Pearl: Mountain-Walker Saga, #1

By Clay Gilbert

Pearl wants peace more than anything. She wishes she could find someone who wouldn't mind having someone like her around, but that's never going to happen. She's alone, except for the animals in the woods she's called home now for a year.

Even if they're scared of her strength, her speed, her sharp teeth and nails, or her strange silver eyes, they don't judge.

At least they don't call her a monster.

At ten years old, she's never had a friend besides the doctor who helped her escape a laboratory cage; never had a father or mother outside of her dreams. Then one day, a stranger moves into the empty house across from the cabin she's lived in for the year she's been on her own.

Everyone told Matthew Chandler he was crazy to abandon life as a California lawyer and move to a house in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to build a new career from the success of his first novel.

Matt Chandler likes proving people wrong. At this point, his only family's twenty miles away, and he figures the only children he'll ever have will be the books he writes. Then one day, a child he could not have imagined crosses his path, changing his notions of family and of humanity.

But Matt and Pearl still have to live with the world, and the people who will stop at nothing to unravel the mystery of Pearl's young life, even if that means taking it away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Moon Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393154631

Clay Gilbert

Clay Gilbert says he’s always liked stories, and that from the time he knew there were people who told them for a living, that’s what he wanted to do. Clay’s work in various genres has been in print since his first short science fiction story, “The Computer Conspiracy,” was published in Scholastic magazine when he was just thirteen. Pearl: A Monster Story is his eleventh novel. He lives and works in Knoxville, TN. His author blog can be found at http://portalsandpathways.wordpress.com/, and the official website for his Children of Evohe novels resides at https://childrenofevohe.com

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Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.  Matthew 13: 45-46

Like falling stars from the universe we are hurled

Down through the long loneliness of the world

Until we behold the pain become the pearl...

—Emmylou Harris

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men...

—William Allingham

Acknowledgments

I'VE BEEN A FAN OF stories about misunderstood monsters for a long time, and so I have to give some credit to Frankenstein, King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, Swamp Thing, the Incredible Hulk, and maybe even Godzilla here; there's some of their DNA in Pearl, to be sure.

I grew in East Tennessee, in Knoxville, and this novel wouldn't have been possible had I grown up anywhere else, or in any other way. 

Thanks to my parents, Bill and Brenda Gilbert, who have always indulged my love of monsters and encouraged my passion for the craft of writing.

Thanks for musical inspiration this time to Johnny Cash for his version of Wabash Cannonball and for Sunday Morning Comin' Down, to Arlo Guthrie for City of New Orleans, and Roger Miller for King of the Road.  Tracy Chapman's song Telling Stories was helpful when I was still trying to capture Pearl's voice on the page.  But more than all of these, the music of Lucy Kaplansky was ever-present while I listened to Pearl tell me her story.

Pearl's story owes a large debt to all the writers who have taught me that horror doesn't exist without heart; that it is a genre that hinges on emotion, and a storyteller who can't tug the heartstrings at times, can't hope to send chills up the spine.  Stephen King, Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Octavia Butler—all of these fine folks helped me to learn this lesson, and if it doesn't show, that's my fault, not theirs.

To my friends who love monsters and sci-fi, but particularly to Derek Tatum, who has been behind the idea of this book from its beginnings; to John Francis, who is always the number one guy in my corner, to Gerry Davidson, Greg Efurd, Jerry Whitehead, Kevin Logan, James Gill, and James' mother, Martha Gill, who encouraged me to tell stories,  perhaps without even knowing it, when she was my English teacher back in sixth grade.

Thanks to my editor, Michelle Charlin, who helped me help Pearl to look her best for all of you.

As always, thanks to Jesus Christ, who loves all, whether they walk in the light, struggle in the shadows, or somewhere in between.

—Clay Gilbert

Knoxville, Tennessee

June, 2019.

Prologue

I. THE OLDEST STORY

or one of the oldest (for if you go back far enough, it gets hard to tell), has to do with a girl, a monster, and a great, wild wood.  It goes like this:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a great, wild wood.  She didn't know whether she had been born there, or brought there, or whether she found her way there herself.

She couldn't remember which was true.

She often felt alone in the wood, although she knew she wasn't the only one living there.

A great beast, a Monster, lived there, too. 

The little girl often heard it (or him, or her, she didn't know exactly which), growling in the great wood as it hunted its prey, and muttering words in whispers the girl could almost, but not quite, hear.

She never saw its face.  The sounds of its growling were sometimes faint and sometimes loud, but the Monster never came close enough for the girl to see, except, sometimes, in her dreams.

The little girl grew older, as all children do, and as she grew, she had three dreams of the Monster who lived with her, somewhere in the dark wood. 

The first dream came when she was still only three summers old.  In the first dream, the Monster came to her when she was sleeping, brought her a gift, which it left on her pillow, and went away.

The first gift was an apple.  As she bit into it, she thought it was strange how she could find a gift from a dream waiting for her when she awoke in the morning.  Thank you, Monster, she said to the darkness, because she knew it was right to be thankful for a gift.

The second gift came when she had seen ten summers pass.  In the second dream, the Monster's whisper was clearer than before, although she still could not make out what it was saying.

When she awoke from the second dream, she found a book on her pillow where the apple had been on that morning she had almost forgotten, seven years gone. 

Turning its pages, she saw to her delight that it was filled with stories; not only that, but the kind she liked best: legends and fairy-tales, of heroes, knights, adventurers, wise men—and yes, of monsters.  Once again, and with a bigger smile on her face, and a gleam in her eye that had not been there before, she looked into the darkness, and said, Thank you, Monster.

Four more years passed for the girl in the dark wood, and she thought the Monster had quite forgotten her.  From time to time, she thought she heard the whisper of its voice far off in the darkness, and the rustle of its footsteps, but there had been no more dreams, and no more gifts.

She had eaten the apple bit by bit for as long as she could, for she didn't know where she could get another. There were no fruit-trees in the wood that she knew of.  Finally, though, it was gone.

She was a fast reader, and although she tried her best to pace herself the first time through, it didn't take long to get from 'once upon a time' to 'the end.' 

Such things never take as much time as we expect, and by the time of her fourteenth birthday, the girl had memorized every line of every tale the book had to offer, and had even, to her surprise, begun to make up tales of her own, as she wandered the wood during the day, or lay waiting for sleep to steal over her at night. 

On the last night of her fourteenth summer, a third gift came at last.  She remembered this one more clearly than the two before it.  In the third dream, she found herself wandering through the dark wood, looking for the Monster, wanting to thank it for its kindness, its gifts to her, and for keeping her safe in the dark wood, for that is what she imagined it was doing, when it walked where she could not quite see.  She always heard its footsteps just behind her own, but it was never there when she turned to look, and when she stopped, the footsteps did, too.

Monster, where are you? she called out loud, and, calling, she awakened.

She looked around her in the dark wood, but saw nothing. 

Monster, where are you? she called, louder than before. 

As in the dream, there was no answer.

Beside her lay a mirror.  She picked it up, and looked into it.  Expecting to see her own face (which, it occurred to her, she had never seen), she was surprised to see silver eyes, dark skin, and a smile full of pointed ivory teeth looking back at her.

She was even more surprised to realize she was not afraid. 

Thank you, Monster, she said, and was not at all surprised when the gleaming, pointed teeth shone back at her from the mirror in a smile, and answered her in her own voice.

When she awoke the next morning, she took the book and the mirror, and set off down a path in the dark wood, until, in the length of time, she came to a clearing.  She stayed there for a while, and, went on, finding more paths that led to new and darker woods, and, in the length of time, to other clearings. At every new turn of the road, she stopped, and before going on, she whispered:

Thank you, Monster.

The end of the story has yet to be written.

II.

October 31 2029

Knoxville, TN

"So that's what's causing the Southbound standstill on Forty?  Eighteen-wheeler turned over, blocking two lanes?"

Stan Eller didn't like the late night beat on Halloween.  In fact, he didn't particularly like being out after dark on what his Ma had always called 'the Devil's Holiday.'  He didn't believe in all that superstitious crap like his Ma always had (God rest her soul, he thought), but all the same, there was enough real-world hell being raised on the thirty-first to make him want to stay inside until November.  He was the new kid on the Knox County squad, though, and he wasn't gonna get to pick and choose.  Everybody else was home tonight, and he was left holding the bag, just as surely as if he was standing outside his house, scooping up his neighbor's dog's business out of the yard.

His friend Stacey was on dispatcher duty back at the station, and he knew she wasn't any crazier about Halloween nights than he was.

He was glad to have some company on this shift though, even if it was just a friend's voice on the two-way radio.

What do they think caused it?  Drunk driver?  Meth?  Kids out for a joyride on Spook Night?  Well, when ya do know, let me know.  Any fatalities?  Injuries?

No fatalities, Stacey answered from the other side of the line. 

Three injured, and every one of them said the same thing.  Said they were pulled to safety.

By who? he asked.

They didn't see.  And what they did say they saw, I'm not sure you can trust.  I'm sure they were all in shock.  For what it's worth, they did all say the same thing.  A pair of strong arms around them, pulling them free.  Yeah, that part's pretty standard, but here's your Halloween candy: a pair of dark brown wings. No, not feathers.  Skin, like bat's wings.  They were clear on that.

Say what?

You heard me.  They were all pulled free, they say, by someone or something with strong arms and dark brown wings.

Stan couldn't pretend he hadn't heard it the second time.  He kind of wished he hadn't asked for the repeat.

Dark brown wings? Skin, like a bat?  What the almighty hell?  Stacey, I don't need any stories like this unless they're pulled out of my Netflix queue and I'm armed with a plate of hot wings and a can of Bud Light, you feel me?  No monster stories.  Not tonight.

"Sorry to be the bearer of weird news.  Anyway, that's all I've got.  You'd better head up there. Check this out.  Let us know what you find.  Oh, and by the way?

Happy Halloween, Stan."

I'll check it out.  Good thing Terrie's home to take the kids trick or treating tonight.  Sure as hell doesn't look like it's gonna be me.  Yeah, Happy Halloween to you too.

Thanks, Stace, Stan thought.

He shook his head as he pulled out onto the highway and headed for 1-40 Southbound. 

Strong arms; dark brown wings.

As Stan merged into the column of light heading southward, he remembered something else.  His mother hadn't just called Halloween the devil's holiday; she'd had a name for the whole month.

She'd called it the season of monsters.

Chapter One:

The Scavenger

OCTOBER 2025

Run, Pearl.  When you get the chance, run.  And don't stop until you're somewhere safe.

That's what Dr. Steve told her to do, and when the chance came, that's what she did.

Sirens in the dark.  Rain all around; on my head, soaking through my hood.

Don't care.  Gotta get away.

And she had.  She ran until the sirens were gone and the branches of the thick trees in the woods rose between her and the rain.  Mostly, anyway.

And then, Pearl was alone.

In five days, that would be a year ago: a year of white squares colored in on a calendar, like a brightly-hued sidewalk between then and now.

Bright squares on a wall, and peaceful woods, all around.

It was quiet, mostly, here in the woods.  Quiet meant no people, and no people meant peace. 

Pearl knew some people in the world hated silence; always turning on the TV or punching at their cell phones like they were scared to be alone in their own heads.

Pearl had some thoughts in her head she didn't like, but she didn't mind being alone, and she could live with the silence.

She’d lived with worse.

The bad place she left behind was worse: the lab, with all its chains, cold cuffs for her wrists, and the cage they kept her in, like she was a prisoner instead of a girl who’d done nothing but open her eyes one day and take a breath.  But the cuffs and chains had stayed the same while Pearl grew and changed, and one morning, soon after her ninth birthday, she found the bonds that were so strong when she was little weren’t so strong anymore, and she broke them, and she was free.

In her first year of freedom, the woods were quiet; a place where Pearl could be alone with her thoughts, and with the animals, and once in a while, read one of the books she’d brought from the bad place with her in her backpack, or color in one of the coloring books she'd brought from there, with crayons from a box she’d found in a dumpster near a store, the first night she was on her own. 

Not found; scavenged.  She liked that word better. 

She'd happened upon the cabin on the third night of that first year, and, after making sure no one else was there, she'd taken a bath in the nearby lake, put on some clean clothes, eaten one of the packs of Pop-Tarts from her backpack, and fallen asleep. 

Across from the cabin, Pearl saw something that made her curious: a big house, with three levels.  Nobody seemed to be home the night she first arrived in the woods.  The cabin was enough for her.  Besides, that house looked fancy, and she thought it might have some alarms on it, like the bad place had on its doors, so that if she went too close to it, the police would come running. 

I sure 'nuff don't need that, she'd thought.

ALMOST A WHOLE YEAR had gone by since the day she moved into the cabin, and all that time, the big house across the way from it stood empty.

Pearl knew, because she kept a watch on it.

She figured as long as the big house stayed empty, it'd be more likely folks would leave her alone. 

Five white squares were left on the calendar before the one she'd circled in green (October 6th, she noted, tracing the circle with her finger).  That green circle marked a whole year's worth of white squares since the day she found the cabin; squares she'd filled in with her crayons, one by one, on the last three pages of one calendar and almost the whole first nine of another.

In all that time, she and the world had passed each other by.

This morning was different.

This morning, Pearl had seen something—something that changed everything.

It was the middle of the day, when the sun was high in the sky.  Most times, it was a peaceful part of the day, but not now.

Two big trucks were pulling up the driveway of the big house, where none had ever pulled up before. 

Both trucks had the same thing written on them: MYSTERY CREEK MOVING COMPANY.

Pearl knew that meant whoever it was the stuff in those trucks belonged to, they weren't just coming for a visit.  They were planning to stay, and that was something she hadn't figured on.

PEARL WASN'T SCARED of sleeping in the woods alone.  As long as all she saw were animals, she'd be just fine.  Pearl wasn't scared of any wild animals.  They couldn't do anything to hurt her.

Neither could men with dogs.  They'd tried, too.

Men with guns, that was something different.  But for a whole year now, they'd stayed away from her, except in her nightmares.

For a year, everyone had stayed away from her.  That was how she liked it.

Now all that was changing, in just one day.

She didn't like changes much.

Pearl looked at the calendar she'd hung with a hammer and a nail on the cabin's wall.  The wall was pretty solid, but she was strong. 

October 1, 2025, the calendar said.  Against the wall, beneath the calendar, there was a stack of ones just like it; only the years were any different.  She was especially glad October's picture hadn't changed from the year before. It made her smile.

The picture she liked so much was a composite design featuring a big tree with mostly-barren branches, a huge jack-o-lantern stuck smack onto an orange sky (October skies in pictures, she had decided, were nothing but sunsets), and cartoon renditions of Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, and Dracula. 

Those made her smile even more.  She loved monsters.  And why shouldn't she?  People were always telling her she was one.

They always said that like it was a bad thing.

Only one person ever told her anything different, and he was gone now.

Pearl still believed him, though.  Even out here in the woods. 

Believing in something's even more important sometimes, Pearl, when you're out in the dark woods than when you're sitting at home.

That's what he'd told her once, although they'd been in a bright room in the bad place, not here in the safe shadows of woods that didn't feel so dark to her.

She could see pretty well in the dark.

She was more afraid of the dreams she had sometimes, especially the ones she couldn't pin down to memory, like she might stick a picture on a wall.  Lately her dreams were full of caves and water; water so deep she couldn't see the bottom, inside a cave so dark even she couldn't see.

Don't know what that's about, and I don't wanna. Can't swim, and a cave might be fun, but not that big ol' wet, dark thing, no way.

She sat up in her sleeping bag and shook her head, as if the bad dreams might fall out of her ears.

They didn't, but it still helped a little.

Pearl smiled, remembering. 

Dr. Steve had sometimes seemed to her like the smartest man in the whole world, but he said funny things too, like that little green man named Yoda, in that Star Wars movie she'd seen on TV back in the bad place. Thinking about Yoda, she thought of a question.

There's people who live in the woods, right, Dr. Steve?

Yoda lived in the woods, in that movie.  On that planet called—Doggie-bag?  No, that wasn't it.  Dagobah.  Yoda had looked funny, too—just like me, she thought.  But he was a Jedi Master, and could lift a whole spaceship without even touching it.

Yoda lived in the woods, but he wasn't scared.

Pearl remembered how Dr. Steve had laughed when she asked the question, but not in that mean, making-fun kind of way some of the men in white coats in the bad place did sometimes. 

Yes, Miss Pearl, there are.  Not far from here, I expect.

That had made her feel better, although she didn't know how she would get to any of those people if she wanted to, or if they'd help her, if she could.  Not having an answer for those thoughts, she asked another question.

"What do people believe, when the woods are their home?"

He laughed again.  More than most people, I imagine.

I KNOW I DO, DR. STEVE.

Dr. Steve had liked that movie with Yoda in it, and all the other Star Wars movies, too.  She'd liked it too.  Watching movies was one thing she and Dr. Steve did when he came to visit her in the bad place.  Reading was another.

Pearl was a smart girl (even the people at the bad place said so), and by the time she met Dr. Steve, when she was eight years old, she'd figured out that the way things worked at the lab (that was the real word for it, she knew) didn't make sense to her.  She knew how they worked, but that didn't mean it made sense.

The people at the lab never seemed to care much about Pearl, for herself.

Never even cared enough about me to give me a name.  Dr. Steve did that.

Every time someone seemed to care about Pearl for herself (and she could count every one of those on the fingers of one hand without even using up all the fingers) they ended up going away, and she was left alone with the ones who didn't.

They seemed to care a lot about how her body worked and what she could learn and do, though. She guessed that was why they had taught her to read, and taught her other things, some out of books and some not, just like she was any other little girl who had school during the day.

They probably hadn't done it for her, she realized now.  One of the things she figured out about how the lab worked was that all she meant to them was what they could get out of her, which, best she could tell, was all about tests.

Test specimens, and test results.  Numbers and figures, like the math problems they taught her to do, probably to see if she was smart enough to learn to do them.

She was, and when they figured that out, they gave her books with brain-puzzles in them, and other puzzles to solve by twisting with her hands.

They were surprised at how fast she was at doing them.  That seemed to make them happy.  They were less happy when she broke one of the twisting-puzzles in her frustration at not being able to get it to turn the way she wanted it to.

They'd gotten her a different one to try, but she thought she saw frustration in the eyes of the white-coat lady who handed it to her through the bars of her cage.  Maybe a little fear, too.

That hurt my feelings, she remembered.  I wasn't trying to scare anyone, or break anything.

She'd just figured out how the puzzle was supposed to work, all at once, and saw how it was meant to look, like a picture someone dropped into her head.  She saw it, and she wanted to solve the puzzle fast, in case the picture went away.

Darn old puzzle just wouldn't turn fast enough.  Didn't mean to break it.

The white-coat lady's eyes got big when that happened, especially when Pearl got mad and threw what was left of the puzzle out of the cage and across the room, where it broke some glass somewhere out of sight.

Oops, she thought.  She didn't mean to break that, either.  She was just mad about the puzzle.  But the sound of the smashing glass did make her feel better.  She knew that was probably bad, but it did.

She'd been afraid they would do something bad to her for breaking the puzzle, or the glass, but the white-coat lady just made some notes on her paper and went away, and the next day, a different white-coat lady came and brought her a new puzzle-toy. Pearl remembered the look in her eyes.

She looked like she was afraid of what else might get broken.

Pearl didn't like hurting people, even people who hurt her.  She did hurt people once or twice, while she was at the lab, and she knew the last time she did that was what led to the cuffs they put on her, and the chains on her cage.

She hadn't done it to be cruel, or to be mean.

They hurt me first, and I was scared.

She found out later that some of the things she did were why Dr. Steve came.

Dr. Stephen Squire, Department of Homeland Security. Research and Containment Division. That's what she'd read on his badge, the first day they met.

She knew what those words meant.  Research meant squirt-bottles, bright lights and needles.  Containment meant bars and cages, locks and chains.

She didn't like to think of those words, but like a whole lot of other words, she knew what they meant.

She didn't like to think of the bad things that had happened to her, but that didn't mean she didn't remember.

She remembered Dr. Steve, too, though, and that wasn't a bad memory at all.

She should have been afraid of him—and she had been, for a little while, when they first met.  But she was good at figuring out people, even though they were tougher than puzzles, and it didn't take her long to figure out Dr. Steve wasn't going to hurt her.

Maybe he was supposed to, she thought.  But I got him on my side instead.

He believed in me. 

The people in the bad place sure didn't.  At first, they seemed they just didn't care about her, even though she hadn't done anything to them. 

I hope he didn't get hurt 'cause of me.

She looked at the cell phone he'd given her on the day he'd gone away, nearly a year to the day after they met.  He'd said to keep it safe and never let anyone find it.

Her heart had beat faster in her chest, and it beat faster, again, as she remembered.

DR. STEVE, I CAN'T take this from you.  It's yours.

She looked down at the cell phone in her hand like she thought it might burn her.

'Sides, what if they see?

Take it, Pearl.  I don't have time to fuss over this with you.  They're going to make me leave, and they're not going to take no for an answer.  I flashed my badge and made them turn off the surveillance, the way I've been doing every time I've come to see you.  They've never liked it much, but they haven't argued.  But my time's up.

Pearl didn't know exactly who decided that, but it sounded like it wasn't up for discussion.

Take me with you, then.  Can't see you, don't wanna be here no more.

"Any more.  You know how to talk better than that."

She'd frowned, and stuck out her tongue at him, even baring her teeth at him and acting like she might bite him. 

He just grinned and shook his head at her.  You're a mess, Miss Pearl.

And you're a mean man.  Take this ol' thing back.  Don't want it.  Want you to stay.

I can't.  People—the people I work for—they need to know about this place.  I've played double agent as long as I can.

Like James Bond? 

Pearl knew those movies, although she liked monster movies and the Star Wars ones better.

He laughed.  Yeah, but what it means is somebody who acts like they're on one side, but they're really on the other.  I only came here to find out what was going on, and honestly, because I knew about you.

She scooted back away from him like he'd smacked her in the face.  She frowned, feeling her lip trembling and tears coming up in her eyes like they did when the white-coats squirted something in them.

Pearl, don't cry.  Please.  What'd I do?

"Thought you was my friend.  Thought you liked me for me.  You just one more white-coat who wants somethin'.  I ain't good enough for anybody just to like me. Just to be my friend.   And yeah, I said ain't.  Don't care.  You go on.  Don't want you here noways."

She looked up at him, her eyes as cold as her heart felt in her chest. 

Take your damn phone too. 

She shoved it at him, but he waved her hand away, and she brought it back to her side.

Well! You got a mouth on you for nine.

So?  Told you first day we met, I know some words. Get on outta here, if you're gonna go.

He didn't move, which made her even madder.  But she was sad, too, so she just sat there and shut up.

"Pearl, I am your friend."

How'm I s'posed to trust you?

She stared him down like she had the first time one of the white-coats had tried to push a needle into her arm.

"Well, for one thing, you could use this phone to really mess me up if you knew how.  Pretty sure all it would take is you punching the right button and telling the right people I touched you somewhere private, and they'd