The Mystery House In Montana
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A strange house in an isolated mountain valley and a group of college students are invited to investigate it—what could possibly go wrong? A haunted house story told with humor and style by the author of The Night of the Living Dummy.
When his girlfriend’s family invites him to visit them on their farm in the mountains, college student Tim Cooper agrees to make the long drive out there from Seattle, Washington.
He has never met any of his girlfriend’s relatives before; her father is a renowned psychologist in San Francisco, and he doesn’t know anything about the rest of her family, except that they have all mysteriously moved to Montana for reasons unknown.
When the family welcomes him with open arms at the airport (and even pays for his plane ticket), and when they take him back home to meet the others—Tim discovers that this isn’t just another ordinary family. They aren’t like anyone else he’s ever met. There is something different about each person in the family, some kind of hidden power or ability.
Her parents, for example, can predict what the weather will be like tomorrow. Her brother-in-law can see visions of the future. Her sister has a gift similar to that of Tarot cards, and so does one of her nieces. Her mother has incredible strength that allows her to lift heavy objects, and she also happens to be able to control insects as well as people.
And Tim himself has discovered a new talent. Whenever he touches a living thing, he knows things about it; he can read minds without touching them, and feel their emotions too. His girlfriend has been worried lately because he hasn’t touched many animals recently, but Tim is happy because his powers seem to be returning.
After two days of getting settled in their log cabin in the mountains, they decide to take a drive into town to see some sights. But soon after leaving, a freak storm hits, and suddenly Tim feels compelled to turn off the main road. He turns around and takes a side road, which leads up through the mountain pass.
It’s a narrow, winding road with no guardrail, and snow is blowing across the pavement, making it slippery and treacherous. After driving only a short distance farther up the road, he realizes that he is taking the most direct route to his girlfriend’s parent’s place—he doesn’t need to stop anywhere along the way.
When they get back home, he notices that the snow is now coming down harder than ever, so hard in fact that he begins worrying about losing control of the car and crashing into the woods. He decides that this would probably be bad news for him, so he tries to find another road leading back down to the valley.
But instead of finding an alternate exit, he ends up going further up the mountain, where there is no road at all.
As Tim drives, he is suddenly overcome by a feeling of unease and starts feeling sick to his stomach. He looks ahead at the approaching trees; the snow has become so deep and thick that he can’t even see the road beyond them. Then he begins noticing how silent it is, with not even the sounds of the wind or his engine filling the silence.
As he approaches the next bend, the snow becomes darker and thicker—not white anymore, but black. Then the car goes into reverse, moving back down the slope of the mountain, and Tim quickly pulls over to let his passengers out, fearing that they will fall asleep before arriving at the bottom of the pass.
He gets out himself and runs back to the front seat, grabs a blanket off of the rack above his head, and wraps it tightly around both his legs. He feels cold, even though the temperature inside the car should be warm enough to keep him comfortable. He reaches for the gas pedal and revs the engine—there’s something wrong with the brakes.
He’s afraid that if he lets go, the car will crash, so he puts on the emergency brake, then tries to drive again. Nothing seems to work. Finally, he decides to leave the car parked right where it is, close to the edge of the road—but there is no road there either! Instead, he finds himself standing in a snowy field on the top of a steep cliff.
Above him is a sheer drop of hundreds of feet straight down into a raging river far below. The cliff is covered in snow; the air smells of pine trees, but it is so still that the sound of his own breath echoes eerily in his ears. He looks up the incline of the hill and sees the black tree line, thousands of feet high.
A sudden gust of wind makes the snow swirl around him—it’s coming from all directions now. Suddenly, he realizes that he cannot walk through it—the snow is so soft that it is melting on contact, and it won’t allow him to pass. So he sits down at the base of the bluff and waits.
A couple hours later, Tim sees a small group of cars coming toward him from the bottom of the hill. He stands up to wave at them, hoping someone will pull over so he can flag them down. They don’t bother slowing down; they just continue their journey. Then, a man dressed in red crosses the road and walks straight toward him.
“Hello!” Tim calls to him. “Can you help me?”
The strange man smiles and nods. “I am called the Devil,” he tells Tim. He then points to a large boulder beside Tim. “There is a path there, and I want you to follow it.” He turns and begins walking away, heading back to his car. But as soon as he does, the ground beneath Tim gives way—he falls straight down the cliff face.
He lands on a pile of rocks below, but the impact knocks him unconscious. His last thought is of how odd it was for him to die while sitting down.
When Tim wakes up, it’s dark outside. He gets up and sees that his car lies broken on its side at the foot of the cliffs above him. The headlights are still on. He walks back up to the top of the bluff to look down at the valley. There he spots a man dressed in white. But instead of smiling at him like everyone else, this person is glaring angrily at him.
The man turns his back to him, and continues along the trail, which Tim finds leads directly down to the river at the bottom. When he reaches the water’s edge, he steps out onto the bank and stares at Tim. Then a wave rushes across the ice and sends him falling back into the icy waters below.
Tim watches as the man disappears under the water, and then he notices that the entire bank has melted into an enormous waterfall pouring over the ledge above him—just as he fell into the river with his friends. He can hear his car breaking apart—he’s going to be washed away too.
Suddenly, he sees that his passengers are floating on the river at the bottom of his car. As he looks closer, he sees that all three have been decapitated and that their blood has frozen in place. The sight of their heads makes him realize that this was his fate—to meet his death alone.
Tim jumps from the edge, landing safely on the ice. He walks over to the edge of the bluff and sees two figures—a little girl and her mother. Their faces are frozen in fear. Tim kneels down beside them and takes his handkerchief out of one of the pockets in his jacket—he uses it to wipe away a spot of mud that landed on the child’s cheek.
Then suddenly, he realizes that the woman is holding the hand of another baby, not far behind her daughter. She must have hidden it when she saw Tim approaching. The infant is wrapped tightly in his mother’s arms, and he seems to be crying.
Tim looks at his watch—only thirty minutes before midnight. He knows that the baby must survive this terrible night if he wants to make it home alive.
So he takes the baby from her mother’s hands and gently places it on the ground near the edge of the cliff. With tears streaming down his face, he walks off into the woods, trying desperately to keep pace with time, desperate to save the lives of two children, desperate to live long enough to save them both.
⁂
It happened in November
when the leaves were brown,
and the sky had no blue.
—Evelyn Underhill, “Invisible”
***
On a cold night, when snow begins to fall softly across the world in winter, Tim wakes up to find himself standing on the top of an enormous hill overlooking a town. The buildings look abandoned. The streets are empty. Everything has been covered in sheets of gray fog.
A chill wind blows through the air, and Tim shivers as he surveys the scene. The town is dead, deserted except for him. He tries to think about what happened to bring him here, or why he should be frightened, but he can’t recall anything clearly. The only thing he remembers is a feeling that something terrible has taken place, and now he is doomed to suffer.
He begins to descend the hill, trying to find some path that might lead him to the center of the town. But as he passes by various buildings, he feels drawn to enter each of them—even though it’s obvious they’ve been left for dead. He goes inside one church where there are several pews that seem to have been pushed together for warmth and sits down in the front row.
The wood creaks as he moves around, settling himself comfortably in the wooden seat. He looks down at his watch again—it is now twelve-fifteen.
But just then someone starts to sing a hymn. It sounds very old, and he recognizes it as the same one that played earlier in the day—the one from his dream. He realizes that it is meant for him. So he sings along, trying desperately to hold back tears. Then the words come rushing out of him and fill him with joy:
I know my redeemer liveth.
Though worms destroy this body,
yet in my flesh shall I see God,
Whom my eyes will behold,
And mine eke shall behold,
My heart hath prepared him
For his coming;
My heart is fixed, O God,
my heart is fixed;
I will sing and give praise
To the forever,
O Lord Most High.
The hymn ends, and Tim smiles through his tears. He realizes that he’s found what he was searching for. He’s sure that he’ll survive whatever lies ahead because he knows that somewhere in this strange town, his family awaits him—not as ghosts, but as real people. They are waiting for him, he can feel it. And he’s determined to reach them, wherever they may be.
He gets up from the pew and continues walking down the street, trying to remember where he heard the first strains of that old hymn. He’s so happy now that it takes him a moment to realize how badly he must be shaking from the cold. As he turns toward the next building, he sees a light flicker in one window.
He stops and stares at the house for a while until finally, it comes to him—it’s the last place he wants to go into. His mind tells him to run away, to escape this place as quickly as possible, but something pulls him forward—some instinct telling him to stay and find out if the truth is as bad as he fears it is.
The door to the house opens and a young boy steps outside onto the front porch. Tim stands still, afraid of what might happen if he approaches. The boy is about ten years old, with sandy hair and sad, blue eyes. He looks up at Tim with such despair that it brings tears to Tim’s own eyes. The boy says nothing, and after a few moments, Tim realizes that he doesn’t even recognize the voice.
With trembling hands, Tim reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small box. He holds it in front of the boy and smiles. Then he asks him: “Who sent you?”
The boy does not reply, but the answer comes to him anyway. Tim feels the familiar tug in his chest and suddenly understands that this is what he’s been looking for all these years—he has found what he’s been searching for in the form of a little child who has lost everything. In this town, everyone seems to have given up hope, and it is only he and the boy left to face the terror.
Tim walks over to the boy and puts the box into his arms. It isn’t much, just some candy that he’s had hidden away in case he ever came to this place. But the gesture touches him more than he could have imagined, and Tim realizes that although they are separated by thousands of miles and centuries of time, they both understand that they are alone in this world.
The boy thanks Tim with a soft smile, and then disappears back into the house. After a while, the sound of crying breaks the silence of the night. As the boy closes the door behind him, Tim sees an infant lying on its stomach across the threshold of the house. The child is swaddled in blankets and is covered in blood—it appears to have died in childbirth.
As soon as Tim crosses the threshold, the baby dies. He feels his own heart being ripped apart—he’s never seen anything like this before. He tries to tell himself that his mother would want him to continue, but he cannot bear to look at the child or touch it, knowing that there is nothing he can do to help.
With numb fingers, he pulls off his jacket and wraps the child in it, covering it completely. Then he carries the body to a nearby trash pile and buries it under the snow. When he returns to the house, he finds another child standing on the porch. She appears to be about five years old, and her blonde curls are matted with blood.
Tim kneels beside the child and places his hand on hers, asking if she’s all right. She stares up at him with huge brown eyes. He feels certain that this girl is somehow related to the boy, though he can’t imagine how.
He picks the child up and begins walking back toward the church, holding the child close to his heart. There’s no sign of the infant anywhere. He passes two more houses on his way to the church, but he sees nothing inside. On impulse, he goes back to the first house again—the one where the boy lives with his dead parents—and finds only the baby in the doorway.
He’s not sure what to make of this discovery. If this child was born to the family, it means that the boy did something very wrong—something unforgivable, perhaps. Or maybe he didn’t kill his wife, but rather gave birth to a deformed or sickly baby who died shortly afterward.
Either way, he’s guilty of something. And Tim realizes that he will spend many sleepless nights thinking about this and coming up with different explanations until he eventually accepts what he already knows—that there’s something deeply wrong here.
When Tim finally arrives at the church, the children appear to welcome him with open arms. They run ahead of him down the center aisle and hug him so tightly that it feels as if he might die from their embrace. Their faces look younger than those of any other child he has ever known, and when he tries to pull away, they push him back and begin laughing hysterically.
His mind flashes back to an image of a group of children playing in a field somewhere in England—he wonders if this is what life would have been like had his own family been normal instead of strange.
He sits down on one of the wooden pews and takes off his coat, placing the baby in a basket beneath his feet. Then he reaches into his coat pocket and retrieves his journal. The kids seem curious about why he wrote it, and they begin whispering questions to each other while he writes.
What is his name? What’s his story?
He stops writing and glances up at them. They’re smiling at him with happy, innocent expressions as if they have no idea what he’s talking about. He looks around the church and thinks of how many generations must be represented here—how long have these families lived here? How many times have they suffered through tragedy and loss because they couldn’t escape their pasts?
For how long has their existence been dictated by fear of death and the need to keep themselves alive? Is there anyone else who remembers a time before all this?
A young girl comes up to him with a scrap of paper in her hand. “Here,” she says as she hands the piece of paper to Tim. It’s covered with childish handwriting, but he recognizes what it’s saying immediately—it’s a drawing of a large bird flying into a mountain.
“It’s beautiful,” he tells the girl and then asks her where she got the picture. The girl doesn’t respond—instead, she smiles at him again, revealing crooked teeth.
She’s older now, and when he touches her shoulder, he can feel the muscles beneath her skin, and her body is much colder than he remembered it.
The door flies open suddenly, causing everyone to turn. A man in overalls appears in the doorway wearing thick gloves and a heavy coat. He is tall and muscular, but his movements are awkward as if he lacks coordination.
They exchange glances, wondering who this newcomer is.
He steps out onto the porch, looking around warily as if searching for someone. Finally, his eyes settle on Tim.
There’s a look of recognition in his eyes. He nods to himself and then turns abruptly and walks away from the church. He doesn’t look at anybody on his way out; instead, his attention is fixed straight ahead on the horizon, where he seems to be watching something moving across a distant field.
As soon as he disappears, all the children begin to cry out in unison. They shout things like “Daddy!” and “Mommy!” over and over again. One of the little girls runs forward and grabs Tim’s arm. She holds on tight and won’t let go.
Tim is stunned by what he’s witnessing: these children knew him as a grown man. But now that he’s seen their true forms, he’s not sure he could recognize them even if he came face-to-face with them as babies.
After a few minutes, the cries begin to subside. As the children continue to weep, Tim looks at their faces and wonders if he will ever see them again, or if they will disappear forever into the foggy distance.
The End