by Lukens, Mark
She nodded yes.
“This is the same thing that it led up to at the dig site, isn’t it?”
Stella glanced at David, and then she looked back at Cole. She sighed heavily and nodded. “Yes.”
“Why does it want us to kill David? He’s just a kid. Why doesn’t it just come in here and do it?”
Stella hesitated for a moment, staring at Cole. “I don’t think it can,” she finally said. “I think it’s afraid of David for some reason. I don’t think it’s able to kill David so it needs others to do it. It tries to scare others so badly that they will do anything it wants—even kill a little boy.”
There was a pounding on the front door.
They all jumped.
From the other side of the door, they heard Jose’s voice. “Cole, let me in! I’m not dead yet!”
They all stood very still and stared at the door.
“I need help,” Jose continued from out on the porch. He beat on the door again. “Please, I’m bleeding bad, man. Please don’t leave me out here!” They could hear that Jose was beginning to cry. “Please don’t leave me out here with this thing!”
Cole took a step towards the door. He rested his hand on top of the butt of his gun that stuck up from the waistband of his pants.
“I won’t hurt David,” Jose said from behind the door. “I promise. Just let me in.”
Cole took another step closer to the door. He stared at it. It couldn’t be Jose. He had to be dead by now. Or taken by that thing out there.
“We’ll think of another way,” Jose said from the other side of the door. “Like you said, we’ll think of something else. We won’t kill David.”
As Cole stared at the door and took another step towards it, David jumped off the couch and ran to Cole. He grabbed Cole’s hand and took it in his own, like a son would grab his father’s hand. Cole looked down at David who stared up at him.
“It’s not him anymore,” David told Cole in a soft voice.
Cole nodded down at David. “I know,” he told him.
There was a sudden flurry of poundings on the door. Jose screamed at them from the other side of the door, and his voice was no longer pleading; now it was angry. “You’re going to be very sorry, Cole! It will get you just like it got me! It won’t let you die. You just go on and on. Just like Frank! Just like Trevor!”
Jose’s voice turned deeper as he continued shouting, his voice became more guttural, more demonic. “Kill the boy, or it’s going to be bad. So bad. Worse than you can possibly imagine!”
There was a rush of wind from outside and the door shook and rattled in its frame.
And then everything was deathly quiet.
Cole looked down at David who still held his hand and stared up at him.
Cole knelt down and got on the same eye level as David. “Don’t worry, David. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re not going to give you to that thing outside. We’ll find a way out of here. I promise.”
David stared at Cole for a moment, then he jumped at Cole and hugged him, squeezing him tightly, his eyes shut with a few tears slipping out.
Cole was a little shocked by David’s sudden hug. He glanced at Stella who watched them. She wiped away her own tears.
David let Cole go and he ran back to the couch.
Cole got back up to his feet and he looked at Stella. “We have to try and run,” he told her.
Stella just stared at him.
“But we can’t run at night,” Cole went on. “We need to get through tonight and leave in the morning.”
Cole pulled Jose’s gun out of the waistband of his pants from under the back of his shirt. He held it by the barrel and walked over to Stella. He handed it to her.
Stella took Jose’s gun.
“Do you know how to use one of these?” Cole asked her.
Stella looked down at the gun in her hand, and then in a blur of motion, she expertly checked the clip for bullets, then popped the clip back in. She racked a bullet into the chamber, and then checked to make sure the safety was on.
Cole stared at her in amazement.
Stella gave Cole a small smile. “I taught myself how to use guns a few years ago. A girl by herself at remote dig sites can be a little unnerving.”
Cole smiled. “You’re full of surprises.”
He looked at the front door. “Since we’re going to be stuck here for the night, I think it’s a good idea to barricade the front door and windows.”
CHAPTER 40
The night was eerily quiet and calm. There was no winter wind whistling around the eaves of the cabin. There were no sounds of Frank or Jose calling out to them from the snow. No sounds of footsteps on the front porch. Everything was just … quiet.
Earlier in the night Cole had barricaded the front windows and doors as best as he could. He managed to tear apart the dining room table and chairs so he could use the wood for the barricades. He used the hammer and various nails he’d found earlier in the cabinet underneath the sink. He used slats from underneath the beds and nailed the pieces of wood over the back door and the front windows that looked out onto the porch. They shoved Needles’ recliner against the front door; it wasn’t much of a barricade, but they didn’t want to use the couch as a barricade because none of them wanted to sit in the chair that Needles had occupied for so much of the time he was in the cabin. They upended the dining room table and shoved it against the entrance to the hallway. It closed off the bathroom to them, but they would just have to make do.
None of them wanted to go into the bathroom anyway after what happened to Trevor.
It was late, nearly two o’clock in the morning. David fell asleep on the couch. Cole and Stella sat on the floor in front of the couch, like they were guarding David.
Stella had Jose’s gun beside her on the floor. She stifled a yawn, trying to stay awake.
Cole looked at her. “I just wanted you to know that this was supposed to be my last bank job.”
Stella looked at him for a moment. “You guys seemed like an experienced group.”
“I used to be a part of Frank’s crew. Then I quit. But then Trevor got involved with them. He ended up owing Frank some money—a lot of money—and I needed to help them with one last job to help Trevor pay him back.”
Stella nodded.
“I don’t expect you to believe me; I just wanted to tell you that this was going to be my last time.” Cole thought for a moment. “I was really trying to change. I just wished I would’ve changed a little sooner. Before I got Trevor involved …”
“I’m sorry,” Stella said in a soft voice. “I’m an only child. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to lose a brother.”
They were quiet for a long moment in the murky cabin. They had turned all the lights off except for the one over the stove.
“How did you get away from that dig site in New Mexico?” Cole asked Stella.
Stella looked at Cole, trying to determine if there was any accusation in his eyes or in the tone of his voice.
“You said your vehicles wouldn’t start,” Cole continued. “And then you said that the thing out there was taking your friends one by one.”
Stella sighed. “Even before I realized that the thing out there wanted David, I began to suspect that there was something … something special about him.” Stella stole a quick glance at David—he was still sleeping peacefully. “When the thing asked the few of us who remained to kill David, I began to believe that it needed us to kill David because it couldn’t do it by itself.”
“So David is …” Cole thought for a moment, trying to find the right words. “He’s special. Like powerful. Like you think he has powers?”
“I think so,” Stella answered. “There were only a few of us left,” Stella continued in a low voice, looking away from Cole. “And Jake, my friend, he hadn’t been taken yet. But Jake and the others wanted to kill David. They felt like it was their only way out. I tried to convince them that once we gave it what it wanted, it wouldn’t
let us go. It would just kill all of us because it wouldn’t need us anymore. But I couldn’t convince them; they had their minds made up. They wanted to kill David. So I took him and I ran to my truck.”
“And you knew it would start?”
“Yeah, I had a feeling it would,” Stella answered him. “I had a feeling that David would help it start whether he realized it or not. It was a big gamble, but it was the only choice I had left.” Stella didn’t mention to Cole that she had watched Jake slit his own throat rather than let that thing take him alive.
They were quiet for a moment.
Stella thought of the things David had drawn in his notebook. She needed to take another chance right now, she needed to trust Cole.
“I want to show you something else,” Stella said. “I want to trust you. And I want you to trust me even though I know you don’t have any reason to since I’ve hidden so much from you until now …”
“You had to,” Cole said quickly. “I understand why you did it.” Cole thought of her trusting him, and then he thought of the secret he’d kept to himself all this time—the snowmobile in the garage. But who knew if it would even work. The snowmobile could be old or damaged. Or maybe that thing out there knew it was there. Maybe that thing could read minds and had learned of the snowmobile from Cole’s thoughts.
Cole pushed the thought of the snowmobile out of his mind as Stella turned and carefully pulled the spiral notebook out from under David. She opened the notebook and showed Cole what was inside.
He took the notebook and flipped through page after page of what looked like some kind of symbols. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but it seemed like some kind of ancient language.
He looked at her, not really understanding what he was looking at.
“It’s the Anasazi language,” she told him in an awed voice.
Cole shook his head a little. “David’s been writing in this language?” Cole shrugged his shoulders like it shouldn’t be a big deal. “Isn’t David Native American?”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure he’s Navajo; most likely full-blooded. But he’s never told me much about himself.”
“But this Ana … ana …”
“Anasazi. Like I told you before, they lived hundreds of years ago and then they vanished. No one knows where they went to. Some say they intermingled with other tribes, or even became other tribes. Some say they left the area. Others even speculated that the Anasazi were the remnants of the Maya who also built massive cities and then abandoned them. But no one knows for sure.”
Cole nodded.
“The Anasazi, like many ancient peoples of North and South America, had no written language, or at least no significant evidence had ever been found.”
It was beginning to sink in a little to Cole.
“There have been bits and pieces of Anasazi symbols found, but not much, not enough to get a clear overview of any kind of language. It’s sort of like Egyptian hieroglyphics.”
Cole nodded; he’d heard of Egyptian hieroglyphics before.
“I asked David how he learned how to write all of this, but he said he didn’t know.”
Cole glanced down at the notebook which was filled with page after page of symbols. All this time in the cabin David had been scribbling down these symbols, one after the other.
He looked at Stella. “Can you read it?”
“I can recognize some of the symbols, enough to know that it’s from the Anasazi culture, but I can’t make enough of it out to understand any of it.”
Cole sighed, thinking this over.
Stella sat up a little more, becoming a little excited, her eyes lit up in the darkness of the cabin. “The word Anasazi is a Navajo word,” she continued. “A lot of times the word is translated as Ancient Ones. But a more accurate translation is Ancient Enemy.”
“So the Navajo called the Anasazi their ancient enemies?” Cole asked.
“That’s what most scholars believe. But I have a different theory.”
Cole waited for Stella to continue. He could tell that she was excited, archaeology was definitely her passion.
“I believe that Anasazi wasn’t a word that the Navajo used to name the tribe, I believe it’s a word they used to describe the beings that took the Anasazi and caused them to vanish.”
CHAPTER 41
“Like I told you before,” Stella went on, “the Anasazi were a very advanced culture at that time, about seven to eight hundred years ago; they were the most advanced culture in North America. They had no one to fear, yet they built these massive cities right into the sides of cliffs. Why go through all of that work if they were the strongest and most advanced tribe?”
Cole didn’t answer. He knew he couldn’t keep up with Stella on this level of conversation. He just let her continue.
“All these years, archaeologists have always wondered what the Anasazi were defending themselves from. What were they so afraid of? And after all of that work, what would make them suddenly leave these cities? Or the Maya. Or the Olmecs. Or the Inca. Something drove all of them out of their cities. Some say it was because of drought or shortage of food supplies, but other tribes stayed in the same regions.”
Stella took a breath; she had been talking so fast, her voice getting louder. She glanced at David to make sure she hadn’t disturbed him. “There are many legends in Native American cultures about demons that would come in the night and take people. Sometimes these demons would ask for things, offerings. And if these offerings weren’t given to them, then they would take people. And supposedly the only people who could see these demons were the shamans. Like witch doctors.”
Cole nodded to indicate that he understood what a shaman was.
“What if David can see that thing out there? What if the reason it wants to kill David is because he’s a shaman—a natural-born shaman?”
Cole just stared at her.
“Many believe that shamans were people who may have been born with some kind of psychic or telekinetic abilities. And they used these … these skills to wield power over their tribe.”
“So you think David is a natural shaman? You think he’s psychic or telekinetic?”
“I think he might be, even though he doesn’t know it yet.”
Stella looked at the front door with the recliner in front of it. She looked back at Cole.
“I don’t know what that thing is out there. A demon? I don’t know. The Native American legends of demons predate Christianity. An alien? Who knows? There are many theories of visitations by aliens to cultures in North, Central, and South America. The Nazca Plains. The Hopi Indian rituals. The sacrifices at the temples in the Maya culture may have not been religious ceremonies to their gods. What if they were offerings to that thing out there through the years? Maybe that thing out there only comes around every few hundred years. What if a day to it is a hundred years to us, and a night of sleeping to it is a hundred years?” Stella had been talking so fast, she stopped and stared into Cole’s eyes where she could see doubt and confusion.
“So you think that thing out there might be an alien? Like from outer space? Like from a UFO?”
“Maybe they’ve been here for a long, long time,” she said quickly. “Even before human civilization. I know it sounds far-fetched, but look around you. You’ve seen what that thing can do.”
Cole nodded.
“I think that thing out there may roam the earth, unseen and unfelt by most. But then every once in a while someone like David comes along; someone who can see it, feel it, maybe even fight it.”
Suddenly, Cole became a little excited. He could see a glimmer of hope, a small dot of light at the end of this long horrible tunnel they were in. “So you’re saying that we can get David to kill this thing?”
“I don’t know if it’s that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“David may be a natural-born shaman, but he’s still just a boy. He’s had no training. He may not even know what to do.”
“Great,”
Cole said and sighed. “Then I guess we’re back to square one. We try and run in the morning.”
“It may be all we can do for now,” Stella told him. “But we need to protect David. That’s the most important thing.”
Cole leaned back against the couch and let out another long sigh. He looked at Stella who yawned again. “Why don’t you get an hour’s rest? I know you need it. I’ll stand guard for a little while.”
Stella nodded. “I’ll try. Wake me up if you hear anything.”
“I will. Just try to get some rest. Tomorrow morning may be very stressful.”
*
Almost three hours later everything was still quiet outside. Cole hadn’t heard a single sound from out there, not even the wind.
He sat near the kitchen in the only dining room chair that they hadn’t broken apart and used as wood for the barricades over the windows. He watched Stella and David. Both of them were asleep, both of them breathing heavily.
Cole watched them for a while. He needed to make sure they were asleep.
He got to his feet, being as quiet as he could.
He looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It would be dawn very soon.
He knew what he needed to do now.
CHAPTER 42
Cole opened the refrigerator. He had rummaged around in here for some food earlier. They had eaten a lot of it so far. But he had seen something earlier that he thought he could use—a can of soda in the bottom drawer underneath a head of wilted lettuce. He took out the can of soda from the crisper drawer and set it on the counter next to the stove. It was a cheap brand of cola. But it didn’t matter to him because he wasn’t going to drink it.
He peeked into the living room.
Stella and David were both still asleep.
Cole looked back at the stove. It was a gas stove. He lifted up the top and blew out the pilot light. He lowered the lid carefully, trying not to make a sound. Once the lid was back down, he turned on all of the burners and the oven. He could already smell the rotten egg smell of gas coming out of the burners.
