by S. T. Joshi
Frank Yellowtail mistrusted the school. Due to a couple of missing students the year before—and the director’s inability to account for them—Zia House had lost its accreditation months ago. Unfortunately, this hadn’t happened until after Julie’s advisor had signed her up, and the university didn’t give refunds. The more her uncle learned about the disappearances, the less he liked the idea of Julie being down there alone.
Even then, Cassie suspected, he’d caught a whiff of the Outside.
She had caught the same scent at that year’s work site—which was also the site of last year’s troubles. Just a small cave in the side of a wash a few miles from Chaco, but the school’s director called it a “new paradigm” in Chacoan outliers.
Within the next few days, that paradigm had claimed two lives: another student, and Daniel McAllister.
She had found McAllister’s box in the back of her Jeep while unpacking back at Twenty Mile. C. BARRETT PLEASE OPEN, it read on all four sides in black marker. Taped to the top was an envelope, also with her name on it.
Cassie had detached and hidden the envelope before carrying the box inside. Nearly a week later, she’d finally read his letter.
To Ms. Barrett, with my deepest apologies …
What followed was an account of McAllister’s unpublished discoveries during the Chaco Project—and for years afterwards, though by then he had neither the academic credentials nor the cash to travel much. During their only real conversation at Zia House, he had hinted at Southwestern links to much older myths: older than the Maya, the Olmecs, or humanity itself in North America.
Maybe on the planet.
In several heavily annotated pages, McAllister laid out the evidence behind these hints. Tunnels under kivas, and the strange metal artifacts that he’d found there. Sketches of carvings from caves—not outliers, no matter what Zia House’s director had claimed—where there should have been nothing. Inscriptions in strange, writhing glyphs, though the Anasazi were illiterate. Petroglyphs that tracked neither the sun nor the moon, but the rising of Aldebaran.
Myths from the stars. Mythic beings (gods?) from the stars, cross-referenced to texts Cassie had never heard of. At least she recognized a few names now: Yig, Tulu, Tsath-something-or-other. McAllister had included more sketches. Some resembled petroglyphs, though the articles she’d read on Southwestern rock art said such symbols could never be explained. They were mysteries, fading contacts with ancient spirituality—
What the hell?
At the bottom of the next-to-last page capered a sickeningly familiar form. Sketched from a petroglyph, it boasted an elaborate headdress of twining, writhing … feathers, she hoped. Like most Kokopelli images, this one’s instrument formed an extension of its face.
Unlike most, this extension had a life of its own, twisting away from the flutist toward a crudely indicated group of other figures. Some had two legs, most had four. All the four-leggers looked canine.
The two-leggers were cowering away. Unsuccessfully.
Kiva tunnel wall, Casa R., Chaco, McAllister’s marginal note read. Poss. plastered over after creation? Binger p. 58—Nyar’la’a?
Swearing again under her breath, Cassie laid the pages aside and opened the box. On top of a stack of field journals lay a worn manila envelope marked BINGER, WESTERN OK 1928. Inside that was a pamphlet.
An Ethnographic Analysis of Certain Events …
Her mind flashed back to that strange conversation with McAllister. He’d loaned her this monograph overnight, telling her it might explain that “outlier” where two grad students—three, by the end—had gone missing. She never had the chance to return it. In the end, she’d just stuck it in his box and tried to forget it.
She couldn’t forget her brush with what it described, though. Tsath in K’n-yan, decadent and terrible—an underground city older than humanity, populated by the degraded spawn of those beings from the stars. K’n-yan could be reached by many gates. One had been inside a mound in Binger, Oklahoma.
Another had been a few miles outside Chaco Canyon.
Cassie started flipping through the monograph. Page fifty-eight listed several “gods” worshipped in the very lowest … oldest … levels of K’n-yan. Yig Serpent-Father. Tulu, who resembled the Moche “Decapitator.” He of Tsath, a toadlike thing less revered than feared. And, near the bottom of the list, Nyar’la’a: forms unknown, possibly infinite.
Messenger of the exiled gods, the anonymous author had noted. Bringer of chaos and nightmare. Associations: ritual music, wild beasts, madness.
She read the entry over again, closed the pamphlet, and slipped it into its envelope. Then she laid the envelope on top of McAllister’s field journals, shut the box, and shoved it as far back into her closet as possible.
It was only after that that she noticed McAllister’s letter on the floor.
Wincing as her conscience bit hard, she carried it back to her desk. She did not want to finish rereading it tonight. Daniel McAllister had not filled all those pages—possibly on the last night of his life—merely to answer her questions about Southwestern mythology.
He had done it because he had no one else to tell. No one else who shared his experiences with the Outside.
Nobody but the director of Zia House, who had embraced it and been destroyed.
Now the Outside might be sniffing around Twenty Mile again, and she didn’t want to think about it. Better to keep on believing that her nightmares (and Frank’s?) were random nuisances. PIPER WITH A PURPOSE was just another charity project selling Southwestern gifts—
A project out of the Four Corners area. Kokopelli country.
Nyar’la’a.
She didn’t even know how to pronounce it, but the word made her skin crawl. Switching on her desk lamp, Cassie turned to the conclusion of McAllister’s letter.
Well, Ms. Barrett, that’s the worst of it, at least as much as I dare put down. I hope you’ll find this useful. I hope even more that you’ll never have to, but there are plenty of Magda Hudsons in this world.
She bit her lip. Dr. Hudson was the reason McAllister was dead now. Hudson and her brand-new Chacoan paradigm.
Once you’ve seen these things for what they are, you can’t ever look away. At least I couldn’t. The world we think we live in now is just a skin—a modern skin—and every so often something else breaks through. Something too ancient to care about us monkeys, even if it bothers to notice us in the first place. Better it doesn’t.
I doubt I’ll be writing more field journals after tonight, so I’m handing these on. Read them or burn them, but for God’s sake don’t publish.
His signature was a ragged scrawl. After a few moments, Cassie folded the pages back into their envelope, then shoved the envelope behind the bookcase next to her desk.
But not so far she couldn’t reach it again.
* * *
This time, there was no moon at all in her darkness. No suppurating sores of stars. There was only the glow of a newly kindled campfire, barely reaching the blackened walls of the cave she stood in.
Even so, pale images were beginning to manifest themselves from those walls. Ragged and primal, more ominous than she had ever imagined petroglyphs could be, they danced in the air for a moment before beginning their slow spiral upwards.
As the flames below leaped to meet them, a too-familiar wailing began.
Pipers all, the maddening notes of these figures rose as they did—swirled as they did, higher and higher, toward some unseen point overhead. Each figure was uniquely malformed. Some capered on two legs only, some locust-like on six, others on writhing tangles of lines. Almost all were hunchbacked. Their instruments—less pipes than appendages—elongated and curled in the firelight, driving her into shadows.
As they reached the very top of the cave, the pale figures began to converge. Writhing limbs wound themselves around and through each other. Headdresses intertwined. The humps and bulges of a dozen bent spines deformed even further, curving as one.
Instead, its very darkness diminished all light.
The music of its single pipe rose wilder than ever. Somewhere outside, a multitude of canine throats answered. The cave entrance, which had seemed desperately far away before, now felt all too near … too full of unblinking eyes and crouching furred bodies. Belly-crawling like fearful pups, they pressed past her in the shadows, converging at the feet of—
Aroo! Aroo!
Jupe’s voice and Juno’s frantic tongue woke Cassie almost simultaneously. Reaching out at random, she grabbed Juno’s neck and held on as she shook off the dream. Jupe stayed bristling by her second-floor window, howling from the depths of his heart at something outside.
Cassie bit her lip. Releasing her grip on Juno’s ruff, she reached one hand under her bed.
The .44’s snub nose caught on the carpet for one heart-stopped second, then came away clean. Swinging the heavy pistol onto her quilt, Cassie took several long breaths before getting to her feet and cocking the hammer back. Only then did she tiptoe toward the window, terrified and curious.
Jupe was quiet now, but he hadn’t backed off and his hackles were still high. Parting the curtains, Cassie looked down.
The yellow eyes of a coyote stared back.
* * *
Wrapping her hands around her third mug of coffee that morning, Cassie slumped in her desk chair, staring at the e-mail on her screen. Julie Valdez hadn’t wasted any time responding to the questions she’d sent last night.
Strange you should mention PWP up in Sheridan. We lost a lecturer to them just this past summer—she’d only been with the dept. 3 semesters. Tenure-track, too, but she got recruited and off she went. Said she wanted to do more for her people. Not sure whose rolls she was on, but it must have meant a lot to her. PWP wasn’t offering squat for pay.
Like her uncle, Julie didn’t mince words.
She said she’d been hired as a creative director, whatever that means for nonprofits. She was interested in rock art—did a lot of documentation and photography between semesters. Maybe PWP wanted some fresh designs?
I’m not sure what she’s doing up your way now. Nobody here’s heard from her for a couple of months.
Cassie’s coffee turned to acid in her stomach. Relax, she told herself. Quit looking for trouble between the lines.
Still, she scrolled quickly.
I never met the guy who recruited her, but he must have been some salesman. The dept. secretary said he blew in like something out of a Hillerman novel—definitely on the rolls—and claimed he had an appointment. Went up to her office, talked to her for maybe thirty minutes, left whistling. She handed her resignation next day and was gone by the weekend. Didn’t even finish out summer session!
I was pissed at her at the time—had to cover one of her classes—but later I got worried. She was always pretty passionate about her work, but that was it. Never drank, never partied. No boyfriend. I finally asked around the dept. until I got her address—a Sheridan P.O. box. No e-mail, even though she had a laptop.
I wrote her a couple of times, asking how the program was treating her. Got one reply on a postcard, then nothing.
Sorry I can’t help more. Keep me posted, OK? PWP doesn’t sound like a bad program, but I’m not sure what might be going on with this gal. Who knows, maybe she’s the director there now. If you’re thinking about volunteering, here’s her name and address. Good luck!
Cassie took a long sip of lukewarm coffee. Then she wrote the name Julie had provided at the bottom of the PIPER WITH A PURPOSE flier and slipped it into her back pocket.
How do I not need this? Let me count the ways—
But first, she had a call to make.
* * *
It took some doing to get away from Twenty Mile unnoticed. Cassie didn’t want to lie to Frank: lying to your foreman was a bad idea, and he’d always been able to read her way too easily. Still, it might be better for all concerned (including Julie) if he didn’t find out about her going out to PWP—not until she’d started volunteering there.
After that, she hoped he’d understand for the sake of charity. Or curiosity.
Or frostbite.
The wind was screaming by the time she found the turnoff to the workshop. Grabbing the wheel whenever her old Wagoneer caught a gust, she bumped along nearly a mile of dirt track before reaching the site. Aside from another orange and turquoise Kokopelli—on a sign about twelve feet high—it was an unimpressive place, all prefab and trailers. The main facility might have been a tech school once. Several aging double-wides clustered nearby were probably PWP housing assistance.
Despite the weather, a couple of people in heavy jackets sat on the front steps of one of these. When she pulled up to the main building, they disappeared inside.
The brown paper bag they’d been sharing remained behind.
Cassie tried not to notice, though she locked her vehicle before heading inside. The wind nearly tore the front door from her hands—and once she’d gotten it shut, she wondered why she’d bothered. Heat didn’t seem to be a high priority. She guessed they were using propane and hoped to God that their system was maintained better than the rest of the place.
Plywood panels, more or less painted, divided the building’s cavernous interior. The front section was office space. From the back came voices and intermittent noise from equipment, manufacturing or maybe packaging. Whatever it was, she wished she had earplugs.
“Need some help?”
A teenage girl edged around the nearest partition. She looked Native American or possibly Hispanic, rail-thin and very tired. Her grubby sweatshirt and jeans hung from her body.
“I’ve got an appointment to see your director about volunteering,” Cassie said. “For four o’clock, but I think I’m a little early.”
The girl stared at Cassie for a moment. Then she pointed down the hall (or what passed for one) with a skinny finger.
“Second from the back.”
Before Cassie could thank her, she ducked back into her cubicle. Smoke from a freshly lit cigarette rose from behind the plywood. Mentally shaking her head, Cassie headed toward the back, noticing as she did so that some of the partitions featured artwork. Most of it was spray-painted, with or without stencils.
Rock art images. Some she’d never seen in any archaeology magazine.
Lots and lots of very strange pipers.
She started averting her eyes, though she knew this was stupid. Sure, a few looked too much like McAllister’s sketches, but his had depicted actual rock art. Maybe workshop artists had been practicing newly discovered designs on the walls here. Julie’s missing lecturer might have supplied a few.
The second cubicle from the back had an actual door. Cassie hesitated, then knocked.
Strains of a solo wooden flute drifted out to her.
“Come in.”
It was a male voice, well-educated and bland. Professionally bland. She pushed the door open to reveal a fully office-sized space, with Navajo rugs covering most of the cement floor. All the walls here were white, more or less. There were only a couple of bookcases, mostly empty aside from what looked like Anasazi artifacts and the CD player emitting the Native American music.
The desk itself sat far to the back in one corner. Like the door, it bore no nameplate—only a cardboard tent with MARCUS GRAY in felt-tip marker. An elaborately carved and feathered flute on a stand completed the desktop décor.
“Ms. Barrett?”
Cassie nodded and took the folding chair in front of the desk. The man watching her reeked of Sixties-era social worker. Even in corduroy jeans and a sweater, she felt overdressed.
“I understand you’re interested in volunteering for the holiday season?” When Cassie nodded, he drew a yellow pad toward him and began making notes. “Have you done community service work be
fore?”
“Not since Girl Scout cookies.”
Gray didn’t react. Perfect non-judgmental mode. “How did you happen to hear of Piper With a Purpose?”
She described the flier, willing her hands not to clench in her lap. “I’m intrigued by Southwestern archaeology,” she added. “Especially rock art.”
Was that a flicker of interest in those faded eyes?
“This workshop is primarily about helping people in the present—answering the needs of the community. Helping our clients make better life choices. Most know nothing about the cultural symbols we use, though many of them come from that culture.”
Not up here in Wyoming, I’m guessing.
“However, we do encourage them to explore spiritually.” He reached out a hand to the feathered flute. “There’s an incredible richness in these ancient cultures. The designs we use help to promote that, bring it into modern awareness.”
One finger stroked a feather. “I think our clients are better for it.”
The back of Cassie’s neck prickled. If she’d learned anything about the Outside, it was that some ancient cultures should stay buried.
“They certainly seem interested,” she finally said. “The wall murals I saw on the way to your office … I’ve never seen anything quite like them.”
Not since my last nightmare, anyhow.
Marcus Gray brightened. “We’re proud of those designs. All authentic—though you won’t find some of them in the standard texts. They’re recent discoveries from sites very much off the beaten path.”
The folded flier in Cassie’s pocket crackled as she leaned forward. Now or never.
“I heard you hired a creative director some time back. I’m assuming she contributed some of those designs?”
Gray’s hand froze on the feathers.
“Dr. Lyn Trujillo, from the University of New Mexico.” Cassie’s throat tightened. “She’s a friend of a friend. From what I hear, you were lucky to recruit her.”
