by Lukens, Mark
The tentacles shot out from the mist, rushing towards David in one last effort to hurt him, but as they touched him, they withered and died. But they had hurt David; he had felt the pain. He knew he was injured, but he didn’t know how badly.
“Die!” David yelled, still seeing his family in his mind, still seeing Stella and Cole and all of the others that this ancient being had tormented and killed.
More tentacles shot out from the mist, striking him, hurting him.
And then everything went black in David’s mind and he collapsed.
CHAPTER 52
Begay
Western New Mexico
Begay and Angie held onto each other inside of her car, waiting for the death they knew was coming.
The tentacle poked at the windshield one more time, even harder this time, and then it reared back like a snake about to strike, about to punch through the windshield and into them.
The tentacle froze. All of the tentacles froze. Even Awenita beyond the tentacles stood frozen in the night. The tentacle in front of them fell down onto the hood of their car with a thud, and then it began dissolving, turning to ash, blowing away into the wind. All of the tentacles were gone in seconds.
Awenita’s dead body stood in front of their car for a moment, but with nothing inside of her to hold her up anymore, she collapsed onto the ground in front of their car, out of sight now.
“What happened?” Angie asked.
Begay shook his head, and he couldn’t help smiling. “I . . . I think it’s over.”
“Over?”
He looked at Angie. “I think David just defeated the Ancient Enemy. Wherever he is, I think he hurt it or drove it back again to its own world. Maybe he killed it.”
Angie jumped when their car started on its own, the headlights turning on and shining into the darkness and down the edge of the lonely road.
Begay picked up his cell phone, checking to see if he had service.
Angie hugged him, crying harder now, holding him tight. She grabbed the shifter, ready to shift into reverse.
“Wait,” Begay told her.
Angie just stared at him.
There was a signal on his phone, a weak one, but it was there. He dialed the number for the Navajo Tribal Police, a private number he knew well. “Someone needs to take Awenita’s body back to the hospital,” he told her. “We can’t leave her out here in the desert.”
Angie nodded.
Moments later, the arrangements were made. They would wait for the captain to get here. He tried Agent Palmer’s phone again, but he still wasn’t getting through.
They’re going to be okay, Begay told himself. He looked at Angie. “We’re going to be okay.” He stroked her hair. “We’re all going to be okay.”
CHAPTER 53
Palmer
Bone Canyon
Palmer had used up all of the bullets in Begay’s gun and the ones in Cole’s 9mm. He had used up all of the gas in both of the plastic cans. His campfire was getting low now, the pile of brush he had used for fuel almost gone. The pickup truck had tarantulas and scorpions all over the side of it. Coyotes yipped in the darkness, even closer now. There were at least two mountain lions out there. But the rattlesnakes, the creatures that Palmer feared the most, were now slithering towards him.
He should have saved one of those bullets for himself. But he didn’t want to do that. David was somewhere else; he was fighting. And Palmer would fight too. He had his branch with the piece of cloth wrapped around it. He had stuck the end of the branch into the dying campfire, catching it on fire. It wasn’t much, but he would use it to fight off the snakes until there were too many of them.
Five rattlesnakes were slithering towards him, two of them coiling up, ready to strike, the rattles on their tails going crazy. It was like the snakes knew he was out of gasoline and bullets.
Of course they knew.
As the snakes began to slither towards him, Palmer backed up towards the rock wall behind him. He was cornered, trapped. The snakes would be on him in seconds.
But then the snakes stopped. All of them. The tarantulas and scorpion dropped off of the side of Begay’s pickup truck, skittering away into the desert. The snakes seemed to be confused, two of them turning around and slithering away. Palmer had seen the snakes act like this before in the church when David had driven the Ancient Enemy away.
“David,” Palmer whispered.
He stepped forward, waving the fire at the end of his stick at the last three rattlesnakes remaining. They reared back, afraid of the fire, crawling away quickly into the darkness. A few coyotes yipped, but they were farther away now.
The animals were gone now. There were still a few spiders and scorpions, but they were crawling away.
Palmer took a few steps away from the rock wall, closer to his dying fire. He picked up his flashlight and turned it on. He rushed past the campfire towards the medicine wheel and the burial pit inside of it. He got to the edge of the pit, shining the flashlight down into the pit. The stack of flat rocks was still there, and now there were human bones and skulls scattered everywhere along the floor of the pit.
But David wasn’t there. It seemed like the Ancient Enemy was gone, but David still wasn’t back.
CHAPTER 54
Stella
The Void
David had defeated the Ancient Enemy. He had driven it back, but now David was down on the ground. He was out. Maybe dead.
No, he can’t be dead.
She rushed over to him and crouched down beside him. The memory of the cabin in Colorado came back to her, when she had crawled over to him through the snow after he had gotten them out of the cabin. She knew he hadn’t been dead then, just knocked unconscious, but she wasn’t so sure now.
David’s face was covered in cuts. His hands were curled up into fists. The ancient writing and symbols on his skin had faded quite a bit. She shook him, trying to wake him up. She felt his neck for a pulse. There was a pulse, a weak one.
“Is he dead?” Cole asked, standing right beside them.
“No,” Stella said.
David’s eyelids fluttered, and then he opened his eyes.
“David,” Stella said, crying. “You did it. You killed it.”
He closed his eyes again.
She shook him gently again. “David, you need to wake up. We need to get out of here.” She had told David that he had killed the Ancient Enemy, but she couldn’t be sure. What if it was regrouping and getting its strength back? What if it was waiting to strike, knowing that David was hurt and weak now?
A loud crashing noise sounded from the mist, like a wall of rock slamming down. A moment later the ground under their feet vibrated from it.
“What the hell’s that?” Cole asked.
Another crash. This one louder. This one closer.
“I think this place is falling apart,” Stella said. She could picture in her mind that this place wasn’t real, and now that the Ancient Enemy was either destroyed or gone, the place was folding in on itself and dying, going away, collapsing into nothingness.
“David.” She shook him harder. “David, you need to wake up. We have to get out of here.”
The crashing was louder now, and closer. The ground was shaking.
“David!”
His eyes popped open.
“David, this place is collapsing. We have to go!”
He nodded slightly and Stella saw that he understood, he had seen it in his mind. He moaned as he struggled to get to his feet. Cole and Stella helped him. He raised his hands, waving them around lethargically, trying to summon the doorway, but nothing was happening.
The crashing was even closer now, like slabs of rock folding over slabs of rock, compressing and dissolving, mashing into each other, destroying atoms along the way, crushing itself into nothing.
The faded symbols on David’s hands glowed weakly, just a pale yellow. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried again. He whispered, the words coming out quickly.
&nb
sp; They weren’t going to make it. David was hurt, too weak to summon the doorway.
Stella took one of David’s hands, lowering it, holding on to it. Then she took Cole’s hand. They held hands. She felt something inside of her, a burning that didn’t hurt, a glowing warmth that wasn’t hot. She realized that she was whispering words that she didn’t understand. Cole was whispering the words too, an ancient language that hadn’t been spoken in centuries. They were helping David, giving him some of their strength, some of their life. They were feeding off of each other, yet strengthening each other.
She opened her eyes and saw a spinning black sphere in front of them, blue lightning crackling off of it. Cole squeezed her hand tighter. He was still whispering, still chanting.
The sphere was getting bigger and bigger, but it was wobbling and the lightning was fading. It was beginning to close.
This was their only chance.
She and Cole took David’s hands, jerking him forward to the black hole, pulling him forward before it collapsed like everything else in this world. She wasn’t sure if they had made it because everything faded away to nothingness.
CHAPTER 55
Palmer
Bone Canyon
Palmer backed away from the pit and then the medicine wheel. He was halfway between the dying campfire and the circle of rocks. Everything was still dark and quiet. There was no wind now and even the coyotes had stopped yipping.
There was nothing.
David still wasn’t back. Was he trapped in the other world now? Was the Ancient Enemy keeping him there? Had the Ancient Enemy actually won?
Just then there was a flash of blue light from the pit, the same flickering blue lights Palmer had seen before when David had opened the doorway down inside the burial pit.
“He’s back,” Palmer whispered. He ran to the medicine wheel, his flashlight beam bobbing around in the darkness. He was at the edge of the pit a few seconds later, right by the old wooden ladder. The blue lights were already gone and the pit was dark.
Maybe it hadn’t worked. Maybe they weren’t back.
But then Palmer heard voices. He shined the flashlight beam down at the other end of the large pit and saw Stella and Cole; they were standing over David who was sprawled out on the floor of the pit. She stared up into the flashlight beam. “David’s hurt.”
Palmer hurried down the ladder and ran to them. Together, he and Cole helped David up the ladder. David’s face was battered and bruised; he was in and out of consciousness, muttering and whispering words Palmer didn’t understand. The symbols that had been painted on his hands and forearms were gone.
Minutes later they were out of the pit and on their way to Begay’s truck.
When they got to the pickup truck, Cole and Stella helped David into the backseat, laying him down with Stella in the back.
“Watch out for spiders and scorpions,” Palmer said as he kicked sand over the embers of the campfire to extinguish it.
“What?” Cole asked, suddenly tense.
“There were some spiders and scorpions on the truck earlier. I think they’re all gone, but . . .” He shrugged like he couldn’t be sure.
Cole climbed into the passenger seat as Palmer got in the driver’s seat. He flipped on the headlights and they shined right on the small airplane in the distance.
“Holy shit,” Cole whispered. “Is that the plane we flew in?”
“Yeah,” Palmer said. “I got your stuff out of it.” He handed the 9mm to Cole. “I used all of the bullets on rattlesnakes.”
Cole nodded. “I saw the dead snakes on the way to the truck.”
“I tried to hold them off as long as I could,” Palmer said as he drove towards the trail. “I didn’t think I was going to make it. Your papers and money are in the glove box.”
Cole didn’t open the glove box to look.
Stella whispered to David. “Hold on, David. We’re going to get you some help.”
“What happened to him?” Palmer asked Cole.
“He fought against the Ancient Enemy, but it struck back at him. It hurt him, but I’m not sure how bad.”
“Is it dead?” Palmer asked. “Did he kill it?”
“I don’t know,” Cole answered. He looked into the backseat at Stella. “I think so.”
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Stella said with tears in her eyes.
“I’ll get there as fast as I can,” Palmer said and picked up his cell phone. He saw the voicemails from Captain Begay, but he still didn’t have enough of a signal to make a call yet. “I’ll call the captain as soon as we have a signal. He’ll direct us to a hospital.”
CHAPTER 56
Stella
Arizona – one week later
Cole drove the car down the highway. Stella was in the passenger seat and David sat in the back. He had his backpack from school beside him on the backseat and the rest of his bags were in the trunk.
Stella’s mind slipped back to a week ago. She remembered rushing through the desert in the middle of the night, trying to get to the closest hospital, which seemed like it was a million miles away.
The next twenty-four hours had been tense. The good news was that David didn’t have any life-threatening injuries. The bad news was that the doctors at the hospital weren’t sure why David was unconscious, and they didn’t seem to be entirely buying the story that David had fallen down the side of a hill and busted himself up.
It had been Cole and Palmer who had come up with the idea of a cover story as they drove to the hospital. Palmer brought it up first, thinking practically. He knew the doctors were going to wonder how David had sustained his injuries. They sure weren’t going to believe that David had entered a different dimension to save everyone on Earth.
Captain Begay and a few of the officers from the Navajo Tribal Police met them at the hospital. Between Begay and the two officers, they convinced the doctors that David hadn’t been abused, no matter how suspicious the story about a fall in the desert sounded.
David regained full consciousness, but he claimed to the doctors that he couldn’t remember the “accident” at all. None of the tests showed any signs of brain damage. He was dehydrated and exhausted, and he had some superficial cuts and bruises on his body, but there were no broken bones or damage to any of his organs. He was released the next day into Captain Begay and Angie’s care since there were no close family members who could (or wanted) to take care of him. When David got back to Begay’s house, he had asked about his Aunt Awenita. He wanted a funeral for her, but it was going to have to wait for a few more days because the FBI was still gathering all of the evidence it could from the bodies.
Palmer had to go back to Denver the day David was released from the hospital. He needed to be with his daughter so they could make their own funeral plans for his ex-wife and her husband. He told Stella before he left that she would no longer be a person of interest in the Dig Site Murders because Cardenelli and the FBI were going to pin all of the murders on Patrick Arthur Curry, whether they had all of the physical evidence or not. Cardenelli wanted this case closed before he retired; he wanted to be remembered as the one in charge when one of America’s worst serial killers was finally stopped. Palmer got some of the credit in the news, but he told Stella that he didn’t want to do any interviews; he just wanted his old life back, and he wanted to repair his relationship with his daughter and her kids.
Captain Begay and Angie tried to pick up the pieces of their life over the next few days. Even though they hadn’t suffered any losses in their family, they had lost friends and members of their community. The town of Iron Springs had suffered so much, but there was also a sense of relief that it was finally over, that the man (and some said the demon inside of him) had finally been stopped. Captain Begay and his wife were considered heroes now. But then again, Captain Begay had always been considered a hero in this town.
Now that Stella was no longer a “person of interest,” she could have her old life back. She had talked abou
t it with Cole because he was still a suspect in the bank robbery and murder in Cody’s Pass, Colorado. But Cole still had his fake ID (which Palmer assured him would pass any sniff test), so he would live under his new name. He had kept out of the way over the last week as the FBI and Navajo Tribal Police continued their investigation. Cole told Stella that he knew they couldn’t go back down to Costa Rica now, not under the names Travis and Melissa, because their Toyota 4x4 was parked at the scene of a horrific murder at the small airport in the jungle. It was all over for them down there. Most of those seven years in Costa Rica had been great, but he was ready to start a new life with Stella.
A lot of David’s family was gone. He had no brothers or sisters. His parents and aunt were dead. David had some distant relatives on the Navajo Reservation, but they didn’t want him because he would never live down the horrors that had happened here; his name would always be associated with the evil spirits that had plagued this town. There would always be some who were still suspicious of him. There would always be some who would still believe that David was behind it all. David would have Captain Begay on his side, and that would carry a lot of weight, but it wouldn’t be enough. David loved his people and his culture, but for now he just wanted to get away from all of the terrible memories of this place.
Three nights ago Stella had talked to Cole in bed about letting David live with them. She wasn’t sure how Cole would react, but it only took him a millisecond to agree that it was a good idea. She loved him for that, along with so many other things.
“Do you think you’d like to stay with us for a while?” Stella had asked David the next morning.
David had looked surprised at her offer, like he’d never considered it. But then a smile appeared on his face and his eyes lit up. “Is it okay with Cole?”
