His grandfather tried to speak to him. The dry, cracked lips opened and whispered.
Something about his spirit.
The Indian’s hand slid over the ground to where he wished the dog’s warm body lay. There was nothing but dirt and pine needles.
Why did his spirit not give him a name or at least a sign? Had he taken the dog?
Steamy jungle heat drenched his body in sweat. Ah! His grandfather’s voice. He heard it clearly as he lay in the Asian bush with an arrow drawn back. A Russian rifle clicked down the path somewhere. They knew he was here, but they couldn’t see him. Good. They were frightened. The Indian smelled blood as he drew the arrow taut toward the chest. A quick, quiet exhalation, the hiss of air, then the strangled cry and he was running, stooped under the leaves, as rifle fire split the night . . .
A shudder whipcracked the Indian’s body. He grunted in fear as icy wetness coated his chest, his fingers, and caressed his neck, soft as cotton. His chest was covered with snowflakes.
Snow whispered through the hissing trees, branch to branch, causing the timbers to groan, whitening the ground into a pale, ghostly hue.
Helder’s voice boomed over the hills: “Ladies and gentlemen, one free drink on the house, courtesy of the great god Snow.”
The Indian whistled desperately for his dog. Winter or not, he wanted to get out of this place. He wanted his spirit back.
“Mountain weather” was Martha Lucas’s only comment about the falling snow dusting her hair. “Looks like it woke Moon up.”
She passed the binoculars to Jason, who observed Moon whistling into the woods. They were sharp, piercing, sad whistles, like a marmot’s. “That’s what the Bigfoot sounds like, too. The same whistle. That’s how they both summon the dog.”
“What do you think will happen to Moon when he learns the truth?” The Indian’s distress apparently affected Martha.
Jason pushed the glasses tight to his eyes. “Him? He’ll never learn the truth, not him. People like him always find a truth they want. He’ll make his spirit into a devil if he can’t have it as a god.”
Jason was depressed, and when he became depressed he became mad. If only he’d burned out that food in the mine and gone after them. If only he’d searched the slope instead of wasting time with Drake. If only this girl had not become entangled with everything. Dammit, dammit to hell and gone! Jason was so damned mad about this business that even his arm did not bother him any more, as if the poison had somehow moved from his body to his psyche.
When Lester awoke at midnight, he screeched in shock. He was surrounded by pitch-blackness as tight as a box-sized jail cell. Then he realized he was seated in his truck with the radio off and the windows coated with snow.
Snow.
“Shit,” he said, opening the door. He stepped out of the truck and promptly slipped on the ground.
The snowfall had stopped, leaving a coating that edged over his shoes. The trees were frosted in bony white. Although moonlight was gone, the snow crystals glittered from some light source he could not fathom.
More to the point, snow covered the trail down to the road. How in hell was he going to get home? His snow tires were down in his trailer, and that was a seven percent grade all the way.
“Shit,” he repeated.
He was answered by a snarl ahead of the truck.
The next three seconds were the bravest in Lester’s life. He slowly looked around into the trees while reaching through the window to the light switch on the dashboard.
Moon’s dog stood in the snow, growling at him, the light exploding in its eyes. A dead beaver’s head was clutched in its teeth.
“Hey, pooch. Pooch, pooch, pooch! You sorry sack of fleas, what are you doing out here?”
The dog slipped into the woods, a burst of sparkling snow marking its departure. Lester followed with his rifle. The dog ran up to a thick spruce, halted, and faced Lester again. It dropped the head and yowled in anger at him. The closer Lester got, the meaner the howls became. Now that was damned weird. That dog was real quiet around the Indian. What was it doing with that head? Where was the rest of the thing?
“I’m not going to do anything to you, boy. I just—”
A blood-freezing screech sailed out from the branches over Lester’s head. Lester did not have brains, but his reflexes were a source of pride. He jumped backward as the thing dive-bombed straight down with a squeal like chalk on a blackboard and killed itself in a sickening crunch of bone. The small, misshapen body thrashed holes in the snow.
Lester stepped clear and put three bullets into its back.
The dog howled and rushed into the woods, its barks transmuted into howls of terror.
Lester knew he was rich. This little thing here was some kind of baboon with a tiny tail and small fingers. It was about four feet long. There was a pelt there, not much, and kind of ratty-looking with ugly scabs and bare patches, but a pelt.
Well, Bigfeet had babies too, and this was good enough. He rolled it over with his foot. And looked at its face.
It was some seconds before Lester gained sufficient control of himself to grab its ankles and drag it to the truck. He swung it into the bed, where it landed like a feather, then climbed behind the wheel. Oblivious to his tires and the dangerously slippery road, he roared out onto the highway. As he left the forest he could still hear the barking dog.
He was kind of worried that his trailer on Hulcher Road was so isolated. It was all backed up in the trees on Colby’s south face. The Petrie family, next door, had gone off for the weekend.
He turned on the lights in his trailer and cleared dishes from a small Formica table that served as a dining area. His walls were papered with motorcycle photos in full color. His refrigerator was well stocked with beer and nothing but.
Only then did he return to the truck, clang down the tailgate, and look at the thing huddled on the metal.
Lester pulled it out by the ankles again. Its head bumped over the ground and up the cinder-block steps. He dragged it into the kitchen, leaving a trail of blood on the linoleum, then hoisted it up to the table under the cold fluorescent light.
Well, that was not so bad. Nothing like that hellacious scare its face caused when dimly seen. Lester cracked open a beer and searched for a butcher knife in the drawer. He was uncertain about how or even whether to skin it.
He had shot a child. Except if Lester ever had a kid like that he would be tempted to shoot himself. It changed from human to gorilla depending on how you looked at it. The head was flat, with scraggly lank hair that peaked in the center of the forehead. One cheek had tufts of hair on it, the other was smooth as a baby’s. The mouth was open, revealing half a set of yellow, crooked, pretty goddamned big teeth. The jaw was narrow and kind of pointed. The eyes were rolled back and white, with red laces in them, just like anybody’s, only two heavy brows sat over them, the ends curled into horns.
Lester closed his eyes and opened them again. Still there. The fur was blistered and patchy, and the arms and legs didn’t match. It looked to Lester as though the little bastard would have died on his own soon anyway.
Lester shook his head, the barking dog’s voice reverberating in his ears. He opened another beer and drank it down. Then another. He sank into a leisurely stupor made sweet by the anticipation of the money he would get for the pelt. Maybe he’d better call some lawyer in the morning to do what was legal to get possession of it.
Lester socked away beer after beer, mooning over money. The outline of the thing shimmered with his doubling vision. Keep on drinking like this and it might just sit up and say hi.
He’d better get started now, before he was too smash-blinded to cut right. This was going to be nasty. He spread newspapers on the floor around the table and set to work on the carcass, trying to think it was just like dressing a deer.
Sometime later, as he labored over the table, Lester realized that the dog’s barking was not in his head. Claws scraped on the screen door. Lester pondered that. The little prick must have followed him somehow.