Fire on Headless Mountain, page 5
They boiled the pot dry and filled it again. The burning propane made its own water, condensing so thickly on the windows that it dribbled down the glass. Virgil scraped it off with the vindow-viper and collected that as well.
By dribbles and drips, the Coke bottle slowly filled. Ice-clear water rose through the narrow waist of the bottle, over its shoulders, into the neck. Virgil emptied it out into a jar and started filling it again. But it was barely half full when the stove started spluttering. The flames turned from blue to yellow and shrank to tiny fingers. Then, with a pop, they vanished altogether.
“Well, that’s it,” said Joshua. “We’re out of propane.”
As the flame went out, the night closed in around the van. Inside, Rusty’s lights made everything yellow and dim. Outside, it was so dark that Virgil couldn’t even see the trees at the side of the road. He remembered his mother’s expression:
Black as a witch’s hat.
8
The Wicked One
Forest fires never sleep. Though sunset cooled the air, the Avalanche Fire kept growing. It spread across the mountain at half a mile an hour, climbing slowly toward the summit.
A hundred feet above it stood a rocky bluff twice the height of the tallest trees. A sheer cliff of gray rock so remote that it had been climbed only three times, it was known by mountaineers as El Malvado, “The Wicked One.” It formed a natural break that contained the fire on the lower part of the mountain.
The night wind helped as well. It blew downhill, holding back the fire. The valley had become a lake of swirling smoke five hundred feet deep.
9
Screaming in the Night
Can we light a fire?” asked Virgil. “We could set up the distiller and make more water.”
“Sure,” said Kaitlyn.
But Joshua didn’t like that idea. “What if we burn down the forest?”
“You sound just like Dad,” said Kaitlyn with a bright laugh. “A little fire’s not going to hurt anything. Mom would have one going by now.”
That was certainly true. Their mom had loved her campfires, even in the rain. Every night at Little Lost Lake she had sat mesmerized by flames that danced inside a circle of stones. She had said once that fire was the first pet that humans ever made. “We captured it from the wild,” she’d said, “when we were still living in caves. We tamed it and fed it. We made it ours.”
“I think we need one tonight,” said Kaitlyn. “It will keep the dark away.”
That made the night sound dangerous to Virgil, a wild thing that would attack them if they couldn’t hold it back. He found a dark forest ten times more frightening than a dark house. At Little Lost Lake, he had never wandered far from Rusty after the sun went down, certain that he would go crazy if he ever got lost in the nighttime forest.
Kaitlyn gathered wood along the road. In the middle of the gravel pit, thirty feet from Rusty, she made a pile of twigs and tiny branches that looked like a game of pick-up sticks. She lit the fire with the old BIC lighter they’d carried from state to state for almost three years. Her fire was barely bigger than a dinner plate, but Virgil set up his distiller beside it, propping the coffeepot on a pyramid of stones.
It worked, but not for long. First the hose began to melt. Then the kettle tipped over, spilling water into the fire, almost drowning the little flames.
Joshua said, “Give it up, Virg. We’ve got enough water for tomorrow. Let’s just sit for a while.”
It was a warm night, and the smoke from the fire chased the bugs away. With his brother on one side and his sister on the other, Virgil felt safe—even happy. They sat silently, watching the flames, until a rustling sound from the edge of the road made them all turn their heads at once.
“What was that?” asked Kaitlyn.
A mouse scurried out of the darkness. Two more came behind it, and they crossed the road in timid little dashes, stopping halfway across to lift their heads and twitch their noses before hurrying on.
“Three blind mice, see how they run,” said Joshua.
Virgil laughed. He leaned back on the gravel with his hands behind his head and stared up at the stars. He liked to watch for satellites and saw one right away, a white dot racing across the Big Dipper. He tried to imagine what the tiny fire on the Boneyard would look like from there. It would be a single dot of light in the endless blackness of the valley of the Bigfoot, as insignificant as a single pixel on a giant IMAX screen. It would be exactly the same as what he was seeing as he watched the satellite cross the void between the stars. But to him, right beside it, the fire seemed powerful. It threw out a circle of light that fluttered and pulsed at the edges, as the darkness tried to force its way in.
A barred owl hooted its wondering, plaintive cry: Who looks for you? Who looks for you?
“Let’s tell ghost stories,” said Kaitlyn.
Joshua said, “Sure.”
But Virgil cried, “No! Let’s tell funny stories.”
“I know one,” said Joshua. He leaned back from the fire, stretched out his legs, and began an old story—about the day when both Kaitlyn and Virgil had fallen into an open septic tank. It made them laugh as though they hadn’t heard it a hundred times, and when it was finished, Virgil said to tell another. Josh did. He told story after story, all the favorites that he’d learned from their mom and dad. There were ones about Kaitlyn and ones about Virgil, ones about their crazy uncle Birdy. Virgil kept poking the fire to send sparks whirling away into the dark. With that he made the circle stronger, and they all felt happy inside it.
Until an hour before midnight.
The first scream came out of the forest then, short and piercing. It made them turn all at once toward the sound, and then all at once toward one another. Their faces shone orange in the firelight; their voices fell to whispers.
“What was that?” asked Virgil.
“I don’t know,” said Joshua. “Maybe a squirrel.”
“A squirrel?” Kaitlyn laughed a crazy sort of laugh. “I never heard a squirrel make a sound like that.”
“Let’s go sit in the van,” said Virgil.
“Just a minute,” said Kaitlyn. She put more wood on the fire, stretching the circle of light into the forest. Then they sat and waited, barely breathing.
Virgil thought of the men in Kaitlyn’s book, hearing a howling that none of them had ever heard before. Their story hadn’t ended with the creature tearing off their heads. It had gotten even scarier. “On moonlit nights their ghosts have been seen in the forest, searching blindly for their own heads.”
The second scream was louder. Shrill and startling, it made Virgil jump.
“Oh, Josh,” whispered Kaitlyn. “That sounds like a woman. She’s getting murdered or something.”
“No one’s getting murdered,” said Joshua. But his voice was too shaky to sound convincing. “I think mountain lions sound like that.”
He’s only guessing, Virgil thought. He doesn’t know about mountain lions.
But something was out there, and Virgil listened for the crack of a twig or the rustle of leaves that would mean it was moving toward them. He felt his nerves twisting into little knots like the rubber band on a toy airplane.
Joshua took his phone from his pocket. He swiped the screen, turned on the flashlight, and tried to light up the forest around them. But it made gruesome shadows among the trees and didn’t help at all.
“We should sit in the van,” said Virgil again, almost desperate now.
“Yes, why don’t you do that?” asked Kaitlyn. “Go sit in the van and lock the door.”
But Virgil didn’t move. It was too far to go on his own, across the little clearing. It was too dark, the trees too close around him. The thing would catch him before he was halfway to the van.
Joshua poked at the fire. He stirred up a cloud of sparks that lit his face with a ghastly gruesome light. The circle grew bigger, then shrank again as the flames cowered down among the bits of wood. Virgil stared straight into the flames, not wanting to see what was out there, waiting with his hands squeezed tightly into fists.
But nothing bounded from the dark to kill them. Nothing screamed or shrieked or made any sound at all.
In the fire a branch exploded, flinging red embers across the gravel pit. The sound made them all start, and then laugh nervously. Joshua used a stick to scrape the shattered embers into a little heap, which pulsed in the dark like a beating heart.
“Well, I guess it’s gone,” he said. “Whatever it was.”
Virgil thought, No, it hasn’t gone. It’s right there. It’s just outside the circle.
But Joshua shut off his light, tossed his stick into the fire, and said, “Let’s go to bed now.”
“You guys go ahead,” said Kaitlyn. “I’ll wait till the fire goes out.”
“Okay, I’ll wait with you,” said Joshua.
Virgil was already on his feet, but he sat right back down again. “I’ll wait too,” he said.
“Oh, Virg.” Kaitlyn sighed and touched his arm. “We’ll be right here. We’re just twenty feet away.”
It was at least thirty feet, but Virgil didn’t say so. “I want to hear another story,” he said. “Please.”
He would never get to sleep if those screams were the last things he heard before bed. They would ring in his ears all night long.
“All right, one more,” said Joshua.
“Tell the bicycle story,” said Virgil.
Joshua groaned. “I already told it.”
“I know,” said Virgil. “I love that story.”
So Joshua began it all over again. “When Dad and Birdy were little kids, they lived at the top of a hill.”
He told the story just the way their father had always told it, almost word for word. “It was a very long hill, and the road turned back and forth, and down at the bottom was a swamp.”
Virgil knew the story so well that his mind went straight to the ending. He thought about his dad and Uncle Birdy coated in mud, about his granddad hosing them down and then hanging them on the clothesline with the laundry. Thinking about it made him laugh before Joshua was even halfway into the story. Feeling cozy and happy, he wriggled up beside the fire.
And the screaming started again.
Joshua turned his head and gazed into the darkness as though he was watching a ghost.
Embers popped in the fire with a sound that seemed too loud. They made little bursts of light that pushed back the dark for a moment or two. Virgil wondered if they might push it back so far that he would see something standing just beyond the circle’s edge, something huge and shaggy.
There was another scream. Joshua turned his head toward the forest. “You’re right,” he said. “It sounds like a woman.”
“You should go look,” said Kaitlyn.
“No!” said Virgil. “Stay here.”
But Kaitlyn said, “Please, Josh. You’re probably right; it’s just an animal. But we have to know for sure.”
Joshua got up from the fire. It was obvious that he didn’t want to go. He stood with his hands hanging down at his sides, still peering into the forest. A bat fluttered through the air above him and went wheeling away into the darkness.
“You should stay here with Virgil, and I’ll go look,” said Kaitlyn. “Girls see better in the dark.”
Virgil had no idea if that was true. He thought she was only saying it to make Joshua feel better.
It seemed that Joshua thought that too. “No, I’m going,” he said. Then he reached down and pulled from the fire the same stick he’d put into it just a short while before. Little waggling fingers of flames clung to the tip.
Holding it high, he led the way to the van. He ushered Virgil and Kaitlyn inside, then grabbed the door by the handle to slide it shut.
But Kaitlyn blocked it with her foot. “Leave it open,” she said.
Joshua turned around and took a step away. His hands were shaking so badly that the flames swooped through the air on the end of the stick. But he took another step, and then another, and suddenly he was striding away across the gravel pit, through the campfire’s circle of light. As he reached the edge and climbed up to the forest, it seemed that he took a part of the circle along with him. But it was pale and fluttery, and it grew fainter as each little finger let go. Soon all he carried was a red glow, an eye that winked in the darkness as he passed behind the trees. It vanished, reappeared, then vanished again.
Virgil heard Joshua calling out, “Hello?” But only once, and then there was nothing. He moved his head up and down, back and forth, trying to see where his brother had gone. “Can you see him, Kait?”
“No.” She stepped out onto the Boneyard.
“Don’t go away!” cried Virgil.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I just want to stand outside.”
Virgil couldn’t see much more than the starry sky and the hints of things around him: the pale strip of the Boneyard, the bushes at the roadside, the trees behind them. But there was no red eye moving through the forest, no sign of his brother.
Kaitlyn called out, though not very loudly, “Josh?”
There was no answer.
“Joshua?”
Virgil thought how easy it would be to get lost in the darkness. The fire seemed too small to guide his brother back.
“I’ll turn on the lights,” he said. He moved through the van, switching them on one by one, until the canvas tent glowed. Finally, he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned on the high-beam headlights.
They lit up the Boneyard as far as the bend, glaring off the gravel. A cloud of moths flurried round the lamps, and their shadows wheeled across the road as big as owls. A raccoon stood frozen in the middle of the road, looking back at Virgil with its eyes gleaming yellow. Then it hunched up its back and scuttled into the darkness.
Kaitlyn shouted again. “Josh!”
Virgil honked the horn. He pressed hard on the big, round button in the middle of the steering wheel. They had always laughed at the sound it made, a hollow hooting beep, but Virgil imagined his brother hearing it far away, lifting his head, trying to tell where it was coming from. Beep! Beep!
Virgil kept honking, and Kaitlyn kept shouting, and down by the bend in the road a white glow appeared in the forest. It slid between the trees and out to the road, and into the bright beams of Rusty’s headlights stumbled Joshua, lighting his way with his iPhone. He turned it off as he walked quickly toward the van.
“Here comes Josh!” cried Virgil. He clambered down from Rusty’s front seat and ran to meet their brother.
“Stay in the van!” shouted Joshua. Almost jogging down the road, he turned Virgil around without stopping and herded him back to the van, “Hurry,” he said. “But don’t run.”
Kaitlyn was waiting there when they came up together. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Something’s out there,” said Joshua. “It was trying to get me.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” He pushed Virgil and Kaitlyn through the big door, climbed in behind them, and slammed it shut. “Turn out the lights,” he said.
Virgil switched off the headlights, and Kaitlyn the lamps. She left only one of them burning, the little yellow light above the sink. With Virgil in the front, Kaitlyn and Joshua in the back, they looked through the windows into the dark.
“So what happened out there?” asked Kaitlyn.
“Well, I didn’t get very far,” said Joshua. “I was barely in among the trees. Then I got that feeling—you know—like someone’s watching you?”
Virgil nodded. He knew that feeling well.
“I called out, but nobody answered,” said Joshua. “There was something nearby. I just knew it,” said Joshua. “It might have been a person, or it might have been an animal; I just knew it was there. So I blew out the torch and waited for it to go away. But it didn’t. I could hear it coming closer. It was moving through the bushes. It sounded like it was over here, and then over there, and then behind me.”
“What do you think it was?” asked Virgil.
“I don’t know.”
“How big was it?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“But was it bigger than a bear?”
“Virgil! I didn’t see it.”
They were almost at code yellow. Kaitlyn said, “He wants to know if it was Sasquatch.”
Joshua laughed. “Seriously? A Sasquatch?”
“It’s possible!” cried Virgil.
“No, it’s not,” said Joshua.
“How do you know?”
“Because there’s no such thing.”
“Dead parrot,” said Virgil.
“Grow up,” said Joshua.
“Don’t tell me to grow up,” said Virgil. “Mom used to say that.” Whenever someone in her class gave an answer like Joshua’s, she would say, “That’s a dead parrot. It doesn’t tell me anything.”
“So what happened next?” asked Kaitlyn. “What did you do?”
“I backed away,” said Joshua. “Slowly. Like they tell you to do if you meet a bear. Whatever it was, it kept coming after me. I couldn’t see a thing, but I heard it. It was hunting me.”
“You think it’s still out there?” asked Virgil.
“Probably,” said Joshua.
“Do you think it will try to get in?”
“No, Virg,” said Kaitlyn, in her calming voice. “We’re safe in here. Whatever’s out there, it will be gone by the morning.”
For the first time in seven years, Joshua slept inside the van. He had a little orange pup tent stuffed in the bag under the back seat, but he didn’t set it up that night. Instead, he used the big bed above the engine compartment, his parents’ place. Kaitlyn climbed into her old spot on the platform she called “the top shelf,” high under the canvas roof. Virgil had thought he’d be moving up there at last, with Joshua in his tent and Kaitlyn on the big bed. But he ended up on the floor where he’d always slept, with his head between the front seats.
Just as before, every place in the van was full. But everything was different. They didn’t tell silly jokes before settling down to sleep. They didn’t talk about the things they would do in the morning. Now there was only the whining of the mosquitoes. Virgil missed his mother’s laugh.
