I fetched The Black Guide and opened it to the relevant entry which was accompanied by a rude sketch not unlike the Hollywood-popularized treasure maps, and cryptic directions such as—Left at ravine and Keep north of Devil Tower. ’Ware crevasse. Leech. “The dolmen is about twelve miles yonder. I propose we pull stakes and ease along a bit. Got to find a spot to turn this beast around.” I indicated the Land Rover.
“Good grief,” Glenn said. “I didn’t realize how far seventeen miles was when we were sitting around the bar back in Seattle.”
Dane said, “I’m with Willem—let’s see what’s over the next hill, so to speak. As for that dolmen, the more I think on it, the more I think we’ve been had. There aren’t any goddamned dolmens in this part of the world. I ought a know, Erik the Red being kin and such.”
“This whole expedition is your idea!” Victor swatted his shoulder. “There better be a ‘dolmen’ or I’m kicking your ass back down this mountain.”
“Yo, man. Don’t get so excited. I said dolmen, not Dolemite.”
Breaking camp proved twice the job as setting it up because everyone was hurting from the previous evening’s brutality—we hobbled like old men and it was noon before we got packed and moving. Glenn took over at the wheel while I navigated. With my arm injury, I couldn’t be trusted to keep the rig out of the ditch. The road continued along the mountainside, wending its way through a series of valleys. Our path intersected a handful of decrepit logging roads. There were occasional fields where forest had been leveled to stumps and roots, but nothing more recent than a decade or two.
“Who comes out here if not loggers?” Victor said.
I said, “Mountain bikers. Hikers. Dope growers. Game wardens and surveyors. The state keeps tabs, I’m sure. The timber companies will be back with chainsaws buzzing sooner or later.”
“Think anybody owns land, a house? Y’know, regular people.”
The Land Rover hit a pothole and I almost flew through the windshield. “Nah,” I said. “Imagine what this will be like when it rains in September. A man would need mules to get around.”
The ravines were steep and rugged with exposed rock and descended into cool, fuzzy shadows that never quite melted even during this, the hottest span of summer. Ridgelines hemmed the winding road, topped by evergreens and redwoods. Rabbits shot across our path. Far below in the vast crease of the landscape was the highway and civilization, obscured by a shifting blue haze. A hawk glided in the breeze.
As the afternoon light reddened near the horizon, we arrived at a T-intersection. There was a convenient site bracketed by several trees and a picturesque scatter of boulders, a couple the approximate height and girth of the Land Rover, and it reminded me of a scene from a Western film where the cowboys sit around a cozy fire in the badlands, eating beans and drinking coffee from tin cups. If the guide was to be trusted, a semi-hidden footpath to the dolmen lay about a quarter of a mile down the southerly wending road. From there the anonymous author claimed it to be an hour’s hike to the dolmen itself.
Once the tent was pitched we took stock of our supplies and determined that between trail mix, canned hash, chili, and fruit cocktail, three five gallon jerrycans of water, and a case of beer, the situation was golden for another night, and possibly two, should the next day’s expedition prove too exhausting. Dane and Glenn took a hatchet into the woods and chopped several armloads of firewood while Victor dug a shallow pit and lined it with stones. I munched aspirin and supervised. Glenn had made me a sling from a shirt. I wore it to be on the safe side, and because it reduced the pain in my arm to the category of a toothache.
Night crept over the wilderness and the temperature cooled rapidly. Dane lighted a roaring bonfire and boiled a pot of chili and we washed that down with the better part of the case of beer. After supper, Glenn unpacked a teapot and mugs and fixed us instant cocoa. We sipped cocoa while Victor played a harmonica he’d bought in Seattle for the occasion.
“Dear God, not the harmonica,” Dane said, and spat a gob of blood into the fire. His nose was definitely broken. He’d crunched it back into joint himself, much to my horror—at which Glenn and Victor snickered and mocked my squeamishness. Evidently, they’d seen this show many a time during their debauched college adventures.
Glenn fiddled with the transistor radio until he dialed in a grainy, but reasonably clear signal—a canned programming station playing big band music from the 1930s and ’40s. Victor rolled his eyes and tossed the harmonica through the open window of the truck. He rolled a couple of joints and we passed them around. Talk turned to the macabre and I entertained them with Baba Yaga legends I’d heard around similar campfires while stationed in Eastern Europe; then Glenn and Dane discussed their favorite horror movies, most of which I knew by heart, and I nodded off, lulled by their easy laughter, the warmth of the fire.
Victor said something about “doorways” and I snapped awake, but missed the rest as he and the others were speaking softly. He said, “It’s only a coincidence.”
Dane said, “Come on, dude. Don’t even start down that road—”
I cleared my throat. “What road?”
Victor said, “The road not taken, of course. I need to shake hands with the governor—ta, ta, my lovelies!” He rose and walked into the shadows.
“That’s a wrap—I’m for bed,” Glenn said and he kissed me and headed for the tent.
Dane stared into the flames and the red light bathed his ravaged face, and he glanced at me as if about to speak. He smiled a sad, tortuous smile, and followed Glenn.
Victor returned, zipping his fly.
“C’mere, pull up a rock.” I patted the log I was sitting on.
He settled next to me, his posture stiff as a plank. Soon, Dane’s snores drifted from the tent and Victor’s shoulders relaxed. He tossed some dead leaves and twigs onto the fire, and said quietly, “What’s on your mind, Will, old bean?” He was high as a kite.
“Not much. The book. Weird, weird thing happened to me before we left on the trip.” I told him, as I had Glenn, about Tom’s visitation, except I didn’t pull any punches.
As I spoke, Victor’s expression became increasingly unhappy. He fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lighted one with apparent difficulty. He offered me a drag. I declined and said, “Glenn didn’t tell you, huh? I sort of figured he would’ve.”
“This explains a lot. No wonder he’s treated me like I’m loony tunes for . . . He prefers to pretend we weren’t a pack of superstitious nerds in college. Dane follows his lead. It’s a survival tool. The front office in Denver sucks—they don’t even know he’s gay. And the hoodoo aspect—that shit ain’t cool now that we’re grownups. Getting your face punched like a speed bag is trendy; crystal meditation and The Golden Bough reading circle is for wackos. I mention anything along those lines, Dane gives me the stink eye and Glen changes subjects like he’s a senator putting the moves on the press corps. Why are we talking about it?”
“Because I can tell you want to. You aren’t the kind of guy to keep deep, dark secrets.”
“The thing with Tommy isn’t really a deep, dark secret. A minor scandal. I had a bed-wetter type dream about him the other night. Neither of the other bozos dream about him, which seems unfair. But whatever, man. I couldn’t stand him and you didn’t even know him, yet we’re the schleps who’ve got him on the brain.”
“Seems rather simple to me,” I said. “He’s obviously haunting you from beyond the grave. You stole Dane away, then he got killed in a tragic manner that trapped his soul on the material plane.”
“Oh, yeah? He didn’t care for Dane like that. Well, fuck, maybe he did. Tommy loved to hump and he didn’t seem too picky regarding with whom. What’s he messing with you for?”
“He’s not messing with either of us. I was checking your credulity.”
“You got me, Tex. I’m a credulous motherfucker these days. Our boys are goddamned credulous too, if you could get them to cop to it. You’re a devious one
. Funny, you and Glenn getting together. He’s such a rube.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, Glenn is as pure as the driven snow. Plus, unlike us his family was damned progressive. A well-adjusted man’s one of my turn-ons.”
“That’s the attraction?”
“He reads. He can be a devil. I like that a whole lot.”
“He’s hot and makes a heap of money.”
“Goodness, Vicky, you’re a real bitch when you want.” I didn’t mean anything by that, however. His bluntness was sweet in its own way.
The fire burned low. Victor stood and stretched. “I was raised Pentecostal. Got any idea what that’s like? I saw a few things you wouldn’t believe. My daddy was a snake-handlin’, babblin’ in tongues psycho-sonofabitch, let me tell you what. I’ve no problem with the plausibility of the fundamentally implausible after witnessing my daddy and two uncles cast ‘demons’ from my cousin one sultry, backwoods night. I can’t say I’m religious, but I surely do believe we aren’t alone on this mortal coil. There are frightful things lurking in the shadows.”
I remembered the woman’s voice whispering in the dark—There are frightful things. I got goosebumps.
He said, “Something else I didn’t mention when I told you about the dreams I had of Tommy. I think I pushed it down into my subconscious. Whenever I first see him, for a split second he’s somebody else. He covers his face with his hands, as if he’s rubbing his eyes, or sobbing, and when he looks up, it’s him, smiling this evil little smile. Once in a while, he ducks his head and pantomimes pulling on a ski mask. Same thing—it’s him again. The act bothers the fuck outta me. Anyway. Goodnight.”
Shadows from the dying fire capered against the trunks of the trees and the boulders nearby. The goosebumps returned and I recognized the nauseated thrill in my stomach as a reaction to being watched. This sense of being observed was powerful and I became conscious again of our frailty, the dim patch of light, the flimsy shelter of the tent, our insignificance. I massaged my aching forearm. Farther out, branches crashed and grew still.
A few minutes passed as I listened to the night. Weariness overcame my nerves. I decided to make for the tent and as I rose, a large, dark shape emerged from the brush and moved onto the road about seventy feet away. There was sufficient starlight to discern its bulky outline, a patch of thicker blackness against the blurry backdrop, but not enough to identify individual features. It had to be a bear, and so I’m sure my brain gave it a bearlike shape. Bears didn’t particularly frighten me—I’d gone hunting on occasion as a teen and hiked plenty since. Bears, cougars, moose; critters could be reliably expected to live and left live. This encounter, however, alarmed me. Had the cooking smells drawn it in? Glenn’s gun lay snug in my pocket since the brawl, but that didn’t comfort me—it was a .25 automatic with no stopping power; more likely to infuriate a bear than kill it.
The animal stood in the center of the road and there was no mistaking it was staring at me. Then another shape appeared near the first and that caused my balls to tighten. The animal rose directly from the road, as if the shadows had coalesced into solid form, and as it materialized I noted that even obscured by darkness, it didn’t resemble any bear I’d ever seen. The beast was too lean, too angular; the neck and forelegs were abnormally long, and its skull lopsided and cumbersome. I pulled the automatic and chambered a round. I considered calling to my companions, but hesitated because of the impression this entire situation was balanced on the edge of some terrible consequence and any precipitous action on my part would initiate the chain reaction.
There are terrible things.
A cloud rolled across the stars and as the darkness thickened, the animals moved in an unnatural, sideways fashion, an undulation at odds with their bulk, and vanished. Symbols of warning conjured from night mist and shadows; ill omens dispensed, they drained back into the earth. I half-crouched, gun in my fist, until my legs cramped. A scream echoed far off from one of the hidden gulches, and I almost blew a hole in my foot. It took me a long while to convince myself it had been the cry of a bear or a wildcat and not a human—not something inhuman, either.
By then it was dawn.
11.
During breakfast I relayed my encounter with the mystery animals, floating the idea that perhaps we should skip the hike.
“Wow, a couple of bears outside? Why didn’t you get us up? I would’ve loved to see that.” Victor seemed truly disappointed while Dane and Glenn dismissed my concerns that we might run afoul of them during the day.
Dane said, “We’ll just let Vicky run his yapper while we walk. Bears will hear that a mile away and beat it for the hills.”
“Gonna be hotter than the hobs of Hades,” Glenn said after shrugging on his backpack.
“What the hell are hobs?” Dane said.
“Hubs, farm boy,” Glenn said. “Don’t neglect your canteens, fellow campers. Put on some sunscreen. Bring extra socks.”
“How far we going? The Andes?”
“It’s a surprise. Let’s move out.”
I took the lead, Moderor de Caliginis in hand. The sky shone a hard, brilliant blue and I already sweated from the rising heat. Fortunately, half the road lay in shadow and we kept to that. I felt rather absurd trudging along like a pith helmeted explorer in a black and white pulp film, novelty almanac map clutched in a death grip—Dane and Glenn even carried the requisite hatchets and machetes.
Despite my morbid curiosity, it would’ve relieved me if the book had proved inaccurate, if we’d tromped for an hour or two until my comrades grew hot and irritable and voted to call it a trip and bolt for civilization. The beating I’d received in Sequim had taken its toll and I just wanted to face the music, to deal with any legal repercussions of the battle royal and then soak in the hot tub for a month.
But, there it was behind a screen of bushes and rocks—the path, little more than a deer trail, angled away from the road and climbed through a ravine overgrown with brush and ferns. There weren’t any trail markers, nor recent footprints. We picked our way over mossy stones and deadfalls, pausing frequently to sip from our canteens and for Dane and Victor to share a cigarette. Victor unlimbered his camera and snapped numerous pictures. Walking was slightly difficult with the sling throwing off my balance. Glenn stayed close, taking my elbow whenever I stumbled.
We pressed onward and upward, past a dozen points where the game trail forked and I would’ve lost the way if not for the landmarks detailed in the guide entry and by the subtle blazes the author had slashed into the bark of trees along the way. I whistled under my breath. My companions were silent but for the occasional grunt or curse. A similar hush had fallen over the woods.
We rounded a bend and came to a spot where the trail forked yet again, except this time both paths were wider and recently trod by boots. He spotted the ruins a second before I did and just after Dane wondered aloud if we’d gotten lost and pegged me in the back with a pinecone. “Everybody, hold on!”
Glenn kept his voice low and pointed along the secondary path where it passed through a notch in the trees. I swept the area with binoculars. There was a clearing beyond the screen of trees, and piles of burned logs, like a palisade had ignited into an inferno. Further in, discrete piles of charcoal debris glittered with bits of melted glass. This appeared to be the old ruins of an encampment, or a village. I could imagine a mob of men in tri-corner hats loitering about, priming their muskets.
“This is weird,” Victor said. “You guys think this is weird?” I said, “In my opinion this qualifies as weird. Also highly unsettling.”
“Unsettling?” Dane said. Victor said, “Well duh. Don’t know about you, but I’m picking up a creepy vibe. I dare you to walk down there and see if anybody’s around.”
“There’s nothing left,” Dane said. Victor said, “That path didn’t make itself. Somebody uses it. Like I said, walk your sweet little butt down there and take a gander.”
“Not a chance,” Dane said and briefly mimed plucking strings
as he hummed “Dueling Banjos.”
Glenn took the binoculars and walked uphill to get a better vantage. He slowly lowered the glasses and held them toward me. “Will . . . ” I joined him and scanned where he pointed. Offset from the main ruins, a canted stone tower rose four or so stories. The tower was scorched and blackened and draped in moss and creepers, on a slight rise and surrounded by the remnants of a fieldstone wall. Window slots were bricked over and it was surmounted by a crenellated parapet. “Anything about this in the guide?” he said. I told him about the Devil Tower notation. “I thought the entry referred to a rock formation, or dead tree. Not a real live fucking tower.”
“Something strange about that thing,” Dane said.
“Besides the fact it’s the completely wrong continent and time period for a medieval piece of architecture, and that said architecture is sitting on the side of the mountain in the Pacific Northwest, miles from any human habitation?” Victor said.
Dane said, “Yeah, besides that. I’ve seen it before—in a book or a movie. Fucked if I remember, though. I mean, it looks like it should be on the moor, Boris Karloff working the front door when the dumbass travelers stop for the night.”
“How much farther?” Glenn said.
I consulted the book. “Close.”
He said, “Unless you guys want to hunt for souvenirs in the burn piles, let’s mosey.” None of us liked the ruins enough to hang around and we continued walking.
Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at our destination. The trail wound under the arch of a toppled dead log, and ended in a large hollow partially ringed by firs and hemlocks. The hollow was a shadowy-green amphitheatre that smelled of moist, decayed leaves and musty earth. Directly ahead, reared the dolmen—two squat pillars of rock supporting a third, enormous slab. I was amazed by its cyclopean dimensions. The dolmen was seated near the slope of the hill and blanketed with moss, and at its base: ferns and patches of devil’s club. It woke in me a profound unease that was momentarily overshadowed by my awe that the structure actually existed.
New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird Page 11
