The Cabin on Souder Hill Page 26

  “Down there.”

  Pink swiveled his head toward the slope then back at her, his eyes sleepy and disinterested. “Thought there was supposed to be some kind of light or something?”

  “We don’t need it,” she said, unsure if that was true, but it felt right. She was going on a feeling. A crazed and absurd leap into the unknown. There was no denying the tensile urgency in her chest, the sense of something waiting down the mountain, a searing gravity in every cell of muscle and bone.

  “This is the most damn fool thing I ever done,” Pink said, sweeping his head from side to side. He zipped up his coat and flipped up the collar to cover his ears, tucking his head down into the opening. “After you,” he said, bowing, sweeping his hand away in a mock princely gesture.

  *****

  Trekking down through the woods, Michelle no longer saw the snow as a sparkling new surface on the world but more a disguise for the ice, loose leaves, and shifting soil that lay beneath it. The farther they traveled from the cabin, the more treacherous the footing became. Without warning, the ground would sweep out from under her feet and drop her in the snow. Each time Pink landed on his butt, he cursed, rolled over, and tried pushing himself back up, getting to both knees first, then one knee, sometimes falling again when he tried to stand. Snow powdered his clothes. Michelle brushed herself off each time she fell. Pink came up behind her once and slapped snow from her coat, proceeding down her backside until Michelle pulled away and said she’d be fine.

  “Don’t want you to catch pneumonia,” he said.

  “Yeah, thanks.” she said.

  After they’d gone a little farther, Michelle spun back to look toward the cabin, upset she’d forgotten to turn on the porch light. She couldn’t see anything. Snow came so hard the air was like fog, and so cold it felt like the night could break apart.

  “So how much farther?” Pink asked. “Seems like we’re lost.”

  His comment was flippant and laced with ridicule. He’d probably never been lost in his life, she figured, especially in these woods. Michelle pictured him hunting every square inch of this mountain, knowing every clump of dirt, every stone, branch, fern, and snake hole.

  “Should have brought us a quart of Lyman’s lightning for our little rendezvous,” Pink said. “Something to kill the chill.”

  In spite of his sarcasm and prurient innuendos, there was an allure about Pink, one that was oddly endearing and made Michelle feel safe and calm in his presence. Maybe it was his confidence and compassion, his cheery cynicism, or adolescent guile, or some unwavering concoction of all these traits. He wasn’t a handsome man in the slick Hollywood sense, but under all his wayward cherubness was a rugged, undeniable charm.

  Michelle was surprised to find herself thinking of Pink in this way, thinking of him at all. Faced with the cold and darkness, her mind had unknowingly swerved toward human contact, the unlikely attraction she felt toward this peculiar man. It wasn’t sexual, but more like a sibling camaraderie, or the first flowering of a blissfully troubling friendship. If nothing else, Michelle admired his devotion. Even as he cheated on his wife, lied to his mother, and deceived everyone around him, it seemed there was nothing he wouldn’t do for someone he cared about. Maybe, in some strange way, he reminded her of Cliff, the Cliff she’d fallen in love with over twenty years ago, the Cliff who drove by her house every day for a month holding a red rose out the window when she’d gotten grounded for staying out all night. Where had that Cliff gone?

  “Why we stopping?” Pink asked, walking up beside Michelle.

  She was lost, but didn’t want to admit it. And cold. And scared. What was she doing on the side of a mountain in the middle of a snowstorm? “We probably should go back,” she said. She looked up the slope, then down, to the side, blizzard in every direction.

  “Sure you don’t want to go on?” Pink said.

  Michelle wanted to know what Pink’s mother had told him, how she’d persuaded him to come with her.

  “I have no idea what we’re doing,” she finally said, blowing into her hands to warm them. Neither her nor Pink were dressed for this kind of weather.

  “Can’t go back,” Pink said. “No way I’m climbing back up that hill. Let’s go on. We’re not far from my mama’s house. About a mile or so.”

  “We’ll never find it,” she said, seeing something move beyond Pink. She hadn’t realized the blizzard had eased, visibility improving as the moon bled through the thinner clouds. She pointed at the dark shape in the distance, its silhouette padding close to the snow. Pink turned and squinted, neither of them speaking.

  “What is that?” she whispered.

  “Too big for a bobcat,” he said. “And sure ain’t no deer or bear. Don’t move right.”

  The creature skulked across the frozen terrain, its body close to the surface. It didn’t look very big to Michelle, but it was still a ways off.

  “Looks like a damn black panther,” Pink said.

  “Aren’t those just in Africa or something?” she said.

  “No. Panther’s a mountain lion. Years ago, these parts were filled with ’em. Unusual to see a black one though. Never saw one before.”

  In a moment the animal was gone. Michelle hadn’t even seen where it went, disappearing into the hemlocks and shadows.

  “I don’t know if we should feel privileged,” Pink said, “or cursed. After all, it was a black cat.” At this, Pink chuckled and slid his eyes toward Michelle. “Hope you’re not superstitious.”

  Michelle never quite knew how to read Pink.

  Before she could ponder his statement much longer, a bright light flashed and rippled through the dark sky beyond the trees, like an enormous electric eel twisting through the clouds, followed a minute later by low, rumbling thunder. Michelle looked at Pink. He shrugged. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Never seen that before, either. Not in a damn snowstorm. Must be the Quickening.”

  Michelle had no idea what Pink was referring to, but he seemed amused by his own comment. Snow began to fall again, as if the lightning had ripped open a massive cloud. Michelle resigned herself to going back to Mrs. Souder’s house for the night. There seemed no point in going on—in search of a gateway—if there was no light guiding them. Michelle was surprised her vocabulary now included words like gateway.

  Pink now led the way, using his arms to sweep limbs from his path, snow dumping from branches as he pushed them to the side. Michelle’s attention shifted between Pink’s footprints in the snow and the dark material of his coat. She stayed far enough back so the branches wouldn’t whip her face. He looked like a bear making its fierce, undaunted trek through the woods and weather, as if Pink had been born in a moss-covered hollow log and possessed some special symbiosis with the outdoors.

  They had traveled probably a hundred yards or so when Pink stopped in front of her, his hand resting against a tree, his shoulders suddenly and eerily without a head. The image startled Michelle, quashing her breath, until she realized he had his head bent forward. When she came closer, she could see he was exhausted.

  “What’s wrong?” Michelle asked, walking around to face him. He raised his eyes to her, as if lifting his skull was impossible, too heavy to bring upright. Pain creased his brow into tight accordion ridges.

  “My stomach’s full of firecrackers,” Pink said. “I can’t hardly move.” He took a deep breath and tried to straighten. When he did, pain splashed across his face. He clutched his abdomen and collapsed on the snow.

  “Pink!” Michelle shouted, dropping down next to him.

  His mouth was a craggy, open hole, his eyes thin crevices in a hardened face. He rolled to his side, his knees springing to his chest as if he were reverting to his most primal remembrances. When he moaned, his legs shot out straight then folded back upon him until he was once again a tight ball in the snow. Between his weight and movement, the snow around him hollowed
into a small cavern, as if he were inadvertently burying himself.

  Michelle wiped the sweat from his brow with her palm. She searched her pockets for a tissue, but found only the pentagram, recalling how she’d come down the mountain looking for Cliff, free of incidents other than falling and cutting herself. But those seemed like the normal kinds of things that would happen to someone trying to blaze a trail down a dark mountainside on a bleak, rainy night. Michelle remembered what Mrs. Souder had said about the amulet, how it protected its owner. She removed the pentagram from her pocket and placed it into Pink’s palm until his features relaxed. As the skin of his face slackened, she felt her insides tighten, her stomach sparking little fires. She felt herself getting dizzy, the cramping growing worse. She opened Pink’s fingers and pressed the pentagram against his palm with hers, weaving her fingers through his to hold the pendant firmly, their hands clamped together like the pages of a book pressing a fresh rose. Her pain subsided.

  She craned her head, searching the slurry of snow and darkness, unsure where they were, how far they were from the house. She considered going the rest of the way holding hands with Pink, sharing the protection of the pentagram, but she wasn’t sure which was worse: The physical pain, or the emotional torment of myriad realities, the strain that information placed on logic, on one’s own mental stability. “It would drive him insane,” Pink’s mother had said. Maybe insanity was better. Not the torture she was experiencing, not the slow erosion of facts, but true insanity, where all consciousness of who you are, where you are, melts to a seamless dream. Pink stirred, and Michelle tried to help him up to a sitting position, not releasing his hand until Pink took curious notice of their fingers entwined. She cupped the pentagram into her palm and slid it back into her pocket.

  “Ain’t sure I can stand,” he said. “I must have me a damn flu bug or something.” He surveyed the area as if it had been familiar at one time but wasn’t now. He took Michelle’s hand and she helped him up. She asked if he was okay when she noticed how unsteady he looked brushing snow from his trousers. Pink shivered, holding himself in a bear hug.

  “I’m freezing to death,” he said, his face blistered with sweat. He looked around, then at his shoes wet with snow.

  “I’m sorry, Pink,” Michelle said.

  “Don’t be sorry. Let’s get to my mama’s house so I can warm up.”

  They picked their way down the slope, holding to saplings, bracing against tree trunks, Michelle leading a few yards in front. They both stopped when they saw the light.

  “What the heck . . . ?” Pink said, doubling over before he could finish, falling to the snow.

  “Pink!”

  He grimaced and cupped his hands over his face, his elbows tucked into his stomach, and kicked his legs, once again writhing in the snow, convulsing. Michelle took the pendant from her pocket again and held it against the back of Pink’s neck until he stopped moving. Blood rushed back to his face, his features growing calm.

  “Pink?” she whispered, kneeling next to him. “Pink?”

  He opened his eyes and held them on Michelle, panic shifting across his face. “What’s happening?” he said. “Can you hear that?” He wiggled his body toward Michelle, pushing his weight against her knees.

  “What? What do you hear?”

  “Voices,” he said. “People mumbling, groaning. Can’t you hear them?” His head swiveled on his shoulders, his eyes wide, his fingers digging into Michelle’s leg. “They’re everywhere. Can’t you hear them?”

  Michelle couldn’t hear anything but the low grumble of thunder in the distance. “It’s thunder, Pink,” she said. “That’s what you’re hearing.” He squeezed her tighter, wedging his shoulder against her thigh. She wove her arms around him and held the pendant against his flesh until his body relaxed.

  “Pink, we need to get up and run as fast as we can toward that light. Then we’ll be safe.” It felt like a lie. She wasn’t sure what would happen to Pink when they reached it, if they even could.

  Pink stared up at her, his eyes hollow, glazed. She was helping him to his feet when she caught movement off to her left. The ground trembled. The branches above them knocked together, though the air was dead still.

  Michelle set her gaze toward the thick hemlocks fifty yards beyond an old stump and saw something drift between the shaggy bows. Each time she caught sight of it her breath snagged. For a moment she thought it might be the panther again, but it was too tall. Whatever it was, it walked upright. That’s when it appeared in the opening between the hemlocks and came toward them. The figure was dark, moving unimpeded by snow or obstacles. Pink was shivering again, his face nestled against Michelle’s abdomen. She felt Pink jerk and was fairly certain he had yet to notice the apparition.

  It moved closer, but now there were more of them, floating among the trees, shifting shadows. Michelle tried to convince herself that that’s what they were, just shadows of clouds and tree trunks tossed there by the moon.

  “Get up, Pink, we need to go.”

  Pink wouldn’t release her legs. She pulled the pendant from his neck and felt his hold on her tighten. The figures moved closer, and as they did, it seemed the snow began to disappear. Not melting but vanishing.

  “Pink. Get up. Please.”

  Pink held his hands over his ears, as if trying to block out some deafening noise, but there was nothing, no sound at all. The snow was gone, the ground dry, as if it were the middle of summer.

  The figures stopped thirty yards away, figures that appeared wavy in the light-starved bracken. One came forward, a woman, moonlight flashing across her features as she drifted between the branches. Pink had rolled himself into a ball, his hands covering his ears. “Stop!” he yelled, scooting closer to Michelle, his body fully against her now.

  “Come on, Pink,” Michelle said. “Get up.”

  The woman came within a few feet of Michelle and looked at her, then down at Pink. She was young, beautiful. Her lavender nightgown was damp and clung to her body, revealing her breasts and the flesh of her tummy. Pink took his hands away from his ears and looked at the woman.

  “Isabelle? What the hell?” Pink said.

  Pink seemed to be listening to the woman, though her lips never moved. Now the other figures moved toward them. As they came closer, Michelle could not make out what they were doing. It appeared as though they were approaching backward; she could see no facial features. At first, she figured it was a trick of light, some undependable offering of the moon. But when they were too close for Michelle to deny what she was seeing, she had to look away. Their skin was craggy and wrinkled, but they had no faces. Michelle could not look back at them. When she tried, her chest tightened, the queasy current in her stomach pulsing. The woman Pink had called Isabelle turned and moved away through the shadows of the trees and was gone. Michelle couldn’t even tell if she had feet. It was as if Michelle were witnessing the scene through some restricted lens where peripheral detail would not register in her brain.

  When the other figures surrounded Pink, he backed up toward Michelle. “What the hell is this?” he said to her. “Is this a damn nightmare?”

  “Come on, Pink,” she said, grabbing his hand in hers, the pendant trapped in the nest of their pressed palms. “Move.” She pulled him forward. He stumbled at first, as if his legs would not function, but then fell into a trot behind her, telling her to slow down. Michelle fell into the rhythm of a skipping gallop to hop over fallen trees, using her free hand to swat branches from her face, the other hand holding fast to Pink. His grip grew stronger, not as if he was struggling to keep up, but more that he was gaining strength himself, until his pace finally matched hers. The light was in front of them, but still appeared as far away as when they’d fled the queer beings. She wasn’t sure if they were following, too afraid to look back and check. Pink ran beside her now, until he tripped over a decaying log, dragging her down with him. She
flew headfirst and rolled, leaves and sticks crunching until she slammed into a tree trunk. Her ribs burned, sending a fire through her torso, into her shoulders. Michelle pushed up on one arm trying to tune her breathing, make it regular again, but she felt sick to her stomach, as if her organs were expanding, cutting off her air. That’s when she heard noises—a low keening, groaning. She tried to convince herself it was Pink, but there were too many voices. It seemed the rhododendron had come to life, all the leaves moving, rustling, in the perfect stillness. The ground shifted beneath her. She grabbed at the dirt, trying to hold on. Then she heard someone walking. “Is that you, Pink?”

  She tried to get up, but her muscles were tight, constricted, like they were being twisted off the bone. A whining shriek rose in the woods, distant sounding at first, eventually growing so loud Michelle had to cover her ears. Even with her palms pressed to the sides of her skull, the noise felt like a torch cutting through her hands, burning into her brain. That’s when she realized she’d lost the pentacle.

  She groped the ground, the piercing trill like the sustained scream of a hundred sirens. She had no idea where Pink was. The faceless beings appeared from behind trees, forming a circle around her, coming closer. She could barely move, her stomach rising into her throat, her arms, legs, and chest congealing into one lumped mass. She scratched her fingernails through the dirt and dead leaves. The smell of something spoiled and moldy and dead rose from the earth. Her bones tingled, growing numb, as if dissolving. Her throat closed when one of the beings touched her shoulder. Another grabbed her ankle. She couldn’t breathe, then felt the grip of another, their touch like cold gel. A high-pitched tone emanated from the center of her forehead, burrowing deep into her neck, her back. Michelle clawed the ground, grit and mud catching beneath her fingernails—then something hard and cold. She closed her fingers on it. It didn’t register at first. The pendant. Michelle felt something grip her shoulder, grab her foot, begin to drag her away. She squeezed the pendant into her palm and held it tight, shutting her eyes. The nausea dissipated slowly, the ache leaving her arms and legs, until the buzz was gone from her head.