Dark Mountain

  “I’m one giant goose bump.”

  “You want me to get a jacket for you?”

  “That’s all right, I’m about done. Thanks, though.”

  “It’s funny how it gets so cold.”

  “The altitude, I guess. You bake during the day and freeze at night.”

  “Yeah. It’s weird. It sure isn’t like home.”

  “That’s one of the great things about camping,” she said. “Home looks so good after you’ve been out here a while. You start dreaming about a hot bath, a soft bed…”

  “Yeah!” Benny leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Last year, we were out for a week and I got so I had to have a chocolate milkshake. I wanted one so bad I couldn’t stand it. Then Dad stopped at Burger King on the way home and…gee, I think that was the best milkshake I ever had. I can taste it, just thinking about it.”

  “Just thinking about it makes me cold.” Karen rinsed out the pot, stood up, and shook the water from it. “Right now, I could go for some coffee.”

  “We’ve got cocoa, too,” Benny said. Standing up, he brushed off the seat of his jeans. “And marshmallows.”

  “Maybe I’ll have a marshmallow in my coffee.”

  He laughed, and hopped across the stream.

  “Thanks for keeping me company,” Karen told him as they walked up the granite slab.

  “Ah, that’s all right.”

  The clearing ahead shimmered with firelight. Most of the others were seated close to the fire.

  “Thought we’d lost you,” Scott called.

  “Save me some coffee,” Karen called back. She handed the pot to Benny, and carried her cook kit down a gradual slope to the tent. “Right with you,” she said over her shoulder.

  Her backpack was propped against a rock near the tent entrance. She lifted the flap, dropped her kit into the darkness, and dug through the equipment trying to find her jeans and parka. They were near the bottom, of course. What you wanted was always at the bottom.

  Clamping the jeans between her legs, she quickly shook open the parka and put it on. She sighed with relief at its warmth.

  Then she crawled into the tent. It was very dark inside, but she didn’t need her light for this. She sat on her soft, down-filled sleeping bag, took off her boots, and changed from her shorts to the long-legged jeans. Pushing into her boots, she left the tent. She hurried toward the fire, hoping she wouldn’t trip on the laces.

  Her cup was still on the stump where she’d left it after dinner. “All set,” she said.

  “Coffee?” Scott asked.

  “You bet.” She held out the cup. Scott spooned in granules of instant from a plastic bag, then poured hot water into her cup and gave it a stir. Steam rose against Karen’s face as she took a sip. “Ah, that’s good.” She sat on the stump, and drank more.

  Benny, she saw, already had cocoa with a couple of marsh-mallows floating on the surface.

  “How about some songs?” Alice suggested.

  They started with “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” Then it was “Shenandoah.” Flash led them in “Danny Boy,” to which he knew all the words, and seemed almost tearful as he sang of the boy returning to his father’s grave.

  “Let’s get into something more upbeat,” Scott said when that one ended. In a loud baritone, he started “The Marine Corps Hymn” and everyone joined in, their voices booming.

  “‘The Caisson Song’!” Nick called out.

  Then “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” then, “Dixie.” When that was done, the Gordons sang a song about a logger who stirred his coffee with his thumb.

  “That puts me in mind of Robert Service,” Scott said. “‘There are strange things done in the midnight sun…’”

  “‘By the men who moil for gold,’” Karen said along with him, smiling that they both knew the same poem. They continued with it, line after line, one remembering what the other forgot until they finally got Sam McGee cremated on the marge of Lake LaBarge.

  Their performance drew applause, and a two-fingered whistle from Julie.

  Alice urged the twins to recite “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

  “Sissy stuff,” Flash said when they finished. “How’s about this one? ‘You may talk o’ gin and beer/When you’re quartered safe out here,/And you’re sent to penny-fights and Aldershot it…’”

  Karen knew “Gunga Din” by heart, but she kept silent as he proceeded. He messed up the middle badly. Nobody seemed to notice, though.

  “Bravo!” Scott called, clapping as he finished. “Benny, why don’t you do one?”

  The boy shrugged. He glanced shyly at Karen.

  “Come on,” she urged him.

  “Well. Is ‘The Raven’ okay?”

  “Great! I love Poe.”

  Benny leaned forward on his rock, and set his empty cup on the ground between his feet. “Well, here goes.” He began to recite the poem in a low, ominous voice. When the raven spoke, he screeched its “Nevermore” like a demented parrot.

  Rose giggled. Heather elbowed her for silence.

  Benny ignored them. He spoke slowly, a haunted look on his firelit face as if he’d become the lonely, tormented man of the poem. He grew frenzied, then furious. “‘Quit the bust above my door!’” he cried out. “‘Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!’”

  When he finished, there was silence. Everyone looked a bit stunned. Until he stood up, grinning, and bowed. Everyone clapped. Even Rose. Even Julie.

  “Terrific,” Karen told him. “That was great!”

  “Do you know some others?” Rose asked.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow night.”

  “Let’s tell stories,” Julie suggested. “Anybody know a really scary one?”

  “How about ‘The Hook’?” Nick asked.

  Rose wrinkled her nose. “That’s an old one.”

  “I could tell you something,” Karen said, “that happened to a friend of mine. It happened just a few years ago when she was camping with some friends—not very far from here.”

  Heather’s eyes widened. She looked frightened already. Flash leaned forward, took a burning stick from the fire, and lit a cigar. Benny turned to face Karen.

  “We don’t want to give the kids nightmares,” Scott told her, smiling.

  “I’d better not tell it.”

  “Come on,” Nick said.

  “Yeah,” Julie said. “You can’t quit now.”

  “Well…they were camping in the mountains not far from here. It was a cold night, with the wind howling and moaning through the trees. Sandy—that was her name—sat close to the campfire with her two friends, Audrey and Doreen. I would’ve been along, but I’d sprained my ankle a few days earlier and had to stay home. Lucky for me, as it turned out.”

  “Is this really a true story?” Benny asked.

  “Let her talk,” Julie said.

  Karen leaned closer to the fire. She felt its heat on her face, the cold on her back. “The three of them huddled close around the fire to keep the cold away. They sang and told ghost stories, none of them wanting to leave the fire’s cheery warmth. Slowly the flames dwindled. Sandy put on the last piece of firewood. Soon, that, too, was nearly gone. ‘Well,’ Sandy said, ‘why don’t we hit the sack?’ The others were against it, though. They’d frightened themselves so much with the ghost stories that the tent, off in the darkness, looked like a creepy shadow.

  “‘What if someone’s hiding inside?’ Doreen asked.

  “‘Oh, that’s ridiculous,’ Sandy said.”

  Karen glanced at Benny. He was staring, wide-eyed, at his tent across the clearing.

  “Well, they decided to stay up for a while longer. But the fire was nearly dead, only a few flickers still lapping around the charred remains of wood. If they were going to stay up till their jitters passed, they would have to replenish the supply of firewood. Since nobody wanted to go alone into the dark woods around the campsite, they decided to all go together.


  “But they had no flashlight. The flashlight was in the tent. ‘I’m not going in there,’ Doreen said.

  “‘Me either,’ Audrey said.

  “Sandy was frightened, too, by this time, but she told herself it was silly. So she volunteered to get the flashlight. She left Audrey and Doreen sitting by the fire, and crossed the dark clearing toward the tent. She crouched in front of it. Her heart was pounding like crazy, but she wasn’t about to let herself be scared off. Then she got an idea that made her grin. She almost laughed, but kept quiet and lifted the tent flap. Inside, it was as black as a cave. She almost lost her nerve, but took a deep breath and crawled in.

  “Suddenly, she screamed. She screamed again, a piercing shriek of terror so loud it made her ears hurt. ‘No!’ she cried out. ‘No! Please! NO!’ And then she let out a howl of horror and agony that made her own flesh crawl.”

  “What was it?” Benny whispered. “What got her?”

  “Not a thing,” Karen answered. “This was Sandy’s idea of a practical joke. Like lots of practical jokes, though, this one backfired. Once she was done screaming, she found the flashlight. She crawled out of the tent, all set to yuck it up about the great gag she’d pulled on her friends. But they were gone.”

  “She scared ’em off,” Nick said.

  “That’s what Sandy thought. She walked around the clearing, calling out to them. ‘Hey you guys!’ she yelled. ‘I was kidding! Come on back!’ But they didn’t come back.

  “Sandy sat by the campfire. Only a glow remained, by now, and she was cold. ‘Come on,’ she finally called. ‘Enough is enough.’ But Audrey and Doreen still didn’t return.

  “At last, she left the campsite and walked into the dark woods, calling out for her friends. With each step, she half expected the girls to leap out at her screaming, to pay her back for the scare. But they didn’t. She kept searching, wandering farther and farther from the camp.

  “Finally, she spotted them in a moonlit clearing. They stood motionless as she hurried toward them. ‘What’re you doing way out here?’ she asked. They didn’t answer. They didn’t speak a word. When she reached them, she stared. She began to whimper.

  “The two figures wore the clothes of Doreen and Audrey, but the arms and legs were made of sticks. They were scarecrows with heads of bloody fur.”

  “Yuck,” Rose muttered.

  “Somehow, Sandy found her way back to the camp. She sat by the dead fire. The wind moaned around her. She stared into the darkness. She waited and waited. Audrey and Doreen never returned.”

  “Never?” Benny asked.

  “Never. Some hikers wandered into camp a couple of days later and found Sandy still sitting there, her wide eyes gazing into the woods as if looking for her lost friends.”

  “What did happen?” Nick asked. “To Audrey and Doreen?”

  “Search parties looked everywhere for them. They were never found. Nobody will ever know what became of them after they ran out into the woods that night. Maybe it’s best that way.”

  There was silence. Heather peered over her shoulder. Rose leaned closer to the fire.

  “On that cheerful note,” Flash said, “I think it’s about time to call it a night.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Hey,” Nick said. “I’m gonna sleep under the stars to night. You want to?”

  “That’d be neat. I’ll have to ask Dad first.” Turning around, Julie spotted him with Karen and Benny. The three were heading away from the campsite, apparently on their way to the stream. “Wait up!” she called, and ran after them. She quickly caught up with her father. “Can I sleep outside to night?” she asked.

  “Do you have a choice?”

  “I mean by the fire. Instead of in the tent. Nick’s gonna sleep out, too.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “Jeez, Dad, we’re not gonna do anything. I hardly even know the guy.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that. Now that you mention it, though…”

  “Dad.”

  He laughed softly. “No, it’s fine with me.”

  “Great!” She whirled away and rushed to tell Nick. She found him crouching over his backpack, pulling out his sleeping bag. “It’s okay,” she told him.

  “Fantastic.”

  “Meet you by the fire.”

  Well away from the campsite, in the woods beyond her tent, she brushed her teeth and washed her face using water from her plastic bottle. As she capped the bottle, she heard a quiet crunching sound. Not far away. A footstep? Holding her breath, she stared through the trees. She saw only black trunks, bushes, a few dim clusters of stone.

  Nobody’s there, she told herself.

  Still, she felt exposed standing in a bright patch of moonlight. With a sidestep, she moved into the dark. She listened. She heard only the breeze in the treetops, the quiet lapping sound of the lake, a few indistinct voices from the camp.

  “Damn story,” she muttered. Karen’s story, and nothing more, was responsible for her jitters. “Wasn’t even scary,” she said.

  But as she lowered her pants and squatted, she scanned the darkness. Ridiculous. Dumb story. She was a jerk to let it bother her.

  Here I am, a jerk. Staring into the woods like a fool, half expecting Audrey and Doreen to dash by. Dumb.

  She stared and shivered. This was taking forever. Why the hell had she drunk so much coffee?

  Finally, she finished. She hurried back to camp. Nick, in his sleeping bag near the fire, waved at her. “Right with you,” she called.

  In the darkness of her tent, she changed into the hooded warm-up suit she’d brought along for sleepwear. She put on clean wool socks, then slipped into her sneakers. She rolled her mummy bag into a loose bundle, grabbed her foam-rubber mat, and crawled outside.

  Nick watched her approach. She felt self-conscious, naked under her snug jacket and pants. He can’t tell, she thought. Besides, she was holding the bulky bag in front of herself.

  “You ought to put down a ground cloth,” he suggested.

  “Yeah. I’ll get my poncho.” She spread out the rubber mat, piled her bag on it, and walked back across the clearing. Let him look, she thought. Nothing to see. For all he knows, she could be wearing long johns under her suit. Her uneasiness, however, was mixed with a tingle of excitement at the idea that he might be watching and wondering.

  She crouched over her pack. The pants drew taut against her rump and slipped down a bit. She felt a strip of cold above the elastic band. Nick can’t see. It’s dark.

  She took out her poncho, water bottle, and flashlight, and fastened down the cover flap for the night. Standing, she hiked up her pants. Then she returned to the fire.

  “Can you use a hand?” Nick asked.

  “That’s okay. I’ll just be a minute.” She spread her poncho over a fairly smooth patch of ground several feet away from Nick’s bag. He was wearing a T-shirt. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked.

  “Just what you can see. I’m toasty warm from there down.”

  “Toasty warm?”

  “Snug as a bug in a rug.”

  “Good grief,” she muttered.

  Nick laughed.

  Knees on the poncho, Julie straightened out her rubber pad. It was just wider than her shoulders, just long enough to cushion her from head to rump. She spread her sleeping bag over it. Sitting on the puffy surface, she pulled off her shoes. She placed them near the head of the bag, propped her water bottle between them, and slipped her flashlight inside one. Then she lowered the zipper of her bag halfway. She drew back the top as far as she could and struggled to get in, rolling onto her back and drawing up her knees nearly to her chin before she could work her feet under the edge. “Graceful, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  She used the inside tab to pull the zipper up. Then, nestled in warmth, she sighed.

  “Okay.” It was her father’s voice, a short distance away. “See you in the morning.”

  “Bright and early,” Karen a
nswered.

  “’Night,” Benny said.

  “Go on ahead, I’ll be right with you.”

  Raising her head, Julie saw Benny turn away from the adults. They walked toward Karen’s tent, the one she would’ve been sharing with Julie. In the darkness near its front, they embraced. They kissed. Julie turned her face away.

  “’Night,” Benny said as he walked by.

  “Yeah,” she muttered.

  “Good night,” Nick said.

  Dad came along a while later. At least he didn’t go in the tent with her. “Sleep tight, you two,” he said as he passed.

  “’Night, Dad.”

  “Good night, Mr. O’Toole.”

  “From here on, it’s Scott. Okay?”

  “Sure. Good night.”

  Soon Dad reached his tent. Julie heard his voice and Benny’s, but she couldn’t make out the words. Quiet voices also came from the tent where the twins were. They had a flashlight on, its beam making a pale disk that showed through the red wall. Julie smiled.

  “Something funny?” Nick asked.

  “I think that story really threw a scare into the twins.”

  “Yeah. They scare real easy.” He scooted down until only his head was visible. “You know what’d be neat? We oughta get up and run behind their tent.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “It’d scare the hell out of them.”

  “Cold out there,” Julie said. She felt cozy in her sleeping bag, but the idea of rushing through the woods with Nick sent a shiver of excitement through her.

  “It’d just take a minute,” he told her. In the shimmering glow of the firelight, his face looked eager.

  She grinned back at him. “We’ll get in trouble.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Me either. It’d be worth it. But we’ve gotta do Benny, too.”

  “What about Karen’s tent?”

  “Why bother?”

  “Just the two tents, then.”

  “Right. Let’s do it.”

  Slowly, as if someone might be watching, they unzipped their mummy bags. Julie’s throat felt tight. She clamped her teeth together to stop her chin from trembling, and sat up. As she reached for her shoes, she saw Nick swing his bare legs free of his bag. He was wearing blue shorts. Boxer underwear? No, she decided, must be gym pants. He wouldn’t dare run around in nothing but his undies. “You’re gonna freeze your tail off,” she said in a shaky whisper.