NINE

Okay, Buster, just one more mile to go.” Brank shifted the sack on his shoulder. For the last hour he’d toiled up through an unending growth of slippery green thorn bushes, and even the almost empty canvas bag he carried lay heavy across the top of his left shoulder.

“Maybe we’ll have us a party when we get to Simpson’s Bald,” he wheezed like a splayed-out accordion. “Or maybe we’ll just sit down and try to recover from the getting there.”

He pushed his way through a stand of goldenseal that cluttered the trail. It was odd to see a flatland weed growing up so high, but these mountains always did do strange things. Birds that belonged in Maine roosted in Tennessee; trees that covered the cliffs of Nova Scotia sprouted up in Georgia. His immediate destination, Simpson’s Bald, was strangest of all—the bare top of a mountain that reputedly got its name from a Union spy who’d been hanged from the lone oak tree that grew there. The soil was a sick shade of gray beneath the limb-span of that old tree, and the mountain people teased their children with tales of witches and boogeymen who held horrific ceremonies in the wide circle of blighted earth.

Brank, however, found Simpson’s Bald restful. He was accustomed to the single, ineffectual ghost that haunted the place, and no one else ever bothered him there. The mountaintop afforded a 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain, and the huge roots of the old hanging tree coiled so thick and deep that a man could lie down between them and wait out a blizzard without getting wet. It was solitary, it was safe, and it was also the one place he knew he could get a clear shot at his sister.

“Scheisse!” he cursed as he stubbed his toe on a rock hidden in the goldenseal. Lately he’d found himself cursing in German, the language of his childhood. Though he had not heard a word of it in thirty years, for the past several weeks it had floated on the top of his consciousness like a bobber on a fishing line.

“Scheisse meant shit,” he explained to Buster as he recovered his footing. “Esel meant stupid. Wiesel meant me.”

He trudged higher. The goldenseal gave way to a scraggly stand of white pines, which shrank into an even thinner scrub of rhododendrons. He decided that green things must run out of juice this high: all the effort devoted to growth at lower elevations up here went to pure survival. He scrambled over a final patch of lichen-covered rock, then he was there.

In the dying daylight the mountaintop glowed a pale green. The single oak tree thrust up from the earth like a bone-yellow hand begging something from heaven. Brank guessed most people would find this tree unsettling, but he admired its stubborn defiance, and the odd, hardscrabble shelter it offered.

“Fate Lyons would have hooted at all these silly hillbillies, Buster,” he chuckled to the snake. “This old bald’s just a place where witches land their brooms.”

He walked across the mountaintop and threw his sack down beneath the gnarled tree. His shoulders and legs burned from the final mile of the trail, and the cold wind that whipped around the mountain made his eyelids feel like sandpaper. With spare, practiced motions he quickly unfolded his blanket and laid it in a deep trench between two of the thickest roots. Punching his near-empty sack up like a pillow, he nestled down inside the trench. The hard earth felt good against his back, and for a while he just lay there, relishing the sensation of not moving. He would build a fire, but later. Right now he just wanted to be still.

When the almost-full moon rose he got to his feet and snapped off some of the lower limbs of the tree. Dead to the point of being powder, they broke off with a groan rather than a crack, and a few minutes later they lay in a pile, orange flames licking their undersides. Brank huddled close to the small aura of light and warmth the old branches produced and stared into the fire. Though he’d missed his best shot at Trudy, the day hadn’t been a total loss. He’d mailed his pelts off and had some fun stealing that Cherokee’s photograph. He patted the pocket of his shirt and smiled. Tonight he had his own personal little movie star, right in there, waiting just for him.

When the fire had burned down to a ruddy glow, he dug into his sack again, pulling out his Moon Pies, his whiskey, and his vitamins. “Ten thousand units of vitamin A,” he read aloud, squinting at the label in the firelight. “Two thousand units of Vitamin C. Every antioxidant known to man.” Chuckling, he opened the bottle, tossed three tablets in his mouth and washed them down with a swig of whiskey. “Whoa!” He shook his head at the potent combination. “Guess I’m antioxidized now.”

He leaned back against the tree and ate two Moon Pies, looking at the brightly colored advertisements in his Esquire magazine. Fate would be proud of the way he was taking care of himself, and keeping his mind up-to-date. By the time he finished eating and reading, the fire seemed to be the sole orange spot in the middle of a steely-blue universe. He put the magazine away and drank several more swallows of whiskey, eager for its warmth to reach the stiff muscles of his buttocks and thighs. Good whiskey’s like a slow fuck, he thought, then he remembered his photo. He unbuttoned his pocket and looked at Jodie Foster’s silvery face.

“Schön,” he murmured, tracing the outline of her neck with his finger. “And tonight you’re all mine.”

He turned and balanced the photograph against the knuckle of a tree root. He’d just begun to unzip his pants when he heard a creaking, high above his head. He thought he knew what it was, but it never paid to be too cocky on Simpson’s Bald. Grabbing his gun, he slipped the picture back in his pocket, then sat by the fire and waited.

It didn’t take long. In a moment it came to him as always, floating down from the tree, its blue uniform in tatters. A noose dangled from its neck, and it rolled its green head from side to side, blinking bottomless scarlet eye sockets directly at him.

“Hello, bro.” Brank nodded. “Still haven’t gotten rid of that necktie, have you?”

The apparition gazed at him pitifully, then clawed at his neck, as if he might tug his head off in his efforts to remove the noose.

Brank scowled, suddenly irritated at the spectral interruption. That stupid ghost pulled the same dumb trick every time he came up here. It had grown as predictable as a train.

“Don’t you know the war’s over? You won. The Union is saved. Go back to hell and celebrate.”

The ghost looked surprised for a moment, as if it wanted to speak, then suddenly the red eye sockets opened wide and the specter grew, stretching to the top of the tree, then swelling high above it. Brank watched, gooseflesh rising on his arms. The crazy thing had never done anything like this before. It had always been nosy, but manageable. When it began to tower fifty feet above him, Brank pulled back the hammer of one barrel and fired.

The shotgun’s deep boom split the night. The ghost screamed—an agonized wail that turned Brank cold inside, then, in an instant, it shrank into a shiny red ball of vapor a foot away from Brank’s head. It glittered there for a moment, pulsing with crimson light like a mad heartbeat, then imploded into a pin-spot of icy blue, and vanished.

“Jesus!” Brank whispered, blinking at the mist where the ghost had loomed above him moments before. “It’s been practicing something new.” His heart pounding, his fingers still wrapped around his gun, he waited. Minutes passed, but nothing more happened. He lowered the gun into his lap, and the mountaintop’s sad, sighing emptiness returned.

When his breathing became normal he started to reach in his pocket again for the picture, but changed his mind. The ghost would probably only come back to distract him, and he’d have the movie star for another two weeks. Instead he took another slug of whiskey and rolled up in his blanket, hoping for a slow easy slide into unconsciousness. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, allowing the night sounds that kept most men awake to lull him to sleep. His muscles relaxed, warm and heavy. Dark colors danced on the inside of his eyes. He’d almost drifted away when suddenly he sat up, wide awake, staring into the darkness.

He heard something—a sound that did not belong, a noise that fit nowhere. It was not Trudy’s low growl, nor the silly natterings of the ghost. This was something else entirely.

His pulse quickened as he listened to the dark. Had it been a dream? He could hear nothing now but the hiss of the wind over the mountaintop. He continued to listen, straining to catch whatever it was. There. He heard it again.

Quick as a shadow he was on his feet, shotgun in hand. He hurried over to the west edge of the bald and peered out over the mountains beyond. The night pressed close against his face. He squinted into the thick darkness, once more hearing nothing for so long he wondered if this might not be some new bit of nonsense the ghost had dreamed up. Then, the noise came again. If he cocked his head when the breeze blew from the northwest he could hear it, crisp as a snapped twig. It was the sound of women. Laughing.

He pulled at his left ear. This was not possible. Women would not be out here in this wilderness, miles from any civilization, thousands of feet above the nearest settlement. It must be some freakish television signal, bouncing around the sky. He gazed out into the blackness and willed his eyes to open to everything.

At first he saw just a million dark, sleeping trees and the night animals that scurried among them. Then, slightly to the left of his center of vision, he saw it. A tiny dot of flickering light suspended between forest and sky. All at once he knew what it was. Women were camping in the fissure of Big Fodderstack Mountain.

His heart drummed in his chest. Women. Catching Trudy was one thing; catching women was quite another.

He gulped, and opened his eyes to the wavering light. Soon they appeared, swirling before him, shimmering like Loreleis. Their flesh was pale, their eyes reflected the orange of the fire, and their lips were moist and red. They threw back their heads and their breasts bounced with the laughter that bubbled up their throats. He could see the blood flowing in their veins, the quivering hearts that pumped the blood, and further down the viscera—the food in their stomachs, the sludge in their guts, the eggs in their ovaries waiting to ripen.

Saliva flooded his mouth as if he’d just licked a lemon. He lowered his gun as another tinkle of laughter reached him, and stared at the flickering light. Women were a different sport from sisters. Far less exciting to track, but infinitely more gratifying when caught. He chuckled as he turned away and headed back toward his bedroll beneath the tree. What a gift! Fate must still be looking out for him!

Grinning, he looked up into the nighttime sky. In just a few hours morning would bring sunlight and the women and maybe even Trudy again. He’d better get to sleep fast. Who knew what kind of prey he might run into tomorrow?