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THE MOUNTAIN MAN
By
ELLEN ASHE
© copyright March 2006, Ellen Ashe
Cover art by Kat Richards, © copyright March 2006
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
They said he stole another man’s wife. So great was his lust he traveled days, from the cabin where he lived a solitary life, high in the mountains, to the outskirts of the town, to wait until he caught a glimpse of her--a lovely young woman whose only mistake was to drift innocently away from the crowd in the market. They said that no one saw him take her, that her screams for help were never heard. Yet her shawl was found, near the spring where the cold clear water gushed from the mountain’s gut.
Enraged at the disappearance of his young wife--his most prized possession--the husband searched, following her trail they said, with unnatural awareness. It was suggested throughout the town, that the husband’s rage was so extensive that he sold his soul to the cloaked devil that waited by the gushing stream where the shawl was discovered, sold his soul so he could find the cabin, kill both the thief and an unfaithful wife. The husband, they said, was an unreasonable man, given to fits of lunacy and imagination, and convinced himself his wife was not stolen after all--that she ran off with this wild, untamed mountain man--because her desires were too insatiable for a common man to satisfy, and this husband was, more than anything else, a very common man.
The devil laughed, however, because even the common man possesses a soul. And to assist the infuriated husband’s quest, the devil presented him with a double-edged dagger, a weapon that would complement the growing rage, a weapon that would secure the violent demise of two more souls. Evil followed along behind, whispering directions into the husband’s ear, taunting him with the perverse acts his naked wife was relishing at the hands of another man, because with blind fury the cabin would fill with blood, and even the children in the town know that devils like to tap-dance on wooden floors soaked with blood.
In the clearing beside the lake was the cabin. They said the husband went on alone, leaving the devil behind in the edge of the wood, to watch a wicked plan proceed. Softly he tread, this tortured man, up to the open window where a woman’s sighs drifted out to touch his ear. He gripped the dagger as his wrath heightened--the voice belonged to his dear sweet wife--and proof of her infidelity was but a footstep away.
“Look inside!” croaked the devil’s call. “She is a whore and has made you a fool! A fool, do you hear? A wretched, pathetic fool!”
They said the husband could barely see what was inside, so thick were his tears. He blinked away humiliation and wrenched to the profound shock of horror instead. On the bed she sprawled--his dear sweet wife--her skirts lifted around her waist, her knitted white stockings rolled down to her knees, her back arched. Between her thighs he stood, this thief, thrusting himself inside her, his thumb stroking the black curly hairs of her mound. She sighed heavily, her delicate features contorted to the pain of endurance, for in his shattered mind the husband dared to believe this was nothing less than molestation and an honorable wife would not simply tolerate.
“Fool!” the devil’s voice scoffed. “She takes pleasure in him!”
It was true. Her cheeks were flushed crimson and her lips pursed to a wicked smile of pleasure. And she gasped an immodest shriek when the thumb rubbed her so that her spine arched and her beautiful blue eyes dimmed.
“Keep watching!” the voice taunted. “Now see what the whore will do!”
His heart had stopped as he watched her fold forward and grin to her lover, those lovely lips--the lips that promised a vow on her wedding day, the lips that consummated the vow on her wedding night--those same lips part to take the thief inside her mouth. Perverse, heathen act--how could he watch such unforgivable sin? How could he allow such crime to go unpunished? He staggered back from the open window, they said, and dropped the dagger onto the wooden platform that edged the cabin.
Those who retell the story are divided in belief over what happened next. Some say the devil, watching from the woods, grew impatient with the man’s foolhardy hesitation to murder, and in its own fit of rage leapt from the shadow and tore the husband’s throat open. Others say, no, the husband’s soul was already lost so murder wouldn’t much benefit the lurking evil. It would, they argued, benefit the mountain man to slit the rival’s throat from ear to ear. He had coveted a wife and was hell-bent on keeping her favors to satisfy his lusts. Lust, greed, covet, and murder--there was enough unrestrained sinning in that cabin to keep a legion of devils expectant for great reward.
Either way, the husband bled--clutching a severed throat, sinking to his knees--to see the world and all its disappointments fade into the twilight of eternity. They say his last vision was that of his dear sweet wife, watching apathetically as his life drained away.
Some said she actually tap-danced on the wooden deck soaked in her husband’s blood.
But no one knew for certain if any of this actually happened. There was no record of marriage that autumn of 1899 and no record of death, either, although this could simply mean that the evil that lurked here had clouded the minds of those who told and retold the story and dried out the inkwells before accurate records could be written.
The ruins of the cabin remain, however. They say if you are unfortunate enough to stumble upon the clearing beside the lake and spot the stone foundation, a black fear from being watched will close around your spine. They say you might even catch a woman’s gentle sighs or hear her steps dance on boards long since rotted into the earth. And if this happens, they say you should leave, quickly, and quietly, because even the village children know that devils like to tap-dance on wooden boards soaked with blood.
* * * *
“Where the hell have you been?”
Stella clutched the phone. Between the static on the line and the constant click-click of freezing rain on the booth’s sides she could barely hear her sister’s anger. “Don’t be mad,” she yelled into the receiver in case the connection was bad on both ends. “I just had to get away for a little while. Please don’t be mad.” She bit her bottom lip to keep the tears from starting again.
“Why? What’s going on?”
I wouldn’t know where to start, Stella thought. Sum it all up by simply saying I married the wrong man? “I left him, Julie. I couldn’t take it any more.”
“What? Sorry--this line is terrible--I thought you said you left Simon.”
Stella took a deep breath. She valued her sister’s opinion and knew that Julie adored Simon. But then, everyone adored Simon--he had wit and charm and dashing good looks--all of it a façade. Stella knew because when they were home alone, together, he’d fly into fits of fury at everything she said or did. No one would believe her. Not even Julie. If there were bruises on Stella’s face or arms, she’d just have to say she had gotten quite clumsy of late, and of course, being so delicate, she bruised easily.
“I’m going to the mountains to take some pictures.”
There was a silence behind the intermittent static. “This time of year?” she asked finally, a touch of disbelief.
Stella shifted the phone to her other ear. The mountains were so engulfed by cloud that one seemed a part of the other; the pavement glistened silver with a sheet of ice and it wouldn’t get any better farther up the road. “Yeah,” she answered. “Besides, I need some alone time.”
“Where will you stay? In case I need to get a hold of you.”
“This line is really bad, Julie. I better go. I’ll be in touch soon, okay? Bye.” With that she hung up. Enough. No more advice, no more tears, no more pain. Certainly no more looking back.
“I can do this,” she said, as though her sister was standing there beside her. “I love you, Julie, but I’m not going to hurt anymore.”
Still, an inrushing of loneliness bore down on her. And now, of her own accord, she dangled helplessly alone. Except for what fortitude she could find within. She had never relied on inner strength to help her decisions as to which path in life to take. She wasn’t certain that inner strength was there. It was about time she took control, and when better to look up then when she had been pushed down as far as she could possibly be pushed?
Figuratively and literally.
Between the phone booth and her car, she stopped. A shiver of cold permeated her very being. Slowly she turned to where the forest met the road, tree limbs bent with the layering ice, quiet with their burden in the windless shadow. There was no denying the underbrush moved and in one fleeting motion two red eyes blinked simultaneously.
Terror had frozen her where she stood, between the phone and her car--this place between past failure and future freedom, a netherworld, a purgatory--and even here she was being watched. Hours from a home--where she kept appearances, smiled to neighbors, chatted amicably to friends, but felt neighbor’s inquisitive eyes watch her every movement, almost heard them gossip about her failures. She had left it all behind, damn it! And now she felt eyes studying her again?
She stared at the black hole in the underbrush, expecting and dreading both that the crimson eyes would reappear, that some grotesque creature would leap from its hiding place and knock her to the ground, devour her whole. Nothing stirred. Did madness have a face? Was it her paranoia that blinked through the underbrush? She rubbed her aching forehead. Fatigue was her enemy. Yes, she concluded. Fatigue, because she had never been so drained, emotionally and physically, in all her life.
As she slipped behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition, she sighed, believing her tattered nerves were deliberately playing cruel games with her imagination.
Worsening weather conditions, however, had nothing to do with imagination. The daylight dimmed prematurely; the yellow hue of her headlights blurred with streaks of freezing rain. A sign glistened through a coating of ice: Daemon’s Creek 3 miles. She’d stop for the night there.
Staccato taps on the car grew louder. She slowed to a crawl. For the first time since stealing away from the house with a hastily packed bag and cash she had been withdrawing over a series of weeks, she doubted whether her decision to run away had been the right one. Eventually she’d have to go back. After all, she had nowhere to go and the money would run out. She shuddered at the reception she’d get when she did finally return. And then tried to block it from her mind.
At the very least she could be alone to soul search, take pleasure in her photography. She laughed nervously. How many times had she been told she had an eye for capturing the essence of her subjects, be they human or animal? Her smile dropped when she remembered the crimson eyes in the forest. That mystical essence seemed to have manifested itself into something horrible and threatening. Shame she didn’t have her camera poised then, because the lens wouldn’t lie, it would have told her if the creature was real, that madness hadn’t bled through the crevices of her mind.
Stella glanced over to the camera, her most prized possession. And when her eyes drifted back to the road, she screamed.
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