Long Chills Page 19

  His father—a stern, joyless man who fought tooth and nail to make a living during the lean times of the Great Depression on a mountain much too steep to plow and plant—held no such love for reading books. In fact, he seemed downright hostile concerning the pastime. He forbade the presence of books and periodicals in his household, except for God’s Word. And, for some unknown reason, he particularly loathed those that bore illustrations upon their covers or amid their pages.

  Therefore, Fletcher, with the secretive assistance of his mother, was forced to sneak his beloved books home from the monthly bookmobile that visited the town of Tucker’s Mill in the valley below. Mother and child went to great pains to keep that simple secret from Elijah Brice.

  Although Fletcher resented—even despised—his father for his irrational behavior and unbending ways, he found solace in the pages of Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and the woe begotten, yet destructive creation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly’s Frankenstein.

  As he grew older, though, Fletcher gradually learned the reasons for Elijah’s stern rules concerning the prohibition of books; rules that were sensible and downright necessary, given the strange nature of the mountain on which he was born and raised.

  It was during 1936, in his twelfth year, that Fletcher grew from a boy into a young man. It was a year of hardship and altered ideals…one full of strife, worry, and fear.

  His mother, Mattie, had lost her health the year before to the ravaging effects of tuberculosis and was bedridden. The strong, vibrant woman he had known since birth was gone. In her place was a shriveled shell of a human being; confined beneath layers of patchwork quilts, her pallor deathly pale and her eyes sunken deeply in shadow. Fletcher would lay awake in his bed at night, listening to her cough so violently that her expulsions would change from watery phlegm to sluggish clots of blood. He would bury his head beneath his pillow to block out his mother’s hoarse hacking, but the sound always traveled past the barrier of cotton ticking and goose down, and caused his young heart to grow heavy with dread. When the coughing ceased and she finally rested, her rattling breath sounded like the ticks of a clock; one that’s inner workings were slowly winding down until, one day soon, it would give out entirely and only silence and finality would remain.

  While his father trapped small game for pelts and hunted for wild ginseng—a medicinal root that could be sold for eight dollars a pound in Knoxville—Fletcher stayed close to the mountainside cabin, doing chores and attending to his mother’s needs. Many a time, Fletcher longed to leave the strain of his obligations behind and hike to the peak of the mountain to his secret place along a stone pathway lined with snow-white roses. There, the boy loved to read his books and dream of a life beyond that he knew on Pale Dove Mountain. He pictured himself walking barefoot along the shore of an ocean, or traveling some foreign land, exploring places he had only visited within the pages of books. He longed to ride a camel among Egyptian pyramids, to climb the icy peak of Mount Everest, or to simply feast his eyes upon the gentle smile of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris. Possessing quite a talent for drawing, he would sketch those ambitions on any scrap of paper he could manage to find. But he always hid them away, aware of the consequences should Elijah accidently happen upon them.

  But his father’s oppressiveness and his mother’s infirmity made all those dreams seem grimly unattainable. Life on the mountain was all he had known and all he probably ever would know. His father was much too stubborn and set in his ways to move down to the valley, where the other residents of Peremont County dwelled. Fletcher was denied a decent schooling; his father deemed it unnecessary and told him that he was needed at home, to attend to his sick mother. Nearly a teenager, Fletcher could scarcely write or cipher with numbers. His only strong point was his reading, which was his only pleasure…and his only hope.

  Another thing preyed heavily on his mind, too. A man by the name of Wesley Allen Scott.

  Wes was a hermit of sorts, even more so than Elijah Brice and his family. He was a veteran of the World War and had suffered a grievous injury while fighting the Kaiser’s army, taking the brunt of a tater-masher grenade, which had cost him his right leg and what little sense he had possessed before. Below his knee, he wore a wooden leg beneath his pants, while the left side of his bearded face was riddled with scar tissue and his eye canted lazily to the side.

  The man worked every now and then at Leland Tucker’s general store down at the Mill, sweeping up or toting provisions for customers. Some folks said that he acted peculiarly toward the local children since his injury, while others claimed that he had been that way before, just better at hiding it. He seemed particularly enamored with Fletcher whenever he went to town with his Father. The cripple would stare at him like a child hungering for candy, grinning slyly all the while.

  “You’d best watch yourself around Wes Scott,” Fletcher’s mother would warn him. “He’s a deceitful and dangerous man. And he’s taken a liking to you.”

  Fletcher knew little of the world and its ways, so he was unsure of exactly what she meant by that. But, in another way, he had an uncomfortable inkling of what his mother was driving at. Fletcher wasn’t like the other boys in Peremont County. He was whipcord lean and handsome, but not in a manly way, almost femininely so. He sported a curly shock of pale blond hair the color of cornsilk and his eyes were as blue as the sky on a cloudless summer day. His sensitive nature and love of things other than hunting and fishing also gave him an air of vulnerability. When in town the other children were cruel to him, playing pranks on him and calling him “sissy boy” or “queer.”

  He was cherished by his mother, but knew that he was a grave disappointment to his father. He had once overheard Elijah tell his mother “God gave us a girl child, but with the wrong plumbing.” That had hurt Fletcher to his very core, but he had said nothing and given no indication that he had even heard. Thinking about the attentive way Wesley Allen Scott regarded him, he began to wonder if his father wasn’t correct in his tactless assumption.

  Surprisingly enough, it was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that revealed the true—and awful—nature of Pale Dove Mountain one balmy afternoon in early spring.

  Fletcher had found the book by L. Frank Baum on the cramped shelves within the gray bus that was parked out front of the Baptist church earlier that morning. Fletcher had read the book once before and, given his age, probably wouldn’t have read it again…except for the enchanting illustrations on the cover and the pages inside. The title page read “illustrated by W.W. Denslow,” and the copyright page dated the tome as 1900.

  The twelve-year-old was at his favorite place that day—the rose-lined pathway near the peak of the mountain. He sat with his back against a boulder, admiring the whimsical drawings, when he got the urge to urinate. He left the book open on the rock and ducked into the underbrush to do his business. When he was finished, he buttoned his trousers and stepped back onto the pathway.

  He was surprised to find four white doves perched on the corners of the book, peering curiously at a full-page illustration of Dorothy and her trio of friends strolling along a winding road of yellow brick. But that wasn’t all. In the middle of the gathering stood a large carrion crow perhaps a good eighteen inches in length. It wasn’t like any crow he had ever come across before. This one was pitch dark, with a stone-gray beak and equally gray feet. Its eyes were what froze Fletcher in his tracks. They were small and beady, and blacker than a night devoid of moon or stars.

  Great! He thought, they’ll poop on it and then I’ll end up having to pay for it…or else Pa will. The thought of his father even finding out that he possessed the book was terrifying. He ran toward the flock of birds. “Get away from that!” he shouted, waving his arms.

  Spooked, the doves flew away, heading toward the vast blue sky above. But the crow remained. It ignored him and, surprisingly, dipped its huge black head and turned the pages of the book with its gray beak.

  Not knowing what else to do, F
letcher reached down and found a good-sized rock near the pathway. “I said, go away!” Then he took aim and lobbed the stone at the ebony bird.

  The rock struck the crow in the left side. The bird cawed loudly and then took flight. As it joined the doves in the sky above the mountain’s peak, Fletcher looked down at the page it had turned to…and shuddered.

  Suddenly, a loud crackling noise sounded from high overhead. It reminded him of a string of firecrackers going off on a Fourth of July evening. He shaded his eyes against the sun and watched, stunned, as the crow and the four doves began to evolve. In midair, they began to enlarge and flatten. Then as the shapeless objects gained momentum, they began to take form once again. But this time, it was not a lone crow and four doves that swooped from above.

  Instead it was four snow-white monkeys with fleshy pink wings and equally pink uniforms and fez caps perched upon their heads. Silently, the winged monkeys dive-bombed him, while the last attacker finished its terrifying transformation. Fletcher watched as a gray-fleshed witch—wearing pigtails and a patch over one eye—jetted toward him in a billowing black cloak, riding on an equally dark broomstick. She didn’t seem to be actually flying like the winged monkeys were, but rather soaring swiftly like a hawk with its head jutted forward and its wings tucked stiffly behind its back. Swooping downward with malice in its lone black eye, as though focused on an unsuspecting field mouse.

  Frightened, Fletcher turned and began to run down the pathway. He had left the stone-scattered pathway and leapt into the cover of the forest, when the wicked witch touched ground. Almost immediately, that nerve-fraying crackling filled the air once again. Then a sound unlike any he had ever heard on Pale Dove Mountain assaulted his ears, causing his young heart to thunder in his chest. It was the roar of a mighty feline; not a bobcat or a cougar, but something much larger and fiercer. As he ran, the boy couldn’t resist the urge to glance over his shoulder. When he did, he felt his blood run cold in his veins.

  It was a huge African lion nearly twenty feet in length. It was stone gray in color and its eyes and teeth were as black as coal. Atop its head, gracing its flowing mane was a broad, black bow like those that the well-off girls in town wore to church on Sunday morning. The expression of fear and cowardice that had graced the beast’s illustrated counterpart was absent. Instead its massive features were full of anger and contempt.

  Jumping through the thicket, dodging trees and clumps of thorny bramble, Fletcher finally made it halfway down the mountain to the log cabin the Brice family called home. His mother stood in the doorway of the structure, sweeping the dusty boards of the floor. When she saw him coming, her brow creased with puzzlement, then her eyes widened as she looked past him and saw what was fast on his heels.

  Fletcher leapt inside, out of breath. “Shut the door!” he huffed, doubling over in exhaustion. “Shut it…quick!”

  His mother did as he said, slamming the wooden door and barring it shut. Elijah sat at the eating table, sopping cornbread in a bowl of buttermilk. “What in tarnation is going on, boy?” he demanded, standing up.

  The twelve-year-old tried to find the words, but he was still struggling for breath. Then from the side of the cabin door, came the distinctive sound of crackling, loud and unmistakable.

  Elijah Brice’s gaunt face grew deathly pale, as though all the blood had drained from the flesh. “Oh shit!” he muttered. He went to the stone hearth and took a double-barrel shotgun from over the wooden mantle. Warily, he started toward the door, keenly aware that the scattergun was no defense at all against the thing that lurked on the other side.

  He was eight feet from the door, when the center split, sending splinters of oak wood spinning across the cabin’s single room. He took a couple of steps backward and studied the thing that had done the damage. It looked like the edge of a shiny black axe. The head of the tool was withdrawn and then it struck again with even more force. This time it chopped a massive hole in the center of the door and Elijah could see outside.

  A lanky man constructed of gleaming gray metal stood in the dirt yard outside, his axe raised menacingly over one shoulder. The woodman’s rounded head sported an oil funnel for a hat and its limbs looked to be jointed to its cylindrical body. The tin man grinned with hinged jaws, but there was no humor to his smile. The thing’s eyes, which were as dark as crude oil, glinted cruelly as it prepared to bring the head of the axe down once again.

  “Just you hold up there!” hollered Elijah, his voice cracking. Fletcher had never seen his father frightened before, but he did at that moment. “What the hell do you want?”

  The shiny man lifted a jointed finger and pointed through the crater in the door, over Elijah’s shoulder…straight at Fletcher.

  His father whirled, glaring at him. “What did you do?”

  Fletcher shrugged. “Not much. Just chucked a rock at an ugly ol’ crow is all.”

  Elijah rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Boy, you might as well tugged on the tail of Ol’ Scratch himself!” He turned and, staring past the metallic form before him, saw a gathering of small people about the size of three-year-olds standing at a distance, watching what was taking place. The men wore long beards and pointed, broad-brimmed hats, while the women were clad in long dresses with bonnets on their heads. All were as white as the driven snow, their clothing a delicate, fleshy pink color.

  “Whatever the boy did, he didn’t mean to,” Elijah stammered quickly. “He’s ignorant of how things are here on the mountain. He knows nothing of you and the others. Believe me, he meant you no harm.”

  The black ax remained steady overhead for a moment longer, then slowly lowered. The tin man glared through the hole in the door, locking its shiny black eyes with Fletcher’s frightened ones. Then with a shake of its head, it seemed to simply melt before the boy’s eyes. Fletcher watched as the pale dwarves did likewise. They swirled and seethed in thick, gooey puddles upon the ground for a moment, crackling like a wildfire through dry tinder. Then, as one, they rose into the air…a large black carrion crow flanked by a flock of pure-white doves. In fascination, he watched as the birds shot over the treetops and winged their way toward the opposite side of the mountain.

  “Oh dear God,” rasped Elijah as he sat down heavily in a chair. His hands trembled as he laid the twelve-gauge on top of the table.

  Fletcher left his mother’s side and curiously went to the door. He peered through the ragged hole in the two-inch wood. “Papa…was that the Dark’Un?”

  His father’s eyes blazed angrily. “I don’t wanna ever hear that name cross your tongue again, boy! And if you see a pale critter—a white possum or squirrel or deer—leave it be. That black bastard will come for you again, especially if you harm one of the white ones!”

  “I promise, Papa,” he said in scarcely a whisper. But his initial fear was gone. In its place were curiosity and a hunger to learn more.

  It was in mid-May when Fletcher and his father went down to Tucker’s Mill for supplies. It was also when the boy discovered that monsters were not limited to the wilds of Pale Dove Mountain.

  The two were in Leland Tucker’s general store. Elijah had a long list of items his wife had jotted down, along with a few of his own. While Leland busily rounded up their order, Elijah was inspecting a table of dry goods the storekeeper had laid out. Fletcher lingered around the front counter, longing for the candy in the tall glass jars that stood there: peppermint sticks, jawbreakers, bubble gum, and hard rock candy. He would have liked to have hoped that his father would buy him a piece before they returned home, but Elijah was an unyielding, annoyingly sensible man and considered sweets a luxury they either couldn’t afford or simply didn’t have need of.

  “Don’t have that twenty pound sack of flour out here,” Leland told Elijah. “It’s in the back.” He turned toward the rear of the store. “Wes! Get on out here.”

  Fletcher heard a sound echo from the back, resounding off the hardwood floor of the store. Ka-klump, ka-klump, ka-klump. He turned and felt
his heart skip a beat when Wesley Allen Scott limped into view. The veteran’s bearded face transformed from a scowl to an expression of lewd interest when he spotted the boy standing beside the candy jars.

  “Wes, Mr. Brice here needs a twenty pounder of flour,” Leland told him.

  “Kinda hard for me to handle…you know, with this.” For emphasis, he reached down and rapped his knuckles on his leg. Tock, tock, tock.

  “Fletcher, go help the man, will you?” Elijah requested of the boy.

  The twelve-year-old felt his stomach sink. “What?”

  “Mr. Scott needs some help toting that sack of flour. Now go on.”

  “But, Pa…!”

  His father’s eyes stopped him in mid-sentence. “No buts. Get to moving.”

  “Come along,” Wes said, nodding toward the back room. “Shouldn’t be too hard for a strapping boy like you.”

  Fletcher followed the man as he shuffled through the doorway. When he got to the back room, he found it to be dim, there being no windows to allow the sunlight in. The air was warm and stifling, smelling of tobacco, leather, and country ham. Crates of canned goods stood around the walls, while sacks of flour, sugar, cornmeal, and seed for planting lay on wooden pallets at the back wall.

  Wes Scott walked ahead of him, his crippled leg half swinging, half dragging across the storeroom floor. Ka-klump, ka-klump, ka-klump. “The flour is back here, Fletcher,” the man said, looking over his shoulder with a crooked grin. The way he spoke his name made him feel somehow dirty.

  Fletcher met him at the back wall. “You grab one end of that sack and I’ll grab the other. Betwixt the two of us, we oughta have no trouble a’tall.”

  The twelve-year-old did as he was told. They were lifting it off the other sacks on the pallet, when Wes froze and stared the boy in the face. “What’s that?” he said, peering at him strangely.