Shadow Dragon (15 page)
Authors: Lance Horton
Carrie watched as Agent Andrews pulled away and disappeared into the lengthening shadows the trees cast across the roadway. He had offered to stay with her, but she had told him she preferred to do this alone. “All right,” he had finally conceded. “But the power’s still off, so make sure you’re gone well before dark.”
“I will,” she had promised. Part of her was intrigued by him. He seemed genuinely kind and caring, unlike most of the men she was used to dealing with. But then they all seemed that way at first.
Turning, she stood in front of the cabin and stared at the sheets of plywood where the big picture window had been. Her heart pounded in her chest in spite of the Xanax she had taken to help calm her nerves.
She walked up the steps to the front door, unlocked it, and stepped inside. Even though she knew better, a part of her still expected to smell the familiar scent of baking bread and to hear Audrey Gran humming merrily as she worked in the kitchen.
Instead, she found silence and darkness. The magnificent view of the lake was gone. Faint beams of light filtered into the room, which smelled of bleach and Pine Sol.
She closed the door behind her. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing here, though she knew she had to come. She hadn’t decided if she was going to sell the place or not; however, even if she didn’t, she knew she would have to go through her grandparents’ belongings sooner or later, and she figured it would be better to do it now and get it over with as opposed to prolonging the inevitable.
The coat closet’s door was missing, and as she looked about the room, Carrie noticed the large hole where the sheetrock had been cut from the wall next to the stairs. She started toward the kitchen, trying hard not to let her imagination run away with suppositions of what might have happened in this room. She intended to sit down and make a list of things that needed to be done, such as calling a glass company to replace the front window and a carpenter to repair the wall and door, but as she passed the stairs and saw the broken baluster and the bleached-out spot on the floor where the blood had been cleaned up, it all became too much.
She rushed into the kitchen and leaned over the sink as her body was suddenly racked with sobs.
After she cried herself out, she turned on the faucet and splashed her face with cool water.
Then, with trembling hands, she took down a glass from the cabinet above the sink and went to the pantry, where her grandfather had kept the liquor on the top shelf. She grabbed a bottle of Bacardi and poured a large shot which she slammed down without the benefit of ice or a mixer.
She coughed and spluttered as the rum burned its way down her throat, but it wasn’t enough. She knew she would never be able to get through this in her current state. She moved to the table and sat down. Grandpa Bill’s fly-tying equipment was still scattered across its surface.
I can’t do this
, she thought, nearly losing it again. She opened her purse and dug around in it. A growing sense of panic started to bloom in her chest before she finally found the bottle of Xanax. She jerked the top off the bottle and sent pills scattering across the table and onto the floor. Then she poured herself another shot, which she quickly tossed down along with one of the bitter pills.
She picked up one of the flies from the table and admired the details of her grandfather’s handiwork. Then she noticed the black powder dusting it all like a layer of fine ash, and the fly disappeared in a blur of tears. She poured herself yet another drink and downed it as quickly as the last, desperately seeking to escape from the nightmare that had become her reality.
Carrie woke with a start. Her blurry vision slowly cleared, revealing a large black bat, its wings spread wide against a blood-red background. The room around her was almost dark. She could just make out the Bacardi logo on the nearly empty bottle in front of her.
She lifted her head from the table and wiped away the thin streamer of drool from her cheek. Her head pounded, and her face was stiff with dried tears. She was momentarily disoriented, and then it all came back to her. She was at her grandparents’ cabin on the lake. She had come to start the arduous process of going through their belongings but had fallen apart and passed out at the table. Now it was dark, and something had caused her to wake suddenly.
She sat still, listening. Outside, the wind had picked up, rustling the trees and moaning through the eaves. There was a
tick
at the window above the sink.
She jumped at the sound. She pushed away from the table, and stared at the window as she backed against the cabinets on the far side of the room. She was so dizzy she wavered, just managing to catch herself by grabbing the edge of the counter. Even so, she felt as if she might fall and spiral downward into a bottomless well.
There came another
tick
, and even though she tried to tell herself it was nothing more than moths or pine needles tapping the glass, it was a struggle to keep her imagination from running away with itself.
Outside, the wind picked up, suddenly howling and wailing. Inside, the cabin creaked and groaned.
Carrie stood there, frozen with fear. She was certain someone or some
thing
was outside. She could sense its presence. She could practically
feel
it clawing at the cracks between the logs, struggling to get inside.
Thunk!
Her heart lurched, and she barely stifled a scream. The sound had come from above, as if someone had just leapt from one of the trees and onto the roof.
She crept to the end of the kitchen and peered into the living room. It was even darker in there, but the boards over the window were still intact. She reached for the telephone that hung on the wall just above the counter and found the base unit, but the cordless handset was not in its cradle and the base had no speakerphone capabilities or keypad for dialing. She thought about her cell phone, but then remembered there was no cellular service at the cabin.
As she fought against the rising panic in her chest, she reached around into the living room, blindly feeling for the light switch on the wall. There was a faint
click
as she flipped it, but nothing happened. Then she remembered Agent Andrew’s final warning as he drove off that morning.
The power’s still off, so be sure you’re gone well before dark.
Without waiting for anything else, Carrie bolted around the corner and raced toward the stairs and the bedrooms on the second floor. The back bedroom had been used as an office for their business. It had a telephone, and perhaps even more importantly, it had her grandfather’s gun locker in the back of the closet.
In the dark, she tripped over one of the steps and fell on the landing halfway up, cracking her shin in the process. The floorboards creaked loudly beneath her as she limped down the hallway and into the converted bedroom.
Just enough wan light filtered into the room for Carrie to see the computer desk with the printer/fax machine beside it. She rushed over, grabbed the handset, and punched in 911 before she realized the line was dead. At first, she thought someone must have cut the line like a scene in a bad horror movie, but then she realized the machine didn’t work with the power off. Therefore, the telephone wouldn’t work either.
“
Damn it!
” she cursed as she threw down the handset. Turning, she started toward the closet, her shin throbbing dully with each step.
Halfway across the room, she froze. She thought she had heard something downstairs. Motionless, she listened for any sounds that might give away the presence of an intruder: the squeak of a door, the creak of the stairs, or the sound of heavy breathing in the hall.
And then she heard it—a scratching, scraping sound on the roof, as if someone was dragging something across it. It went on for a few seconds, stopped, and then began again. There was no rhythm to the sound, just a random procession of thumping and scraping that pushed Carrie to the edge of hysteria.
Without taking her eyes off the window, she hurried to the closet and Grandpa Bill’s gun cabinet. The cabinet was a heavy, sixteen-gauge-steel locker with a single door. And it was locked. There was a combination lock like a safe on the front and a keyhole in the latch handle, but Carrie didn’t know the combination and had no idea where Grandpa Bill kept the key.
She hurried back across the room to the desk. Frantically, she searched all the drawers, pens and pencils and tiny boxes of paperclips spilling to the floor as she tossed them aside, all while continually glancing up at the window before her. Time was running out, and she knew it. At any moment, she expected to see a dark form come hurtling down from the roof and crashing through the window.
In desperation, she snatched up a gold-plated letter opener and raced back to the closet. She pulled on the cabinet’s handle as hard as she could while she worked the opener into the crack between the door and the side in hopes of prying it open, but the opener bent and then snapped in two without even scratching the door.
“
Damn it
,” she whimpered, hammering futilely at the cabinet before finally slumping to the floor.
Sitting there, she began contemplating her situation. Would it really be so bad to just give up and surrender to the inevitable? She had done all she could, and it hadn’t been enough. She was so tired of being alone and afraid, and now that her grandparents were gone, she was
truly
alone—more alone than she had ever been before. What reason did she really have for going on anyway?
But even as those thoughts crossed her mind, she knew the answer. She owed it to her parents and grandparents who had loved her and had done so much for her, especially Audrey Gran, who had refused to let her give up after her parents’ death. She owed it to them all to go on, to live a full life and continue their legacy, because that was what they would have wanted. More than that, she owed it to them to find out who had murdered them and why. They had never done anything to deserve the horrific deaths they had suffered.
Carrie knew then what she had to do. After she picked herself up off the floor, she shut the closet door. Then she moved around beside the gun cabinet and pushed against it. It was too heavy to slide across the carpet, which just buckled up in front of it, but she kept pushing, bracing herself against the wall and shoving with everything she had until the carpet ripped loose from the tackboard and the cabinet slid away from the wall slightly.
With renewed determination, Carrie slowly worked the cabinet back and forth until it blocked the closet door shut. There was just enough room between the wall and the cabinet for her to slip into. She squeezed herself into the small gap and sat down, her knees pulled up against her chest. Her only hope was that if someone did break in, they wouldn’t search the house thoroughly enough to find her in the narrow recess behind the heavy cabinet.
It wasn’t much, but at least she wasn’t giving up.
And that, she thought, would have made her grandmother proud.
Just sixteen miles beyond the town of Hungry Horse on Highway 2 at the western entrance to Glacier National Park lay the small town of West Glacier. While called a town, it was really nothing more than a collection of a few gift shops—all built to look like log cabins—a small grocery store, a gas station, and an Alberta Visitor Center for travelers interested in crossing the border into Canada. In the summer, West Glacier was the western entry point to Glacier National Park and the Going to the Sun Road. The narrow, two-lane road snaked its way through the park, offering grandiose views of the majestic, snowcapped mountains and numerous waterfalls that plummeted hundreds of feet down sheer stone escarpments into crystal-clear blue-green lakes. In the winter, however, from early October until late May of each year, the Going to the Sun Road was closed, buried beneath tons of snow and ice in drifts and slides up to eighty feet deep.
During that time, travelers wishing to reach the east side of the park had to continue on past West Glacier, following the route of Highway 2, which dipped around the southern edge of the park along the boundary between Glacier National Park and the Flathead National Forest. The highway, which followed the valley that had been cut between the mountains by the Flathead River, ran roughly parallel to the river that had been dammed up to form Hungry Horse Reservoir. At the southernmost point of the highway just past the tiny burg of Essex, the road extended about halfway down the reservoir’s length before it turned back northward toward East Glacier, the Blackfoot Indian Reservation, and Canada. During summer and the peak of tourist season, the road was well traveled, but in the winter, hardly any traffic at all was found on the road.
It was at this point on the highway that a late-model Ford Taurus made its way along the lonely road. The sun had just dipped behind the mountains, the rosy glow of twilight slowly spreading across the sky. Snow chains on the tires made an awful clattering sound that echoed down the valley like the roar of a distant avalanche. The highway had been plowed, the snow piled in dirty mounds along each side of the road, but dangerously slick patches still lurked within the shadows of the mountain.
With the onset of night, the deepening cold pressed ever more insistently against the windows, but Tammy Knowles felt as warm and as cozy as she could ever remember having felt in her entire life. She looked over at Danny—as she had done countless times in the past two days—and in particular his left hand on the steering wheel. The shiny silver band was still there. Again, she felt the warm glow spread outward from the core of her being through her entire body—a tingling wave of absolute bliss from her fingertips to her toes.
Danny glanced over at her. He wasn’t the greatest looking guy in the world. In fact, to be totally honest, he was more than a little pudgy, with unruly brown hair, plain brown eyes, and the remnants of acne scars on his nose and cheeks. But he was sweet and kind, and he loved her for who she
was in spite of her big nose and small breasts. He smiled, looking a little shy and embarrassed and perhaps even a little nervous all at the same time, which only made her love him that much more.
They had gone a few miles farther when a sudden thumping came from the back of the car.
“Ah, fuck,” Danny cursed as he looked in the rearview mirror.
Tammy rolled her eyes. He wasn’t exactly Prince Charming either. “What is it?” she asked, looking behind them.
“I think we’ve got a flat,” he groaned. He slowed and turned on the hazards. “I knew I shouldn’t have put the chains on so soon.”
“So what do we do?” Tammy asked, a hint of uneasiness creeping into her voice.
“Don’t worry,” Danny said. “There’s a spare in the trunk. I’ll just change it. We’ll be fine. The roads aren’t that bad, and we’ve still got the chains on the other three tires. Once we get to the next town, we’ll find someone to fix it.”
Just ahead was a scenic overlook complete with dozens of parking spaces and a little brick building housing the restrooms, which Danny pulled into. The rest stop had also been plowed, although not as thoroughly as the highway. Snow still clung to the asphalt in slick, frozen patches that made loud, crackling sounds as they drove over them.
Tammy looked out the window. Across the valley, an elevated train trestle crossed a deep gorge cut by the rapidly flowing Flathead River. To the right, in stark contrast to the rest of the dark mountain, a large white flank stood out in the gathering gloom.
Just in front of the car was an angled metal plaque detailing the area for tourists. Tammy opened her door and gingerly made her way across the icy macadam.
The marker was titled, “the Salt Lick.” The location was a favorite of mountain goats, which, in the summertime, came to the spot to lick the salt from the exposed stone.
Intrigued, Tammy looked at the Salt Lick, but there were no goats to be seen. The trees across the river rustled in the rising breeze, and the tiny hairs on the nape of her neck stood on end as the cold knifed across it. A shiver slid down her spine. She pulled her coat tighter around her and carefully shuffled back to the car.
She adjusted the rearview mirror in order to watch while Danny banged around in the trunk and pulled out the jack and the spare tire. He moved to the passenger side, and after a few moments, the back of the car began to rise. Tammy looked at the rearview mirror on her side. She could see his dark silhouette, which was lit up intermittently by the hazards as he worked the crank.
At least the flat’s on the passenger side of the car
, she thought. That way she didn’t have to worry about him getting run over, which she would have if the flat had been on the other side, even though there was hardly any traffic on the highway.
Danny had the car jacked up in almost no time. With the rear of the car in the air, Tammy could no longer see him in the mirror. She thought about adjusting it to see better, but it was electric, and the controls were on the driver’s side armrest. Plus, Danny had them adjusted so he could see while he drove, and she didn’t want to mess them up for him.
A sudden knock at the window caused Tammy to jump. She turned and saw Danny grinning sheepishly. She rolled down the window.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “But would you mind turning off the car, I’m about to choke to death on the fumes back here. You can leave the stereo on. It’s not gonna take me that long.”
“Sure,” she said. After she rolled the window back up, she leaned over and switched off the ignition, leaving it in the accessory position. She turned the stereo back up to keep her occupied until Danny was finished.
Outside, it had started to snow. The first big flakes blowing against the windshield began to melt almost immediately, but with the heater off, it didn’t take long for them to begin to accumulate. It was beautiful, but it also concerned her. They still had a fair ways to go to the Prince of Wales Hotel in Canada, and now that one of the tires was flat—
Thunk.
The car shook as if it had been hit by something. Tammy looked at the mirror, but it was obscured by the snow. She couldn’t see anything out the window either, except for the white ground, which lit up intermittently with the flashing red light of the hazards. She figured it was just Danny putting on the spare. Then she thought she heard him call out.
She turned down the music. It was silent except for the
blink … blink … blink
of the hazards. She rolled down the window and stuck her head out. “Honey, did you call me?” He wasn’t beside the car anymore; she could see his silhouette behind it. It looked as if he was hunched over something on the ground, but it was too hard to see amid the brief flashes of red light.
“Danny?” she called out louder this time.
When he didn’t respond, she got out to see if he needed help. The wind whipped her hair into her face. She pulled it back out of her eyes and looked at the ground, making sure not to slip.
The red light flashed on the snowy ground.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
The dark form huddled behind the car raised as she approached.
It wasn’t Danny.
It took a moment for her mind to grasp the horrific scene before her.
Danny lay on the ground, unmoving, his midsection a bloody mess that spilled onto the pavement, glistening in the light of the hazards.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Tammy screamed.
The dark form turned in her direction.
She ran.
She didn’t even think about trying to get back into the car. She
couldn’t
think. Rational thought was gone. She didn’t know where she was running or if she might slip and fall or how long she could survive outside in the cold. She just ran as fast as she possibly could. She ran past the open door and the front of the car, across the beam of the headlights, and into the middle of the highway, her breath coming in harsh, raspy gasps, the cold air burning her lungs.
Blink.
Twenty feet in front of the car, a sudden, sharp pain pierced her shoulder as if she had been stabbed.
Blink.
She tried to scream, but all that came out was a faint, wheezing gasp as she was driven to the ground.
Blink.