Cold on the Mountain Page 15

  “So when is the lottery? It kind of feels like things are picking up around town.”

  “Ah, so you feel it too, huh? Yeah, it’s just about time for another purge. The universe must need a little injection of the good ol’ dark matter, I guess.”

  Phil described the display he’d seen at Herman’s, and Jasper merely nodded.

  “It’s a town tradition, that display. Most department stores will throw up a tree and some fake presents right around Christmas. Not us—we pay homage to the portal.”

  “The portal?”

  “Yeah. The portal swings open on the Dowager’s back acreage. Nobody knows why it happens precisely there; nobody even knows how. It just is. But when that door opens, we all know it’s time for the lottery. It’s time for our shot to get back in the show.

  “She’s the one that takes the tolls, by the way. She’s the one that the two of you are busting your asses to please.”

  “Who is she?”

  Jasper shook his head. “She’s something terrible, I think. She wears the mask of a human woman, at least when she bothers to show herself in the flesh at all. Nobody’s had eyes on her in years. She’s got a servant living with her in that great rambling mansion on the northern edge of town, but she certainly keeps to herself. Has everything delivered in the middle of the night—creepy as hell, that one.

  “The lady answers to no one here in Adrienne—not the sheriff or the worst of the dark ones or even the powerbrokers like Rip Herman or Levi Strauss. She opens the gates of her property to the dark ones when it’s time for a purge, but as for the rest of you? She doesn’t care if you ever leave and it’s her that sets the rates. It’s the Dowager that keeps us all stuck here in servitude.”

  Phil recognized the word, but its meaning escaped him so he asked Jasper about it.

  “Oh, ‘Dowager’?” Jasper replied. “It means ‘a widow who inherits property.’ And she inherited property, all right. That woman has murdered every man that was ever foolish enough to ask for her hand in marriage. It’s quite a list, if you can trust the folklore.”

  “So why on earth would anyone try to marry her? Didn’t they know?”

  Jasper sipped his beer. He placed it carefully on the bar and stared at Phil, a tight-lipped smile on his face. “Oh, the Dowager is quite the catch, Phil. We’re talking supernatural beauty here, and of course that’s just what it is. Even more than the dark ones, she’s not of the world of the living. And in terms of your first question, I’ll just respond with one of my own. Why does any man choose to mess around with a dangerous woman?”

  Phil shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe…maybe they just can’t help themselves.”

  “Bingo,” Jasper replied with a wink, “it’s in their nature.”

  ~0~

  The nausea was getting worse. Bo’s stomach cramped while Miriam whispered the summons, her voice growing louder—growing more insistent—as the room filled with energy.

  It was like riding the Gravitron at the county fair. There was a palpable sense of pressure as the atmosphere in the room changed. The lights dimmed again before quitting altogether, the room plunged into perfect darkness. Kelli squeezed Bo’s hand (perhaps just a little too tightly) and he returned the gesture.

  “Kelli,” he muttered, “I think I’m going to be si—”

  His words were swallowed up by a shrill whine. It sounded like a Cessna gearing up for takeoff, and the atmosphere changed once again. Bo had the unmistakable impression that something—someone—had invaded their space.

  He saw a spark of light across the table. Squinting in the darkness, Bo saw Anna fumbling with a lighter. She got a flame going and lit a couple of fat candles before pushing them into the center of the table.

  Bo turned to Kelli, surprised by the quizzical expression on her face. She nodded toward his closed hand, now floating awkwardly in the air. What’s up with that? she mouthed.

  Bo turned his head.

  His hand was empty.

  He placed it on the table, heart straining. Tasket, having caught the whole thing, wore an amused expression. Anna and Kelli looked concerned, but Miriam simply bowed over the text, that incessant whispering filling the room as she recited the incantation.

  Christ, Bo thought, who the hell had been holding my hand?

  The whining whipped into a crescendo and that’s when Bo noticed the Ouija board. The pointer moved deliberately across its face.

  Miriam finished her chant and the room fell instantly silent. Her head slumped between sagging shoulders for a long minute while she gathered herself and caught her breath, and then she slowly lifted her head.

  Miriam was gone.

  In place of the compassionate woman who had opened her heart and home to them now sat a creature that exuded waves of raw malevolence. It wore aspects of Miriam’s features, sure, but that was where any similarity between the gentle woman and the creature now sitting at their table parted ways.

  “Industrious,” it purred, the voice both alien and familiar. In the candlelit shadow, Miriam’s eyes were opaque—pools of inky darkness, now black all the way through. Her easy smile lifted inexplicably at the edges, a wicked glee in the set of a too-wide mouth. “Oh, how very brave of your foolish friend to venture back into Adrienne! The meddlesome cunt…I know where her eyes have been! I know where her thoughts have roamed! Conjurer!” it spat.

  “I know where her filthy meddling has taken her, and she’ll be lucky to leave Adrienne with her sanity this time! She’ll be lucky to leave with her very soul intact!” The thing loosed a throaty chuckle. Bo watched in horror as Anna’s hand inched toward the book of spells. She lunged for it, but the creature was too fast; its mottled fingers closed tightly around the slight woman’s wrist.

  “Frankie Ryman is as good as dead, you dithering bitch!” it spat at Anna, who shrieked in surprise. The creature yanked her closer, placing its face mere inches from the now-screaming woman’s. Anna’s sleeve smoldered, the creature’s grin spreading while blisters formed on her skin. Her shrieks dissolved into howls of agony and the creature drank them in like sustenance.

  In fact, Bo thought, that’s just what was happening. The creature grew in stature—expanding by increments as Anna’s flesh puckered and sizzled in its grip. It was feeding on their fear, and there was more than enough to go around.

  In fact, it was bellying up to the trough, as far as Bo was concerned.

  The nausea now on the verge of crippling him, Bo lurched across the table; in one fluid motion, he slapped the creature’s face hard enough to leave an angry handprint. It released Anna’s wrist; her arm was instantly whole—the injury nothing more than a painful, momentary illusion. Anna took advantage, snatching up the book.

  The creature howled in surprise, and Bo fell back in his chair. He gulped air while Kelli gawked at him.

  “Jesus, Bo! That’s Miriam! You can’t just go…go hitting her like that—no matter what that…that thing says to us!”

  “But, Kelli, she…it was…” he fumbled for the words. The creature studied him intently from across the table, wearing the impish grin of the child who aggravates her older brother into impulsive violence.

  “It’s okay, Hollywood,” the creature growled, “you’re just acting on your instincts. What’s a little violence among friends, right?”

  “You’re not Miriam,” Bo said. “You’re not her.”

  “Your name, dark shadow!” Anna shouted, her voice shaky. She held the book in front of her like a talisman. “Your name, in the eyes of your creator, that you should be held to account for your wicked nature!”

  The creature shrieked—the hellish din compelling them to clamp their fists over their ears. Tasket fumbled for his sidearm, Anna stilling his hand with a flash of her eyes. No! her expression said. No more violence.

  “Your name, vile thing, that we shall know you!” she continued, her voice steadying—the conviction mounting in her tone.

  Wearing an expression of purple hatred, the creature cut its
eyes at Anna. “Some know me only as the abomination of the children of Ammon. Others address me as the Dark King—the king clad in the tears of our mothers. You, though…you may call me by my one true name. I am Moloch.”

  As the creature spoke, Miriam’s visage shimmered. It grew hazy for an instant and then vanished altogether, replaced by a bronze calf’s head.

  “Why are you here?” Anna continued.

  Just like that, Miriam’s distorted features returned. “Your cunt of a witch displaced me. Her eyes! How they crawl across my things, those filthy eyes! When the rovers find her, and they will, I’ll have them for myself. I will have those pretty eyes, and all your precious witch will see from here until her death is the great…black…void!”

  “Kelli,” Anna said, pushing paper and pencil across the table. “Record it. Please!”

  Kelli pulled the Ouija board closer; she charted the pointer’s progress.

  F-O-U-R-N-I-G-H-

  “Oh, it’s almost time. Almost time! The rovers! The rovers are at the door,” Moloch said in a sing-song voice. It rubbed its hands gleefully and, for the second time that evening, Bo had the impression that the demon was nothing more than a child. So simple—so consumed by silly emotion. “They await my instruction. Tell me, Anna…are you prepared to lose your dear witch?”

  T-E-R-T-H-E-L-A-T-E-W-I-N-

  “Let her be,” Anna said. “I hold the key, and I command it.”

  There was strength in her voice, a conviction that jarred the demon. Moloch’s eyes went wide with rage and the demon spat a string of guttural phrases that shook the very room. Books toppled from their shelves, and the crashing tinkle of glass echoed from another room.

  T-E-R-M-O-O-N-

  “Take her!” Moloch shouted. “Take her now!”

  But Anna was already working through another incantation. Her voice steady and clear, she spoke the words that might buy her friend a few precious minutes inside the lair of the damned.

  ~0~

  They were trying to beat the door down. Miriam glanced about the room for something to arm herself with, her heart racing as the walls shook with each blow.

  She knew who was trying to get in. All those years ago, back when she’d worked at the diner, she’d learned about the rovers. About the demons that walked between worlds.

  Words were strong. Spoken in the proper sequence, they held great power. But at the end of the day, that’s still all they were—mere words.

  True strength was something altogether different, and it was true strength that now threatened the door to Moloch’s study.

  Miriam looked through the demon servant’s eyes, studying a complex diagram etched in what looked like blood. Despite the ornate illustrations, it was just a calendar.

  A calendar with the exact timing of the lottery.

  She pored over the document, unnerved by the mottled skin on the back of the great demon’s hands as she traced the script. She jotted the information on a blank piece of parchment, over and over again—a form of automatic writing.

  It would have to do. Hopefully, Anna was doing her part on the other side.

  She scrawled the message three times; maybe one of them would get through. It had to, as she had no idea of whether she could make it back herself…

  Bodies boomed against the door, shaking the room; a crack splintered the frame. Frantic, Miriam slammed the text shut. She slipped the ancient volume into an open slot on the demon’s bookshelf and turned around just as the door burst wide on splintered hinges.

  “My, my,” the woman said, “what have we here?”

  She was beautiful beyond measure—her skin the color of fresh milk, her eyes a haunting shade of blue. Her beauty was made all the more apparent when contrasted with the livid demons flanking her. They were seething, monstrous creatures—their thickly muscled shoulders oozing blood from a dozen angry cuts.

  “We’re setting them free,” Miriam said. In Moloch’s voice, it came out as a deeply guttural growl. “All of them.”

  “Oh, I think not,” the woman replied matter-of-factly. The demons attempted to charge into the room, but she stayed them with a single touch of her fingertips. Instead, she strode, alone, into the room. “I don’t think you’ll be doing anything of the sort, honey.”

  She was over six feet tall, and she had an air of royalty about her, her long hair swept high off her temples and channeled down her back by a silver chain.

  “It isn’t right,” Miriam said, now retreating. She felt the bulk of Moloch’s desk pressing into her lower back. “None of this is right. You need—you need to release the innocents. This isn’t their home. It never was.”

  “Innocents?” she laughed. “That’s funny, Miriam. Really funny. Did you know that your innocents have been naughty? In some cases, very naughty?”

  “I don’t care if they have. This isn’t where they’re supposed to be, and you know it. You’ve always known it. Adrienne is…it’s a place of punishment—a purgatory for the very worst in human nature. It’s not right that you’ve exploited the innocent for all of these years.”

  Now it was the Dowager’s turn to seethe. Her smile flattened at the edges, her blue eyes throwing sparks. For a split second, her appearance changed. An ancient hag—her face a mosaic of wrinkles and age spots—flashed a fierce sneer across the room.

  “Belphegor,” she said, lifting her hand to level an accusatory finger at Miriam. “Ornias. Do your duty. Collect this bitch’s soul.”

  The demons rushed into the room, but Miriam was ready for them. She had a single chance, and she took it.

  “Transmutationis, mutatio,” she said, and then the world went dark.

  ~0~

  The candles extinguished in a rush of wind. There was a shriek and the booming sound of some great expanse of canvas tearing. Bo again felt the pressure in the room swelling—that infernal whining repeating itself.

  And then…relief.

  The nausea vanished. Bo felt an instant change in the atmosphere and he smelled…he smelled perfume.

  Miriam’s perfume. She was back—he was sure of it.

  Anna got the lighter going and tried to relight the candles, but it wasn’t necessary. At just that moment the thermostat’s heat register kicked on and the lights swelled back into action. Whatever dark magic had interrupted the power was gone.

  “Miriam?” Anna said gently. Their host lay collapsed on the table—eyes closed, her cheek flush with the hardwood. Anna rubbed her back lightly. “Miriam, are you okay, sweetie?”

  Gladstone gasped for air, coming alive with a series of choking coughs. She slowly lifted her head.

  It was her—Bo was sure of it.

  “Did you get it?” she croaked. “I…I don’t remember what I saw back there…I don’t…I don’t remember.”

  “We got it,” Kelli said. She slid the paper across the table and they all leaned forward, craning their necks to read Kelli’s careful script.

  FOUR NIGHTS AFTER THE WINTER MOON

  NEAR SHADOWS OF BLACK HANDS MEADOW

  Bo studied it. “Black Hands Meadow,” he said. “Mean anything to any of you?”

  Miriam shook her head; Anna followed suit. Tasket merely appeared amused.

  “You’re not as observant as the character you play on television, Bo,” he said. “That meadow earned its name a long time ago—case of frostbite, if I’m not mistaken. It’s the very place where we found that picture the Benson girls drew.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  No doubt about it—Phil was tipsy. The band had finished the sound check and launched into a jaunty little bluegrass number, Phil still more than a little taken aback by the identity of the big man nimbly picking at a banjo in the center of the stage. A face that had often seemed so stern in life was now fully animated, those trademark dimples in full effect at the corners of his wide grin.

  The place filled rapidly, the festive atmosphere now spilling from the streets into the Dark Earth Saloon.

  At the far end of the bar, Wil
l let go with a throaty laugh. It was nice to see people enjoying themselves, all things considered.

  “It’s not so bad sometimes, right?” Jasper said, reading Phil’s mood. “Especially this time of year. When the lottery comes back around, it’s actually easy to forget that we’re all stuck up here in hell’s version of Mayberry.”

  “Hell, huh?” Phil replied. “You really believe that, Jasper? That we’re in hell?”

  “Nah—not really. I mean, you’re alive, right? You’re still fundamentally you. I think heaven and hell are reserved for those that have fully moved on—those that didn’t get flagged along the way. This place—” he said, shaking his head, “it ain’t hell.”

  “Well, what’s the difference then? I mean, if I’m alive, then what are you?”

  Jasper drew a deep breath; it was a sobering question—one Jasper chose to answer with one of his own. “You want to hear something terrible, Phil? I remember everything about the day that I died. Everything,” he said softly. “I remember those final, fleeting seconds, and that terrifying recognition that things were growing dark around the edges. Do you know what the last thing I saw before I died was, Phil?”

  Phil shook his head. It wasn’t really a question, of course.

  “I saw those animals dragging my wife away. There I was, just sitting there in the snow, my hand pushed down into the hole they’d torn in my guts, while they carried my wife away from the village where we’d been married. Where we’d made a home together—raised a family. And even though I know for an absolute certainty that she’s in heaven, I can only imagine that her last moments on Earth were pure hell. Pure, unadulterated hell. There’s one difference for you.”

  He licked his lips and took half his beer down.

  “Jesus, Jasper. I’m so sorry,” Phil said. “Is that why you’re here? Because you killed the people that attacked your village?”

  Jasper nodded. He untucked his shirt, lifting the fabric to reveal his torso. It was unremarkable. “See that? Nothing there. No scars to tell the story of what happened to me. But this…” he traced a circle over his ribs with his index finger, “this is where they shot me. Right here in the lung. The ball punched through my ribs and right out my back. I drowned in my own blood, Phil. My lungs filled up and I drowned, just sitting there in the snow. But not before I’d made a mark of my own. Not before I’d made orphans of at least a dozen Russian children.”