Cold on the Mountain Read online

  “Could you explain that?” Kelli said. “The lottery, I mean.”

  Miriam smirked. “It all starts with Adrienne. I mean, it’s the strangest thing. There’s a lottery every year there. That place,” she shook her head, “is foul. I can’t think of a better way to describe it. It’s diseased. There’s a malignancy that hangs over the town. It’s because of the dark ones, of course. The monsters that become trapped there, and who live there full time. The others—the people like your brother and his family? They’re just collateral damage. It’s sad, but true—they’re just innocent, healthy cells, caught in the center of some gigantic cosmic tumor.”

  “So this lottery—it’s open to everyone in…what’s this place called? Adrienne?” Kelli frowned in confusion. “I don’t recall seeing it on the map.”

  “That’s because it’s not there—at least not in this reality.” She abruptly stood and left the room. Bo and Kelli turned to Anna, who merely smiled in response. Cupboards banged from the next room and Miriam returned, a mason jar filled with what looked like cow manure in her hand.

  “Adrienne is the closest thing to Hell that I can conceive of. I’ll just start there, and if that doesn’t grab your attention, you should probably check your pulse.” She sighed, gearing up to deliver a speech that never got any easier.

  “The world that we think we understand is filled with positivity and light. There’s beauty and love out here in abundance, and the vast, vast majority of human beings live their lives in the service of those good things. Would you both agree?”

  Bo nodded. Kelli just sipped her tea, studying the woman over the rim of her cup.

  “But there’s also darkness. Horrible, evil darkness. You read the papers, I’m sure. Maybe you just watch the news on television, but it’s there, too. It’s there every…single…day. Children vanish without a trace, shattering families forever. Dictators slaughter thousands over petty squabbles for sand and oil and diamonds. Horribly flawed creatures murder innocents over urges that make no sense at all to the rest of us. These things—these people—have always coexisted in the same space as the love and the beauty.

  “And that’s just as it should be. It might seem unfair—it might seem perfectly irrational, but the truth is that they balance each other out. You can’t enjoy the sweet without the bitter, as tough as that is to admit. And you can’t understand the beauty and the love without the monsters and the…well, the darkness.”

  “Anna told us a little about all of this,” Bo said. “But let me get this straight, Miriam. You’re saying that you’ve actually been there? To Adrienne?”

  She nodded. “Years and years ago. I was just a girl then. I was headed east—no particular destination, just east. My story is pretty typical of my generation. I was young; I thought I had it all figured out.

  “So I left my family behind in Santa Rosa. They loved me so much, and I broke them when I left. I was a naïve little girl. It wasn’t until I got out of Adrienne that I truly understood what it meant to be with family. To love and to cherish the ones who love us back. I guess…I guess gaining that perspective was one benefit of the years I spent there.

  “I finally learned what it meant to appreciate what it meant to be with family.

  “Anyway, I was high when I stumbled into Adrienne. I’d picked up some pretty strong grass after visiting friends in Modesto, and that’s why I didn’t think twice about the glow.”

  Anna offered a knowing nod, her mouth agape.

  Bo noticed her expression and swallowed thickly. Better shut’cher trap, Anna, he thought, or you’ll swallow a fly and it’ll lay eggs in your heart and the maggots will burst out of your chest and there won’t be any Christmas for you this year, buddy-boy.

  He winced a little. Criminy, where did that come from? It had been a favorite phrase of his brother’s growing up—something Phil used to say to Bo when he caught his kid brother zoning out in one of his little daydreams. He hadn’t thought about it in years.

  He expelled air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his chest and focused on Miriam.

  “The roads were deserted. I mean, there was just nothing for miles and miles and miles. I was ripped, driving this beat-to-shit Dodge, and I come around a bend in the road and there’s this perfect little town. Above everything—and I mean the mountains, the town, the trees…everything—there’s this eerie green glow. I figure it’s just the weed messing with me, so I book it straight into town. Seemed like a nice place to sleep it off for the night.”

  She looked away, overcome with emotion. A tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

  “I was there longer than one night,” she finished, her voice shaking. “When my number was finally called in the lottery—when I made my return to this reality? Well, the world was a very different place. I’d been gone eight years. There was a new President. New laws, new music, new clothes, new television shows. And my mother. Well, my mother had passed away while I was stuck there in Adrienne. I…I missed that. She missed me, and I lost her.”

  Kelli sighed. “I’m so sorry, Miriam.”

  Miriam swiped at her eyes. “It couldn’t have been helped. When you get stuck in some off-dimensional whirlpool, what can you do, right?” She smiled, and it was a like a very grim mask—a forced expression meant to convey toughness, but falling woefully short.

  “My relationship with my dad is fine now. It was hard explaining away eight years, especially when it looked like I hadn’t aged a minute, but we’ve mended our relationship. Same with my brothers. But my mother—I…I won’t see her again until it’s my time to go. And that wears on me. I wish…I wish she could have known how sorry I am that I left. How stupid and selfish that I was back then. She only ever loved me, unconditionally, and I wasn’t there for her when she needed me—her only daughter.”

  “But,” Bo interjected, “you’re here now. You did make it back. What’s Adrienne like, and who gets to leave?”

  Miriam nodded. “You’re right. I am here. And I’ll never go back over that mountain, Bo. Never. I used to warn others off the road, but the Bishop City Council didn’t appreciate that. Who’d have thought, right? Anyway, that’s just one of the reasons I stay so far out here in the boonies.

  “Adrienne is actually quite nice—at first glance. There’s a town in Oregon that I visited once—a little tourist place called Sisters. Adrienne reminds me of it. Beautiful, rustic shops. Clean streets. The homes are charming, the yards well kept.

  “The only difference is that every citizen that lives there is an absolute monster. And I don’t mean that in the figurative sense. The people that find their way to Adrienne are murderers of the very worst sort. People like Hitler and Chairman Mao. The world’s worst serial killers. History’s biggest bullies. They’re all there, until they get picked. Then they come back. And they do it all over again. You want to hear something…something crazy?”

  Kelli grinned. “You mean crazier than all of this? Sure, go ahead.”

  Miriam returned the smile, unoffended. “Look, I can hear it in your voice, Kelli. You believe. It sounds crazy, I know, but I can tell that you’re buying in. And you’ll have to, honey, if you ever want to see your family again.

  “Anyway, you remember that kid that did that terrible thing at Virginia Tech?”

  Nods all around the table.

  “When I was in Adrienne, I waited tables at one of the local diners. It was an easy job, and they make all the innocents that get trapped there work. It’s…it’s like indentured servitude is what it is. Anyway, this awkward kid used to come in all the time. He’d have the same meal, over and over again. Ham sandwich, strawberry milkshake, and onion rings. He rarely spoke, but he would only sit in my section. If my tables were full, he’d wait outside, peering in through the windows until a table opened up.

  “His name was Elias, and he was horrible. He did some terrible things in the 1950s before he was finally caught and hanged for his crimes. And, of course, he ended up in Adrienne. And, of course
with my luck, he took an interest in me. It got to the point where I didn’t go out alone at all. Killings in Adrienne are very rare. When they happen, you see, the dark ones can’t go back. They can’t participate in the lottery. It’s…I guess it’s some kind of a breach of protocol or something. Still, sometimes those assholes just can’t help themselves and I was getting pretty worried about Elias around the time of the lottery.

  “So, he was coming around more often. When I was finished at the end of the day, and I’d try to find some time for myself, he’d be there—watching me. He had,” she shook her head, “the worst eyes I’ve ever seen. He never seemed to blink. I mean, not ever. It was the damnedest thing. And they were…well, his eyes were just dead. There was nothing in them but hunger. Raw, evil hunger. When his number came up in the lottery, nobody was more relieved than I was. It felt like I could finally breathe again.

  “And then my lot was picked a few years later. I had my things with me and I ran through that doorway and went straight home, never looking back. I reconnected with my family, and I started picking up the pieces. Then I discovered that my time in Adrienne had triggered something inside of me. I started…I guess I started picking up signals from other places. There are other realms than Adrienne, thank the heavens, and I seemed to be sensitive to all of them. I moved out here and set up shop, right in the shadow of that terrible place. And things have been, relatively speaking, pretty damned good. I have a loyal clientele, of which Anna is just one. We’re praying that her Frankie will be back soon.”

  Wells smiled, her eyes shining at the mention of her fiancé’s name.

  “But to finish my story, the strangest thing happened a few years back. I don’t watch the news much anymore, but I’ll tune in from time to time. A person shouldn’t be content to live in a void—I know that better than most. So I heard about what happened at Virginia Tech and I put on the news.” She choked up, swallowing hard and looking at the wall while she composed herself.

  “What was it?” Kelli said. Her voice was soft, her curiosity piqued.

  “It was him. The news anchor was showing all these horrible pictures. A young man posing with a gun. With a hammer. He was Asian—we later discovered Korean. But that didn’t matter. In the eyes, I knew it was him. It was Elias—that same South African killer that had been executed in 1960. Nationality, race—none of it mattered a bit, because the eyes said it all.”

  They sat in silence for a long moment. Bo could hear a clock ticking in another room. What time was it? How long had they been there?

  He looked outside; it was dusk.

  “Evil doesn’t fade away,” Gladstone quietly continued. “It just…it just passes through. There’s no escaping it. Every minute, every hour, every day…the cycle repeats itself.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bo said. “I thought you said it was a small town.”

  “Oh, it is. The population might have crested at about 10,000 dark souls while I was there. But think about it, Bo. How many people do you suppose do terrible, horrible things and never get caught? Elias Xitavhudzi was executed by the state in 1960. I did the research, and that was him—the same creep from the café. But he came back later, taking a different form. This time, he took his own life. This was back in 2007. Remember? I’m sure he’s back in Adrienne now—living there in Cho’s form—just waiting for this year’s lottery. Waiting for another chance to come back into our world and do it all over again when the time is right. There is a natural delay—these monsters, they all start out as children, of course. I knew Elias was pure evil, but I could never know where he might resurface. It’s just—it’s just the way of the universe.”

  Kelli shuddered at the idea. She remembered the pictures. The dim hatred in that tortured soul’s eyes. The families whose lives had been shattered by his actions. Virginia Tech would never be the same.

  “So,” she said, locking eyes with Gladstone, “how do we get them out of there?”

  “Well, first let me try something. Do you…do you both trust me?”

  Bo nodded. Kelli hesitated, then followed suit.

  “Good. I’m going to reach out. There are places that I can see into—people I can touch. Let’s…let’s just see if we can make contact. Who knows? Maybe they’re not stuck in Adrienne at all…”

  She unscrewed the lid and Bo caught an immediate, pungent whiff of soil. It smelled of blood and copper.

  Gladstone upended the jar. The soil formed a little pile on the table, and she took her time smoothing it out over the table’s surface.

  “Let’s join hands,” she said.

  They formed a circle with their bonds. Bo felt adrenaline surge through him. He looked at Kelli, shocked to see the fear in her eyes. She felt it too.

  “Silence,” Gladstone whispered. “Everybody…close your eyes.”

  They did, and for about three minutes…nothing. Bo peeked at the table and Gladstone squeezed his hand. He clamped his eyes shut.

  The table began to shake. The subtlest of tremors rattled their tea cups. Bo gulped the fear down in his chest.

  “Oh!” Gladstone gasped. It was like she’d been stung by a bee—a sharp exclamation, born of surprise. She groaned, and Bo heard the soil moving on the table.

  Scritch, sloosh. Scritch, sloosh.

  It shifted, sliding and scrabbling on the oak surface—repositioning itself.

  “Where?” Gladstone sighed. She groaned again—louder this time. “All of them?”

  “What’s happening?” Kelli cried. “Wendy? Can you hear us?”

  “Shhh!” Wells replied. Kelli clamped her eyes shut even harder.

  “When? So soon?” Gladstone said. Her voice was soft, the inflection high. It didn’t sound like her voice at all.

  “Are they safe? That’s all we need to know right now,” she said. “Are they together?”

  Bo felt another surge rush through him. The sands were shifting faster now. Gladstone held his hand tighter—tighter—tighter still. She was crushing his fingers, her strength uncanny.

  Finally, she released his hand, gasping.

  “You can open your eyes,” she panted. “I think you’ll appreciate the answer.”

  Bo opened his eyes. In the center of the table, that rich soil now formed a single word.

  Yes

  “It appears that your brother and his family are in Adrienne, Bo. They’re there, and they are among friends, at least for the time being. The last thing I asked was whether they were safe. You have your answer.”

  Bo’s mouth fell open. He looked at Kelli, then Wells, and finally Gladstone. “How…?”

  “I told you,” Gladstone said, sweeping the soil into a pile with the edge of her palm, “that I left Adrienne with certain skills. I also left with more than that—namely, this little sample of soil. It helps me to connect; after so many years there, I wanted to bring something home. Proof. And so I brought this little bit of soil with me to each of my last three draws. It was one of the best choices I’ve made.”

  She swept it back into the jar and offered them a weary smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll kindly ask Anna to take you back down into Bishop. Touching that place always takes it out of me. I think I’m going to lie down in the other room.

  “It was a pleasure meeting both of you.” She stood and smiled—her expression warm and sincere.

  She disappeared into the kitchen and Bo heard her quiet steps on a stairway in the back of the house.

  “What now?” he said.

  “Time to go,” Wells replied. “Come on. I’ll take you back to Bishop.”

  TEN

  Big Wren lived in a tidy little ranch house. He set the girls up in the dining room with art supplies that he kept for the unfortunate children that found themselves stuck in Adrienne.

  “Are the two of you up for a walk?” he asked, when it was clear that the girls were happy just to sit and be creative for a little while. Wendy was thankful for the distraction, and she found herself warming to the big athlete. He
seemed like some kind of city patriarch—like the informal mayor of those unfortunates that found themselves in Adrienne due to the allure of a shortcut that existed on no earthly map.

  “Sure. Girls? We’re going outside to talk. Sit still and stay out of Mr. Wren’s things, okay?”

  “’Kay,” they called in unison, and Wendy smiled. Their response was a wonderful affirmation. They might be in a hell of a bind, but at least they were all together.

  Wren led them out into the back yard. A little gate opened up on an alley behind the house, and they strolled down the gravel lane, passing the fenced yards of a string of perfectly maintained homes.

  “We’ll need to find work for both of you,” he said.

  Phil forced a laugh at the absurdity of it. “Mr. Wren, I have a job back in Oregon. Christ, that’s what nobody here seems to understand! I have…I have responsibilities! I can’t just…” He shook his head.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Phil. If you work hard here and get lucky, maybe you can go right back to it. One thing, and you can decide for yourself whether it’s a blessing or a curse, is that it’s just like I said—I haven’t aged so much as a second in all the time I’ve been here,” he replied, studying the backs of hands, as if to double check. “And please, skip that Mr. Wren stuff. Denny is fine. Big Wren, even, if you like. I’m used to it.”

  “Fine…Denny it is. Assuming that what you say is true, and we have no reason to doubt you, based on everything that’s happened in the last twelve hours, why on Earth would we need to work?” Phil said. “Can’t we just use our credit cards?”

  “If only. You have to work just to get a chance at the lottery. It’s the only way out of here. These are dark forces at play, Phil, and they always require their pound of flesh. Even if they can’t take it in the way they did before, they still want their pound of flesh. Hell, there’ve been some years when I couldn’t even draw.”