Among the Mountains
A Tale from "The Stone Portal"
This short story is taken from Justin Geoffrey’s excellent, The Stone Portal, which is now available from 1325 Publishing.
Hewlett’s fate was sealed by actions beyond his control. He never learned the cause of his despair, and it is likely that the truth would have driven him to madness. Few can withstand knowing just how random life can be.
On the first chilly day in September, Gus Richard, an employee at the Common Man restaurant, decided to kill time. He had plenty of time to kill. Everybody in Lincoln had nothing but time. The months between summer and winter were as dead as a graveyard. The locals loved it of course, and Gus and his family had lived high up in the White Mountains since crossing over from Quebec sometime in the nineteenth century. Gus liked his Lincoln quiet. He could spend long lunch breaks smoking in peace. Gus was convinced that he slept better, and that beer tasted better when his workdays were frivolous as opposed to strenuous. Gus was a man who saw no point in hard work.
As the sun started setting, Gus found himself mindlessly strolling up the main path through Loon Mountain. He picked the last of the season’s blueberries and swished them around in his mouth. They stained his yellow teeth purple, but he didn’t care. He was busy enjoying the feel of the wind cutting through the trees. Gus was so wrapped up in nature’s goodness that he did not see the small shrine until it was too late. Gus tripped over it and fell onto his outstretched hands in the dirt. The fall drew blood from his palms. Gus swore with all the vigor of a true Frenchman. He kicked the rocks in front of him and spat on the scattered tree branches and leaves on both sides of the trail.
After calming down, Gus examined the source of his accident. He picked up a partially burnt pot covered in old wax from a black candle. The pot contained indescribable things, some of which appeared to be animal bones. Gus bent his head to smell the pot. He recoiled after realizing that the coppery scent was blood. Gus heaved the pot far into the woods. He heard it crash against some moss-covered rocks in the distance. Without a second thought, Gus walked back in the direction of the Common Man. He would finish his shift that night without anything more happening. He left work and got drunk at his favorite watering hole. He drove home in his decaying Ford truck and went to sleep. He slept with all the assurance of the ignorant, never once pondering what he had stumbled upon on the mountain.
***
At the same time as Gus Richard dreamed pedestrian dreams, Hewlett woke up in a panic. Nightmares were not normal for him. Hewlett was one of the rare people who did not dream, or at least did not remember his dreams. Hewlett loved the night because that was the one time in his day when his mind did not work in overdrive. Hewlett was a graduate student in Northeastern University’s English Department, and his sole goal was to complete his doctorate in record time. He was well on his way to reaching the pinnacle of his academic prowess when the nightmare arrived.
Hewlett left his bed and journeyed to the bathroom. He ran his face under cold water in the sink. He padded it dry with his clean towel, and then looked in the mirror. After making a mental note to clean the mirror with Windex, Hewlett studied his face. He found it the same as ever. He peered into his reflection and repeated a familiar mantra out loud: “It’s just a panic attack. Not a medical emergency. It’s just a panic attack. Not a medical emergency…”
Except it wasn’t a panic attack.
Hewlett managed to go back to sleep. He rose at his normal time feeling a little groggier than normal, but otherwise fine. He showered, brushed his teeth, and made coffee. He put on his normal outfit of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt featuring the university’s logo. He took the T to class as usual. Everything was ordinary.
Except it wasn’t.
For no reason at all, seconds after he sat down in his chair in the basement office that he shared with two other graduate students, Hewlett’s nose began to bleed. Rather than a small dribble, the blood came out as a flood. It was bright blood, almost arterial. Hewlett found the bathroom and stuffed his nose with coarse paper towels, but the blood kept flowing. He grew dizzy and collapsed. Unfortunately, Hewlett’s habits nearly did him in. Hewlett was always the first to arrive at the department building, so he was not found for another hour. Tracy Broadman, who specialized in postcolonial literature but who was actually a master of pitch-black cynicism, nudged Hewlett’s lifeless body with the toe of her overpriced combat boots. She took her time in calling for help, and when she did, she only called Kathy Steiner, the department administrator. Steiner’s reaction was the opposite, as she frantically called both the campus police and a city ambulance. Neither woman cared about Hewlett; Steiner cared about saving the department from possible scrutiny, while Tracy Broadman did not care about anything except herself. She shut her office door and stayed inside while the paramedics loaded Hewlett onto the stretcher.
“Another wounded white man,” Tracy Broadman said to herself. She then stopped thinking about it.
Hewlett woke up in a hospital bed with a surgical mask around his mouth. He felt completely drained of energy, but otherwise okay. He said as much to the nurse and the doctor who talked to him. Hewlett was eventually released late that night after all the tests came back negative. He did not have hypertension, he did not experience a stroke, and there were no signs of an aneurysm. All the doctor said was something about relaxation. Hewlett paid him no mind, as he was too wrapped up in the mechanics of hailing an Uber or Lyft.
Hewlett got home well after midnight. He tried to sleep, but his sleep was disturbed by another nightmare. It was similar to the last one—a wooded scene featuring an unnatural sky. The first time the sky had been red; this time it was a sickly green. The color of slime, Hewlett thought. The image bothered him so much that he found sleep impossible that night.
Hewlett learned something that generations of unfortunate lunatics have been forced to learn—madness comes swift. Prior to the nightmares, Hewlett had been relatively normal. He had his passions and his hobbies, plus he loved his job. Sure, there were things that he did not like so much. He wanted to lose some weight, and he was sick of being single. Still, these were minor irritations in the grand scheme of things. They seemed even milder when Hewlett’s mind and body started attacking him.
First, Hewlett had to stop attending classes. Whenever he did, something went wrong. During the mandatory discussion about Derrida, Hewlett wet himself. While Professor Papelbon crowed on and on about the occult genius of the German misanthropic poet Ludwig Derleth, Hewlett vomited into the classroom wastebasket. As bad as these bodily manifestations of unease were, the embarrassment was worse. Hewlett could not stand the way his classmates looked at him. Tracy Broadman was the worst of them. She seemed to take perverse pleasure in his suffering. Hewlett stayed home and let his grades suffer.
Then, after a week of searing headaches, he checked himself into the Boston Medical Center. All the x-rays and blood tests turned up negative. The headaches persisted and increased in intensity. Hewlett began to consider himself a medical mystery. He hunted among the lowlifes of the Methadone Mile in a fruitless search for narcotics. Hewlett, a novice drug user, figured that a potent chemical could ease the pain in his brain. The junkies considered him a police spy, so they maintained their distance and kept their needles and pill bottles away from his demanding hands.
At the end of his personal stamina, and after almost a month of inexplicable sickness, Hewlett retreated to the safety of his family’s home in central Massachusetts. His mother welcomed him back with open arms, but very worried eyes. His stoic father said little. At first Hewlett convinced himself that he was feeling better. His mother’s chicken noddle soup and his father’s mindless conversations about the Patriots really did seem to weaken the building pressure inside his skull. He even volunteered to help with the yard work. He enjoyed it until he had to stop because of the pain behind his eyes. His sweet mother told him it was fine, and she brought hot rolls and a cup of herbal tea to his bedside that night.
On the edge of this seeming tranquility was the threat of another physical breakdown. Hewlett stayed up at night worrying about his life. He considered that death was just around the corner. That or a total mental collapse. He could feel the itch of the straitjacket’s tight sleeves on his arms. He started hearing the shuffling of feet in an imaginary mental ward. Hewlett, who to all outside observes was living a decent life in exile at his family’s modest home near Leominster, felt one step away from the impenetrable void of the grave. Ever the student of literature, Hewlett tried to chronicle his despair via a journal. A true-blue diary of a madman, he thought. This too fell away along with Hewlett's motivations, love, and general interests.
Then, without warning, in much the same way as the madness came, the fog covering Hewlett’s brain was lifted. Yet another dream was the root cause. Hewlett saw the same scene—the forest and the strange sky painted an unnatural color. He smelled the damp, moss-covered stones and the layers of dead leaves and dead things underneath the tree branches. However, this time the primordial forest had a name. A voice that sounded like his own whispered in his ear:
Loon.
Loon. As in looney tunes. Loon as in lunatic. Hewlett figured that his devilish mind was tormenting him again.
Except this felt different.
The next morning, Hewlett asked his mother, who was far more sympathetic to his mania than his earth-bound father, about the meaning behind Loon. Her answer surprised him.
“Loon’s an animal, honey. Well, that and there’s Loon Mountain up in New Hampshire.”
“New Hampshire,” Hewlett repeated.
“We used to go there when you were a baby,” his mother added.
“I don’t remember that,” Hewlett said.
“You wouldn’t. You were so young and cute. You’re still cute, though.” His mother bent down and pinched his cheeks. She smiled at him, but all Hewlett saw was a grinning ghoul. His formerly rosy-cheeked mother grimaced like a demon looking for a soul to steal. It took everything for Hewlett not to scream or strike out. He left the quiet kitchen and retreated to the sunny afternoon outside. He saw his father nod to him in the backyard. His upper body was covered in a familiar gray Boston Red Sox t-shirt, but his lower body was different and disgusting. His father’s usual khaki shorts or faded blue jeans were replaced by the hairy and bowed legs of a goat. His father, a man close to the rhythms of nature and the demands of daily life, had become the Greek god Pan. Hewlett watched in horror as his father crouched and began to slink around the backyard, licking each blade of grass as he went.
For the next several days Hewlett refused to leave his room. He sought shelter and refuge in isolation and adolescence. He pulled down the plastic container holding all his old toys. He played with the wooden toy trucks, the pro wrestling action figures, and the various LEGO contraptions he had built during happier days. Nothing could make the images go away. No amount of sleep could erase those scenes from his eyes, so Hewlett removed himself from his parents. His mother tried to coax him out of his room with food; his father stayed quiet as usual. Suicide went from an unspoken taboo to a daily thought that occurred every minute of every day. Hewlett knew that it could not last—either he would die or forever sever himself from the world. He considered swallowing his mother’s anxiety medication or using his father’s gardening shears to sever his hand from his wrist.
No relief appeared until the man came. During the afternoon of his last day in Leominster, Hewlett sat by his bedroom window. He tried to occupy his mind by counting random objects between his family’s house and the ones that belonged to the neighbors. Between the wooden fence his father had built after the 1999 Super Bowl and the Morrisons’ backyard, Hewlett saw a man standing still and smoking a cigarette. He stood in a ratty t-shirt and dirty jeans and just smoked and stared at Hewlett. He looked like a landscaper on a protracted lunch break. The man gave Hewlett the creeps but nothing more.
Except there was much more to the man, and Hewlett learned the awful truth that night.
The heavy thunder woke him up. Thunder never bothered him before, but everything bothered Hewlett after his nightmares. He peered out into the night and watched two streaks of lightning briefly illuminate his small corner of Leominster. He got up out of bed and made his way to the kitchen for milk and something from the pantry. Eating late at night meant Hewlett would avoid his parents, which he preferred. He also preferred the silence of the house in the deep, dark hours.
Hewlett found the kitchen, poured a glass milk, and drank it all. He fumbled around and found a bag of chips. He stuffed a handful in his mouth before he finally smelled it. It was the distinct scent of cigarette smoke, and it came from somewhere behind him. Hewlett turned and saw the same figure from earlier standing at the door’s threshold that divided the kitchen from the back patio. The man stood still. The tip of his cigarette glowed but did not illuminate his face. His hands and legs were shrouded in the night’s darkness. The thunder continued to roll behind him.
Hewlett retreated into the house. He ran until he saw a small light coming from his parents’ room. He thought it meant that his mom was still up reading one of her romance novels. Hewlett opened the door without knocking. Instead of finding his father asleep and his mom nose-deep in a paperback, Hewlett found them butchered on the bed. Both had been attacked with a sharp and heavy object, maybe an ax or sword. The carnage was so great that all four walls were splattered with gore.
The residue of the man’s cigarette smoke lingered in the air.
Although in a panic, Hewlett still remained cognizant enough to reach for his mother’s car keys. He found them and drove off into the night without shoes, his cell phone, or his wallet. He drove blind because he knew what would come next. The neighbors, especially the damned Morrisons, would tell the police about the weird boy next door. The detectives would then find out all about his mental collapse. They would put it altogether and name him as the chief suspect in a double homicide. Everybody in the neighborhood would agree and say things like, “Yes, he was always such a strange boy.” Hewlett was doomed. Yet his vampiric brain reminded him of Loon. The word became a protective totem for no reason at all. The voice, which was his voice, just kept repeating it over and over.
Hewlett stole a map from an out-of-the-way gas station just outside of Leominster. The clerk did not seem to care, as nobody bothered with actual road maps anymore. Hewlett found a green tree icon on the map that read “Loon Mountain” and put his finger on it. The finger would remain there for hours until his mother’s Toyota entered Lincoln. Unbeknownst to him or anybody, Gus Richard left the bar with a leg full of beer just as Hewlett found the parking lot nearest the base of Loon Mountain. Neither man was aware of the other or their connection.
Hewlett parked the car in an empty parking lot. A sign read Evergreen a few spaces away. The parking lot was evidently the property of a ski resort/hotel. It was empty. Hewlett killed the lights, exited the car with the keys still in the ignition, and walked off in the direction of Loon Mountain.
Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon.
The word kept echoing in his head. It got louder and stronger after he crossed a small bridge overlooking a pitiful river that had more rocks than water. Hewlett found a trail in the darkness. He did not see the withered blueberries, but they were there. His naked feet slapped on rocks and grass and dirt, with each footfall creating small ripples of pain. Hewlett put it out of his mind. He was more concerned with defeating the repetitive mantra.
Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon.
The overgrown slopes of the mountain taxed Hewlett’s lungs and his dormant muscles. Each turn in the darkness revealed a new level, with the steps ascending higher and higher towards the pinnacle of the mountain.
Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon. Loon.
It never stopped. The cacophony extracted blood from Hewlett’s ears and nose. His eyes started to bleed as he ascended higher and higher in altitude. An observer viewing the scene from a neighboring mountain would wonder why Hewlett continued to climb in the middle of the mountain, rather than along the more accessible trail. An observer from farther away, say one hovering above in an airplane, would likely comment on the strange shape of Loon Mountain itself. An educated commentator would call it a ziggurat in the style of Ancient Mesopotamia, which is exactly what the designer, Ansley Hewlett, had in mind when he constructed his temple on the mountain so many years ago. Only a select few in Lincoln know about the temple; most simply believed that Loon Mountain has always been a tourist trap ensnaring ski bunnies and their beaus. In fact, old Ansley, Hewlett’s unknown ancestor, had created the mountain temple as a different kind of trap.
At the precise hour, when Hewlett reached the spot where the cacophony ended, Gus Richard eased into his favorite chair and began watching TV. The show was a typically mindless one. Gus laughed where he was supposed to and pretended to be amazed at others. He slipped back into blissful ignorance thanks to the warm blue electric light. Meanwhile, Hewlett, covered in sweat, dirt, and blood at the bottom of his feet, found himself panting while standing in a small circle of stones. The stones looked and smelled old. Ancient even. Hewlett enjoyed the quiet around him and in him. The incessant drumbeat of Loon had ceased. His ears, eyes, and nose no longer bled. Ther was peace in the world.
Except there wasn’t.
A bonfire appeared just above Hewlett. The shock of recognition made him gasp. He tried to rationalize that others were on the mountain with him. Hewlett hoped that the fire belonged to drunken revelers, maybe even year-round workers looking for something warm during the cold night. This hope dissipated along with the last thread of Hewlett’s sanity when the shadows moved into the fire’s light. Hewlett was the first to see the creatures of the mountain—the host that had fashioned the black pot that Gus Richard had so carelessly kicked over, thus initiating the mess. Hewlett tried to scream, but his throat was clogged with black bile. Nothing came out of his throat. His arms and legs were limp and could not be moved. Hewlett had to stay as still and silent as the man with the cigarette as the mountain host slithered closer and closer to him.
As for Gus Richard, he would be found the next day by his wife. She found him slumped over in his favorite chair, the victim of a heart attack. Rather than call an ambulance right away, Gus’s wife did a small dance to celebrate the passing of useless white trash.