The Spirit

by Thomas Page

  Helder ran to the doorway, slipping across the floor. He caught his balance against the jamb and cut on the parking-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

  apron floodlights. No one—or nothing—was there.

  “Hey, goddammit!” he screamed into the wind. “Come back here!”

  A shadow lengthened from behind his car. Helder put a bullet through the windshield. He was hiding out there, him and his goddamned egg-­sucking buddies.

  A rock rebounded off the doorjamb, next to his fingers. Helder fired two shots in the direction from which it had come. “Come on, kids, out of there! I mean it!”

  Another rock arced up to a floodlight on the east corner and exploded it. Helder fired again. One by one the lights in the parking lot were killed by rocks, plunging the area deeper and deeper into wind-­blown darkness, in which he made out a scurrying form at each end of the lot.

  He fired at the one headed down the road and ran out of bullets. There were only two of them, but that was more than enough. He turned to see people crowding into the kitchen, dressed in all manner of nightgowns and pajamas. They had been attracted by the shooting.

  “Look at this! Just look what they did!” he screeched, kicking at a balled-­up wad of hamburger. “That’s a week’s supply of food. They hit everything, the lockers, the cutting table, the stove . . . Look at this. Little bastards!”

  Jason and Martha stepped through the service-­­­­­­­­entrance door. Jason held his revolver. He saw a rock lying in egg yolk and picked it up. “Did you see them, Mr. Helder?”

  “Of course I saw them. They hid behind the cars out there.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “How do I know what they looked like!” Helder shouted with immaculate illogic. He lifted a shoe and examined the muck mixed with eggshell. What in hell was the man toting a pistol around for anyhow! “It’s . . . it’s . . . just barbaric! Why would anybody do something like this, for Jesus—” He flushed red. He froze. His voice dropped. “Decoy. Diversion.”

  “What?” asked Martha.

  “The bungalows! Was anybody robbed? Maybe it’s a diversion.”

  Panic-­stricken, the people pushed and shoved their way out of the kitchen, down the gallery hall toward the bungalows, leaving Jason and Martha alone.

  Jason thoughtfully tossed the rock up and down in his hand. He was smiling. Martha was frightened. She searched out the sink-­pipe water valve and shut it off.

  “That answers our question,” said Jason.

  “Why would they do this?”

  “Because they want the valley back. That means drive Helder out. They’ve been watching everything down here. I guess they figure if Helder goes, nobody will come back.”

  “I’m going to call Drake,” said Martha. She ran out of the kitchen toward Helder’s office. Jason was wiping the mess from his boots when she ran back in again, her somber eyes ignited with barely suppressed fear. “Raymond?”

  “Yes?”

  “The phones are dead.”

  Jason checked his watch. It was three thirty in the morning. Daylight would come in two hours. They could not check for any further damage until it was light. He decided he would stay awake until sunrise.

  Morning dawned with Helder’s lodge being pelted by flying branches, bark, and leaves blown from the woods by gale-­force winds. Helder had not slept either. He remained in the bar, slowly sobering up and looking out the window as the morning light outlined the ruins of his ski trails.

  By seven in the morning he had driven into Garrison and returned with three state policemen.

  You found kids like that everywhere, Helder reflected bitterly as he stood by the ski-­lift machinery, watching the wind scour the artificial snow into razor-­sharp crests.

  Helder’s ski machinery had been ruined. Not just broken into or vandalized, but destroyed. The snow guns had been toppled from their supports; the chair cables were a broken jumble scattered down the slope; the shed had been cracked open, the wooden walls torn to pieces and the machinery inside rendered into an unsymmetric, overturned pile of cables, wires, toppled stanchions, and gear wheels.

  One of the policemen came out, his gloves coated with grease. “What I don’t understand is how they got up here, Mr. Helder.” That was a neat trick all right. The slope had been plowed into a thirty-­degree angle. Because of the wind and frozen fake snow, climbing it would have been quite an undertaking even for a mountain goat.

  “What I don’t understand is why,” said Helder, looking up the slope to the mountain summit lost among trees bending under the wind.

  The policeman was sympathetic. “I guess somebody just doesn’t like you.”

  Fifteen of Helder’s forty guests canceled immediately and arranged schedules with the van driver. Several of those who had driven themselves up—the weekenders, whose business Helder desperately wanted—also headed for home. The rest seemed undecided. They returned to their rooms or to the game room. Helder told Delbert to drive into Garrison that morning and return with a load of hamburger for the afternoon and tonight. What they would do about feeding people tomorrow, at the height of the storm, was something Helder could not face that morning.

  12

  Lit by bronzed fire reflected off the fireplace hearth, the huge lips moved. The Indian pressed his hands against them, trying to stop the word from creeping out between his child’s fingers.

  He tossed on the bungalow bed, trying not to wake up. He was ripsawed between his faith and the growing press of his grandfather speaking to him. He fervently wished the doctors were here with their calming needles. He tried to shut his mind to his grandfather’s voice, lest he say something that would destroy him.

  Someone rapped on the door. “Mr. Moon? Mr. Helder sent me. You’re late.”

  The Indian groaned at the suffocating weight of reality. The wind blew fiercely, shrieking past roof eaves and through branches. The Indian’s feet slid to the floor, and piece by piece he got himself to a standing position, from which he lurched across the room. “Yeah, I’m awake,” he said, tugging the knob.

  The pistol butt came straight for his forehead. The Indian’s head turned an infinitesimal fraction of an inch, enough to divert the full force of it. He awoke fully on his way to the floor, blood flowing from his scalp. His eyes were closed, but his ears were attuned to the stranger stepping in and closing the door behind him. The Indian waited for his chance.

  Jason had struck quickly but not accurately, and he

  hoped not too hard. The Indian’s chest rose and fell in

  steady rhythm, his eyeballs rolled under his lids, but otherwise there was not a twitch from him.

  The room stank of meat gone bad. Gun in hand,

  Jason kneeled beside the Indian and untied the medicine

  bundle. He opened the flap, and the stench poured forth in

  such waves that he gagged.

  He overturned the bag. Out fell a clay pipe, a medal

  box, a billfold, a crucifix, and some dried corn. Whatever

  else was in there was stuck to the leather, as if hiding for

  a last few seconds. Jason shook the bag.

  It tumbled onto the floor with a sticky plop. Jason

  recoiled with a sheet of cold zipping down his spine as

  though it were some kind of spider. But it was just a toe. The thing was unrecognizable but for the suppurated cuticle anchoring the huge brown nail. The flesh had drawn up from the severed bone, leaving it exposed. Hair clumped the top of it.

  Jason grasped it between thumb and forefinger. Vertigo swirled through him, rushing out of his eyes to the toe like a drain for his emotions. After a second he calmed down. What was the matter with him anyway? He was at peace for the first time in weeks. Here was something for his efforts, at least. The end was in sight—the end of endless lonely exertions that had played havoc with his business a
nd his life, the cauterizing climax of days of constant fear that he had lost the beast forever.

  He turned it to the gray light from the window. It was big, at least the size of a silver dollar in breadth. In length it was well over an inch, jointed between two long bones as if Nature had designed it for a gorilla’s clutching foot, then changed her mind at the last minute. Decay was advanced. The hair was loosening. He would have to get it into preservative quickly. There must be alcohol in the infirmary—

  The Indian’s hand caught him on the side of the neck. It hit like an ax blade, sending a bone vibration up the vertebrae to his skull, where darkness exploded in a black globe that drove light from his eyes.

  He came to flat on his back with his own gun muzzle hovering like an evil eye between his nose and forehead. The Indian was seated on the bed, holding the pistol in both hands. The medicine bundle was tied fast to his waist.

  “All right,” said Jason. “I’m ready.”

  The Indian’s body was relentlessly still. Only his hands moved, rotating the gun in small circles.

  “Moon?” Jason said to break the silence. “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen your spirit.”

  The gun muzzle steadied on his forehead.

  “I know what it is. It’s not a spirit at all. Never was. Do you understand me?”

  Moon’s head vibrated in small negative shakes.

  “He killed two men last summer. I was with them. Don’t you remember that?”

  “I never seen you before.” His words were contemptuous, as though too precious to waste on a doomed man.

  “In Canada, Moon. You hit me with a rifle. I had a beard then. Remember?” Jason tried to define a beard with one of his hands on his chin.

  “No.”

  Jason raised himself on his elbows. Moon’s foot pushed him down again. “Dammit, Moon, he tore off their heads!”

  “I don’t remember nothing past yesterday, no sir. My memory’s gone.”

  Jason tried to sit up again.

  “Stay put.”

  “Can’t I have a last cigarette?”

  The Indian nodded. Reluctantly.

  Jason sat upright, tenderly rubbing his neck. The ache was a pole of agony that flared whenever he moved his neck. “Thanks for hitting me on the right side, Moon. It balances my left arm.”

  Moon was not amused in the slightest. This apparition had many words which he would use to shake his faith. “Just stay on the floor.”

  Very carefully Jason withdrew a cigarette from his pocket. “You really don’t remember me, do you.”

  Moon shook his head.

  “If I talk and you don’t like what I’m going to say, are you going to shoot me?”

  “I might.”

  Jason lit the cigarette with slow movements. He looked for some place to put the match. Seeing nothing, he slipped it into his pocket. “Have you seen your so-­called spirit’s face?”

  “ ’Course I have.” It was a lie, but Moon did not want to be put on the defensive.

  “Then you know it’s deformed. But in a special way, Moon. In a way that was familiar to humans thousands of years ago, when there were many more species of primate on the earth than there ever have been since. A genetic change hit a species of Bigfoot out here about two hundred years ago. It entered the bloodline of these creatures and has been making hash out of them.”

  “Shit on you.”

  “Let me finish. Kill me later. Okay?”

  Moon gripped his pistol.

  “This genetic change appeared to them as a disease. Every now and then an infant would be born strange and killed. But another would carry little or no visible evidence and pass it on to its own offspring. A biologist back in Kansas City set me up for this. He was right. But he thought it was a real disease, and it isn’t. It’s a human strain, Moon. One of your spirit’s ancestors was a human being.”

  Not much of a revelation to Moon. He had considered similar thoughts himself.

  “I call it a disease because that’s exactly how it would appear to them. None of this shit about being touched by gods or anything like that. To them it would appear they were giving birth to monsters. Do you follow me?”

  Jason was certain the Indian did not understand a word he said. He talked to keep the thumb away from the hammer of the pistol. Moon studied him as if he were a centipede that had invaded his room.

  “There are human traits of your spirit, Moon, that simply do not fit primate behavior other than man. He travels alone, whereas apes live in bands. He has a very distinct chin, and no other nonhuman primate has that. I’ve seen him walk. Only humans walk upright for any length of time—other primates walk on their knuckles. He eats meat. He hunts heads—”

  “No sir.” The gun came up. “He don’t do that.”

  “And he leaves footprints that are a total mix between human and ape. And there are other details, mostly in the thing’s face. He has a long thin nose with a bridge and horns. Horns, Moon! Didn’t you ever wonder why the devil had horns? This face that your spirit has goes back thousands of years and frightened people then. And why? It’s not because they believed in an abstract devil, it’s because there were enough creatures like this wandering around. It’s in the Bible. It’s in the Veda, Chinese legends, Scandinavian ones. People in ancient times were consistently warned not to sleep with giants. It used to happen more often than we can believe. Think of Polyphemus, the cyclops. Goliath. The Greek Titans. They were outcasts from both species! Just like your spirit!”

  The gun continued circling. Jason babbled on, knowing he was getting too abstract for Moon but hoping his fervency would convince him.

  “The original species was definitely humanoid. Very tall, very hairy, very strong. The other species are shy— you glimpse them in the woods for a few seconds at a time. But not yours. Yours is aggressive. And calculating. No ape could have dreamed up throwing a rattlesnake . . .”

  In Moon’s obsidian eyes, something splintered and fell away, blanking his gaze into a deadness that seemed to go through Jason. Something had happened.

  “Moon? Moon?”

  The giants.

  His grandfather’s mouth opened and the fearful word slipped out. Natliskeliguten, the fearful giants, and the old man had terrified the Indian with tales of their depredations. They had a powerful odor like burning horn, and they would walk up to tipis and look down the smokeholes. Sometimes they stole women.

  Softly, softly, like a curtain shredding to golden threads, then those threads to their constituent atoms, the Indian’s memory unblocked and the old cracked voice returned to him. His grandfather spoke again in the grave, patient tones of his youth.

  The giants were dead, John! Coyote the dancing dog, God who made the human race, killed them all and turned them into the black boulders of the Bitterroot valley. They were dead.

  Weren’t they? All of them? Could one have escaped? What did the giants look like, Grandfather?

  Like . . . Like . . .

  No!

  This is it, thought Jason as the Indian bounded off the bed, thrust a hand into his jacket, and pulled him to his feet with a single yank. Jason protected his face until the gun barrel pushed into his stomach, almost to his spine.

  The Indian hissed into his face, black eyes distilling fire, threads of saliva collecting in the deep clefts on the sides of his mouth. “He’s a spirit! He is! I know what he is. And you’re the devil, you bastard—” Moon babbled on, words spilling out of his mouth, juiced with a venomous hatred so potent they seemed to cling to the walls. He drenched Jason in obscenities, some common, some so bizarre they made absolutely no sense.

  But he did not pull the trigger. Some uncertainty stilled his finger. Jason knew that if the right lever in Moon’s psyche were touched, his own life would pour out, and he had not touched that lever. It was fear that really fueled the Indian’s rage.
Fear of Jason, fear sparked from some mysterious emotional terminals in his brain.

  The Indian ran out of insults. He released his grip on Jason and stepped backward, his bony face a whitened mask of trapped anger.

  “You were in the war, weren’t you, Moon?”

  Moon breathed harshly, the breath whistling through his nostrils. His forehead glistened.

  “I’m very sorry,” said Jason, straightening his coat.

  He opened the door. Wind shrieked in, bearing twigs from the woods. There were no snowflakes yet, but there soon would be. The sun would darken and the sky grow fat with iron clouds that pressed tightly over the horizon. “I want my gun back, Moon. If you’re not planning to shoot me, that is.”

  Moon threw the gun at him. It bounced off Jason’s jacket to the floor. Had it been cocked, one of them would not be walking out of the room.

  “Thank you,” said Jason. He tucked it into his belt and bulled out into the wind.

  Touching that toe had been a kind of addiction. He had to get back into the medicine bundle. Regardless of what the Indian did, Raymond Jason was determined to stick as close to John Moon as Moon had stuck to his spirit.

  The late cousin Murphy used to say that Lester Cole was never on time anywhere. When relatives called Cole’s trailer to find out how he could miss Murphy’s funeral, an operator came on to say that the phone was out of order. He was not working at the lodge, where the phones were also down, so they became mildly alarmed and contacted the police.

  A motorcycle cop braved the winds and drove up Hulcher Road to where Lester’s trailer was parked deep in overhanging woods. Lester’s truck was overturned, and the entire trailer was off its cinder-­block mountings. The ground was littered with broken glass, furniture, and beer cans, thrown out the smashed doors and windows.

  The cop took out his gun and shouldered his way inside. A rock lay on the floor. Blood was everywhere. A trail of thin blood led into the kitchen, to a great dried puddle of it soaking newspapers around the kitchen table. Lester had apparently been poaching deer. Every­thing else in the trailer was smashed.