I sat. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Somebody needs to talk to you. In private. Prob’ly won’t take a half a hour, then we’ll get you back to town so you can go on about your business with the sheriff.”
I studied Waylon. He outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, and I was guessing there was a pistol tucked somewhere in that camo suit. Maybe a skinning knife, too. “What if I say no?”
He sighed. “Look, Doc, ain’t no reason we got to have trouble between us. I told you, I ain’t gonna hurt you, but I will hogtie you if I have to. Besides, you’ll want to talk to this fellow I’m taking you to. I bet he can help you figure out who you pulled out of that cave the other day.”
News travels fast in a small town. I cranked the engine and shifted into gear.
“You tell me where to go.”
He grinned, flashing a smile of scattered teeth, pitted with cavities and flecked with chewing tobacco. “Now you’re talking. Once you cross that next bridge, take your first right. It’s gravel.” We wound along for maybe a mile; during that time, I considered half a dozen escape plans and rejected them all—not because I was hopelessly outmatched, though plainly I was. I rejected them because this homespun mountain man had shrewdly punched the one button—short of threatening my family—that was guaranteed to ensure my complete cooperation: he dangled before me the prospect of a forensic revelation. We thunked onto a new concrete bridge—obviously a replacement for some predecessor that had washed away in one of the floods that frequently scoured the mountain valleys—and off the other side. “Best slow down a bit—it’ll sneak up on you. Right yonder—you see it?”
I did, barely: two mammoth hemlock trees arched over the right-hand side of the highway, and running between them, as if they were some great gateway, a gravel road turned off and disappeared into the forest.
The road was deceptive: unobtrusive, but smooth and well-maintained, free of the ruts and mud holes that plague most gravel roads in the mountains. The Great Smoky Mountains are classed as a temperate rain forest, with up to eighty inches of precipitation a year, so it’s a rare mountain road that doesn’t have a few wallows and washed-out spots. This one was firm, dry, and well-drained by ditches and culverts everywhere that drainage might be a problem. There were no weeds in its center, either, a sign of frequent traffic or regular grading.
“This is a good road. The county keep it up like this?” I tried to sound offhand. He swiveled his bearlike head at me. Perhaps I hadn’t managed to sound quite as casual as I’d hoped. “Naw,” he said. “This here’s what you might call a private drive.” After a moment, I heard a low, rumbling growl that seemed to shake the entire vehicle. I glanced over to see him chuckling. “Private drive,” he mumbled again, and chuckled some more at his wit. Then he flashed me a delighted, speckled smile. Lord God, what have I got myself into, I thought, shaking my head. Then I felt myself chuckling, too, at the absurdity of the situation.
But the chuckle died in my throat a moment later when the big man said, “Stop the car right here, Doc.” I felt myself freeze up, unable to speak or act. The world seemed to shrink, until nothing remained but a green tunnel, a gray gravel track, and a steering wheel gripped by a pair of white-knuckled hands that might or might not have been my own. Another hand reached in from somewhere and cut the ignition switch. The car drifted to a stop on the gravel, the only sounds the crunch of gravel under the tires and the rush of blood in my head. Then even those sounds were gone, and the tunnel of green faded to black.
WHEN I AWOKE, I felt myself curiously confined. The air was dank and hot and close against my face, depleted of oxygen, yet my arms were cooled by a breeze. The darkness was softened by fuzzy globules of light. As my eyes shifted focus, instinctively seeking some definable shape, the globules sharpened into myriad pinpoints of daylight, viewed through the weave of fabric. My thoughts regained their focus, too, and I recognized the damp, acrid smell of sweat. A pungent camouflage cap was stretched tightly from my chin to my forehead. My arms twitched as if to bat it away, but they would not move. I jerked against whatever was restraining them and began thrashing my head.
“Easy, there, Doc, you’re gonna hurt yourself that way,” rumbled the deep voice to my left. “We’re nearly there, so just sit tight a minute. I told you I weren’t gonna hurt you, and I ain’t, but they’s some things you need not to see, in case somebody was to ast you about ’em later.”