Ararat

by Christopher Golden

  But she couldn’t go back to sleep.

  A flutter touched her heart. Not excitement and not that old itch. This was something unfamiliar and uneasy. She felt a kind of pressure against her back—not a physical weight, but the weight of regard, the sense that someone must be there, just behind her. Her heart quickened and she swallowed hard, flooded with the sudden certainty that someone was there, very close now. Looming.

  There. Was that the rustle of clothing or just someone shifting in their sleep? And that breathing … had it moved closer? Had it deepened?

  Long seconds passed as Helen lay there and listened. She felt too warm, suddenly, only her face exposed. The sense of not being alone did not abate at all, but as the moments ticked by she began to recognize the absurdity of her fear. There were people only six feet away, and others beyond them. If some creepy bugger wanted to watch her sleep, she had only to turn and confront him. It was almost guaranteed to be a him, after all. Some men seemed to have a certain setting, a switch on their dial, that women hardly ever managed.

  All right. Enough of this.

  With a quick snicker of disdain at her childish fear, she began to roll over.

  The first blow struck her nose, shooting a wave of obliterating pain through her face, enough to make her gasp and then hold her breath as the figure looming above took a fistful of her hair, yanked tight, and struck again. The second blow made her whimper, and she sucked in air, disoriented but not enough to blot out her anger and fear. She opened her mouth to scream and the third blow hit her in the temple hard enough to make the edges of her vision go black. So did the fourth. And the fifth.

  If a sixth blow fell, Helen didn’t feel it.

  Darkness. A pulsing, aching, throbbing darkness that resembled the cradle of sleep in the same way that screaming resembled laughter. Awareness crept back in fits and starts and then she realized she was being tugged along, dragged along the snowy timbers in her sleeping bag. The only noise her abduction had made was a quiet shushing sound, and for a dozen long seconds, Helen could do nothing but blink and listen to that soft, lovely noise. The whisper of brutality. Of capture.

  She blinked, wondering where her attacker hoped to take her. There was nowhere to go.

  Snow whipped at her face, icy pinpricks on her bleeding, swelling flesh. The pain exploded in a brilliant flare and she thought her cheek must be broken, maybe the orbit around her right eye. The wind buffeted the sleeping bag and her blurred thoughts began to clear and quicken. She tried to twist herself inside the sleeping bag, tried to wrest her arms free, and her attacker picked up the pace.

  “Stop,” she rasped, her voice weakened by the beating she’d taken and stolen by the wind. The pain in her broken face exploded again, bursts of brightly colored agony like fireworks in her brain. “Someone…”

  From the corner of her eye, in the strange blue-white darkness of the storm, she saw a body on the ground. Darvill, one of her students. The long, thin limbs and shaggy beard were unmistakable, so she recognized him instantly. He’d been on sentry duty tonight.

  If her brains hadn’t been scrambled by those punishing blows, she’d have sorted it out more swiftly. But now she knew.

  Momentum picked up, and then she was sliding sideways, shushing against the snow until the swing lifted her entirely off the ground. Helen felt a moment of weightlessness as she sucked in a lungful of air.

  As she plummeted over the edge, she screamed at last.

  Too late.

  TWELVE

  Walker stands on the shore of the lake with an AR-15 in his hands, scanning the misty surface of the water. It ripples with a light breeze and he holds his breath, watching each tiny wave. The water is always warm, though the air is chilly. They are atop a volcanic mountain in Guatemala, three thousand meters above sea level, and the lagoon is an idyllic paradise of water and jungle born inside a volcanic crater. The mist atop the water might very well be steam. Walker hasn’t clarified that with his geologist yet. He’s been more focused on talking to the biologist about the things that have been slithering out at night and dragging the locals into the lake.

  Witnesses describe them as nightmares. Serpentine bodies, long arms, hooked talons, and the teeth. All who’ve seen them mention the teeth.

  Those they’ve taken eventually wash up on the shore of the lake, pale and bloated and drained of blood. The word “vampire” has come up several times, but Walker has laid down the law. Anyone who uses the word again is off his team, permanently. So they don’t speak the word anymore, but he can’t banish it from their minds. Only capturing or killing one of these fucking things will do that. Capture will be better. A previously unknown species showing up in such a remote location is a fascinating anomaly, and there will be a long study to determine their origin. His best guess is from inside the volcano itself, that the water goes deeper than anyone knew, through some kind of crack in the lake bottom. But none of that matters right now. Not when they’ve already killed three members of his team.

  It’s nearly dawn. He whispers the names of members of his team who began this long night at his side but whom he has not seen for hours. As far as he knows, he is alone. So the chill of the night breeze and the mist off the lake makes him think of lonely nights afraid in his boyhood bed, when his father would insist that only babies needed their mommies in the middle of the night. Dreams were just dreams and he needed to grow up.

  He’s nearly been killed seven times in his career. Walker is not afraid. Despite the chill and the mist and the fact that his team has vanished and he is alone, he is not afraid. But little Ben—his mom had called him Benny—that boy is terrified. Every breath he takes seems to have its own claws, and they drag inside his chest and cut him up with fear.

  “Anyone?” he offers up to the predawn mist, and he hates how pitiful he sounds.

  A splash out on the lake makes him freeze. Squinting to see through the mist, he takes a step into the water. Only ankle-deep, it’s too shallow for them to hide, but still his pulse quickens. The darkness has turned that shimmering blue that exists only in the hour before dawn.

  The mist eddies and begins to thin, just enough for him to make out an object on the surface of the lake.

  He narrows his eyes, shuddering as he makes out the shape of it.

  Not an object at all, it’s a head, just barely above the surface.

  A face, eyes glistening in the mist.

  Human.

  The curtain of mist draws back and in that blue darkness, Walker can’t take his eyes off of that face.

  “No,” he whispers, and he takes another step into the water, heedless now of the danger.

  He’s been holding off, not wanting to draw their attention, but now he clicks on the light attached to his weapon, and the tight, powerful beam finds that face. The eyes blink, but the fear in those eyes … etched in that face … the sight of that fear just about kills him.

  “Daddy?” Llittle Charlie calls to him, his voice slithering across the water.

  Little Charlie. Like Little Benny. Two little boys, filled with fear.

  “It’s got me, Daddy,” Charlie says, his voice a hitching whimper. “I can feel it down there, holding on. My legs are cut. It’s got … I think it’s got its teeth in me.”

  Walker wants to scream his son’s name but the sound won’t come out. He feels as if he’s turned to stone, but still he forces himself to move another step, the beam of light from his weapon trained on Charlie’s face … his weapon beamed on Charlie’s face.

  The boy whimpers again and then he jerks in the water, causing a little splash, like something has tugged him from below. He calls out for his father again and now Walker can see the tears on his cheeks. Worse than the tears, worse than the fear, he watches the spark of hope extinguish in his son’s eyes. This little boy, only nine, knows he is going to die now.

  That he is dying at this very moment.

  “I love you, Daddy,” Charlie whispers, the words gliding along the water’s surfac
e.

  But Walker doesn’t hear “I love you.” He hears “good-bye.”

  And it breaks him.

  “Charlie, no!” he snaps, and he wades into the water.

  Wades deep. Not caring what might happen to him or what’s happened to his team or the villagers. This is his son. The good thing he’s done, the gift he’s given the world that is meant to survive long after he’s gone.

  He screams now.

  A hand rises, dripping, from the water, and long fingers wrap around Charlie’s face. Walker can only see one of his eyes now, as Charlie begins to scream. The hand drags him down so slowly that the boy has time to call for his daddy one last time before the water enters his wide-open mouth and he is choking on it, drowning, just the top of his head and that eye and that horrid hand on him.

  The thing rises up from the lake even as it drowns the boy. Its eyes glitter like cold orange embers. This is not the same as the monsters in the water. This is something else.… something worse.

  Through the mist, Walker can see its horns.…

  He woke sweating, despite the cold. Woke with a shout that startled Father Cornelius, who lay on the other side of the tent. Woke swearing, and then rolled over onto his side, legs pulled up tight against his body.

  Walker whispered his son’s name once, twice, and again, grateful to whatever gods there were that the boy was safe at home and not here with him. Not in the ark with the horned thing that had invaded his dreams.

  Somehow it had infiltrated Walker’s mind, and he’d felt it there, even while he was sleeping. It knew him now and he knew at least a tiny sliver of it. He’d felt its evil, and no matter what happened, he could not let it get down off the mountain. The evil had been unearthed, but it could be contained.

  He lay for a time in that post-nightmare panic, ruminating on these thoughts until they came to seem awkward, even ridiculous. When at last he drifted off again, in that last hour before sunrise, Walker had convinced himself not to let fear make a fool of him. Though his determination wavered, he could not erase the certainty that the demon was somehow awake and aware, that it knew they were there. That it wanted them there.

  * * *

  Morning crept into the cave with a gray sprawl of daylight. Sometime during the night, the snow had stopped falling … at least for a little while. Word of the vanished staff members had spread quickly. Helen Marshall’s team gathered in a private mourning circle beside the section of level one where they’d spent the past several days taking samples and preserving remains. They talked among themselves, wary of being overheard, and when Meryam passed by, she noticed that they fell silent and some glanced guiltily away, and she knew then that they were considering abandoning KHAP altogether.

  Now she stood all the way in the back of level two, near the ladder that went down to the corner where the horned cadaver lay inside its tent, dead thousands of years, but still affecting the nerves and thoughts and behavior of everyone around it.

  “I’m tempted to just set the thing on fire and be done with it,” she said.

  Adam held up a hand. “Now hang on—”

  “I said I was tempted, love. I’m not going to do it.” She rolled her eyes, shook her head, stared at each of the men around her in turn. Adam, the man she loved. Ben Walker, whom she’d welcomed but now wished was anywhere but here. Hakan, who hated her.

  “I just wish it wasn’t part of the conversation,” she said. “If you’d told me we’d find a dead bloke with horns I’d have thrown a party. When we first opened up the coffin I felt almost giddy. That footage is gold for the documentary, but now every single thing that goes wrong gets blamed on us having a bloody demon in our midst.”

  Adam leaned against the dry timber wall. “It’s not a goddamn—”

  “I know it’s not a demon!” she snapped. “But try convincing all these superstitious twats…”

  She froze. Beyond Hakan, just at the edge of the passage that had brought them to this corner, someone stood eavesdropping. She spotted his shadow on the far wall, thrown by the bright work light just above her head.

  “Oh, you little bastard,” she hissed, storming past Hakan.

  The shadow moved, squeaked like a mouse, but it was too late for him to run so he stepped out into the open. Olivieri, cheeks flushed with the cold and with guilt.

  “Fuck off,” Meryam said, biting off the words.

  “I—”

  “I’m not joking, Armando,” she said. “Fuck off out of here right now. You weren’t invited to this meeting. You know we came back here to speak privately or you wouldn’t be eavesdropping.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  Meryam put a hand on his chest and shoved gently but firmly, walking him backward several steps to get him going. He used the momentum to turn and head back down the passage.

  “I ought to be included in this,” Olivieri said. “All of the senior staff should be. I don’t know why Dr. Walker is here and—”

  “Dr. Walker has a history of dealing with ugly shit and I wanted him here,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”

  But she didn’t need to say any more. Olivieri was leaving.

  Meryam turned and walked quietly back to the ladder, gazing a moment at the shadowy opening that led down to level one. To the box and the horned thing.

  “What about my history?” Walker asked.

  She studied his face. A thin scar creased the left side of his forehead and he bore several smaller ones on the right side of his neck. His eyes, though, were the real evidence of just how much darkness and trouble he’d seen.

  Meryam sniffed. “Adam’s here because he’s my partner. Hakan’s here because he’s foreman. If I’d wanted someone in this little conference because of politics, I’d have Kim and Mr. Avci. When they were clearing you to come here, I studied up on you a bit. You’ve been in some tight spots, and though I don’t understand who you really are or what you really do for the National Science Foundation, what information I found suggests you’re capable of handling yourself pretty well when things go tits up.”

  “So you’re saying you want my perspective?” Walker asked.

  Meryam felt her anger at Olivieri abating. The cold settled into her again. The bright work light did nothing to make her feel more alert, more like morning had come. It still felt like midnight to her, like she hadn’t slept in months and the shadows were closing in.

  “Yes, Dr. Walker. That’s what I’m saying.” Her skull ached.

  Walker rubbed at the dark circles under his eyes. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping, either.

  “You had two men go missing night before last,” he said, looking pointedly at Hakan. “One of them is a guide, skilled enough to get down the mountain even with snow falling. The blizzard that’s been forecast isn’t here yet, so I was willing to go along with that theory. It made sense, to a degree. You have a lot of frustrated people working for you right now. But now two more people? A middle-aged archaeologist and one of her students, neither with a lot of climbing experience?”

  The ladder drew her gaze again and Meryam forced herself to look away.

  She turned to Hakan. “Could they do it?”

  Hakan fell back on old habits, averting his gaze. He focused on Adam almost as if he wanted to wait for permission to reply. And what the hell was that about?

  “It’s possible,” Hakan said, nodding slowly. But then he ticked his gaze toward her, eyes narrowed, full of dark wisdom. “But you know they didn’t.”

  Meryam flinched. “What are you saying?”

  Hakan’s nostrils flared. He studied her with that familiar distaste. “You are not a stupid woman, no matter how hard you seem to be working to prove otherwise. Professor Marshall showed no hostility toward your leadership and no fear of dead things.”

  “I agree,” Adam said quietly. For the first time, Meryam noted the absence of his camera. “These people didn’t leave. There aren’t any demons here, but that doesn’t mean we’re not dealing with a monster. Maybe mor
e than one.”

  Walker moved to the ladder, put a hand on it, and gazed down into the darkness. They all watched him. Meryam saw the tension coiled inside him and felt it in herself, the urge to run or scream or fight.

  “Murder,” she said. “That’s what we’re saying.”

  “Yes,” Hakan replied. “It can be nothing else.”

  “Murder, yeah,” Ben agreed, glancing around to be sure there were no more eavesdroppers. “And sabotage.”

  Meryam felt her hands trembling. Her face flushed with heat.

  “Hakan, tell Patil to put together whatever tools he needs, then get a few of Helen’s students—the ones who can function—and meet me back at the box.”

  “Hang on,” Walker began.

  She ignored him. “Adam, make sure Zeybekci and Avci know what we’re up to. You might as well tell Olivieri, too. And you and Calliope bring your damn cameras. We’ve wasted enough time.”

  Walker held up a hand. “Meryam—”

  “You have no standing here, Dr. Walker. If you and the priest want to be there when we do this, I’m okay with that as long as you stay out of the way. But if I don’t get that fucking demon out of the cave and away from these people, this project is going to unravel entirely.”

  Hakan and Adam nodded.

  “Got it,” Adam said.

  They began to move away.

  “Gentlemen,” Walker said, “just one thing? Watch your backs. From now on, nobody should be running around alone in here. Even after we get rid of the cadaver, we’ve still got a real monster to deal with.”

  Meryam stepped onto the ladder and started down.

  “One monster at a time.”

  * * *

  The plastic tenting around the coffin had been dismantled. Bright lights illuminated the horned thing, a buttery yellow glow that cast haunted gray shadows in strange patterns on its withered remains and on the wall and floor around its box. Walker stayed out of the way as best he could, knowing that if anyone stumbled over him, Meryam would be within her rights to order him away.