by Lukens, Mark
“Don’t leave me here, Cole,” Trevor said, and his voice was much deeper now, almost guttural and angry. “Don’t leave me like you left me at the cabin. You failed me. You were supposed to protect me. You were supposed to look out for me. You were supposed to have my back. But you didn’t. You let it take me out through the bathroom window. It hurt, Cole. It hurt so bad.”
Cole looked at Trevor again.
Trevor was still standing in the same spot, the mist still cleared away from him. His head was tilted to the side a little, the strange smile still on his face, his eyes blank behind his glasses.
“I’m sorry,” Cole whispered. Tears slipped out of his eyes. “You’re right. It’s my fault. All my fault. You always followed me around and did what I did. I got into trouble and you did too. I became a criminal and you were right there with me. But I tried to change. I tried to take you back with me. But then you got involved with Frank and his crew when I told you not to. I tried to help you, but it was too late. If I had changed earlier, if I had gotten through to you earlier, you never would have hooked up with Frank and Jose. You never would have been at that bank in Colorado or at that cabin. We never would’ve been there and none of this would have ever happened to us.” He wiped at his tears. “It’s all my fault.”
“Don’t cry, big brother,” Trevor said, but there was no emotion in his voice now. “Come with me and we can be together forever.”
“I lost him,” Cole said to Stella, looking at her now. “I lost him and I’ve had to live with that.” He looked back at Trevor. “But you’re not him. You’re not my brother. You’re not Trevor. I saw him die. I saw him torn to pieces. I saw him put back together again. And then I saw his body burn up in the fire. He’s dead. Gone. His soul is in another place, but it’s not here.”
Trevor was quiet for a moment. He stood motionless as the mist moved back in, swirling around his legs. His expression was still blank, the smile gone now, his head tilted just slightly. His posture reminded Stella of how Frank stood in the snow, his body hollowed out, waiting there like he was listening for instructions from a voice they couldn’t hear, the Ancient Enemy’s voice.
A smile suddenly appeared on Trevor’s face. “You’re wrong, Cole,” he said. “His soul is here. It’s trapped here. And you’ll be trapped here too.” A line appeared on Trevor’s neck, right across his throat, like a crack in an egg. Another crack moved up the side of his face, another one down into the collar of his shirt, another one appeared on each of his hands. A crackling sound came from him as the cracks grew longer and wider, deeper, bloodless red flesh exposed underneath as his skin began to pull apart.
“Run!” Stella yelled at Cole, grabbing him.
The mist flowed over Trevor again as he broke apart into pieces, his body coming apart inside of his clothes. He collapsed down to the ground like an imploded tower.
Stella and Cole ran away, but then they came to a stop when they saw someone else in front of them. The person limped forward out of the mist. It was Jose. He looked just like he had at the cabin, so much of the flesh of his neck missing, only a thin line of vertebrae somehow holding his head up like a balloon, pieces of his face gone. He had an ax in his hands, the same ax from the cabin.
They turned and ran, but Needles’ voice rang out from somewhere in the swirling fog. “You took my eyes, Cole! It hurts! It hurts so fucking bad!”
The voices were coming from all around them now: Trevor, Jose, Needles, and Frank. And there were others that Stella recognized—the man from the Mountainside Inn and Travis who had come to kill them with the gun. She saw Jim Whitefeather standing in the mist when they tried to run in a different direction. She heard Jake’s voice calling to her from the mist. She heard some of the other dead archaeologists. And there were others she didn’t recognize. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. She and Cole were surrounded now with nowhere to run, a circle of the dead in the mist, shadows moving around and getting closer.
CHAPTER 48
David
Bone Canyon
David stood inside the medicine wheel at the edge of the burial pit. The sun was down behind the mountains now, but much of the sky was still a light purplish color, those magic minutes of twilight, the barrier between day and true night.
Palmer had parked Begay’s pickup truck thirty yards away from the edge of the medicine wheel right near a rock wall that rose up twenty feet from the valley floor. He had built a campfire in front of that rock wall. David knew Palmer was scared, but the man wasn’t leaving. He had Captain Begay’s gun and now he had Cole’s gun with him. Would it be enough if the Ancient Enemy came? David didn’t know.
David had the letter from Joe Blackhorn folded up in his pocket along with the map. It was a goodbye letter from his teacher, but it was more than that—there were final instructions inside. It was like Joe Blackhorn knew this moment was going to come, like he had seen it.
And now it was time to face the Ancient Enemy.
David climbed down the ladder into the pit. When he was on the hard, smooth floor of the pit, he walked towards the stack of rocks that looked like some kind of cairn. He had the wooden box from the hogan and he set it on top of the stack of flat rocks. He opened the box and took out the contents, laying them out on the flat rock. Most of the contents were immediately familiar to him and he would have known what to do with them even if he wouldn’t have had the letter from Joe Blackhorn. There was the small rattle with feathers and beads on it, the glass jar of owl’s blood, a small paintbrush, and the small black rocks. But the thing that intrigued David the most was the lone eagle feather. David picked up the feather and held it in his fingers, staring at it for a moment. He couldn’t say exactly how he knew, but he was sure this was the same feather Billy Nez had used in Hope’s End, the Billy Nez who had lived over a hundred years ago.
It took David a few minutes to go through a similar ceremony that Blackhorn had performed in the church. He didn’t need to draw a circle around him because the medicine wheel of rocks was the circle of protection now. He opened the jar of owl’s blood and smeared a little of it on each wrist and on his cheeks underneath his eyes. He sang the ancient songs that Joe Blackhorn had taught him by those campfires years ago.
He wore the string of ghost beads that Billy had given him last night, and he still wore the other necklace Billy had given him, the necklace with the silver charm with the lock of hair inside, his own hair from 1891.
This ritual was both a repeat of the original ritual in the ghost town, but also different. David had incorporated some of the things Billy Nez had done in the saloon in Hope’s End. He held the eagle feather in his fingers, waving it back and forth in the air gently, like he was writing the symbols of the ancient language on the air.
As he chanted, he felt the energy inside of him. He pictured that energy as a ball of spinning electricity inside his body, a power trying to escape from him. The dry air around him felt charged with particles now. He felt the fine hairs on his skin standing up—this was the same feeling he got when the Ancient Enemy was near.
He remembered the words Joe Blackhorn had written in the letter: The items in this box may help you re-create the same ritual inside this circle of protection. It may help, but you don’t really need the things inside the box—those are just talismans and they only hold the power you give to them. The power is inside of you and it has always been there.
And now David felt that power. He was truly summoning it on his own. Before today he had always needed to be scared for his power to surface, scared of losing loved ones and friends. But he wasn’t scared now—he was angry. And maybe that anger was fueling his power as much as his fear had before. He saw his parents in his mind, his memories of them before the Ancient Enemy had taken their bodies over and made them tear each other’s faces off. He saw his Aunt Awenita’s dead body on the floor of Captain Begay’s man-cave. He saw Cole and Stella, held captive and used as bait. He saw so many others, so many who had been used by the Ancient Enemy
to get to him; some of those people had been guilty, but so many others had been innocent.
It will end here. One way or another, all of this will end tonight.
David opened his eyes. He saw the black sphere in front of him, spinning and growing larger, hovering above the rocky floor of the pit, trapped in this ancient mass grave, trapped even more by the circle of rocks surrounding the pit. The air around the sphere crackled with energy, small bolts of lightning shooting off of it as if it were a Tesla coil. It looked like a spinning black sphere, but now it also looked like a hole in the air, a hole that was pulling him towards it.
It was a doorway, and it was growing larger and larger, big enough for David to step through now. There was nothing but the blackest of darkness beyond the doorway. But David knew there was a world beyond that darkness, a world he had been to before, a world he had escaped from to be here now.
With the eagle feather still in one hand, David stepped through the spinning vortex and into the Void.
CHAPTER 49
Palmer
Bone Canyon
Palmer sat by the fire he’d built on the sand. He’d dug a small pit and surrounded it with rocks earlier while he still had enough daylight to see. He had scrounged for wood, breaking up the small, dry brush and piling it up a few feet away from his campfire. He had used a little bit of the gasoline he’d brought in the five-gallon plastic containers to get the fire going, and to keep it going if he needed to. He would need the rest of that gasoline later in the night—he was sure of that. He hoped he had enough wood and brush to last him through the night because he didn’t want to go looking for more in the desert when the darkness came.
He sat on a blanket that he’d gotten from the backseat of Begay’s truck. He had his jug of water on the blanket and the flashlight he’d bought at the gas station. He had the gun Angie had given to him along with the extra magazine. And he had Cole’s 9mm. He was as prepared as he could be for whatever was going to happen tonight. He even had the crucifix on his necklace tucked down inside his shirt. His mother had given the necklace to him—it had been his grandfather’s necklace. Maybe the crucifix would help him when the evil finally came. Maybe it would keep him safe. It couldn’t hurt.
Now all he could do was sit here and wait. Night was almost here, the last of the daylight was fading over the mountains, the purple sky giving way to the black night sky. The mountains were still a jagged line silhouetted along the horizon. David was down in the pit now. David had told him that he needed to be alone down there when he summoned the doorway. And that was okay with Palmer because he didn’t want to be near that doorway when it was opened again. The moon was rising in the east and it was nearly full. He hoped the full moon would give him some light to see by, but the flickering light of the campfire made the world beyond the fire even darker.
What if this doesn’t work? What if David can’t open the door to the other world, the Void as he called it? What if he can’t get the ritual right? What if his powers aren’t strong enough to stop or even kill the Ancient Enemy?
It will end here. One way or another, all of this will end tonight.
Where had that thought come from? Palmer wasn’t sure. It almost felt like someone else’s voice had just whispered in his mind, a voice both familiar and alien at the same time.
He watched the pit in the distance from beside the fire. The fire was making everything else around him darker, and now he could just make out the line of white rocks that made up part of the medicine wheel’s circle. It felt surreal sitting here in the middle of a place called Bone Canyon while a fifteen-year-old boy tried to summon a doorway to another world. This felt like a dream. Like a nightmare. Part of his mind tried to convince himself that what he’d seen in the ghost town had never happened, that it had been some kind of hallucination brought on by the venom of the rattlesnakes when they had bitten him. But he knew it was true, he knew it had happened. And he knew the demon they called the Ancient Enemy was real, and it was close.
It had been deathly quiet for a while now; the only sound was the crackling fire. But then the wind picked up suddenly, and a moment later a bluish light danced along the top of the pit, the light reflecting off of the rocks of the medicine wheel. The light looked almost like the flickering light from a television set in a dark room. Something was happening down there.
Palmer stood up and walked away from the campfire. He had his gun in one hand and the flashlight in his other hand; he couldn’t really remember grabbing them. He was a few steps beyond the fire now, out in the darkness, watching the blue lights dance along the rim of the pit, spreading out into the desert.
Somewhere a coyote yipped
Another coyote answered the first one; this coyote was much closer.
“Oh God,” Palmer whispered as he stared at the lightshow dancing along the rocks and dirt. It was really happening; David was doing something down there. Palmer wasn’t sure if he should go over to the pit and look down, see if David needed any help. But what could he do to help David? Instead, he stood right where he was on the sand, the campfire behind him, the small airplane a black shadow in the night.
The wind was picking up even more now. Sand was swirling around the protective circle of rocks, whipping around the edges of the pit. The blue lights were more intense now, and there was a rushing noise, like a train coming.
And then it was over in the blink of an eye. The wind had died down. The lights were gone. Everything was quiet and still again.
Palmer stood there for a long moment as another coyote yipped. It sounded like the coyotes were talking to each other out there, making their plans to attack as an army. He felt the urge to get back to the campfire and the safety of the firelight. He had built the campfire in front of the rise of a rock hill, something to protect his back and reflect the firelight. He had parked the truck at the other side of the fire. Even though the truck wasn’t a rock wall, it still felt somewhat like a wall of protection. Now he was leaving the fort he had built, that meager place of protection. But he had to look down into the pit. He had to know for sure that it had worked.
He used the flashlight beam to guide his way to the edge of the circle. Now that he was fifteen yards away from the campfire, he could see better out here in the darkness. The moon had risen in the sky and even the scattering of stars helped provide some light. But he still needed the flashlight.
He stepped over the line of large rocks and inside the medicine wheel. The edge of the pit was only another fifteen feet away. He could see the poles of the wood ladder sticking up just above the edge of the pit. He walked towards the ladder carefully, not wanting to stumble and fall over the edge.
When he was at the edge, he shined his light down into the bottom of the pit.
David wasn’t there. The pit was empty. On the stack of rocks there was the wooden box that David had gotten out of Joe Blackhorn’s hogan—the only sign that David had ever been there. Palmer shined the flashlight beam around the walls of the pit, the light picking up objects sticking out of the dirt sections of the wall. He trained his light on one area, staring at it for a long moment.
Bones. There were human bones sticking out of the dirt. They hadn’t been there before when he had stood at the edge of the pit with David.
He panned the light a little to the right and saw the face of a grinning skull partially exposed from the dirt wall. And there were more skulls, more bones. The bones weren’t white, but brown with age.
A rattlesnake rattled close by, and then another one.
Palmer whipped his flashlight beam out towards the desert beyond the circle of rocks, trying to spot the snakes in the darkness, trying to keep his balance at the edge of the pit.
The desert creatures were coming now.
Palmer hurried back across the desert floor to his campfire and Begay’s pickup truck. The wind had picked up again, gusting through this wide valley, the Darkwind blowing through the night and bringing its evil with it. When he got within a few feet
of the fire, Palmer heard something from the pickup truck, a skittering along metal. He shined his flashlight beam at the truck and saw dozens of tarantulas and scorpions crawling all over the side of the truck.
It was here now.
More coyotes yipped and rattlesnakes rattled. They were still far off, but getting closer. Palmer even heard the sound of a mountain lion, a low warning growl from the big cat.
But what scared him the most was the shuffling and shifting sound coming from the pit, like those bones were moving around inside the walls of that pit, pulling themselves out of the dirt and assembling into skeletons.
The campfire was getting low and Palmer added a few more branches and twigs to it. He had the cans of gasoline close so they would be ready when he needed them. When the snakes and spiders got too close, he would create his own protective circle of fire to keep them back.
I’m going to die out here tonight.
If that happened then he was glad he had been able to talk to his daughter one last time earlier when he had called her from the gas station. He was happy he had told her he loved her one last time. He was happy she was doing well with a career and a family of her own. He was proud of his own career in the FBI, and he was proud that he had stopped a killer this morning. He hadn’t gotten there in time to save Billy Nez or David’s aunt, but at least he had helped Captain Begay and his wife, and David. He was happy he had gone the last seven years without a drop of liquor. Yes, he’d led a pretty good life and if tonight was his last night on Earth, then he was satisfied with that.
There were more scuffling noises coming from the pit. Palmer could imagine the skeletons standing up, flesh growing on their bones.
Another coyote yipped in the night, answered by another one. They were even closer now. Palmer remembered the animals at the church, the spiders spilling out of the woman’s face, the birds pecking at the windows and getting inside the church, the coyotes standing guard outside. And of course the rattlesnakes.
