P Deutermann - Spider mountain

“What’ve we got?” Baby asked.

“Fog’s coming in,” I said. “Nothing moving out there for the moment. Better move that lantern, though.” I didn’t want to be silhouetted. And we still hadn’t found Grinny Creigh.

“These kids are starving,” Baby said. “And scared.”

“Wards of Grinny Creigh,” I said. “They ought to be scared.”

He shook his head in dismay. “Barely human, some of them,” he mused.

“Problem is, how do we get them out of here?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking sideways out the partially opened barn doors. “We try to make a run for it, and she’s out there in the weeds with some of those dogs?”

“What if we could go back through the tunnels,” I said. “That would reduce our exposure to a fifty-foot run across open ground. Once we got into the rock passage, we could defend ourselves, and then get to the vehicle.”

As if in answer to my what-if, we both heard something, a noise in the tunnel from which we’d just come. One of the kids was staring at the open door, and then she started to cry. I sprinted for the door as I recognized the sound of running feet-far too many running feet. The shepherds recognized it, too, and leaped for the doorway at about the same time I got the thing slammed shut. Ten seconds later there were multiple thuds against the door and dark growls of frustration. So much for getting out through the tunnels, I thought. And Grinny had joined us on the web. Her web.

Baby had brought the keeper bar into the barn and then secured the barn doors using the brackets on our side. There was a lot of snuffling and growling going on in the tunnel and just that simple door latch keeping the door closed. I jammed a pitchfork up against the panels of the door.

“What time is it?” Baby asked.

I looked at my watch. It was twelve thirty in the morning.

“They’ll find that note when they go looking for you,” he said. “Then they’ll come here. All we have to do now is wait.”

“She’s here,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” he replied. “She’s here.”

I peered through the crack between the barn doors. There was a cold draft coming into the barn, and the mist had deepened outside. I could see out into the building complex, but not very far out into the yards beyond.

“Well, we sure as hell can’t go out there,” I said. “There’ll be dogs and probably some black hats with rifles waiting. Don’t suppose your cell works, does it?”

He shook his head. I’d checked mine; same deal-no signal. Some of the dogs on the other side of the tunnel door must have heard us talking, because they began to jump against the door. The pitchfork held, but just barely. The kids were watching the door with terrified expressions. They apparently were all too familiar with Grinny’s dog pack.

“Hay bales,” Baby said, and we started stacking bales against the door. We got twenty of them set up, which had the effect of reducing the scary noises and also putting a thousand pounds of weight in front of that door. I went back to the front door to keep watch.

“What would you do if you were Grinny’s crew right now?” Baby asked.

“I’d surround this barn with dogs and black hats and then set it on fire,” I said. “Solve all my problems at once.”

He nodded. Apparently the same thought had occurred to him.

“Still glad you came?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” he said. “How far is it to the main cabin?”

“Maybe three hundred feet,” I said, opening the door a crack to make sure.

“If we could get over there before she organizes her troops, we’d have that hidey-hole underground and a shot at that one escape tunnel. Here we have what’s called a barbecue pit.”

He had a point, but it was getting really foggy out there. We’d never see a brace of dogs coming, and they’d probably hit the kids before they hit us. We both looked out the front door. A substantial mountain fog looked back. Then, somewhere along the hill, a dog began to howl. Before I could shut them up, my shepherds howled back, and we were treated to a two-minute wolf-pack duet echoing across the ridges, strangely muted by the fog but eerie all the same. I let them go to it; I wanted whoever was out there in the trees to know there were four of us in here, not just two.

The dogs in the back tunnel went quiet when the howling started. The kids watched my shepherds with total fascination. Somehow the howling inside had comforted them a little bit. Baby was right: They were a motley-looking crew, all of whom would have been the subject of taunts at school for their defective appearance. But they were little girls, and the witch had been sending them to a butcher.

“Cover me,” Baby said. “I’m going to see if I can find some water and buckets nearby.”

I put the lantern over in one corner near the girls, told them it was going to be okay, and then took up position just outside the door with the shotgun. Baby slipped out, gun in hand, and went left, in between our shed and the next one. The fog lay over the grounds like a wet white veil, quiet as a coiled snake. The dogs on the hill had stopped their racket, and mine were plastered to my legs. I stood out there for five minutes, listening. I should have sent them with Baby, I thought, although they might have taken off after sounds in the fog.

Sounds in the fog. There was something out there.

I slipped back into the barn and closed the doors down to gunport width. Then I realized Baby might return in a hurry and opened one about a foot. Frack bristled at the foggy darkness, and I told him to stay. I went down on one knee to lower my profile. Tendrils of fog probed the doorway and chilled my ankles. Where the hell was Baby? I heard more snuffling behind the tunnel door, and one of the girls began to whimper again.

Suddenly, out front, an orange glow flared in the fog. Then a second one, then two more. Two were close together, the rest spread out. They were far enough away that all I could see was the flickering light, but it was obvious I was looking at torches. Lots of torches. Then a disembodied voice spoke out of the fog.

“Lawman!” the voice called. “You in there.” It was Grinny’s voice.

I said nothing, but got down flat on the ground with the shotgun pointed out front.

“ You in there, speak up, damn yer eyes,” she said. Even her voice was hateful. There were some old shingles on the floor by the door. I picked one up, slanted it across my mouth so that my voice would be pitched to the right, and answered her.

“I don’t talk to women who murder children,” I called back.

“Shet yer mouth with that talk,” she called back. “You’s the one gonna die tonight.”

I wondered if perhaps Baby was out there, doing some kind of a flanking movement. If he could surprise them from the side, I could release the dogs and attack them in the face. Had to keep her talking so I’d be able to locate them. The torches made it harder, not easier, to pinpoint where they were.

“We’ve got Nathan hanging by a hook at the glass hole,” I called back. “Talking to some federal friends right now. Then they’re coming here.”

“Maybe not, sport,” Baby said. “Look behind you. In the corner, by the kids. I think your little love note came with you.”

I blinked. What? His voice had come from the same direction as Grinny’s. A cold, sinking feeling filled my stomach as I realized where he’d gone.

I looked. My note to Carrie was on the floor. They might yet come, but not because they knew I was here.

“That you, Special Agent?” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “You’re in this kid-killing thing with that monster?”

“Consider it culling, not killing,” he said from somewhere out there in the fog. “You saw them: Most of’em aren’t going to make it past puberty anyway.”