The Spirit

“So it could have been anything. It could have been people.”

They shifted weight from one foot to the other. Then Jones said, “If you ask me, those shafts were blocked off deliberately. Those rockfalls fill them up completely.”

Taylor chimed in, “And I bet they’re keeping meat in there and smoking it.”

The other two groaned. Drake said, “What’s he talking about?”

“Taylor says he smelled smoke inside,” said Wallace. “We didn’t smell anything.”

“They’d put it in one of the higher shafts,” said Taylor stubbornly. “So the smoke would escape through the tunnels. That way nobody would notice like they would if it came out of one hole.”

Wallace squashed his empty beer can in his hand. “It’s just nuts, if you ask me. Man or beast, it’s so dark in there you’d go blind in an hour. The only thing that can see in there is a bat.”

Which had occurred to Drake. Nocturnal or not, human or not, nobody could live forever in the mine in total darkness. Were it not for the vegetation, that would have been grounds for dismissing Jason’s story. “What about the bones?”

“Just bones. Nothing.” Jones did not elaborate, which meant that Jameson’s bones were not in the pile. For that small grace, Wallace was grateful. “Them bones, them bones, them dry bones . . .” Jones beat time with his knees, trying to discharge his tension.

“Boss, all that vegetation is sea-­level stuff. Whoever did it has been foraging all over the county.”

Drake said, “Well, I’d like to know how they got it in there without leaving prints.”

“It was packed in from the other side. Had to be. Which means . . .”

“Yeah,” Drake retorted. “I know what it means.” It meant there had to be another entrance to the mine somewhere on the mountain. He looked at the useless charts. He had asked the state bureau for more recent ones after Jason and Martha left that morning. Which meant they should be here between now and Judgment Day, depending on how good secretaries were at rummaging through filing cabinets.

Somebody must have seen them! To Drake it was simply inconceivable that they could have been up here unnoticed all these years. Well, what would a Bigfoot look like from a distance anyway? A man in a fur coat. Maybe they’d been seen all along and no one had realized it. Living up here without leaving trails even, not even a speck of shit, not anything!

Drake stood up, stashing his chart in the truck. “I think we better start combing these mountains before the charts get here. I think we better find out where the food is coming from and how they got it in. We’ll look for stripped bushes and trees and holes where seeds were dug up and everything like that. Jason said they may have left in the past couple of days. If we find any sign they’re still here we mount a hunt of some kind. I don’t want anybody talking about this—not even to your wives—and I don’t want anybody running after them at night, okay?”

“Why don’t we close the lodge down now?”

Which Drake could have done with no trouble, but it was not quite as easy as that. Much as he disliked Colby Lodge, jobs were scarce in Garrison. Augusta County was what is euphemistically called a depressed area, and that was why Helder had been allowed to build in the first place. Drake would not like being responsible for driving Helder out of business on the basis of Raymond Jason’s story, especially if the Bigfoot were gone already. “We can always do that. Let’s give it a couple of more days first and see where we’re at when the storm gets here.”

They were blocking the road with sawhorses when Helder’s Cadillac drove up. Usually the sight of the huge machine bouncing over back roads like a yacht in a bird-bath amused Drake. Today he did not smile at anything.

“Hello, Drake,” Jack Helder said pleasantly.

“Afternoon, Mr. Helder,” Drake answered with equal pleasantness. “You just saved me a trip to your lodge. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stop your overnight camping trips.”

“Might I ask why?”

Drake expectorated a thin stream of saliva between his two front teeth. “Little bear problem. Some folks spotted grizzlies up at the town. So we’re closing off the road.”

“Oh.” Helder thought it over. Yes. Okay. Grizzlies. “Funny, it’s the first I’ve heard about it. In fact, I haven’t heard about bears since . . .” Helder’s stomach rotated, and his hands made an involuntary movement to his mouth. He was the one who had found Walter Jameson that morning, lying on the fresh sand, his blood soaking a patch the size of a blanket. A man without a head. Helder had never seen anything like that in his life. “Where did you say they were?”

“Up at Oharaville. They live in the mine. We figure they’re about ready to hibernate, so they’ll be sleepy and pretty impatient with folks.”