Red Mountain by Dennis Yates Read Free Book Online Page A

mean you no harm.”
    He began to drag himself across the floor so the boy could see his face better in the wavering candlelight. The boy stepped back and lit several candles in a small alcove. As Underwood’s eyes adjusted to the light, he wished he’d stayed put.
    Holy Christ…
    Resting on a bed of dirty yellow straw were thick blocks of clouded ice. One lay split apart and leaking. Ice like that, Underwood knew, could only have been taken down from the mountains in the back of a mule-drawn wagon.
    In the flickering candlelight he could make out a grayish form suspended inside the unbroken block. It occurred to Underwood the steaming pot of hot water sitting next to it was there for the purpose of helping it melt. When the child touched the block with his palm Underwood was startled by a shadowy movement inside. The boy took his hand away and giggled.
    “What is it?” Underwood asked, not believing his eyes. Torrents of pain passed through his body, creating hallucinations that played tricks on his mind.
    The boy grinned and picked up the lantern from the floor. Before Underwood could say another word the boy disappeared. He thought he heard the padding of bare feet ascending a wooden staircase and shouted at the boy to come back. As the night wore on, he watched the candles sink into runny puddles on top of the blocks of ice. Then, just as he was going to shut his eyes again, he heard the sound of something moving toward him through the near darkness, its hot breath stinking of raw flesh and death.
    “Sheriff… Sheriff…” hissed a voice just outside the golden refuge of candle light.
    Underwood strained to see, but it was too dark. Then the candles began to go out, one by one, and with each candle he could feel the temperature of his blood drop several more degrees.
    It can’t be Horn. Horn’s dead…
    He loaded his rifle and braced it against his good knee.
    But then again it might be….
    “Sheriff… Sheriff…”
    He could have sworn the voice was a woman’s.
    He had an idea. A desperate one and the only damn card he had left holding…
    “You and I’ve got no bad blood between us,” he shouted to the unknown presence. “I’m asking you to let me live. I’ve got a wife and a daughter who need me. If you just put me on my horse, I can take myself home. I’ll tell them all you’re dead so they won’t come looking for you.”
    Underwood waited. Whoever—whatever—had stopped calling his name. But it hadn’t stopped coming toward him. He listened to the gritty scrape of its feet.
    “I’m begging you. Please…”
    Shaking badly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wooden match. He struck it against his silver belt buckle, stretched out his good arm and held it there.
    A shape suddenly blurred into view, a human monster covered in sticky yellow fat. Its jaw sank into the sheriff’s wrist and tore it away in seconds. Blood sailed from the ragged stump and pattered against the candle-lit blocks of ice. The match he’d lit still flickered in the palm of his severed hand.
    When Underwood fainted the thing leaped on top of him. In the pitch black he felt its muscular thighs rock against his groin, and its long hair fell into his face and tickled it just as his wife’s sometimes did. He felt himself getting hard, and forgot for a bittersweet moment he was probably bleeding to death. He lifted his hips and moaned, his mind engulfed by an unspeakable ecstasy as long finger nails twirled playfully with his ears before plunging deep inside, stirring the delicate bones and flesh into a pulpy soup.
    He couldn’t even hear his own screams.
    He splashed backwards into a heaving sea and floated along an obsidian surface until a swift current gripped him by the legs and pulled him under. He knew he’d never be coming back.
    Underwood’s final thoughts were of his promise to take Caroline to see the Pacific again in late summer. With luck, perhaps they’d meet there again in some form or another,