Precious Cargo

Eric was confused. Why was this man screaming and pointing at him. Or was he? Now Kay was yelling too.
Where was Pye? He finally understood what she was saying.
"Behind you! Turn around. Look behind you."
Eric turned around. Then he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Pye was akwardly lumbering between the hearse and the truck.
And he was carrying the axe. His eyes were flat and his jaw was set in a grim, determined posture.
His shuffle was slow, as if he were medicated, or just learning to walk. The same way George was walking.
"Deixa-lo ir Pizarro. Podemos ser livres." George's mouth said.
"Something about being free." Kay told Eric.
"Voce ainda e um tolo, Juan" Pye's mouth answered.
As the two argued, Eric and Kay slowly eased away from the pair.
"They appear to be old acquaintances. Whoever is doing the talking, that is. Pye is somehow Pizarro and this George guy is now Juan.
Pye just called Juan a fool. I think they are speaking Portuguese, which to me is a cross between Italian and Spanish." Kay said.
"I really don't think it matters what the language is hon. This whole thing is turning Twilight Zone." Eric said as he reached inside his jacket pocket, only to discover his shoulder holster was empty.
"Crap, my pistol is in the glove box. I put it there when I walked in that store." Eric said as he slid back a step and dropped to his knees out of sight, on the passenger side of thre truck.
The door opened silently and Eric reached in to the glove box door, opened it and removed his .40 caliber semi aoutomatic.
He thought briefly of the 12 guage shotgun in the sleeper, but felt it too risky with Pye standing just outside the driver's door.
He found the fear irrational, with a shotgun certainly outranking a shotgun, but was hoping the situation could be resolved without violence.
The argument continued vehemently and it seemed to be centered around the briefcases, now on the ground at George's feet.
Without warning, Pye roared and raised the axe over his head, charging at George.

 

George/Juan dropped one briefcase and held the other up as a shield, while stepping backwards.
Pye/Pizarro closed the gap quickly, bringing the axe above his head, rather than to one side, like a baseball bat.
George/Juan blindly stepped back into a depression in the earth, causing him to lose his balance and fall flat on his back, keeping the briefcase in front of him as he went down.
Eric went into a three point, two handed shooters stance.
"Drop the axe! Don't make me shoot." Eric commanded, not yelling, but trying to inject some authority into his voice.
Pye/Pizzaro brought the axe down like a railway worker driving a spike.
Eric took a deep breath and held it, bringing his finger inside the trigger guard.
On some level he knew Pye wasn't in control. His body was only a vehicle for some unseen, wicked entity.
But the same could be said for the man on the ground. He didn't know this man, but he was a client.
A client who placed his trust in Eric's employer.
All these thoughts passed through Eric's conciousness during a very brief period of time.
Eric had heard of this phenomenom from his uncle who was in numerous firefights in Viet-Nam.
He said time slowed down and everything became very clear.
Eric was experiencing that now. He was also experiencing a moral delima. He was simply not equipped to make this decision.
George/Juan rolled to one side in that final fraction of a second of the blade's descent.
The heavy blade buried itself into the ground.
As Pye/Pizarro struggled to regain control of the axe, George/Juan rolled back onto his shoulders as he pulled his knees to his chest.
While George was an orthodonist, not a woodsman, he was much younger and in reasonably good shape.
He jettisoned his legs forward like a pair of pistons into his opponent's chest, driving him backwards.
Eric watched the scene play out, cursing his inability to act, yet grateful he didn't pull the trigger.

 

Pye/Pizzaro was backpedaling, freewheeling his arms in an effort to maintain his balance.
"Grab the briefcases." Kay told Eric, shaking him from his reverie.
Eric rushed to where the cases were laying on the ground, first grabbing the axe, flinging it down the hillside, in the direction of the lake.
He then gabbed a handle in each hand, only then realizing how heavy they were.
A large safe had been bolted to the floor of the cargo box, especially for this trip, but Eric didn't want to take the time to use it.
Not now, anyway. Instead he told Kay to jump up into the cab.
When she did, he passed the briefcases in, one at a time, which she in turn, put into the sleeper compartment.

 

Eric knew the easiest thing to do right now would be to simply take off. After all, he got what he came for.
But this was too bizarre. These men were clearly possessed by an outside force and it was somehow connected to his business.
Although he had known him only briefly, he felt some kinship with Pye, for being such a gracious host at Provincetown, if nothing else.
The conversation in the tavern came to mind, when Pye interrupted their meal to give them his phone number.
He seemed genuinely distressed that they were coming to this region.
Eric dismissed him as a superstitious old man. Not anymore.Pye knew something. That much was clear now, but hindsight wasn't helping matters.
Eric told Kay to stay in the truck and to get the shotgun from the sleeper.
Kay immediately opened the first briefcase and began dumping the gold coins onto the mattress.
"What the heck are you doing?" Eric yelled.
"Put some rocks in there and close it back up." she said, shoving the now empty case at him.
"What?" he asked, puzzled.
"Just do it, please." Kay said as she began dumping out the contents of the second one.

 

Eric dropped to his knees a few feet from the truck where there was an abundance of rocks, many golf ball size or larger and began tossing them in the case.

Kay did some research on her laptop on the ride up. There was some Indian folklore concerning treasure in one of the lakes up here, but it was sketchy.
The dominant theory concerned cannibalism and trapped spirits unable to move on.
She never connected any of it to what Pye said in the tavern, but now she did.
Something clicked when he pulled the axe from his car. Who carries that everywhere if they haven't logged in fifteen years?
She picked up enough of the conversation between the fighting men to understand one of them felt they would be free if the gold was gone.
Free from what? Or free to do something. Move on maybe?

"How many should I put in?" Eric asked.
"Enough to sink it to the bottom of the lake."
"Gotcha. Now you want to explain what we are doing this for?"
"No time for that, now. Just trust me." she said as she tossed him the second case.

 

As Eric filled the second briefcase with snow powdered stones, the ghostly combatants continued their brawl on the opposite side of the truck.
George/Juan let loose a wolf like howl as he charged Pye/Pizarro, who was already in the process of falling over backwards.
They collided like football players. George was smaller, but had momentum on his side.
He landed on top, straddling Pye's waist with his knees, wrapping his hands around his throat.

"Now take them to the lake and toss them in. Hurry, hurry." Kay said, as Eric closed up the second one.
The tennis shoes he wore were more suited for a dry day in Georgia than a snowy hillside in Maine.
Three strides into his journey, he lost his footing, landing on his back.
Somehow he spun during the fall and landed with his feet pointed uphill and began sliding backwards, not letting go of the briefcases.

Kay's plan was for the ghosts to believe the gold was going back into the lake, which would please one and disturb the other. She had to somehow let Juan know it was all a ruse and he would soon be free to finally move on.

Eric felt as if he was on a runaway sled. The sky above was a blur and the snow flakes clouded his vision.
The descent came to an abrupt halt when his right shoulder slammed into a massive pine tree.
The unexpected pain turned his field of vision into a red blur.
The explosion he heard at impact confused him, until he realized it was a shotgun blast.