by Lukens, Mark
He picked up one of the plastic cans of gasoline and poured the gas in a line around him and the campfire. He’d found a large branch earlier, it was about three feet long. He used an extra T-shirt from Begay’s pickup truck, tearing the shirt into strips. He wound one of the strips around the end of the branch, tying it there. He lit the end of the branch and touched it down to the line of gas. The flames whooshed up, creating a ring of fire all around him. In that light he saw the rattlesnakes coiling back, the tarantulas and scorpions skittering back along the sand. The fire would hold them off, but for how long? How long before David defeated this demon (if that was even going to happen)? How long before David was back?
Palmer still had his burning branch in one hand and he had Begay’s gun in the other. He aimed the gun at the rattlesnake closest to the ring of fire, the one venturing the closest despite the heat. He pulled the trigger and the snake’s head blew away in a spray of blood, the body coiling around and around violently.
“Come on, you son-of-a-bitch!” Palmer yelled at the night beyond the fire. “I’m ready to die.”
Any day is a good day for a warrior to die. Again, he didn’t know where that phrase had come from and how it had popped into his mind, but it was there, and it gave him an odd sense of comfort.
Yes, if he had to die tonight, then so be it. But he was going to go out fighting.
CHAPTER 50
Begay
Hospital – New Mexico
Angie pushed Begay in the wheelchair all the way to their car. The parking lot wasn’t even half full, and there wasn’t anyone else wandering around out here under the streetlights. Angie helped Begay out of the wheelchair, trying to guide him to the passenger door of the car.
“I got it,” Begay told her. “Go ahead and get the car started.”
Angie darted around to the driver’s side as Begay opened the passenger door and sank down hard into the seat, trying to keep his leg as straight as he could. His knee was screaming now and his head was throbbing worse than ever. But he managed to get in the car and close the door.
“I don’t see anything out there,” Begay said, already out of breath, as Angie got in the car. “I think we’re good for now.”
Angie started the car. She glanced at him and then looked out the windshield. Begay had seen that same look of shock before on a rookie’s face when he had seen his first murder or suicide victim. He’d seen that same look on an officer who’d been shot and was fighting for his life. It was a look of pure shock, like nothing could be trusted as real anymore. And he didn’t like seeing that expression on his wife’s face.
Angie gripped the steering wheel hard as she pulled out of the well-lit parking lot and onto the road, the darkness taking over now.
“Where are we going?” Angie asked even though she was already speeding down the road.
“Home,” Begay said, but then he wondered if they should go somewhere else. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed Agent Palmer’s number from his contact list. It went right to voicemail. “Agent Palmer, this is Begay. Call me back when you get this.”
Begay tried David’s phone but it did the same thing Palmer’s had, going right to voicemail. He left a message there too.
“It’s a good thing we got out of that hospital when we did,” Begay said after setting his cell phone down in the center console. “You wanted me to stay, remember?”
“The doctors wanted you to stay the night,” she corrected.
“Still, it’s a good thing we left.”
“You’re not trying to take credit for that right now, are you?”
Begay shrugged.
Angie tried to hide her smile. She was still tense, still white-knuckling the steering wheel, but she was beginning to relax just a little. He was doing his best to joke with her and set her at ease a little.
“What are we going to do now?” Angie asked, all business again.
“I don’t know. We should go back home.”
“It will come for us there.”
Begay could see that home was never going to be the same for Angie; it would always be tainted by the monster and the people who had died there, always tainted by the evil that had come knocking at their door.
“We could just drive around for a while,” Angie suggested. “Just stay on the move.”
“How much gas do you have?”
“Almost half a tank,” she said. They were passing the edge of town now, getting out into the desert where they wouldn’t see another building for miles.
“We should go home first,” Begay said. “I’ll get my shotgun. The feds didn’t take that. I’ve got another handgun there we could use.”
Angie shook her head. “I gave that one to Agent Palmer because the feds took his gun.”
Begay nodded. “Well, I’ve got a rifle there.”
Angie still didn’t look too sure about going home.
“I need some kind of weapons,” Begay explained. “I need something to protect us with.”
Angie still didn’t say anything. She drove along the two-lane road into the desert.
“The FBI might still be there,” Begay said. “The police.”
She gave him a hopeful look, and he thought it might be enough to convince her. She needed to take a left up at the next road, which would lead to Iron Springs. But that road would be the most desolate part of their journey home.
“You need to turn up here,” Begay reminded her.
Angie finally nodded and turned left onto the road. The canyons and hills stood in the distance like dark giants.
They drove along in silence for a while.
“We’re okay,” Begay told her. “We’ll be okay.”
“You still want to go find Palmer, don’t you?”
“I want to find out where they are,” he answered. “See if they’re still alive.”
Angie was about to say something, but her words were choked off when their car made a clunking noise. The headlights and all of the lights on the dashboard went out.
“What’s wrong?” Begay asked.
“I don’t know,” Angie said. “Everything just died.”
Begay turned around in his seat and looked out the rear window; sharp pains shot from his neck up into his head and down into his back. He didn’t see any cars on the road behind them. “Just pull over,” he told her. “Shift into neutral.”
Angie shifted into neutral as she steered the car towards the side of the road.
“Try to start it again while it’s still rolling,” he told her.
She twisted the key in the ignition.
Nothing.
She twisted the key again and again until they rolled to a stop on the sand at the side of the road, pebbles and sand crunching under their tires.
“Put it in park and try to start it again,” Begay told her, trying to keep his voice calm, trying not to panic Angie any more than she already was.
Angie shifted into park and twisted the key. The car wouldn’t start.
“I’ll call someone,” Angie said. She tried Begay’s phone and then her own. “No signal,” she said, trying her phone again. She looked at him. “We should still get cell phone reception out here.”
“I know,” Begay said. He turned around and looked out the rear window again, trying to ignore the pain in his head and neck. There were no headlights in either direction on the road, no one coming. This was such a remote area and it could be an hour before they saw another vehicle.
Begay realized now that they shouldn’t have tried to go home. They should have stayed in town. But what good would that have done? If the Ancient Enemy wanted to get them out here or in town, then it would. David wasn’t here to protect them now like he had at the house.
The wind picked up, blowing hard suddenly, rocking their car just a bit.
Angie stared at Begay. “That thing did this, didn’t it?” She watched him like she was searching his eyes for the truth. “It made the car die. It made the cell phones die.”
Beg
ay didn’t answer. He didn’t really think he had to.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
Begay took her hand into his, giving it a gentle squeeze like she had done to him earlier in the hospital room. He looked back out the rear window of their car.
“Why do you keep looking back there?” Angie asked. She yanked her hand out of his and turned around, her eyes widening with shock. “How . . . how can that be possible?”
Awenita was walking up the road towards their car, her naked body still wrapped in plastic, her skin pale, her throat a gaping wound that looked black in the moonlight. The wind was blowing her dark hair around, some of the loose pieces of plastic whipping around her.
“I want you to go,” Begay told Angie. “Run. I can’t run. Even if my knee wasn’t sprained, I couldn’t run very far.”
“No. I’m not leaving you.”
“I’ll fight her off,” Begay said. He didn’t think he would be able to do that for long, but he would try. He didn’t know what else to do. At least Angie would have a chance. If she stayed in this car, she wouldn’t have a chance at all. “Please, Angie. A truck might come by. You could wave it down.”
“No.”
“Angie . . .”
“I said no,” she snapped.
Awenita was at the rear of their car. Then she was walking past Angie’s window to the front of the car. She stood there at the front, staring at them, her hair flying around in the wind, the plastic around her body rattling and crackling. Something moved underneath the plastic and four black tentacles poked out from the plastic and her body, the ends of the tentacles tapered down to points, the skin of the tentacles shiny and slick with blood and fluids in the moonlight. Two of the tentacles slithered towards the sides of the car, their tapered ends fanning out into smaller offshoots of tentacles, like roots growing from a taproot, creating a web across the windows to the rear of the car. The other two tentacles slithered up the hood of the car to the windshield. One of the tentacles continued up onto the roof, but the other one reared back like a cobra, poking at the glass of the windshield as if it was testing the strength of it.
How big was that thing inside of Awenita? It didn’t even seem to make any sense. The thing seemed to keep growing from itself, like a tree from a seed.
The tentacle tapped at the windshield again, harder this time.
Angie grabbed Begay’s arm, pulling him to her. She had tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She shook her head no. “I love you,” she told him.
“I love you,” Begay said, holding her, waiting for their death to come.
CHAPTER 51
David
The Void
David was in the Void now. Everything was a contrast here, a collision of opposites. The place felt limitless, an unending sea of grayness. Yet it also felt claustrophobic, like the mist was pushing down on him, the walls of fog closing in all around him. It felt like he’d been here before, but he also couldn’t remember ever being here; it felt foreign yet strangely like home. The memory of dual lives floated around in his mind—his memory here and his memory back in Hope’s End. And now there were memories of other lives, distant lives.
He needed to concentrate—he was here to save Stella and Cole. But he was also here to stop the Ancient Enemy. Could he kill it? He wasn’t sure. Could he even harm it here in its own world? He wasn’t sure about that, either. Joe Blackhorn seemed to think he could defeat the Ancient Enemy, so he would just have to use the confidence his former teacher had in him.
There didn’t seem to be an immediate threat near him now, yet the Ancient Enemy seemed to be all around him. The hairs were standing up on his skin and he felt the electricity buzzing in the air all around him, like static electricity on a dry but stormy day. Every atom around him seemed to be vibrating here, and it seemed like he could hear the frequency, like it was a language he could understand. The world here was malleable, controllable, solid matter could be formed from the mist all around him.
Stella and Cole were here somewhere. They could be a mile away or a million miles away. But distance didn’t matter in this world, and neither did time; none of that existed here in this ever-changing yet never-changing world.
David closed his eyes and concentrated on Stella, listening to her frequency. He held the eagle feather in one hand and touched the ghost beads hanging around his neck with his other hand, and then he touched the silver charm on the necklace. The symbols drawn on his hands were glowing now; he didn’t need to look at them, he could feel the warmth on his skin, the power inside of him. The necklace and the feather might just be talismans, objects with no power as Joe Blackhorn had said in his letter, but David felt like he was drawing even more power and energy from them.
“Stella,” David whispered, calling out to her.
She was close, but he couldn’t hear her yet.
“Stella,” he whispered again, a little louder this time.
She screamed from the mist.
David focused on her scream. He opened his eyes and . . .
. . . he was beside her and Cole now, like he had teleported there. They were surrounded by the dead, ghosts summoned by the Ancient Enemy and solidified into life. David saw the bank robbers from the cabin in Colorado, including Trevor, Cole’s brother. He saw the archaeologists from the dig site, and Jim Whitefeather with his eyes gone. Tom Gordon’s eyes were gone, too; there were just two deep black holes in his frozen face, the ice on his skin and clothing crackling as he moved forward. He saw others from the Mountainside Inn, the salesman who had been crushed up but somehow still alive, the clerk from the front desk, his upper body twisted in a different direction from his lower half. He saw the tall, thin Swede from Hope’s End, his torso naked, his belly bloated as spiders wriggled around inside, his throat swollen with them. He saw the cowboy and Rose, the woman he had gone upstairs with at the saloon, their bodies twisted together like taffy. He saw the others from Hope’s End, the dead townspeople. And there were others he didn’t even recognize. So many of them. Hundreds of them.
But his eyes settled on the man and the woman from the ghost town church, both of them still wearing his parents’ skinned faces. And then he saw his parents right behind them, their faces red masks of gore like chewed raw hamburger.
That’s not them. That’s the Ancient Enemy.
The dead were closing in fast, all of them rushing forward at the same time.
David raised his hands up. Words came out of his mouth without his understanding what they were. Joe Blackhorn had tried to teach him the language of the ancients, but David had never learned much of it, but those words and phrases of power were pouring out of him now, the symbols Billy had drawn on his hands were glowing yellow, then orange, and then a deep red like magma from a volcano. He waved his hands back and forth in front of him like he was erasing a chalkboard, the eagle feather still clenched in his fingers. He spun around in a slow circle, erasing the dead that charged them. Their flesh was wiped away like the mist itself, disappearing like ash blown on the wind, leaving behind the skeletal remains of the Ancient Enemy inside of them. Each structure looked like a human sized and shaped tree with branches for the arms and legs, a network of thinner branches growing out from the bigger ones like a network of vines.
Exposed now, the skeletal membranes that had controlled each of the dead crumbled down to the ground like collapsing buildings, breaking up into smaller creatures that looked like beetles with no legs, scurrying away into the mist to regroup, to collect together again into a monstrous creature—the Ancient Enemy’s true form. Maybe not. Maybe David, Stella, and Cole would never be able to see the true Ancient Enemy; maybe their minds weren’t able to process it, just like this world was only what their own minds could project onto it.
“David,” Stella breathed out. She hugged him.
David hugged her, holding her for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she pulled away. “We tried t
o run. We tried to get up here to help you, but it took us into a doorway, into the Void. It used us as bait to get you here.”
“I had to come,” David told her. “I never had a choice. If I don’t stop it now . . .”
Stella just nodded. David could tell that she understood what would happen if the Ancient Enemy won; she had seen in it in her mind, in her dreams. She had seen the tidal wave of death coming. And Cole had seen it, too.
Crackling noises sounded from all around them in the mist. The Ancient Enemy was rebuilding. It was going to come at them again soon.
But David knew something about the Ancient Enemy now; he knew that it was weaker. It had punched itself out in a way just now, like it had at Joe Blackhorn’s house when it had controlled all of those animals and the wind. Now it was regrouping, but taking its time, trying to recharge its power. It was also spread out in too many places. David saw now that it was trying to attack Agent Palmer, Captain Begay, and Angie. David knew he had to attack now, he couldn’t let the Ancient Enemy get its strength back.
David stepped forward, raising his hands up in front of him. He still had the eagle feather in his fingers, and the symbols on his hands and arms glowed even brighter now. But there were more symbols on his flesh now, symbols that Billy Nez hadn’t drawn on his skin; these were new symbols, even more powerful ones creeping up his arms; they were all over his body now, heating it up. But David didn’t feel the pain; all he felt was the anger as the power grew inside of him, ready to blow like a faulty boiler.
“This is for my aunt!” David yelled at the mist and the shadows moving around in it. “This is for my mom and dad!”
David thrust his hands forward and strings of light shot out of him in every direction, shooting into the mist like a web, like threads of light that went on forever, wrapping around those shadows in the mist, wrapping around them like a net, holding them, heating them up, hurting them. He could hear the Ancient Enemy’s screams inside of his mind; he could feel its pain and its fear.
