“How do you know my real name?”
“I know lots of things that men don’t, but for now, you’ll have to trust me. Ghost Horn and the woman, they speak true. This infestation is gonna have to get cleaned out before it spreads.”
“Well, thanks for that,” said Porter, rolling his eyes to Mary. “But you haven’t really told me anything.”
Mary shook her head, warning Porter with, “We should abide his wisdom.”
Porter faced Nodens. “Then share some wisdom I can use. Otherwise, I’m getting awful tired of the poetic inuendo and excuses.”
Nodens grinned, nodded his hoary head, and reached his wizened hand forth. He took Porter’s hand in his and clasped it firmly. “Keep this until your return.”
Porter felt nothing but the old man’s weathered palm, but as Nodens withdrew his hand, it left there a mystic light that danced like an aetheric flame. It rapidly grew until it was almost as large as Porter’s hat. It resembled a wavy star. It gave no heat and minimal light but exuded a primal power.
Glancing up, Porter realized Mr. Nodens was gone. Swallowed by the infinite sea of blackness.
Ghost Horn nodded. “You are gonna need that.”
Porter spun about, searching for Nodens. “Who was that?”
Ghost Horn shrugged. “He gives himself any name he wants, but we have always called him The Great Coyote. He is wily but a trickster, too.”
“A trickster? And I should trust him on this?”
Ghost Horn said, “He doesn’t want the Old Ones coming out any more than we do. We can trust him on that.”
Porter wrinkled his nose. “And I’m supposed to trust this guy with a star light as I go into an abyss to get back a book to shut these doors?”
Mary took Porter’s hand. “It must be done. This way must be closed off from the sleepers within. I will go by myself if you will not.”
No way he’d let her go on alone. “Dawg, you’re wounded so you’re staying here.” He pointed dramatically at the ground. Dawg watched his hand anxiously, then sat in the fresh earth beside Ghost Horn.
“Good thing I was loaded for bear already going after Stoney. I’ve still got a dozen cylinders on me, along with a pocketful of shells for the Sharps. Let’s get this over with,” he said.
Bloody Creek Mary said something softly to Ghost Horn. The old medicine man nodded.
“What was that?” asked Porter.
“He will sing the song of the Sasquatch. That we might get some help.”
“What’s a Sasquatch?”
“The furry people.”
Porter’s eyes nearly bugged out. “A song for them? And help? No, thanks.”
Mary shook her head, but signaled to Ghost Horn, who began a droning chant and padded his hand on a skin drum.
The moon hid behind the clouds, and darkness seemed to envelope everything as they stood before the doorway. The doorway looked like a fang-toothed mouth with stalactites and stalagmites leering up and down. The forbidding aspect was palpable.
“Every journey needs a first step,” said Porter, as he drew his pistol in his free hand. Mary clutched the shotgun with both hands. Porter held the bizarre wavy star light in his other hand a little high, then they walked in.
Trails in Darkness
Porter and Mary crossed the threshold of the titanic doorway. The vibrating star in Porter’s hand cast eerie light on the path before them. The path was made of rough basalt flagstones that were all joined in a non-linear pattern resembling nothing so much as fractals in broken ebon glass. It was readily apparent that this place was ancient as anything Porter had ever seen, granted he was the son of a young country, but this was beyond even those places of antiquity he had heard about in far off lands across the sea. This was a place made from another age beyond any he was aware of.
Ghost Horn’s chanting song was the only thing Porter could hear as it echoed softly behind them, since the gaping tunnel before them devoured all sound and light.
“Ugh, this is gonna get uglier, before it gets better isn’t it?”
“Is there any other way?” she answered.
“Is that a joke? Didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I don’t,” she said.
Porter grimaced, she really didn’t have a sense of humor.
They walked on for some time. A few chunks of fallen rock and a peculiar bend in the sidewall revealed at their feet a gaping hole leading into utter darkness. The path continued on the other side of the hole. It wasn’t difficult for them to circumnavigate the precipice, but the bottomless feel of the thing, along with a slight breeze wafting up at them, was disconcerting.
The tunnel slanted deep into the earth and Porter noticed that if there was just a little more dampness or a coating of dust upon the stones, it would be too slippery to walk back up. Boots were great for horses but hell for slickrock and caving. His bizarre light cast two dozen feet further where he saw an abrupt drop off.
“Hold up, let’s get a rope here just in case,” said Porter. They tied a firm knot and wrapped it around a thick stalagmite, then he made a wide knot on the end and wedged that against a nearby boulder that had fallen from the ceiling. He gauged it weighed more than he and Mary put together. They eased the full length of the rope down the slope.
“I’ll go and take a look over the edge and see how far it goes. If it’s bottomless, we’re up a creek since this rope ain’t much more than fifty feet.”
Mary grunted her answer as Porter wound the rope about his waist and eased down the steep embankment. His boots skittered and slipped and if not for the rope he would have gone right over the brink.
“Might be we missed a secret turn or something,” he suggested.
Mary glanced at her surroundings. “There might be another way back at the first drop off.”
Porter peered over the edge, fully expecting to see nothing, like the bottomless pit earlier, but was pleasantly surprised to see that it was only about a seven-foot drop to the bottom where passing through a slightly smaller tunnel, the path went on.
“Come on down, we can keep going,” he said. He let himself down nice and quick, then glanced into the tunnel beyond. The smaller aperture blasted wind in his face.
Mary eased herself down and readied the shotgun.
Porter stalked inside. The cavern opened to a wide, vast dominion. He could no longer see the roof of the subterranean world. The ground was flat and sandy instead of stone, and they saw their own light glinting on the silver surface of a lake not more than five paces away.
“Might be a lake now, but this sandy shore tells me it might occasionally flood and carry sediment higher, maybe that’s what broke through the wall we just came through,” Porter said.
The walls beside them were cliff-like, rising almost vertically with few enough cracks, seams, or points gouging out into the darkness.
“How can we even know if we’re on the right path? Those flying demons might just as well have gone down the pit we saw earlier as come here.”
Mary swung about looking in every direction. “They probably connect up there somewhere. It would all lead to the heart of the mountain and the abyss—where they sleep.”
“You’re saying we should press on, not knowing where we are going?”
“It’s this way,” she said, taking the lead, despite Porter holding their only light.
He followed closely on her heels, ever mindful of all the strange tricks of light the glittering star in his hand cast upon the blue-black rock.
“Might have been nice for old Ghost Horn or Mr. Nodens to tell us something useful to do in this situation. Are we expecting to just see that demon bat thing sitting and taking a read with the gold book or what? It’s not like he’ll just hand it over to us.”
“Shhh,” urged Mary as she paused and stared into the deep gloom.
She remained still a long time, and after a long minute Porter moved in closer and whispered into her ear. “What do you see?”
“Noth
ing. But the blackness moved, I could sense it.”
“Maybe you ought to let me get in front with the light then.”
“No,” she insisted. “Better that I should douse it somewhat.”
They trekked on over the hard-packed sand. Every now and again, Porter would wheel and look behind. The massive gallery of a cavern and the impenetrable dark played havoc with his senses and he wished Dawg was there, but it was not a good place for a wounded four-legged animal to be moving in.
The sound of rushing water met their ears, but it was a much longer walk to the waterfall than they expected. The cavern both hushed its sound and strangely echoed it deafeningly once they were almost on top of it.
“I do believe by now we are under an entirely different mountain.”
“It’s the same,” said Mary. “Our trail has simply taken us around the far side of the lake.”
Porter tried to get his bearings right and either confirm or dispute Mary’s assertion, but he could do neither. It was a bizarre feeling for the frontiersman, he was usually the one with the best sense of direction. Of course, despite all his time living the way he had, he was still infinitely more civilized than Mary was, she’d been raised in this wild country as had her ancestors for centuries untold. He had to admit that her connection by blood to the land was deeper than his could ever dream of being.
“You know where we are in relation to getting out? And I do mean quickly if we have to. I don’t understand how this star is still lit. I don’t know how much more oil it can hold.”
Mary gave a half-smile. “It’s not oil and it won’t burn out. It is the old magic and will burn so long as you hold it free.”
“Forever?” he asked dubiously.
She nodded. “But Nodens will ask for it back when the job is done.”
Porter stared at the strange wavy star. It had a glow circling around it, and he could see glyphs floating in the golden haze moving ever so slightly like words traveling down a river. It reminded him of characters he had seen in what seemed ages ago, when his best friend in all the world had shown him some curious characters of a lost and arcane era. He shook himself free of the moment, remembering the dire straits they were in here and now.
Mary, as if she had been waiting for Porter to focus, said, “We are across the lake from the exit we came in. If we had a canoe, we could return faster.”
“I don’t see a canoe down here, do you?” said Porter.
“There,” she pointed.
Porter peered into the gloom and saw the slight curve of a rock near the silvery waters of the lake. He approached it cautiously and saw that it was indeed a canoe of curious workmanship. It was wood and looked seaworthy, though the design was not familiar to any he had seen before. It looked neither made by white men or any Indian tribe. It had a long flat bottom and a pair of oars, but the manner it was constructed was entirely alien.
“Well, I don’t know how it got here, but looks like it could carry us both across the great deep, if you think that’s the best way to go when we’re done here.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We must now find the place where they sleep.”
“They?”
“The Old Ones. The book will be beside them somewhere close. We must hurry before they wake.”
“Won’t that bat thing just wake them?”
Mary shook her head. “We must do what we can.”
Porter grimaced and followed her. He didn’t like feeling out of his element, out of control. Mary didn’t know a lot of things about the way of the world he came from, but she seemed to know a whole lot more about this strange and weird world than she had ever let on in the last couple months she had worked for him. He always thought he was doing her a favor by taking her in when she was half dead and covered in blood. He soon realized it wasn’t her blood, but that of the half dozen mestizos she had killed who had murdered her family. It’s a hard world and he knew what it was like to lose people close to you, and he would have done the same as her. But she had narrowly survived and only too soon after she had done the deed, it looked like the local miners had wanted to string her up for murder. It had taken a lot to get everyone to back down. Only some of the Mountain Hounds had protested, saying the mestizos were friends of theirs and must have been jumped by Mary’s clan. But no one believed that. The mestizos were usually shot on sight by any of the Spanish ranchers, and no one would miss them.
Now he wondered if she hadn’t done him the favor, sticking around and helping out. He wasn’t sure he could have run as lucrative a place without her and Jack. Now here she was leading the way into gripping darkness as they approached a roaring waterfall.
“It lies beyond there. It is the final doorway,” she said.
“We gotta go through that?”
She nodded. “You must lead with the star.”
Porter was skeptical but strode toward the falling white water. The star light gleamed on the opposing whiteness of the water that contrasted so strongly with the black firmament encompassing the rest of the cavern.
As he neared the waterfall, stepping upon the smooth flat rocks, he noted that they did resemble a path of flagstones akin to those from the upper entrance. He steeled himself, fully prepared to be drenched in the cold water—the spray from it was chilling—but the falls began to part like a drawn curtain before the power of the glowing star.
Porter gasped.
Beyond was a new cavern, deep blue lights revealing the outline of incredible citadels and towers of magnificent size. A city of fantastic antiquity lay spread there, held in mysterious, silent awe.
Dwellers of the Dead City
They stole forward, eyeing their surroundings, watching for any sign of life, and awed by the stark wonder of the seemingly dead city.
Statues of monstrous figures of titanic shape and girth held an archway leading deeper inside. All was thrown back from the clutching darkness, but the light was cold and unwholesome. Cyclopean pillars of tremendous size held up the roof of the mountain hall. Giant steps half as tall as Porter and each as wide as a street led to a palace marbled with jet or obsidian. Curling lines of rusted metal formed pathways all over the flagstones, and Porter wondered if each was like a guideline for some inhuman probe. It was maddening, and he wondered at who or what had created such a place only to leave it shrouded in darkness deep in the earth. Lost to the ages.
“Why is this here?” he said aloud, his words echoing in the vast chamber.
“Nodens said it was locked up and made for them to sleep.”
“But why? And what happens when they wake?”
“We don’t want them to ever wake,” she said.
Staring at the lofty heights, Porter wondered how this place even remained hidden beneath the mountain they were in. It seemed too large in his mind’s eye, as if it should be leering above the snow-capped peaks.
“Let us hurry and find the book.” Mary tugged on Porter’s jacket and pulled him along as he stared in wonderment at the bizarre spectacle.
Everywhere were deep cut glyphs and signs representing things he vaguely recollected he had seen on the pages of the book. The many parapets and towers, while set in a style differing from anything Porter had heretofore ever seen, did have some semblance to the fantastic real world he had dreamed about while listening to others read aloud tales to amaze. Here and there, gargoyles were perched atop protruding corners or lofty obelisks.
Then he saw one move.
As they strode across the wide forum, the creature which had remained still most of their intrusion, subtly shifted its weight and turned slightly to continue facing them, not unlike how a pigeon might adjust its perch. But this would more closely resemble a pigeon from hell
“Mary,” Porter whispered through clenched teeth. “One of those damn bat things is up there watching us. Might be the same one that took the book.”
Mary, whose culture was not subtle, wheeled about to look.
The Night Gaunt took to the air and swooped do
wn at them. It was not carrying the book.
“No,” urged Mary, but it was too late.
Porter fired his dragoon, the gun blazed red fire in the gloom and lead shattered the faceless horror of the Night Gaunt, splitting it wide open. It struck the flagstones and fizzed and hissed as it turned to an eerie mist.
“That wasn’t so bad,” said Porter.
“But now we risk the sleepers being awakened,” she said.
Porter kicked at the roiling sulfurous murk. “I didn’t see a way around it. You saw one of those things drop Stoney on his head, and I wasn’t gonna let that happen to us.”
Mary shook her head in frustration and pointed toward the bizarre temple structure ahead of them. “I just hope they are still imprisoned and asleep.”
They hurried on, the sound of their boot leather slapping against the flagstones seemed terribly loud now in the echoing hall.
Jutting towers held the ceiling aloft and the strange features of the silent city beckoned them on.
Porter glanced in every direction, hoping the star light in his hand would catch any hint of movement or the gleam of any eye. Then he reminded himself that the Night Gaunt had no eye nor any face for that matter, what other horror might be down here lurking in the myriad shadowy corners?
Some of the deeply recessed glyphs caught the light from the star and seemed to flicker a moment as if gas had been struck and a wick was lit, but whenever he looked again, they remained cold and dark as the grave.
Mary had to swing a leg up to gain the first of the gargantuan steps that led into the temple. Porter himself was forced to holster his pistol as he could not manage the titanic step without at least one free hand.
“You got any other ideas or revelations, now is the time to spill,” Porter said as he waited for here to gain the step and watch his back.
“I have no words,” she said. “I simply feel that we must go in and see if the book is within this place.”
Let Sleeping Gods Lie Page 9
