Mountain Nightmare by David Thompson

Author:David Thompson [Thompson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Westerns, http://www.archive.org/details/mountainnightmar00thom
ISBN: 9780843946567
Google: GbRtAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 1614530866
Publisher: Leisure Books
Published: 1999-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Zach King never thought he would live to see the day when anyone or anything got the better of his father. But earlier, when he’d heard the door being opened and had rushed outside, he’d seen a look on his father’s face he’d never seen before. A look of utter, baffled helplessness. And he’d remembered the statement his father had made to his mother, in a voice choked with anguish: " "I can't stop it. ’’

That statement repeated itself over and over in Zach’s head after he turned in. He couldn’t stop thinking about how terrified his father sounded. The great Grizzly Killer, the man reputed to never know fear, was experiencing it now. And that made Zach mad, boiling mad at the creature that had caused his father the despair. An unquenchable thirst for revenge filled him.

So when the scratching resumed, Zach was out of his chair and at the window before anyone else. With the barrel of his rifle he swept the heavy curtain aside, then sighted down it at a shape just outside. A face suddenly pressed against the pane, a demonic, grinning, gargoyle face, all hair and teeth and glowing red eyes, arrogantly staring up at him, almost as if defying him to pull the trigger.

Zach hesitated. He couldn’t help himself. The thing was so eerily inhuman, its devilish features so savage, he was too startled to shoot. He gaped, and the creature’s cruel grin widened.

Winona was almost to her son’s side, her arm outflung. Not to fire her pistol, but to grab his rifle. “Not through the glass!” Her cherished glass, which would take a year to replace, if, in fact, they were able to have a new pane sent at all. “Please, son! No!”

Her cry snapped Zach from his daze, and he fixed the front bead squarely between the creature’s eyes. But his moment of delay proved costly. The thing dropped from sight. Zach leaned down to try to catch a glimpse of it and saw not one but two dwarfish figures scuttling toward the forest with blinding speed. In a span of heartbeats they were in the vegetation.

Winona grabbed the Hawken, even though she saw he wasn’t going to fire. “What did you see?” she asked. “What does it look like?”

They both felt a rush of cool air and turned. The door was wide open.

Nate King had no intention of letting the thing get away. He ran outside and saw a short dark shape sprinting into the woods. Immediately, he gave chase. Ignoring a shout from his wife, he declared, “Not again!” and was in among the trees in time to spot his quarry moving briskly to the northeast.

Shirtless and shoeless, armed with only a pistol, Nate raced after it. He had to exert himself to his fullest to keep it in sight, glimpsing it now and again as it crossed open spots.

Nate couldn’t get over how small it was, no higher than his knees. He realized it must have been standing on something in order to reach the cabin window, which was five feet off the ground.

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