The Vanishing (33 page)

After a discussion that turned into an argument, he and Carrie were kicked out. They picked up Merritt down the road apiece. He was walking away from Haskell’sestate, and he grinned when he saw them, sticking out a hitchhiking thumb.

‘‘Oh! I almost forgot,’’ Brian said. He pulled out his cell phone and accessed his voice mail while the photographer got into the car.

Jimmy’s message was simple, direct and to the point.

‘‘Kirk Stewart came out of his coma. He’s talking.’’

Twenty-two

Marshall hadn’t told Sutter about the ghost camp in the canyon. He hadn’t told anyone, though he still had night-mares about the dead woman and her monster baby. Doug Lilley had drifted away somewhere, no one seemed to know where, and that was probably for the best. With him around as a reminder, Marshall would have been constantly thinking about what he’d seen, would have quite likely gone back to the canyon and drunkenly spilled the beans to someone, causing a mini-rush. Whatever happened as a result of the cursed gold would be on his head.

Yes. That’s what he believed.

Sutter was still making a living off the fort and everything that had stood him in good stead all these years, but it killed him that the parade of easy wealth was passing him by, that every Johnny-come-lately and his brother could dip a pan in the water and end up rich while he remained mired in boring traditional mercantilism. Marshall had been angry at that as well. He was the one who had
discovered
the damn gold! He was the one who’d known about it in advance! But now he was glad that he’d never struck it rich. There was a price to pay for that gold, and though such a thought might be mumbled about in a bar after many, many drinks or whispered late at night around a wilderness campfire, it was not something that was ever mentioned by sober, civilized people.

The mill still wasn’t finished. Everyone wanted to work for himself in the gold fields rather than have a normal job, so it was hard to hire these days. Marshall doubted the project would ever be completed, though that was not an opinion he shared with Sutter.

Right now, Sutter was trying to scout a spot for a new general store, and Marshall and a few old hands from the fort were coming along to give their opinions on how difficult it would be to actually construct the store as well as keep it stocked. It was Sutter’s contention that a wilderness store stocked with dried foodstuffs and mining supplies would make a fortune because the men would be willing to pay more if they didn’t have to go all the way to a town. It was a good idea, Marshall thought, and he hoped for his friend’s sake that the store was a success. The man deserved to have some good luck thrown his way. Hell, they all did.

Right now, they were exploring a deer path alongside a tributary of the Bear River. New camps had been popping up in this section of the Sierras for the past few months, and if Sutter could find a centralized location that was easily accessible to all, he stood to inherit the lion’s share of the miners’ business. Marshall appraised the ease of travel along this route, decided that if they could hire some Indians, the path might be widened enough for oxcart use.

They made camp for the evening in a stand of trees close enough to the water that they could hear the burble of the creek but far enough that they wouldn’t end up in the soup should they get up in the middle of the night to take a piss. Marshall laid out his bedroll betweenSutter’s and Matthew Taylor’s. Time was when he would’ve been out on his own, as far away from the other men as possible. Nothing ruined a good night in the wilderness like the snoring, farting and sleep talking of a bunch of filthy drunken men who’d been on the trail since dawn.

But these days, as far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as a
good
night in the wilderness.

Given his druthers, Marshall would spend every night for the rest of his life in a house or a cabin, preferably in a town. His days of enjoying the solitude of open country were over.

That night, Sutter and the other men stayed up drinking and lying about their hunting prowess and female conquests. Marshall tried to go to sleep early, feigning tiredness, hoping to doze off while the others were still up and about, but he ended up tossing and turning, and his eyes were still wide open when Sutter, the last of the others to fall asleep, finally nodded off for good.

Sutter had been acting odd the past few days. Ostensibly, he’d been working on the plans for this store, even going so far as to consider expanding it into a new fort, but despite his stated intentions and the seriousness of this scouting expedition, he’d seemed distracted a lot of the time. And he’d brought along some heavy extra equipment—like a bear trap—that served no useful purpose and made Marshall wonder if there wasn’t some other unspoken reason for this trip.

He didn’t like the bear trap.

Marshall finally dozed, but his sleep was light and fitful, a succession of dreams that, unfortunately, he remembered each time he awoke. In one, hordes of monster babies like the one in the canyon were swarming over a hill made out of garbage and shit. In another, a creature with the arms of an ape, the skin of a lizard and the tail of a devil was raping the corpse of Emily Smith, which lay sprawled over a mossy log. Emily’s corpse was smiling.

When he finally woke up in the morning for good, it was not to the crow of a rooster or the smell of coffee, but to the wild cries of John Sutter, who was absent from his sleeping spot and off somewhere in the woods. The sun had not yet arisen, dawn was only a faint lightening of the sky above the hills to the east, and Marshall saw that the rest of their party had been jolted awake as well.

‘‘What the hell?’’ muttered Matthew.

Goose, Jameson and Big Reese were putting on boots and grabbing rifles as quickly as their groggy minds and unwilling bodies allowed.

‘‘Hurry up!’’ Sutter yelled. ‘‘I need help
now
!’’

The five of them ran toward the sound of his voice, Marshall in the lead. They found Sutter several yards from camp, next to the spot where they’d made their shit hole and dumped the bones from their meal in order to keep animals away.

Only this wasn’t an animal that Sutter had caught in his bear trap.

Marshall felt his heart lurch up to his throat when he saw the creature whose leg was clamped in the iron jaws. It wasn’t human, whatever it was.
Monster
was the first thought that came to him, and he recalled the baby and the dead woman, his dreams of the night before. Its body had two arms and two legs, but there the resemblance to a person ended. For it was well over eight feet tall, and its skin was slimy and shiny, like that of a fish or a worm. Around the middle was a band of thick fur that resembled a belt. On the shoulders were two wicked-looking horns, and protruding from the right side underneath the armpits was what looked like a double row of rose thorns. Its head was too small for its body and was topped by several strands of bloodred hair, each as thick as a finger. Two beady eyes peered out from under a bulging brow, and in place of the nose was a leathery nub bisected by a single slit. The mouth, wide open, was filled with several rows of sharp, tiny teeth.

There was something vaguely arousing about the beast, however, and though he was sickened by this thought, Marshall couldn’t help but be stirred by the sight of the naked creature. It was female, that much was clear. Oversized pudenda spread out pink between the hairless thighs, and
three
breasts were aligned across the broad chest, each made from that slimy skin but with large womanly nipples that stuck straight out.

They consorted,
Doug Lilley had said, and for the first time, Marshall could understand how such a thing might occur. He tried to imagine what
he
would do if he came across a human mating with such a creature, and he understood now why Sutter had banished all offenders from the fort.

Except it was only the women he’d banished, wasn’t it? The ones who had coupled with the male versions of this monster. If any men had been caught fornicating with creatures like this, they had not been cast out, and Marshall thought of how Sutter had brought his bear trap on this trip and wondered what exactly had been the man’s ultimate goal.

‘‘Come on!’’ Sutter cried, holding on to a jerking arm. ‘‘I need help!’’

The creature was howling like a dying dog, although it had been silent only seconds before. It thrashed about crazily, threatening to rip its leg off at the ankle. In the predawn light, the blood dripping down the leg and from the jaws of the trap looked thin and watery. Marshall, Matthew and Big Reese helped Sutter grab the thing’s arms, holding tight, while Goose ran back for some rope. The skin felt spongy and rough at the same time, not nearly as slick and slimy as it looked.

The creature continued to howl.

‘‘Maybe it’s calling for help,’’ Big Reese said. ‘‘Maybe it’s calling its friends.’’

‘‘Keep an eye out!’’ Sutter ordered Jameson.

Goose returned with the rope, and while Marshall and the others continued to hold its arms, he and Jameson hog-tied it. They pushed it over, onto the ground, then jumped back. It had stopped howling but was rolling over, back and forth, the chains of the trap rattling. Marshall found himself staring at the alternating views of buttocks and vagina.

‘‘So what now?’’ Jameson asked.

‘‘We’ll keep it,’’ Sutter said, wiping the sweat from his red face with a dirty kerchief.

‘‘And do what with it?’’ Marshall asked. The only possible use he could see for such a creature would be to sell it to a circus.

‘‘I don’t know yet,’’ Sutter admitted.

‘‘These things been killing miners and animals,’’ Matthew said. ‘‘Hell, they’s even taken some of our women, the men ones have. I say we hang it.’’

‘‘Maybe we could use it to attract others,’’ Big Reese opined. ‘‘Like bait. Maybe we could clear the whole area of ’em!’’

Marshall pulled Sutter off to the side while the others debated. ‘‘You might be able to fool them, but you can’t fool me. You didn’t just happen to catch one of those things. You were looking for one. That’s the whole reason we’re out here, isn’t it?’’

Sutter looked at him, saying nothing.

‘‘I’ve known you for a while now, John. I know how you think. I know how you act.’’

‘‘Yes!’’ he hissed. ‘‘I wanted to trap one!’’

‘‘What the hell for?’’

Sutter turned away, didn’t answer, but as he walked back toward the other men, Marshall saw him surreptitiously press down on the lap of his pants.

Bringing the creature back to the fort had been hard. They’d waited it out, knowing it would eventually pass out or fall asleep, and when it did they tied it up even tighter to make sure it could not escape, put a gag over its mouth, and pried the trap off its ankle.

They carried it on a pole, like a dead deer, taking turns as they retraced their route, always on the alert for anything out of the ordinary, aware that at any moment other creatures might emerge from a canyon or copse in an effort to save their companion and slaughter all the humans. It was a long tension-filled journey, and the nights they spent with the creature were the worst Marshall had ever experienced. They took turns guarding it, so that they could all get a little sleep, but the truth was that none of them were relaxed enough to slumber. Marshall took first shift each evening, and as he sat watching the monster his blood ran cold.

And hot.

For just as every time he looked into its beady eyes he saw an evil alien unfathomability, each time his gaze moved lower on the creature’s body, he felt an unwelcome stirring in his loins. Was he imagining things or did the monster try to raise its hips higher when he looked at it? Was there an attempt to part those bound legs and display its sex?

They hadn’t fed the thing, had been afraid to even remove the gag. Not that they knew what it ate anyway.

But it hadn’t seemed to grow any weaker or lighter, it hadn’t had to excrete waste and from what he could tell it didn’t exhibit any signs of hunger. He thought of that half-demon baby in the canyon that had been left there to starve yet hadn’t starved.

Maybe they lived on air or sunshine. Like plants.

Its eyes glittered in the light of the campfire, as dark as the night, and while Marshall watched it, it watched him. There was a calculating shrewdness in its gaze that frightened him, and he knew that deep within its brain it was planning, plotting. If it had been up to him, they would have killed the creature and burned its body.

It was no wonder that even when his shift was over, he couldn’t fall asleep.

By the time they reached the fort, all of them were irritable, exhausted and practically at each other’s throats. Sutter and Jameson had ridden ahead the day before in order to set up a location where the captive creature could be housed, and obviously the word had spread. A large crowd came out to greet them, including the squaw Matthew had married, but they were quiet when they actually saw the monster, shocked into silence by the site of this strange being tied to a pole like an ordinary hunting prize. Matthew’s wife said some words in her language that sounded like a prayer but that none of them understood before running quickly back into the fort, but the rest of them merely stepped aside in order to make a wider berth for the travelers’ passage.

Sutter, Jameson and some of the other men had cleaned out an unused storage room and equipped the windowless chamber with an extra padlock for the door as well as leg irons and chains bolted to the heaviest beams in the wall. They would have used the brig, but Teagarden James was already locked up there, and Sutter wasn’t sure how long a space would be needed for the creature. He still had not decided what to do with it.

Or so he claimed.