by Lukens, Mark
David didn’t say anything; he just waited for Billy to continue.
“Before Joe Blackhorn died two years ago, he told me that he had something for you.”
David’s heart jumped with surprise. “What?”
“He did not tell me what it was. He said it was something that could help with your training. Something that could help with a spirit walk.”
“A spirit walk?” David asked.
Billy nodded.
“But he didn’t say what he left for me?” David asked.
“No.”
David was going to ask Billy why he had waited two years to tell him about this, but Billy spoke before he could ask. “Joe Blackhorn wanted you to have this when the time was right.”
When the Ancient Enemy came back, David thought.
“Where is it?” David asked. “Do you have it with you?”
Billy shook his head. “No. It is at Joe Blackhorn’s home. Hidden somewhere. But he told me that you would be able to find it.”
Billy Nez and Joe Blackhorn had obviously been friends. David wondered if that meant Billy knew that he had walked away from Joe Blackhorn and turned his back on the training? The heat of embarrassment flushed him for a moment.
Billy took David’s hands in his gently, glancing down at the symbols painted there. “The thing Joe Blackhorn left for you will help. And these symbols and our songs will help. But it is you who must fight the evil out there. Only you.”
David nodded, but he still wasn’t sure what to do, and it didn’t seem like Billy was going to be much help when the time came.
CHAPTER 25
Stella
Costa Rica
All day Stella had been telling herself that Cole was right, that she had been hallucinating and having night terrors, that the things she’d seen lately weren’t real. She had slipped back into that cycle of fear that had dominated their lives the first few years they were down here in Costa Rica. He had suggested that something had triggered her sudden fear, and he suspected that it was the story of the eighteen villagers that had been slaughtered. It was a big story around here. Costa Rica didn’t have as high of a crime rate as some of the other countries it bordered, but there was still crime. Murder could happen anywhere.
“It was just a drug deal gone bad,” Cole had told her earlier in the day when he had suggested again that the slaughter of those villagers had triggered her sudden panic. “Someone ripped someone off and they had to pay. They made the person pay by making him watch all seventeen people getting hacked to pieces before they finally killed him. It’s a common practice with drug cartels.”
If anyone would know, it would be Cole. And his explanation seemed to make sense. But the only thing that didn’t make sense in Cole’s explanation was the rumor that the pieces of the hacked-up bodies had been arranged and displayed, like the bodies in the cave at the dig site. It was too much of a coincidence for her to overlook.
Cole had just shrugged off her worry, automatically dismissing those details as exaggerations or rumors. People lied. Sometimes they passed rumors on that they knew weren’t true and the stories grew like a snowball rolling down a hill.
Cole had seemed to be getting a little defensive at that point, and she had let it go. She began to believe that the story of the murdered villagers had been in the back of her mind when she was at the dig site in the jungle, where she thought she’d seen Jim Whitefeather standing in the brush. In that split second everything had converged and all of her fears had come back. But either there had been a man in the jungle and she had projected Jim Whitefeather’s dead and eyeless face there, or no one had been there at all. Both were equally frightening.
It bothered her that something like a murder spree could trigger all of this fear again so easily, that she could nearly be back to the place where she had started when they had first gotten here. She was upset that all of her years of hard work of getting past her fear could be erased in a few days.
But it was just a temporary setback, she told herself. She would battle through her fear again. She would get better again.
Stella and Cole had gone back to bed last night after her sleepwalking episode. After she had crawled back into bed, Cole had stayed awake in the chair for a while, watching over her like he used to.
She’d fallen into a deep sleep and dreamed again of the ghost town where David had made his stand against the Ancient Enemy. And again in this dream the ghost town was the town of Hope’s End that it used to be in the 1890s. The same people were in the saloon. She didn’t know them, but at the same time she recognized them. It felt like something was outside the saloon, something out there in the darkness coming for them.
They had both slept in late this morning. Cole cut up some fruit for breakfast when they got up. He didn’t go into town to the bar as evening approached; he stayed with her. He knew she needed him around tonight, and it seemed like he was a little jumpy even though he would never admit it.
Little by little Stella had felt better throughout the day, but as the sun set over the Pacific, the horizon on fire with the last of the daylight, she felt the first twinge of nervousness returning. It felt like the day was ending and that it wouldn’t ever come back again, like the night and darkness would reign forever. Things hid in the dark. Things moved around in the dark and materialized out of the dark. Dangerous things. Poisonous things.
After a light dinner of fish and vegetables, Cole made them each a mixed drink. Stella sipped her drink, hoping it would help her relax. She drank it slowly; she didn’t want to get drunk. For some reason she wanted to be alert tonight.
She had tried calling Maria again to let her know that she wouldn’t be able to make it to the dig the rest of the week, but she still hadn’t gotten a hold of her. She left a voicemail this time even though she really wanted to talk to her. She hoped Maria wasn’t mad at her.
And now it was almost midnight. Cole had fallen asleep in bed, but she was still wide awake. She got out of bed and went out to the living room. She turned on the light next to the couch and grabbed one of her books. This was a book she had picked up on her last trip into San Jose, a book about Mayan and Aztec myths and prophecies. She saw similarities between their stories of monsters and what had happened with the Ancient Enemy in New Mexico and Colorado. She believed even more now that the same thing had happened down here a long time ago, that some of the mass disappearances could be attributed to the Ancient Enemy. She had to close the book because it was starting to creep her out a little. She thought the book might distract her, but it only made her think about the Ancient Enemy even more.
She got up and grabbed another book, a fiction book, one that would hopefully make her tired. She lay back down on the couch, reading, and soon the words were beginning to run together.
Stella woke up when the book slid off of her chest and almost fell to the floor—that would have definitely awakened Cole. She must have dozed off for a few minutes without remembering it.
It felt like something had pulled her from sleep, a noise maybe. She couldn’t remember dreaming anything, but maybe a nightmare had awakened her. Her heart was beating fast, her skin tingling with a creepy-crawly feeling. A heaviness was pressing down on her chest, trying to squeeze the breath from her.
The house was quiet except for the whirling ceiling fan above her and the occasional chirps and buzzing of the night insects outside. The wind was picking up outside and there was a flash of lightning from behind the curtains covering the windows, and then a few seconds later thunder rumbled. A storm was coming; maybe that was what had awakened her.
But no, it seemed to have been something else.
She glanced at the recliner across the living room and remembered Cole sitting there last night, hunched forward, his face blank and expressionless. A shudder ran through her and she was suddenly cold under the ceiling fan as she lay on her side on the couch, her back facing the cushions.
That hadn’t been real. Cole hadn’t been there last ni
ght. It had only been a dream. Cole had been in their bedroom the whole time last night, exactly where he was now.
She had a sudden and almost overwhelming urge to go to their bedroom and make sure Cole was still in bed. But she forced herself to remain on the couch, curling up on her side, nestling deeper into the couch.
Lightning flashed again and thunder boomed a few seconds later. She couldn’t hear any rain outside, but the wind was even stronger. The storm was close.
Stella felt something touching the small of her back from deep down inside the couch, something poking at her, something moving around down in the crack between the cushions. She shot up and got to her feet, staring at the couch. A large yellowish-white snake crawled out from deep in the cushions of the couch, pushing its way out over the couch and onto the floor, staring at her and hissing.
She backed up a few steps as the snake darted across the living room to the bureau against the far wall, the snake lost in shadows for a moment as it crawled behind the bureau.
Was the snake poisonous? She wasn’t sure. There were definitely poisonous varieties of snakes in Costa Rica.
How did a snake get into their house? How long had it been inside the couch? It must have been there when she’d fallen asleep a little earlier. Her body shook with the shivers for just a moment as she thought about the snake being so close to her.
She watched the bureau across the room against the wall. The snake darted out from the other end of the piece of furniture and into the kitchen; at least it hadn’t gone towards their bedroom.
Hisss.
She couldn’t see the snake now. It was somewhere in the kitchen, hissing and slithering around. She needed to get to the bedroom and wake Cole up. She wasn’t deathly afraid of snakes—she’d seen many of them on dig sites in the southwest—but something felt different about this snake.
You know what it is.
A soft tapping noise sounded from the window beside the couch. Stella jumped. She stared at the curtains in front of the windows. Something was tapping on the glass out there.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She had forgotten about the snake in the kitchen for a moment as she stared at the curtain covering the living room window. The tapping stopped, but it was going to start again; she was sure of that. Her mind was turning to white-hot panic, every nerve in her body buzzing. She knew she should run and wake Cole up, but she walked towards the window almost like she wasn’t in control of her own body. She watched her own hand rise to the curtains—she had to see what was out there, she had to know. She grabbed the edge of the curtain and pulled it back just as the lightning flashed.
Maria floated right outside the living room window, her golden skin so pale in the lightning flash. Her expression was blank, her mouth wide open, her eyes wide like she had died of shock, like she was still seeing the horrible thing that had stopped her heart. She still wore the clothes she’d had on at the dig site two days ago, the sleeves of her shirt rolled up to her elbows. She raised a hand to the glass, her fingernails caked with dirt, her index finger poking out stiffly. She tapped at the glass again. Three taps.
In that moment Stella knew it was all true. She knew she had really seen Jim Whitefeather in the jungle. She knew the Ancient Enemy was back. She had left the dig site and it had gotten Maria and everyone else. And now it had sent Maria back to tap at her window.
Stella jumped off the couch and bolted for the bedroom.
CHAPTER 26
Cole
Costa Rica
“Get up!” Stella yelled at Cole, pulling the bedsheet off of him.
Cole sat bolt-upright in bed. Stella had turned the overhead light on, the one attached to the ceiling fan. He knew it was still dark outside, but he had no idea what time it was. It felt like he’d been asleep for only a few minutes, but when he looked at the alarm clock he saw it was only a few hours until dawn.
Stella’s eyes were wide with fear, her tanned skin paler than he’d seen it in years. He hadn’t seen her this frightened since . . .
Cole jumped out of bed. He wore only a pair of underwear. He grabbed his clothes he’d laid over the chair. Even though it was hot in the bedroom, the ceiling fan barely pushing the heat away, Cole felt a cold chill dancing across his skin, raising goosebumps. He suddenly felt like he was back in Colorado, back in that freezing cold with something dangerous and unimaginable waiting outside, something approaching their front door, something about to knock on the door and ask for things.
He’d been dreaming when Stella had shaken him awake. He’d been in the ghost town again in his dream, but the town was different; it was the town of Hope’s End. He was himself in that town, but he was also someone else. He waited in the saloon with a few others, all of them frightened of the Ancient Enemy that lurked out in the darkness, the monster that had slaughtered everyone else in the town. He saw a woman named Esmerelda in the dream, a woman he had feelings for, but it seemed like the woman’s visage shimmered from Esmerelda to Stella and then back to Esmerelda again. There were other people in the saloon that he didn’t really recognize, but he knew them. And then there was David, and David looked exactly as he had seven years ago.
Cole was dressed in a few seconds, slipping his feet into a pair of boots and buckling the belt on his jeans at the same time. He pulled a T-shirt on and then grabbed his gun from the table beside the bed.
Stella was at the bedroom door, staring down the hallway; she was tense, ready to either run or fight.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s happening again,” she told him without taking her eyes off of the hallway, like she was watching and waiting for something to come down the hall. “The Ancient Enemy . . . it’s here.”
Cole wondered if Stella had been sleepwalking again, if she had seen a nightmare that she had projected onto the real world. “Stella?”
“There was someone at the living room window,” she said as she backed up a step into the bedroom. She still stared down the hallway, still waiting for the monster to come.
Cole could see down the hallway because Stella had turned on the lights in the living room before rushing into the bedroom to wake him up, but he didn’t see or hear anyone moving around in the rest of the house. The wind was blowing outside and thunder was rumbling every minute or two, but it wasn’t raining yet. He stood right behind Stella, trying to ignore the noise of the wind, the thunder, the ceiling fan, and Stella’s heavy breathing, trying to listen for any other sounds in the house. He kept his gun down by his side. “Who was at the window?” he asked.
“Maria.”
It took Cole’s groggy mind a few seconds to realize who Stella was talking about. “Maria? From the dig?”
“Yes. She was outside the living room window. Floating out there. She was tapping at the window. She had this . . . this blank look on her face. She was dead, or nearly dead. It’s inside of her.”
“Stella, you’re sure—”
“There’s a snake in the house,” she said.
“A snake?”
“At least one. There might be more now. It came out of the couch.”
Cole remembered the ghost town and the way the Ancient Enemy had controlled the animals there: tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, birds, coyotes. And it had controlled the wind, kicking up a sandstorm.
Just then a gust of wind slammed into the house, rattling the windows. The tree branches and palm fronds were shaking outside. And then when the wind died down, there was a tapping at their bedroom window.
Cole turned and stared at the curtains covering the window. He knew then that Stella was right, the Ancient Enemy was here. Cole had been trying to convince Stella that she hadn’t seen Jim Whitefeather standing in the jungle. He had tried to convince her that she’d been sleepwalking last night. But now he knew that he’d been wrong and she had been right. Maybe he had just been trying to convince himself that it wasn’t really happening again.
There were three more loud taps at the window, a fingernail tapping
at the glass.
“Don’t open the curtains,” Stella warned.
Somehow the Ancient Enemy was out there even though Joe Blackhorn said that David had driven the being back to its own world. Cole suddenly felt vulnerable—they didn’t have David here to protect them now. They were defenseless.
“Get the phones,” Cole said. He was still watching the window, the tapping still coming from outside, three taps at a time. He shoved his gun down into the waistband of his pants and darted over to the closet. He opened the doors and pulled out an old cardboard box, tearing it open, pulling out some papers until he found a plastic pouch that was zipped up. He threw the pouch on the bed and then turned back to the closet. Underneath the cardboard box was a wooden box full of bottles of pure grain alcohol. He pulled a bottle out and untwisted the cap, splashing the alcohol around the perimeter of the room.
Stella had the cell phones in her hand, standing very still at the end of the bed. She wasn’t even watching Cole—she was staring in horror at the phone in her hand.
Cole emptied the bottle of alcohol and tossed the bottle down on the floor. He went back to the bed and picked up the plastic pouch, about to hand it to Stella. But then he saw the look on her face as she stared down at her phone. “What is it?”
“David texted me a few hours ago.”
“He did? What did he say?”
“He said the Ancient Enemy is back.”
There was no dismissing it now or trying to pretend that something else was going on. If David said it was back, then it was back.
Stella shook her head a little, staring at Cole. “This text message wasn’t here before. I checked earlier. I would have seen it.”
“We can’t worry about that right now,” Cole said, pulling a disposable lighter out of the wooden tray on top of the dresser. He ripped a strip off of a T-shirt he pulled out of the top drawer and lit the end of it with the lighter. “We need to go.”
