Footprints of Thunder (23 page)

23. Mountain Mystery

As I approached the Lang farm I could see my friend David working in his field. His family was near the house and waved in greeting. When David turned toward me he suddenly disappeared. The Lang family joined me in the field to search but we found no trace of him.

—
Judge August Peck, September 23, 1880

North of Grant’s Pass, Oregon

PostQuilt: Sunday, 10:30
A.M.
PST

I
t was a mountain all right, Terry conceded to himself. Even if the word might be a bit grandiose for the pile of rocks in front of him. Rather than towering snow-capped peaks rising above the timberline, Terry was staring at a huge pile of boulders that looked as if they had been poured into the middle of the interstate. It could have been the result of an avalanche, except the pile towered above the nearest hill. Then there was the problem of the vegetation. Leading up to the towering rock pile was a carpet of sparse clump grass, but it didn’t match the surrounding vegetation. Would an avalanche have deposited a green carpet of scrawny grass?

Terry and Ellen had been skeptical when they left the parking lot at the Oregon Caves, even as the CB reports of the mountain were confirmed by other motorists with CBs. But still it was hard to believe. They’d driven only a few miles north of Grant’s Pass before they realized the traffic in the southbound lanes was very light. The farther north they drove, the lighter it became until the traffic stopped completely. Shortly after that they came to a traffic jam.

The traffic was at a dead stop, and northbound drivers were abandoning their cars and walking forward through the extemporaneous parking lot. Terry and Ellen had to walk nearly a mile before they saw the mountain. It was set a little to the east of the interstate with the mountain tumbled down to the west. A hundred people were milling around in front of it. Many of them were taking pictures or videos. Parents posed their children on boulders or in the clearing, trying to get as much of the mountain in their shot as possible. Other children chased around the clearing or climbed rocks.

Terry and Ellen joined the crowd of happy gawkers, but Terry couldn’t share their partying mood. Only here and there were other concerned faces like Terry’s. This mountain wasn’t just a road hazard that prevented tourists from logging their four hundred miles a day. It represented something far larger, something Terry did not understand. Something impossible.

Terry squatted at the end of the interstate and examined the edge. It was a nice sharp break. On one side you had a four-lane freeway and on the other side coarse grass leading up to the mountain. Terry began looking for a way around the mountain. He certainly couldn’t drive around it, but he was curious how big a blockage this was. He was about to suggest a walk to Ellen when he heard a familiar voice, and he looked up to see the towering figure of Bill Conrad.

“If you’re wondering if the road continues on the other side, it does. I just don’t know how far you have to go. The CB channels are buzzing with southbound truckers and travelers talking about the landslide blocking I-5.”

“You read my mind correctly on that one. Now try the next question.”

“I don’t have any idea where this came from or what is going on.”

Terry laughed and nodded. It was reassuring to know Bill was as confused as he was. Bill Conrad had been in his element in the cave, prepared for his role by his training. But out here on the road, standing in front of a mountain that magically appeared on an interstate highway, Bill wasn’t any more competent than Terry or anyone else. Terry spotted Ellen talking to Angie. They were laughing and smiling, as if they were old friends.

“It makes you wonder about that kid in the cave, doesn’t it?” Bill said. “I mean I wonder if this is what he was talking about?”

Until Bill Conrad had suggested it, Terry had never connected the kid in the cave with the mountain. Now, he was having trouble relating them.

“I don’t know, Bill, the kid was delusional, and he was pretty specific about what was going to happen. The world was supposed to end.”

“The sister said something about things falling from the sky.”

“This couldn’t have fallen … impossible.”

Bill made a noncommittal murmur, but his mind was working. Asserting himself, Terry decided to demonstrate his own specialty.

“I’d guess that kid was paranoid schizophrenic. He exhibited the classic symptoms, the secret knowledge that only he could understand, the certainty that no one would believe him. These types are often pretty successful at fitting into society. They’re delusional, though, and their worldview only makes sense to themselves.”

Bill was singularly unimpressed by Terry’s diagnosis.

“Are you a psychiatrist?”

“Psychologist.”

“Mmmm. If someone believes the world is going to end and it doesn’t, he’s delusional. What if he thinks the world is going to end and it does? That’s not delusion, that’s prophecy.”

“But the world didn’t end.”

“But
something
sure as hell happened. How do you explain that, doc?” Bill said jerking his head toward the mountain.

Terry conceded Bill had a good point. “I’m not saying I know what has happened,” Terry responded. “I’m only suggesting the two events are not necessarily related.”

“Mmmm. Peculiar coincidence.”

Bill walked over to Ellen and Angie, who were still talking animatedly. The three of them laughed together for a while before the conversation turned serious. Then they approached Terry.

Bill began. “We’re thinking of heading back to Medford and finding that kid from the cave. It may be he knows more than people are giving him credit for.”

“I told you, Bill, that kid is delusional, and even if he did know something it will be difficult for him to communicate it.”

“No problem. We’ve got a psychiatrist to go with us.” Bill winked and grinned cynically.

“Psychologist,” Terry answered curtly.

“Whatever.”

“If he gives us any trouble,” Terry offered more genially, “we’ve got a marine to shoot him.”

“Air force.”

“Whatever.”

“Come on, Terry, let’s go with them,” Ellen said. “We can’t get through this way anyway, and we’ll have to find another way around.”

Ellen was right. There really was no reason to stay where they were, and they could hardly backtrack. Terry relented and Bill and Angie fed the way back to the cars. Bill, more resourceful than Terry, had driven up the median close to the mountain. They all climbed in for a ride to Terry’s car.

Bill Conrad’s demeanor worked its magic again at the sheriffs department. The receptionist/dispatcher turned out to be a woman named Karon, who would only say the suspect’s name was Kenny Randall, a student at Oregon Institute of Technology, and he had not been taken to the police station. She was reluctant to give any information about Kenny’s current whereabouts, but then Bill flashed his military ID, spoke in a clipped, brisk manner, and found out that Kenny was at the community hospital.

The hospital staff buckled just as easily under Bill’s demeanor, and the two couples found themselves outside Kenny’s door talking to the sheriff and a doctor.

The sheriff turned out to be a refugee from the big city. He had migrated from the Chicago police force to Portland and then to Medford. Well-educated, professional, and not intimidated by big, loud, black air force officers, at six feet two he could almost look Bill in the eye.

“Sheriff, this is official business. You know what’s happened to I-5 don’t you? Well the air force believes there may be some connection between the two events.”

Bill was bluffing, but he was so good at it Terry began to wonder what he did for the military.

“You’re talking to the wrong person,” the sheriff insisted. “We’re only holding the suspect until the FBI can transport him. I don’t have the authority to admit you.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” the doctor cut in. “He was severely agitated, so we sedated him. He won’t be conscious for a few hours. When he does wake up I wouldn’t expect much. He isn’t responsive.”

“Catatonic?” Terry asked.

“Not yet, but that’s the direction he’s headed.”

Bill argued with them until he got a “maybe you can see him” out of them and strode back to the elevator as if he had a sense of purpose.

Terry lagged behind, unsure of what to do next. Ellen was down in the lobby talking to Angie, and Terry supposed he should collect his wife and try to work his way over to highway 101 and head north along the Oregon coast. It would be slower than I-5, but at least there weren’t any new mountain detours. Still, Terry had an irrational feeling of unfinished business. Wherever that mountain had come from—and Terry could not even remotely guess—he couldn’t move it and had no idea of how to go around it. He might, however, be of some use with Kenny Randall. Paranoid schizophrenia wasn’t normally what he dealt with, but his residency had exposed him to most of the psychoses. Still, there were more competent people than Terry to deal with Kenny’s problem. Terry had nearly convinced himself to head home when Bill said, “You coming?” Terry followed him, feeling like Tonto.

While Angie and Ellen waited in a coffee shop, Bill and Terry headed south, to search Kenny’s dormitory room.

To Terry it seemed that the easiest way to find Kenny Randall’s room was to ask the administration. But Bill instead started asking students if they knew Kenny. Everyone did, and everyone rolled their eyes at the mention of his name. The third person they talked to directed them to Residence Hall. Bill had to ask only two people before he found out which room was Kenny’s. The reason Bill avoided the administration building became clear as they stood outside Kenny’s room and Bill pulled a credit card out and opened the locked door.

“Bill, this is breaking and entering!”

“No, it’s only entering.”

“Oh, that makes me feel much better. Why are we playing burglar?”

“I doubt the dean would let us in, and as soon as the police or the FBI think of it they’ll seal this room. They’re probably on their way here now.”

“What if someone catches us in here?” Terry worried out loud.

“Don’t worry, I’m licensed to kill,” Bill said, wiggling his eyebrows.

The room looked much like Terry’s son’s room. The bed was unmade, and dirty clothes were piled all over the bed, and on the floor. Piles of books and papers were scattered here and there around the room. A desk was buried under more books and papers, a computer sitting in the middle of the clutter. Terry felt skeptical: This was like a thousand other dorm rooms around the country.

Bill settled in front of the computer and began sorting through the disks. Reluctantly, Terry decided to snoop around, not expecting to find anything. The closet was filled with books and more dirty clothes. Buried in the far corner Terry turned up a typewriter case. He found nothing in it but the expected typewriter and two extra ribbon cartridges. He sorted through the books—mostly texts on organizational psychology, systems theory, personnel management, history, literature, and a surprising number of geography books with sections highlighted in yellow and pink.

Terry, who had marked up his textbooks in the same way, reflected how some things don’t change about college students. Other books dealt with science, specifically physics, with titles like
Quantum
Theory, The New Physics, Physics in the New Age,
and
Whatever Happened to Newton’s Universe?
There were books on magnetism, superconductivity, and nuclear fusion and fission. But the topic Kenny seemed to like best was “time.” There were at least a dozen books with the word
time
in the title. So what? Terry wondered. Now we know Kenny Randall likes to read books on management, physics, and time. That does not tell us why a twenty-year-old college student held a group of strangers hostage in a cave. Nor does it tell us how a mountain ended up sitting in the middle of I-5.

Terry thought about the mountain again, and began to wonder if he’d been right in assuming it had been a natural event. He picked up a book titled
Unified Time Theory
and thumbed it. Uneasy now, he tried to remember what Kenny and his sister had said about things falling out of the sky. But why books on time? Wouldn’t the mountain be better explained with books on geology?

Bill was still working with Kenny’s computer, running programs. So Terry started looking through the books on the shelf above Kenny’s desk. There were titles like Stranger Than Fact,
The Unknown,
and
Science and the Unexplained.
They reminded him of tabloids in grocery store racks, pulp journals that mixed fact and fiction. Terry thumbed through
Stranger Than Fact
and found a chapter on ghosts, describing how a man bought a house, against the advice of his friends, which supposedly had a haunted room. One night the man went to bed in the room and woke up in the night feeling someone’s breath on the back of his neck. He rolled over to find himself inches from the decaying face of a dead woman, her fetid breath blowing into his face. Terrified, the man ran into the street, pulling his hair out.

Other stories were similar, and Terry was about to throw the book back onto the shelf when he noticed some pages were highlighted in pink.

For instance, in a section called “Human Torches” one story detailed how an old woman was found burned to death sitting in a chair in her room on February 5, 1905. She and the chair were burned to crispy charcoal. The floor was charred around the woman’s chair eighteen inches in all directions, but beyond that the room was untouched, and the walls were free of soot. The woman did not smoke and the book described it as a case of spontaneous human combustion. There were other similar cases, ranging from 1725 to 1977. The last case was nearly identical to the 1905 one—a woman found in front of her television, her body completely consumed by a fire that left only the head and one foot. Nothing else in the room was burned.