Chapter 5

WHERE THE DEVIL’S TAIL ENDS

No electricity.  He should have known that.  The cook stoves, heaters, hot water tanks, and lamps were all gas.  There was no generator, and his laptop sat dead next to a windup alarm clock that Susan had furnished.  It had about eight hours of battery power left, but there was no sense using it up now while he sat, musing, pondering, daydreaming.  Trying to come up with a goddamned idea.

So with a yellow legal notepad on his lap and a black gel pen in hand, Bill Koch sat on the flat surface of a boulder, watching the birds fly below him.  The view both thrilled, and frightened him, and he was glad now that he hadn’t insisted on bringing his eight year old son, Steven.  Bill wouldn’t have gotten a moments peace, worrying that Steven might be about to tumble off the edge.

Writer’s block; mental constipation…it sucked, and when he didn’t have a channel to pour his never ending imagination into, it backed up, soured, poisoned him.

He knew from experience he couldn’t fight his way through it.  The result would be either frustration, which only seemed to solidify the block, or page after page of crap, which was worse.

An abuse of the English language.  Unforgivable.  Enraging.

Bill had serious anger issues.  He knew this.  He accepted it, and was trying his hardest to overcome them.  He suspected it was an impossible battle.  Rage was just a part of his makeup.

But sitting here on the rock, in this place, he did not feel the frustration, the approaching anger bubbling up into a full blown hatred.  He was calm, and he didn’t even need the bottle, which he’d agreed to ease up on for the week of the Hack’s retreat.

He was happy.

He wished Camp would hurry up and get his ass here, though.  It wouldn’t really be a party until Camp showed up.

*      *      *

Bill Koch was here, he wrote in deliberate, neat letters, on a sheet from the tablet in his lap, then signed his name below.  He tore the sheet out at the perforation, folded it into a paper airplane, and sent it sailing into the canyon below.

A sudden racket near the lodge drew his eyes, and when a cloud of dust cleared, it wasn’t Camp’s car, a Candy Apple Red ’65 Plymouth Barracuda, but that lunatic guide’s white Eagle.  The man had grilled Bill half way here about the movie he thought they were making, not willing to let it go until Bill had finally come unglued.

This is the last time I’m going to say it—there is no fucking movie! Now shut the fuck up and watch the road!

The positive upshot of Bill’s tantrum was that ‘Yahoo,’ as he had come to think of Yohan, had shut the fuck up and kept his eyes on the road from then on.  With any luck Yahoo would stay out of his airspace from here on out.

Bill turned back to the canyon, searching for his yellow paper airplane, but it was gone now.

A message in a bottle, he thought, on paper that would rot before it was ever read.  Suddenly he felt very lonely, perched above the wild, green abyss.

Bill shoved the pen in his pocket, stuck the tablet under his arm, and hurried off to welcome the new Hacks.

*      *      *

For a moment, Heather thought Jim was going to throttle the yokel behind the wheel.

He seemed to be considering it.  He stared at the back of Yohan’s head, his mouth a tight thin line. The dust settled; the clearing in front of the lodge slowly came into view. A woman stepped down from the steps of the lodge, waving the dust away from her face.

Susan Bonkowski?

The woman smiled and waved at them, catching Jim’s eye.  His anger seemed to ebb.  The red in his cheeks faded as he took his eyes off Yohan.

“Here we are folks,” Yohan said unnecessarily.

Jim waved back to the woman, then said, “You okay, Heather?”

“Sure I am,” she said, her heart fluttering in her chest, hands clutching her knees to keep them from shaking.

Exhilaration was one thing, she liked a healthy shot of adrenaline as much as the next person, but when Yohan careened onto that last narrow road, he had crossed the line to reckless. She wondered if he was trying to scare them, or if he was just that stupid.

“Hope I didn’t shake you up too much,” Yohan said.  His voice had taken a sullen tone.  “Maybe you creative types aren’t as sturdy as you think.”  He grinned.  A hard, humorless grin.  His head turned toward the approaching woman, and he lowered his voice a little.  “You’re lucky I’ll be around to handle any rough stuff, should it come to that.”

Heather sighed. She had no comeback, no good-natured retort. All that was lost when the Eagle went into a fishtailing spinout around that last bend.

Jim looked like he was about to say something, but Heather never found out what it was.  Their doors creaked open in tandem, letting in the comfortably neutral mountain air.

The man who had opened her door was handsome, bald, with a few days worth of stubble covering his cheeks and chin.  He had tired eyes, which he turned on the driver’s seat.  He whispered something that might have been douche-bag, and helped her out.

The woman who’d opened Jim’s door, their hostess she assumed, seemed purposely not to be looking at Yohan.  Her smile looked forced.

She took Jim’s hand and helped him out of the Eagle.

“I’m very pleased to meet you both,” she said.  Her eyes moved from Jim to Heather.  “I’m Susan Bonkowski.  Welcome to Hacks.”

*      *      *

Jim checked his temper for Heather and Susan’s sake, but it took all the self control he possessed not to pull that freak in the cowboy hat out through his window and do something antisocial to him.

Smug little shit-kicker!

“Pleased to meet you,” Jim said, giving Susan’s hand a light squeeze.  “Appreciate the invitation.”

Bill Koch, Jim recognized him from dust jacket pictures, helped Heather from her side of the Eagle.  Jim saw her hand shaking in his.

Bill stood calm, eyes locked on the Eagle’s driver’s.  Steady, unblinking eyes.  Sniper’s eyes.

The trunk door popped open, and Jim hurried to get the luggage.  Bill walked Heather toward the lodge, introducing himself, as Jim hefted their bags and slammed the trunk.  This time she didn’t object to his carrying her luggage.  A few seconds later Heather stepped inside, and Bill joined him by the Eagle.

Susan, leaning in through the driver’s window, had quiet words with Yohan.

Bill, reaching a hand out, said, “hand one of those over, man.”  He took Heather’s bag, then extended his right hand.

Smiling, Jim shook it.

“Jim Eldridge, right?”

“Yeah.  Bill Koch?”

“Guilty as charged,” Bill said, and after giving the Eagle a last, scorching look, led Jim to the lodge.

“If she doesn’t fire Yahoo I’m gonna end up kicking his ass.”

Yahoo.  Jim liked that.

“Don’t think he likes us much.”

Bill answered with a commiserating grunt.  “He’s lucky Camp is driving himself.”

Jim had heard stories about Camp; his antics and temper, and he thought Bill had a fair point.  If someone decided to hand Yohan, or Yahoo, as Bill had dubbed him, his ass, it would be Camp.  Not just another loud, anonymous Internet mouth, Camp never had a problem mixing it up in real life.  Camp had been at the center of a near riot at a hotel hosting the World Horror Convention only a few years ago.  Bill had been there with him, raising holy hell, but he seemed to have calmed down a little since then.  Camp had taken up his slack.

“Who all’s here so far,” Jim asked.

“Me, thee, the lovely lady you rode in with…” He paused for moment, then asked, “is that Heather Woods?”

“Yeah.”

Bill nodded.  “Younger than I expected.  Prettier too.  Wonder why they’re using a fake picture in her bio?  A face like hers would sell books.”

That’s when it hit Jim, stopping him in his tracks as they crossed the deck to the lodge.  The picture on the back cover of her books was not the woman waiting inside for them.  The woman on the back cover of her books was older, with hair somewhere between blond and octogenarian white.  Her face was thinner, not wrinkled, but sour looking.

That’s why I didn’t recognize her.

Bill continued, “the three of us, and Ryan Stahl is around somewhere.  He rode up with Susan.”

They crossed the threshold into the lodge.  Jim was relieved to see the place was not as primitive as he’d imagined it would be.  It looked like an army of maids had been through recently, rubbing out every spec of dust that had settled over the years.  The walls looked freshly painted, the hard wood floors scrubbed and waxed, even the high cathedral ceiling was clean.

Several gas lamps in brass sconces were mounted on the walls, and an old wagon wheel chandelier hung from the ceiling by a tarnished chain.  Twelve glass globes circled the outer edge of the wheel, and Jim tracked the suspending chain along the ceiling’s central beam to the wall near the fire place, where it hung almost to the floor, one of the links held by a large hook on the wall.

Oil lamps, probably.  He wondered if they still worked.

Heather sat on a sofa in the center of the room, examining stacks of books on a coffee table in front of her.  Looking calm again.

Most of the books were hardcovers, many of those were limited editions.  A stack of mass market paperbacks sat alone on the fringe, one of Heather’s on top.

Jim and Bill set the bags next to the hearth and went to join her.

“Oh, this is gorgeous!”  Heather’s hands hovered over a leather-bound volume, as if they wanted badly to touch it, but didn’t quite dare.

One of Jeff Campbell’s, Jim noticed.  He leaned over the table for a closer look.

Bill smiled.  “Camp is going to shit when he sees that.  That book goes for around five hundred on Ebay these days.”  Bill laughed.  “He sold all his copies to buy one of those Semerling’s that Repair Man Jack uses and has regretted it ever since.”

“Who’s Repairman Jack?” Heather asked.

Bill looked horrified.  “Good lord!  Did you hear that, Jim?”

“I did,” Jim said, shaking his head.  He felt better now too, maybe it was the vision of Heather looking prettier than ever, sitting there with that look of absolute awe, her lips curved into that enchanting smile again.

They sat on either side of her, Jim picking up one of her paperbacks, an advance copy of a novel that hadn’t even been released yet, Bill throwing an arm casually over her shoulder.  She smiled at them in turn, looking embarrassed, but pleased to be the center of their attention.

“We’re going to have to fix that,” Bill said.  “I’ve read your work, and trust me, Repairman Jack will be right up your alley.”

Jim had harbored second thoughts about agreeing to come to this Hacks thing, but they were gone now.  Meeting Heather had been a wonderful start to what promised to be an excellent vacation.

And when it ended—a thought Jim decided to put out of his mind for now—Shelly would be gone, the rest of their short, childless mistake of a marriage, put to death by their lawyers.  With any luck, she wouldn’t take him for every penny he’d ever made or would make.

Life, for the moment, was good.