"Where do we look first?" Sue asked.
Odus stroked the lean, sinewy neck of Sister Mary, who nuzzled against the flannel of his shirt. "I think our animal friend here knows the way."
Animals.
Alex Eakins sensed their presence as he threaded his way up me narrow mountain trail. This path had been marked by buffalo and elk, which had walked these ridges in great numbers before European hunters had permanently removed them from the landscape. Bears, bobcats, deer, foxes, raccoons, opossums, and other creatures had used the route in their stead. Mountain lions had once lurked in me branches above, waiting for easy game. Alex could feel the power of all those thousands of feet, hooves, and paws that had passed here before. But mostly, he could smell the raw musky funk of goat shit.
As daylight had failed, he'd relied on the flashlight to follow the goats' trail. When night had finally pulled its dark sheet over the sky, his other, more primitive senses had emerged at their keenest. The air was chilly, ripe, and moist, full of the fecundity of fall's decay. The forest had a taste that lingered with each breath, the acidic tang of oak, the bitter bite of wild cherry and birch, the muddy richness of a hundred seeping springs. His power at detecting scent had also heightened, until he found he could smell not only the goats' spoor, but their fur and their ripe rutting aromas as well. Several times he thought he'd heard dozens of them moving through the unseen trees ahead, and wondered what he would do if he stepped into a clearing and found them all staring at him.
Alex patted the bow. He'd handle it, by the grace of God and the pissed-off fury of a man who had suffered trespassing.
His footing had grown more treacherous, the soles of his boots slick with the offal of those he pursued. The soil, though packed down by the centuries of use, had been scarred and tilled by the goat hooves. They were mountain creatures by nature, browsing the high forests when left in the wild, where their sure footing gave them an advantage over predators. But Alex felt his weapons and determination made him equal to the task.
The degree of the slope leveled out a little, allowing him to catch his breath. Near the peak, the trees thinned and moonlight spilled over the gleaming protrusions of granite. The gray boulders were scarred by moss, worn smooth by the slow work of a hundred thousand rains. The path narrowed as it wound between the rocks, and the hoot of an owl made the mountaintop seem like the last outpost on an alien boundary. Alex didn't contemplate the danger of breaking a leg or falling from a ledge. His path was sure and righteous. Revenge always delivered its own justification.
Below, through a gap in the trees, he could see the few twinkling lights of Solom. The bulb on the porch of the general store cast its pumpkin-colored glow, the center of a constellation of houses. The river road was like a dark black snake winding through the valley, and icy moonlight glinted off metal barn roofs. The trees thinned and Alex came to a clearing. He paused and listened, the wind playing through the dead and dying leaves. A soft murmur arose, like the babbling of a brook. After a moment, he recognized the sound as that of lowering goats, their bleats muted but uneasy. The bastards were just ahead, probably milling around in stoned-out glory, chewing bark and rocks in their advanced stage of marijuana munchies.
Alex slipped an arrow into the Pearson bow and made a stealthy approach. The ridge seemed brighter here, as if a last finger of daylight held a tentative grip. Alex eased his way through a stand of laurels and saw what was in the clearing.
Weird Dude Walking stood in the center, on a large slab of stone. The goats knelt around him, their heads tilted up as if awaiting words of capricious wisdom. Car headlights glared from behind the opposite stand of trees, moths swirling in the twin beams. Three people stood in silhouette among the trees.
Alex drew back the bowstring, intending to send an arrow through the dude's heart.
Weird Dude Walking turned to where Alex was hidden in the vegetation. "Welcome, friend," he said his voice like smoke.
Chapter Thirty-three
Katy guided the Subaru off the highway onto the old logging road, sure that the last bit of sanity had slipped from her, leaving the nerves of her brain raw and exposed.
Why else would she be taking directions from a ghost? Her instinct had been to stay on the highway and make time to Florida, maybe stopping at a Holiday Inn halfway between. Anything that would have put distance between Jett and Solom. But Rebecca's lost voice had connected with her on some primal, feminine level. They were two women who had traveled the same path, though Rebecca's had ended too early and violently.
"Well, Mom, this is just great," Jett said. "You brought me here to get me off drugs and then you drop me right into the biggest bad-acid trip in the universe."
Jett had been reluctant to get back in the car after Rebecca had shared her story. But Katy's determination had convinced Jett they had a duty to obey. It was a little like a stray kitten that comes yowling in hunger around your doorstep. Never mind that this particular feline could remove its head and was built of see-through supernatural stuffing.
"Just hang on, honey," Katy said. She glanced in the rearview. Rebecca was gone but her words came as if she were leaning over the seat: up the mountain.
Up, an ascension, as if the journey had a spiritual as well as physical element. But didn't all journeys? If you thought of life as a road that must be traveled, then you had all kinds of exit ramps, signal lights, pit stops, and, eventually, a vehicle breakdown. Each fork was an opportunity, as the poet Robert Frost had pointed out, but no one had ever figured out if each road taken was a choice or an obligation. If you took the road less traveled was it because you wanted to, or because you were compelled?
Katy decided this road was definitely the one less traveled because the Subaru bottomed out in the ruts, the arcs of the headlights bouncing ahead like light sabers cutting a path through the wilderness. The car was all-wheel drive, which gave it enough traction to navigate the roughest parts of the old road but it groaned in protest as it leaped and jittered like a two-ton electrified frog.
"Mom, what are we supposed to do when we get there?"
"I don't think we're supposed to know," Katy said.
"You just have to get there," Rebecca said suddenly whole again, or the closest she could come to that state.
Jett jerked away, sitting forward in her seat, fighting the tension of the seat belt. "Hey! Don't do that. You're freaking me out enough already without popping out of thin air."
"I'm a ghost," Rebecca said. "What else do you expect me to do?"
"I see years of therapy ahead" Jett said.
"Just imagine the stories you'll have to tell your grandkids," Katy said wrestling the steering wheel as the car lurched over a f en sapling. "If I live that long. Let's not take that for granted yet. We're on a place called 'Lost Ridge' with a headless woman in the backseat." "They're waiting," Rebecca said. "They?" Katy asked. "The ones who are supposed to be there." "What's with the riddles?" Jett said. "If you know what's going to happen, why don't you tell us?"
David sat in the pickup truck's passenger seat, wiping his face with Ray's orange hunting vest. The interior light was on, and in its weak light David's cheeks were pale and bloodless. Ray's pipe wrench lay in the seat between them.
"You seen him, didn't you?" Ray said. They were brothers. They had fished together, fought together, lost their virginity to Mary Lou Slater together, were baptized together. They hadn't kept any secrets, not until the day the congregation went for style over substance eight years ago.
"Yeah," David said. "I looked in his grave."
"But he wasn't there."