A Winter Haunting

by Dan Simmons

  Clare shook her head. “It burned down a long time ago. I . . . there, please stop.” She pointed to a small trailer no different than most they had passed.

  Dale pulled into the dusty drive behind an old pickup and waited. “Do you know these people?”

  Clare shook her head again. They sat in the Land Cruiser and waited. After a while, a middle-aged woman came to the screen door of the trailer and looked at them with no more curiosity than the children had shown. She disappeared from the door for several minutes and then returned and stepped out onto the cinderblock stoop.

  “Please stay here,” whispered Clare and got out of the truck. She walked over toward the woman, stopped about five feet away, and began speaking softly. The woman responded brusquely and squinted in Dale’s direction. Clare spoke again. Dale heard only snippets of the conversation but was surprised to hear that they were speaking in Pikuni, the language of the Blackfeet.

  Finally the Blackfeet woman nodded, spoke a few syllables, and went back into her trailer. She reappeared a moment later and climbed into the ancient pickup truck.

  Clare walked back to the Land Cruiser on the driver’s side. “Do you mind if I drive for a few miles?”

  Mystified, Dale only shook his head, clambered out, and went around to the passenger side. The Blackfeet woman backed past them in a cloud of dust.

  Clare adjusted the driver’s seat and backed out, hurrying a bit to keep the woman’s pickup in sight without driving into the dust cloud the vehicle kicked up on the gravel road.

  They followed the other truck away from Heart Butte, down several crude BIA roads, along Jeep tracks, then west along another BIA road that headed off toward the foothills. They stopped several times for the older woman to get out of her truck and open stock gates. Each time, after they drove through, Clare would clamber out and close the gate behind them.

  Once a man on a roan horse stopped the pickup, spoke briefly with the driver, and then rode back to stare at Clare and Dale for a moment. The man was dressed in basic cowboy work clothes, sweat-stained hat and all, and the only hint that he was Blackfeet was the dark, wide face with deep-black eyes.

  He brusquely addressed Clare in a Pikuni dialect—Dale had heard the language used on campus by some of the Native American students and one professor, although these words sounded different somehow—and Clare answered his questions in the same language. The man finally fell silent, stared at Clare a long moment, nodded ever so slightly, wheeled his horse around, and rode away to the east.

  The pickup started up again, and the Land Cruiser followed slowly.

  Two miles further the BIA road ended. The Blackfeet woman turned her truck around and climbed down. Clare got out. Dale hesitated, wanting to speak to the other woman but not wanting to intrude on the silent scene. He stayed where he was.

  The older woman said something that sounded angry but then quickly hugged Clare, got back in her pickup, and drove away in a cloud of dust.

  Clare came back to the Land Cruiser. “We have to walk from here,” she said.

  “Where?” said Dale. He looked around. No ranch houses or trailers were in sight. Nothing man-made was visible except for a distant fence. Ridges rose higher as they ran west to the Front. The land here was high desert and grasslands blending into the forested foothills. The only road visible was the one they had come in on.

  “A mile or two,” said Clare. She squinted at the afternoon sun lowering itself toward the high peaks. “We’ll have time. Let’s use some of that backpacking equipment you have.”

  “Will you tell me what our destination is?”

  “Sure,” said Clare. She was already pulling their packs and hiking boots out of the back of the Land Cruiser. “I’d like to spend the night at a place called Ghost Ridge.”

  It began snowing in earnest the day after Thanksgiving. Dale walked for hours that day, hands deep in the pockets of his wool peacoat. He had not remembered autumns in the Midwest being so wintry.

  Duane’s farmhouse was colder after the removal of the plastic barrier at the head of the stairs. It was as if a cold wind was blowing down from the second floor—or as if the heat of formerly inhabited parts of the house was bleeding away into outer space through some hole upstairs. Dale had shivered in the study until almost 3:00 A.M. after Michelle Staffney left and then had given up and gone down to the basement to sleep. It was warm near the furnace and the glow from the furnace and the old console radio, volume set low so that the music was not much more than a whisper, lulled Dale to sleep.

  The next morning he had cleaned up the last of the clutter from their Thanksgiving dinner and then had gone upstairs. It was bitter cold there. Hesitating a second, Dale finally worked up courage to step across the threshold of the front bedroom.

  Erotic excitement hit him like a tsunami. He forced himself to stand there, just inside the doorway, letting the tide of lust flow over him.

  Dale had always thought of himself as a physical, if not overly sensual, person, but this wave of desire was pure lust—physical excitement completely removed from thoughts of romance or love or the reality of another person. Dale was bombarded with half-images of penises, breasts, vaginas, pubic hair, sweat, nipples, erections, and semen spurting; he heard the moans of passion and the whispered filthy nonsense that only the drunkenness of desire could free one to whisper. Blood flowed into his own straining erection, and his pulse pounded in his ears.

  Dale staggered out into the upper hallway, caught his breath, and went down to the relative warmth and sanity of the kitchen to recover. It took ten minutes for his body to release the coiled spring of desire.

  What the hell is going on? Dale had never heard of a psychic phenomenon consisting of a place haunted with . . . with what? Sexual stimulation. “Fucking weird,” he said aloud and had to smile at the appropriateness of that phrase.

  He went into the study to work on his novel. The screen was black except for a message on the black DOS screen.

  >The lords of right and truth are Thoth and Astes, the Lord Amentet. The Tchatcha round about Osiris are Kesta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Qebhsenuf, and they are also round about the Constellation of the Thigh in the northern sky. Those who do away utterly sins and offenses, and who are in the following of the goddess Hetepsekhus, are the god Sebek and his associates who dwell in the water.

  Dale stared at the message for a moment. Finally he typed—

  >You’re getting long-winded. What’s with this Egyptian shit? I thought you just communicated in Old English. Who the hell is this? What do you want?

  He waited, but there was no answer. Dale walked out to the kitchen, poured a glass of orange juice, and returned to the study. Only the previous lines of text glowed on the screen.

  >Fuck you and the Nile barge you rode in on, typed Dale. He turned off his computer, went back to the kitchen, pulled on his peacoat, and went out into the snow for a walk.

  The black dog was following him. Dale was about half a mile north and west of the farmhouse, walking along the line of trees toward the creek, when he looked back and saw the dog moving slowly along his trail. The heavily falling snow made it hard to see details, but it was obvious that this hound—although black with a pink patch on its muzzle—was four times the size of the little dog that he had first seen. Even more disturbing was the fact that four other black dogs—all large, but not as large as the hound in the lead—were also following his tracks in the snow.

  Dale stopped, heart pounding, and looked around for a weapon—a fallen fence post, a heavy stick, anything. Nothing came to hand.

  The hounds had stopped about forty yards away. Their coats were impossibly black against the snowy fields and falling snow.

  Dale began moving more quickly—not running for fear that he would cause the hounds to give chase, but walking in a half-jog—trying to get to the little patch of woods, where he could find a tree big enough to climb. The saplings along the fence here were far too small.

  The black dogs shuffled along be
hind him, keeping their distance but following relentlessly.

  Dale was panting when he reached the trees. He climbed the fence and moved quickly into the woods, looking for a tree with stout branches.

  What am I afraid of? Am I really going to let some stray dogs tree me way out here? He looked back through the snow and the tree trunks, saw the black dogs pausing at the point where he had entered the thin screen of trees—saw how huge the lead hound really was, larger than any rottweiler or Doberman Dale had ever seen—and realized instantly that the answer to his question was You’re damned right I am.

  Dale found a tree with branches that would hold his weight, grabbed a branch in readiness to climb, and looked back, half expecting the black hounds to be bounding into the darkness of the woods, tongues lolling, teeth bared, eyes burning red . . .

  The dogs were gone.

  Dale stood there breathing hard, swiveling, certain that the pack of wild dogs had moved to flank him somehow.

  The only sounds in the little woods were his ragged breathing and the soft fall of snow.

  He waited ten minutes—until his hands and feet were freezing and the drying sweat on his face and body had started to chill him—and then he ripped one of the stouter lower branches off and walked back the way he had come.

  The dogs were gone. But dog prints were everywhere. Ghosts and demon dogs don’t leave paw prints, he thought, and tried to smile at his own silliness. Tried and failed.

  The prints headed back toward the farm, disappearing into the falling snow.

  Dale headed east, following the ridgeline back to County 6 where it came out at Calvary Cemetery. Clambering over Mr. Johnson’s fence across the road from the cemetery, Dale saw a man moving at the far end of the graveyard.

  Give me a break, thought Dale. More ghosties. In truth, however, Dale was relieved to see someone. Perhaps the man had a car or pickup back there, obscured by the heavily falling snow.

  No tire tracks leading into the cemetery, he thought. The snow was four or five inches deep already and falling more heavily than ever.

  “Hey!” shouted Dale, waving across the black iron fence at the distant figure. “Hey there!”

  The form paused. A blank face turned Dale’s way. Even from fifty yards away, through the heavy snow, Dale could see the khaki-colored army uniform and the old-style campaign hat with its broad brim. He saw no eyes, nor any features. The distant face was a pink blob.

  The man started moving his way, but not walking—there was no gait and rise and fall of walking—but, rather, gliding—seeming to slide over and through the gray tombstones and low bushes.

  Okay, thought Dale. Fuck this. He ran and slid down the steep hill, panted up the steep rise past Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s old place, and did not stop running until he was a quarter of a mile beyond the cemetery, glancing over his shoulder the whole way. The khaki-clad figure had not pursued him.

  Dale half expected to see the black dogs waiting for him in Duane’s long driveway, but there was only snow, piling up deeper by the moment. But there were tire tracks being buried in that heavily falling snow. Dale put his hands in his peacoat pockets, tucked his chin down, and walked into the westerly wind, blinking snow out of his eyes.

  A sheriff’s car was parked in the turnaround. Sheriff C.J. Congden levered himself out of the driver’s seat and stepped out as Dale came up to the driveway. The fat man had one hand on his gunbelt and the other hand on the butt of his pistol.

  SIXTEEN

  * * *

  IT was almost dark by the time Clare and Dale set down their packs. Ghost Ridge looked like any of the other nearby ridges. A cool evening wind from the west stirred the tall grass around them.

  “Are we camping here?” asked Dale, trying to catch his breath. Even though Clare had insisted on taking the backpacking tent in her rucksack, she had set a fast pace.

  “No,” said Clare. The wind stirred her short dark hair. “This place is sacred to the Blackfeet.” She pointed to a long, narrow lake running east below the ridge. “We can camp down there as long as we move around to the other side of the lake.”

  “Why is this place sacred?” Even as he asked the question, Dale remembered her earlier comment of how almost every natural site was sacred to someone.

  “About six hundred Blackfeet died near here during the bad winter of 1883–84,” said Clare. “The tribe buried the bodies here.” She looked around, reached into her rucksack, and took out a battery-powered backpacker’s headlamp. “I can lead the way down to the lake.”

  “Wait a minute. How did you know about this place?”

  “My mother told me. She used to ride her horse here from Heart Butte when she was little.”

  “And did your mother teach you Pikuni?” asked Dale.

  Clare nodded. Dale realized that he could see her more by starlight now than by the fading twilight. She had not yet switched on the small headlamp. “My mother and I used to speak the Blackfeet language when we wanted privacy,” she said softly, her voice almost lost under the sighing of the high grass in the night breeze. “That was the older, traditional dialect that I used with Tina.”

  “Tina?”

  “The lady who led us here. Her Blackfeet name is Apik-stis-tsi-maki—Crystal Creek Woman. She used to run the I-am-skin-ni-taki before she moved to Heart Butte.”

  “I-am-skin-ni-taki,” repeated Dale. “That sounds as if it has to do with skinwalkers and tribal medicine. Was she a . . . a shaman? A holy woman?”

  “I-am-skin-ni-taki translates as ‘Cut Hair Salon,’ “ said Clare. “It’s a hairstyling place in Browning that offers skin therapy, massages, and saunas as well as cuts.”

  “How’d you know that she could speak traditional Pikuni?” asked Dale.

  “There were indications outside her house.”

  “What kind of indications?”

  “Subtle ones,” said Clare. She gestured toward the lake. “If we don’t get hiking, we’re going to be setting up the tent in absolute darkness.”

  “Okay,” said Dale, but he hesitated. “Do you want to do anything here on the ridge first?”

  “Like what?” said Clare. “Take a leak?”

  “I was thinking of a prayer or something,” said Dale. “Some sort of Blackfeet ceremony.”

  He could see Clare’s teeth flash in the starlight. She set the headlamp straps on her head and clicked on the light. “I don’t know any Blackfeet prayers,” she said, “and I’m not big on ceremony.” She began hiking down the hill.

  Dale paused in the farmhouse driveway. C.J. Congden was between him and the side door. The snow was turning into a cold rain.

  “What do you want, Congden?”

  “It’s Sheriff Congden to you, Stewart,” rasped the fat man.

  “Fine,” said Dale. “Then it’s Mr. Stewart to you, Sheriff. What do you want?”

  “I want you to get the fuck out of here.”

  Dale blinked at this. “What?”

  “You heard me. You don’t belong here, Mr. Stewart.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” said Dale, trying to be amused by this Deliverance-style dialogue.

  “Something bad’s gonna happen if you stay here.”

  “Is that a threat, Sheriff?”

  “I don’t make threats,” said Congden in a flat, almost lifeless voice. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “I’m not bothering anyone here,” said Dale, trying to keep his voice from showing the real anger he felt at this redneck talk. “Why don’t you earn your salary and find the people who let the air out of my truck tires rather than threatening law-abiding citizens?” He could hear how stilted his words sounded even as he spoke them.

  Congden stared at him through the sleeting drizzle. The brim of his Western-style hat dripped. The sheriff’s eyes were thin black slits in his fat face. “You heard me, Mr. Stewart. Get the fuck out of here before something happens.”

  “I think that the next thing to happen is me calling my lawyer about this
harassment,” said Dale. It was pure bluster. Except for a divorce lawyer he’d consulted once a year ago, Dale knew no lawyers.

  Congden turned away, lowered himself ponderously into his sheriff’s car, and drove away in the snow.

  What next? thought Dale. He went into the house, took off his soaked peacoat, boots, and socks in the kitchen, stood over the heating vent for a moment, and then went into the study to get dry clothes.

  The computer screen was still on DOS, but there was a new line of text under his “Fuck you and the Nile barge you rode in on” line.

  >He’s right, Dale. If you don’t get out of here, you’ll end up as dead as Congden.

  Dale stood staring at the two sentences. It was the first time the unknown hacker had written anything that didn’t amount to abstract drivel. Whoever was writing this shit knew who he was and where he was and that he’d just spoken to Congden.

  How? And what the hell does it mean—“. . . as dead as Congden”? Is something going to get both of us? Perhaps it was his wet feet and jeans, or perhaps it was the chill breeze sliding down the stairway from the frigid second floor, but something caused Dale to start shivering, his teeth literally chattering.

  So, do you believe in ghosts?” asked Dale about half an hour after he and Clare had crawled into their sleeping bags. They had made a quick dinner of soup, Dale had spent ten frustrating minutes trying to get the campfire lighted with old matches blowing out in the wind before Clare removed a cigarette lighter from her pocket and lighted it with one try, and—even though they’d pitched the tent in case of rain—they’d set their bags out under the stars. Wind-driven waves lapped at the shore of the small lake fifteen yards away.

  “My mother does,” said Clare. “She saw several right here at Ghost Ridge.”

  Dale looked up at the hill looming above them. The rustling grasses sounded like urgent whispers. “But do you?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Clare said softly, “but I saw one once.”