by Alex Archer
It lifted him into the air and knocked him over. He rolled over twice and lay on his face.
Annja almost collapsed. She just caught herself, bent over, bracing hands on knees, gasping and moaning as she tried to suck in breaths. She knew it was the worst thing she could do. The posture created both physical and mental stress that actually restricted her ability to draw in air. But she was momentarily overcome by a drowner's desperation.
After three heaving breaths she quit feeling as if she were about to die and began to force herself to breathe from her diaphragm, compressing her abdominal organs to create room to allow her lungs to fill all the way to the bottom. As she winched herself fully upright, she saw the Jesuit stir, then begin with obvious pain to pick himself up. As he did he was hit by a coughing spasm so violent that it sounded as if things were tearing within him.
He's an old man! she thought with a pang of self-reproach. She had to remind herself sternly that old or not he had given her as tough a hand-to-hand fight as she had experienced since coming into her destiny. He was a skilled, tough bastard.
Yet he didn't seem so tough as he spit something dark into the gravel from all fours then raised the back of one gloved hand to his mouth to wipe it. She wondered if she had broken his ribs.
"Ave Maria," he gasped. Another spell of coughing shook his body.
With a mighty effort he came up to his knees. He jackknifed forward, coughing brutally, stopping himself with hands on thighs. He forced his body vertical, raised a knee, got his foot planted. "Sancta Maria," he said, and thrust himself upright.
"'Mother of God,'" he rasped in English. His face contorted, his body began to buckle. He clutched at his side with a black-gloved hand, which seemed to arrest the spasm.
"'Pray for us sinners – '" he stood fully erect once more "' – now and in the hour of our death. Amen.'"
Without meaning to Annja echoed his final words. As he crossed himself, she did the same.
"You are a daughter of the holy mother the church," Godin said, with more than a touch of the raven's croak, "no matter how hard you pretend not to be."
"But I've seen how the church treats her daughters!" she retorted defiantly, the more because her cheeks were wet, for some unaccountable reason.
"And may God have mercy on my soul, child, for I do what I must – " He reached behind himself.
She charged him. The sword sprang into her hand. She brought it looping up into a side cut at his neck.
He snapped a black autopistol out right into her face. She heard the safety snick off as the muzzle aligned with her right eye. She froze.
For a few heartbeats they stood that way, her blade pressed into the skin of his neck, the barrel of his pistol almost touching her eye.
"You should come back by daylight and examine that statue up the hill," he said conversationally. A trickle of blood was drying down the right side of his chin, maroon in the bluish light. "It's a naive representation of popular Mexican myths. The warrior is the personification of Popocatepetl, the languishing maid his lover Ixtaccihuatl. I mention this because I believe you have recently seen the originals firsthand, yes?"
She had to smile. But she never relaxed the sword's pressure against his neck.
"Is it just me or are you even more full of bullshit than any man I've ever met, Father?" she asked.
His grin made him look almost boyish. "Given my order, and my life experience, I would most assuredly hope so," he said. "And now we seem to find ourselves at a New Mexican standoff."
"Now, you can blow my head off with that piece of yours," she told him. "It's possible I'll just relax, and my arm won't twitch enough to sever your carotid artery before I fall. So you need to ask yourself just one question, Padre. 'Do I feel lucky?'"
He laughed incredulously. "You quote Clint Eastwood?"
"It was all I could think of," she said.
Sirens began to wail. They weren't far and they were getting closer in a hurry. From multiple directions, by the way the sounds surrounded the pair.
Godin tipped his gun toward the star-filled sky. His thumb let the hammer down and snapped the safety back on.
"If you want to cut my head off," he said, holstering the weapon behind the small of his back, "now's your chance. But I'd suggest you do whatever you choose to do quickly and leave with alacrity. The police will not care for any of the answers you will be able to give them."
For a moment she still stood, feeling the pressure of her steel against the skin of his neck through her hand and arm. Then she deliberately moved the blade sideways before making the sword disappear.
"I don't have it in me to kill a man who doesn't pose a direct threat," she said. "I hope I never do. But I also hope I'm not making a mistake not going ahead and taking your head off and letting my soul take the consequences."
"Refraining from burdening your soul with such a weight is never a bad choice, child," he said. "And now by your leave, I bid you adieu. You have given me much to contemplate."
She watched him walk away. Just before he passed out of the direct shine of the light illuminating the play area he stooped to scoop up his big, gleaming revolver and stuff it back inside his jacket. Then he continued on his way, moving along with no apparent hurry. Once beyond the circle of light he seemed to dissolve into the night.
She turned to run in a different direction.
Chapter 14
"Sit, sit," the big man in the herringbone coat with the black fake-fur collar said, gesturing her back down with a gloved hand. He beamed at her through his full salt-and-pepper beard. Cars choked the narrow street behind him. A horde of tourists, many wearing brightly-colored lapel pins in the shape of balloons, milled along the sidewalks to either side.
Halfway out of her metal chair on the small patio in front of the Purple Sage Coffee House, Annja halted. "You're Dr. Cogswell?" she asked.
"Affirmative, affirmative," he puffed. He was a tall man, heavyset, with round pink cheeks and lively brown eyes beneath extravagant black-and-white eyebrows. Like his beard his thinning hair was gray with a showy black streak down the middle. He held himself almost militarily erect and moved with brisk authority. "And you are the famous Annja Creed?"
"Not that famous," she said, resuming her seat. "I'm pleased to meet you, Doctor."
The coffee house was tucked back from San Felipe Street
, just north of Old Town Plaza in Albuquerque. San Felipe Cathedral stood across the lane. It was a bright autumn noon. The sun was warm enough Annja had taken off her jacket.
"Puff," Cogswell said, taking his own seat across the round metal table from her. "The pleasure's all mine. I'm flattered you took time out of your busy schedule to meet with an old coot like me."
For a moment he sat regarding her. He had a keen gaze. His scrutiny could well have been taken as obtrusive and inappropriate, though she detected nothing sexual in it. She wondered if he understood that and was using the fact that his age and professorial mien made him relatively innocuous, or whether, like a great many scientists of her acquaintance, he knew too little of human interactions even to be aware of it.
Make no assumptions, she told herself sternly, behind a carefully bland smile.
He nodded his round head once, briskly, as if she had passed examination. He leaned forward slightly. "We live, it would appear, in interesting times."
He nodded to Annja's left, where a thirtyish brown-haired man dressed in slacks, a pullover and red-and-white athletic shoes sat reading an early-afternoon paper. The headline read, or rather screamed, Nine Die In Gang War.
Her smile crumpled a little. "Yes," she said. "I guess we do." She had never really thought she'd be grateful for the War on Drugs, but she had to admit it kept providing excellent cover for her. She wondered how long that could last.
Cogswell cocked his head to one side. "Ah, but I suppose you know that better than any of us," he said.
Her blood turned cold. She felt as if he had read the thoughts right out of her head. He
r cheeks burned. What does he know?
The next moment he reassured her by saying, "You are acquiring quite a reputation in paranormal circles."
"Ah," she said. "Well. I hope they aren't too hard on me." Some people were, she knew. She had once made the mistake of wandering onto the public forum the Knowledge Channel maintained online for Chasing History's Monsters.
He smiled. "I suppose you've been quite occupied researching the remarkable events transpiring here in the land of enchantment. In fact, I gather you've been a firsthand witness of one of the more alarming phenomena."
"I'm afraid that's been a little blown out of proportion, Doctor," she said. "I don't think I saw anything but an eagle. The light wasn't very good."
"You maintain scientific detachment. Very good. But an eagle that flies without flapping its wings? An eagle that makes a sound like a baby crying? Or was it a woman screaming?"
She was getting those insects-crawling-down-the-spine sensations again. She searched her memory frantically. How much had the anonymous post from the San Esequiel dig revealed?
"A baby crying?" she asked.
"So what you heard sounded more like screaming to you," he said. "Reports vary. Still, the one seems rather similar to the other, don't you think?"
He smiled at her merrily. His coat had come open. Beneath it he wore a bright red vest and an emerald-green tie. It went beyond aging-professorial fashion blindness almost to the point of deliberate bad taste. Though the combination, she had to admit, lent him a certain cheery premature-Christmas air. And who am I to play fashion fascist anyway? My friends all accuse me of dressing like an archaeologist.
"Wait," she said. "An eagle has a pretty impressive wingspan. They glide pretty well. And while I'm no authority, I believe they have some pretty shrill, piercing cries."
"Could a bird as imposing as an eagle take off without flapping its wings?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so. But if you're familiar with my work on the show you know I'm sort of the house skeptic. I try to resist jumping to any exotic conclusions."
He nodded. "Commendable, commendable. But please, tell me truthfully, do you really think that all that's going on here is childish pranks and misapprehension of natural creatures?"
"Let's leave aside what I think, if we can, Dr. Cogswell. You have a most impressive résumé, I must say."
"Ah, the wonders of Google. You probably don't even remember the days when checking a person's bona fides required at least a trip to a well-stocked library, if not lengthy and tedious correspondence."
"My love for the past does not blind me to the advantages of climate conditioning and antibiotics and the other blessings of modern life. But you said you had some information for me. I'm very eager to hear it."
"Yes. Are you familiar with the works of Charles Fort?"
"I've heard the name."
"In his writings he maintained a careful distance between the anomalies he reported and his own belief system. Nonetheless, whether jocularly or not, he indulged occasionally in speculation."
"Didn't he write at one point that 'we are owned,' presumably by some nonhuman intelligences?" Annja asked.
"Yes. Which may have more merit than we like to believe, but does not bear directly, insofar as I am aware, on our situation here. Rather, I find fascinating his suggestion, later expanded in the sixties and seventies by American monster hunter John A. Keel, that a great many sightings of anomalous beings can be attributed not to undiscovered life-forms from our own Earth, but rather are strays from somewhere else."
"By somewhere else do you mean other planets, Doctor?" She felt her interest begin to slip. UFO conspiracy nonsense was all that needed to be added to the mix to turn it all into a hopeless web of confusion.
"Not necessarily. Rather, I suggest the possibility that some manner of small, localized dimensional shift allows beings to enter our world from, as I said, somewhere else – which for now must remain unspecified owing to a lack of data. Whether these slips are accidental or deliberate, or some mixture of both, is likewise speculative."
"With all respect, Doctor, it all seems pretty speculative to me. Are temporary holes between dimensions really a more plausible explanation than people seeing wild animals or escaped pets – or just shadows magnified by their imaginations?" Annja asked.
"Sightings worldwide, and over a very lengthy period of time – spanning centuries at least – show remarkable consistency. Such as the ability of these anomalous creatures to appear, sometimes do great harm and then simply disappear, even when hunted by professional trackers with dogs."
"Like the Beast of Gévaudan?" she asked blithely.
He chuckled. "Give me credit for doing my research, too, Ms. Creed. I watched that particular episode of your show. You did a most creditable job of getting across your reasoned hypothesis that the beast was some kind of unfortunate mutation of a natural animal, possibly a large wolf-dog hybrid."
She decided that she liked this older gentleman.
"The beast was reportedly killed," he said, "which seems to remove it from our particular anomalies. Not so with others. We have just recently seen another spate of mystery large-cat sightings in England, where no cats of any size have dwelled in the wild since before the last Ice Age. By comparison, in his book Strange Creatures from Time and Space, Keel reports that according to the records, in August of 1577, a beast like a giant black dog killed several worshipers at a church in Suffolk, England. The creature vanished without a trace. Incidentally, the British Ministry of Defense has repeatedly, if discreetly, dispatched experienced SAS sniper teams with the most modern night-vision equipment to chase down the phantom cats that have killed sheep, chickens and household pets. Without result, needless to say."
For some reason his words chilled her. She shook herself, annoyed at being susceptible.
"Certain other phenomena are repeatedly reported in such sightings," Cogswell went on. "One of the most persistent is the frightening sound associated with the creatures, usually described as sounding either like a baby crying or a woman screaming. A sulfurous smell is another. Black color, red eyes, flying without visible flapping of wings – the latter were common features of the Mothman sightings in West Virginia in the sixties, which Keel himself made famous, although they have likewise been reported in myriad cases before and since."
She stared at him. She willed herself strongly not to remember that last evening at the dig site. There was no future in that.
"What about the Santo Niño sightings, Doctor?" she asked, hoping her tone didn't ring as brassy false in his ears as in hers. "Do they bear some relation to these extradimensional phenomena you suspect?"
He smiled his big smile and bobbed his head. "Precisely! How else to account for the fact that our phantom hitchhiker has repeatedly shown a distressing tendency to vanish from people's automobiles? In the Murakami case near Acoma – which is the farthest west and south the Holy Child has been reported in this current spate – the family reported the child vanished from within arm's reach of the two children, sitting in the backseat of a minivan. What else could account for that, but an ability to travel dimensions usually debarred to us?"
He sounded so enthusiastic she almost felt herself going for it. "Well, since we have names and even video of real people who have reported the Santo Niño, it's hard to pass him off as an urban legend," she said. "Still...wouldn't you really think it's more likely that some kind of clever street magician, somebody like David Blaine, has come up with an especially ingenious disappearing stunt?"
"That would seem a high level of conjuring skill for an eight-year-old child."
She shrugged. "Well, then, a very small David Blaine. A little-person David Blaine. Who actually does, you know, tricks."
"Who's grasping at straws now, Ms. Creed?"
"That would be me," she confessed. "But – you've hit me with a lot, here, Doctor. I need some time to assimilate it."
She made what she hoped wasn't too much of a
show of checking her wristwatch. "I have to ask you to forgive me. I've got another appointment coming up here – "
"Of course. Of course." He nodded sagely.
They rose together. "Should you uncover anything you find it difficult to account for," he said, "you have my contact information."
"Thank you, Doctor. I will remember that. And thank you for the time. What you've told me is highly intriguing." That was the truth.
"Just one thing," he said, arresting her as she began to turn to walk back to the parking lot to reclaim her rental. "These warnings the Holy Child issues – "
"Don't most of them involve immediate peril to the people who report seeing him? Like a flash flood, in that Murakami case?" she said.
"Yes. But percipients also report, rather unanimously, an impression that he was also trying to convey some greater danger, some common danger we all face. Here's the thought that makes my blood run cold. Could that greater menace possibly have anything to do with our own current spate of sightings of strange and very scary animals?"
I sincerely hope not, she thought. Aloud she said, "One thing's for sure, Doctor. It doesn't concern the Mayan calendar."
He laughed at that. "Indeed. A very good day to you, Ms. Annja Creed. And remember to look behind you."
****
Annja was standing in her motel room in her underwear trying to figure out what to pack in her overnight bag for her imminent jaunt overseas. The small stack of clothes on the bed beside her open case was not giving her any hints.
Damn that smug old bastard, with his look-behind-you bullshit, she thought peevishly. He got me so rattled I'm actually dithering about doing something I've done a thousand times. It was true. It seemed she had spent far more time moving from place to place than fixed at any given address. Even the Brooklyn loft where she'd lived for the past few years served as little more than a pied-à-terre. She should have been able to pack for a short trip in her sleep. As a matter of fact, she was pretty sure she had.
