Spider mountain

15

The closer we got to the Creigh compound, the less confident I was. I couldn’t tell if Carrie felt the same way, but I could not for the life of me think of any different move. Nathan might get one look at me and come screaming off the porch with a handful of knives, as might Grinny herself, over Rowena if nothing else. It was fully dark, so they might have to wait a few seconds to see who or what had showed up. Carrie kept trying her cell phone to establish comms with someone, anyone, but the signal evaporated once we left Rocky Falls. I looked at my watch-it was seven thirty. I hadn’t seen any utility poles going up to their cabin, so, even if they did have a generator, they might not have telephone service. The trees looked larger than life as our headlights swept over them along the river road.

“If the kids are there, where would she keep them?” Carrie asked.

I told her about Baby’s theory that there was a cave or some other underground structure behind or below the cabin. “And I thought I saw some little faces inside that time I was taken there at night,” I said. We were approaching the turnoff to the dirt road.

“You really think I should go up on the porch?” she asked.

“Hell, no,” I said. “We’ll drive up there, honk the horn until someone shows up, and conduct our discussion from inside the car. In fact, you should be in the backseat with a shotgun instead of over there on the passenger side. That way you can give me some cover if they come out shooting.”

“What if they don’t come out at all?” she asked. Good point, I thought. But I had a plan.

“Then I’ll find some way to set the place on fire and we’ll burn ’em out. Like they tried to do to Laurie May.”

“Listen to you,” she said. “Eye for an eye-you’re starting to sound like you’re the one who came from here, instead of me. Stop and let me get into the backseat.”

We were approaching the entrance to the field that lay out in front of the cabin. I stopped and she switched seats, taking Hayes’s shotgun with her. There were no lights showing up above around the cabin. I decided to drive right up there, the way Mingo had done. I turned the headlights on bright to make it tougher for anyone inside to see who was coming and gunned it up the front field, half-expecting gunfire as we made our approach.

Nothing happened. I pulled up in front of the steps and lay on the horn. Carrie was crouching in the backseat with the shotgun barrels resting on the left rear windowsill. I had her nine in my lap. It felt like a toy. I hit the horn again, waiting for lights inside.

Nothing. Silence. Not even a dog barking. Then I realized there should be a dozen or more dogs barking.

Nothing but the sound of my engine running.

“Where are all those damned dogs?” I asked.

“They’ve run,” Carrie said quietly from the backseat.

I decided to shut down, get out, and look around. It felt like there wasn’t anyone there. Carrie got out, and I asked her to cover me with the shotgun. I left the dogs in the vehicle, just in case Grinny’s pack appeared suddenly. I walked down across the front of the cabin, the nine in hand, until I got to the dog pen area. It smelled as rank as before, but it was definitely empty. The moon was rising in the east, but it was still pretty dark up there. A small breeze stirred the pines, bringing a draft of clear, cool air down from the big ridge behind the cabin.

I opened the door to the barn where they’d cuffed me in the stall, and it, too, appeared to be empty of any animals, four- or two-legged. Carrie had moved halfway down the covered breezeway with all the firewood in order to keep me in sight.

“Anything?” she called quietly.

“Nope,” I said, walking back to where she was standing. As I examined the cabin for any signs of life, I thought about going inside. Even the side windows had bullet holes in them, courtesy of my temper tantrum with Nathan’s shotgun.

“No way,” Carrie said, reading my intentions. “She probably has it booby-trapped.”

“Get the car keys,” I said. “Then let’s go around in back.”

About the time she opened the Suburban’s front door a match flared on the front porch, and we both spun around, guns coming up. Grinny Creigh was standing in the front doorway, turning up a kerosene lantern. We hadn’t heard a sound until she lit the lantern.

She didn’t even look at us until she got the wick where she wanted it, dropped the glass, and then lifted the lantern with one hand and picked up her own shotgun. She held it by the receiver. It was an old-fashioned, heavy steel double, and she held it as if it were a willow wand. She didn’t say anything, just looked at us. Her massive body looked like a small silo with a human head on it.

“Police officers,” I said, loud enough to be heard in the house. “We’ve come for the children.”

“What damn children?” she said calmly.

“Mingo’s dead,” I said. “Hayes killed him. There’s a couple dozen feds in Rocky Falls right now. They’ll be here soon. Give us the children and we’ll leave you alone.”

“What children?” she said again.

“The ones you have for sale,” I said. “Like the one you showed that doctor the other night, when you asked him if he could take more than one should you need to unload the whole mess of them.”

She studied my face in the lantern light. If she was impressed with what I’d just said, she gave no sign of it. “How’s Brother Hayes?” she asked.

So she knew what had happened. Two could play this game. “Where’s Rowena?” I countered.

Her face twitched. “Away,” she said. She turned to Carrie. “You that Harper girl, went off to work for the state?”

Carrie said, yes, she was. Her shotgun was still pointed in Grinny’s general direction, but not right at her.

“I recollect your little sister,” she said. “Pretty little thing. Went missing in the river with your papa. Real shame, that was.”

Hold on to yourself, Carrie, I thought. Don’t go doing what you want to. “She’s trying to provoke you,” I muttered to her. “Watch out for creepers.” She grunted through clenched teeth but started looking around at our perimeter. The shotgun was still pointed in Grinny’s direction, however.

“Just give us the children, Grinny,” I said. “We don’t want you. The feds do, but it’ll be an hour before they get here. Give us the kids and we’re out of here.”

“You the one shot down my Rowena, ain’t you?” she asked, holding the lantern a little higher.

“She kidnapped Special Agent Santangelo here and then pulled a gun on me. I shot her before she could shoot me.”

“Blowed her head clean off, didn’t ye,” she said. “Had’ta plant her in two pieces, we did.”

Carrie raised the barrels on her shotgun to point at her. “That’s what shotguns do,” she said. “Want to see?”

Grinny looked first at me and then at Carrie’s gun. Then she did a curious thing: She smiled. It was a twisted, faintly triumphant smile. Then she raised two fingers in a V, mumbled some words, and spat between them. I felt Carrie stiffen beside me.

“There now,” Grinny said. “Count the hours, missy.”

“I’m so very not scared,” Carrie said.

“You should be, missy.” Then she turned to me. “Ain’t no children here,” she said. “Everybody in these parts knows I’d eat ’em if they was. Boil ’em in oil and then eat ’em for breakfast, so everybody says. You people get on outa here. Them revenoors want to come in here, they better bring ’em a warrant.”

“Count on it, Grinny,” I said. “And pack your bags. You’re going away.”

“No,” she said, “You the ones going away.” She carefully set the shotgun down on its butt against the wall, reached sideways, and pulled on a chain that was attached to something in the floor of the front porch. We heard what sounded like a trapdoor dropping, and a moment later every damned one of her dogs was piling through the latticework under the porch, unlimbering a yard of slavering canine ivory each, and coming our way.

We both scrambled into the Suburban with maybe one second to spare before they were all over the vehicle. I zapped my window up and started the engine, while behind me I heard Carrie’s gun go off as three snarling dog heads appeared in the left rear window trying to get in. One dog lost its head while the other two went screaming, earless, for cover. Grinny had disappeared and her front door was closed.

I backed up in a hurry through a sea of snapping, snarling, growling beasts. My shepherds were very wisely keeping their heads down in the way-back. I illuminated the front of the cabin with my brights again, but there was no sign of anyone else getting ready to take action. Carrie had rolled up her window and was reloading the shotgun.

Nathan had taken the children somewhere. I was sure of it. Grinny didn’t care if the feds did come; they wouldn’t find anything. I was also sure she didn’t keep meth or any other drugs here, so her cabin would reveal nothing. I’d been bluffing about feds coming, anyway. Most of the action would be in the two sheriffs’ offices, in both counties, for some time. I backed the car up some more and then turned to head back down the field. All that bravery and we’d flat-ass struck out. Bounced off, once again.

“Now what?” Carrie asked. She was getting good at asking that. And then it occurred to me that Grinny might have been simply lying. They were all in there, kids and Nathan, down in the basement or in that cave or whatever it was behind the cabin. Short of going back and shooting every last dog, there was no way we could to force our way in there. The dog pack continued to surround the vehicle, making more noise than ever, as we drove off. They were everywhere, snapping at the tires, trying to jump up on the hood and the back door.

“They could be in there,” I said. “I’m not taking Grinny’s word for fuck-all. Let’s lose these dogs and then come back.”

“Lose these dogs?” she said. Two of them had locked their jaws on the bumpers as we rolled down that field.

“Well, hell, at least thin ’em out,” I said. I kept the Suburban rolling down the field in first gear and half-lowered my window. I shot the first mouthful of teeth that jumped at the window and then the next one after that. They backed away then, but still followed us down the field, raising absolute hell and lunging at the vehicle from every direction. Carrie lowered her window and blasted two more with the shotgun as we finally made it into the tree line. The dogs quit at the edge of the field. We rolled up our windows, and I turned on the vents to clear the gunsmoke.

“Let’s go over to Laurie May’s,” I said, putting the vehicle onto the dirt road leading down to the big creek. “We’ll come back through that crack in the ridge.”

“And do what?” she said. From the sound of her voice, the dog pack had unnerved her. To be honest, it had unnerved me, too. That had been very close.

“There’s that cave on this side of the ridge, right down from the crack. We get to that, make noise, and attract the dogs. Then we kill every one of them. We’ve got two shotguns and my rifle. Then we walk down there and get close to that cabin.”

“The stealthy approach, hunh?” she said.

“They know we’re back. If the feds do show up, all the better. If not, I still want those kids. She knows we know, so maybe she won’t kill them all out of hand.”

“Or she already has,” Carrie said. “Or Nathan’s gone and taken them up to some hole in the mountains where he’ll bury them alive.”

“Gone where?”

“Shit, take your pick. To any one of the hundreds of hideouts, caves, old mines, sinkholes, you name it, up there in that ten thousand acres of blank space on the map the state calls game lands.”

“First things first,” I said. “Let’s go do what no one else has ever been able to do.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Get inside that cabin.”

“Why not wait for backup?” she said. “Get the Bigs here, at least.”

“Time, Carrie, time. You know what might be happening in there, now that she knows someone’s rumbled their operation.”

“I can just imagine the kinds of things Grinny Creigh will have in her house,” she said. “Can’t wait to go inside.”

I turned to look at her. “What’s the matter-that witchy-twitchy bullshit didn’t get to you, did it?”

She looked away. “No,” she said, most unconvincingly.

“Aw, for God’s sake, Carrie,” I said. “Focus! There might be a half dozen little girls in there, and they’ve absolutely got something to be scared of. Let’s not give her any time to think about this. We need to go back there, eliminate the dog problem, and get inside. No one else is going to do it.”

She didn’t reply.

“Okay, look,” I said. “Watch your cell phone. You get a signal, tell me to stop, call your boys, get ’em out here.”

It took us an hour to get over to the cave. We hadn’t spent too much time around the remains of Laurie May’s cabin, which was indeed all gone. Even in the moonlight, the pile of blackened rubble was a desolate sight among all the pretty flower beds and the fenced yard.

Carrie had been unable to reach the Big brothers. Our problem now was that the Creigh dogs didn’t show up when they should have. Carrie figured Grinny had retrieved them and put them back under the house. It was one thing for us to hole up in a cave and shoot them as they attacked. It would be another thing altogether if we were creeping Grinny’s cabin and they all appeared at once like the last time.

“We shouldn’t have left,” I said. “We could have dispatched that whole pack right there from the car.”

“And if those kids are there, Grinny would have been down in the basement cutting throats while we were eliminating attack dogs,” Carrie said.

The field leading down to the Creigh cabin was just as bare of cover as before. I’d brought the spotting scope and spent some time scanning the whole compound, but that wasn’t helping us get any closer. It was nearly midnight, and we needed to either back out and get some help or get down there and start some shit.

“Cam-look,” Carrie said, pointing down the hill. I looked. A child was walking out of that tree line that ran down alongside Grinny’s cabin. I swung the scope around. She was blond, almost white-haired, wearing a long dress that reached to her ankles. Her face was pinched and scared, and she was somewhere between eight and ten years old. And she was coming right up the hill toward us like a diminutive ghost.