Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (11 page)

He watched as she began to descend and then thunder boomed again, closer now, and he knew that he was running out of daylight. He finished the lens swap and then turned back to the mine, thinking that her blood would add a nice, creepy touch to an already creepy spot.

The lens showed no blood inside the iron gate. Jim blinked and pulled his head away from the viewfinder. There was fresh blood, still damp, in the dust all around them, but he’d watched her shake her hand and send fat, wet drops of it flying inside the adit. He’d seen it happen. How had it dried so fast?

He walked closer to the gate, knelt, and stared.

The rocks just inside were dry and unstained.

“Losing my damned mind,” he muttered, and then he turned and saw that the sun was descending. That meant going back down the slope in darkness. Kristen was nearing the base and approaching camp, surely leaving a trail of blood the whole way, and he cursed himself for not thinking to bring the first-aid kit up here with them.

You want to pay attention out here
, the stranger had said, and still Jim had made a fundamental mistake. First with the gas, and now with the first-aid kit.

He hoped they were allowed a third strike.

Behind him, something rustled, and when he turned back, he lifted the camera as if it were a club, as if he’d have to defend himself. But there was nothing there except for silent rocks and wind-whipped dust, and he laughed uneasily at himself. Kristen had made one too many jokes about bad luck back at Dead Indian Pass, that was all. The bars of the adit were spaced far enough apart to allow a
determined and thin man to slip through, maybe, but no bears were coming out of there.

Jim knelt beside a bloodstained rock and lifted the camera again. The last of the light bridges between worlds was fading fast, and he didn’t want to miss it.

H
er hand was throbbing by the time she reached the base of the slope, and Kristen had tears in her eyes and was glad that Jim wasn’t there. The truth of the matter was that she was scared of the mountains, and she didn’t want him to know that. In the six months they’d been dating, he’d made so many references to appreciating her willingness to join him in his outings that it had become a part of her identity, and she’d gone too far along with the ruse. Initially, she’d wanted to impress him; it was that simple. Spending time with Jim in bizarre locations sounded intriguing, and once she was out with him she didn’t want to be a complainer, so she’d done her best to put up a brave front. Then they’d returned from a trip through the backwoods of Maine that had been absolutely terrible—she’d counted fifty-seven mosquito bites—and he’d spent an entire dinner party with friends bragging about how tough she was. Why she couldn’t tell him the truth, she didn’t know. It was childish, but there was something about spoiling the illusion he had that seemed like failure. She was a librarian, and while Kristen loved her job, she had to admit she grew tired of the jokes that came with the territory. Traveling with Jim had added something to her identity that she thought she enjoyed. Discovering the truth that it was merely a mask, a falsehood, had probably disappointed her more than it would him.

Then he’d proposed the Montana and Wyoming trip, showing her photographs of the old town and collapsed storefronts, and that had sounded okay, certainly no worse than Maine.

Until they arrived. The mountains unsettled her instantly. Kristen thought she had an understanding of them, but you couldn’t
truly appreciate the vastness and the isolation until you were out there in it. She’d turned unease into teasing, giving him a hard time and labeling the trip as jinxed, but she really
had
been scared by the idea of running out of gas on that lonely road, and she really
had
been scared of the strange man who’d accepted a fifty-dollar bill and promised to return with gasoline. All of her jokes about the horror-movie motel were actually born from a desperate desire to convince Jim that a hotel was the better option, at least tonight. The base camp that he found so beautiful, she found terrifying. There wasn’t another soul in sight, and down there in the basin by the stream, the mountains quite literally surrounded them, looking imposing and hostile. You could scream your head off and there would be nobody to hear it. Now Kristen was bleeding, and all of his concern over the bears was lodged in her brain. She knew that he was right; bears
could
smell blood at a great distance, and she was leaving a trail of it all over the mountain, a trail that led directly back to the flimsy tent she was supposed to sleep in. Now,
that
was a joke; there’d be no sleep tonight, not for her at least.

The first-aid kit was strapped to the back of her pack, a bright red swatch against the dark green fabric. She pressed her aching palm against her stomach as she awkwardly freed the kit with her left hand, and then she set off toward the stream, trying to put as much distance between the blood and the tent as possible. She passed the bear bag and kept going, and now she could feel warm moisture on her belly as the blood soaked through her shirt and found her skin. She’d have to leave the shirt behind, too, and that was just perfect—the only way to give the Maine mosquitoes a run for their money was to wander around out here shirtless, at dusk, and by a stream.

She sat down on a wide, flat rock next to the water and wiped her eyes, cursing herself for both the tears and her irrational inability to just tell him how she felt and what she wanted.

When she got the iodine and butterfly bandages out, she allowed herself her first real look at the damage the bars had inflicted. The wound was bad, and it hurt worse because the metal had been corroded, making an unclean, jagged cut. Jim had been right; it was going to require stitches. It was also going to be damn hard to stop the bleeding because the cut ran down the center of her palm, so every time she moved her fingers the sheared skin would flex. She set to work cleaning the cut and applying the bandages. The blood darkened the center of the bandage instantly, no clotting being achieved yet. Kristen said, “Those pictures had better be fucking incredible, James.”

She kept looking over her shoulder as she worked, expecting bears to descend one of the slopes at any moment. With the stream and all the towering boulders around it, the place looked exactly like the background of every photograph of a grizzly she’d ever seen. The whole valley looked like a grizzly condo village, easy real estate to sell to a ten-foot monster with razor-sharp claws. Perfect place to put a tent.

Once the bandages were on, she remained on the rock in the gathering dusk and kept her hand still and waited for the wound to clot as best as possible, not wanting to carry the scent of fresh blood into her sleeping bag later. Taking deep breaths and letting the tears dry, she tried to calm herself so that when Jim returned he wouldn’t have any indication of the meltdown she’d had out here.

Take in the beauty,
she instructed herself.
Not the danger, just the beauty.

And it
was
a beautiful spot. The mountains rising on all sides were majestic, but the valley in the center was truly special, lush and green and painted with golden light that made the stream twinkle and glitter. She listened to the water and felt her breathing slow and some level of peace return. The stream was absolutely gorgeous. Sure, it seemed to be begging for a few bears in the evening light, but other than that it was . . .

She leaned forward on the rock and strained her eyes, trying to simultaneously see clearer and deny the image her eyes had found.

There was an elk carcass in the water, resting high, propped up on a submerged boulder. She’d spotted the antlers first, but now she could make out the side of its head and part of the gutted body. Whatever had killed the elk was sure to return for it, and when it did, filled with hunger and bloodlust and territorial aggression, it would discover the place where Jim and Kristen had helpfully pitched their tent not even fifty yards away, her wilderness-photographer boyfriend so focused on the damn mountain behind them that he’d missed the elk kill entirely.

“Jim!” she shouted, but her echo died swiftly and she knew there was no way he could hear her. She got to her feet, stumbling and swearing, and started back for him, her bloody hand now the least of her concerns. They needed to get the hell away from this campsite, and do it before dusk.

Far away and halfway up the slope, the mountain was turning itself over to blackness and she could see Jim working right on the shadow line, still visible but almost lost. She had to squint to find him. The fading light played tricks on her eyes; at times she could swear there were two silhouettes instead of one—Jim’s and a much taller, thinner version.

T
here were four mine shafts on the slope, and Jim shot all of them in the fading light, moving as fast as possible, feeling the sort of electric thrill you got when you knew you were getting both quality photographs and special ones because the conditions might never be the same. That was the point, the whole goal—capture the world as it was once but would not be again tomorrow. The mines had stood here for decades, and the sun rose and set every day, but you could sit here for twenty years and not get the same unique play of the dwindling beams of light on those ancient doors.

He’d gone up the slope and circled back down as the light forced him lower, and by the time he got back to the original adit, it was three-quarters in darkness. He decided to take one last series and then head down the mountain. He lifted the camera to his eye, moved his hand toward the lens, and then dropped the camera into the rocks and shouted.

There was a man inside the mine.

“Sorry!” the stranger said. “My goodness, you startle easily.”

“Jesus Christ,”
Jim said, reaching down for the camera with trembling hands. “I startle easily? What in the hell are you doing in there?”

“I’d expect we have similar interests. Are you not here for the mines?”

“I’m here to take pictures of them, not stand in them in the dark.”

The man smiled—maybe. It was damn hard to tell, because his face was obscured by darkness, the only remaining sunlight playing over his feet and lower legs. His boots were old and worn. He was a tall man, and a thin one, but even in the dark, Jim had a sense that he was strong. It was a strange feeling, a certainty without any evidence to back it up.

“How in the hell did you even get in there?” Jim said.

“Oh, these gates aren’t as secure as they look.”

“Well, they’re damn dangerous, I can tell you that. My girlfriend cut her hand pretty bad right where you’re standing.”

He thought of the blood then, of the last series of photos he’d taken in this place. The blood that had been there and then gone. He took a few steps away, making a show of looking at the camera to inspect it for damage. Really, he just wanted to clear some space between him and the tall man. The camera looked to be fine, some nicks and dirt on the body, but the lens intact.

“You’d better have a good flashlight,” Jim said. “It’s not going to be easy walking down that slope in the dark.”

“Oh, I’m familiar with the terrain.”

The man hadn’t moved, was still just standing there on the other side of the bars, but there was an odd quality of bridling energy to him, like a racehorse waiting for the gate to go up. Jim couldn’t see how he’d possibly gotten in there to begin with—the bars had seemed solid to him, and the lock was still in place—but he didn’t want to linger to find out, either. There was something off about the guy, and for the first time, Jim was thinking that a motel sounded pretty nice tonight. Hell, they could leave the tent where it was. The hike back to the car would be a dark one, but they had flashlights and headlamps and it was not a long stretch. The cut on Kristen’s hand would require attention anyhow. He was certain she wouldn’t object to the idea of a night in a bed instead of a sleeping bag.

“Well, take care,” Jim said. “Don’t spook too many more tourists—you’re going to give someone a heart attack eventually.”

The tall man laughed. It was a strange, keening sound and drove Jim farther away. He glanced back once, and all he could see now were the tops of the man’s boots, those torn leather flaps, covered with dust. Other than the boots, his silhouette was framed in blackness behind the bars. The image froze Jim.

That’s pretty damn good
, he thought.
That is, in fact, some supremely spooky shit.

He decided he’d take just a few more pictures.

Leaning against the slope, braced on one knee, he lifted the camera, adjusted the zoom, and began to shoot. If the tall man disliked having his picture taken, or wanted to know the reason for it, he didn’t give voice to the concerns. He didn’t speak at all. Behind them the sun dropped that last fraction, and the frayed leather of the boots fell to darkness.

The man moved then, and Jim straightened, prepared to apologize and explain why he’d paused to take the pictures, but by the time he looked up, the tall man was already halfway through the
gate. He hadn’t opened it from the inside somehow, as Jim had expected—he simply slammed his torso between the bars and, astonishingly, managed to get his upper body through. He was snagged at the waist; it looked like he was caught in a trap, and Jim had a momentary, if unsettled, thought that perhaps he should offer to help when the man turned his face back to Jim’s and smiled in the darkness.

His mouth would have been the envy of any grizzly or wolf in the valley. Long canines and twin rows of razor-sharp incisors. He braced both hands on the bars, the same bars that had lacerated Kristen’s flesh, and then slammed forward again, and this time he drove his hips through the impossibly narrow gap and then he was free and facing Jim on the dark mountainside with no more than ten feet between them.

Jim screamed then, a scream that he didn’t know he was capable of making, but it ended fast. The man covered the distance in a single, staggeringly fast bound and then his hands were on Jim’s shoulders, his fingers strong as steel bands, and then they were both down and rolling on the loose scree and it was maybe another fifteen feet of terrifying, chaotic slide, the dark world spinning around them, before his teeth found Jim’s throat.