The Thirteenth Skull

by Bonnie Ramthun

  He should be more afraid, more frightened. He wasn’t. He knew, absolutely knew, that more than inky blackness and nothingness awaiting him. There would be clouds and light and beauty. Perhaps even a laser spear of his own, and dragons to kill. Death was the hard part, he thought, his eyes stinging with the thickening smoke. Death was the portal.

  He was jostled, suddenly, as the climbers pushed their way past him. For a moment he thought they were all trying to climb onto the helicopter and felt sick. Then he realized three of them were carrying the other one, the one with the high boyish voice. A helmet rolled off and Joe saw a bright blonde braid fall down the back of the struggling climber. Her companions threw her bodily onto the helicopter and slid the door closed. They ran back away from the rotating blades as the helicopter struggled into the air.

  Joe, standing with his hand to his brow, saw a face between the pilots. It was Eileen, and he saw her gesturing frantically and pointing, trying to communicate something to the pilots.

  “What’s she doing?” Paul asked.

  Joe looked where Eileen was pointing. She was pointing up. Joe suddenly felt cold and hot all over in a prickling flood.

  “Oh my God,” Ted said, following the direction of Joe’s gaze.

  “Don,” Paul said. “Will the fire reach up to the top of the Tower?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Top of Devils Tower, Wyoming

  “I never did like that kind of Titanic lifeboat crap,” Eileen said, laughing.

  Lucy sat down, feeling at any moment as though she were going to roll off the sloping edge of the Tower and fall, screaming endlessly, over a thousand feet straight down. She’d never been good with heights. The top of the Tower wasn’t a smooth, flat surface. It sloped, about as big as a baseball diamond, from north to south. In every direction the earth fell away in a crumbly mix of rocks and soil that ended abruptly and met the sky. Jorie sat down next to her.

  “Can you feel it?” she whispered. Lucy saw her face and Jorie looked transported, almost exalted. “Can you feel it?”

  The funny thing was, Lucy could feel it. There was a part of her that felt euphoric, as though everything was possible. Eileen grinned down at them, feet planted firmly apart, hair blowing backwards in the breeze, her gaze as fierce and joyful as a hawk’s.

  “Mateo Tepee,” the Lakota girl said, her tears gone, her eyes round with amazement. “I’m here. I can’t believe it. Can I sit down with you? I have to be careful of my dress, it’s my grandmother’s dress.”

  “We better move off this area,” Eileen said. “The helicopter is going to land right back here. So let’s move a little to the north.”

  “Oh, great,” Lucy said. She could see great clouds of billowing smoke rising into the air from the north and west sides of the Tower, rising into the air and streaming down towards the northeast part of the valley. Looking into the distance made her feel nauseated.

  “Here,” Eileen said, striding towards where the sky met the edge of the rock. “Is that right?” She addressed her question to the climber, who was holding her long blonde braid in her fists and looking stormy.

  “Right, that’s the start of the north slope,” she said. “You shouldn’t go more than fifty feet, it starts to get steep and crumbly.”

  “Come over here, then,” Eileen said, gesturing. “We’ve got to let the helicopter have some room.”

  Lucy got up carefully and walked towards Eileen, keeping her eyes on her feet and not on the curious and sickening illusion that she was going to fall off the edge at any second. In spite of her fear of heights she was feeling wave after wave of giddy happiness. Ted, her heart sang, Ted, bring me Ted, the next helicopter load had better have my man on board. Oh, please…

  She sat next to Eileen and Jorie sat down next to her. The Lakota girl joined them, carefully sitting down in her grandmother’s pretty doeskin dress. The climber came over as well. She had a square face and a stocky body. She was still clutching her lovely blonde braid. It was wheat-colored and thick and fell below her waist.

  “They shouldn’t have made me get on,” she said in a low voice.

  Lucy exchanged a glance with Eileen. She reached out and they clasped hands. She felt her eyes fill up with tears and she whispered, “Ted.”

  “They’ll come,” Eileen said confidently.

  There was a rising, chattering roar, and the helicopter burst up over the cliff edge. It labored higher, clawing for more altitude, then moved over and set a skid delicately on the top of the cliff. Lucy could see the skid mark from their landing, and marveled that the pilot had fit his skid directly into his previous mark. He was damned good.

  Then all thought fled her as Ted scrambled from the helicopter. He was followed by Joe, Nolan, and the three Lakota men. The reason for the helicopter’s laboring was thus revealed; they’d crammed six men onto a helicopter that should only carry five. The eldest Lakota, old and frail as he was, must have weighed so little that they’d put him on board.

  The helicopter, without delay, picked itself up and plummeted off the cliff and out of sight. Lucy stayed seated, waiting for Ted to come to her. She didn’t think she could stand, so dizzy was she with the relief of seeing him. He came to her and took her hands, and everything that had gone on in the past twenty minutes was gone as though they’d been nothing but a nightmare. Ted, die? Of course not. How ridiculous.

  “They’re picking up your dad and Zilla, and the ranger, and the other climbers right now,” Nolan was saying to Eileen.

  He was standing next to Jorie but she hadn’t taken his hand or leapt to her feet. Her expression was confused and mistrustful, and Lucy squeezed Ted’s hand and stifled a smile. She’d seen Jorie kiss Nolan, too. Kissing a man like that meant something, meant a lot, and perhaps Jorie had done it because she figured Nolan was going to die, and why not? Now Nolan was here, all six feet of him, sweaty and hairy and full of life and air and promise. He was a man, real as could be, and Lucy wished Jorie would stop fighting the river and let the current take her. Let love take her, and a man take her, and marriage, and life. Jorie didn’t understand, yet, that every woman struggled against the current at some point.

  She saw that Joe was holding Eileen and laughing into her upturned face.

  “Can’t get rid of me that easily,” he was saying, with his goofy, happy Joe grin. “Your mom was right about this place, wasn’t she? I feel incredible!”

  The oldest Lakota said something. Lucy looked up and saw his face. He looked stonily into the distance as he spoke. He didn’t look happy at all.

  “She was right about this place, Eileen Reed,” the button-down Lakota translated. “Your mother who is my great-grandmother’s descendant. But I am afraid.”

  He stopped and looked at his elder, who had fallen silent.

  “Afraid of what?” Eileen asked.

  There was no answer, and no time for an answer. Joe could hear the laboring chatter of the helicopter and he felt like whooping as he realized that meant that Paul and Ranger Don and the other mountain climbers were in the helicopter, and safe. There was a sudden, choking gust of smoke in his face as the wind started to shift.

  “The wind is shifting,” the woman climber said. As quickly as that, smoke started to circle, then blow to the west. Joe could hear the helicopter and then he couldn’t and he stood, frozen with horror, waiting for the crash and the explosion.

  There wasn’t one. Joe started to see spots in front of his eyes and he remembered to breathe again. The helicopter sound surfaced again from the murky smoke and Joe realized that it was further away.

  “Look!” Eileen pointed, and Joe saw the cross that was the rescue helicopter, swimming away in the drowning smoke. The pilot had abandoned the attempt to take his last load to the top of the Tower and was now fleeing south, towards Sundance.

  “They’re safe,” Lucy said. “Thank God. Thank God.”

  “But are we?” the climber asked. She was looking north and as Joe followed her gaze he saw somethin
g that looked like an opening directly into hell. Burning trees and undergrowth were being lifted into the air, literally pulled from the earth by the tremendous updraft. Enormous tree trunks were exploding, burning with flames that leaped a hundred feet. In some places the fire didn’t start until it was fifty feet from the ground, where it could find oxygen to consume. Joe saw a tiny spout appear on the top of a ridge of fire, a tornado that lifted burning sparks into a merry, whirling dance. The sparks, burning pinecones and bark and branches, spun and fell and were lifted again. Still, the very top of the fire spout was a hundred feet below the Tower’s edge. They had a chance.

  “We have a chance,” he said, trying to take his eyes from the fire. He couldn’t. They were all standing, unable to look away, watching the fire as it raged through the valley. Beyond the smoke and the flames Joe could see a long line of cars fleeing south, their headlights on in the artificial gloom. They looked like tiny ants. He wondered if Tracy and Hank and Howie were in that line of cars. He hoped they were. He hoped they were safe.

  The elderly Lakota said something again, something in a resigned voice. Joe turned, with Eileen and Lucy and Ted, to the younger man. The young man looked at them with a suddenly ashen face, his mouth slack with consternation and fear.

  “It comes,” he translated. “He said – it’s coming.”

  Sundance, Wyoming

  “Okay, I’m hooked in,” Paul said into the helmet. The pilots had wearied of trying to listen to his shouting and had handed back a helmet with a microphone cord attached. Paul had spent precious seconds figuring out how to hook the cord into the helicopter’s communication system. The pilots were fighting vicious cross currents as they struggled south towards Sundance, currents caused by the rising winds from the fire. Local weather conditions were affected by a hot fire, as this one was, and the hot, dry July days made for a deadly condition known as dry lightning. The hot air struck cooler air aloft and caused clouds to form. The clouds weren’t heavy enough to give needed rain but they spawned fierce winds and vicious lightning strikes. The Huey, overloaded, labored in the increasing gusts of wind.

  “Right, then, what’s up?” one of the pilots said, blessedly clear, in Paul’s ear.

  “I think they’re going to get fire across the top of the Tower,” Paul said. “I’ve heard that it’s happened before. The updraft brings burning material aloft until it hits oxygenated air. You need to drop water on my people or they’re going to die.”

  There was silence from the padded helmet that covered his ears. Paul waited, then realized they’d cut him out of the communications loop. Instead of a hum he heard nothing but silence. He waited patiently, his hands smoothing Zilla’s head. She was on his lap, shivering uncontrollably. Something had happened to her as they loaded on the helicopter. She’d pricked up her ears and looked back towards the fire and barked sharply. She was in her carry pack on Paul’s back so he didn’t have time to see what she was looking at. He didn’t have time to think about it because he wanted to get to the top of the Tower and let the pilots take the women with them, into the clear. Even then he knew that the top of the Tower might not be high enough.

  When the helicopter was struggling up the side of the Tower Paul became aware that something was wrong with his little dog. Zilla was trembling from nose to tail. He took her from the pack and set her on his lap, where she tried to bury her nose between his arm and his side. She used to do that as a puppy when something scared her, before she grew to adulthood.

  He had no time to think of it now, though he patted and smoothed her fur with gentle fingers. His daughter was trapped on the Tower and there was no worse death than fire. None. Even the rock fall at the base of the Tower was a better death than a burning one. There, at least, the death by suffocation was a fairly painless one. If only the fire wouldn’t burn any higher. Paul knew that he was hoping against his judgment, and that was against his nature. He knew better, but he didn’t want to think about that.

  Someone pulled lightly at his shirt. It was the sunglasses climber, who’d introduced himself as they waited for the helicopter. Dennis Patterson he was, and he was a volunteer firefighter. Dennis was pointing to the north and Paul could hardly steel himself to look. Dennis’ expression was bleak.

  The north end of the valley was a wall of flame. Worse, flaming debris had been thrown aloft with the wind shift and there was another fire line starting at the southwest end of the valley. If the two fire lines converged there could be a fire spout hundreds of feet high, just like two converging thunderstorms can cause tornados.

  It looked to Paul as though the fires would converge roughly at Devils Tower.

  “Come on, guys, what are you going to do?” he shouted into the smooth silence of the microphone. “Turn on my mike, damn it,” he said, tapping his helmet and tapping the shoulder of the copilot. The copilot didn’t turn around but the microphone did come alive with static.

  “Okay, Mr. Reed,” the pilot said. “We decided to give it a try. We’re going to drop you all off at Keyhole Reservoir and fill up the dump bag in the reservoir.”

  “We’re only going to get one shot at this,” the copilot warned. “If we miss, that’s all the time we’ll have. And we’re going to have to time it just as the fire sweeps by the Tower.”

  “It’ll be like spitting in the eye of the devil,” the pilot said cheerfully. “I don’t think this has ever been done before.”

  “My prayers are with you,” Paul said. He rubbed at his smoke-reddened eyes and drew a deep breath. “And may God be with you, too.”

  “Oh, that guy. He’s always tagging along,” the copilot said, his voice sounding as crazily upbeat as the pilot’s. “He just loves the way we fly.”

  “Get ready to bail right out when we land,” the pilot said. “Don’t wait around.”

  “I’ll tell the others,” Paul said. The microphone went dead as he pulled the cord from the console in the helicopter. The wind still buffeted them but the skies were clearing as the helicopter raced towards the reservoir. Paul gestured the others to lean close. He explained what they were going to do, his voice cracking with the effort to be heard over the chop of the helicopter blades and the full-throated roar of the engine.

  Top of Devils Tower, Wyoming

  “What does he mean?” Eileen said. She had her hand on her gun, at the back of her waist. If the Lakota became crazed and tried to throw them off the top of the Tower, she was prepared to stop them. That was the only explanation she could think of for the inexplicable behavior of the old chief. He had to be a chief, and one of the natives who had never turned to drink. His face was lined with great age but showed no broken red lines across the nose and cheeks. His eyes were strong and his back was proudly erect.

  The Lakota who translated for him, as well, was straight and strong and unbroken. He was looking directly at her and his gaze was faintly disapproving, as though he knew what she was thinking.

  “He said the evil spirit comes,” he repeated, and broke into a few sentences of his native tongue.

  “The manitou,” Joe said.

  “Where?” Lucy whispered.

  “I know where,” Joe said. “Look.”

  Everyone turned to look and Eileen turned last. She made a visual sweep of every person in their group before she turned to where Joe was pointing. There was Jorie and Nolan, Ted and Lucy, Joe and Eileen. There was the climber girl, and then the four Lakota; a young girl, an old man, and two very tough looking young men. Eleven people, and not one of them was changing, growing, sprouting hair and fangs and the mask of a manitou. Eileen didn’t consider, at that moment, how completely she believed in her mother’s ancient story. She was going to keep them all alive, and if it meant shooting a were-whatever, she was prepared.

  Joe was pointing towards the Visitors Center. From this height it looked like a tiny matchbox, a miniature building. The climber’s Subaru and the ranger’s truck were ants in the handkerchief-sized parking lot. The fire had almost reached the Visitors
Center and as a tree exploded into flame at the road that lead to Devils Tower Junction, a car shot out of the trees and into the parking lot.

  “Oh Jesus,” the climber girl moaned. “Someone’s trapped.”

  Eileen felt Joe take her hand. She couldn’t feel her feet; she couldn’t feel her body. She was pure spirit, floating without emotion and without pain in the smoke and the hazy light, watching the tiny vehicle over a thousand feet below her. She was going to watch someone die, and there wasn’t a thing that she could do about it. It was too horrible to think about. She was a cop and she thought sometimes that cops were born, not made. Her duty was to protect, to serve the community, and even if she hunted down evildoers after their deed was done, she still had that most protective part of her at her core. And there was nothing she could do. Her training and her gun couldn’t help her now.

  The car roared to the very end of the parking lot, where the trail began that led to the rock fall and the Tower, and stopped next to the other two vehicles. The door opened. A man got out, an enormous man. He started running for the path that led to the rock fall. He might, indeed, make it to the rock fall, where he would die as the fire sucked the oxygen from the air or flame swept over him. There was a chance that the fire would burn so quickly that if he found a cool pocket of air among the rocks, he might survive. It was a slim chance, but better than the alternative.