Mr. 8

Chapter 33: Mt. Nazareth

Even though the snow had stopped hours ago, the roads were still a mess. Even where the ploughs had passed, the streets were treacherous and cars crawled along to avoid accidents. It only got worse up by the State Park. Denton steered with white knuckles, maneuvering around the bends. The tires drove on pillows of snow and never seemed to make contact with the asphalt. He was certain that if he hit the brakes, he would end up over the guardrail, tumbling down the embankment.

All that time in the car, with no better company than the incessant whine of homogenized Christmas Carols, Denton began to think about what he was going to find up there. Or rather, what he wouldn't find. From the moment the old man in the shelter had mentioned Mt. Nazareth, he had felt its pull. There was a resonating connection between the man known as Ray and the cow mutilator. Demons in the woods, devils in the trees. But now in the clear light of day, his certainty deserted him.

Whatever reason the drifter had to go there, it had nothing to do with that disturbed young man who built that shack. The kid had probably chosen to worship his bull demon because of the folk tales people told about the place. The stories had mixed in with his own delusions and formed an outlet for his psychosis.

Besides, the old man never said that Ray had mentioned devils there, only that he was going to live on the mountain. And he never even went there. He stayed behind and went mad instead. Then the Bexhill Guerrillas had dismembered and burnt him. If anything Nazareth would have been a refuge if he had gone. He would still be insane, but alive.

Denton thought about the timeline. Had the boys gone back for him that very night, after the trip to the hospital? Or had they plotted and planned, striking days or weeks later? At first in his confusion, Denton had wondered how it was possible that they were already on the lookout for the eights—or the star and the moon, as they called it—when Ray was the first one with the disease. But even though he was the first to be infected, Alfred Reynolds hadn't been the first victim. Agatha Radcliff must have already been dead on that night, and Danny was already weaving Gasher's tale in with reality to ease the guilt and spread the paranoia. Then along came that man running onto the road with blood pouring from his head, and a story about a devil attacking him and circles of hell drawn under the train bridge. Denton got as far as the road would allow. The way forward was impassable by car. He got out and started making his way on foot through the snow. The only indication that there was a road at all was the uniform border of trees on either side of a strip of white.

What am I supposed to do now?

Even if by some miracle there was an answer, a clue, one iota of evidence, he couldn't search the whole mountain. He wouldn't have been able to do that even in the summer, when it wasn't shrouded in fresh snow. It was too big, too impossible.

Perhaps if he just went to were the shack had been. If he could just appease his own superstitions and make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary there. Then he could call it a day and go back.

It all looked so different: the leafless trees, the blanket of white. Would he even be able to tell where the shack had been? How far down the road was it anyway? In the 4X4, the ride had been five, maybe ten minutes. The trooper couldn't have been going more than thirty. So what was that? Five miles or so? He'd never make it five miles. Not through fourteen inches of snow. It was a fool's errand. And just because he was the biggest fool of all, it didn't mean he had to carry it out.

He turned around looking at the woods. They seemed far more beautiful than they did haunted—heavenly rather than hellish. A great sense of peace filled them. Tension drained from Denton's shoulders as he relaxed and breathed in the cool, bright air.