"I'd already decided not to go down," Garden admitted sheepishly. "I was getting ready to put my stuff away yhen you guys showed up."
The day was starting to fade. Afternoon was giving way to twilight, and a portion of the sun had dropped below the western hills. The sky above was still light, but a large section of the western shore and surrounding countryside had been thrown into shadow. Through the half gloom came the two Walkers, not slowing because of the incline, not sliding on the sand, but marching relentlessly, surefootedly, toward the water.
Miles heard Janet's frightened, exaggerated breathing next to him, but other than that the three of them were silent, and they watched the corpses--a man and a woman" head straight into the lake.
"Why are they going down there?" Janet asked. "what do you think they're doing?"
"Walking," Garden said. z97
The three of them carried Garden's satchel, sleeping bag and diving equipment back to his Jeep. Another Walker was already heading down the road toward the parking lot.
"You still planning to sleep out here tonight?" Miles asked, putting down the sleeping bag.
"Not next to the water, but yeah." He gestured. "Near the picnic tables probably. What about you?"
"I guess. There don't seem to be any hotels around here."
"I suggest we stay together," Janet said. "I don't think we should separate. Not at night."
"Circle the wagons," Miles said, nodding.
They discussed the sleeping arrangements and other practical considerations, trying to stay away from the real subject, the fact that they had no idea what to do and were simply hanging around pointlessly, waiting for something to happen.
Just before dark the last of the Walkers came striding through the small parking lot.
Bob.
The succession of feelings that passed through Miles made him feel like a frightened child----only he had never experienced anything this intensely as a child. He stood there, stunned into inaction, watching as his dad, the man who had brought him up, the man who had shaped him into the person he was today, the man who had lived with him all those years, brushed against a cactus, stepped on sagebrush. "Dad!" he called. I
His father did not turn his head, did not pause in his walking, but continued forward, down the slope, into the water, until the water was up to his knees, his chest, his neck. He did not float, did not swim, but appeared to be anchored to the muddy lake floor as he walked.
A moment later, there was no trace of him left.
He was gone, but Miles stared at the spot where he had disappeared into the lake, and he continued to stare until the
day's light was completely gone and the skY was as black as the water.
Greg Rossiter took the week's worth of vacation days he had coming to him and flew to Phoenix
He knew it was wrong, knew it was stupid, knew that in his current position he could not afford to be a hot dogger anymore, that he had to be a team player. But old habits died hard, and he had not gotten where he was by playing by the rules.
He had gotten where he was by ignoring them.
he would once again be the one to crack this thing wide open, would be able to claim all the credit for himself, and would doubtlessly take yet another step up the Bureau ladder.
But what was this case?
He didn't know. Not exactly. A man in Utah had become a reanimated corpse, an Interior Department undersecretary had been murdered by some type of monster in his own garage--and forty years ago, government engineers had flooded a town of witches after constructing a damn.
Whatever it was, it was big. Not as big as what had happened in Rio Verde maybe, but plenty big enough, and if what he'd gathered from reading between the lines of McCormack's secret re oort was true, things might be coming to a head
He approached the dam from the south, passing through Rio Verde. It brought back memories not all of them good ones, and as he drove by the Chinese restaurant on his way toward the center of town, he considered stopping by the police station, dropping in on his old pal Sheriff Carter for a surprise visit. Rossiter smiled to himself. Such a tweaking would be fun--he knew Carter had no desire to see him ever again--but as much as he would like to hang around and annoy that fat bastard, he had to get to the lake. He had no idea if anything was happening there, or if it was, whether he was late or early for the fireworks, but he needed to go there first and assess the situation.
Maybe on the way back.
Outside Rio Verde the highway followed the river, and twenty miles north the road split, one heading through the desert toward New Mexico, the other winding up a series of plateaus and bluffs to the lake. The road curved around a cliff face, then narrowed to a single lane as it crossed the dam. His was the only car, and Rossiter drove carefully, aware of the inadequate railing that separated him from the water to his right and a precipitous drop to his left. On the other side of the dam, the road was dirt, and it ended at an empty gravel parking area ringed by warped and weathered picnic tables.
He got out of the car, stretching, and walked to the edge of the lake, looking back toward the dam, up the shore, then across the water.
He didn't know what he had expected to see, but he had expected.." something.
Rossiter stared out at the desert. There were no cars, no people, no vampires, nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. The late afternoon air was silent save for a whooshing rumble coming from the base of the dam where water was released into the Rio Verde.
God, he'd grown to hate this state in the years he'd been
assigned here. And two terms in D.C. had not lessened his antipathy one whit. Who the fuck would live in such a hell hole other than moronic rednecks and inbred hillbillies?
He sighed. He'd start at the dam and work his way around.
Already he was beginning to think that he'd made a mistake and acted too rashly. There was no reason for him to have come. Even if there was some sort of power in this place, he couldn't hope to exorcise it just by showing up.
The supernatural wasn't some trained monkey, jumping through hoops on his timetable, showing its face when it was convenient for him.
There was nothing to do about it, though, except continue on as planned, and he looked back at the dam, then started walking along the shore, wishing he had brought some tennis shoes.
At night, low whispers.
Miles recognized the Soft susurration, the barely audible noises he had heard in the house the night before his father had returned from the hospital. The sounds had scared him then, and he was even more frightened now. Everyone else was asleep--Garden in his sleeping bag on the ground, Janet in the backseat of the car--and Miles wanted to wake one of them, wanted someone else to hear this, wanted some sort of verification that it was not all in his mind, but he did not know either of them well enough to impose on in such a manner, and the truth was that he would have felt stupid waking them up merely because he was afraid of some noises. "
The noises were spooky, though, particularly under these circumstances, and somehow he doubted that either Garden or Janet would blame him for wanting company.
He stared into the night sky. The whispers were all around
him, coming from behind the tree, up on the rocks, from the black surface of the lake itself. As before, he thought he could make out words, names: "May. Lizabeth."
He was lying atop the picnic table, Garden's jacket wadded up under his head for a pillow, a dirty blanket from the back of the Jeep wrapped around him, mummy-like, against the surprisingly cold night chill.
"May." ..... What could it be? He didn't know and he didn't want to know. It was what he'd come here for, the reason they'd all been drawn to Wolf Canyon, but now that he was here, now that the answers for which he'd been searching were making themselves known, he realized that he didn't really want them.
"May," the whispers said, and there were other unintelligible words mixed in, backing it up. "May... Lizabeth... Lizabeth May..."
He would be
less afraid if Garden or Janet were awake, but he still would not allow himself to cave in and rouse them. Instead, he closed his eyes, rolled onto his side, pulled e dirty blanket above his ears and softly hummed to himself in order to shut out the sounds.
It took awhile, but focusing on not hearing the whispers eventually tired him out. He fell asleep. He dreamed.
He'was back in Los Angeles, at Dodger Stadium, in the middle of the night. The place was empty, all halogens turned off, only the muted glow of city lights under orange-tinged smog offering any illumination whatsoever.
In the parking lot of the stadium was a small plywood shack, a makeshift home made from discarded construction materials. A man stood in the darkness of the shack's open doorway, an old man dressed in chaps and the dusty clothes of a western pioneer. He was smoking silently, and there
was something ominous about the way only his arm moved to bring the cigarette to and from his lips while the rest of his body remained as immobile as a marble statue.
The old man tossed his cigarette into the parking lot, turned, and walked into the gloom. Miles understood that he was to follow. He did not want to do so, was afraid of the man and the shack and the darkness, but he had no willpower of his own, and he obediently fell in step behind the retreating figure.
Inside, the shack was big, much larger than was possible given the confines of its outer structure. The old man led him through a debris-filled room to a table atop which was a lit kerosene lamp and a woman's head in a clear cookie jar. Sliced fruit lay at the bottom of the glass container-oranges, peaches, pears-and the head rested upon the slices, bloodless tendons and string-like veins hanging over the clean edges of the skinless fruit. The man picked up an old rusty spoon and used it to sprinkle sugar into the jar from one of two small saucers on the table. He put in another spoonful of mint leaves from the other saucer, and turned to Miles. "It keeps the head fresh," he explained. His voice was high and cracked, not at all what Miles would have expected. Miles nodded, not knowing how else to respond.
The man picked up the kerosene lamp, walking through another open doorway into a room that looked nearly as big as Dodger Stadium itself.
The flickering light illuminated only the small area immediately surrounding them. Strewn about the dirt floor were naked porcelain dolls with painted breasts and pubic hair. Miles followed the old cowboy past the dolls, stopping before a massive opening in the earth.
Wide enough to fit a car in lengthwise, the pit descended into an inky blackness deeper than any he had ever seen.
"I dug this hole," the old man confided. "It leads to China.
"What did you dig it with?" Miles asked him.
"My mint spoon." Where did you get the spoon? "A dwarf gave it to me."
The conversation seemed nonsensical to him, but there seemed to be real significance beneath its lack of literal meaning. Miles nodded sagely as if this was what he'd expected to hear.
The old man put a cold hand on Miles' shoulder. He pressed his face close, and Miles could smell tobacco and coffee and something else, something sweet and not at all pleasant.
'that's where I put her body," the man said. "When the head's ready, it'll go in, too."
Miles awoke with the dawn, and he sat up, the chill of night already dissipating before the warm rays of the rising sun. Janet and Garden were still asleep, and he quietly pulled off his blanket, sat up, and stepped off the picnic table onto the hard ground
The desert was beautiful in the morning. The monochromatic flatness that would overtake the surrounding land later in the day had not yet arrived, and the rocky hills and cliffs were bathed in sunrise orange, their clefts and indentations shadowed. Tall saguaros, arms upraised and outstretched, stood like surrendering soldiers between the boulders. The sky was cloudless and deep, its gradation of colors spanning the spectrum from orange in the east to purple in the west.
Above the top of the nearest butte, a lone hawk circled lazily in the sky.
The lake itself was black.
It was a trick of the light--it had to be--but the effect was nonetheless disturbing, and Miles was grateful to hear the sound of the car door open behind him as Janet got out and stretched.
Garden emerged from his sleeping bag, awakened by the
slamming of the door, and the three of them looked awkwardly at one another, not sure what to say.
"Anyone bring any food?" Miles asked.
Garden nodded. "I have some Pop-Tarts in the Jeep. Blueberry. Hope you all like them, because it's a long drive to the nearest Denny's."
Miles and Janet waited while he dug through the jumbled mess in the back of his vehicle and pulled out a Pop Tarts box.
The three of them stared out at the lake as they ate. "Any--" Janet cleared her throat. "Any new ones come in the middle of the night?
Walkers?"
Garden shook his head. "Not that I heard."
"If they did," Miles agreed, "we all slept. Silence.
They finished eating. "So what do we do?" Janet asked finally, robbing the crumbs off her hands.
"I don't know," Miles admitted. The problem is, we don't even know what's really wrong. I mean, maybe nothing'll even come of this.
Obviously, people have been homing back here for years, decades even.
Who's to say that it means anything, that something bad's going to come of it?"
"Because," Garden said, squinting at him, "I feel it. And I'll bet you do, too."
He did, and Miles nodded reluctantly. There was a feeling here, an unnamed sense of foreboding that was like a great weight pressing against him. He had not examined it closely, but it was something he'd experienced ever since arriving at the lake, and he realized finally that he did have a plan: wait for something to happen and then react to it.
But what made him think that he--that, any of them could react effectively? Nothing.
All he knew was that they had to try.
"Miles?" Janet said, and he heard a hint of worry in her
voice. He looked over at her, then followed the line of her gaze. A man was walking along the shoreline, an inappropriately dressed man wearing what looked like the black slacks and white shirt of a standard-issue business suit. The dark shades he had on gave him the appearance of a Secret Service agent, and the incongruity of his appearance set off a red flag in Miles' mind. Something about the stranger's bearing bespoke law enforcement, and with a sinking feeling in his gut he thought that they were going to be kicked out, that this area was being closed and evacuated.
The man saw them, apparently catching movement in his peripheral vision, then immediately changed his direction and headed up the slope toward where they stood, looking down at him.
He reached the top fairly quickly and held out a sheathed badge. "Agent Rossiter," he said, identifying himself. "FBI." "Yeah?" Garden said.
"May I ask what you're doing here at the lake?"
"You can ask, but I don't have to tell you. Unless I'm under arrest or something."
The agent turned toward Janet, who looked furtively over at Miles.
Miles sighed as Rossiter's attention shifted to him. He didn't understand Garden's unprovoked belligerence, but Janet's nervousness was a common reaction to authority. Miles stepped in to speak for them. He nodded politely. "Agent Rossiter? I'm Miles Huerdeen."
"Mr. Huerdeen. May I ask why you're here?"
Miles was about to answer, to give some false, harmlessly generic reason, when the sky changed. Shapeless clouds did not move in but simply appeared without preamble, blotting out all trace of blue, filtering the sunlight to a small white lightening above the suddenly dark desert mountains.
There was a ripple in the water, movement that began in the middle of the lake, moved south, then disappeared, like
some Loch Ness Monster surfacing for a moment before diving. They all saw it, and the look on the agent's unintentionally expressive face told Miles everything he needed. "I think we all know why we're here," he said. Rossiter's eyes narr
owed. "What do you know?" he asked.
"You first. He'd expected him to get nervous, but to his surprise the FBI agent stated matter-of-factly that he was here to investigate a series of mysterious deaths that had been tracked in Washington and seemed to have as their only connection strong ties to Wolf Canyon, the former government-sponsored colony of witches that was now buried under this lake.
Colony of witches.
That explained a lot, and in his mind pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. He understood now the existence of magic paraphernalia, the supernatural aspects of the deaths. Still, it did not explain the source of all the recent activity. Witches had been killed when the town was flooded, and now retribution was being sought.
But by whom? Were witches living today or were they coming after those who had wronged them from beyond the grave?
He thought of his father, and found it impossible to believe that Bob was involved in all this, that his dad was a witch.
Rossiter nodded. "Your turn," he said, finished.
Miles spoke for all three of them, describing the situation with his father, Janet's uncle, Garden's grandpa. He explained to the agent that he was a private investigator and told him about Liam Connor's list.
"You have a copy of that?" Rossiter interrupted.
"In the car."
"I'd like to see it."
Miles nodded. The sky had darkened further. The ceiling of strange clouds kept thickening. The black water of the lake was un naturally still, undisturbed by wind or bird or fish. The desert warming had not lessened with the disappearance of the sun, however, and the juxtapositon of the Nordic sky and the Arizona temperatures perfectly complemented the goose bumps that thrived on the hot sweaty skin of Miles' back.
"So what's your plan?" Rossiter asked. "What were you intending to do? Why are you here?"
Miles looked from Janet to Garden, unsure of what to say. "I don't know," he admitted. "We were sort of trying to figure that out when you showed up.,
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