Shades of Cassandra Ch3

Chapter 3

         Her third morning at the cabin found her a nervous wreck. Her novel, the reason she had come up here, was now but a memory. Her focus had recentered completely on the remnants of the mining town, and on the ledger she had liberated from the old hotel. She was spending the first few hours of daylight perusing its contents while sipping on a Hi-C fruit box. And by seven o’clock she had reached June of 1885.
         January 1885 was when Cassandra Wilcox’s name first appeared in the pages of the ledger. She had fist signed in on January 1st, New Years Day. A man had signed in with her, a Mr. David Winston. Kim stared at the name, wishing she knew why it seemed so disturbingly familiar. Had she gone to grade school with a Winston? Was there a reason she should know the name? However, after a moment she dismissed it, thinking it nothing more than wishful thinking, a wanting to connect with whoever was the possible love interest of Cassandra.
         She had thumbed through the weeks and months, ending up where she was now, June 27, 1885. That was where the ledger changed. That was where a large number of people checked in, free of charge. She wondered why it was free of charge until she saw a small notation written in the corner; Cave-in, ten miners trapped inside, possibly dead.
         A cave-in, there was a cave-in in the mine. So the people who checked into the hotel were all rescue workers, other miners who found the hotel the best place to clean up and catch some sleep when they weren’t extracting rocks. Okay, so the hotel was being used as an aid station, sort of like what was set up after 9/11 happened. She feared the results might have been the same for the trapped miners. She flipped the page. There was no log for the following day. Instead, a notation was made.
         This morning a cave-in occurred in shaft number two, causing ten strong men to be buried alive in the Cougar Summit mine. Rescue workers are staying at the hotel for the duration of the rescue effort. Word has spread and some people have even come as far as Missoula to help, bless their hearts. However, I fear their efforts might be in vain. Shaft number two is completely sealed and there is little hope of air actually getting to the men trapped inside. I can only pray to God and hope he hears my prayers.
         Samantha Conway
         Hotel owner
         June 27th, 1885
         Okay, that confirmed her suspicions. There was a cave-in and the hotel was used as a place for relief workers to stay. Now at least she had something, a flavor of the lives of the people who lived in the town. A story began to form in her head. What if the beau of Cassandra Wilcox was trapped in the mine? What if he died? She would be heartbroken, casted upon the cruel world with no one to love her. And what if someone stepped in, took advantage of that fact? Denton?
         She thought of the dream.
         Was there an actual Denton? Was he really a man, a normal man? And if so, why were the town’s folk afraid of him? She flipped through several more pages, attempting to look for a clue which might tie her dream in with reality. But there was nothing. There were only the same fifty or so names registered in the ledger. Apparently, the rescue/recovery effort lasted for several weeks.
         Her cell phone rang.
         She had left the phone in the Jeep, sitting on charge off the cigarette lighter. The sound, although faint, had startled Kim. She had thought she had turned the phone off. She had intended to, intended to take two full weeks without any outside influences. She got up and set the ledger down upon the lawn chair, walking out to the Jeep.
         The voice she heard when she pushed on the touch screen belonged to her father. It really wasn’t the voice she expected to hear. For some reason, probably out of habit, she expected to hear Steven’s voice. Actually, given Steven’s nature, she expected to hear him calling, rubbing in the fact he and Betty Sue were on their honeymoon in Jamaica, fornicating on some nude beach while Calypso music played in the background. Actually, she was relieved to hear her father’s voice.
         “Kim?”
         “Yah, Dad. What’s up?”
         “Kim, are you all right? How’s the cabin been treating you?”
         “I like the cabin just fine, Dad. It’s a little primitive for my taste, but it’s good, nice and quiet for writing.”
         “Did you bring up plenty to eat?”
         “Yes Dad.”
         “Do you have plenty of warm clothes?”
         “Yes.”
         “There’s fly tackle in the cabin. Honeysuckle Lake is full of trout. Fish is brain food, you know.”
         She sighed. “Dad, I went fishing on the day of my arrival, caught three cutthroat trout. I ate them for dinner.”
“          Did you dispose of the entrails properly? All you need is for a grizzly to smell the entrails and come wandering into camp.”
         “Dad, you know me better than that.”
         “So, you’re doing all right then?”
         “Yes.”
         “Okay.”
         There was a moment of awkward silence, a moment when neither one of them said a word. Kim thought she had lost the connection at first. She was only getting two signal bars up here, and they were sporadic at best.
         “Dad?”
         “Yes honey, I’m still here.”
         “Dad, I hiked up to Cougar Summit yesterday.”
         Again there was a moment of silence. She took the phone from her ear, looking at the display, verifying she still had the two bars and she still had a connection. She then put the phone back up to her right ear, now wondering why her father had gone silent.
         “Dad, did you hear me?”
         “Why did you hike up there?”
         “I wanted a bit of a challenge, and Cougar Summit seemed to be the way to satisfy that need.”
         “Stay off Cougar Summit.”
         His voice, which up to now had been that of a concerned father, had turned into a snarl. She physically flinched, pulling the phone away from her ear yet again.
         “Kimmy, are you there?”
         She stared at the phone, tempted to hit the end icon on the touch pad.
         “Kimmy, answer me.”
         Nervously, she put the phone back up to her ear. “Yes Dad, I’m here.”
         “Kim, please stay off of Cougar Summit. That area is dangerous. The trail leading up is prone to rock slides.”
         “I know that.”
         And still she went up there yesterday.
         “You know that?” She could hear him sigh in exasperation. “Kim, hiking around Cougar Summit is not like hiking around Glacier. There are no tourists on the trail in case you get into trouble. You get hurt up there, and you are on your own. You will end up as some mountain lion’s lunch.”
         “I have pepper spray. And I have my Glock.”
         “Pepper spray, or the gun, will do nothing if you get struck from behind. Mountain lions are ambush hunters. They might lie in one spot for hours, sometimes days, waiting for suitable prey to come along.”
         “Dad, I can take care of myself.”
         And she could take care of herself. She always took care of herself. How many run-ins did she have with wildlife when she grew up in Hungry Horse? The encounter with the mother grizzly had only been one of many encounters she had had. She had pissed off a moose once, a big bull which didn’t take so kindly to her attempt to feed it an apple. Then there was the wolf pack she had stumbled across. They had been feeding upon a deer carcass and became quite agitated when a ten year old girl approached them.
         “I’m sure you can. I’m only asking you to stay close to the cabin. Don’t venture any farther than the lake. Please.”
         She was tempted to ask him about the mining town, but then thought better of it. She thought it wise not to push him on the subject matter.
         “Okay Dad, I’ll stay near the lake area. I can’t lollygag around the woods much anyway. I got a book to write, a deadline to meet.”
         “That’s a good girl.” He replied, causing her to cringe. She suddenly felt like some Irish Setter which had just been praised for doing her business in the back yard and not on the living room rug. It wasn’t what he had said, but the way he had said it. And it ticked her off enough for her to want to return to the mountain, to want to explore the rest of the ghost town, just to spite him.
         “Dad, I should let you go. I really got to get back to work, strike while the iron is hot, as they say.”
         “Okay sweetheart. I don’t want to keep you.”
         No, please don’t keep me.
         “Thanks Dad. I’ll call in a couple of days.”
         Or not.
         “You do that, honey. And I want to be the first one to read the completed manuscript.”
         “Yes sir. And Dad, have a nice day working up in the park.”
         “I always do.”
         She pushed on the END icon on her smart phone and turned the phone off, hooking it back to the charger cord and tossing it back onto the front passenger seat of her Jeep. She then closed the door and leaned against the front passenger side fender, looking up at Cougar Summit, her mind full of questions. What the hell had happened to the men trapped in the mine? Had they survived? She needed to go up there. She needed to investigate further, try to find the mine.
         But not today.
         If her father’s phone call had done anything, it refocused her upon the job at hand. Tomorrow she would climb back up to Cougar Summit. Today she would send Cassandra Wilson on her own dangerous adventure on the streets of London. Today she would have Cassandra Wilson and Sheila O’Malley meet on the street for the very first time.

****

         Mid-afternoon found her story three pages richer. She had introduced Sheila O’Malley to the sexually irresistible Hank Hammer, and had in a roundabout way, introduced Sheila to Cassandra. It had been a storied scene, a scene set in one of the fish and chips shops which were so common in London. Cassandra felt immediately threatened, recognizing the ravishing blonde with the well endowed bust line for what she really was, a predator. The scene she wrote was rather amusing in a way, at least from the view point of old Hank. Two beautiful women were competing for his affection. What man wouldn’t want the potential for a cat fight to occur merely because he was dashing and had rather large biceps?
         But, of course, Cassandra would win. Cassandra always got her man, didn’t she? Hank was hers. He would always be hers, unlike real life, unlike what happened to Kim. Steven and Betty Sue, together, married, rolling around on the sand, frolicking in the hot Jamaican sun. She wondered what the hot sun felt like that close to the equator. What did the warm tropical breezes feel like? Did the trees softly sway as the ocean breezes blew past them?
         Why was she thinking about the sun, and about tropical plants?
         She stood up from the table, now convinced she needed a break. She rubbed her eyes and then glanced at her watch. It was three o’clock. She had been at it since eleven. Perhaps she would peruse the ledger for a while, read it down by the lake; feel the warmth of the sun as it reflected off of the water. She turned around and picked the ledger and her day pack up from off the bed. She then went outside, allowing the warm afternoon sun to greet her. She looked up at the summit, shading her eyes. She could barely make out the plateau to the left, where the town stood, feeling it exert a strange sort of pull upon her.
         “Tomorrow, Kim.”
         She set the pack down on the folding chair and carefully placed the ledger inside. And then she paused, taking it back out, deciding to read it there. She set the pack on ground and sat down, picking up from the morning of the cave-in.
         The cave-in had happened on June 27th. She perused the entries for the next two weeks, seeing the same names written down each time. The handwriting remained the same, the penmanship of Miss Samantha Conway. However, the writing seemed to get shaky by the fourteenth day. The flowing lops of Miss Conway’s cursive became less flowing, the dots on the Is a bit blotchy. Sometimes there were no dots. The non-stop recovery effort was taking its toll on her, and most certainly everyone else.
         It was on the fifteenth day, a day well past hope for anyone trapped in the mine, that Kim discovered a eulogy written within the ledger. It was an odd thing to find within such a book. But perhaps Miss Conway found the eulogy to be of importance. It read as follows:
         July 12th, 1885
         I fear our efforts and hopes of rescuing ten brave and hard working men are for naught. Every man, woman, and child in the town have put in endless shifts in their efforts to extract the stone from the mountain. We still have not reached the ten men within. After fifteen days, without food or water, or air for that matter, it is most certain those men have perished. We now continue forward, knowing our grim task has changed to one of recovery. Nevertheless, we will continue on. Those ten men deserve a proper Christian burial in the town’s cemetery, not the hellish internment under the granite slabs of Cougar Summit.
         So, as we continue on, I pray for those ten lost souls and list them here: James Walker, Donald Wesley, Thaddeus Purus, Web Smith, Ezekiel Holmes, Timothy Wagner, Sven Johnson, Walter Andrews, Samuel Tyson, and Benjamin Gleason.
         May God watch over their souls. They were good men.
         Samantha Conway
         A tear rolled down from Kim’s left eye. What Samantha had written was touching, a glimpse into the hardships of mining for gold in these mountains. She turned to the next page, seeing the names had tapered off slightly. There were now only twenty listed in the entry for July 13th. People had given up, gone back home to Missoula, or perhaps to their farms or ranches. People did have lives, after all. And Kim was sure many people didn’t wish to be present when ten dead corpses were pulled from the mountain. She turned the page, seeing the same twenty people listed for July 14th.
         The entries remained the same until she reached the entry for July 25th, 1885. This entry was different; a notation had been made by Samantha which sent the hair on Kim’s arms standing on end. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as she read the words.
         July 25th, 1885
         We have dug far enough in and have reached the chamber which had imprisoned ten good men. As we have feared, they have perished, each a dusty corpse with his mouth hanging open, gasping for the last tendrils of air. It is what I expected, what we all had expected. However, we didn’t expect to find an eleventh survivor sitting amongst the dead, somehow still breathing air and perched atop the corpse of Timothy Wagner. It was disturbing to find this stranger sitting there. It was far more disturbing to discover this stranger had sustained himself on the decaying flesh of Timothy’s right arm. I guess Cannibalism is acceptable under such extreme condition. The infamous Donner party had survived utilizing such methods. Still, it makes me uneasy to be in the presence of a cannibal, and of a man we have no record of, and who has not spoken a single word since we extracted him from the mine. I am ashamed to say this, but there is something unholy about this man, something which makes my skin crawl. I will not sleep soundly while this stranger resides in our fair town.
         Samantha Wagner
         She thought of the dream she had the previous evening, of the man who could clear out a saloon by merely approaching it. But that was just a dream, a creation of her mind. She did not believe in warning dreams, or premonitions, or things which went bump in the night. To her, if she couldn’t see it, taste it, or touch it, it didn’t exist. In that one respect she was from the state of Missouri, not Montana.
         But still, she felt her dream and the man mentioned in the ledger were connected. She turned the page, looking for some clue as to who the man was.
         The number of people who were registered as guests dropped dramatically in the following days. The remainder of the relief workers went home and, on a peculiar note, Cassandra Wilcox had returned to the hotel (she had been absent during the excavation). A Mr. David Winston had returned as well, each renting individual rooms. Kim smiled as she pondered this thought. The old no-tell motel. Each had their own living space, close proximity to one another, convenient for the odd nocturnal visit. What better way was there to carry on with a lover and yet keep the town gossip down a bit?
         Carry on with a lover. She pondered that statement for a bit, picturing Mr. Winston to be the striking image of her fictional character, Hank Hammer. She could easily imagine old Hank dressed in trousers and a pair of suspenders, wielding a pick axe, strong muscles extracting granite and chunks of gold from the mine. And then she could imagine Cassandra touching those same sore muscles, caressing them every night, being held in Hank’s arms, being carried to bed by him, and being loved by him as some lone wolf howled into the night.
         Denton.
         The name swept through her mind like a flood of ice water, drowning the flame of passion which her soul had lit only a moment before. Denton, it was a name to her, nothing more. But it was more than just a name, wasn’t it? It was an image of darkness, of something vile and loathing … something green?
         She closed the book, deciding she had had enough speculation about people who had been dead for the past one-hundred years. She put the ledger into her travel pack and sighed. It was time she just relaxed tonight, and played some music. She would take her I-pod out of the Jeep and hook it up to her portable radio, and then she would rock the forest and a have a nice vegetarian meal.

****

         She was back in the saloon, back serving drinks to a ragtag group of miners who were currently spending the few ounces of gold dust they had retrieved from the mountain. At least some were spending it. Others were merely hanging out, shooting the shit for the evening as music emanated from a player piano in the corner. And Cassandra Wilcox (yes, she was Cassandra again) had managed to back her beau into a corner (he was the spitting image of Hank Hammer), talking to him about the prospect of getting married.
         “I think Mrs. Cassandra Winston is a lovely name.” She cooed, pushing herself deeper into his receptive arms. “And I think it’s time we stop putting it off, David.”
         “What about your father?”
         Sergio? No, he didn’t mean Sergio. He meant Sheriff Wilcox, Cassandra’s father. Was he against her marrying David?
         “What about my father?”
         “He won’t allow it. He will never give us his blessing, not as long as that thing controls him.”
         What thing?
         “My father is his own man. He’s not afraid of Denton.”
         The words had come out of her mouth, emanated from her lips, but they weren’t her words. They felt alien, almost scripted. They were Cassandra’s words, weren’t they? They were the words of a stranger, of a woman who had long ago turned to dust.
         “He’s Denton’s puppet. Don’t you see that? And Mr. Roger Denton, our mysterious cave dweller, has taken a rather peculiar interest in you. He will object to any union between the two of us.”
         “I’m not going to have my life dictated by that freak.”
“          We don’t have a choice, Cass.” She felt David visibly shiver. “You saw what he did to Reverend Fletcher.”
         What did he do?
         “Yes,” Cassandra sighed. “I saw all right. I didn’t think it was possible to kill someone that way.”
         Denton killed a minister?
         “No, I didn’t either. I also didn’t think it was possible for a man to cause a woman to miscarriage. Poor Mrs. Fletcher.”
         He caused the Reverend’s wife to miscarriage?
         “Still, I refuse to live in fear of him.” A wild thought came to Cassandra’s mind. “We should go to Missoula to get married, Dave. We should leave first thing in the morning, saddle up a couple of horses and go.”
         “And what about your father?”
         “We won’t tell him. If he doesn’t know, then Denton won’t know.” She glanced back at the rest of the saloon. “In fact, we’ll tell no one. That way he can’t intimidate anyone into telling him where we’ve gone.”
         “You’re running a dangerous game, Cassie.”
         “Dave, if we stay here we will die. At least you will. I don’t know what Denton intends to do with me.”
         And she didn’t. At least Cassandra didn’t. Kim, however, didn’t even know who this Denton was or what he looked like. He was a name, nothing more, a character set in a stage play, a phantom in a dream.
         And she was in a dream, wasn’t she?
         She looked around, remembering taking six bottles of Moose Drool beer out of her ice chest, amazed the dry ice had kept as long as it did. And she remembered how she sat in the lawn chair, drinking beer after beer as she stared up at the sky, attempting to name the constellations. And she remembered (vaguely) stumbling into the cabin and falling onto the bed. So, this just had to be a dream. She was sure it was. And she was equally sure she would wake up again in a cold sweat, stumbling through the dark, attempting to ascertain what the time was.
         And what time was it?
         Well, it was nine-thirty at night according to the grand-father clock which she had spied next to the player piano. And it was a Saturday night, wasn’t it? That’s why the saloon was crowded. The entire town was here, attempting to take refuge (from him), weren’t they? But this wasn’t refuge. The previous dream had proven that. He had cleared the saloon, hadn’t he?
         “I think he’s still up at the mine.” She returned her attention back to David. He had apparently guessed what she was thinking. “He sleeps up there at night, after everyone retires for the day. And from what I hear, he won’t let anyone dig in the number two tunnel. He had it sealed off after the rescue crews extracted the bodies.”
         “Why?”
         “I don’t know.”
         Dave picked up his glass of beer and took a sip from it. She watched his eyes as he did. He was watchful, cautious, like an antelope expecting to be attacked any moment by a cougar. And she had been the same way lately. She was as frightened as he was. But the whole town was on edge. She turned away to closely inspect the townsfolk. The mine workers were lined up along the bar, each holding a beer mug or a whiskey glass. Two saloon girls, one a skinny blonde, the other she thought to be a raven-haired native American, were both standing at the bar, making small talk with the men. One miner had a hand on the blonde girl’s thigh, reaching high under her skirt. Kim noticed she wasn’t removing it. Apparently, any human contact was now acceptable and found to be comforting now that Denton was around.
         She looked back at Dave again (at Hank Hammer), suddenly feeling a rush of desire flow through her body. This is the man (the type of man) Kim should have married. He had the square chiseled jaw she had always found attractive, the broad shoulders, the dark wavy hair. She leaned forward, touching her lips to his and found herself ... passionately kissing her camp pillow. She ended up rolling over on the bed, eyes wide open to the darkness, spitting up lint, attempting to get rid of the taste of cotton from her mouth. The dream was over.
         But was it over? She was still in the cabin. She was sure of that. But she wasn’t alone. There was something in the room, something which emanated a presence. Kim sat up, straining her eyes as she attempted to see into the darkness. And it was total darkness which she was looking into. There was no moonlight coming in through the window. Something was blocking it. Something was standing in front of the table, a shadow, a shadow which was getting closer.
         Instinctively, she screamed.
         The shadow backed up, apparently alarmed by her outburst. It then turned, allowing the moonlight to eclipse it for a brief moment. It was a human form, perhaps a woman. Kim couldn’t be sure. And then the shadow pushed the screen door open, the return spring making a resistant sound. She heard a shuffling of feet upon the wood floor, and then the door closed with a bang.
         She sat there for a moment, rather stunned. And then she was on her feet and grabbing for the flashlight she had placed next to the bed. She was out the door in moments, shining the beam around; on the trees, on her Jeep, on the trails which led down to the lake and up to the summit.
         She found her quarry on the summit trailhead.
         A woman stood there. She seemed to sparkle in glow of her flashlight beam. But it wasn’t just any woman. It was her, Cassandra Wilcox, or perhaps Wilson. With the exception of wardrobe they did look identical, long black hair, full lips, a rather bountiful chest.. And, now gazing into Cassandra’s eyes, Kim realized how much this lady looked like her. She was practically looking into a mirror.
         “Beware. All is not what it seems.”
         “Who … who are you?”
         “You know who I am.”
         Cassandra stepped out of the light and back into the trees, becoming one with the shadows of the forest. In response, Kim stepped forward, determined to follow her. But there was now nothing to follow. The person, or apparition, was gone, swallowed by the night. And Kim was once again alone, her mind filled with more questions than answers.
         And one thing was now certain. This was not a dream.
         She turned around; shining her light onto the grill of the Jeep, wondering if she should just wait until first light and be off, crawl down the trail to the highway. But was running the answer? If she went home she would only have to sit in that trailer, listening to the neighbors as they argued and threw heavy objects at each other. And she would never get any work done there. She would never finish her latest adventure concerning … Cassandra. She stopped in mid-thought, turning her attention back to the summit; the moonlight ominously silhouetting it in the distance. And Cassandra wasn’t in Kalispell, was she? Her muse, or whatever that was, was up on the mountain, a ghost trapped in an abandoned ghost town. If Kim was to find out what this was about, she would have to be Moses. She would have to climb back up to the summit and wait for a sign.