Shifter Mountain Read online

  "That's a relief," Jordan said.

  "And it means you are in charge here. We all live on the mountain, and the mountain takes care of us. But the mountain also dictates our lives. Everyone living on Scopes Mountain has to obey the Man-in-the-Mountain."

  "God help anyone who had to obey my father," Jordan said.

  "Your father was a tough son-of-a bitch, it's true. But, you can be the Man however you see fit. You want to rule with a fist of iron, that's fine. If you want to rule with a velvet hammer, you can do that, too."

  "Rule?" Jordan asked. "You're not kidding about that?"

  He turned to Kay.

  "That's why Cephas had to back down then," he said to her.

  There's just one thing, though," Old Man Cowell warned. "You can't ever leave Scopes Mountain now."

  "He can't leave?" Kay said. "He has to leave. He has a whole life outside of here!"

  "Not anymore."

  Now it all made sense to Jordan. How his mother had gotten away from his father. If his father was the Man-in-the-Mountain, he was trapped. So she escaped, knowing he would never be able to come after her.

  "This is awful!" Kay exclaimed.

  "Hey — hey — it's okay. We'll figure it out," Jordan told her.

  "There's something you should see," Old Man Crowell said. "You got a truck?"

  "Waiting outside."

  "I'll lock up."

  Old Man Cowell closed up the general store and told Jordan to drive them about three miles around the base of the mountain. Then they ascended a ways. Around a hairpin turn, suddenly they came upon a breathtaking view of the south side of Scopes Mountain.

  As they drove, Old Man Cowell explained the story of the Man-in-the-Mountain.

  "Scopes Mountain ain't the only peak in Appalachia with skinwalkers," he told them. "And it ain't the only one that is alive. The Man goes back before White settlers came, and it goes back even before the Cherokee and the Chickasaw Indians. And who knows who was here thousands of years before even they migrated? The legend goes that thousands of years ago a man felt into a ravine and his soul got trapped. Sounds simplistic, I know. People started seeing his ghost emerge from the rocks, only he could pick up things and touch people. Then he would disappear back into the rocks."

  "But that sounds like someone would have to die first in order to become the Man-in-the-Mountain" Jordan said. "Specifically, someone would have to die while on Scopes Mountain."

  "It's a legend. So who the hell knows what really happened," Old Man Cowell said. "But after that man died, his son started acting strangely. Lost his mind. And the next time he saw the ghost of his father, he fought him. The ghost of his father pulled him right into the rock — both of them disappeared. But only the son came back out."

  "What happened then?" Kay asked.

  "Pull off there at that rest stop," Old Man Cowell told Jordan. To Kay he said: "When the son reappeared, he could command anything and anyone living on the mountain, and they were compelled to obey him. And if they tried to resist, he would petrify himself into hard stone and crush them."

  "I'm sorry, but the Man-in-the-Mountain sounds like an asshole," Jordan said. "Are you saying that I'm turning into an asshole?"

  "You telling me you aren't already an asshole?"

  "Jordan's really not," Kay said.

  "Now your husband — there's an asshole," Old Man Cowell said.

  "Maybe he should be the Man," Jordan snarked.

  "We'd all be screwed," Old Man Cowell said. "He'd be even worse than your daddy. "

  Jordan parked, and they all got out of the truck.

  "Look up at the side of the mountain there. What do you see?"

  "Oh my gosh, you're right!" Kay explained. "I always thought that was just an oddity! When we were in grade school we used to tell ghost stories about it."

  "The adults knew what it was about, but we didn't like to scare the kids. Skinwalking was hard enough to explain. And teach. The adults alone dealt with the Man-in-the-Mountain. And then this one died before you grew up."

  Jordan stared hard, but it took him awhile to see what Kay saw. But then once he saw it, it was clearer than day. It jumped right out at him: A two-story high, stony profile of a man jutted out from the side of the mountain.

  "Goddamn. Look at that!"

  "That's your daddy. Spitting image of him."

  "I wouldn't know. I've never seen a photograph. My mother never showed me one. Who did that? That's a crazy work of art."

  "No one did it. The mountain simply produced it. It's actually a series of four granite ledges, and when you look at them from this angle, you can see the face. And you can see the profile only from this exact angle."

  "So that's what he looked like?" Jordan asked.

  "If you want to see what he really looked like in person, I can show you."

  "You've got a photograph?"

  "No. Just this."

  The air around Old Man Cowell shimmered, and suddenly he transformed into a much younger man. He looked definitely like he could be related to Jordan now, and appeared to be in his 40s.

  Jordan froze.

  "I knew your daddy, although I didn't like him much. But here he is," Old Man Cowell said.

  Jordan studied his features, but could not feel a connection to this person — to this thing before him.

  "That's enough," Jordan said. "I don't need to see any more."

  "Good. Because shifting gets exhausting at my age. I try not to do it too much."

  Old Man Cowell's features morphed back into his own self. He shrank in height, his back stooped, and his skin wrinkled and sagged.

  "Has this facial profile in the mountain face always been here?" Jordan asked.

  "It's been at least since before your grandfather died and your daddy' took his place. When your grandfather died, your daddy came to this very spot, announced his presence aloud, and the profile changed. Who knows when it first formed?"

  "What do you mean it changed?"

  "This may sound crazy, but you should tell the mountain that you're here. The mountain already knows, but you should make it official."

  Jordan laughed.

  "Okay, you know what — that IS crazy."

  "What do you have to lose? You're already experiencing the transformation."

  Jordan shook his head.

  "But, what the hell do I say?"

  "You just say that your here!"

  "Okay fine, 'I'm here'."

  "Not to me, dummy, tell it to the mountain," Old Man Cowell chided him.

  Kay looked up at Jordan.

  "Just go ahead," she said.

  Jordan sighed. He felt like a fool. He looked at his father's profiled, studying it.

  Jordan cleared his throat. He looked directly at the stony profile.

  "I'm here?"

  It came out as a question, not a declaration.

  "Louder!" Old Man Cowell complained. "I thought you were a big Country and Western singer, boy! So you should have a good pair of lungs. No excuses."

  Jordan glared at him. Then he turned back to the profile in the rock. He took a deep breath, and then yelled out as loud as he possibly could: "I'M HERE!!!"

  His voice echoed thunderously against the granite backdrop. At first there was silence.

  "What now?" Jordan asked.

  "Shh. Just wait," Old Man Cowell.

  "First you want me to yell, then you want me to shush," Jordan said.

  Kay grabbed Jordan's hand and squeezed it.

  "He's right," Kay said. "I hear something. So be quiet."

  At first, there was a slight crack. Then a rumble. Then the ground beneath them began to shake like a mild, low-level earthquake.

  Dust started rising around the stony profile of Jordan's father. A rockslide began, boulder-by-boulder.

  "It's crumbling!" Jordan exclaimed. "Should we get out of here?"

  He looked up nervously and realized that the area they were standing in also was vulnerable to a landslide.


  "No, we're fine," Old Man Cowell said. "Just wait."

  The rumbling continued, and rocks continued to split off and fall away from the profile of the Man-in-the-Mountain. Then after a few minutes, everything went quite again. The dust began to settle and the air cleared around the profile.

  "Oh my God," Kay said. She turned to stare up at Jordan, standing close next to her, clutching her hand. Then she looked back toward the side of the mountain.

  "Oh my God is right," Jordan whispered.

  Old Man Cowell simply smiled to himself in satisfaction.

  The image of the Man-in-the-Mountain remained, but now the profile it displayed was distinctly that of Jordan Lawless.

  Chapter 12

  The film crew packed up and left the next day. Jordan sent Bob off, telling him he would be back in Nashville in a day or two.

  Jordan was in his cabin, while Kay was off picking up supplies and ingredients for a new batch of moonshine. She was still making it, knowing that Cephas was collecting the money from buyers. She thought that if she held up her end of the moonshine business, this might not add fuel to the fire in terms of his coming around again.

  Cephas would figure out quickly that Jordan's film crew had left and that he was on his own. But also, he knew that Jordan was the Man-in-the-Mountain, so he was holding back. Jordan felt that Cephas was just plotting. He didn't sound like the logical type who knew when to quit.

  Knowing that he could not leave Scopes Mountain anytime soon, Jordan dialed the Grand Ole Opry planning to ask them if he could reschedule. But, then Andrea beeped in via call waiting, and so he hung up on the Opry before anyone answered in order to take her call.

  "I'm so sorry, Jordan," Andrea said. "For some reason, my voicemail hasn't been working right, and I just realized now that your number came up. Did you leave a message? Because for some reason I'm not getting my messages."

  "No," Jordan said. "I didn't actually leave a message."

  "Is everything okay? Are you still up there?"

  "Yeah, we finished up shooting the video, but I'm staying behind for now."

  Andrea paused on the end of the line.

  "Did something happen?"

  Jordan cleared his throat, and then let out a frustrated laugh.

  "Lots of things have been happening up here. I'm thinking maybe now is about the time you should come clean with me and tell me everything you know about my mother and her life up here."

  "I'm not sure where to begin."

  "Begin at the beginning."

  "Well, I don't really know the beginning," Andrea said. "What I do know is this. Your mother was terrified for her life. She told me stories about skinwalkers. At first I thought she was superstitions and maybe a little bit touched. But then I babysat you once when you were about four years old, and something really weird happened."

  "Weird how?"

  "I left you playing with some toys while I ran out to my car to get something. When I came back, you were missing. I ran all over the house looking for you, but I couldn't find you. Then suddenly this little sparrow came flying out of nowhere."

  "A bird — in the house?"

  "Yes. It freaked me out! And then the sparrow flew into the bathroom, and when I followed it in, suddenly it was gone. Like it had disappeared into thin air. But there you were, sitting on bathroom rug, happy as could be."

  "Are you saying that I shifted? I don't remember this at all!"

  "I told your mother about it, and she got upset. But she said she knew this day would come. Then not long after that, she got word that your father had died. And there were no more weird incidents with you."

  "My mother never told me about this at all."

  "Well, she did say something else," Andrea added. "She told me she was sure that she was safe, because your father couldn't leave Scopes Mountain. At first I thought she meant he was, like, under some kind of house arrest. But then after your father died, she said everything had changed, and that you could NEVER go back to the mountain. Because then you'd never be able to leave."

  "Was that why you tried to stop me from coming up here?"

  "Yeah, but how could I tell you all this without you're thinking I'm crazy? That your mother was crazy?"

  "But you're telling me now."

  "Well, obviously it sounds like you have seen something up there that makes you a little more open minded."

  "This place does have some serious secrets," Jordan said.

  "Can you tell me one?"

  "Maybe when I get back to Nashville."

  "When are you coming home?"

  "I don't know," Jordan said. "Like my mother said, it seems I can't leave the mountain."

  "You can't leave...how so? You really can't leave?"

  "It seems like something bad might happen if I do."

  "Jordan, what the hell is going on?"

  "It's weirder than basic skinwalking," Jordan said. "If skinwalking could ever be called basic, that is. I promise I will tell you when I can. I'm just not ready yet. I just needed you to fill me in on some things."

  Jordan ended the call and tossed his cellphone onto the bed.

  He looked at the clock on the wall and realized that Kay was taking longer than she should. She told him she would be gone about an hour, and now two hours had gone by.

  Something didn't feel right.

  He tried calling her on her cell, but she didn't pick up. He texted her, but she didn't text back.

  Now the hairs on his neck were standing up again, and he felt like something was really, really wrong. He reasoned that he couldn't just go jump in his car and drive all over the place looking for her. That would be totally unproductive. He thought of calling Jimmy. Even though missing persons reports for adults can't be filed until 24 or 48 hours, Jimmy would still help him out. But then realized he couldn't get Jimmy involved in all this weirdness.

  If he was the Man-in-the-Mountain, and if Kay was in trouble somewhere on Scopes Mountain, shouldn't he instinctively know? Or, at the very least, shouldn't he be able to find out?

  With this in mind, he went outside and looked around. He noticed a small stone outcropping and headed for it. First, he put his hand on it. Predictably, his hand started turning to stone, but this was getting to be a little old hat. He needed more than this.

  He took his hand off the stone and waited for the blood to return to it. He decided to try something different. He had nothing to lose. He stared at the stone outcrop for a second, looking around for a crack.

  There. Something now looked inviting. Beneath some moss, he could see a nice long split in the stone. He had no idea why the idea occurred to him, but he reached out, with the goal of reaching into the rock, through the crack.

  Technically, by the Laws of Physics, this should be impossible. But the general Laws of Physics didn't seem to apply to him.

  Jordan's instinct was right on the money. His hand slipped through the stone, right through the crack. When he touched the beginning of the crack, the stone actually softened and seemingly turned to clay around it. Jordan shoved his whole hand in.

  When the stone hardened up, effectively trapping his hand, he felt a moment of panic. But he calmed himself down. He was the mountain, after all, and he had command of it. With his hand now effectively inside the mountain, he tried to feel something. Anything. It was a weird concept, but it felt like it made sense to him.

  Within a minute or so, after he cleared his mind and tried to concentrate, he knew exactly where Kay was. And it wasn't good.

  Cephas had abducted her. She was being held at his brother Daryl's cabin on the north face of the mountain.

  Rage surged through Jordan's veins. He ripped his hand from the stone. At his slightest move, the stone turned to clay again and released him. He turned to head for his truck, but then he realized there was a faster way to get to Kay.

  He turned back to the stone outcropping, and to the mossy crack. He reached out with both hands and into the crack. He pried the stone open at the crack
before it could turn fully to clay. With Jordan having split open a rather large entryway, the whole outcrop started softening up. He took a deep breath, and then pushed his whole way into the clay, into the outcrop.

  In a matter of seconds, Jordan managed to travel through the mountain, stepping out of another outcrop on the north face of the mountain.

  He didn't have time to assimilate the shock of what he had just been able to do. Because he heard a woman's scream coming from a distance, and he knew it was Kay.

  Before Jordan could find his way to Daryl's cabin, Cephas sensed that he was in the immediate vicinity. Cephas had deliberately lured him there. He dragged Kay with him out into the dark, on the hunt for the Man-in-the-Mountain.

  "You can't fight him!" Kay yelled. "Let me go before he destroys you!"

  "Old Man Cowell's been telling you bullshit," Cephas spat. "I don't care who he is. We haven't had the Man around here for three decades. I'm not about to start bowing down to him now."

  Cephas dragged Kay a bit further, when Jordan stepped out from the darkness.

  "Let her go," Jordan said.

  Cephas had lured Jordan to the north face for a reason. Cephas' father had killed Jordan's father here on this very spot. An old wives tale had turned out to be true: That the Man-in-the-Mountain loses his authority here. There was a 6X6 patch of rock that technically was not part of Scopes. Millennia ago, when the Appalachians pushed their way up toward the sky, as tectonic plates heaved and collided, a blast of lava spurted from a volcano that partially created Harper's Peak, one of the three peaks opposite Scopes on the opposite side of Lake Surepa.

  A lava hole had redirected molten rock that was meant to be part of Harper's Peak. Which meant that this very spot technically was not part of Scopes Mountain, but was rooted in the structure of Harper's Peak, and thus was not under Jordan's authority.

  And if Cephas could trick Jordan into stepping onto that rock, then Cephas could kill him.

  Cephas threw Kay down at his feet, just in front of the target spot.

  "Jordan! I don't know what he's doing, but he tricked you to get you here on purpose!" She coughed, and spit up some blood.