A lonely crow swooped over, landing in the top of an old sycamore tree. The bird cawed a couple of times, and the sound was swallowed by the sickly blooming treetops. Chester worked his fresh tobacco into the old, enjoying the sting of nicotine against his gums. The moonshine jar in his pocket was half empty. He thought about taking a swig but decided against it.
Hell, must be getting religion or something. Next thing you know, I'll be blaming the devil for what happened to old Don Oscar. Maybe the easy answer is the best. Then at least it would all be God’s fault and the rest of us could go on home.
He swiveled his head, looking around the ridge. They were getting close to Don Oscar's property. If there were green lights, they should be able to see them from this rise. The sun was just now falling into the fingers of the trees and would soon crawl behind the mountains and die for the day. Chester was reconsidering his newfound abstinence when he first saw the opening.
"Well, I'll be dee-double-dipped in dog shit," he muttered. Then, loud enough for DeWalt to hear, he called through the trees.
"What's that… Chester? Did you… say something?" DeWalt yelled, between gasps.
"Get your flatlander ass up here and pinch me. Just so's I can be sure I'm not dreaming."
"Coming… you flannel-wearing… bastard," DeWalt said, breaking into a tortured trot. "Don't.. let your long johns… ride up your rump.”
Chester's thumb trembled on the twin hammers of the twenty-gauge. Not that buckshot would do a whole hell of a lot against that.
Then DeWalt was at his side, saying "Good God" in a hoarse, weak voice.
"It ain't nothing to do with God,” Chester said. “More like the garden gate to hell, if you ask me."
Below them, in an outcrop of mossy granite boulders, the light radiated green, fuzzy, and dismal. Chester thought it looked like the bonus light on that pinball machine down at the GasNGo over on Caney Fork. You had to knock a ball into the caved-out belly button of a painted Vegas showgirl to get the bonus. But this light looked like the jackpot for a game that had no score.
There must have been a springhead in the rocks, because a sluggish trickle of fluid roped down the gully. But it was no clean, pure mountain stream. It sparkled like rancid grapes, as if only part of the light were reflected, and the rest was swallowed and absorbed into the oozing green tongue that wound its way through the trees toward Stony Creek. The mud of the gully banks was veined with stringy white roots, as if a thousand giant spiders had spun sick webs.
The trees that bordered the outcrop were stunted and gnarled, darkened as if lightning-struck. Chester had the fleeting notion that they had grown heads and had bent low to eat their own trunks. No animals stirred in the heavy, still air of the ridge slope. It was almost as if the source of the green light had swallowed the atoms of the atmosphere.
Swallowed was the word that came to mind, because the thing definitely gave Chester the impression of a mouth. It was a grotto, a jagged opening under the rocks. Soil was spilled around the edge of the opening as if around a woodchuck's hole. Chester could clearly see inside the grotto because the fluorescence was coming from somewhere within the earthen throat.
Along the walls of the cave, which angled downward toward the base of the mountain, yellowish tendrils and umbels dangled like tiny slick stalactites, as long as arms. They writhed and curled like eyeless maggots searching for dead food.
The mouth of the grotto was large enough to hold a dozen people. Paste-colored stones huddled inside like teeth that were impatient for something to grind. In the throat, ribbed bands of unnatural color shimmered in chartreuse, electric lemon, and cadmium yellow, greasy glow-in-the-dark colors. Deeper inside, leathery pedicels quivered like thirsty taproots.
"Is that your government conspiracy?" Chester said, after they'd both seen more than enough. They had reflexively crouched behind the locust, as if the cave-thing had eyes and would spot them.
"What in heaven's name is it?" DeWalt said, still struggling to catch his breath.
Chester almost said, "Oh, just one of those Earth Mouths you hear about, like the ones in those old folk stories. No big deal. Hills are covered with them."
Because he was afraid that he was becoming used to the idea of mushbrained people and a world where the unreal was commonplace.
Instead, he took a serious bite into his chaw and said, "You're the man with the book-learning, why don't you tell me?"
"You can only be taught what is already known. And I don't think this falls into the category of ‘natural phenomena.’"
"What the hell do we do now? We've hunted down the bastard-and pardon me for giving it credence by calling it an ‘it’-but it ain't the kind of thing you shoot between the eyes and field dress and carry back home to the dinner table."
Chester was relieved to see that DeWalt's color had faded from beet red back to pink. Maybe the Yankee wouldn’t up and die on him just yet.
"That creek might explain the green rain I saw," DeWalt said. "It's like that cave is spewing the stuff out. Those roots are spreading out, whatever it is. And the mouth-"
Chester looked over his shoulder and met DeWalt's eyes. There, DeWalt said it first.
"Yeah, the mouth," DeWalt repeated. "The mouth goes into the mountain, but it feeds here. Can't you feel it?"
Chester nodded. He supposed he'd always had what DeWalt called a "kinship with nature," but he didn't want to be kin to whatever this thing was. He had enough fucked-up kin already, with his worthless sons Sylvester and Johnny Mack. Not to mention that liquor-pinching grandson of his, Junior. Now this mouth had squatted on his land, just crawled into the belly of Bear Claw and made itself at home with no respect for property lines.
"I can sure feel something, DeWalt. Like when you're standing under one of those transfer stations with all the electric cables crisscrossed over your head. Something invisible but strong enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and make your innards tingle. And if you listen close," Chester said, realizing for the first time that they had been whispering, as if the knotholes of the tainted trees were ears, "you can hear a little murmur inside the mouth. Almost like an ass-backward birdsong with a hard wind thrown in for good measure."
"Yes, I hear it. Sort of like music. The orchestra of the oubliette."
"Talk plain, you cufflink-wearing Yankee. I'm getting left far enough behind as it is."
"Something that sounds wrong. And looks wrong. But there it is. We can see it with our own eyes."
"But what are we going to do about it?" Chester's knees ached from stooping. "I don't think a shovel would do much good, even if we'd have brought one."
"Time to plan our next step, I suppose."
"I want all my steps to be backward, away from this damn dirt Mouth that looks like it's ready to suck something in."
They had scarcely noticed that darkness was settling around them like black ink. The fluorescence from the mouth was so bright that it lit up the pocket of woods like a used car lot. The sound of distant crickets warned Chester that night was pitching its tent. “I see enough. Too much. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
"I'm game," said DeWalt.
"Don't say that, especially when that Mouth looks like it's ready to do some hunting of its own."
He led DeWalt back toward the farmhouse, hoping his directional memory and woodsman's instinct held true. They reached the ridge overlooking the farm just as the sky turned from pink to violet. Chester was leading the way down one of his old hunting trails when he heard a twig snap. He spun, lowering his shotgun to waist level and pointing it toward the sound.