded. ‘Yep.’

Logan went down beside him, squinting at the disturbed soil and twigs. Brandon reached out with one hand and spread his fingers over a group of scuffs and indentations.

‘Big pug marks — ten inches at least. Here’s your escaped lion, Chief.’

Logan drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

Markenson raised his flashlight and pointed back into the trees. ‘Came in from there,’ he moved the torch towards the mountains, ‘and goes out there. This is as close as it got, I think.’

Logan nodded. ‘Good man.’

He felt a glimmer of hope that the tracks didn’t come within a hundred feet of the house.

Brandon moved some twigs. ‘It was here a while. What was it doing… just watching?’

Markenson shook his head. ‘Lying in wait probably. They do that, you know.’

Logan shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’ The Kringle Brothers had told him the lion had never attacked anyone in its life.

Markenson crouched down with him and pointed the light at Logan’s face. ‘I was doing some reading before I came up, Chief. Adult lion eats up to twenty pounds of meat a day. That little Wilson girl was just over forty wringing wet. If it did take her, in a couple of days, there ain’t gonna be much left.’

‘That’s enough of that talk. We don’t know the lion took her.’

‘It’s true, Chief,’ Officer Parsons said from behind them. ‘And they don’t eat their prey right away. They usually take it somewhere quiet and secluded. They like to eat where they —’

Logan shot to his feet. ‘Shut the fuck up, both of you.’

Brandon rose slowly, wiping his hands on his thighs. ‘Bill, they’re right. Big cat, hungry, probably confused and scared. Used to people or not, all bets are off, I reckon.’

Logan looked up at the sky; it was getting dark. He walked a few paces away from the small group and stood with his hands on his hips, looking up into the thick forest cover of the Black Mountain. For the first time in his life, he thought the beautiful peaks seemed secretive, even a little threatening.

They probably were right about the lion. Decisions mattered, and even minutes probably counted now. He spun back to the group.

‘Markenson, Parsons — you two just pulled extra duty. We’re going up.’

We shoulda done this days ago, Logan thought miserably as he and his three men moved up the side of the mountain, breathing hard, leaving plumes of hot air behind them. Logan was only just managing to keep pace with Harry Erskine, who was being dragged up the steep incline by the twenty feet of leather lead attached to his tracking hound. The large animal was picking up speed in spite of the increasing slope.

Logan tried to remain upbeat. She’s going to be okay. She has to be… No one gets attacked by a lion in North Carolina, for chrissakes. Might as well put up signs at the Fontana Dam warning of sharks.

Nevertheless, he felt himself sagging, fatigue and concern weighing him down.

‘Get your running shoes on, Chief,’ Erskine called. ‘Buzz must be getting close.’

Erskine leaped over a log and nearly slipped on the frozen ground. The leash went taut and jerked him forward once again. Logan looked back and frowned; his two officers had fallen nearly fifty feet behind and looked ready to sit down first chance they got. He swore softly, before yelling back down the hill, ‘Markenson, Parsons, you get your asses up here, pronto. We got contact.’

Markenson looked up briefly, gave his senior officer a thumbs-up, and started taking larger, though not faster, steps. Pete Parsons nodded, but struggled to get his thick thighs moving at any increased speed. He resorted to using the barrel of his shotgun as a hiking stick, which elicited a torrent of foul language from Logan. Parsons lifted the gun and wiped the stock on his jacket sleeve, then put his head down and ploughed forward, breathing hard in the icy air.

Logan followed Erskine into a thicker stand of trees, and nearly crashed into the man’s back. Erskine had reeled the dog in and strapped its snout. It whined softly and danced at his feet, eager to continue the chase and confront whatever it had been tracking for the last few hours.

‘What…’ Logan began, but stopped as Erskine held the back of one hand up in front of his face.

‘It’s just through them bushes,’ he whispered without turning, ‘moving in and out of the rocks. Must be a cave or shelter or sumthin’ there.’

Logan followed Erskine’s gaze. After a second or two, he saw movement — something large, fur-covered, moving in and out of the shadows. The dog whined again and pulled on its lead.

‘What’s up?’ Markenson’s voice made Logan jump.

He turned to scowl at the man, put his finger first to his lips, then pointed through the foliage. Markenson nodded slowly, mouthing, Got it.

‘Whatta we doin’?’ Parsons gasped as he reached them, his round face the colour of boiled beef.

Logan stood, giving up trying to be quiet. ‘For fuck’s sake, Parsons. Why didn’t you bring your bugle? You coulda belted out the cavalry charge. Whatever it is, it’s through there. I’m going in, but I want you two ten feet further up near that big oak. Keep watching me, and whatever you do, don’t bunch up. And don’t fucking shoot each other… or me.’

He paused and reconsidered that last statement. ‘Just stay focused, okay? Keep your barrels to the ground unless you sight something.’

Both men nodded.

Erskine spoke softly out of the corner of his mouth. ‘It’s movin’ again.’ He reached down to pat the dog’s muzzle. ‘Shush up now, boy.’

The dog tried to lick his hand even though its mouth was clamped. Its eyes were rolling in both excitement and fear.

Logan pointed up the slope, then to his men. They hunched down and pushed through the branches of the dark fir trees, which were so tightly packed it was if their stems were woven together. Logan watched them go, then turned back to Erskine.

‘You and Buzz stay here. If anything goes wrong for me and the boys, God forbid, head straight back down to the truck and call Chief Winston in Charlotte.’ He paused, trying to think of something heroic to say, but all that came to mind were General Douglas MacArthur’s wartime quotes — none of which seemed appropriate.

He crept forward, ducked below a branch and stepped out into a small clearing. Some ancient landslip had brought down a jumble of enormous boulders, and the shadowy spaces between them created a series of shelters.

Logan paused to look up the slope. As instructed, Markenson and Parsons were standing in an opening between some trees. They waved, and as he lifted his chin in return he was pleased to see they both had their guns ready but pointed to the ground. Just as well. If he went back to the station full of double-aught he’d never hear the end of it.

He breathed in slowly through his nose: the clearing smelled rank. Something large had been living here, and, by the look of the large bones strewn about, had been feeding up here as well. He took another few steps and motioned with one hand for his men to move forward.

The forest was cemetery quiet, and he was sure he could hear breathing, a deep-chested panting, coming from just up ahead. He lifted his gun. He felt good, his hands were steady as a rock. He remembered two things from his training — don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to; and, more importantly, make the first one count.

The panting was getting louder, coming from just behind a large kidney-shaped rock. He gritted his teeth. This is where training and guts meet reality, he thought solemnly; then, Damn, wish I’d thought of that in front of Erskine. He gripped his gun a little tighter.

The panting stopped. There was silence. Logan held his breath. He waited a few seconds, then slowly brought his gun up, aiming the barrel at the tumble of boulders where he assumed the beast’s lair to be. He planted his legs wide apart — a hunter’s stance.

The sudden roar was like a monstrous shockwave; he felt it from his scalp all the way down to his clenched sphincter. The creature appeared on the rocks, a colossus of teeth, claw and stinking fur, like something out of a bourbon-soaked nightmare. Its open jaws could have accommodated Logan’s entire head and shoulders.

It roared again, but Logan swallowed a dry ball of fear and kept his gun up, level, unwavering. He could see the massive beast coiling its muscles, its face furious, or fear-maddened, or both.

It leaped; he fired.

Other explosive roars quickly followed, then a crushing hot weight landed on top of him.

Chief Logan took the canteen, sipped, then allowed Markenson to drag him to his feet. He held on to his deputy’s arm for a few seconds, waiting for the wooziness to leave his gut. He guessed he might be suffering delayed shock.

Parsons slapped his shoulder. ‘Right between the eyes, Chief.’

Logan looked down at the massive lion. Its skin was torn by numerous bullet and buckshot holes. Someone had used a stick to prop open its jaws, displaying yellowed teeth as long as his fingers.

Markenson kneeled beside the huge head to investigate the cavernous mouth. He turned slowly to look up at the chief. ‘You think the Wilson girl is in there?’

Logan went to rub his brow, but noticed there was blood on his hands and wiped them on his pants. He pictured the tiny girl standing alone in front of the 500-pound monster and shuddered. ‘You know, Ollie, I sure hope she isn’t. But let’s call in the ME and find out.’

‘C’mere.’ Charles Schroder waved Matt over to where he was crouched beside a tree.

Matt could see his friend’s attention was riveted on an area where the dry grasses had been unable to take hold. All that was visible from a distance was bare dirt and a few struggling asters.

Matt looked quickly over his shoulder before heading over. He knew they were probably trespassing. When he’d phoned Chief Logan earlier, he’d been told that he was out at the Wilson place looking for a missing girl. While he was still on the line, he’d heard the chief and some of his men rush in to get kitted out with weapons. Something was up and Matt’s radar had gone off the scale. They’d arrived at the Wilson place at dusk, and Charles had been straight on the scent like a bloodhound.

Matt kneeled next to him, adding his own flashlight beam to Charles’s, and frowned at the ground. Up close, he still couldn’t see anything beyond a few bumps and waves in the dry soil. Charles looked at him, his face excited, eyes wide.

‘We got something,’ he said, clearing pine needles and twigs away from the soil.

Matt moved his flashlight slowly over the area while Charles fumbled in his pockets. ‘I don’t see it. What’ve you got — a track or spoor?’

Charles pulled a small tape measure from his pocket and sat back on his haunches. He lifted his flashlight to shoulder level and shone it at a spot in the dirt. ‘Okay, squint and make your eyes go a little out of focus. That’ll allow your central vision to include peripheral input.’ He raised his other arm, his hand extended flat to the ground. ‘Now look where I’m pointing.’

Matt could just make out a rough shape in the dry soil. The small depressions resolved into a pattern, something more than an accident. ‘Holy shit, I see it — it’s fucking enormous. A footprint, or part of one.’

‘Keep your foghorn down,’ Charles said. ‘You’re damned right — we got a clear big toe, and part of the metatarsus pad.’

He expertly extended the tape one way, then the other, then set it down carefully beside the print and pulled a small battered notebook from his pocket. He removed the rubber band binding it, and started to scribble with the pencil stub that rolled free of its pages. He chuckled softly as he looked again at the print. ‘Whoa, you’re a big ’un, aren’t you?’

He held the notebook out so Matt could see his calculations. ‘I’ve used standard anthropoidal biometric ratios. As an example, an average human of about six feet in height has a foot length approximately fifteen per cent of its total height. The big toe is roughly eighteen per cent of that ratio.’ He looked at Matt, who nodded, so he went on. ‘The big toe we have here is around three and a half inches in length, giving us a total stature of…’ He circled a number and tapped it. ‘One hundred and twenty-five inches… over ten fucking feet tall!’ He sat back in the dirt, almost panting with excitement.

Matt laughed. ‘Hey, take it easy, buddy. Do you need a cigarette after that?’

They both laughed.

Charles shook his head. ‘I should have brought a camera. Sorry to doubt you, but I thought this was going to be hoax number one million, and so I didn’t bother. I’ll come back later and take some casts.’

Matt gave his friend a half-smile. ‘I’m glad you came anyway. And hey, all I had to go on was a rock carving and a grainy photo — I kinda doubted it myself.’

Charles’s face turned serious. ‘You do know, we’ve got to find this thing before anyone else does? This could make the coelacanth and the Wollemi pine look like sardines and dried flowers. We can’t let something this rare be filled with a lot of shotgun pellets.’

‘I think Chief Logan took all that firepower after the escaped lion,’ Matt said. ‘It was probably here too. For all we know, it could have been tracking this creature as well.’

Charles shook his head. ‘If this creature is what I think it is, the lion wasn’t tracking it. More like it was tracking the lion.’

Matt looked up at the Black Mountain. It was night now, and a huge moon had lifted up behind the peak, making it look almost prehistoric. He shuddered and felt his fears reemerging. Being out in the dark with a giant creature on the loose brought back memories of another monster that had stalked him and others beneath miles of rock and ice. He took a deep breath. A lot of people had died that time. He hoped history wasn’t about to repeat itself.

The old man moved through the trees close to the house. He stood looking up at the mountain for several minutes, as still and quiet as the hushed night around him. He took a small leather pouch from his pocket, loosened the looped string around the top and pinched out something that he threw in the air towards the mountain. Some of the substance blew back in his face and he sneezed.

He sliced the air with one arm, his fingers opening and closing, making symbols and shapes in the air. He spoke in a strong voice, a chant that lasted for several minutes. Then he stopped and stood staring once again at the mountain.

As he turned to leave, he kicked dirt over the print that Matt and Charles had been investigating.