The Mountain Between Us (11 page)

“Have I?”

“The two of us had some rough times. Now that I'm a mom I'm just beginning to see how rough.” She had been every mother's nightmare: a smart-mouthed kid who thought she knew everything.

“You were not an easy child,” Lucille admitted. “But I'm proud of the way you've turned out. And you don't have to worry about Lucas. He's a good boy.”

“The trouble is, I remember everything I did when I was just a little older than he is,” she said. “I know what kind of trouble he could get into.” She'd tried everything—smoking, drinking, drugs, underage sex, shoplifting. Somehow, she'd survived, but it was a wonder Lucille didn't have more gray hair.

“Eureka isn't perfect, but it isn't the inner city,” Lucille said. “And Lucas is smart—sometimes I think he's smarter than the two of us put together.”

“He's scary smart,” Olivia agreed. She patted her mother's arm. “So, will you come with me tonight?”

“Sure. Why not?”

C
HAPTER SEVEN

T
he Dirty Sally had a larger than usual crowd for a Wednesday evening. Olivia and Lucille threaded their way through the crowd and claimed a table normally reserved for the bus tubs. Olivia stuck the tubs in the kitchen, then rejoined her mother at the table. “Is she this pushy at home?” Jameso asked from behind the bar.

“Worse,” Lucille said. “She badgered me into coming here tonight.”

“At least she's good for something.”

“How's Maggie?” Lucille asked.

“Maggie is . . . hormonal.” He shook his head. “I've learned to keep my head down and say, ‘Yes, ma'am.' ”

“Smart man.”

They ordered beers, then turned to the stage, where Bob was fiddling with a mike stand. “Is this thing on?” he asked.

A chorus of yeses answered him. He slid one of the bar stools closer to the microphone and settled on to it. “I guess I'm supposed to get this competition started, so here goes. This story is about the haunted mine.”

A hushed anticipation settled over the crowd. Bob started off in a conversational tone. “Some people think of mines as holes in the ground you take rocks out of. They look at them the way you might look at a boulder or a pile of dirt—lifeless.

“But a mine is a living, breathing organism, I'm convinced. You spend enough time in one and you'll know what I mean. The air pressure in a mine constantly changes, as air flows in and out, the way breath flows in and out of a man. The walls sweat or dry like skin. Stay down there long enough and I swear you'll hear the heartbeat of the mine, steady and low as a pulse.”

“Drink enough and you'll hear anything,” someone called.

Bob scowled at the speaker. “You going to shut up and let me tell my story or not?”

“Tell your story and quit taking all night to do it,” someone called.

Bob rested his hands on his knees and straightened his back. His voice carried over the assembled crowd. “I had a mining friend, Tate Moses,” he said. “We worked together at the Miller Mine back in seventy-two, before they shut down. But like a lot of us, Tate had his own claim he worked on his days off. He called it the Pay Day, because he expected a big pay day from it before too long.

“During the time in question, Tate had decided to extend one tunnel of the mine, following a vein he thought would lead to a good quantity of gold. As the shaft got longer and deeper, he came across some bones. At first, he thought they were animal bones, but quick enough he realized they were human bones. He figured he'd run across an Indian burial ground. But he didn't tell a soul. The last thing he wanted was the state coming in and telling him where he can't dig and what he can't do on his own property. So he reburied the bones outside the mine and kept on digging.

“His next day off, he goes back to the mine, and all the bones are there, piled up in the tunnel. This makes old Tate hopping mad. He figures one of his buddies is playing a trick on him. So he reburies the bones, but this time, he scatters them—a leg over here, an arm here, a hand here and so on.”

Olivia shivered. This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Grisly stories in keeping with the holiday? She hadn't counted on the local setting and Bob's authentic detail making the tales quite so realistic.

“The next day, everything's fine, and the next,” Bob continued. “But the third day, the bones are back, all together in the middle of the tunnel.

“Tate is furious. He's determined to get to the bottom of this and find out who's trying to play him for the fool. He reburies the bones; then he hides in a little side tunnel, where he can see the goings on in the main tunnel. He plans to watch until he sees who the trickster is.

“He settles in for a long wait. He sits with his back against the wall and after a while, his eyes drift closed. He's worked hard all day, and he'd celebrated at the end of the day with a tot or two of bourbon.

“He may have drifted off, but a noise wakes him. He opens his eyes, but the inside of that mine is as black as the inside of a cast-iron Dutch oven with the lid on. He leans forward, straining his ears to listen. Then he hears it again—
scritch. Scritch.
Like nails scraping against rock.

“Scritch. Scritch.”
Bob lowered his voice. The crowd hushed, as if everyone was holding their breath. “The rocks shift, as if something heavy is dragging over them. Tate switches on his headlamp. At first, he doesn't see anything. He plays the light over the wall on either side of the tunnel. Then he searches lower, on the floor.

“The headlamp beam catches on a flash of white. Tate leans forward and recognizes a skull, the nose collapsed and the jawbone missing. He shines the light behind the skull and sees the rest of the bones—arm bones and leg bones and vertebrae, lined up in a semblance of order, but looking like they were put together by a tenth grader without a lot of knowledge of anatomy.”

Bob leaned forward even more. By this time he had the attention of everyone in the room. Only the occasional clink of a glass or bottle cut through the silence. “By this time, Tate's heart is pounding so hard, he can hardly hear anything else. He wants to close his eyes and open them again and find out this is all a horrible dream—a nightmare. But he can't move. He's paralyzed. The bones aren't just assembled again, they're moving, crawling down the tunnel straight toward him.

“Tate can't do anything. He can't scream. He can't move. He can barely breathe. He sits there, overcome with terror, as the bones crawl past him. Just as they're even with him, the skull turns and looks at him with those empty eye sockets. Tate starts to shake all over, teeth chattering like he was caught in a blizzard.

“The bones move on. They finally collapse in a heap in the exact spot where Tate first uncovered them. Only then can Tate move.

“He runs screaming from the mine and then drinks all the rest of his bourbon. But the liquor won't kill the memory of those bones crawling toward him, or those empty eye sockets turned to him.

“The next day, Tate went back to the Pay Day and sealed off the tunnel. He paid a priest to come out and say prayers at the entrance. Then he worried that might upset the ghost even more, so he found an old Ute shaman and had him come out and say some words over the spot, too.

“The bones never bothered him anymore, but Tate lost his taste for mining. He preferred to stay aboveground after that, and let the dead stay below it.”

The patrons of the Dirty Sally greeted the end of the story with hoots and whistles and stamping feet. Lucille leaned across the table toward Olivia. “I think Bob missed his calling when he chose mining instead of acting.”

“It was a good story,” Olivia agreed. “It'll be a hard one to top.”

“All right, I've had my say,” Bob said. “Who's next?”

“I've got a story to tell.”

Olivia almost choked on her drink. She looked up to see D. J. taking Bob's place in front of the microphone. Dressed all in black, from his knit watch cap to his motorcycle boots, he presented an imposing figure. His grim expression did nothing to erase this impression.

He didn't look at Olivia, though he had to know she was there, just to his right, eyes fixed on him. He was like a bad accident she couldn't look away from.

“My story takes place in Iraq,” he began. “A soldier—we'll call him Tim—is on guard duty. The night is moonless, and utterly silent—the most dangerous kind of night. Under cover of darkness, the insurgents will sneak up on the compound with suicide bomb attacks. Even innocent-looking civilians—women and children, even—could be deadly, so Tim can never let down his guard. He has to be constantly on edge, alert for killers.”

She shivered. Is that what Iraq had been like for D. J.? He'd been a contractor, not a soldier, but still, he must have seen plenty of danger.

“The night is long,” he continued. “Tim is out there alone and there's nothing to distract him from his own thoughts. And it's those thoughts that torture him, even more than his fear of dying or of failing to do his duty.

“Tim can't stop thinking about the woman he left behind in the States. They parted on bad terms, and he's weighed down with guilt.”

Olivia looked away and pushed aside her empty beer glass, her hand shaking. Was D. J. talking about a made-up character? Or was he making a confession of his own?

“Over and over in his mind, he replays scenarios of what he could have done—what he should have said. He thinks about her all the time now. He's having trouble sleeping.

“But guard duty is worse. On this moonless night he's standing guard at the gate of the compound when he sees a woman walking toward him. She's wearing a pale blue burka that covers her from head to foot. ‘Halt!' he tells her, then repeats the order in the local dialect. The woman stops and reaches up to push the hood of the burka away from her face.

“Tim stares at a woman who looks exactly like his lost love, the same blond hair and creamy skin. She's definitely not an Iraqi woman. She smiles and starts walking toward him again. He's not supposed to let anyone approach unless they have the proper credentials. But he's paralyzed and mute as the woman—his woman—walks toward him. She's smiling, but she doesn't say a thing. He calls her name, but still she says nothing.

“By this time, he's panicking. Is this some kind of trick? Is he losing his mind? ‘Halt!' he shouts. He shoulders his weapon. The woman keeps coming. She's scarcely a yard from him. Still smiling, she reaches into her robe. All his training tells him she's going to detonate the explosives she's wearing. Tears are streaming down his face. ‘Halt!' he screams, but she ignores him.

“He can't let her do this. He closes his eyes and squeezes the trigger on his weapon. The bullets tear into her, knocking her back. She lands in the street in front of him, a bloody rag doll. He drops his weapon and runs to her, kneeling beside her. The hood of the burka has fallen forward, shielding her face. He reaches up to push it back, but instead of the face of his beloved, he sees only a grinning skull.”

Silence greeted the end of this tale. Olivia swallowed hard. Was this some twisted way of trying to make her feel guilty? Or was she too paranoid and this had nothing to do with her at all?

“That was seriously creepy,” someone in the audience said, and a few people laughed, breaking the tension. Applause broke out. D. J. nodded. “Who's next?” he asked.

But before anyone could answer, the door to the bar opened and newspaper editor Rick Otis leaned in. “The ghost lights are back,” he said. “They're putting on quite a show.”

Glasses chimed and chairs scraped back as people headed for the door. Olivia and Lucille followed the others and stood in the street in front of the bar, looking up toward the pale outline of Mount Winston. “I don't see anything,” Olivia said.

“There, over to the left.” Lucille pointed.

Olivia looked along her mother's finger and saw a bloom of white light. The single orb shimmered in the night, then was joined by a second. The two balls of light skipped down the mountainside, swallowed up at the tree line. Then another orb appeared, and another. The display was eerily beautiful.

“Anybody want to drive up there with me, see how close we can get?” Rick asked.

“Don't do it, Rick.”

Olivia started at the sound of her mother's voice. “Don't go haring off up there,” Lucille said. “You won't find anything and you're liable to drive off the side of the mountain or something.”

“Don't you want to know what's causing the lights?” Rick asked.

“No,” she said. “We all need a little mystery in our lives.”

“I'm with Rick. I don't like not knowing things.” D. J.'s voice vibrated through Olivia, and she had to fight the urge to turn and look at him.

“Sometimes, all it takes to know things is paying attention,” she said, raising her voice only slightly, so he'd be sure to hear.

“What do you mean by that?” He touched her arm so that she was forced to look at him.

He bore the same fierce, demanding expression she knew too well, a look that made her feel whatever she gave to him would never be enough.

“It doesn't matter now,” she said, and pulled out of his grasp.

“Maybe I didn't pay enough attention before,” he said. “But I'm paying attention now.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “It's too late.” She'd had enough of dwelling on the past and letting things that should be dead and buried haunt her. She'd been telling the truth when she'd told him she didn't believe in ghosts. She wasn't about to start believing now.

 

“Did you see the ghost lights last night, Maggie?”

“The what?” Maggie looked up from her computer, mind foggy from spending the last hour trying to make sense of the town budget figures Doug had passed on to her. No matter which way she looked at them, the result was the same—Eureka was broke. And her job was to write an article breaking the news to the general public. Was it too late to change jobs?

“The ghost lights up on Mount Winston,” Rick said. “They're these mystery blobs of light that show up from time to time—no one knows why. They put on a special Halloween performance last night.”

“Is this another one of those quaint Eureka customs that's supposed to make up for the fact that you don't have a Starbucks or a Taco Bell in the entire county?” she asked.

He stared at her and shame washed over her. The filter between her brain and her mouth had gone missing lately. “No, I didn't see them,” she said.